Peter Kirby

This question was put to me by a visitor to my site.

If not, justify your answer.

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Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

One possible piece of evidence, traced to Steven Carr.

Another detail is worth noting. In Acts 25:13, Luke writes, "When a few days had passed, King Agrippa and Bernice arrived in Caesarea on a visit to Festus." Luke assumes a knowledge of who this Bernice was in his Greco-Roman readers. This would be most easily assumed after she had been made famous by her affair with the emperor Titus in c. 69 CE. Juvenal mentions her in his Satires in the book on "The Ways of Women," while Suetonius comments on "his notorious passion for queen Berenice, to whom it was even said that he promised marriage" (Titus 7.1). This lends further probability to a post-70 date of Acts.

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Peter Kirby

Ben C Smith

My favorite argument for Acts postdating Josephus is the one put forward by Steve Mason concerning the date of Theudas. (You were in on that thread, too.)

Ben.

neilgodfrey

No doubt it could have been, if it were kept an exclusive secret from the 60's to the mid-second century among a close-knit local community that refused to share it with anyone who might share its thoughts or who might think it important enough to respond to in some way in their writings, especially the authors of Mark and Matthew and John, or who might try to confirm some of its stories with eyewitnesses and pass any of these findings on to the wider christian communities.

By the way, frustrated with reading what early christian writings DON'T appear to know about the early church history, some time ago I went through the writings of Justin Martyr to list what at least this one church 'father' DID know about the history of the origins of his faith. I have since put those notes in table form here for anyone interested. (Also on my blog with what JM knew of the gospel stories, too.)


Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

Clivedurdle

From Justin Martyr link above.

Does this not tend to a date for the story of Peter's dream in Acts as after Martyr?

Doug Shaver

I suppose so. But I think that any argument for such an early date would have to have to totally trash Occam's razor.

jakejonesiv

Could Acts have been written in the 60's CE?

I don't see how it could be. Luke/Acts appears to have been written as a unit by the author. Since the author utilizes Josephus for so much of his historical reference, this pushes the date of composition towards, or even into, the second century CE. See Luke and Josephus, Richard Carrier. "...in order to draw material from the Jewish Antiquities, as he appears to have done, Luke could not have written before 94 A.D., and again could have written much later."

Joseph B. Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts A Defining Struggle (or via: amazon.co.uk), has made a strong argument that Luke-Acts were written in reaction to Marcion's version of Christianity. This puts the compostion of Luke-Acts well into the second century, at least 120 CE, and overturns the conventional dating scheme. It is argued that Marcion's Evangelon was not derived from canonical Luke, but from an earlier version much more similar to Mark than canonical Luke.

It is also argued that Acts was written to combat the Paul of the Marcionite Paulines which identified Paul as the exclusive apostle. The author omitted any direct mention of the Epistles, and teamed Paul up with Peter to create a mythical false harmony between the two.

Jake Jones IV

NatSciNarg

Is the Acts we have today considered to have been a new work (by that I mean that someone wrote Acts as a complete book, sometime between the 60s and mid-second century, that it was written from scratch, and that any changes between then and now are small), or does anyone consider it to be a compliation and redaction of earlier material?
Could it have been (partly) written in, say 60s or 70s or whenever, then someone later used the material as a base for e.g. an anti-Marcion attack?

Matthew

hatsoff

Well, anything is possible. There's no real proof that Acts wasn't written in the late 60s. It's quite improbable, sure, but in the end it hinges on the accuracy of a lot of speculation.

Peter Kirby

Why is it quite improbable?

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Peter Kirby