Ben C Smith

To make a ripping good story and glorify the apostle. The same reason biographers of Alexander made false claims about him (that he visited the Amazons, for example).

I have no idea.

Ben.

aa5874

But your analogy is illogical. You are proposing that since people make false claims about real figures of history, then false claims made about any one signify that the person was real.

Well, then Achilles was a real person. If biographers made flase claims about Alexander, Homer probably did the same with Achilles. Homer lied when he said Achilles was the son of a goddess.

Paul's history is no way linked to false claims about Alexander. Paul is fiction because his history as reported in Acts is fictitious and in the Epistles he has multiple unknown personalities.

mountainman

This must be a very difficult question to answer. Perhaps the better question is why scholars allocate different measures of historical credence to the canonical "Acts of the Apostles" as compared to the apocryphal "Acts"? They are all part of the one phenomenom called "christian origins".

One of the problems is likely to be that most scholars recognise the figure of "Leucius Charinus" as yet another "literary profile" created by the fathers, and the fact that at least some of the apochrypha were decared heretical, as early as the fourth century. There is certainly the explicit reference to these five books in the Decretum Gelasianum at the end of the fifth century:

From elswhere ....

Besides, another question is this:

Scholars know that "The Acts of Thomas" contains Manichaean content, and for that reason alone, were necessarily required to revise their estimates of the chronology of this "NC Acts" from 150-250 CE to a later date in the third century, since the rise of the follows of Mani occurred after his death in 272 CE. This obviously casts certain doubt over the testiment of Tertullian.

So the big question in my mind is this. If Tertullian died c.235 CE, how could he have actually reported a work thought to have been written after 272 CE, a fact apparently supported by "the church fathers" to date?

Best wishes,



Pete Brown

Ben C Smith

That is not what I am proposing.

I am proposing that false or incredible claims about somebody do not make that person mythical. He may be mythical, but it is not the false or incredible claim that makes him so.

Let me test this against Alexander: Alexander is fiction because his history as reported in the Alexander Romance is fictitious.

No, sorry, your statement does not work. This is exactly the fallacy I am exposing. And I am hardly the first on this board to do so for you.

Multiple personalities is a clinical term that is completely inappropriate for describing ancient pseudepigrapha. Just because somebody wrote epistles falsely in the name of Paul does not make Paul fictitious.

Ben.

aa5874

My position is that the Acts of the Apostles was invented to APPEAR to be history. Without Acts there would have been no "history" of the Apostles, including Paul.

Acts was probably written in the 2nd century, but Tertullian implied that Acts was written by a disciple of Paul, sometime before "Paul's death, however Justin Martyr did not mention Acts of the Apostles and the first time Acts of the Apostles was mentioned by Tertullian or Irenaeus was well after Justin Martyr's and Marcion's deaths.

Why did Irenaeus, Tertullian and Eusebius use Acts to support the history of "Paul"? These Church fathers considered or wanted their readers to believe Acts of the Apostles was history, not fiction. Acts was not invented as fictional, it was fabricated to APPEAR to be history.

But the Church fathers, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Eusebius, did rely on the fiction called Acts and called it history. They did exactly the thing you claimed they would not have done.

You have lost track of Paul's history, according to Acts and the Church fathers, almost all that is known about Paul comes straight out of Acts.



But, your choices ignore the evidence that point to fiction.

It is illogical to think that plausibilties reflect reality.

Ben C Smith

I do not know where Tertullian reports the Acts of Thomas. Could you supply a reference? Thanks.

Ben.

aa5874

Well, Achilles is not fiction, even though his history as reported by Homer is fictitious.

No, sorry, your statement doesn't work.This exactly the fallacy that I am exposing. And I am not the first on this board to do so for you.


So fiction is a good indication of historicity? Paul's history is fiction, what does that make Paul?
What is the correct term for "mutiple persons used the name Paul in the Epistles"? Is this fraud, forgery or fiction?

mountainman

You said above ....

The name of the man who wrote the Acts of Paul, and four of the other acts (including the Acts of Thomas), is reported as "Leucius", and much later as "Leucius Charinus" --- this same man who "was actually deposed from his position, apparently for adding stuff that did not belong to the history of Paul".

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Ben C Smith

Ah, I think I see the source of the confusion. Photius ascribes a single work known as the Travels to Leucius; from the description given this book had several sections, to wit, the various Acts. That does not mean that Photius ascribes each separate text in history known as the Acts of Somebody to Leucius (though I believe he gets credit for the Acts of John as a separate work).

The various Acts as we have them circulated separately from one another for a very long time.

Ben.

Gamera

Tertullian tells us:

"in Asia, the presbyter who composed that writing, as if he were augmenting Paul's fame from his own store . . ."

This is a bit oblique but the gist is, I take it, that the presbyter wanted to burnish Paul's reputation by adding to the narratives about him, and in that way get some vicarious psychological satisfaction.

In short, it appears the forger was overzealous and self-involved, which makes him sound like many an author.

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=6&gl=us

Other MSS of the same text, de baptismo, have different renderings of this passage, which can be translated thus:

"let men know that in Asia the presbyter who compiled that document, thinking to add of his own to Paul's reputation, was found out, and though he professed he had done it for love of Paul, was deposed . . ."

This version suggests that the "love of Paul" was self-deception or a justification for self-aggrandizement in adding to the Pauline narrative.

In any case, none of this is particular strange or detrimental to Paul's historicity, so I don't quite get aa5874's point. Just because people made up legends about George Washington's veracity in cutting down cherry trees, that doesn't mean Washington's historicity is diminished.