Ratel

Let me put on my apologist's hat and give this a shot. See, James was busy running the family carpentry business and taking care of Mom and little Jude while Jesus was playing holy man all over Galilee. So when the apostles grabbed him to run the Jerusalem church, the reluctant James (who always thought his brother was a little off-kilter to begin with) was a little sketchy on all the doctrinal fine points that Jesus had conveyed during his ministry. "Faith without works is dead." Come ON James!

Peter, on the other hand, well Peter was just a doofus as we know from the gospels. You couldn't trust Peter with a shopping list let alone something as complex as substitutionary atonement or salvation by grace through faith.

So now it's time for Paul to shine. The Christ looked down from heaven and realized what a mess his disciples were making of things and began telepathically transmitting correct doctrine to Paul, which he would then express in series of disjointed and tediously boring letters to various churches throughout the Mediterranean world. Thus true doctrine was preserved for all God's elect.

Amen.

Sheshbazzar

Good enough to satisfy most Christians. :Cheeky:

dog-on

In my view, not only was the author of Acts familiar with Galatians, the same author, or perhaps group, redacted the original Paulines, The Ur-Lukas and possibly was responsible for both the deutro-Paulines and the pastorals.

Doug Shaver

We certainly cannot assume familiarity, but I don't think it matters much to how we should read Acts. Even if he knew Galatians, he could have had what he thought was good reason to simply ignore it when composing his narrative.

Even skeptics seem too often to forget that the people who wrote the New Testament had no notion that they were producing something that would one day be regarded as Holy Writ, nor any inkling that they were obliged to support or endorse anything that any other member of their religion had previously written.

dog-on

Except Doug, that the NT was put together explicitly as Holy Writ.

Doug Shaver

I can put a bunch of lumber together as a table. That doesn't mean that the trees from which the lumber was cut were planted by anyone who either wanted or expected me to make a table.

aa5874

But that does not mean that not one of them did NOT. One person could have cut down a tree just to make a table like a person who cut a tree just to make a boat.

You simply cannot claim to know how the very first Jesus story was assembled.

When the CHRISTIAN Marcion wrote his doctrine of the Phantom was it NOT HOLY WRIT to the Marcionites?

Well, if the Jesus story was believed to the product of the Word of God or Hebrew Scripture then it may have been regarded as Holy Writ when it was FIRST written.

According to Justin Martyr in "First Apology" the Memoirs of the Apostles" were read in the Churches on Sundays.

ahdenai

New testament ignoramus here, seeking an explanation.

Acts 16 doesn't make any sense to me....


So, what is the story here? Paul & Timothy want to go preaching, so Paul starts by disfiguring Timothy's member? And when Tim gets to Lystra and Iconium, Paul tells him to expose himself to the locals, then gets his preaching in before they get arrested for indecency? Or were the Lystrians and Iconiumians used to strangers coming to town and exposing themselves?

And what would Tim think? "I've just converted to a new religion that teaches that I don't need to circumcise, so now to preach that religion, Paul is going to circumcise me, and then have me go around to strange places like Lystra and Iconium exposing myself?..."

Why couldn't Paul have just whispered to Tim, "hey, dude, they won't trust you if you show them your uncircumcised penis, so just keep it zipped, OK? NO WHIPPING IT OUT on this trip, get it?"

Wouldn't that have made more sense?

stephan huller

An interesting fact about ancient Jewish controversies regarding circumcision. Jews of the Second Commonwealth period distinguished between the ten utterances which Moses received on Sinai from the rest of the commandments given in Torah. The former were held to be 'the Torah' and from heaven, the latter mitzvot developed according to the authority of Moses. Why does this matter? Interestingly circumcision which Acts pretends is at the heart of the disputes in early Christianity was not included in the ten utterances which the divine finger inscribed with fire on the stone tablets. The argument then among those 'antinomian' figures identified in the rabbinic literature (Agrippa especially) was that circumcision was according to man rather than God.

From memory Agrippa says something like 'if God really believed in circumcision he would have included it among the ten utterances.'

Everything else you hear about these debates is nonsense. The debate about circumcision worked along the same tracks as the debate about whether Moses's rules about divorce, sacrifices and the like were valid or not. Jewish tradition says that the position of the Sadducees with respect to 'only the ten were from heaven' (a position reflected still in the writings of Marqe the Samaritan) were used by the minim (Christians) to great effect.

I hope everyone can see that these debates developed rationally rather than 'spiritually' - i.e. the drivel that Gentiles claim was at the heart of the controversy ('all you have to do is be nice to one another'). There are logical steps to the arguments of those who rejected circumcision. It wasn't that 'we're going to ignore the OT' but rather stick to a minimalist position with respect to the sanctity of 'the Torah' (= ten utterances EXCLUSIVELY).

Doug Shaver

Yes, of course, but the inference from "could have happened" to "did happen" is invalid.

Nor do I claim such knowledge. I claim only to have a reasonable belief as to how it might have happened.

I have no idea. I have not gotten around to examining the pertinent evidence.

You have asserted "If A, then possibly B." Even assuming it to be a true proposition, it proves nothing at all about B.

Quite so. And, it is widely presumed that those "memoirs" were the documents that eventually became the canonical gospels. I am not at all sure that that presumption is justified.