Vinnie

http://www.christianorigins.com/acts.html

Just got an email. Thought everyone might like to know Crist put out a very lengthy piece on Acts, hosted by Peter Kirby.

Just started a firs skim....

Vinnie

Peter Kirby

Yes, only I have the exclusive scoop, straight from Crist!

It's an excellent piece and well worth reading in entirety.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Layman

Yet somehow I doubt I will achieve canonical status. Especially here.

Vorkosigan

It's the usual conservative culprits Chris, none of whom seem to get Pervo's argument. I'll be taking Acts apart next year, so I hope to have a serious and formal reply to you then. But Pervo's analysis seems correct -- Acts is a Greek erotic novel (comically, you even repeat someone arguing that it can't be because it doesn't have a romance -- what a great argument! Somebody needs to get familiar with the wide range of literature encompassed under that term). Alas, none of the "historical" features of Acts mean much, as accurate history and knowledge of local customs occurs in them quite often -- they were written to be enjoyed as "histories" and often use historical events as the basis for their plots. Indeed, Acts' use of historical characters is vintage Greek novel convention. You'll find as much verifiable history and geography in Chaereas and Callirhoe as you will in Acts. As Jean Alvares notes of the same book:

• "For example, Hermocrates, Ariston, Statira, and Artaxerxes are historical figures. Mithridates may recall a Mithridates that, according to Ktesias, Statira helped become satrap."

If you really to get a handle on them, I suggest you get Winkler's collection of the Ancient Greek Novels, and also Hock's Ancient Fiction and Early Christian narrative -- reviewed here. {I couldn't get this link to work but I could go to this review from the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. -Amaleq13} I suspect from Mark, which is littered with both narrative motifs and construction practices of ancient Greek fiction, that Acts is of the same genre, except that the author was much more interested in faking history than Mark was -- I doubt Mark thought of his work as history, merely as an interesting or useful story. It was Luke who realized, in both senses of tthe word, the historical potential of the tale of Mark.

For example, take this:

• 3. Paul the Tentmaker
  
  “[A]nd because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and they were working, for by trade they were tent-makers.” Acts 18:3.
  
  “Paul’s trade, if understood as that of ‘tentmaker,’ is interestingly appropriate to his Cilician origin.”[89] The material “cilicium,” a cloth of woven goat hair, was a standard material used in the creation of tents. Notably, “cilicium originated in and was named for Paul’s native province of Cilicia.”[90]

Of course, Paul the tentmaker in Corinth recalls Habrocomes, the sappy hero of xenophon's Ephesian Tale, and his sojourn as a fisherman. Paul is even warned in a dream, another convention of Greek fiction.

or

Familiarity with Roman Citizenship and Legal System

Trials before the local potentate are a convention of Greek novels, appearing usually in multiple examples for both major and minor characters. As you note " The author of Acts not only accurately narrates various aspects of the Roman legal systems, he places them in the right time period and context." Certainly, as do many of the Greek novels. That was SOP.

Your presentation on this is going to have to be much stronger than it currently is. Relying on bog-standard conservatives like Hemer and Sherwin-White who are confessionally committed to Acts-as-History (did I mention that there was a Greek novel, when discovered, that was taken for a historical text until later discoveries corrected that?) is a strategy that is going to fail.

Vorkosigan

WinAce

Which Greek novel was that, Vorkosigan? Sounds scandalously delicious.

Diogenes the Cynic

I enjoyed reading it. Chris does manage to present his material in a way that, on a superficial level, seems more reasoned and less overtly a priori than the average apologetic. I'll give you this, Chris, you do a better job of presenting than Holding does (not to mention hacks like Strobel) and part of your effectiveness is that you keep the polemics out of it. It's nice to be able to read through a piece without encountering gratuitous ad hominems against "skeptics" and "liberal scholars" every third paragraph.

Having said that, I think your overall piece is more an exercise in skill at making an argument than a truly convincing thesis to us "skeptics" who have read more than a little about the subject matter. It reminds me of an attorney making a closing argument, shading and massaging his evidence in the most favorble light, minimizing or dismissing the evidence against, drawing confident conclusions from tenuous interpretations of evidence, etc.

It's better than average as far as apologetics go, it takes a certain level of knowledge to make a coherent rebuttal and (for what its worth) I don't believe it's dishonest as is often the case with some others. I think your conclusions are sincerely felt and that the piece is not patently deceptive, just subtly tendentious.

Peter Kirby

Diogenes, would you give three examples of the claimed failings of Chris's piece?

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Diogenes the Cynic

Maybe later tonight. I'm going to have to be away from the computer for a few hours this afternoon and I'll need some time to read the piece again. I don't think that "failings" is the word I would use so much as shaded and tendentious. I'll give some examples later.

S.C.Carlson

Something's wrong with the HTML as it confuses Firefox to no end (e.g. only the first 7 pages print out; it bizarrely switches to courier font in places).

The page works better in IE, perhaps because the page appears to be converted from a MS Word source, and IE is largely bug-for-bug compatible with the converter.

Toto

This is the first problem that caught my eye:

Chris Price: What Pervo actually said So Pervo is not assuming that Acts is replete with historical inaccuracies. He refers to previous scholars who have demonstrated those inaccuracies so often that it would be a diversion from his point to merely reargue them, but he does list them when required by his argument.

I haven't read the entire essay, but this is not a good start. Chris Price's arguments against Pervo (as if he were the only scholar convinced that Acts is a Hellenistic romance) appear to attack a fairly simplistic version of Pervo's thesis, which relied heavily on previous scholarship which does not appear to be referenced in this essay.