S.C.Carlson

The Language Log is having a field day with current-day journalists routinely misquoting their sources (see e.g., "Quotations" with a word error rate of 40-60% and more). This is in a day and age with modern recording equipment. Think about how much more difficult it would be in antiquity to capture extemporaneous speech in a verbatim fashion.

Vinnie

There is no easy answer. My rule it to stay focused on what we do know:

1) Ancient authors certainly had a higher level of freedom in their speech writing.
2) Even authors like Josephus embellished, created and omitted things.
3') The Gospel of John went hog-wild with invented sayings of Jesus. I think the Gospel of John makes me very cautious of accepting any single-attested sayings that are ideologically consitent with the overal grain of Acts itself. I don't know of a cruitical scholar who thinks the Johannine sayings material is accurate. The fact is that some Christians were very inventive though differences between Acts and GJohn must clearly be recognized.
4) Luke had his own theology which is evidence by how he treats Mark. Looking for ways that Luke edits Mark and finding similar beliefs/material in Acts can find us some insight into luke's mind.
5) I am flat out dismissive of the miraculous.
6) Luke has a tendency to smooth out conflict and present a unified Church. Anything along this line is suspect IMO.
7) The same author who can churn out an infancy narrative can write a cohesive church history.
8) Acts has no qualms about inventing. He imagined a codign ending for Judas. Matthew casts the eventsi n light of the OT and has Judas hang himself as did that Apho (forgot the name) guy who betrayed David and Papias has two different demises for Judas an Luke a third. Judas was the embodiment of evil, he was infamous and all the authors felt free to assign a codign ending to him (fell headlong and body burst open).
9) As I noited above, the Twelve--if historical--which is seriously disputed--we may end up taking a Sander's like view that membership was not completely static. Jesus' inner twelve would have numbered about twelve, but not necessarily exactly twelve. This accounts for the divergences in the lists of twelve which are overall , similar. So there was no need to "replace Judas" but since the number "Twelve" by then (when Luke wrote ala Meier) became more exact he wanted to smooth things over in transition from Jesus' twelve to the post easter twelve with an appropriate beginning. Jesus selected twelve and one of them was missing so someon had to replace him.

On the flipside, Luke does get a lot of things right, as Chris amply documents. The fact is that Luke gets stuff right and some stuff wrong.

Lets take the first major speech that I can find in Acts:

Peter addresses the crowd in c.2. It has an air of historicity, its set in a real time and place and more than that, Peter even mentions "its only nine in the morning". But this may be common tongue in that Luke knows Jews won't break their fast on festival days until 10 am. But the fact is, Luke is writing about 60 years after this event and when Peter gave his speech I doubt his illiterate audience had notebooks on hand to record it. Just imagining this speech accurately remembered and faithfully handed on for 60 years is extremely difficult.

The fact is that Peter was a leader in the early church. He presumably gave many many speeches and teaching about Jesus. There is no clear line of transmisison here. Memory forgets, memory adds, memory conflates and so forth. Peter's speeches themselves would have undergone fchange through time. Look what happened to Jesus' sayings in such a short time. Peter may even have even said the types of things Luke has him say.

As far as Luke was concerned, Peter was an origianal member of the twelve who accepted the death and resurrection of Jesus as according to the scriptures. Luke basically "knew" the types of things Peter would say. It is very easy to envision Luke--in his mind-- simply connecting a few dots.

So I don't think "did Peter say exactly this" is the right question. I think the reconstruction should begin with, what did the early church believe and in that light, based upon the material they produced that ended up on later written sources, and that found in Paul who was a Christian preacher, what type of things would they have said. Then if we have diverse beliefs evident in the first stratum try to break it down for individuals (e.g. Jame's belief versus Peter's versus Pauls if they differ).

But I doubt Luke--if written by the actual Luke-- followed Peter around and wrote down his speeches. I think the convention may have been followed in that Luke very well could have known "the type of things Peter would have said or normally said" but even this must tread carefully. Did Luke carefully investigate the situation and learn of Mary's song performed 100 years earlier when Jesus was born in Luke 1.46-55. This is clearly an invented fiction--presumably a wholesale one.

Mary's speech//song does not appear within the realm of historical convention that those who quote Thucydides think his comments pertain to . Though Luke may have supposed "Mary was a good mother and since she knew she was giving birth as a virgin and she knew God was working through her, and something big was happenoing through her, she must have been elated and its easy to have her say something along the lines of what she did say as she must have felt that way....

The limits provided by comments from Thucydides and Lucian? Those limits are extremely hard to define. It can be as extreme as that found in GJohn or in Mary's song or so on. Luke may have just thought he was conecting appropriate dots, or simply trying to write a good story. One doesn't know and not convention, but detailed and painstaking study into the texts themselves will tell.

Vinnie

Ben C Smith

Thank you very much for the clarification.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

You gave me five times the response I expected. Thank you.

I quite agree that the limits implied by Thucydides and Lucian are very broad; however, the main limit that I had in mind was that both appear to require the speech to be appropriate for the historical personage himself (or herself), not necessarily for the author. In addition, Thucydides (at least) appears to presume that there actually was some such speech given; that is, he does not admit to inventing the occasions themselves.

(Inventing an apocalyptic outlook, for example, for a Jesus who happened to be rootedly opposed to apocalypticism would seem to me to cross the line. Smoothing out apparent anomalies in such an apocalyptic outlook, on the other hand, would seem to fall under what Lucian says about being eloquent.)

Between Acts and John, if only one of them crosses the line, my money would be on John. Acts looks more controlled.

I do not think that we can recover the ipsissima verba of any ancient person unless that person himself has left it in writing (and even then there may be wrinkles). However, the basic thrust of what a person believed and habitually talked about is fair game for the historian.

Thanks again for your thoughtful and lengthy remarks.

Ben.

Toto

Discussion of the 1001 errors in the Bible has been split off here

JoeWallack

JW:
I previously indicated that in General Price has the following serious problems with concluding that Acts is primarily history which he Ignores/Minimizes:

1) Impossible claims.

This is a characteristic of Fiction. It also creates doubt as to the historicity of Possible claims. Comparing Acts to Paul's letters here it should be noted that Paul's letters generally don't have Impossible claims concerning Paul. History. Acts on the other hand does. Fiction.

2) No Provenance for the Author.

This is a characteristic of Fiction.

3) Credibility of the Author.

This author also apparently wrote "Luke". "Luke" is filled with the Impossible. "Luke" copied most of "Mark" without indicating such and appeared to edit "Mark" for theological reasons.

4) Language.

The author wrote in Greek and appeared to use Greek sources. The primary subjects in the related stories would have spoken Aramaic. Maybe no big deal when you still have sources in the original language, but when you don't?

5) Religious Genre.

"Luke"/Acts is in the genre of religious writing, maintained and Edited by a Biased Religious institution.

6) The difference in Style of Act's Paul and Paul's Paul.

Act's Paul is well-spoken and clearly communicates. Paul's Paul is often disorganized, contradictory and unclear. Read "Romans", probably Paul's most important theological work, in the Greek, before English sanitation, and it's often unclear what the hell Paul is trying to say.

Now let's add another one (for Price to Ignore and Vinnie to copy):

7) Act's succession of Jesus' Disciples is Contradicted by a Primary Source for the Author, "Mark".

The purpose of Acts in the Christian Bible is to provide the Missing Link between Jesus and the Church. A Primary point of the original Gospel, "Mark", is that there was no such succession. ALL the original disciples Failed Jesus. I can just picture the author of "Luke" spinning around in her grave when she found out "Mark" was put in the same Canon like Disney spinning in his grave when he found out "The Jews" were now running his company.

We can also look at 7) from a Common Sense Criteria (always the best criteria). How does Paul, someone who was never taught, knew or saw the earthly Jesus, become the Primary spokesman for Jesus if there were Jesus Disciples who received (the) spirit holy promised by "Luke's" Jesus that Paul didn't? In the words of that great 20th century philosopher Yoda, "hmmm". Doesn't make sense. Unless, "Luke's" primary source was correct, there was no transition of Jesus' disciples.

(JW drinking with BAR, trying to control temper, unable to, yells at Peter and Vinnie):

Go get yer friggin shoebox of 1001 Errors In The Christian Bible!

Here's Price's conclusion on the intent of the Author of Acts:

Intent is evidence of historical value but what Price doesn't mention is just because your intent was history, that doesn't necessarily mean it was history. More important is HOW you determined history.

Regarding accuracy Price writes:
And here's how Price dealt with Potential Inaccuracies in the detail of his piece:

What a remarkable statement! Peter, you must be very proud of this excellent work.

So in order to help evaluate whether Acts is history I think we should look at Potential errors in Acts even though Price doesn't. But maybe that's just me. Does anyone else agree?



Joseph

(In response to advice to be respectful) "Hey Vinnie, go yuck your forceps out" - JoeWallack

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Errors...yguid=68161660

http://hometown.aol.com/abdulreis/myhomepage/index.html

Ben C Smith

Sorry, Stephen, I missed your post the first time through.

I think Ed Cook had a blog entry not so long ago about a differently rendered modern quotation, to which he compared synoptic studies.

Do you think that the difficulty you point up helps decide between the appropriate-for-the-person-and-occasion model and the putting-my-own-contrary-ideas-on-his-lips model for any given text with speeches?

Ben.

Toto

Chris Price (Layman) has been trying for some time to convince us that Acts contains real history. Layman is not a historian, or he would know that modern historians are highly skeptical of trusting ancient documents in general, not to mention religious tracts such as Acts.

I don't have my copy of Pervo's Profit with Delight with me now, but I recall that he discusses "Luke the Theologian" and "Luke the Bad Historian" before he settles on "Luke the 2nd Century Christian Moralistic Romance Author."

Layman's argument appears to be that first of all we look at Luke's intent - his intent was to write history. Even though there are errors in the text, he still had that intent. But then with a wave of the hand, the errors are gone, and we are supposed to accept that Luke actually produced reliable history. What is the point here?

I think that everyone would agree that there is at least some history in Acts. Even historical novels contain some valid historical background, and historians have made use of novels in writing social history. But is the historical content 2%? 50%?

And if "Luke" managed to get some titles of various officials in the Roman Empire correct, does that mean that his tale of Saul persecuting Christians is based on history, or that Paul was sent to Rome under an armed guard and experienced a rather improbable sea adventure? Does that mean we are to accept as "history" the tale about a spiritual Jesus speaking to Saul on the road to Damascus - especially given all the other historical anomalies in that fable? (Or maybe one of the two other versions of Saul's conversion is more reliable?)

The whole enterprise doesn't make sense.

S.C.Carlson

That's right, and Ed even linked to an earlier Language Log post on the same topic.

Personally, I'd rather operate under the what-the-author-perceives-would-be-plausible-to-the-intended-audience's-expectations model and go from there. The lack of contemporary expectations for verbatim transcripts means that we are primarily working with interpretation rather than raw data. That doesn't necessary mean that there isn't something underneath the interpretation, just that the critical historian has to be careful with it.

Stephen

Ben C Smith

I like that name for your model.

I bet I could come up with an even longer and more convoluted one if I applied myself. But I will settle for appropriate-for-what-the-intended-readership-presumably-expects-of-the-person-and-occasion in place of my more simplistic appropriate-for-the-person-and-occasion. How does that sound?

Ben.