Ted Hoffman

I think Kirby has found exceptions to Robbins case. But exceptions do not constitute a refutation - at best, they are quibbles. A general pattern has been established by Robbin. That much is clear.

I think an "objection" would be much stronger if one provided cases of sea voyages where the first person plural is used consistently (and used "normally" - without abrupt shifts) without first person singular - instead of showing cases where first person plural is used in non-maritime events. AND one actually proved that the usage of the we was NORMAL (ie used for factual rather than literary reasons).
Now, how one does that I dont know.

And better yet, if one actually demonstrated that the (unusual) "we" passages were the exception rather than the norm.

Until then, all I have seen are twigs being thrown at a giant.

Of course, as has correctly been observed, the reason the first person plural could have been used is because such activities were always undertaken with others.
The question is, is that the only reason the "we" were used? Robin says no.
I think the guiding principles are:

a) Where the author was not present in the scenes/voyage yet they use "we".
b) Where the author shifts from I to "we" in a manner that is abrupt.
c) Most cases involved sea voyages, difficulties at sea or if on land, the difficulties are described using maritime features like "bulwark", "port" in describing (shipped) cities ie "sea voyage imagery" as seen in The Libation-Bearers and Seven Against Thebes.

Considering tortured arguments (Re: Hannos enigmatic shift from first person singular to plural) that have been erected contra-Robin like the preface argument, one sees ideological motives driving Robins detractors and not honest inquiry.

I hope this makes sense.

Layman

But, Toto, you did do it. While arguing with me about Acts no less.

http://www.iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimate...1&t=000848&p=2


One other reason I took up the topic was because Peter Kirby's website cited the theory as established fact. I don't know if he was one of the "two" you were thinking of (other than you and Paul Tobin I guess), but his website states the following:

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

And Kirby stated this in a debate about Acts:

Thus, affirming that one other notable skeptic has adopted Robbin's argument.

Toto

Layman: I was giving Paul Tobin's argument, not my own. (I think that this is the second time I have pointed that out.)

Peter somehow thought that he would find numerous examples of ancient sea stories shifting from third person to first person plural. But Robbins never claimed that this was the case. He only claimed to show a trend towards using second person plural in sea stories, (where there was an option for third person narrative or first person singular), plus 2 or 3 documents where there is an unexplained shift from 3rd person to second person, all of which when combined together leads suggestively to to idea that the second person plural was a literary device to make the story more dramatic.

He also never claimed that seeing "we" as a literary device is evidence against the "we" passages reflecting personal participation. (And I don't think that Robbins would use the term "mere" literary device.)

You may argue that some skeptics have overstated his conclusions. I think that Paul Tobin is one. His complete quote is:

{emph added}

This overstates the case. I don't think that Robbins would say that he had conclusively shown anything, just as he would not have used the term "mere stylistic device."

Here is the only reference I have found to Robert Price (in an unrelated review):

I think this is more accurate: "adequately accounts" includes providing an alternative explanation, and I think Robbins has provided an explanation that makes as much sense as the other possible explanations.

And then there is Burton Mack's
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE: Book I from Who Wrote the New Testament:

Again, maybe a little overstated, but clearly Mack does not think that the use of "we" is evidence for personal participation in any case.

Layman

You provide even more information about skepitical abuse of Robbin's theory. That is, if you are correct that Robbins never meant to imply what he clearly stated. But you are wrong. Of course Robbins was suggesting that his "literary device" explained the "we" sections in Acts while avoiding any hint of narrator participation (or the use of a source of a participant).

Your whole defense of Robbins is intriguing to me Toto. His theory has been utterly refuted by leading scholars, myself on this board and with others on Cross Talk, and now by Peter Kirby. When directly challenged on this point by Ken Olson, Robbins failed to even respond.

In other words, your whole defense of post-modernistic literary criticism such as Robbins is the reason I laugh when you claim to have no biases on these topics. Heck, you admitted that you look for the "atheist" position on these matters:

You also claim you were just quoting Tolbin and were not adopting his argument. Of course, you never said that at the time. You merely stated it, without comment, to oppose points I was making about Acts.

For someone who doesn't want to "defend" Robbin you sure expend a lot of time and credibility attempting to do just that.

Toto

Yes, Layman, but when I see you distorting things the way you do, I can't just sit there.

As I read Robbins, he would not be inclined to attribute the "we" sections to narrator participation in any case. If there was a narrator, why is he in and out of the picture? Why does he never use the first person singular, or identify himself?

If you think that the "we" sections indicate the presence of a narrator, does that mean that the other sections definitely are not eyewitness accounts?

I read Robbins as avoiding any judgment on whether any part of Acts is eyewitness testimony.

His theory has been bashed by conservatives and accepted by liberals. (The conservatives have written more on the topic.) The Crosstalk discussion seemed to favor him, but came to an abrupt end for reasons that are not clear.

I would guess that Robbins' theory is not the basis of the liberal opinion that Luke-Acts is not based on eyewitness accounts - it is just a little icing on the cake.

As I recall, I posted the comment because the theory was new to me, and I did a web search and posted the results. You might have interpreted that as something done in opposition to you.

Toto

Peter Kirby now has a copy of the article on his website, www.didjesusexist.com .

By Land and By Sea: The We-Passages and Ancient Sea Voyages.

Peter Kirby

I thank Toto for preparing the HTML edition.

best,
Peter Kirby

Ted Hoffman

You guys are angels.

Brian Trafford

I would also like to thank Peter for his contribution to this discussion, as I found his essay to be both interesting and informative. As a participant in X-Talk, and specifically, in the rather lengthy discussion with Professor Robbins I did, however, wish to clarify a couple of points raised here.
I did not see Robbins ever make a clear statement one way or the other in any of his posts, though it is possible that I missed it. The closest he came was in his concluding remarks found in his post to X-Talk of February 20, 2002 which he made the following proposition:

SOMETHING TO TEST: The Acts of Peter has at least one first person plural sea
voyage account in it. Could Peter, or his interpreter "John Mark" have been
the author of first person plural sea voyage accounts incorporated both in
Luke's Acts of the Apostles and the Acts of Peter? Something especially to
look for: nautical information in the account, rather than a simple statement
about a short, direct sea trip.

So far as I am aware, neither Robbins, nor any other member of X-Talk has taken up this challenge. However, from it we can at least postulate that Robbins takes seriously the prospect that the "we passages" do, in fact, originate with an eye witness.
I cannot speak for Layman, of course, but from my own point of view this would certainly appear to be the most reasonable conclusion.
Again I can only speak personally, but the post of February 20th does appear to be Robbins concluding remarks. In it he added one more detail that was merely factually wrong, but I considered it to be a typo on his part, and did not pursue it further. He had stated:

The point is that the we-passages are not only a "Sea Voyage Account," but they are told from a "group point of view that does not include Paul in the group"!

This is simply wrong, as Paul is specifically included in the group in passages like Acts 16:10, 15 and 27:1. In Acts 20:13-14 it is made clear that Paul is not a member of the group as of yet, but there is no reason to exclude him from that group from verse 15 onward.

For myself, I had remained content through the discussion to accept Robbins' thesis as a working premise, and to treat the "we passages" as a convention. My own questions focused upon the apparently inconsistency in Luke's use of this convention, and to tighten up Robbins' definitions and usage of his argument sufficiently to make it a more useful hypothesis.

For example, I was never clear as to what the distinction happened to be in the stories found in Acts 13-14 when everything is related in third person plural, and those of Acts 16 when we find some that are in first person plural.

Unfortunately, I did not see Robbins address this concern, though the comments from Ken Olson in his own post of February 18 proved to be quite helpful. He concluded his post by quoting from Joseph Fitzmeyer and then posing the question that seems to interest most scholars and lay inquirers alike:

I was disappointed that Robbins did not address Olson's questions, but the proposed test/experiment in Robbin's own post of February 20 suggests that he would accept that these portions could have come from an eye witness account. He would certainly take it as a distortion of his argument to conclude on the basis of his thesis that the "we passages" did not come from an eye witness. Very simply, this was a question he was not really interested in addressing, and as a result, he seemed more than a little disturbed that his actual argument continued to be lost in the midst of an ongoing debate over the historicity of Acts, and whether or not the author of Acts was a sometime companion of Paul.

Now, all of that said, Peter Kirby's post in this thread does seem to pose a number of important challenges to Robbins' thesis overall. It would appear that this hypothesis is in need of some significant revision in order to maintain its usefulness. Were Robbins to tighten up his arguments then this may still be possible, though Kirby's analysis and conclusions do seem to call this into serious question. Perhaps of equal importance, however, is the fact that casual usage of Robbins' thesis as some kind of evidence/argument that the "we passages" did not come from an eye witness goes well beyond Robbins' own claims, and is a clear misreading of what he is proposing. The fact that Robbins relies upon so much evidence that comes from sources that clearly were from eye witnesses serves to demonstrate this point sufficiently. I believe that such treatment of Robbins' work has done him a grave disservice. Robbins himself could, perhaps, help discourage this erroneous use of his thesis by being clearer as to the extent of what he claims based upon the evidence he has gathered.

Peace,

Brian Trafford

Toto

I think that Robbins clearly avoids the question of the historicity of Acts, but it is also clear that he rejects the use of "we" as evidence for historicity (see his discussion starting at p. 228 from here).

I would disagree that "Robbins relies upon so much evidence that comes from sources that clearly were from eye witnesses" - unless you want to count the Odyssey as an eyewitness account. In fact, we don't know if they were from eyewitnesses, and just tend to assume that because of the use of pronouns.

I do not think that Peter's essay adds or detracts anything from Robbins, because Robbins did not argue that there were many examples of narrative shifting from third person to first person plural in the literature of this time. Most of his examples of first person plural in sea voyages are in documents that are in first person throughout. But his critics explain this as natural usage, while he argues from other examples that we might very well expect first person singular or third person narration in these cases.

Robbins' defense to his critics' accusations has never been to challenge their facts, but to describe them as "tone deaf", "missing the point", or "full of negative energy." (I do agree with his assessment as far as some of the critics go.) I get the sense of people talking past each other.

On Ken Olsen's question

I think this depends on when Acts was written and circulated. If Acts suddenly appeared as a narrative in the mid-2nd century, I suspect that the readers would have recognized it as a historical novel, creating imaginative scenes about Paul that they knew were not to be taken as literal fact, and would have seen the use of "we" as just part of that novelization. If, as was common then, Acts were read aloud, I can imagine the reader adopting a different voice and tone in those sections. I don't see why the audience would have assumed that this was history any more than a typical Greek drama - if they even cared about the distinction.