Radorth

"Seems" being the operative word. I dunno Vork, why don't millions of Christians suck up every legend they hear? Why doesn't Durant get the same answers when he tests The Golden Ass? How is it that M.Scott Peck decided in the end that while he knew there was some fiction in the NT, the reality of Jesus became obviously and annoyingly irrefutable the more he read? Why is that?

Oh I know.

"He needed a crutch."

Yeah M. Scott Peck needed a crutch, Luke was a woman, and Paul wrote Acts 50 years after he died.

Rad

Clutch

Yes, why?

Geoff Hudson

I am considering a hypothesis that Paul is a pseudonym, and that James was the author of Paul's epistles. Then the issue of rivalry is between James, a preacher of the Spirit, and the high priests of Jerusalem who would have had Gentile converts keep the Jewish law. I believe it was the latter who were offerring baptism in water for the remission of sins, not those who preached the Spirit.

This does not rule out Josephus. At the moment I am thinking that he went to Rome at an early age, was a "Christian", accompanied James on some of his later travels from Rome at least, and could have written Luke and Acts.

Interestingly, the second letter of [Paul] {James in my hypothesis} to Seneca, refers to "the young man" he intends to send to Seneca. That "young man" could have been Josephus, possibly aged 16.

Geoff

Toto

I think you will find that James was reputed to advocate keeping the law, John the Baptizer offered baptism for the remission of sins (in one version anyway).

The letters between Paul and Seneca are usually considered outright forgeries from the 4th century. We went around that before:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...ghlight=seneca

Geoff Hudson

That is exactly what the editors want us to think. It was convenient for them to diminish the role of James, the principal, from his position of leadership, attribute his work to a false character Paul, and have the two opposed with James made to appear in favour of the law.

Similar considerations apply to John the prophet whose role is taken by the ficticious character Jesus. The editors can't wait to have John "decrease" and Jesus "increase", so they have him done away by Antipas - an execution that I can prove is totally fabricated. John's theology of purification by the Spirit cannot be reconciled with water baptism for the remission of sins.

As for the corresondence between Paul and Seneca, these letters make far more sense if the former is James.

Geoff

Radorth

So then it was James who wrote "...they spent their time in nothing else but to hear and tell something new."' (50 years after she died).

Rad

Geoff Hudson

I am suggesting that James was the author of Paul's epistles and that Josephus could have written Luke and Acts. The authorship timings would then be appropriate.

The parallel of Jesus replacing John, and Paul and Peter replacing James is remarkable. The two principal characters of the NT, namely John the prophet and James the lord, were pushed into the background by the same editorial technique.

Geoff

Toto

Geoff: when I pointed out the problems in your original hypothesis, you changed it to one that may be possible to fit into the timeline, but seems to have no other rhyme or reason to it.

I can see why you might speculate that Jesus is really John the Baptist, since Jesus' character is semi-mythological at best and looks like it could have been invented. But why would anyone want to invent Paul? What's your motivation here?

Toto

Oh Layman, Where Art Thou?

I typed up that long except from Steve Mason, and asked if you knew of any scholar who had commented on his idea that Luke used Josephus since its publication. No response so far.

I have been going over your original 56 points, and am working on a response, but I may not be able to post it until next week.

Toto

Layman explains the correlations between Acts and Paul's epistles as two independent sources that confirm each other, like the "two source" rule that journalists use. (Since Layman relies on the scholarly consensus that the author of Luke-Acts did not have access to Paul’s letters, I assume that he accepts the basis of that conclusion, which is that there are major differences between Acts and the letters. If not, it would be assumed that Acts was based directly on the Epistles.)

Contra Layman, I would explain the many coincidences between Acts and Paul's Epistles (and the letters forged under his name) by the supposition that the author of Acts had copies of the epistles. This author did not base his or her theology on Paul, and did not copy large blocks of text from Paul in the same way Matthew copied text from Mark. But aLuke did mine the letters for historical details and ideas – much as Steve Mason shows this author mining Josephus for historical names and details to flesh out the narrative.

As a side note, it is possible that Paul's letters and the book of Acts were both 2nd century fabrications from two competing camps of Christians. This view is expounded in more detail at The Cosmic Context, by Dr. Michael Conley. But I don't want to go into that here. For the purposes of this thread I will work with the conventional wisdom that Paul's letters in some form were written by an early Christian missionary around 50-60 CE and compiled some time later, and that Luke-Acts was written or compiled sometime later, most likely between 90 – 150 CE, although it may incorporate earlier material.

Is there any way to test these two competing theories? If Acts and the Epistles were two independent sources, we would expect to find some random disagreement between them, some details in one that are lacking in the other for no apparent reason. If Acts uses the Epistles, we would expect to find the differences following the theological line of the author.

Layman has attempted to overwhelm us with 54 points, some of which are obvious padding. I originally started to work through each point, but it is clear that could turn into more of a project than I have time for. But I will point out how certain of his points illustrate the idea that the author of Acts used the letters, but changed them to conform to a different point of view, principally an anti-Jewish point of view (in spite of Layman’s statement that the author of Luke was one of the least anti-Semitic of the gospel writers. ) Others may add to this or dispute various points.

So once Paul was converted, he stopped persecuting Christians. Isn't that like saying the keys you lost are always in the last place you look?

"Paul the persecutor" seems to be agreed upon. But why did Paul say that the churches of Judaea did not recognize him, since he had recently been persecuting them?

Galatians 1:21 Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia; 22 And was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ: 23 But they had heard only, That he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed.

This makes it sound like there is a significant time gap between the persecution and the conversion – or maybe between the persecution and the preaching. Or could it also be that aLuke is exaggerating the violence of Paul’s persecution? Going into private homes and dragging out believers to be stoned for heresy fits the later Christian myth of the evil Jewish establishment persecuting Christians, but hardly fits what we know about Christianity in its early years, when Christians were a sect of Judaism and seem to have spent time in Jewish synagogues.

In addition, Paul’s conversion story is a bit suspicious. The details of the conversion story are not in Paul's letters, but three different versions are in Acts. Does this mean that aLuke heard different versions from Paul or his friends? Actually, it appears that aLuke constructed the conversion story from Maccabees in the Septuagint.

From Randel Helms, Who Wrote the Gospels, p. 94

Ananias of Damascus is unknown from any other source, and his name may be based on the High Priest Onias. But it is perhaps notable that in Damascus, Paul is represented as staying in the house of a disciple known as Judas. Judas and Ananias have negative connotations in earlier Christian history – Judas the betrayer and Ananias the liar in Acts 5. But this story transforms these names.

Another element of the story of Paul’s conversion in Acts was supplied by references to Euripides, as I detailed on page 2 of this thread.

These literary elements make it highly unlikely that aLuke is presenting the results of research from independent historical sources, and more likely that a few details have been taken from Paul’s letters and fleshed out with material from other literary sources.

(Except of course that the author of Luke-Acts says that the risen Christ appeared to 2 people on the road to Emmaus before appearing to Peter and the remaining disciples.)

There is some speculation that this passage in 1 Cor has been interpolated, but in any case the two passages are different. The appearances in Luke-Acts are of the risen Christ in his transformed but still physical body. The appearance to Paul in Acts was an entirely different phenomenon, but in 1 Cor. is described in the same language. Is this Paul’s attempt to elevate his status to close to the original disciples? Or has aLuke added the appearances, which are missing in Mark, to create a chain of authority reaching from Jesus to the later church hierarchy?

Acts 9:3 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

Gal: 1:17 Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.

In Acts, Paul is on his way to Damascus from Jerusalem, on a journey that has no basis in fact. (The high priest in Jerusalem did not have the authority to send an agent to a foreign city to enforce laws on heresy.). In Paul’s letters, he "returns" to Damascus after a detour to Arabia. There is no indication that he was on a mission from the high priest in Jerusalem, but we have seen evidence that aLuke constructed that fantasy out of literary sources.

Yes, but – in Acts, Paul circumcised Timothy and engaged in some Nazarite sacrifice involving cutting his hair. There is no mention of this in the letters, and no indication that Paul would ever do such a thing, but it fits the theological bias of Acts, which describes Jews and Gentiles uniting into one church.

Out of order, but since I mentioned it:

There is no confirmation here. Acts has Paul cutting his hair, evidently after letting it grow as part of a Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:1-21); his letter does not confirm this, it merely references Cenchrea. Here Acts has Paul acting contrary to his stated philosophy in his letters, which rejected Jewish sacrifices and rituals.

(skipping over this for now)

This incident been altered so those persecuting Paul in Damascus were Jews, not the civil authorities – clear evidence of editorial change that fits Acts’ bias and the later Christian bias.

Acts 9:26 And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. 9:27 But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. 9:28 And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.

Gal 1:17 Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. 19 But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother.

These might as well be stories of two different journeys. In Galatians, Paul stayed in Arabia or Damascus for 3 years, then went to Jerusalem to see Peter and James. There is no mention of the other apostles or of Barnabas.

In Acts, Paul is chased out of Damascus by the Jews. He goes to see the remaining disciples who knew Jesus, but they could not recognize him as a disciple until Barnabas interceded; and then Paul has to flee because another faction of Jews are out to kill him.

Are these random variations, or is the author of Acts weaving in various themes that recur throughout Acts: evil Jews persecute early Christians, and the original disciples, in particular James, are clueless and can’t recognize Paul as the apostle that he really is?

I will skip over some points to get to this one:

I contend here that Paul was probably never known as Saul, and that the author of Acts is constructing a royal lineage for Paul comparable to Jesus' Davidic line. Far from being undesigned or a coincidence, this one has its designer's fingerprints all over it.

First, it is unlikely that Paul came from the tribe of Benjamin. Paul may not in fact have been born Jewish, and may have been puffing up his credentials. (Or a later editor may have done this for him.) It might be that everyone would have recognized that a reference to the Tribe of Benjamin was meaningless and an empty boast, since by the first century, Jews had no record of their tribal lines.

Jewish Encyclopedia

There is no confirmation of Paul's name change outside of Acts. There is no particular reason given for this name change. There is no description in Acts of why Saul changes his name. It appears that aLuke has invented it for theological reasons.

It would be possible to derive Benjamin from reading the OT scriptures, just as details in the gospels were composed from reading the scriptures. (See Life and Epistles of Paul.)

But given that aLuke learns from Paul’s letters that Paul is of the tribe of Benjamin, why not create an earlier persona for him, named after the notable king from the Benjamite tribe?

This seems clear when aLuke mentions Saul (in the form of a speech by Paul) in the context of describing Jesus' David descent:

Acts 13: 21 "After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. 22 After removing Saul, he made David their king. He testified concerning him: 'I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.' 23 "From this man's descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as he promised.

Contrary to Hemer's "coincidence", this sounds like a deliberate literary and theological construct. Paul, descendent of Saul, announces Jesus, descendent of David, as the savior of Israel. Why? The author of Acts is deliberately weaving a story of salvation for both Israel and the Gentiles. So in spite of the common statement that Paul had a mission to the Gentiles, he must be linked to Israel's history.

Interestingly, "Saul" is the Hebrew form; the Aramaic would be "Sheel", and the Greek form of the name is "Silas" – the name of Paul's companion.

Saulus is also a thuggish character in Josephus who is engaged in rioting in the 40’s and was a relative of Agrippa, that Eisenman, in James the Brother of Jesus, sees as a parallel to Paul. Eisenman identifies the stoning of Stephen in Acts as based on the stoning of James, and since he thinks there is some historical basis to Acts, he hypothesizes that Paul was not executed in Rome, but traveled back to Jerusalem to participate in the stoning of James. It is much more parsimonious to assume that the author of Luke picked Saul’s name from Josephus because of its tie to the tribe of Benjamin and because of Saul's violent behavior, to use for the pre-converted Paul.

Skipping ahead again:

This is all disputed by Hyman Maccoby and other Jewish scholars, who rate Paul very low on his Pharisean skills.

Jewish Encyclopedia:

So there is no evidence that the author of Acts got this information from any source other than Paul's letters.

In short, the idea that Acts is a reliable source of history has no support. Layman's list of coincidences only drives this point home.