Toto

This is an offshoot of Layman?s thread Confirmation and Correlation in Acts and the Pauline Epistles, which has developed too many side issues. I would like to separate out this one.

Is there a scholarly consensus that the author of Acts did not have access to Paul?s Epistles, and if so what does that mean?

In the first place, in my recent reading, when I find someone describing a ?consensus?, it is usually to argue against that consensus. Scholars gain renown for moving the consensus, for finding a new paradigm, or at least new insights, not for upholding a stodgy old consensus which may also be referred to as the "conventional wisdom." So I do not think that it is necessarily useful to know that there is a consensus on any issue unless you know what the consensus is based on. It is one thing where scholars have hashed out the issues, put them to the test, and debated them from every angle, but quite another when an idea is just accepted because no one has challenged it so far. We don't want to reinvent the wheel every time we look at an issue, but there is no point in cutting off discussion based on a poll of scholars.

Secondly, I cannot find a source that gives coherent reasons for the idea that the author of Acts did not have access to Paul?s letters. Many claim that Paul obviously did not have access or did not chose to use Paul?s letters, without making a case for either one, other than to assume that if the author of Acts did have access, he would have used the letters and avoided the contradictions between the picture of Paul in his letters and his portrait in Acts. The obvious argument, that the author of Acts might have selectively used facts or ideas from the Epistles but ignored them in general for ideological reasons, or because the letters were identified with Marcion or other heretics, is never addressed.

Donald Harman Akenson, in Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historic Jesus asserts without proof that the author of Acts did not have access to Paul?s letters. (p. 127) He has to deal with evidence that the author of the Gospel of Luke obviously did have access to the Epistles, based on textual evidence, and constructs an elaborate argument that the author of Luke was not identical to the author of Acts, an idea which runs contrary to most if not all opinion on the subject. Akenson recognizes that Acts was primarily a polemical act of propaganda written well after the life of Paul, but still cannot make the connection that its author may have had access to Paul?s letters but chose not to use them for reasons of politics or ideology. (Akenson?s book is very well written in general, but this convoluted argument takes the cake among the knots that people have tied themselves into when they try to make sense of Paul and Acts.)

As stated by Frank McGuire in Did Paul Write Galatians? (where the same argument would apply to other of Paul?s letters)

(emphasis added)

Unfortunately, I don?t have ready access to Enslin?s article. McGuire goes on to suggest that Galatians was written after Acts and in response to it.

In short, there is no reason to assume that the author of Acts did not have access to Paul?s letters.

Vorkosigan

Good opening post, Toto.

Layman

Toto cites one commentator who dates Acts to the second-century and then concludes that Acts must have been familiar with Galatians. Hardly a surprise.

If I dated Acts that late I'd find such an assumption reasonable as well. But it certainly smacks of begging the question.

Toto

What does it matter whether you date Acts to the late first century or the early second century? Textual analysis shows that whoever wrote Luke-Acts was familiar with Paul's letters in some form.

Layman

It does? Prove it.

Toto

I will post what details I have later when I am home, but in the meantime, Layman, can you prove your assertion that there is a scholarly consensus that Luke did not have access to the Epistles?

Layman

Actually, I believe what I have asserted is that Luke did not use Paul's epistles as a source for Acts.

I'm not sure what "consensus" means to you, but I already pointed you to Raymond Brown's statement in his Introduction to the New Testament that it is "widely held" that "Acts betrays no knowledge of Paul's letters." Brown, at 224.

Are seriously contending that this is not the majority opinion?

Even your own article provided support for this: "By the present century it was almost universally agreed that Galatians and Acts were mutually independent."

Toto

Did you skip over the first part of my post? Is this just the conventional wisdom, or is there some basis for the idea that the author of Acts did not use Paul's letters?

Layman

Have you changed points again Toto? You asked me for any indication that there was as consensus on this issue. I don't know about using the word consensus, but Brown makes it clear that it is "widely held" that Acts does not use Paul's letters. And your own source mentions that such a position is "universally" held.

What more is needed to show that this is, indeed, the majority position?

Toto

I indicated that a consensus was not worth anything unless we know the basis for the consensus and the reasons underlying it. All you have is the assertion that everybody believes that Acts was not based on Paul's letters. I would like to know what is behind that consensus, or is it just smoke and mirrors?