Bede

Very impressive Layman. Your gears are definitely well oiled. You are almost clairvoyant.

Our good friends evidently need to brush up and remove the clogs and rusty patches <clears throat> or they might lose their ability to provide meaningful defences to ideas propounded here.

Ted Hoffman

Huh huh,
I had no idea Bede had a sense of humour. Is Toto's brilliance that infectious?
A little obliqueness is all you need now or the humour will be too simplistic.

Ted Hoffman

I mean, after the shrapnel of Vernon Robbins decimating Layman has hit the audience(us), we can no longer take cheap shots at humour: we must have the postmodernist sense of humour flowing in our veins.

Abtruse, oblique, sophisticated, technical and seemingly sapiental deconstructing every event, approach and writing. Taking angles that leave the readers mentally reeling and staggering - with laughter, or surprise.

Wouldn't it be - um - exclusionist, to resist the urge to hijack this thread?

Peter Kirby

This is correct. I had a discussion with Jeff Lowder by e-mail around 1999 in which I had suggested the possibility that a companion of Paul wrote Acts, which prompted Lowder to request Price's thoughts, so we had a short exchange. The possibility of a sea voyage literary device for the "we" passages was mentioned; that was the first time I heard of the idea.

best,
Peter Kirby

Layman

I must have missed it. How did Robbins explain his reliance on the Voyage of Hanno and the Third Syrian War as examples of his purported literary convention?

Ted Hoffman

You mean, you missed the shrapnel, your decimation or his explanation?

Don't tell me you missed anything he could have said yet you were engaged in such a passionate discussion with him. I beleive you had ample chance to clarify any doubts you had. I hope you dont want to draw anyone into a catfight.
Any residual energy (or pent up energy - I noticed you felt compelled to be polite and respectful) should be spent tackling the issue with him again - until you expose his error to him.

But Toto seems to be ready to take you on that too - the thread is still open. As for me, dont let my lighthearted banter ruffle your feathers (you are too big for that).
Perhaps if I state I am totally ignorant concerning the argument (the Voyage of Hanno and the Third Syrian War etc), you would deflect the fireball you seem to be aiming at me? See, I was just a bemused spectator.

Fire it at Toto's direction. And Toto, I hope you are ready. I sense that our good friend is on a short leash and is a bit restless today.

Toto

You did miss it, since you're stuck in the old paradigm (and probably also have your fingers stuck in your ears.)

Just remember to use the clutch when you switch paradigms.

But no, I am not about to waste my meager energies dragging Layman into the 21st century (or the 20th). If he rejects literary critiques, if he thinks that one document cannot influence another unless it is substantially similar in all details, that's just the world that he lives in.

Bede

Wow, so Toto is now officially a post modernist!

I have little doubt that if he thought believing in God and faithfully reciting the Nicene creed would help in an argument with Layman, he would do it.

B

Layman

Even YOU said that you expected him to explain his reliance on Hanno. He never even tried.

It's a rather simple question. How can the Voyage of Hanno establish a literary convention to use the third-person we when the author was not present when the Voyage of Hanno is based on first-hand accounts?

Layman

LoL.

Arguing with Toto reminds me of elementary school kids bugging each other by playing "opposite day."

Acts is too different from Paul's letters to have been written by a companion of Paul. No wait! Acts is so much like Paul's letters it had to be written by someone using his letters as a source!