godfry n. glad

Steven Carr did state:

Could you expand on this? Upon what do you base this assertion?

godfry n. glad

Toto

Wow! We're back at the point of this topic after a digression to China and other points.

Why are there so many contradictions between Paul's letters and the narrative around Paul in Acts?

Layman

Well, not conceding how many or serious these unspecified but assumed contradictions are, it certainly suggests that the author of Acts did not have Paul's letters to consult, doesn't it?

Toto

That depends. Did the author of Luke/Acts intend to write a history that would meet modern standards of accuracy and consistency? I see little evidence of that. Luke is based in part on Mark, but the author feels free to change details and improve on the narrative. Acts is full of obvious fantasy. It may contain some historically-based tales, but who knows which ones they were?

Or alternatively, if the line about the 500 was interpolated at a later date, the author of Acts may have been reading an earlier version without that number, or with a different number.

Layman

This is all nice characterization, but its completely conclusory.

Steven Carr

I was being sarcastic. Emphasing that people who say early Christians had to hide were calling Luke a liar , as he is clear that Paul preached in the open.

Toto

Well, I thought this was a conversation and not a cross-examination.

Do you dispute that there are contradictions between the Gospels? You have two obviously different geneologies for Jesus, but the church fathers who compiled the canon put them together without seeing any problem. This by itself tells me that the early Christians did not put a high value on journalistic factual consistency (that hobgoblin of small minds), and that they were probably looking for something else in their scriptures. It could be allegory, moral messages, or hidden meanings.

So the mere fact that Luke/Acts and Paul disagree on details does not necessarily mean that the author of Luke did not have a copy of Paul's letters, especially in their current form.

It is Robert Price's speculation in <a href="http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/Rpcanon.html" target="_blank">The Formation of the Pauline Canon</a> that Marcion was the first to collect Paul's letters, and that Luke/Acts and the Pastorals were written as a response to Marcion. They all got joined together as part of a political compromise. If I get to take any vacation, I might have time to read up on this.

Layman

My apologies, I thought demanding evidence for unsupported speculative statements like yours was a common practice here on the SecWeb.

You are claiming that the early Christians did not think that their Gospels were true?

Ah. Except that the author of Luke/Acts clearly intended to convince his readers that he was writing history -- whatever yours or Price's speculations abou this ultimate motives may be.

Remember his preface?

Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which are most surely believed among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainy of those things in which you were instructed.

Remember also that Luke does not invent his narrative with a free hand but uses his sources -Mark, Q, and L- in a rather conservative way.

Remember also that Luke nails historical detail after historical detail, especially in Acts.

In other words, Luke gives every indication to his readers that he is writing history.

Yes, we already dealt with this theory in previous threads and you never really even figured out what your position was, much less offered a substantive defense of it.

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000600&p=" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000600&p=</a>

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000526&p=" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000526&p=</a>

Price is just rehashing Knox. Nothing new there.

Peter Kirby

Layman writes: Price is just rehashing Knox. Nothing new there.

Have you read Knox's book? Has Knox been refuted? One of these days I am going to have to get Marcion and the New Testament by ILL. I would like to be familiar with any authors who have undertaken to show the errors in Knox's thought.

best,
Peter Kirby

Toto

It appears that at least some early Christians did not think their Gospels were literal truth. (I have been reading Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.) Do you have any evidence that early Christians treated these Gospels as literal truth, as opposed to allegory, litury, symbolic tales?

I think this question has been discussed here before, and I do not want to rehash arguments. I think that Mark's Gospel was written as fiction, and was later misinterpreted as fact.

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Luke feels free to correct "problems" in Mark. You don't know what Luke does with Q and L, because you only infer the existence of those sources from Luke (or Matthew).

And Luke might very well nail historical details - he (or she) had Josephus to use as a source.