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Loading...There are so many legends, and only so many facts, we know about Paul from our surviving sources. Is there a way to tell which is which? How much of what we read — in the New Testament letters of Paul, the book of Acts, the Acts of Paul, the letters of Paul from outside the New Testament, such as the Letter of 3 Corinthians, the Letter to the Laodiceans, and the exchange of letters between Paul and Seneca — how much of all that can be seen has historically reliable information and how much intriguing but unhistorical fiction?
That’s what I started to ask in my previous post, and I continue here, once again, in an excerpt from my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press, 2006).
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Separating History from Legend
How do we know the difference between what really happened in the life of Paul and what has come down to us as pious legend? An early account indicates that on one of his missionary journeys Paul arrived on the Island of Cyprus, where he met a certain magician, who was a “Jewish false prophet named Barjesus” (literally: “Son of Jesus”; he also went by the name Elymas) who had the ear of the local Roman official, Sergius Paulus. Barjesus is said to be afraid that Sergius Paulus would convert to become a follower of Jesus, and that he would thereby lose a patron. And so he tries to prevent him from accepting the message that Paul proclaims. When Paul realizes what is happening he confronts Barjesus, telling him “Now see, the hand of the Lord is against you and
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Not related to this, I’m interested in what you think about the ring composition in the Gospels because some want to use it as an argument that the Gospels are a complete myth, I’m Catholic so I definitely don’t believe that but I’m interested in your answer because I know you don’t believe in it.
The literary structure of a story never has anything to do with whether its basic content is historical or not. I can tell a story of Abraham Lincoln with a ring structure, but it has no bearing on whether he existed or not.
Hm. Never to any extent? Many historically accurate narratives contain events that correspond to, say, some elements of the Campbell “Hero’s Journey,” but if you come across an account that seems to track all or nearly all of the beats, wouldn’t it be reasonable to infer that, at minimum, partly historical events have likely been massaged to fit a familiar and compelling archetype? In much the same way film adaptations of “true stories” will typically need to tweak the real events to some degree to hit the plot beats of the familiar three-act structure? Though I suppose your point is that “tweaked to squeeze it into a structure” is a far cry from “complete myth,” if that’s what some people are trying to claim.
Absolutely historical events get massaged, altered, made up, etc in stories. But a massaged, altered, made up story about Abraham Lincoln would have no bearing on whether there actually was an Abraham Lincoln. The story itself would not prove there was, but it’s fictional character also does not prove that there was not.
Interesting fact: Eutychos is a Greek word which means lucky or fortunate!
The Barjesus incident in (Acts 13:4-12) is highly interesting.
Before that passage Paul was always named ”Saul”, but in 13:9 Luke explicitly tells us “Then SAUL, who was also called PAUL.”
Interestingly ,just in the prior verse (13:8) we are told that BARJESUS was also known as ELYMAS.
So from 13:8-9 we know that Barjesus is Elymas and Saul is Paul.
Furthermore, the “punishment” for the “Jewish sorcerer and false prophet” was to become blind … but just for a while . Luke makes Paul say “ You are going to be blind FOR A TIME” (Acts 13:11), so we have to conclude that he eventually recovers .
Paul’s own conversion also made him “blind FOR A TIME” ( Acts 9:8-9) and as Barjesus/Elymas was “seeking someone to lead him by the hand” (Acts 13:11) so Paul was “led by the hand” by his companions.
The final equation is ELYMAS=BARJESUS=SAUL=PAUL.
The author of Luke-Acts , a pagan scholar hired by the early church, found the way to tell us what he really thought about the founders of the cult.
Paul was just a “Jewish sorcerer and false prophet” that blamed others with his own faults (Acts 13:10 and 2 Cor 11:13-15).
Hmmm … and in what passage did the author of Luke/Acts find a way to tell you that he was “a pagan scholar hired by the early church”?
Acts 5:36-37
How does the citation of a few facts about Jewish rebels tell you that the author of Acts was a “pagan scholar hired by the early church”?
I could understand if you said that this is evidence of borrowing from Josephus. But how does it evidence a “pagan scholar hired by the early church”?
Hi, Bart,
1) What does Acts 5:1-11 mean? Does Peter kill them by sword, lets say? (Althought not specified) Or is it God that kills them in an instant by his power? What does the story want to show?
2) What does Jesus mean when he calls the woman dog in Matthew 15:21-28? Is it an insult? Why does he refuse to help her? And how does she make him change his mind?
Thanks Bart!
1. It appears to mean he utters a curse and they fall down dead. 2. Well, it certainly seems a bit insulting. Jewish bias against non-Jews? But he doesn’t refuse t ohelp her in the end, as you’ve noticed. He sees she truly has faith and a clever tongue, and so cavees in….
Gremlins again! In PP&MM, you wrote: “Lo and behold, Eutychus rises from the dead. Paul, completely unfazed, returns to the upper room where he continues to talk until daybreak (Acts 13:7-11).” Somehow, in today’s excerpt, the word “unfazed” turned into “nonplused,” which, since that means “surprised and confused,” is quite different.
So, I tried to look up Acts 13:7-11, but couldn’t find this story. It turns out, there was an error in the book as well. The story occurs in Acts 20, not 13. Oops!
The citation error aside, this paragraph has 3 edits: one that made the fall from the window read better, one that added “And” at the beginning of a sentence, which improves the flow, and one that reverses a word’s meaning. So I compared the whole excerpt to your original book. I found 8 changes, one causing harm, but most of them either improvements, or if clumsier, not changing the meaning.
I’m curious about your usual procedure when copying excerpts. Do you usually memorize a chunk and then manually type it in? I assume, that for this blog post, you weren’t able to just copy/paste.
What often happens — as in this case — is I copy the excerpt from my word file that I sent to the editor before it was copy-edited (I don’t have Word documents of the book as it appeared). My thinking is that for this purpose (here on the blog) that’s fine.
Since Acts descriptions of Paul’s life events differ from Paul’s own writings and since Acts includes the same type of legendary stories that are also included in books that did not make it into the NT…
1. How did Acts make it into the NT?
2. When the decision was being made, did Acts have some controversy regarding if it should be allowed into the NT?
1. These differences were not actually noticed much if at all. If that seems strnage to you, it’s worth noting that of the 2 billion people in the world today who accept it as Scripture almost none of *them* notices the problems either. (No one I know has noticed them unless first alerted to them; in my classes students never notice till I point it out; same with the differences among the Gospels themselves) 2. There were no particular controversies about Acts; it was thought to be written by the Luke, and both were considered acceptable already by around 180 CE or so.
I am learning much from your blog. Thank you.
It seems some of your conclusions, in this case miracles, are based on a bias and therefore cease to be driven by a search for historical truth. The existence of God can’t be proven or disproven, I think that’s axiomatic. Any conclusion is one of personal belief. Once personal belief is interjected into the conversation of what’s true historically, the conclusions cease to be purely historical. Conclusions that are shaped based on the belief in the existence or absence of God may or may not be historically accurate.
I understand many, maybe all, reported miracles are legendary in nature, but rather storytelling to emphasize a point, to provide legs to support one’s table of beliefs, or maybe to expose absurdity by being absurd. On the other hand, maybe some / many of the miracles did occur. Historically that cannot be determined.
To conclude a miracle story could not be true simply because it is a miracle and a miracle is not possible absent a God, and since there is no God, the miracle could not possibly have occurred, seems like flawed logic me since we don’t know if God exists.
I don’t think I’ve ever said a miracle couldn’t happen. (Do I say it here?) What I’ve argued strongly is that given what a miracle is, it cannot be *shown* to have happened even if it did. It takes a long argument to explain that, but it’s a big difference. And my sense is that EVERYONE who reads texts decides that X Y or Z didn’t happen because it is just so implausible, even if it doesn’t involve things that require the suspension of natural laws that, to our knowledge based on emprical evidence, are *never* broken. that doesnb’t mean such things haven’t happened, but it means that if they have, their probability is so remote that they can’t be shown to have happened by using the methods we normally use to establish events from the past.
Hi Bart, slightly tangential to this post, but in one of your recent Misquoting Jesus episodes you mentioned that it made no sense for Paul to be going to Damascus under the auspices of the high priest at Jerusalem to arrest Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem, since the high priest wouldn’t have had the standing in the Damascus synagogue to do so. Apart from that, what would the situation have been in relation to the view the Roman administrations of the separate provinces – Syria and Judea – would take on this kind of thing, or would they simply had reason to not know/care? Thanks
Do you mean the Romans take on the authority of hte high priest outside of Jerusalem? I suppose they wouldn’t have a take since its not something that ever happened.
Sorry for being a bit muddled here – I guess I’m just curious about how secular authority worked (or not) in Roman times – was just wondering in general if/how the Roman authorities would have cared about an ethnic-religious group like this grabbing people in another province and taking them back to another province (ie Jerusalem). Thanks.
Ah, got it. The Romans pretty much let local authorities take care of what happened in their localities, and didn’t interfere, so long as there wer no uprisings and the tax revenues came in.
“Barjesus is said to be afraid that Sergius Paulus would convert to become a follower of Jesus, and that he would thereby lose a patron.”
What do you think of the theory that Sergius Paulus *did* become Paul’s patron, and that Paul adopted his name in recognition of this? (It’s during this story that we’re first told that “Saul… was also called Paul”)
I first encountered this idea in stuff the evangelical NT scholar Paul Barnett was writing when he was a bishop in Sydney, but haven’t been able to find it backed up or refuted anywhere else over the years.
Interesting point; about where Paul is firs tcalled this. Your question depends on whther you mean this is historically why Paul was called Paul or if you mean that the book of Acts is trying to say that it is why. I doubt if the encounter with Sergius Paulus is historical at all, anbd historically it seems pretty clear that Paul had two names — Hebrew Saul, Greek Paul. (He himself never calls himself Saul, so it must have come to the author of acts in a source). In terms of Acts, of that’s what the author meant to say, he appears not to have said it! When you read the passage it seems more like he begins telling the story aobut Sergius Paulus and he uses that simply as the occasion to say that this too wsa Paul’s “other name” (in Greek it says “Saul, also Paul,” i.e., “Saul, also [called or known as] Paul”)
Thank you for the reply! That all makes sense. And yes, even as I typed the comment I was thinking. “but did this even happen???”