Robert said
BruceRMcF said
But in what circumstances is this the choice that they face?
In the circumstances that most Greek speaking faith communities are self-consciously Pauline, there is no need to accept some embarrassment on the second count in order to gain the support of the Acts of the Apostles in the first count, and the embarrassments on the second count can fall away copying.Whether or not most Greek-speaking faith communities are self-consciously Pauline is one of the core issues under discussion. We cannot simply a proposition under discussion is true.
How else can you use circumstantial evidence other than consider the various possible circumstances and how likely we are to see the evidence under the various possible circumstances?
To forbid considering the likelihood of seeing the circumstantial evidence at hand under the two contrary hypotheses is to deny the use of circumstantial evidence at all, which is to refuse to use all of the evidence at hand.
Whether or not the gospel of Mark was Pauline is also one of the points under discussion here.
Yes, and the circumstances at the time that Mark was composed were what the circumstances at the time that Acts was composed evolved from.
Paul wrote in Greek to the Christians in Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire, and they certainly were not self-consciously Pauline. Did they not have an outreach to Greek-speaking Jews and pagans? Greek was the lingua franca in most of the Empire. When the men from James came to the churches in Galatia, don’t you suppose they spoke Greek to them? Was Paul the only person spreading belief in Jesus among Greek-speaking people? Will you just assume that community/ies for which the gospel of Matthew was produced was Pauline?
How can you ask whether I will “just assume” that the communities for which the gospel of Matthew was produced were Pauline when I am contrasting the two alternative hypotheses that at the time of Acts, the gentile-dominated faith communities were predominantly Pauline to the one that there were multiple coherent strands including a self-consciously Petrine one.
Rome is, of course, a special case, since, as they say, all roads led to Rome. A Christian church being established in the Imperial metropole is the far flung location where it could most readily be established directly from the core church, as opposed to by evangelists operating out of faith communities established somewhere in between the core church and Rome.
Whether or not they had an outreach to Greek speaking gentiles is part of what is in question. According to Paul, their outreach was to Jews, and his outreach was to Gentiles. According to the later Acts, Peter, at least, also had a mission to Gentiles.
Yes, I’d guess that men sent by James to Galatia would have been members of the Jerusalem church who could speak Greek. Are you saying that the account given by Paul suggests that those men felt that they had a mission to evangelize among Greek speaking Gentiles?
I’m not sure what distinction you are referring to when you speak of embarrassment on the first or second count.
The circumstances in which there is the less embarrassment is if Greek speaking faith communities that are self-consciously Pauline and those that are self-consciously Petrine are in interaction, in which case the Acts account putting the compromise decisive (and only quoted) argument in the Council on Peter’s lips is placing Peter on Paul’s side in the argument. The circumstances in which there is the least embarrassment is if an early form of the Noahibite Law was the compromise used in the Petrine churches for converted Gentiles, so that the Council decision provides justification for what they have been doing while Peter’s vision provides justification for what the Pauline faith communities have been doing.
1. “Would a devotee of Paul, aware of Paul’s version of events, be more inclined to reject or accept an account that showed that Peter, James, and all the apostles and elders in Jerusalem eventually agreed with Paul about the most important things?”
2. “Or would they see the text of Acts of the Apostles as presenting a contrary presentation of the facts, a cause of embarrassment because of their allegiance to Paul, because they knew Paul to be wrong and the account in Acts to be factually correct?”
You seem to also be assuming that the Pauline communities were not following Paul’s own advice to compromise in favor of not scandalizing those with a weaker conscience.
I am simply not letting go of the observation that Paul argues adamantly to his followers that those people are wrong, before making the concession.
In a purely Pauline faith community, there would be none of these believers with “weaker consciences” to scandalize by buying the cheaper meat that had been sacrificed to idols, and so no reason to make the financial sacrifice of avoiding it.
I mean, as I have repeatedly said, it is about looking at using Acts as circumstantial evidence regarding the conditions in which it is so much more widely disseminated and relied upon than other Acts that it is the form of the early history of the Church that ends up being canonized.
So are you only speaking of why the Acts of the Apostles was used and canonized as opposed to the Acts of Peter, or the the Acts of Paul and Thecla, or the Acts of John, or the Acts of Andrew, or the Acts of Thomas, or the Acts of Matthias, or the Acts of Barnabas? When do you date each of those texts? I’ve already asked you this regarding the Acts of the Apostles, but I don’t think you’ve responded.
“We know” here is “Paul claims to advance his argument”, which would be the epitome of a “Principle of Convenience”.
Can you unpack this statement for me, please? I’m not sure what you’re saying here.
Assuming, as I believe we should, that the argument regarding eating the less expensive meat on the market that was offered to idols was not made by the heroic Paul appearing in Acts but rather by the cantankerous, argumentative, divisive figure that we see in the Pauline epistles, the question is who is the third party in the argument including Paul and the “circumcision party”, with Paul strenuously arguing that he is correct that there is no intrinsic issue with a “strong” believer eating the meat offered to idols, but it is ethically warranted to refrain if necessary to avoid, as you say, avoiding endangering the conscience of believers who might be scandalized by these things.
In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians and his letter to the Romans, the third part is the Corinthians and the Romans, respectively. The argument that took place in Antioch, as best we can gather is occasioned by the men from James, the circumcision party. Paul also draws Peter into the debate for sharing exclusive fellowship with his fellow Jews and no longer with the gentile converts. I wouldn’t try to re-construct a theological position for Peter beyond what we can read in the text. The case could also be made that Peter and Barnabas were following the same rule that Paul himself would recommend among those with a weaker conscience or, as he says elsewhere, being a Jew among Jews. But here the issue is that the gentile Christians are not only being left out, being made second-class citizens as it were, but Peter is siding with a party that would demand that all of the gentile Christians be circumcised and convert to Judaism. It is a bigger issue than just the weaker conscience of another believer.
This suggests a group who are not of the circumcision party, but whose conscious [conscience] would be scandalized by the consumption of meat offered to idols, and therefore are not of Paul’s party either, and unlike the circumcision party, this third group seems to be one that Paul is willing to accommodate, although casting those who can eat the meat of idols without the risk of falling into idolatry as being the “strong believers” and those who must be accommodated by refraining from doing so as “weaker” believers.
I think you are unnecessarily multiplying hypotheses here. The argument in Galatians is especially about circumcision and the obligation to follow all of the Law of Moses. It is not a very specific argument about whether the idols to whom meat has been offered were demons or gods or nothing. In the dispute at Antioch, Peter was not a member of a third party for, according to Paul he had eaten with the gentiles and lived as a gentile. Peter is condemned for hypocrisy not for arguing a different theological point representing a third party of weaker believers.
I don’t see how I can possibly be unnecessarily multiplying hypotheses. A minimum of two hypotheses are needed to use circumstantial evidence. Given an orthodoxy centuries later that is substantially Pauline, the Pauline strand of faith communities evidently did not die out. So north of the Aramaic speaking areas, Greek-speaking Christian Gentile faith communities were either predominantly Pauline or a mix of Pauline and something else. The circumstantial evidence of the copying and dissemination of Acts of the Apostles so that it survived through the early to mid 2nd century bottleneck suggests that there may have been both Pauline and Petrine strands.
In neither hypothesis is it being supposed that there is not a “circumcision” party, so arguments directed explicitly at the circumcision party are not relevant to providing circumstantial evidence about the circumstances during the early to mid 2nd century bottleneck period.
Robert said
Stephen said
… Maybe what actually happened historically is that Paul got shown the door. …Interesting. I’ve never considered that possibility. Thinking about it, ‘though, I don’t think so. Even the pseudo-Clementine literature can only surreptitiously oppose Paul and must admit that some gentile Christians will be saved. Sounds like they were opposing Paul, but against the larger majority that accepted Paul.
Well Paul ultimately won the day, and if Luke/Acts was composed late first or early second centuries that would have reflected a time when Paul had largely won the day. But when we read Paul’s authentic letters he is continually in conflict and it is not entirely clear that he is winning all the arguments. (He thinks he does, of course!) The supposition that Paul’s ministry might have been less than successful in his own day would help to explain why he decided to head to the hinterlands of Roman Hispania. Maybe he had worn out his welcome everywhere else.
It seems that Luke/Acts exists at least in part to give the gentile churches an “origin” story and repair the severed connective tissue (or invent it?) between these gentile communities and the lost home community in Jerusalem. The collection and distribution of Paul’s surviving letters would have aided this attempt. As far as we can tell, none of Paul’s contemporary competitors left literary remains. At some point, especially after the consequences of the Revolt, Paul had the conversation largely to himself.
Of course this doesn’t require that Luke know Paul’s letters. He know of Paul and might have come out of a community dependent on Paul but you could say the same about whoever composed the forgeries. The nexus of, the collection of Paul’s surviving letters, the composition of the forgeries, and the composition of Luke/Acts all would serve to serve to confirm Paul’s primacy. A primacy that might not have been recognized by others in his own day.
I don’t see Paul being the face of all gentile Christianity for a while.
Yeah, there was clearly an early non-Pauline gentile ministry. Interesting since Matthew emphasizes that Jesus ministry was to the Jews only. While that makes sense historically there was some kind of gentile outreach that predates Paul’s conversion.
Who were these folks? Under what conditions did they convert? When the Time Machine technology goes online these are some of the folks I’d like to spend some time with. (Another group I want to interview are the members of the Jesus community who stayed behind in Galilee when Jesus and his disciples made their ill-fated trip to Jerusalem. I’ll let Prof Ehrman interview the biggies like Jesus and Paul and James. I’m interested in the marginal folks. Like, say, one of the disciples who quit the movement after Jesus death.)
Robert said
BruceRMcF said
How else can you use circumstantial evidence other than consider the various possible circumstances and how likely we are to see the evidence under the various possible circumstances?
Huh? If you want to consider the various possible circumstances, don’t assume that only one set of circumstances must be true: “In the circumstances that most Greek speaking faith communities are self-consciously Pauline …” How do you know this to be true? Is this not one of the possibilities under discussion?
“Under the circumstance” doesn’t mean “this argument assumes this to be true”, it means … “there are two (or more) circumstances, under circumstance A, this is the likelihood of seeing this evidence, under circumstance B, that is the likelihood of seeing this evidence, so this is circumstantial evidence in favor of …” (whichever circumstances are more likely to generate the evidence).
To forbid considering the likelihood of seeing the circumstantial evidence at hand under the two contrary hypotheses is to deny the use of circumstantial evidence at all, which is to refuse to use all of the evidence at hand.
I have not forbidden anything. What is the circumstantial evidence at hand that you are speaking of here?
The propagation over the 1st century of Acts of the Apostles at enough different churches that it later gains canonical status.
How can you ask whether I will “just assume” that the communities for which the gospel of Matthew was produced were Pauline when I am contrasting the two alternative hypotheses that at the time of Acts, the gentile-dominated faith communities were predominantly Pauline to the one that there were multiple coherent strands including a self-consciously Petrine one.
It’s a question. Did you noy say, most Greek speaking faith communities were self-consciously Pauline’? Is that not your assumption?
No, it’s one of the possible set of circumstances under which the Acts of the Apostles might be propagated (… etc.).
One set of circumstances are supposed, and you figure out as well as you can the likelihood of the evidence at hand in those circumstances, another set of circumstances are supposed, and you figure out as well as you can the likelihood of the evidence at hand under those circumstances, repeat for as many different possible circumstances being considered, but in this case, A is “Greek speaking, gentile dominated faith communities are predominantly Pauline”, and B is “Greak speaking, gentile dominated faith communities include important Pauline and non-Pauline strands”.
Rome is, of course, a special case, since, as they say, all roads led to Rome. A Christian church being established in the Imperial metropole is the far flung location where it could most readily be established directly from the core church, as opposed to by evangelists operating out of faith communities established somewhere in between the core church and Rome.
Whether or not they had an outreach to Greek speaking gentiles is part of what is in question. According to Paul, their outreach was to Jews, and his outreach was to Gentiles. According to the later Acts, Peter, at least, also had a mission to Gentiles.Are you wanting to suppose that the Roman churches did not have any outreach at all? And how do you know, or why do you think that it was established from the core church? By core church, do you mean the Jerusalem community of believers? Where does Paul say that their outreach was only to Jews? I’m trying to distinguish between what you consider evidence of certainties and what may be mere assumptions on your part.
I am refraining from making any suppositions about the Roman church/churches, nor even whether the faith community/communities in Rome were well enough organized at the time to be a “church” as such.
Yes, by the core church, I do mean the Jerusalem community of believers, where we seem to have multiple attestations that they operated with apostles and elders having their say on an important issue and the church leader making the final decision on behalf of the church.
Galatians2:6-10.
Yes, I’d guess that men sent by James to Galatia would have been members of the Jerusalem church who could speak Greek. Are you saying that the account given by Paul suggests that those men felt that they had a mission to evangelize among Greek speaking Gentiles?
No, but they evidently felt that they had a right to impose circumcision upon Greek-speaking gentile ‘Christians’. Do you seriously disagree with this?
They evidently were of the view that being Christian required being Jewish, so for a gentile to become Christian required them to be converted to Judaism. That much seems to be the necessary unstated opposite side to the argument that Paul is making.
Whether they are evangelizing among the gentiles, or going to Christian Jews and coming up mixed groups of both Jewish and Gentile believers who are sharing non-kosher food in their agape feast and trying to bring the Christian Jews back into compliance with the law, so the Gentiles must either convert or go off on their own, I don’t see enough in Galatians to distinguish between those two, but Paul is quite adamant that he has the mission to the gentiles and Peter has the mission to the Jews.
I’m not sure what distinction you are referring to when you speak of embarrassment on the first or second count.
The circumstances in which there is the less embarrassment is if Greek speaking faith communities that are self-consciously Pauline and those that are self-consciously Petrine are in interaction, in which case the Acts account putting the compromise decisive (and only quoted) argument in the Council on Peter’s lips is placing Peter on Paul’s side in the argument.
What is your evidence for Greek-speaking faith communities that are self-consciously Petrine? Is it merely accepting as factual the account in Acts of Peter converting Cornelius and his family as factual and extrapolating upon that, ie, that the family of Cornelius must have gone on to establish Petrine gentile communities?
Acts of the Apostles are circumstantial evidence for that. 1 Peter might be more, as it may have been written by a literate member of such a Church, “on behalf of” Peter based on the teachings of Peter that their church is passing on. Peter’s position in the synoptic gospels might be more circumstantial evidence. I’m obviously not an academic in this field, but I’ll keep my eyes open for more.
Given that Peter himself was likely illiterate, so that he wouldn’t have left behind a smattering of actual surviving letters, we wouldn’t expect to have much direct evidence.
The circumstances in which there is the least embarrassment is if an early form of the Noahibite Law was the compromise used in the Petrine churches for converted Gentiles, so that the Council decision provides justification for what they have been doing while Peter’s vision provides justification for what the Pauline faith communities have been doing.
Please: Noahide, not Naohibite. Do you have any evidence for these Petrine gentile communities following proto-Noahide commandments? Or is this your assumption or hypothesis?
Sorry, Economics uses a lot more Latin roots & suffixes than Greek ones. That is the working hypothesis that follows from the contrast between the Acts version of the Council in Jerusalem that Paul participated in and the Galatians version.
You seem to also be assuming that the Pauline communities were not following Paul’s own advice to compromise in favor of not scandalizing those with a weaker conscience.
I am simply not letting go of the observation that Paul argues adamantly to his followers that those people are wrong, before making the concession.
No, not exactly, he clearly suggests that they would be communing with and sacrificing to demons, which he had previously characterized as many gods and lords. I think the question is whether or not these demons, principalities, etc, were in the process of being subdued and destroyed in the coming Kingdom of God or if they should be considered above the one, true God. I think it is pretty clear what Paul has to say about this.
In a purely Pauline faith community, there would be none of these believers with “weaker consciences” to scandalize by buying the cheaper meat that had been sacrificed to idols, and so no reason to make the financial sacrifice of avoiding it.
What is your evidence for purely faith community in which there would be none of these believers with weaker consciences? Is this merely a hypothetical community upon which you build another hypothetical purely Petrine gentile community with an alternative theology?
Not “upon with you build”, which are set up as alternative hypotheses. I said at the outset I was looking at Acts as possible circumstantial evidence, which implies alternative hypothetical circumstances which might give rise to the evidence.
I don’t see how I can possibly be unnecessarily multiplying hypotheses. A minimum of two hypotheses are needed to use circumstantial evidence. Given an orthodoxy centuries later that is substantially Pauline, the Pauline strand of faith communities evidently did not die out. So north of the Aramaic speaking areas, Greek-speaking Christian Gentile faith communities were either predominantly Pauline or a mix of Pauline and something else. The circumstantial evidence of the copying and dissemination of Acts of the Apostles so that it survived through the early to mid 2nd century bottleneck suggests that there may have been both Pauline and Petrine strands.
In neither hypothesis is it being supposed that there is not a “circumcision” party, so arguments directed explicitly at the circumcision party are not relevant to providing circumstantial evidence about the circumstances during the early to mid 2nd century bottleneck period.If you are not multiplying hypotheses, perhaps you could provide evidence for the reality of what you assert. When you say a minimum of two hypotheses are needed to use circumstantial evidence, on what basis do you assert that your two hypotheses are nothing more than willful hypotheses?
Is it not a valid question to ask how early a Pauline position became dominant in Greek speaking gentile Christian faith communities?
And why should we accept that you have proposed the only two possible alternative hypotheses?
I don’t see any reason that you should accept that. I certainly don’t ask you to accept that in the discussion you quote.
The logical dichotomy are “Pauline faith communities are the sole substantial strand/strands in this region”, or “there are substantial strands both Pauline and non-Pauline strands in this region”.
Some of the strands in the second case being Petrine is simply what is suggested by Acts of the Apostles as circumstantial evidence.
Where is your evidence for the Petrine proto-Noahide strand of gentile communities? This is not even supported by Acts of the Apostles, unless you are perhaps imagining that the family of Cornelius went on to establish the Catholic church in Rome in contradistinction to Pauline churches elsewhere?
I didn’t see the family of Cornelius playing a pivotal enough role (in the story that Acts of the Apostles is crafting) to have a big impact on the appeal of Acts of the Apostles among a substantial number of faith communities, so I didn’t take it into account.
Perhaps you could try to answer some of my questions and present evidence that is not merely presumptuous?
If you view all circumstantial evidence as presumptuous, what can I do other than be explicit that I am looking at Acts of the Apostles as circumstantial evidence about the early church at the time of its initial dissemination, which is a period of time where it seems like we have precious little direct evidence.
My problem with this whole idea of the gospel authors knowing Paul’s letters is, ultimately, even if you could establish such, so what? It is a scholarly commonplace to point out how uninterested Paul is in Jesus’ actual life and ministry. Even if the gospel authors knew Paul’s letters there is so much extra-Pauline material present that their importance would be questionable and their influence marginal. The episode of the Eucharist is the main bone of contention in such arguments. But, as Robert pointed out way back in post #9 of this here thread, the resemblances between Paul and Mark exist but are somewhat superficial.
But let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. Robyn Faith Walsh’s position is that the gospel authors knew Paul’s actual letters. Not simply that they knew of Paul. There could be a Pauline influence on Mark and Paul be Luke’s “hero” without either of them actually having any of Paul’s letters.
Prof Walsh’s point that the gospels are literary artifacts rather than collections of oral stories is well taken but the attempt to divorce the gospels completely from some extra-literary context is much more dicey.
>> My problem with this whole idea of the gospel authors knowing Paul’s letters is, ultimately, even if you could establish such, so what? It is a scholarly commonplace to point out how uninterested Paul is in Jesus’ actual life and ministry. Even if the gospel authors knew Paul’s letters there is so much extra-Pauline material present that their importance would be questionable and their influence marginal. The episode of the Eucharist is the main bone of contention in such arguments.
Aside from the obvious example you mention, the main place I am tempted to see some connection is in the moral teaching of Christ. There are places that Paul’s moral teaching seems to echo–not word-for-word, but perhaps thought-by-thought–certain teachings of Christ in the gospels (love fulfilling the whole law would be one such shared moral theme). If the gospel authors knew Paul, it might be plausible to think they had rephrased some of Paul’s moral instruction and put it in the mouth of Christ.
Robert said
Is it not a valid question to ask how early a Pauline position became dominant in Greek speaking gentile Christian faith communities?
Sure, it’s a very valid question. It’s the heart of the discussion in this thread. I just don’t think we have much evidence, even circumstantial evidence, on which to construct a very full or definitive answer to this question.
Yes, and to be sure one piece of circumstantial evidence does not provide a definitive answer … but still, if it is established, then it is evidence.
…
I’m skeptical of deriving a Petrine school or doctrine or subsequent tradition based on Acts.
To be sure, it couldn’t be based only on Acts, since an accumulation of circumstantial evidence is needed before it starts to be persuasive.
The last mention of Peter is Acts 15,7. I tend to view Acts as embracing Paul as a hero of the spread of an irenic view Christianity. What was being papered over behind this irenic view of Christianity? I think the only evidence we have for that is to be found in the authentic Pauline letters.
And in some early manuscripts, at what I would expect to be well over a century later, Acts precedes the Catholic epistles (with the position of Jude not being as stable within that sub-collection), with Paul’s epistles coming last, putting the “pillars of the Church” first, before the “last apostle”. In that early order, the first epistle is the one attributed to the first Bishop of Jerusalem, then up to three Petrine epistles, then the epistles attributed to John (with, AFAIU, Jude not having as fixed a position and not included in some early Eastern Syriac manuscripts).
The view of Acts as “embracing Paul as a hero of the spread of an irenic view Christianity” leaves open the question of what faith communities Acts is written to oppose and what faith communities Acts is written to bring on board.
Now, the circumstantial evidence is stronger if the author of Luke/Acts had the letter to the Galatians, as then rather than simply having a different version of events at hand than the ones recounted by Paul, if the author has Galatians, then Paul’s version of events is being amended.
But in either event, of the three early pillars, Acts gives pride of place to Peter, while never even recounting James becoming the leader of the early Church, and in the place where it acknowledges James as the leader of the early Church, it even softens that by having Peter deliver the decisive argument to the Council.
Firstly, if it be not gauche to quote oneself –
Prof Walsh’s point that the gospels are literary artifacts rather than collections of oral stories is well taken but the attempt to divorce the gospels completely from some extra-literary context is much more dicey.
I was unusually (I hope) clumsy here. Of course a major point of Prof Walsh’s fine book is to provide a context for the writing of the gospels. I meant, even though I am convinced by her arguments against the idea of the gospels as curated collections of oral tales, nevertheless, I am not entirely prepared to abandon the idea of a believing community as a context for the process of gospel formation. I’m not saying she’s wrong. Just that before we move from “A” to “B”, let’s try to figure out how we got to “A”.
We’re still dealing with interpretation. Prof Walsh has access to no new facts. Her historical analysis of how the “community curated oral composition” view came about is trenchant but doesn’t it invite scrutiny of her own assumptions? Actually the real brilliance of her book is that it forces us to ask lots of questions.
What we can say about Paul is that at some point he was deemed important enough to have his surviving letters collected and distributed, have an account of his adventures composed, and perhaps most tellingly, regarded as enough of an authority to have forgeries composed in his name. But I think it’s possible for all of the above to be true and still raise the possibility that Paul was a marginal figure in his own day. The center of gravity of the early Jesus movement was the community in Jerusalem. The First Revolt put paid to that and the Jewish sectarian Jesus movement was spread to the four winds. The ultimate success of the Pauline gentile church was a byproduct of the vacuum created. And the availability of these literary remains.
Was Mark influenced by Paul? Lots of scholars say yes, but would that have required copies of Paul’s actual letters? If we say yes then we have to explain how the letters of Paul made it to the attention of Walsh’s literary “elites” before they were collected, usually dated to the end of the century? Wouldn’t the best explanation of this still have to be some sort of community?
Matthew seems to have been part of the “Party of Circumcision”. Wouldn’t he and Paul have tried to scratch each other’s eyes out? Exactly how was Matthew influenced by Paul?
Luke seems the obvious candidate until you examine his account of Paul’s message and ministry. If he had Paul’s actual letters in front of him and he valued Paul so much, how did he get it wrong so often?
By John’s day wouldn’t Pauline ideas have spread far enough to be common currency? Would he have needed to have the actual letters in front of him?
…the main place I am tempted to see some connection is in the moral teaching of Christ. There are places that Paul’s moral teaching seems to echo–not word-for-word, but perhaps thought-by-thought–certain teachings of Christ in the gospels (love fulfilling the whole law would be one such shared moral theme). If the gospel authors knew Paul, it might be plausible to think they had rephrased some of Paul’s moral instruction and put it in the mouth of Christ.
But wasn’t much of this moral teaching simply mainstream Judaism? Are any of Jesus’ moral teachings truly original?
Robert said
…
The author of Acts effectively turns Peter into Paul and (in the words of James and the elders in Jerusalem) defends Paul as someone who “guards” the law rather than teaching Jews living among gentiles to abandon the law.
Into the Paul in Acts, perhaps, … but at the same time turns the Paul of the Pauline epistles into the Paul in Acts.
Which is, therefore, effectively turning both Peter and Paul into the Paul in Acts, who, possibly unlike the Paul of the original letters of Paul, and certainly unlike the Paul of the Apostolos, “guards the law” for Jews.
And that would seem to be the most critical aspect of whether or not the author of Acts knows any of the collections of the letters of Paul, placing it either prior to, or else either contemporaneous or following, the Marcion New Testament.
Robert said
Bruce, when you refer to “the Paul of the Apostolos,” are you referring to Marcion’s Apostolikon? The current collection of books as it eventually came to be canonized as our whole New Testament certainly postdates Marcion. I wouldn’t date the book of the Acts of the Apostles that late, but we do know that the text of Acts had quite a bit of variation in the Western text. Eldon Epp did a seminal study of the Western text of Acts, which is still under critical review by current text-critical scholars (eg, here). You might be interested in diving deeper into those issues.
Yes, the generally middle dating of Acts puts it before the Apostolikon, the generally later dating puts it either contemporaneous or after … and some with the later dating argue in reaction to the Apostolikon. I am not impressed by the arguments for the earliest datings, but see both the middle and later dating arguments as making some credible points, so I wouldn’t be confident hanging an argument on either dating.
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