Stephen said
I’m not sure of the relevance of other examples. In this case we know the writer of Luke/Acts had some stories about Paul. Perhaps he just didn’t have any stories about Paul’s ultimate fate. We can tell he didn’t know Paul’s own correspondence because when we can compare events between Paul and Acts there are contradictions. There are also contradictions between the depiction of the leaders of the early church and Paul’s own actual message in both sources.
But Acts apparent intention to depict Paul “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” would mitigate against ending with a martyr story.
You’re not sure the relevance of other examples?
So you’re hypothesizing a possible literary narrative which you concede may never have been used in human history, and suggest that just because it hasn’t been used elsewhere doesn’t mean it didn’t happen here?
How is this not different than Christians who make extraordinary claims?
How is it not different from people claiming to have experienced supernatural events?
There are any number of principles we have developed discouraging hypotheses like this. Occam’s razor immediately leaps to mind.
Then again, Ockham was a Christian clergyman; so you’d probably discount what he’d have to say.
godspell
The ford movie is about the young lincoln – he didnt mention the assassination because the assassination is not part of the young lincoln story.
Acts is about the followers of Jesus after the crucifixion. Its mostly about Paul and it should be assumed that’s because the author had information mostly about Paul. (He claims to be a traveling companion).
The later chapters have no particular theological significance and read like historical narrative. The author just giving us all the important events leading up to the trial in Rome. Everything he knows about – he stops only when he knows no more.
Why would someone who has so much knowledge of events leading up to the trial have no knowledge of trial itself or its aftermath?
There’s quite a lot in Acts that isn’t about Paul. There is no reason to assume ‘Luke’ knew any of the participants, and the book makes no such claim. Nor can we assume the author tells us everything he knows. Mark’s gospel proves very directly that Christian writers might leave out some pretty important plot points.
The Ford movie uses a brief visual at the end to remind the viewer where young Lincoln ended up–but if you had no knowledge of Lincoln’s later life and his death, you’d just know there was a statue of him somewhere and he grew a beard.
There’s also a much earlier book, supposedly written by a man who knew Lincoln as a boy, Austin Gollaher. Actually it’s an ‘as told to’ book, written by a journalist who interviewed Gollaher, and who clearly added many fictitious details, since very little was known of Lincoln’s boyhood, and there were a lot of conflicting stories about it (modern historians tend to pass over his childhood quickly, for this very reason). Gollaher’s own memories would be less than fully reliable, since he was so young during their friendship in Kentucky, which Lincoln left at the age of 7. But it’s got some powerful moments, for all that. And it ends without any mention of how Lincoln died, though it’s quite clear that he has.
Even the recent Spielberg film skips over Lincoln’s assassination, doesn’t show it. We know he’s dead, that he was shot at some kind of event where formal dress was required, but no further details. Because it’s more powerful to invoke that event. And everybody knows what happened–well, everybody who cares.
There’s also a film where Lincoln fights vampires. I believe some questions have been raised as to its veracity. 😐
godspell said
There’s quite a lot in Acts that isn’t about Paul. There is no reason to assume ‘Luke’ knew any of the participants, and the book makes no such claim.
Don’t you think that the best interpretation of the “we” passages in Acts is that “Luke” is purporting to place himself at those events?
Whether he was actually there is another matter.
There’s been a lot of speculation about the ‘we’ passages. Bart’s opinion is that the author is making false claims of being an eyewitness (and we know a number of early Christian authors made false claims, and committed forgery). Others believe he really was a traveling companion of Paul, the physician Luke.
But it’s also possible the author was incorporating earlier material into his narrative, which was written in the first person plural. Or it could be something else. Acts doesn’t have any prefatory material explaining who the author is, or even identifying himself as the Luke who traveled with Paul. There’s no scholarly consensus here, but there is consensus that the author of Luke’s gospel wrote Acts. Which to me, makes it less likely he was a witness to any of these events. But if he was, why not say so explicitly? (And if he wasn’t, but wanted readers to believe he was, as Bart thinks, the same question applies.)
Possibly because of the conflict between the desire to record events for posterity and the lingering belief that there’d be no posterity, because the Kingdom would come, at which point only the faithful would still be there to read it, and they’d have better things to do. Devotional literature can contain history, but isn’t written from an historian’s perspective. Or even a chronicler’s. And yet, so much of our record of the distant past comes from people who wrote from this perspective. Because Christianity inherited Judaism’s reverence for the written word.
godspell said
[I]t’s also possible the author was incorporating earlier material into his narrative, which was written in the first person plural. Or it could be something else.
That is possible, but it’s the decided minority opinion among scholars. “Luke” doesn’t do that anywhere else in Luke-Acts, and, considering “Luke” seems to be the most careful of Gospel writers, it’s a hard sell that he just dropped someone else’s narrative into his work, without even changing the personal pronoun.
I think it’s very hard to read the “we” passages in anyway other than that the author is purporting to put himself as a participant in the story.
godspell said
[T]here is consensus that the author of Luke’s gospel wrote Acts. Which to me, makes it less likely he was a witness to any of these events. But if he was, why not say so explicitly? (And if he wasn’t, but wanted readers to believe he was, as Bart thinks, the same question applies.)
I’m officially agnostic on whether “Luke” personally witnessed the events in the “we” passages; generally, I think it’s more likely than not that he did, but by no means a sure thing. I’m not sure why the author being explicit as to his identity is important here. The Pastorals explicit claim to be written by Paul; the Epistles of Peter and James claim to be explicitly written by each, respectively; and yet very few scholars think that authorship is authentic.
I personally think it’s far more likely that Luke personally witnessed the events in the “we” passage than that Paul wrote the Pastorals or that Peter wrote his epistles.
In any event, I think we can agree that Acts most likely does include the (at a minimum, implicit) claim that author did know certain participants, including Paul.
Not much point in talking about majority/minority opinions where there is no scholarly consensus. In that case, all opinions are, in effect, minority opinions. Just a matter of degree.
The gospel of Luke was not referred to as such when it first appeared. Nor does Acts identify itself as a sequel. It’s through scholarly consensus that we’ve come to agree (for the most part) that both were produced by the same author. But no such consensus exists with regards to who the author of those books, or whether he definitively claims to be an eyewitness. Which he could easily have done. Why do it obliquely, by implication?
I agree about the Pastorals and Peter’s epistles, but that’s not proof of anything regarding Acts (not that you said it was). All that proves is that there are NT texts that do directly claim authorship by eminent figures in the early church that almost certainly were not authored by them. So again, if the claim is being made, why is it not made openly? If ‘Luke’ is writing a forgery, why not put a forged name on it? He clearly could have gotten away with it. And if it’s really Luke, or some other eyewitness, same problem. Most authors of that time period, remember, did care about being acknowledged as the true authors of their own work, and were incensed by forgeries.
I think there was a demand in the growing cult for books documenting what they had gone through, where they had come from. Which testifies to the fact that literacy among Christians was growing, and that Greek had by this time become the chosen shared language of the new faith. But given that the highly literate Paul only gave us a few letters, we have to assume that the life of an active evangelist was not conducive to producing a large body of written work. Letters can be dashed off, but books have to be labored over.
This was perhaps a specialized area of endeavor in the early church, practiced by people who were not well known, and it seems like most if not all of the NT writers other than Paul (who had to identify himself to his scattered flocks) were not in fact high-ranking members, nor were they so habitually peripatetic. A few of them left a direct mark on posterity, but most only survived through their influence on the few whose work made the canon. They were not conning anyone. Anymore than whoever wrote “I Thought I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” was conning anyone.
godspell
about 3/4 of the book is about Paul – the further you go in the book the less fanciful the details and the more historical the narrative. Exactly what you’d expect from a later travelling companion of Paul who was an eyewitness only to later events – and had collected the testimony of earlier witnesses.
Unless a good reason can be thought of for acts finishing where it does the assumption should be that that’s simply where the information available to the author stopped.
The Spielberg movie may not show the assassination but it doesn’t leave it out – it doesn’t end with Lincoln celebrating the passing of the amendment. Spielberg has no reason to leave out assassination so he mentions it. The author of acts has no reason to leave out the trial of Paul or his death so the assumption must be he knows nothing about them.
And you want to believe this because you want to prove Luke came before Mark (that is quite literally the only reason). But the same scholarship that says ‘Luke’ wrote Acts says you’re wrong about that. If they were wrong about one, they could be wrong about the other.
The Spielberg movie assumes we know what happened to Abraham Lincoln (and if not, we can Google). The author of Acts assumes the reader knows what happened to Paul–and in any event, to the extent it’s about Paul, it’s about Paul’s triumph, not his death. LIncoln’s death was directly related to the passage of the Amendment–John Wilkes Booth swore to kill Lincoln for having emancipated the slaves and for talking about giving some black people the vote in his 2nd Inaugural. But there is nothing in Acts that mentions any specific deed by Paul that would lead to his arrest and eventual execution, as documented elsewhere, how accurately we don’t know.
It’s not proof of anything with regards to dating. Absence is not evidence of anything but absence. That’s why Mark leaving out the resurrection doesn’t mean he didn’t believe the resurrection happened. Unless you think this proves Mark dashed off his gospel right after Mary Magdalene and the others saw the man outside the tomb but before Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee? That would be an earlier date for Mark than I could accept, sorry. 😉
It might also be worth mentioning that while it is by no means impossible to draw comparisons between storytelling related to historical events in different eras, one does have to take context into account. A major motion picture is intended for a global audience, potentially comprising everyone who lives near a movie theater or can rent/download/watch the film later on. The texts of the Old and New Testaments were, in the main, written for originally tiny audiences of literate people who were presumably conversant with the people and events discussed. (Do I need to mention that most people, and definitely most Americans, know very little of their own history?)
This explains why Mark would write a gospel that leaves out the single most significant event in the history of Christianity (whether you believe it happened or not), even though he clearly knows about it. He trusts his audience to finish the story in their minds. As any good storyteller will do when it suits the story being told. Storytellers and historians have points in common, to be sure–but they have different jobs.
godspell said
The gospel of Luke was not referred to as such when it first appeared. Nor does Acts identify itself as a sequel. It’s through scholarly consensus that we’ve come to agree (for the most part) that both were produced by the same author. But no such consensus exists with regards to who the author of those books, or whether he definitively claims to be an eyewitness. Which he could easily have done. Why do it obliquely, by implication?
So you are making a two-pronged argument here: first that Luke-Acts is anonymous, and second that the anonymous author never claims to be an eye-witness — or, if he does, he does in the most non-explicit manner.
I don’t disagree with all of your conclusions, but I do have some points of diverging opinion.
First off, you say: “The gospel of Luke was not referred to as such when it first appeared. Nor does Acts identify itself as a sequel.” We don’t know whether Luke was originally referred to as Luke when it first appeared. Bart’s argument on this point basically rests on early Church Fathers quoting from Luke (and the other gospels) without citing to the name of the author.
But there’s a big problem with this argument: those very game early Church Fathers do the same things with works that do include internal identification, such as the epistles of Paul, Peter and James.
What’s more, the earliest fragments of Luke don’t contain the beginning or end of the book, where a title would commonly appear. All copies of Luke which include the beginning have a title in front of it. That’s true with Mark, Matthew and John as well.
So, we just don’t know if the works originally circulated with titles or not. But, if there was any Gospel that one would think DID circulate with a title, it’s Luke. The reason is that Luke is easily the least prominent figure identified as an Evangelist, and it’s very difficult to imagine, if some later copier simply was adding names to the Gospels, why “Luke” of all people would be chosen. Sure, “Luke” is mentioned in Philemon, Colossians and Timothy epistles, but he’s hardly some major figure identified in the Pauline corpus.
As to whether Acts identifies itself as a sequel … I just disagree here. Acts begins with the same dedication as the dedication in “Luke,” referring to “the former treatise” he wrote “concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was received up.” That’s a pretty explicit reference to Luke 24:51. I don’t even think this is implicit. The author is flat out saying this is a sequel.
godspell
Unless you think this proves Mark dashed off his gospel right after Mary Magdalene and the others saw the man outside the tomb but before Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee?
If the author of Mark was an eyewitness it would be an inappropriate time to write a book between the empty tomb and Jesus appearance in galilee. He’d have more important things on his mind.
The difference with the ending of Acts is that a two year hiatus in Rome would be an appropriate time for a companion of Paul to sit down and write his memoirs – he may even have felt Paul’s adventures were drawing to a natural conclusion.
Also we can be sure Acts is intended to end where it does – we can’t be sure of that with Mark.
godspell said
The Spielberg movie assumes we know what happened to Abraham Lincoln (and if not, we can Google). The author of Acts assumes the reader knows what happened to Paul
Not sure about this one either. We just don’t know what Theophilus and his community knew about early Christian leaders.
Okay, but you’re sure the makers of the Lincoln movie knew what happened to Lincoln, right? I mean, it took a battery of historians to list all the inaccuracies in that film, but they made those errors on purpose, because storytelling and history are two different jobs. 🙂
When there’s no consensus, that means even the experts aren’t sure.
brenmcg said
godspell
Unless you think this proves Mark dashed off his gospel right after Mary Magdalene and the others saw the man outside the tomb but before Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee?
If the author of Mark was an eyewitness it would be an inappropriate time to write a book between the empty tomb and Jesus appearance in galilee. He’d have more important things on his mind.
The difference with the ending of Acts is that a two year hiatus in Rome would be an appropriate time for a companion of Paul to sit down and write his memoirs – he may even have felt Paul’s adventures were drawing to a natural conclusion.
Also we can be sure Acts is intended to end where it does – we can’t be sure of that with Mark.
Bren, if you didn’t get that was a joke, I really don’t know what to tell you.
There’s no consensus on Acts, but there’s pretty strong consensus on Mark. It originally ended before Jesus showed himself to any of his followers, and the women who saw the empty tomb being too afraid to talk about it. And obviously some people objected to that, and a new ending was spackled in.
Mark was written decades after the crucifixion, and years before Matthew and Luke, both of whom read Mark.
vergari said
So you are making a two-pronged argument here: first that Luke-Acts is anonymous, and second that the anonymous author never claims to be an eye-witness — or, if he does, he does in the most non-explicit manner.
I don’t disagree with all of your conclusions, but I do have some points of diverging opinion.
First off, you say: “The gospel of Luke was not referred to as such when it first appeared. Nor does Acts identify itself as a sequel.” We don’t know whether Luke was originally referred to as Luke when it first appeared. Bart’s argument on this point basically rests on early Church Fathers quoting from Luke (and the other gospels) without citing to the name of the author.
But there’s a big problem with this argument: those very game early Church Fathers do the same things with works that do include internal identification, such as the epistles of Paul, Peter and James.
What’s more, the earliest fragments of Luke don’t contain the beginning or end of the book, where a title would commonly appear. All copies of Luke which include the beginning have a title in front of it. That’s true with Mark, Matthew and John as well.
So, we just don’t know if the works originally circulated with titles or not. But, if there was any Gospel that one would think DID circulate with a title, it’s Luke. The reason is that Luke is easily the least prominent figure identified as an Evangelist, and it’s very difficult to imagine, if some later copier simply was adding names to the Gospels, why “Luke” of all people would be chosen. Sure, “Luke” is mentioned in Philemon, Colossians and Timothy epistles, but he’s hardly some major figure identified in the Pauline corpus.
As to whether Acts identifies itself as a sequel … I just disagree here. Acts begins with the same dedication as the dedication in “Luke,” referring to “the former treatise” he wrote “concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was received up.” That’s a pretty explicit reference to Luke 24:51. I don’t even think this is implicit. The author is flat out saying this is a sequel.
I’ll concede that last point. It could be more explicit, but given that he was probably writing this for the same audience he wrote the gospel for, it didn’t need to be.
As to titles, I put my trust in Bart here–I don’t think any of the four gospels were originally written in the names of Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John. They are not eyewitness testimonies, nor are they forgeries.
godspell said
Bren, if you didn’t get that was a joke, I really don’t know what to tell you.
There’s no consensus on Acts, but there’s pretty strong consensus on Mark. It originally ended before Jesus showed himself to any of his followers, and the women who saw the empty tomb being too afraid to talk about it. And obviously some people objected to that, and a new ending was spackled in.
Mark was written decades after the crucifixion, and years before Matthew and Luke, both of whom read Mark.
Sure its a joke but there’s a serious point behind it – are those who claim acts was written shortly after its narrative ends forced into the same ridiculous conclusion with Mark? No – for the reasons above.
There’s a reason ancient readers objected to the ending at 16:8 – because the ending is completely inappropriate. The author may have intended to end it there but its impossible for a modern reader to be sure – especially when ancient readers of Mark disagreed with it.
So now you’re a literary critic?
The original ending of Mark is perhaps the most powerful passage in the bible. Sorry you missed that, but leaving matters of taste aside, the original ending of Mark clearly does not prove Mark didn’t know what Jesus’ followers later claimed to have experienced, and the ending of Acts doesn’t prove the author wrote before Paul and Peter had died. And again, the only reason you’re insisting that it does is that you want to believe Luke didn’t read Mark. But there is overwhelming scholarly consensus that he did. And if you abandon scholarly consensus, then there’s no basis for you claiming that the author of Acts wrote the gospel of Luke. So you’re screwed. 🙂
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