This thread was inspired (sorry) by this video from C J Cornthwaite, someone I’ve linked to before. I dislike the clickbaity titles enormously but I guess that’s de rigueur for YouTube at this point. (Although we seem past the point where everyone is “destroying” each other.)
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My comments are based on the assumption you’ve already watched the video. So, in more or less the order in which the issues were raised-
1. Did “Luke” (or whoever) know Josephus?
Several respected scholars think so. However, while certain figures and details are strikingly similar there are also chronological disparities in the narratives. I regard this influence as an open question. My primary request, given these two writer’s divergent audiences, is to hear a convincing account of how the author of Acts would have known of Josephus in the first place. For the record, I have no real objection to placing Luke/Acts in the early second century.
2. Did “Luke” (or whoever) know Paul’s letters?
Some scholars, including Robyn Faith Walsh, claim that the gospel writers, including Luke/Acts, knew Paul’s letters. The problem is that when we can check the claims in Acts against Paul’s own testimony, they invariably disagree. Markus Vinzent’s view that “Luke” is using Paul’s letters to create a foundational account, i.e., Acts, of the spread of early Christianity to the gentiles seems internally contradictory. If Paul is your hero and you know his own writings why change everything? You either value Paul or you don’t. You either know his writings or you don’t.
3. What was the point of Acts?
First, I am interested in Cornthwaite’s discussion of social and economic factors in the spread of early Christianity. I very much want to read his thesis. If I can find a copy online not behind a paywall I’ll share it. I also want to read Julien M Ogereau’s book but I’ll be damned if I’ll pay the $160! The search begins.
So what was the point of Acts?
In the absence of a psychic we can’t really talk about purposes or intentions. But we can notice how a text functions. Let’s look at the situation in the second century. You have disparate writings. You have a community that began in Palestine and consisted of Jews and now you have communities in various spots that consists mainly of gentiles.
My view is that Acts functions as a way to build a connection between the dominant gentile communities and the original Jewish communities. A connection that had been destroyed as a result of the First Revolt. (Stories like the “Flight to Pella” fulfill the same function.) Just as the gospels are creative literary depictions of the life and ministry of Jesus, Acts is a creative literary depiction of the hero Paul. Acts is gentile Christianity’s origin story.
What did happen in the second century is that the different surviving literary strands engaged in conversation with each other. But of course that doesn’t mean that the surviving literary strands had their origins in the second century. I think Luke/Acts and Josephus definitely came out of a similar intellectual milieu but dependence? Maybe.
Note: Cornthwaite includes links to all the books he references in the notes with the video.
Bingo!
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Note that this latter link requires registration but it’s free.
I take it as an act of faith that any picayune amount of renumeration denied to these scholars by free access to their work is more than offset by interest and appreciation of its content. The first link is to the U of Toronto so presumably Cornthwaite approves. However, for Mohr Siebeck to charge $160 for specialized scholarship I take as a personal insult. I would never boot one of Ehrman’s books because they are reasonably priced and I am happy to support his work. But the rapacious academic press brings down its own doom upon itself. Such is my own ethical calculation.
Stephen said
…
2. Did “Luke” (or whoever) know Paul’s letters?
Some scholars, including Robyn Faith Walsh, claim that the gospel writers, including Luke/Acts, knew Paul’s letters. The problem is that when we can check the claims in Acts against Paul’s own testimony, they invariably disagree. Markus Vinzent’s view that “Luke” is using Paul’s letters to create a foundational account, i.e., Acts, of the spread of early Christianity to the gentiles seems internally contradictory. If Paul is your hero and you know his own writings why change everything? You either value Paul or you don’t. You either know his writings or you don’t. …
Note that these dichotomies may not actually be dichotomies.
A third position on the spectrum is somebody who feels that Paul “properly understood” is divinely inspired, but “the enemy” traps people into an “improper understanding” of his writings, so additional divinely inspired elaboration is required for people to better understand what Paul “meant” to say.
A fourth position is someone who is trying to get some factions of Paul following faith communities on side, so the most appealing (from this editor’s view) traditions about Paul from those factions that are the most compatible with the editor’s faith community are composed into a Church history that proves that the faith communities that view themselves as Pauline should make common cause with the faith communities that view themselves as Petrine, because despite “corrupted” texts suggesting the opposite, in reality Paul and Peter resolved any differences that they had and were part of a single larger overall faith community.
A speculative hypothesis regarding traces of knowledge of Paul’s letters in the fourth position would be the traditions being drawn on to compose an Apostolic history were from faith communities aware of Paul’s letters, so that “signal” (in Bilby’s lingo) comes into Acts from the traditions that it draws upon. That could happen even if it is explicitly trying to avoid the “tainted”, “corrupted” Pauline epistles in circulation. However, I’m not sure whether that could be made into a scientific hypothesis, since it’s not obvious to me at the moment how one would test the hypothesis given available evidence.
The various speculative and/or scientific inferences of Vinzent and krewe about the edition history of the letters of Paul are open to the possibility that one set or group of editors were responsible for a redaction of Paul’s original letters and the three “deutero” Pauline epistles, and another editor compiled canonical Luke and composed canonical Acts.
If, as I seem to recall, there is at least one early canonical list or codex that placed Acts directly before most of catholic epistles that were later canonized, that suggests the hypothesis (as far as I can tell, purely speculative) that the placement of Acts in front of the Pauline epistles to provide a useful proto-orthodox lens for reading the Pauline epistles was a later move, where Acts was originally intended to provide a “purified” alternative to the “corrupted” epistles in circulation. In that hypothesis, the original function of Acts did not stand up to the determination of a cohort of Pauline faith communities insisting on using some version of Pauline epistles as part of their holy literature, and a new function was found for it.
A third position on the spectrum is somebody who feels that Paul “properly understood” is divinely inspired, but “the enemy” traps people into an “improper understanding” of his writings, so additional divinely inspired elaboration is required for people to better understand what Paul “meant” to say.
Sure but if agreeing and disagreeing with Paul are both signs of influence then where are we? How could we ever falsify the claim that Luke/Acts knew Paul’s letters? Heads I win, tails you lose.
A fourth position is someone who is trying to get some factions of Paul following faith communities on side, so the most appealing (from this editor’s view) traditions about Paul from those factions that are the most compatible with the editor’s faith community are composed into a Church history that proves that the faith communities that view themselves as Pauline should make common cause with the faith communities that view themselves as Petrine, because despite “corrupted” texts suggesting the opposite, in reality Paul and Peter resolved any differences that they had and were part of a single larger overall faith community.
The problem there is there doesn’t seem to be any accommodation. In both Acts and the two Petrine forgeries, Peter is made to mirror the views of Paul as recorded in Acts and the Pauline forgeries in the two letters of Peter. Paul gets distorted and Peter gets cancelled.
The various speculative and/or scientific inferences of Vinzent and krewe about the edition history of the letters of Paul are open to the possibility that one set or group of editors were responsible for a redaction of Paul’s original letters and the three “deutero” Pauline epistles, and another editor compiled canonical Luke and composed canonical Acts.
Yes I think we need to avoid the idea that all these Christen communities were intimately familiar with each other. It was only in the second century that these disparate strands began to push up against each other.
Quote I:
A third position on the spectrum is somebody who feels that Paul “properly understood” is divinely inspired, but “the enemy” traps people into an “improper understanding” of his writings, so additional divinely inspired elaboration is required for people to better understand what Paul “meant” to say.
Stephen said Sure but if agreeing and disagreeing with Paul are both signs of influence then where are we? How could we ever falsify the claim that Luke/Acts knew Paul’s letters? Heads I win, tails you lose.
In the real world, either would indeed be an influence … it’s blithely ignoring the Paul of the letters which would be Luke/Acts not knowing Paul’s letters.
But in either the positive or negative influence, the burden of proof would be on the claim of influence, so the counter-argument would be arguing against the strength of the evidence that has been advanced.
A fourth position is someone who is trying to get some factions of Paul following faith communities on side, so the most appealing (from this editor’s view) traditions about Paul from those factions that are the most compatible with the editor’s faith community are composed into a Church history that proves that the faith communities that view themselves as Pauline should make common cause with the faith communities that view themselves as Petrine, because despite “corrupted” texts suggesting the opposite, in reality Paul and Peter resolved any differences that they had and were part of a single larger overall faith community.
Stephen said The problem there is there doesn’t seem to be any accommodation. In both Acts and the two Petrine forgeries, Peter is made to mirror the views of Paul as recorded in Acts and the Pauline forgeries in the two letters of Peter. Paul gets distorted and Peter gets cancelled.
There is an empirical problem in observing any accommodation in the composition of canonical Luke/Acts … you can’t get movement from a single observation.
If the Vincent & &c. group are on the right track, there are at least two observations available, and possibly three … the movement from the Paul in the reconstructed Apostolos to the Paul in Acts & the canonical epistles, and possibly the movement from Paul in the reconstructed Apostolos to Paul in the canonical epistles to Paul in Acts.
If the Peter in Acts is made to agree with a Paul that is progressively shifted away from the Paul in the epistles, then equally well Paul is made to agree with the Peter in the Apostolic myth making in Acts. Compared to the Paul in the Apostolos reconstruction, the Paul in the canonical epistles has the confrontation relocated to Jerusalem, and resolved with the added element of fund raising for the Saints in Jerusalem, and then in Acts the resolution includes additional elements required.
The various speculative and/or scientific inferences of Vinzent and krewe about the edition history of the letters of Paul are open to the possibility that one set or group of editors were responsible for a redaction of Paul’s original letters and the three “deutero” Pauline epistles, and another editor compiled canonical Luke and composed canonical Acts.
Yes I think we need to avoid the idea that all these Christen communities were intimately familiar with each other. It was only in the second century that these disparate strands began to push up against each other.
I guess the argument advanced for broader communities would involve roving itinerant evangelists knitting faith communities together. But then there is the language barriers. If Antioch is a primarily Greek speaking city with an Aramaic speaking hinterland, that could be the northern extent of the Aramaic zone, except for a community of Aramaic speakers in the metropole. Then Antioch toward the north and west is the Greek speaking region. And of course there is the Greek & Coptic communities in Alexandria. And the metropole is Latin speaking, with substantial Greek fluency, and likely a native Aramaic speaking community among other minority language communities in the Imperial Capital. So there are a minimum of four “zones”, and frequency of interactions between different faith communities within each zone very much open to question.
Well the consequences of the First Revolt put paid to any strong centralized Jewish sectarian Jesus movement. Although we know of such sectarians in later times the movement seems to have been largely marginalized. One can imagine an alternative history sans Revolt where there remained an active Aramaic Jesus movement centered in Jerusalem. Would this have affected the evangelization of Gentiles? Maybe the Pauline churches would have been marginalized had the “Party of Circumcision” won the day! Maybe the gospel of Matthew would have survived as a foundational document known only to specialists and a few outside the academy. No Luke/Acts or collected Pauline corpus at all!
Stephen said
Well the consequences of the First Revolt put paid to any strong centralized Jewish sectarian Jesus movement. Although we know of such sectarians in later times the movement seems to have been largely marginalized.
Yes, the fracturing of influence among larger diaspora Jewish communities post-First-Revolt is part of the mix of the pluralism that is a plausible reason for the early proto-orthodox accepting the canonical redactions of the four canonical gospels … it opens the door for different degrees of accommodation and conflict in different language-mix environments. And then the Bar Kohkba revolt further weakens the “Party of Circumcision” and strengthens the hand of the various Gentile leaning strands.
One can imagine an alternative history sans Revolt where there remained an active Aramaic Jesus movement centered in Jerusalem. Would this have affected the evangelization of Gentiles? Maybe the Pauline churches would have been marginalized had the “Party of Circumcision” won the day! Maybe the gospel of Matthew would have survived as a foundational document known only to specialists and a few outside the academy. No Luke/Acts or collected Pauline corpus at all!
Or, in between the two extremes, one could imagine history rhyming when it does not repeat, and project something similar to the Shia / Sunni split.
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