Comments on: Who Wrote That? Verbal Affinities Between the Lukan Prologue and Acts

By: Who Wrote That? Verbal Affinities in the New Testament (Part 2) « Vridar

Who Wrote That? Verbal Affinities in the New Testament (Part 2) « Vridar — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:43:17 +0000

[...] (This post is a follow-on to Who Wrote That? Verbal Affinities Between the Lukan Prologue and Acts.) [...]

By: Roger Parvus

Roger Parvus — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:50:52 +0000

Tim wrote: “The verbal affinity here may be purely coincidental; on the other hand, it could indicate the mark of the ‘ecclesiastical redactor’ (Perhaps Polycarp? See Trobisch’s The First Edition of the New Testament) who domesticated Paul’s letters, wrote the pastorals, edited Luke, and wrote or at least compiled the final version of Acts. Naturally, this explanation is simply conjecture.” Me: Another possible candidate I am interested in is Clement of Rome (as proposed by P.L. Couchoud). With that in mind I looked over 1 Clement for verbal affinities between it and the Lukan Prologue. I notice these possibilities: Verse 1: Lukan Prologue: “those things on which there is full conviction among us...”, using peplērophorēo 1 Clement 42.3: “The apostles… having been fully convinced (plērophorēthentes) through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ...went forth...in the full conviction (plērophorias) of the Holy Spirit… ” And 1 Clement 54.1: “Who is filled (peplērophorēmenos) with love?” Verse 2: Lukan Prologue: “Even as they delivered (paredosan) them unto us..." 1 Clement 7.2: “the glorious and venerable rule which has been delivered (paradoseos) to us” And 1 Clement 19.2: “the goal of peace that has been delivered (paradedomenon) to us..." Verses 2 and 3: The Lukan Prologue twice says “from the beginning”, in the first instance using archē with preposition apo, and then uses anōthen in the second. 1 Clement uses archē for “beginning” but, like John 6:64 and 16:4, does so with the preposition ek (“delivered to us from the beginning” – 1 Clement 19.2). In 47.2 it uses the preposition en: “in the beginning of the gospel”. Verse 4: Lukan Prologue: “so that you may know the certainty...", using epiginosko and asphaleian 1 Clement, using other forms of the same words, opens with a commendation of the church of Corinth which includes praise of its “certain knowledge”: asphalē gnōsin ( 1 Clement 1.2)

By: sahansdal

sahansdal — Sun, 06 May 2012 02:24:34 +0000

The point is there is something fishy with blood salvation doctrine. ‘Jesus’, whoever he was, never taught it.

By: mP

mP — Sat, 05 May 2012 22:10:30 +0000

Who is too say the fabricates did not act as editors for each others works. One writer or team produced one work, while another concentrated on another. They may have been co located and helped each other by chipping in, wherein unexpected places.

By: sahansdal

sahansdal — Sat, 05 May 2012 03:14:16 +0000

The “denial” wasn’t as the writers depicted. Look carefully, Jesus came three times to the disciples (in spirit, in their meditation — “Watching” is meditating) before “Peter” (Simeon Cleophas) “denies” him three times. The Greek word for denial is “aparnese” and means to repudiate, or deny utterly, or ignore. It isn’t merely simple denial to recognize. This is refusing to meditate. They were ASLEEP. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak [sleepy]“. The were to watch and pray “for an hour”. In Hebrew Matthew, at the Transfiguration, the disciples were “alseep but not asleep, awake but not awake”, which is the way they described meditation in the first century. This was removed from the received Greek at 17:3. (Also removed was, “Elijah does indeed come, and will save all the world”, 17:11, speaking of John. Several other changes removed the elevated status of real-life character John the Baptist, so as not to compete with the mythical Jesus. You may know Luke has John in prison when Jesus is baptized. Lots of that sort of thing going on in the gospels. Eisenman is thorough on the removal of James from the canon.)

By: sahansdal

sahansdal — Sat, 05 May 2012 02:58:41 +0000

Tim,

I am working on a paper length treatise on Judas in “the Betrayal” scenario. “Judas” was James in all four gospel accounts. So was ‘Lazarus’. I got the stuff on it down pretty well now. First Apocalypse of James, Gospel of Judas, Hegesippus, and modern: Robert Eisenman, support it. I can email or post it if you want to look at it. It’s about 8 book length pages now.

By: sahansdal

sahansdal — Sat, 05 May 2012 02:53:23 +0000

I am no expert on who wrote Luke and Acts, but I can tell you something Luke didn’t write: 22:19b-21. It is a Pauline interjection in an already Pauline gospel. (source: Bart Ehrman, “The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture”) pp 180-190, thereabouts.

By: Tim Widowfield

Tim Widowfield — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:41:44 +0000

He’s referring to the rough treatment the disciples get in the Synoptic Gospels, especially in Mark. They all flee at Gethsemane, Peter denies him, and Judas betrays him. They continually misunderstand what’s going on. For example, when Jesus tells them to beware the leaven of the Pharisees, they act like the Twelve Stooges and say, “Duhhhh, he means we forgot to bring bread!”

Marcion believed that the Jesus gave up on the Twelve and rebooted the whole franchise with Paul, who was the only apostle who truly understood Christ’s message.

By: mP

mP — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:34:59 +0000

Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly do you mean by “unreliability of the twelve” ? Are you referring to writings presented in their name or something else.

By: Badger3k

Badger3k — Thu, 03 May 2012 23:42:20 +0000

Dettering sees the association that the “real’ Pauline letters and Acts were written basically as counterpoints to each other, so they would have been written at the same time. I haven’t finished “The Fabricated Paul”, but it does seem that he puts them as 2nd century writings.

By: Will A

Will A — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:11:36 +0000

Yep that’s cool.

“I never would have predicted finding verbal affinity between Acts and Paul’s letters.”

Unless the writer of Acts had Paul’s letters, which he surely did?

By: Tim Widowfield

Tim Widowfield — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:01:30 +0000

Thanks for the kind words. I was getting rather tired of talking about the Ehrman book, and the Talpiot Tomb stuff just bores me.

By: Tim Widowfield

Tim Widowfield — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:52:13 +0000

That’s probably my next step. Neil and I were chatting last night, and I mentioned to him that often when I found verbal affinities in the “undisputed” letters, the text at that point seemed rather un-Marcion-esque. Given Hoffmann’s claim that the rehabilitation of the disciples at the end of Luke is an orthodox interpolation, perhaps this is more fertile ground for study. I would presume that if the goal was to elevate the Twelve and tone down Paul, we’ll see the redactor’s hand in both places (the new stuff in Luke and various places in the Pauline corpus).

By: Tim Widowfield

Tim Widowfield — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:37:39 +0000

The esteemed R. Joseph Hoffmann wrote a dissertation back in '84 called Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity: An Essay on the Development of Radical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century. I can't afford a copy, but the reviews praise it to the high heavens. As I understand it, Hoffmann argues that Marcion used Urlukas, and that the "the Luke-Acts of the orthodox canon represents an effort to contest two of Marcion's most important teachings: the unreliability of the Twelve and Paul's sole right to the title of Apostle." (JBL Vol. 105, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 343-346) Hoffmann contends that the orthodox redactor(s) added material to the end of the gospel to beef up the role of the Twelve, giving them "special instruction," and elevating their stature. I don't know whether Hoffmann specifically addresses the issue of the tacked-on introductions, but it would seem necessary that if Urlukas was retooled to become the two-volume orthodox Luke-Acts (the way The Cage became The Menagerie?), then the salutations to Theophilus are necessarily suspect.

By: Robert Bumbalough

Robert Bumbalough — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:15:03 +0000

Hi Tim. Wow. Really cool. Thanks. I appreciate your hard work. Good job too.

By: Squirrelloid

Squirrelloid — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:03:08 +0000

I’m curious, have you also compared to the Pauline corpus as reconstructed for Marcion to see if the affinities you find are *not* present using his presumably less redacted versions?

By: mP

mP — Thu, 03 May 2012 09:39:21 +0000

If it is addressed to Theophilus does this mean the original greeting is lost or this is an addition, or perhaps that the gospel of Luke in the form we roughtly have is from a much later time. Could the other fragments that are dated earlier that are labelled Luke, be possibly fragments of an earlier source, in much the same way Q is given as a lost earlier source.

By: Tim Widowfield

Tim Widowfield — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:53:26 +0000

It might be, or it might not be. I'm not fully persuaded either way. I often suspect, however, that many NT scholars believe that the recipient was a real person (either in the first or second century, depending on the scholar's inclinations) mainly because they want it to be true.

By: Tim Widowfield

Tim Widowfield — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:49:19 +0000

A shy and very polite reader asked in an email why I quoted from Westcott and Hort’s Greek New Testament. Actually, the SBLGNT, the UBS, and W&H are identical in the Lukan prologue except for verse 3, in which there is a single-letter spelling difference. In that case, I explicitly quoted from the SBLGNT. This same reader asked why I quoted from the KJV. The King James is not a terrible translation, and in fact, it’s sometimes quite literal, which is useful in textual criticism. In those cases where the KJV translation was ambiguous or questionable, I used the NASB instead.

By: mP

mP — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:46:17 +0000

I recall reading in a book that the Theophilus in Luke is actually Theophilus the Bishop of Antioch from the mid 2nd century.