Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
The Acts Seminar was a Westar Institute sequel to the Jesus Seminar. It met between March 2000 and March 2011. It was charged with the task to develop methods for determining the reliability of Acts and produce a comprehensive guide to Acts as history. (Acts and Christian Beginnings: The Acts Seminar Report, p. 1) The … Continue reading “Top Ten Findings of the Acts Seminar”
The Acts Seminar Report (Acts and Christian Beginnings) maintains that, contrary to the view that has long been widely held among biblical scholars, the author of Acts (with the routine caveats we call him Luke) did know and use the letters of Paul. I begin with some comments by one of the Acts Seminar Fellows, … Continue reading “Paul’s Letters As Sources for Acts (Acts Seminar Report)”
I very much doubt that it is possible to tell the gender of an author simply from reading the author’s works. (Surely there are too many times women authors have fooled reading publics with male pen-names and male authors of romance are also on record as having fooled even literary judges with female pseudonyms.) But … Continue reading “Women in Acts (An Acts Seminar Perspective)”
At about 57 mins of the MythVision podcast O’Neill underscores the importance of Paul’s claim to have met James the “brother of the Lord”. Not only is Paul’s claim from a contemporary of Jesus but it is even from one who is opposed to his source: Paul is saying, says O’Neill, “Yeh, I have met … Continue reading “Bad History for Atheists (3) — Proof-texting, Circularity, Fake Facts, Insults”
Continuing from Luke-Acts Explained as a form of “Ideal Jewish History” (Part 1) The reasons Luke-Acts has been considered a form of ancient history writing: Like other ancient historiography the work begins with a prologue announcing its superiority over what has gone before; Steve Mason notes that unlike the preceding gospels Luke-Acts, as a two volume … Continue reading “Luke-Acts as form of history-writing (Luke-Acts Explained . . . Part 2)”
TL;DR The author of Luke-Acts was following an ideal that Josephus had presented as a superior feature of Jewish historical writings: that history learned from revelation (e.g. works of Moses) was superior to the uncertain and often disputed historical inquiries of the Greeks. I think Steve Mason has nailed Luke-Acts. I think, as a specialist … Continue reading “Luke-Acts Explained as a form of “Ideal Jewish History” (Part 1)”
Genre can be a highly fluid concept. In studies of Gospels I’ve noticed that discussions of genre sometimes overlap with intertextuality. Moreover, we may conclude that an ancient narrative belongs to the genre “history”, but once we learn what “history” could mean to the ancients we quickly move into discussions about the place of fictional … Continue reading “Genre of Gospels, Acts and OT Primary History: INDEX“
I’ve been preoccupied with catching up with what certain New Testament scholars have writing about the way ancient Greek and Roman authors wrote history and the relevance this has for how we interpret Acts and the Gospels and what they can tell us about Christian origins. This all started after I began reading and posting … Continue reading “Acts 1-7 as Creative Literature, not History — Illustrated”
Genre can be a highly fluid concept. In studies of Gospels I’ve noticed that discussions of genre sometimes overlap with intertextuality. Moreover, we may conclude that an ancient narrative belongs to the genre “history”, but once we learn what “history” could mean to the ancients we quickly move into discussions about the place of fictional … Continue reading “Genre of Gospels, Acts and OT Primary History: INDEX”
Dennis E. Smith, one of the editors of the Acts Seminar Report, published as Acts and Christian Beginnings, includes in that publication a short essay on the identity of the author of Acts (pp. 9-10). Smith begins by noting that the first writer we know who identified the author of Acts as Luke, a companion … Continue reading “The Author of Acts”
René Salm has kindly shared with me a new translation (I think it’s the first English translation) of the Acts of Mark, a text I had never heard of till now. Until René’s contribution the most detail available on the internet about this document was from an old Synoptic L exchange between Philip James McCosker and … Continue reading “The Acts of Mark”
For all posts in this series: Roger Parvus: A Simonian Origin for Christianity It has been more than a year since I wrote the previous installment in this series. I have some excuses: new location, new job, and separation from well-stocked libraries. And also, I must admit, something unexpected happened during the break: I started losing … Continue reading “A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 16: Mark as Allegory”
I was introduced to the work of Shelly Matthews through the Acts Seminar Report. She is one of the Seminar Fellows. I have since read — and enjoyed very much — her historical study Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity. Shelly Matthews is one of the few theologians I … Continue reading “The Fiction of Stephen the First Martyr”
244 V. Trajan and the Emergence of Christianity 1. The Happiest Epoch for Humanity in Roman History. This is the title of an essay that has brought the admiration for Trajan, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius from the previous century to the present, and presents itself to us as an explanatory guide upon entering a memorable … Continue reading “BRUNO BAUER: Christ and the Caesars – V. Trajan and the Emergence of Christianity”