Paul is Jesus Redivivus in Acts

19 thoughts on “Paul is Jesus Redivivus in Acts”

1. Wow!

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2. This is very interesting. I had time only to check a couple of the parallels. One of them “A crowd follows Jesus/Paul” results in opposite emphases. Jesus is mourned, whereas Paul is heckled. Even so, the number and closeness of many of the parallels is striking, and suggests a template that the author or authors might have used. Since it’s usually assumed that it’s the same author, this would have been pretty easy for the Acts author to use.

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   1. I also think the comparison can be used to study how “midrash” and intertextuality works in the mind of the ancient author.

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3. Damn. I missed a bit. An hour or so after posting I added another section: Deaths and Resurrections.

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4. As one who is going to be increasingly persuaded by a recent book, I hope that the post is not meant to vehicle implicitly the idea that these parallelisms presuppose one and the same author for “Luke-Acts”. Both the idea and the expression “Luke-Acts” (sic) have to be abandoned, as who argues for Acts of the Apostles being from first century CE.

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   1. I am currently persuaded by the view developed by Joseph Tyson https://vridar.org/tag/tyson-marcion-luke-acts/ that our canonical Luke is the product of the author of Acts. The one who wrote Acts was the same who took an earlier form of our Gospel of Luke and augmented it into our canonical form.

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5. Are there Mandaean references to “Christ-Paul” ?

   https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2016/12/paulish-mistake-mandaean-book-john.html

   Haberl in 2014: “The Peacock Angel of the Yezidis is most frequently compared with the figure of Iblis in the Qur’an (7:11–13), but the obvious parallels between the Mandaic Ṭausa and the Yezidi Tawûsê Melek cannot be discounted. As all of the written traditions surrounding the Yezidis and Tawûsê Melek are comparatively late, this account (in the Doctrine of John) may well be considered the earliest surviving tradition about this enigmatic figure.” https://philologastry.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/the-peacocks-lament/

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   1. Mandaean references to Christ-Paul? That’s naughty McGrath once more doing his click-bait trick to get people to visit the site of his friend. Haberl, as you no doubt learned, argues emphatically in the negative, no, there are no Mandaean references to Christ-Paul! 😉

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6. Pingback: Paul and Jesus: Mirrored Rejections, Deaths and Resurrections – Vridar

7. Great post and compelling–devastating–establishment of the intentional parallelisms in composition between Paul and Jesus in Luke/Acts especially with reference to the “fateful final trip to Jerusalem”. There has already been work done on the fractured “we” passages of Acts as deriving from an original single travel narrative, “exploded” in Acts with intervening material to spread pieces of the “we” narrative over several years (Niels Hyldahl and others). The close parallelisms between the Luke final journey of Jesus to Jerusalem followed by death and resurrection and the Acts “final journey of Paul to Jerusalem” followed by ending up in Rome … and the Jerusalem-to-Rome leg of that narrative being from the “we” source, suggests a simple observation: since the “we” travel narrative already is jumbled and reworked, having the beginning of the original “we” journey by ship starting from Jerusalem to Rome displaced to be in Acts the final stage, is simply explained in principle.

   Then it might be conjectured the other “we” passages in Acts interspersed with various added adventures in Greece and Asia Minor might derive from what in the original “we” source was the return trip from Rome, in Acts situated chronologically the reverse of reality, before the beginning of that “we” trip from Jerusalem to Rome.

   Separately, there is independent argument for identifying the “we” trip in Acts, at least the Jerusalem to Rome portion (not certain concerning the return trip back to Judea) with Josephus’s trip to Rome ca. 63 ce, which is important in giving a date to the “we” source. An observation is that there is nothing “Christian” in the original “we” source. The reconstruction would be that all Christian elements in Acts associated with Paul of the “we” source fragment elaborations are overlays or additions, later than the original “we” source of ca. 63.

   In my line of reconstruction, Paul does not become a proponent of Jesus as Christ until ca. 70 though I think Paul could have encountered Jesus in a violent episode during the time of the Revolt when Jesus was active in Galilee and (likely) Transjordan (i.e. that there may be something to the Acts story of what Acts and Paul himself in Gal 1 anachronistically presented as his “conversion”), and that all of Paul’s writings postdate 70 ce in date of authorship. But the “we” source from which Acts drew would be glimpses of Paul’s pre-Revolt, pre-Jesus-Christ life history, recast in the later composition of Acts as if Paul was already a Christian. This seems to me a possible fruitful line of reconstruction, in which the Luke/Acts parallels and focus on the pivotal final journey to Jerusalem render explicable how and why the “we” source was fractured and reworked in composition, so as to fit the narrative the author of Luke/Acts wished to construct making Paul like Jesus, and Paul in Rome as parallel to Jesus’s ascension to heaven.

   Incidentally I am presenting a paper to the regional Pacific Northwest Society of Biblical Literature, May 21-23, 2021, in the History of Christianity and North American Religions Unit, titled, “Does ‘Aretas’ of 2 Cor 11:32-33 allude to an Aretas V of 69-70 CE?” The abstract:

   “A longstanding puzzle has been understanding a reference to a Nabataean ‘governor under king Aretas’ in control of the walls of Damascus at 2 Cor 11:32-33. ‘Aretas’ is universally identified as Aretas IV (ca. 9 bce-39 ce), but the problem is Aretas IV is not known to have controlled Damascus. Several solutions have been offered to reconcile 2 Cor 11:32-33 with known history, all starting from the premise that ‘Aretas’ is Aretas IV. This paper will make the case for a possibility not previously considered: that the reference may be to a previously-unrecognized Aretas V of 69-70 ce.

   “A short-lived Aretas V of 69-70 ce is chronologically viable following the death of Malichus II some time in Malichus’s regnal Year 31 of 69-70 (Nisan to Nisan), yet before the beginning of the reign of Rabbel II some time in Rabbel’s Year 1 of 70-71 (Nisan to Nisan). 69-70 was a time when Nabataean forces were actively allied with and provided military units under the direct control of Vespasian and Titus. In that context Roman control of Damascus could have involved Nabataean forces under Roman command such that Paul’s claim to have escaped a commander under king Aretas controlling the walls of Damascus could be other language or circumlocution for Roman control of Damascus in 69-70, in a way that was not the case with Aretas IV. This in turn suggests new possibilities for the relative and absolute datings alluded to in Galatians 1-2.”

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   1. I don’t know why we assume there is a lost source behind the “we passages”.

      I understand that . . .

      — studies have shown that the text around the “we passages” is no different in style from the rest of Acts;

      — we can see the prodigious use the author made of creatively adapting gospel and OT material as well as tendentious re-writing of scenes derived from the Pauline epistles, and Josephus, and a little 2 Maccabees, and a dash of Euripides . . . — so much so that one must question whether the author had any other (ostensibly biographical) material to work with (do the we passages add anything beyond these sources?);

      — the prologue suggests that the author was a participant among the events he narrates, so when we read “we” in the narrative we recall that the narrative is written by an “I” so it follows that the same “I” is among the “we”.

      The “we passages” lend authenticity to the narrative.

      Confession: my thoughts are influenced in part by this article:

      https://www.academia.edu/43308150/_Did_Luke_Write_Anonymously_Lingering_at_the_Threshold_

      A key passage that strikes a harmonious chord to my ears:

      To attribute the “we” passages of Acts to redactional ineptitude or to the disingenuous use of a source – a “travel-diary”, for example – seems to me to stand in unresolved tension, if not outright contradiction, with the anonymous author’s otherwise sophisticated literary abilities in general and “redactional” skill in particular, especially when we can track his use of sources.

      Looking forward to notice when your paper is available.

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   2. The Arthur Droge article that you cite (“Did ‘Luke’ Write Anonymously? Lingering at the Threshold”, pp. 495-518 in Die Apostelgeschiche im Kontext und fruhchristlicher Historiographie, ed. Frey, Rothschild and Schroter, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), and your argument, makes what seems like a compelling, conclusive argument, essentially: (1) Luke/Acts is 2nd ce and the author was not a personal associate or eyewitness of Paul; yet (2) the author of Acts intends the reader to understand that the “we” of the “we” passages refers to himself; and (3) the “we” passages of Acts are either written in or are difficult to distinguish from the author’s style. Therefore (4) the entire thing is fiction–intentionally deceptive fiction–from the author of Luke/Acts. The “we” is a subtle fictitious literary device of the author, for the purpose of lending authenticity to the narrative.

      The argument hangs together, and you develop it well, and my delay in responding was because of revisiting thinking and reading prompted by your comment. In the end I see a differing reconstruction–accounting for the same facts–as not only viable but subjectively more likely, without claim that evidence excludes the reconstruction or reading of Droge/you. Of the above four points, I agree that the first three are facts, not contested. On the fourth, I agree the author is being intentionally deceptive in having the reader understand “we” to be him, when that was not and cannot have been the case. The only issue with respect to the fourth point is whether the author created the “we” material de novo out of whole cloth, or worked over a prior written source with the same literary purpose intended. Either way it does not matter for the reading and intent of Acts in its published form in its 2nd ce context, but it may matter to us with respect to Christian origins history questions. The unresolved question is sources: did the author of Acts use sources? Was the author of Acts creating new fiction in the “we” passages out of whole cloth, or on the other hand reworking written sources creatively in the production of Acts?

      As you cite the influence on you of the Droge article (making the case for de novo whole-cloth creation of the “we” material), I am influenced by this article with a different interpretation of the same data, arguing for a source-development reconstruction in explanation of the final form of Acts: Justin Taylor, “The Making of Acts: A New Account”, Review biblique 97 (1990): 504-524.

      I have gone over the Justin Taylor article again prompted by your comment and by the Droge article, and although the source reconstruction of Boismard and Lamouille discussed by Taylor is unavoidably hypothetical, it makes sense to me in its major points as at least a viable theory–above all, gives a plausible mechanism of how doublets in Acts appear, both versions deriving from the same source. I do think there may be one significant error however. Boismard/Lamouille/Taylor interpret the “we” passages as deriving from a source which originally was of a single voyage by ship and on land (so far so good, that was also Hyldahl’s argument, not the case in final-form Acts), but they identify that voyage as the same as “collection for the saints in Jerusalem” of the epistles, whereas the line of reconstruction I see is that the ship voyage of the “we” source was pre-70 and the era of writing of the epistles/collection for the saints in Jerusalem was later and unrelated, post-70. That the author of Acts intended, and deceptively so, the reader to read “we” as the author himself is unchanged from what Droge and you see. Only the backstory leading up to the final form of Acts as we see it differs in reconstruction or explanation thereof.

      On another point, the reading I have suggested of Gal 2:1, gr. dia, as an event occurring “during” the fourteen-year period of that verse instead of “after” as universally translated in modern translations and scholarly understanding–and that the endpoint of the fourteen years is not the visit to Jerusalem but the time of writing of the letter to the Galatians–seemingly idiosyncratic in going against prevailing scholarly reading–I have found in fact has received a serious published argument in this article: Alexis Bunine, “La date de la premiere visite de Paul a Jerusalem (suite et fin)”, Revue biblique 113 (2006): 601-622 at 620-621. This is the best explanation of the case for this different reading of the syntax of Gal 2:1 in print to my knowledge. Ironically Bunine develops that syntactic argument for the purpose of solving a problem which I think is a non-issue, but never mind that, the argument itself for “during” rather than “at the end of” I believe is sound.

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      1. Thank you so much for this detailed response, Greg. You certainly keep giving me new angles to think about. I have since added Bunine to my collection and have read his argument re “dia” the 14 years — indeed most interesting. I’ll continue my exploration of the letters of Paul from a different perspective but always with your alternative standing beside me. I look forward to your full explanation of the date of Paul and Aretas.

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8. Great post.

   A query: in the post you say, “If one accepts that the source of Paul’s life and adventures was the Lukan account of Jesus then there are implications for the purpose of Luke-Acts … ”

   Do you mean, ‘the Lukan account of Jesus’ in Acts or in Luke, or in both ie. in Luke_Acts ?

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   1. I was thinking of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, and by extension, the Jesus of his source gospels, too — those of Mark and Matthew.

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      1. Thanks for the prompt reply Neil.

         Then … If one accepts that the source of Paul’s life and adventures was the synoptic gospel accounts of Jesus then are there implications for the relative dating of the Pauline letters and of the synoptic gospels? ie. could some, at least, of the Pauline letters be dated to around the time that early manifestations of the synoptic gospels were being written?

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         1. Your first question was easy to answer. This second one is hard. Though if I focus on your word “could” then I can opt for an easy way out — yes, anything’s possible. More meaningful probabilities on the basis of demonstrable evidence are ideas I am still wondering about and keeping in mind as I try to read more (hopefully) relevant material.

            I hope to be posting more about Paul’s letters and ideas this year. Still much to learn first.

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            1. If it helps, here is a link
               https://scholar.csl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=ofs
               The New Perspective from Paul

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               1. What I’m looking at at this moment are the different ways Paul’s letters, in style and content, fit wider literary cultures. Main focus is on ancient philosophical literature, especially letters, on the one hand, and comparison with the structures and motifs in the Jewish scriptures on the other. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to see the letters of Paul as the work of “a historical Paul” as we generally understand him.

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