Tag: Acts of the Apostles

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8.

The Composition of Acts of the Apostles

Let us especially keep in mind the parallelism of Peter and Paul, then the undeniable testimonies that speak for the fact that the miracles of both apostles are intentionally and with full consciousness copied from the miracle reports of the Gospels, finally the artistic machinery that suddenly brings the course of events to a halt, when everything was already ready for the Apostle of the Gentiles to enter into his role, and which only allows the events to run their course again when Peter has in the meantime left and won the firstfruits of the Gentiles – thus the theological views on the origin and composition of the Acts of the Apostles will no longer be able to assert themselves against the correct explanation.

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If, for example, de Wette *) says: “very naturally, although without any clear intention on the part of the author, there is a first part in C. 1-12 and a second part in C. 13-28”, this machinery rather points to a very definite, very clearly recognisable intention which the author pursued with perfectly clear consciousness and which he certainly also achieved in his own way, in that this machinery very artfully intertwines both parts.

*) Introduction p. 223.

Schneckenburger **) also thinks that “the book can best be divided with de Wette according to the main parts of the material, which is up to C. 13 is more general, while the following chapters have Paul as the sole hero and the wide non-Palestinian world as the geographical setting,” he combines with this the further opinion that the author, when he deals in the second part only with Paul, knew very well what was happening at the same time in Palestine and what the other apostles were doing, so we do no longer even need to ask where the traces of this richer consciousness of the author show themselves, but we can at once, with reference to the proof hitherto given of the free creation of the whole work, put down the proposition *) that the author knew only so much of the history of his Church as he pleased to create, and that the presupposition of the readers that he might well know more than he expressly reports would have been most unwelcome and embarrassing to him. He rather wanted to give the impression that he gave everything he knew and that he knew everything that had taken place under the Lord’s guidance up to his time in the church and with its chosen witnesses.

**) op. cit. p. 49.

*) By leaving aside the mistakes of the author, in which his knowledge of the Pauline epistles and his dependence on the presuppositions of the same are betrayed.

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If Schneckenburger **) then thinks that the narratives of the first part were taken by the author from the tradition of the early church, and if he combines this view in part with at least the hypothesis of others that the author had already found this tradition in written records, then we need only refer to our proof, that the miracles of Paul are copied from the miracle reports of the Gospels in the same way as the deeds and destinies of Peter, and that the conformity of the method followed in this copying bears irrefutable witness to the simultaneity of the origin of both parts and to the unity of the author. Before we put it on the account of the most monstrous and mysterious coincidence that, for example, the first reproduction of the miracle of Jesus on Peter’s mother-in-law – (the miracle of Peter on Aeneas 9:2-34) – was casually presented and only later in the miracle of Paul on the father of Publius (28:7-9) – we prefer to acknowledge the fact that one author created both accounts, that the one author who, during the first imitation, already had the second one in mind and knew that the precisely corresponding imitation would follow in it.

**) op. cit. p. 154. 156.

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The first part of the Acts of the Apostles never existed on its own, but the same author, who in the second part made the Apostle of the Gentiles a miracle worker and protégé of heaven after the model of the evangelical Jesus, created the miraculous figures of the first part after the same model and had the Apostle of the Gentiles in mind as the chosen instrument of his Lord from the beginning and already at the first construction of his work. When, for example, immediately before the Ascension Jesus tells the disciples that they will be His witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth (1:8), the author sees before his eyes the original apostles who began the proclamation of the Gospel in the Holy Land and in Samaria, and he sees behind them the Apostle to the Gentiles who carried the message of salvation to the ends of the earth. When the disciples fill the gap that the traitor brought into the holy number of twelve and choose Matthias, the author is already thinking of the Apostle to the Gentiles, whom the Lord Himself called, and he counts on the reader coming to the conclusion of his own accord that he is the true substitute, the one called afterwards, i.e. the one whom the Lord had appointed to complete the circle of disciples. If the miracle of Pentecost depicts the universal destiny of the congregation in advance, who fulfilled this wonderful prophecy in its entirety? Who else but the witness whom the Lord won at Damascus and whom he accompanied and led on his missionary journeys until he finally brought him to the promised goal of his activity, to Rome? Why, finally, must James, John’s brother, fall as a martyr shortly before the appearance of the Apostle to the Gentiles? Only so that he might stand in a new way, so that he might stand quite clearly and evidently as the substitute ordered by the Lord, and so that at the same time, through the fate of the disciple he replaced, the outcome of his own life might be indicated, even declared to be a divine destiny.

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But the account of the first great missionary journey of the Apostle to the Gentiles (13:1-14, 28) is surely *) a “special memoir” which the author of Acts found and simply inserted into his work? So the author of this memorandum happened to find that Paul is only the copy of Peter, of Peter who was portrayed by another author in such a way that his image could make the most indisputable claims to originality? The copy was made independently of the original – before the original was fixed? And the author of this memorandum happened to find that Paul is the same copy of Peter that he is in the course of his activity – he happened to strike the same note that others struck in their memoranda – he was so fortunate in his tendency that his memorandum could easily be added to the memoranda of others? No! Whoever elaborated Peter’s sermons in the first part, also created the copy in the presentation of the Apostle to the Gentiles at Antioch – whoever created Paul’s miracle on Elymas, had immediately before created Peter’s great deeds on Simon Magus and Ananias – it is the same author who called the miracles of both Apostles on a lame-born into existence – one and the same author lets the Apostle to the Gentiles on his first great journey, as later, first address the Jews, and the writer, who composed the apostle’s sermon to the Gentiles at Lystra, knew that he would later bring him once more – at Athens – into the situation in which horror at the Gentile nature moved him to a peroration to the Gentiles – the same writer who made Barnabas the companion of the apostle on his first missionary journey, had with deliberate intention made him the well-deserving and respected member of the early church (4: 35-36), who was from the beginning destined to introduce the Apostle to the Gentiles and to his missionary activity.

*) as Schneckenburger also assumes.

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From none of the persons who appear in the Acts of the Apostles could the author receive notes or memoranda about the early days of the church and about the history of the Apostle to the Gentiles, for what they know, do and speak, they know, do and speak only through him. They are his creatures. Barnabas could not tell him anything, nor could he be the centre of a special memoir, for this Barnabas, who exits in the Acts of the Apostles, is from the outset only a means of historical pragmatism. Timothy could tell him nothing, because this Timothy of Acts with his unnatural circumcision is only an artificially created counter-image to Titus of the Epistle to the Galatians. Silas could not tell him anything about the apostle’s second journey of discord, for his experiences in the prison of Philippi only took place in that world in which the miracles that freed Peter from prison were capable of being repeated effortlessly and without danger. Finally, the four daughters of Philip, with whom Paul and his companions met in Caesarea (21:9), could not have told the author anything, for with their gift of prophecy they only serve to form the prophetic environment for the appearance of Agabus, who announced to the apostle the fate that awaited him in Jerusalem.

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But since in the beginning of the report on the second major missionary journey a man appears who (16:10) speaks in the first person – with a direct and confident “we” – and with this “we” also appears later, in the report on the last journey to Jerusalem and on the journey to Rome, do the theologians not have every right to accept from the 16th chapter onwards a memoir *) that comes from an eye-witness and thus deserves – indeed, may demand – unconditional faith?

*) and indeed to accept it with the confidence which, for example, de Wette displays? (Introduction p. 232.)

Unhappy eyewitness, who appears just there (16:10), where the failed reproduction of the relation in which the Jesus of the Gospels stood to the demons, brought the Apostle of the Gentiles into the prison, from which the failed renewal of the faith of the miraculous power, which once assisted Peter, delivered him!

Unhappy eyewitness, who (20:5-13) comes forward with his We again at the moment when in the miracle of the apostle on the dead Eutychus the tortured recovery of the miracle should take place, which the Jesus of the Gospels had performed on the daughter of Jairus, and of the miracle which Peter had performed on Dorcas!

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Poor eyewitness who has to hear in Caesarea e” (21:10-12) that the fate of the Jesus of the Gospels is to be repeated on the Apostle – again unfortunate eyewitness who, with his We, with which he accompanies the sea voyage to Rome and witnesses the arrival in the metropolitan city (C. 17, 1-18, 6), also has to witness the literal repetition of the miracle which Jesus had performed on Peter’s mother-in-law (C. 28, 7)!

This eyewitness could only see the events whose truth he affirms with his “we” in the ideal world which the author of the Acts of the Apostles created and modelled on the miraculous world of the Gospels. That is, he is made with his “we” like the world in which he lives and travels, which he sees and witnesses.

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If the unity of plan and tendency, the continuous and always constant use of the evangelical image of the Saviour, the fact that Peter and Paul only received their form with regard to each other – if all this proves the unity of the author of the Acts of the Apostles, there are also some features in it, some inconsistencies, contradictions and repetitions, which virtually contradict and overturn this result – contradict it – and yet it retains its truth!

They contradict it – and yet it retains its truth! they overthrow it – and yet it remains unshakeable, it holds up irrefutably on the basis of that proof.

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So several authors and yet only one? Several workers and yet the work comes from only one?

That is so! The Gospel of Luke, too, comes from One author – One wrote the Original Gospel, which is preserved to us most purely in the writing of Mark and which Urlukas based his compilation on – Only One was Ur-Luke, who inserted into the Original Gospel the late variations that others had made on it, and the author of the present Gospel of Luke enriched this compilation with additions, which represented to him the expansion of the Gospel historical material that had been accomplished in the meantime.

One of them originally created the Acts of the Apostles, but his creation gradually received various additions, expansions, intermediate remarks, variations, and the compiler who compiled the present Gospel of Luke proceeded with the Acts of the Apostles as he did with the original of his Gospel – he imposed on it a part of the additions and extensions which he found in the various redactions of the same, and thereby brought about the shifts in the material, the inconsistencies and incorrectnesses which in the present form of the Acts of the Apostles disturb the flow of the whole. Even if he did not cause all of these inconsistencies, even if he found a part of them already in the basic material of the work, they were still only possible through later hands and arose through the insertion of later variations.

It is impossible, for example, that the original creator first described the sorcerer whom Paul found on the island of Paphos as a Jewish false prophet, named Bar Jesus, and then, immediately after noticing that he was in the vicinity of Sergius Paulus and proceeding to the apostle’s fight with him, suddenly described him as the sorcerer Elymas (13:6-8). The hesitation and uncertainty of the later hand is rather betrayed by the addition to the latter name: “for thus his name is interpreted” – this hesitant addition therefore speaks for the fact that the latter name belongs to the original and that the former name and the remark that the sorcerer was a Jew comes from a later editor who proceeded from the assumption that Paul always and everywhere had to fight only with Jews. Probably the magician Elymas was originally a Gentile like his Petrine archetype the magician Simon.

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The account at the turning point where Paul separates from Barnabas and joins Silas is also highly irregular. Barnabas suggests to him to take John Mark with him on the intended missionary journey, as if he was with them in Antioch (15:37), and so far it had only been reported that he had separated from them on his own authority on the earlier journey and had gone to Jerusalem (13:13). Furthermore, Paul took Silas with him on his new journey, as if he were in Antioch, and it was reported that he who had brought the apostle’s decree to Antioch with Judas was sent to the apostles in Jerusalem (15:33, 40). A later hand has wisely inserted the remark after the latter note (V. 34) that Silas remained in Antioch, but in this way it could not possibly succeed in removing the confusion that earlier reworkers had brought into this turning point.

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If the prophets and teachers in Antioch receive a command from the Spirit to separate Barnabas and Paul for the work they are called to do while they are serving the Lord and fasting (13:2), this pragmatism corresponds to the overall design of the work in which Paul himself, while praying in the temple, hears the voice of the Lord sending him to the Gentiles (22:7-21), and where the prophet Agabus predicts his future fate to him (21:11). However, the preceding enumeration of those teachers and prophets, in which Paul and Barnabas appear so strange as if they had not yet appeared, so strange that the hypothesis could arise that here (13:1) begins an independent memorandum about the first missionary journey of the apostle – this overloaded and disturbing enumeration can only come from a later hand.

We have indeed seen at decisive points that the author was not able to form a tenable motive and to carry it out firmly and securely – so the uncertain accumulation of motives that finally drive the apostle to Jerusalem can also be his work. The overcrowding, however, which the penultimate journey to Jerusalem (18:21, 22) brings into the account, the circumstance that the apostle, after leaving Ephesus, immediately returns to convert the disciples of John (19:1), the circumstance further that the journey to Jerusalem (18: 22) is almost furtive, only furtively alluded to – all this makes it possible that this overcrowding was originally a variation on the last journey to Jerusalem, and that the confusion of the account is due to the compiler, who took this innovation into the original structure of the whole, and now had to almost conceal the superfluous journey to Jerusalem, and could only let it happen in a furtive way.

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Otherwise, the author liked to vary his themes himself – as an example, we will give another variation, which one might be tempted to consider as the work of a later hand and as evidence of the gradual expansion and filling out of the Acts of the Apostles, if the original were not imitated in the copy with a knowledge of detail and an interest in detail that could only belong to the original creator.
Twice it is reported that the members of the early church sold their possessions and put the proceeds at the disposal of the community (2:45; 4:34-35). Both times, a miracle follows this note – the first time, Peter’s miracle with the lame man (3:1-10), and the second time, Peter’s miracle with Ananias and Sapphira (5:1-10). Both miracles made a great impression on the people, and they marvel at the apostles, who are in the hall of Solomon, like supernatural beings (3:11; 5:11-13). As a result of both miracles, the apostles are brought to trial, both times Peter speaks, both times he brings out the contrast that the one whom his judges have killed has been raised from the dead (4:10. Compare 3:13-15; 5:30-31), both times he appeals to the fact that one must obey God rather than men (4:19; 5:29), and finally, in both cases, the matter is settled by the judges forbidding the apostles to speak to the people about Jesus (4:17-21; 5:40).

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As for the question of the time in which the Acts of the Apostles were written, this work is so deeply involved in the history of the Gospels, and the criticism of the latter is at present so securely established, that the answer to that question can be found with positive certainty.

Marcion, who became known by his system at the beginning of the second third of the second century, possessed only the foundation which was later extended to the present Gospel of Luke.

It was only in the second third of the second century that the compiler, who expanded the writing of Ur-Luke into the present Gospel of Luke, was able to find the Acts of the Apostles, which had made the revolutionary of the Pauline epistles an apologist *), and to connect it with his writing of the Gospels.

*) How far this transition from revolution to apologetics was already prepared in these letters themselves, we will show in the following critique of them.

Find them! – Because he did not create it anymore than he created his Gospel work; he only connected it loosely with his Gospel, for even though he expanded the ending of the original Luke text, which originally contained only the Lord’s command to the disciples to preach repentance and forgiveness to all nations (Luke 24:46-47), as well as the note of the Ascension (vv. 50-51), and added his own additions that connect with the account of the miracle of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles (vv. 48-49, 52-53), he could not overcome the contradiction of the views and assumptions of both works – indeed, he did not even attempt to mitigate it and left it in all its harshness. He immediately follows the Gospel that has the Lord ascend into heaven on the day of his resurrection and at Bethany in the plain with a work whose author, however, had determined that Jesus ascended into heaven on the fortieth day after his resurrection, specifically from the Mount of Olives. He did not want to leave us any doubt that he is innocent of this contradiction and that he only caused it by combining two works of others.

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His Pentecost miracle also takes us to the late period to which the standpoint and tendency of the author of the Acts of the Apostles takes us. The Pentecost celebration, which unites the apostles, becomes a celebration of the new law and a counter-image of the legislation of Sinai through the miracle that they suddenly speak in all the languages of the world and the listeners from all the nations of the world each hear his language *). Josephus, however, does not yet know that the Pentecost had any relation to the legislation – the original Gospel does not yet know the Pentecost, does not need it and has completely and solemnly entrusted the disciples with their task and equipped them with the power to carry it out when, after His resurrection, the Lord gives the commandment that they should now go into the whole world and preach the Gospel.

*) The fact that the author (Acts 2:9-11) wants to list and group all the nations of the world according to their linguistic differences, although he also includes linguistically related groups, and that his enumeration yields the number 16, so that the foreigners present should represent the descendants of the 16 grandsons of Noah, we only mention in passing, as well as the mistake that those foreigners in Acts 2:5 are said to be Jews residing in Jerusalem, yet in verse 9 they are described as people who are living abroad.

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Later, after the original Gospel had undergone multiple revisions, all of which, like the Gospel of Luke, considered the Lord’s farewell to the disciples as a sufficient and adequate introduction to apostolic work and a full guarantee of the universal mission of the Church, only later, when apostolic activity became the subject of a separate historical narrative, could the pleonasm arise that the Lord’s farewell, which in the original Gospel was absolutely miraculous and conclusively final, received its subsequent confirmation and fulfillment at Pentecost.

(We only need to mention in passing here that the theory found in the Philonic writings *), according to which the voice that proclaimed the law on Sinai reached to the end of the world, emerged from heavenly fire, or rather consisted of the fire itself, which articulated in the dialect that was innate and familiar to the listeners, must have been known to the author of the Acts of the Apostles and provided him with the elements for his miracle of language, his fiery tongues, i.e. the flickering flames of fire on the heads of the disciples, and the occasion for his combination of the Pentecost and the giving of the law feast.)

*) de sept. et fest. p. 1193 de decalogo p. 748-750.

The late origin of the Pentecostal miracle is finally proved by the use which the author of it made of the category of speaking in tongues. He took the category from the Pauline epistles, uses it as generally known, and even believes to use it in the sense in which it is used in the Pauline epistles, thus not noticing that while his “speaking with tongues” is speaking in foreign languages, hitherto foreign to the disciples, but known in themselves, the speaking with tongues in the Pauline epistles means the instantaneous creation of formulas and expressions that went beyond the ordinary language in general and formed, as it were, a completely new language.

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The objection, whether Paul after the fall of Jerusalem could still be portrayed as a temple worshiper, whether in the late time, when the “early church” of Jerusalem had long since lost its influence and importance, the Apostle to the Gentiles could be placed in this dependent relationship to it, will not make the result of our investigation any more shaky. The former objection can only be clumsy against the proof that the Acts of the Apostles is a historical fiction that must use local colors, and the importance that the early church together with the primitive apostles has in this fiction, the preponderance that it has over Paul, we have already explained perfectly when we interpreted the whole Acts of the Apostles as the work of that Judaism, which has survived to the present day in the Christian Church. It transformed the original creation into a gift from heaven and the past, subjected the authority to its own power, and made the gain of the revolution, the bold conquest, a legitimate legacy of tradition.

At the same time that this Judaism produced the Acts of the Apostles, it modeled the cultus, constitution, and discipline of the church on the Old Testament hierarchy, without needing to see the temple and its service. When this Judaism formed the Christian hierarchy, the temple had long since fallen and had long since lost its worshippers.

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One more question! Theologians have expressed it so far in the form of questioning whether the Acts of the Apostles were written before the martyrdom of the Apostle or whether it presupposed this death as known and real.

However, since the Acts of the Apostles, as a work of fiction and reflection, cannot report anything to us about Paul’s life, since the journey of the apostle to the Gentiles to Rome, along with his Roman citizenship, has also been shown to be a free creation of the author, and since the later legends about the martyrdom of the Gentile apostle – legends that reveal their origin from the rivalry in which Paul and Peter competed for the principal and true palm of victory and which become adventures – do not introduce us into real history, the question for us can only be: at what stage of development was the legend of the martyrdom of the Gentile apostle when the Acts of the Apostles were written, or did the author of the Acts know anything at all about his hero’s Roman martyrdom?

When the author reports at the end of his work (Acts 28:30-31) that Paul preached the kingdom of God in Rome for two years without hindrance, he acts as if he has these two years behind him and knows the turn of events that occurred after their conclusion, but he does not even hint at what this turn of events was. Nevertheless, throughout his work, he assumes that the Roman martyrdom was the culmination of the apostle’s career. The farewell that the apostle takes from the leaders of the Ephesian community in Miletus happens once and for all and is so generally worded that it is clear that it applies to all the communities with which he has been in contact: “And now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again” (Acts 20:25). When he went to Jerusalem for the last time, he was really driven to Rome and did not rest anywhere because the Spirit did not allow him to, and the Lord told him himself in a nocturnal vision (Acts 23:11) that he had to testify in Rome just as he had testified about him in Jerusalem – Rome is thus the goal of his career, the culmination of his work, and can this culmination be anything other than tragic when Stephen, who initiated the break with the Jewish people, fell as a martyr, and the apostle, who made room for him just before the beginning of his great work so that he could enter the circle of apostles as his replacement, and when James was the victim of the hostility that the secular power harbored against the community?

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The author’s presupposition is therefore clear and pervades his work visibly and undoubtedly – why did he not elaborate it at the end of the same and develop it in detail?

In the fourth gospel, which was written after the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is already the martyr of the Lord (C. 21, 18. 19) – in the first letter of Clemens *) Paul and Peter stand next to each other as martyrs – while the place where Peter suffered is not yet determined in this letter, the end of the west where Paul witnessed with his blood is supposed to be Rome in any case, both apostles in the letter of the Corinthian Dionysius to you Romans *) are so closely connected with each other that both found the church of Corinth, both go to Italy at the same time and suffer martyrdom here at the same time – both apocryphal letters belong to the age in which the Acts of the Apostles were written – so why, we must ask again, why did the author of the latter not historically elaborate at the end of his work a premise that was certain to him and his time?

*) C.5.

*) In Eusebius hist. eccl. 2, 25

He did not dare – he shrank from the criminalistic and bloody detail that would have been required to execute his assumption – it was enough for him that his time would find an assumption that they shared with him in his work, even without the bloody ending.

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7.

The viewpoint of the author of the Acts of the Apostles.

What de Wette, with the brevity required by the dignity of a textbook, simply presents as fact, Schneckenburger, by taking a hypothesis of Dr. Baur as a basis, seeks to establish with at least some certainty, and Schwegler has finally sought to make it fully comprehensible by inserting it into a larger historical context.

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When de Wette *) refers to the justification of the teachings and effectiveness of the Apostle Paul “against the narrow-minded views of the Jewish Christians” as a “subordinate pragmatic aspect of the historical narrative” in the Acts of the Apostles, Schneckenburger **) describes the Judaizers, against whose “hostility and accusations” the Apostle to the Gentiles is to be defended, as faithful Israelites who believed that the influx of the “mass” of Gentiles into the church threatened the privilege of the chosen people, following the lead of Dr. Baur. Finally, Schwegler ***) identifies “reconciliation, mutual approximation, and unity” of the two conflicting parties, the Paulinists and the Petrinists, as the purpose pursued by the author of the Acts of the Apostles in the composition of his work, and calls this apologetic historian a “Paulinist who, in a time still predominantly inclined towards Jewish Christianity and among a generation still prejudiced against the person, doctrine, and activity of the Apostle to the Gentiles, could only obtain recognition for Pauline universalism by making sacrifices.”

*) Textbook of the Introduction to the N. T. 1848. p. 223. 224.

**) op. cit. p. 90. 217. Baur, der Apostel Paulus, p. 347. 349.

***) Post-apostolic age ll. 73. 74. 113.

The insignificant disagreement of these scholars regarding the relationship between the apologetic purpose pursued by the author of the Acts of the Apostles and his historical narrative, their disagreement about the extent of the influence that his apologetic purpose had on the existing historical flow, is no longer of interest to us, now that it has been shown that the Acts of the Apostles is entirely a free creation and artificial product. While de Wette may push cautious belief the furthest, carefully distinguishing the historical narrative from that pragmatic perspective, calling it only a subordinate aspect and thus blunting the entire question of the habit of faith out of love, while Schneckenburger may attribute greater influence to the pragmatic purpose of the author, such as the fact that “Paul is only presented from his side facing Judaism, with omission and modification of what could bother the Judaizers,” and while Schwegler may extend the limits within which the purpose pursued by the author of the Acts of the Apostles “transformed the actual course of events and circumstances,” these scholars still share the assumption that the author was given the actual historical circumstances and that he modified them more or less in the interest of his purpose.

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Having established the origin of the Acts of the Apostles as a product of free reflection, we can calmly leave these scholars to their debate about the extent to which the author’s tendency influenced the transformation of historical facts. We will use their agreement as well as their differences to draw attention to the difficulty of their fundamental assumptions. In this regard, it will be only Messrs. Schwegler and Schneckenburger who can engage us, as the audacity with which Mr. de Wette presents his few sentences, assertions, and clauses is too far beyond our scope.

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“Against all the hostility and accusations of the Judaizers”, the author of the Acts of the Apostles wanted to defend the Apostle Paul in the “matter of the Gentiles”, as Schneckenburger assumes – “in a time still predominantly turned towards Jewish Christianity”, according to Schwegler, he wanted to bring Pauline universalism to recognition.

So the same purpose, the same tendency, the same interest! But how is it possible that the author of the Acts of the Apostles, who according to Schneckenburger wrote before the destruction of Jerusalem, according to Schwegler around the middle of the second century, could find the same opponents in both cases, take the same part and pursue the same purpose? How is it possible that an insightful and adroit Pauline, whether he appeared in the Neronian period or a century later, could in both cases find the struggle waged for the recognition of his teacher at the same stage, that he could consider the position taken by the writer of Acts as the most appropriate and fitting to decide the battle in his master’s favour?

In other words, a definition of the purpose of the Acts of the Apostles that conveniently finds its historical substrate in the time before the destruction of Jerusalem and a century later cannot be correct, – a view of history that is able to find exactly the same parties and these parties in exactly the same position in two points in time that are separated from each other by a century – (and by what a century, by what battles and decisions!) – cannot be other than erroneous.

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And who are the opponents that the author of the Acts of the Apostles wanted to appease and win over? Really those Jewish Christians who were concerned about the crowds of Gentiles who flocked to the Church in such numbers after the overthrow of the law “that they soon exceeded the number of believing Israelites” – to whom the thought that the Gentiles should enjoy salvation before the chosen people was unbearable? Really those Jewish Christians whose views and fears, as Schneckenburger thinks, “a careful consideration of the Epistle to the Romans” teaches us, – those Jewish Christians who, as Dr. Baur has really proved with the help of the Epistle to the Romans, alarmed and frightened by the disproportion between the encroaching crowd of Gentiles and the small number of believing Jews, dared to assert that “for the sake of the Jews the Gentiles should be excluded from the grace of the Gospel?”

But there never were such people – the Epistle to the Romans, as the renewed examination of it and the correct determination of its origin will prove, knows nothing of them, and in the Acts of the Apostles they appear nowhere, after once the clumsy pragmatism of miracles had removed the equally clumsily formed misgivings of the early church against the admission of the Gentiles and their deliverance from the law.

And if the Acts of the Apostles was written around the middle, in the second half of the second century – in this later time there should still have been Jewish Christians who denied the calling of the Gentiles, who at most only wanted to grant them salvation on the condition that they first submitted to Judaism through complete submission to the Law? At that time, “Jewish Christianity” still held sway, so that a Pauline could only get the Apostle of the Gentiles to recognise him at the price of the smallest compromises?

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Where is the evidence that the universalism of the congregation had to beg for a precarious existence around the middle of the second century?

Nowhere – nowhere can they be found.

Schwegler himself has to show how bad the situation is with regard to his basic premise when he lets his Pauline Fathers beg for a meagre and even humiliating recognition “in a time still predominantly turned towards Jewish Christianity, among a generation still prejudiced against the Apostle to the Gentiles”.

But still? still? By leaving the time in which Paulinism really fought – a time which itself has yet to be “elucidated” and which can only really be formed from the criticism of the Pauline letters – to itself for now and placing ourselves in the middle of the second century – what was the expression of the “Jewish Christianity” which still prevailed at that time – what were the prejudices which the generation of that time still harboured against the Apostle to the Gentiles?

Was there any party worth mentioning that was not convinced of the universal purpose of Christianity? A party that did not grant salvation to the Gentiles? Any party worth mentioning that wanted to accept the Gentiles into the church only on condition of their complete submission to the law?

None of the above.

So what did the parties argue about that the author of Acts wanted to reconcile? Mr. Schwegler will be as unable to say as all those who believe they have recognised and interpreted the entire history of the first two Christian centuries, if they attribute all movements, struggles and developments to the one opposition of the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians, the Petrines and the Paulines.

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So what were they arguing about? What was it that made the Jewish Christians bitter against Paul, or at least aroused their suspicion and worried them?

None of the scholars who have dealt with this question in modern times has been able to say, and the author of the Acts of the Apostles himself did not know, could no longer know, since the dispute between the Pauline and Jewish Christian parties had reached its end in his time and the points of contention had become blurred, confused, forgotten. When the author wanted to bring about the final catastrophe and let the fate of the Apostle to the Gentiles be fulfilled through the suspicion, yes, through the hostility of the believing Jews in Jerusalem, he was so incapable of forming a real and tenable opposition that he made one approach after another and always ended up with another, an ever more impossible and untenable opposition. By the time he wrote his work, the earlier, the historical contrast between the Pauline and the Judaeo-Christian movements had become blurred and incomprehensible – only unsubstantiated echoes of an earlier contrast occasionally penetrate his presentation, but the contrast itself does not appear in reality, the author cannot present it and no longer understands it.

At the moment of the dispute, when the opposition was still alive and active, a work like the Acts of the Apostles would have been impossible – as the difference between Paulinism and the Judaeo-Christian direction, a difference which, of course, can only be brought back to its truly historical form through a renewed critique of the Pauline letters, it would not have occurred to anyone to weave a “reconciling veil” *) in the Acts of the Apostles and to count on a reconciliation of the differences by throwing this veil over the points of contention – no one would have listened to the “peace proposal” if **) the Acts of the Apostles was presented as such.

*) Schwegler, op. cit. p. 73.

**) Same p. 74.

121

When the Acts of the Apostles were written, the tension of the parties had already collapsed, the opposition had already been veiled, the difference blurred, peace had already been made – the Acts of the Apostles is not a proposal for peace, but the expression and conclusion of peace and relaxation.

The Acts of the Apostles does not want to have an effect on genuine, original Pauline Christians, for example, with the intention of getting them to be tolerant and lenient towards the Jewish Christians, and it could not have had this intention because such Pauline Christians no longer existed. Nor does it want to make the Jewish Christians tolerant of the Pauline Christians, because this opposition no longer exists, because it was already obliterated. The author of the Acts of the Apostles does not live in the opposition in which the Pauline epistles move, nor in the opposition which modern scholars presuppose in every stage of the history of early Christianity; in his consciousness, rather, the elements of that earlier opposition had run into one another – when he wrote, the parties had melted away and the unity in whose element he lived had already been established.

122

So what did he want? What did he achieve in his work?

First, those who, like Schwegler, start from the premise that he wrote in a “time still predominantly inclined towards Jewish Christianity” may answer the question whether the dominance of this Jewish Christianity, which the author of Acts wanted to “reconcile” with Pauline Christianity, was later completely broken, whether this Jewish being was later completely subjugated to the Christian principle!

But we only say so, without waiting for their answer: The Acts of the Apostles first brought Judaism to dominion and recognition within the congregation, it helped to close the chain that connected the congregation with the Jewish world, and the church held fast to the Acts of the Apostles and recognized it as the canonical expression of its consciousness, because it wanted this covenant with Judaism and this Jewish marriage with the past and with heaven.

The author of the Acts of the Apostles gave form, flesh and blood and a sanctioning history to Judaism, which had neutralised the original conflicts and their struggle.

“To Judaism,” we say, even though this term, which we have immediately put in the title of our work because it is the only correct one, will cause some offence.

Judaism, which has prevailed in the Acts of the Apostles and received its balance with Paulinism, is of course not the historical Jewish people. Rather, the Jewish people as such is hostile to the church in Acts – “the Jews” are the opponents of the church, their opposition to salvation is determined and remains the same from beginning to end, their nature and character is finished, they persist in their nature, persecute Paul as they persecuted the original apostles: – in short, they stand outside and can only harbour enmity for the church.

123

The Judaism which triumphs in the Acts of the Apostles is not the Jewish Christianity of which modern scholars have so much to say – it has nothing against the freedom of the Gentile Christians, nor does it intend to impose the yoke of the law on them. On the contrary, on the ground on which this Judaism prevailed, the freedom of the Gentile Christians and the universality of the community were an undeniable truth, and the former opposition between the Gentile and Jewish Christians was disappearing.

The Judaism we speak of is rather a power that, although in changing forms, has maintained its dominance until modern times. It still worked and operated in the ignorance of the rationalists, who concealed their lack of historical knowledge by assuming a mediated revelation and expressed their inability to distinguish and recognize different historical epochs, for example, by assuming a messianic dogma before the emergence of Christianity and the Gospels. It still worked until recently in the apologetics of Hengstenberg and his attempt to demonstrate the New Testament in the Old, that is, to conceal and eliminate the difference and opposition in the development of religious consciousness. It gives the freethinkers the courage to speak of research after the works of criticism, but in reality, they retain all the essential categories of the old belief system in the vagueness of their minds. It is the eternal opponent of specificity, historical differences, original formation, self-determined decision, and the shaking that the self-determined hero, who draws the resolution and strength for his action from the source of his inner being, brings into the life of habit and into the world of regulation and tradition. It is the tireless power that immediately flattens and brings into conformity with the existing level as soon as a new force emerges. It fills in the incisions that the creative self-power makes in the usual course of history, pushes the boundary markers left by the hero as a testimony of his work far back into the past, and makes the discovery an outflow of tradition. It is the power that quickly submits the revolution that the discovering hero brought about to the past and tradition, thereby securing the discovery but also reducing it to the comprehension of the masses.

124

We call this power Judaism, which is a conservative, reconciling, counter-revolutionary force that nonetheless ensures the gains of the revolution. It received its classical expression in the Old Testament, in the inability of the Israelites to perceive historical differences, in the Jewish transformation of later historical products into a divinely inspired tradition – in short, in Jewish theism, which condemns the historical creator to impotence and hands over the prerogative of revelation to heaven. And indeed, this power has maintained its influence in the church through the original inheritance that the new community received from the Old Testament and even gained a larger terrain for its influence.

125

No! It was not a self-determined revolution – that is the main theme which the author of the Acts of the Apostles carries out in the interest of this Judaism – there was nothing original or creative, it was not a sacrilege of self-power when Paul brought salvation to the Gentiles and freed them from the law – he only did what heaven wanted, and heaven had already accomplished it through Peter before him.

The historical struggle is over, the opposition blurred, the revolution completed, the birth pains of the new creation forgotten – the revolutionary is incorporated into the holy chain of tradition – the Judaism of the church has blurred the characteristics of the epochs – it has submitted to the human creator and returned the honor due to God and tradition.

After this meaning of the Acts of the Apostles has become clear to us from the text itself, we only have to summarize some results of our investigation in order to eliminate several prejudices about its composition and determine the time of its writing.

———————–

2.

How Miracles Help

When the author had transformed the religious theologian into a sorcerer, he was also compelled to boast of the man who (1 Cor. 15:30) was hourly in danger and whose sufferings and “incessant” afflictions gave him the right to boast of himself that (2 Cor. 4:10) he was carrying the dying Jesus around in his body (2 Cor. 4:10), only to involve him in apparent dangers, i.e. as soon as he got into a danger, to immediately remove the appearance as if he could be seriously and severely affected by it.

26

The man of God must not really suffer; divine help comes at the moment when a distress or danger threatens to become serious and a contradiction of his covenant with heaven; suffering and persecution, on the contrary, must result in his glorification.

Even the accidents of nature must be powerless against him: if an adder gets into his hand, so that people expect his death at any moment, nothing bad must happen to him and people must get the idea that he is a god (28:3-6); if a storm rises on a sea voyage and the ship seems certain to sink, God gives him the whole ship’s company (27:20, 24) and for his sake it is saved.

At one point he has to retreat from the fury of the Jews, whose envy had aroused the conversion of the Gentiles, and leave Pisidian Antioch but the sorrow of this fate is infinitely outweighed by the joy that it must give the apostle, since it proves how right he was when he said immediately before that it was his principle to preach the Word of God to the Jews first, so that their obduracy would be proof that salvation must come to the Gentiles (13:46-50). His adverse fate is important for his theory, necessary even, since he carries out his divine destiny as teacher of the Gentiles – it is the indispensable link in a theoretical proof.

Immediately after the flight of the apostle from Antioch, the same hatred of the “Jews” drives him out of Iconium — when he then proved himself great before the Gentiles in Lystra, even the Jews of Antioch and Iconium come and bring the people to revolt against him (14: 2-19) — this alone is only the continuation and completion of the trial that his fate in Antioch provided – the author therefore, with deliberate intention, sent the same Jews who initiated the trial in Antioch and who continued it in Iconium to complete it in Lystra.

27

Once this testing had been carried out, however, the apostle could no longer be subjected to severe suffering without it bouncing off his majesty and high destiny. The series of sufferings that hit him, for example, during his last stay in Jerusalem, became a corresponding series of glorifications and finally only served to pave his way to Rome. In Philippi (16:22-40) he is beaten with Silas and thrown into prison, but here too it must be shown that the attempts of his enemies bring about the opposite of what they intended and only result in the brilliant revelation of his covenant with heaven.

The nature and origin of the conflicts which the apostle experienced during his last stay in Jerusalem will be revealed to us later; for now we are only concerned with his miraculous fate in Philippi and the side story which contains the account of Peter.

Paul and Silas let themselves be whipped and thrown into prison, although, as is shown on the following morning, when the captains of the city were frightened when they heard that both were Roman citizens, this privilege, if they had claimed it in the first place, would have prevented all maltreatment – only they were to be whipped, they were to be thrown into prison, so that the omnipotence of heaven could declare for them, they were to mention their citizenship *) only in the morning, when the captains of the city had announced their freedom to them, so that these, in their fright, would see fit to come themselves and lead them out of prison.

*) How questionable this is, how Paul, of whose Roman citizenship the epistles still know nothing, how in association with him also Sllas comes to this privilege, we will leave untouched here.

28

The miracle, which revealed the two prisoners to be the friends of heaven, was also worth the fact that they did not invoke their civil privilege. When they prayed aloud at midnight, so that the prisoners heard them, an earthquake immediately arose, which burst open all the doors of the prison and loosed the shackles of all the prisoners **), including those who were imprisoned alongside Paul and Silas.

**) 16:26 πάντων τὰ δεσμιὰ 

The jailer is awakened from his sleep by the shaking, and when he sees that the doors are open, he intends to fall on his sword, thinking that the prisoners have escaped. He is not allowed to think about investigating what has actually happened or to check if the prisoners have truly escaped, so that Paul (Verse 28) can shout to him that everyone – everyone, Paul must speak of everyone, because the author does not have time and space to report what Paul’s and Silas’ fellow prisoners have done – is still there.

In the wonderful element that abolishes all distances, Paul can speak from the innermost prison cell to the jailer, who has just awakened from sleep and is separated from the apostle by cells and corridors, and make himself heard. In the miraculous light that illuminates the event, the jailer immediately knows that it is a miracle and has happened for the sake of Paul. He forgets the other prisoners and throws himself at the feet of the apostle and his companion, even though he had just intended to fall on his sword out of fear of the chief magistrates. Suddenly, he knows that their anger is dispelled, and after he and his household have received baptism, he hosts a banquet for the apostles in his home that same night. In fact, the next morning the chief magistrates announce the freedom of the two prisoners, so their inexplicable change of heart coincides miraculously with the change in the prisoners’ situation during the night. However, Paul insists that they come and release them themselves, and they do come and ask both of them to leave their city. They act just like the Gadarenes, who also felt only terror before the mighty power of Jesus and asked him to leave their land. The author of the Acts of the Apostles even copied the corresponding Gospel account word for word, to leave us in no doubt about his source. *)

*) Acts 16:39 και ελθοντες παρεκαλεσαν αυτους και  ηρωτων εξελθειν της πολεως
Mark 5:15 και ερχονται . . . V. [17 – corrected from 16]  και ηρξαντο παρακαλειν αυτον απελθειν απο των οριων αυτων 

29

The contradictions through which Peter’s corresponding experience moves also work so thoroughly that they break it up and lift it out of the real world into that ideal region in which everything, even the impossible, is possible. Everything, even the utterly incoherent, is inwardly connected.

30

Why were Peter and John, after helping the lame man to his feet, arrested by the priests, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees? Because of the miracle they had performed before the eyes of the people? However, the question is put to the two in the Sanhedrin: “by what authority or in what name did you do this?” – Peter, in his speech of defence, proceeds from the assumption that he and his comrade would be judged because of the benefit they had done to a sick person (4:7, 9) – but of a part of their opponents the author expressly remarks (V. 2) that they had brought about the arrest of the disciples because of their teaching and because they taught in Jesus the resurrection of the dead, – why, then, is this reason for the arrest not brought up by the judges? Simply because the author had only one interest this time, only one intention to achieve, and only wanted to punish the opponents of the apostles by the fact that their measures and legal proceedings led to the official certification of their sins. Why, then, does he mention, before the Sadduceans, their opposition to the disciples’ sermon on the resurrection, their annoyance at their preaching? Why does he not bring out the hostile interest of the Sadducees in the course of the judicial proceedings? Simply because he knows beforehand that soon afterwards a second arrest of the apostles will take place and as a result the opposition of the Sadducees will really come to the fore – but he does not consider that this opposition is not directed against the disciples, but rather causes an inner discord in the Sanhedrin itself – Furthermore, he introduced this contrast much too early and when he was already exhibiting it (4:2), he was idly slacking off.

31

The miracle is thus for now the reason for the arrest, the subject of the trial, and its complete authentication the purpose of the author. But why do the judges ask: “In whose name are you doing this? Why? The question could not have occurred to them, since they had arrested the disciples as heads of the new sect, and therefore also knew whom they proclaimed as their Lord and Master – but the author put the question into their mouths, so that Peter might have an opportunity to “prove his boldness” and preach before them the name in which alone salvation is given (vv. 10-12).

Why do they ask, “by what authority did ye do this?” Because the Jesus of the Gospels is the original “apostolic” founder of the Church, because therefore also the disciples must hear the same question which was put to the Lord after the cleansing of the Temple *), and because now, after this question, Peter’s answer led all the more surely to the conclusion that Jesus is the true author of the miracle and, by the miraculous crast which he communicates to the disciples, puts beyond doubt their authority to “found” his Church.

*) Acts 4:7 εν ποια δυναμει . . . . εποιησατε τουτο . . .
Mark 11:28 εν ποια εξουσια ταυτα ποιεις

The opponents’ attack must be to their own detriment – their questions must lead to their embarrassment – if the fact that a “lame” person jumps on Peter’s word promotes the growth of the church, the opponents’ limitation must at the same time prove the “solid” foundation on which the church rests.

32

The church works miracles – the limitations of its opponents prove its power.

The opponents are so limited and lacking in understanding that they only now, in the course of the negotiations, discover that the disciples (4:13) are not the idiots and unlearned people they thought they were – i.e. the author only now lets them get to know the disciples’ gift of oratory and their art of interpreting Scripture by forgetting that they (4:1) when Peter preached his great sermon about the Risen Lord, so that they must have known long ago how powerfully Peter knew how to speak and how skilfully he knew how to handle the testimonies of the Scriptures from his Master. The author does not consider at all that the Jewish authorities must have known of the danger when they decided to arrest the chiefs of the new sect – but he does not consider it because he wanted to leave the opponents, after they had citied the disciples before the highest court in a correct appreciation of the danger, in the unrecognised danger.

Another intermediary must confound the opponents and bear irrefutable testimony to the miraculous nature of the wonder – namely, the healed man who stands beside the two disciples during the trial. The author himself feels how inappropriate and impossible his presence is and hopes to anticipate the reader’s objections by noting (4:14) that the judges “had nothing to say” when they saw him standing next to the disciples. However, this does not explain how he could have entered the courtroom, nor how he could have filled the interim period from the moment when the healed man (3:11) joined the two disciples until the trial, nor how he could have cleared the healed man’s path from the temple, through the prison, to the courtroom.

33

The Sanhedrin must at last “admit” to itself – and this confession was just what the author wanted to bring about by his unfortunate pragmatism – that they cannot judge the arrested and deny the miracle, since the same (V. 16) is known to all the “inhabitants” of Jerusalem. They even see themselves so constrained by the force of the facts that they can neither come to a decision nor to a sentence – the fear of the people (V. 21) compels them to release the arrested without fail – but if the people were to be feared to such a degree and the public admiration they paid to the great deed demanded such unconditional consideration, then the arrest was also an impossibility from the outset.

Nevertheless, the arrest was repeated soon afterwards. All the apostles were thrown into prison. The angel of the Lord frees them and commands them to teach publicly in the temple. When the Sanhedrin learns of their bold work in the temple, it sends out the centurion with the servants and – these? They bring the disciples to trial, but (5:26) “not by force, for they feared” the people. *)

*) Mark 11:32 εφοβουντο τον λαον, απαντες γαρ . . . .
Acts 4:16 οτι μεν γαρ γνωστον . . . . πασι . . . .

After the consideration for the people and the fear of them had already put themselves between the Jewish authorities and the disciples in the same way as they paralysed the opponents of Jesus after the cleansing of the temple *), the same fear now compels the captains to renounce violence, just as the Sanhedrin had to give up the idea of carrying out the arrest of Jesus by open violence for fear of a popular uproar *). 

*) Mark 14:2 μη εν τη εορτη . . . . .
Luke 22:2 εφοβουντο γαρ τον λαον. V. 6 ατερ οχλου.
Acts 5:26 ου μετα βιας εφοβουντο γαρ τον λαον.

34

But this fear of the people also allows the opponents of Jesus in the Gospel to act correctly; it is real fear and has its natural consequences; the imprisonment is omitted economically and is only carried out when a means presents itself which makes open force necessary; – In the Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, the same fear does not take effect until later, after that which should have made it impossible has happened – the author has placed the key words of the Gospels wrongly, because he certainly needed the catastrophe which the fear of the people had to prevent, and needed it beforehand, before the opponents of the disciples remembered the necessary consideration for the people.

This time he needed the repeated arrest of the disciples, who, after their miraculous liberation, must voluntarily follow the servants of the Sanhedrin, so that in the new trial the discord between the Jewish parties, which he had already caused at an inopportune moment during the previous arrest, would really break out and in a new way contribute to the irresistibility of the “Christian” cause.

Gamaliel is now to appear and paralyze the zeal of the Sadducees **).

**) Acts 5:17 επλησθησαν ζηλου.

But even this contrast is made – made according to the pattern of the Gospel, in which the Sadducees also appear as special opponents of the work of salvation “and indeed as the same opponents of the resurrection as they prove to be in the Acts of the Apostles – the contrast is therefore unhappily copied from the Gospel – for if it really makes sense and is coherent when the Saddueans of the Gospel make common cause with their bitterest enemies against Jesus and attack him in their own way, it is inconceivable that the two ruling parties would not have forgotten their particular quarrel with a new sect by which they both saw themselves threatened in the same way.

35

The contrast is all the more unfortunate because the same Gamaliel, at whose feet (22:3) Paul sat and under whose leadership the zealot persecutor of the Christians became a zealot for the law, could not possibly have spoken in favour of a cautious and gentle procedure against the young church in the mild manner that the author portrays.

Gamaliel also could not have made the speech which the author puts into his mouth, since the rebellion of Theudas, which he presents as a past one (5:36), occurred at least ten years later.

If, therefore, all the individual features of the report were to dissolve, it would be an unjustifiable half-measure to drop the person of Gamaliel and to attribute his advice *) “only to the view prevailing at that time among the rulers of the Jews” that “it might be best to leave the cause of Jesus to its own fate for the time being”, since it would “soon become apparent how little there was in it” – it would be a more than bold assumption *), “that the enemies of Jesus cared little for his followers in the immediate aftermath of his death, and as “they saw them increasing” and had to be concerned about them, did not consider it worth the trouble “to apply more serious measures” – it is not at all permissible **) to speak of “this first period of the first Christian community” “and to say of it” that it was “still devoid of eventfulnes.”

*) as Dr Baur does; the apostle Paul p. 35.

*) See the same ibid. p. 33, 34.

**) Nevertheless, as Dr. Baur does.

36

This first Christian community, known only from the Acts of the Apostles, this first period of the community that the author portrays in the first sections of his work, does not belong to history, because the substrate no longer exists once everything that reveals its nature has proved to be unhistorical – this basis of the author’s historical account has dissipated when the building he erected on it, which stands in the correct architectural proportion to it, has collapsed.

Whoever, with reference to the account of the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of a first Christian congregation, of a “first period” of the same, of a view of the Jewish authorities that prevailed “at that time”, of a mood of the Jewish parties in the “next” time after the death of Jesus, must also accept all statements of this Scripture as historical – whoever places himself on the ground of the Acts of the Apostles and wants to orientate himself from there about the first period of the Christian congregation, must not and cannot even distinguish between legendary embellishments and a real foundation, for another “first” Christian community, another “first” epoch of it apart from that which the Acts of the Apostles may describe, is not possible according to all its presuppositions – but none of these presuppositions leads to real history – all are the testimony of the later ideal view.

37

Anyone who wants to learn about the origins of the Christian community must take a longer detour and, above all, have first acquired the certainty that the late construction of the Acts of the Apostles is not built on historical ground. We will never know what the opponents of the “first” Christian community thought of it from Gamaliel’s council – but he teaches us that the author of the Acts of the Apostles could not find a better testimony to the irresistibility with which the church grew than the recognition that even the chief and spokesperson of the Pharisees had to offer to its divinity.

Dr. Baur therefore only tries to make a groundless distinction when he *) does not want to accept Peter’s miracle of punishment of Ananias and Sapphira as historical and nevertheless wants to assert the assumption “that these two names are not interwoven into the history of the first Christian community without historical reason” as a legally permissible one. Barnabas, for example, “displayed an attitude and conduct that made their names so odious and detestable that one believed one could only see a divine judgment in their death, which somehow occurred.

*) Ibid, p. 23

38

Rather, the one who killed them also created them in the first place. It was not the tragic indignation over their “despicable” behaviour that made them important to the congregation and preserved the memory of their names until it occurred to the late historian to “bring about” their death by Peter’s word – but the only interest they could offer to the congregation was their death, which Peter inflicted on them with a single word.

Not the two deceitful spouses are the object of Christian interest, but the deed that Peter performed on them, and apart from this deed they could not even exist.

In the end, until the author of the Acts of the Apostles came and did his last work on them, did the church carry their names around in their memory in contrast to that of Barnabas, who shamed them by his “sacrifice and altruism”? Rather, it was only the late historian who connected the name of Barnabas (4:36, 37) with theirs – not only for the sake of contrast, but because he was already thinking of what Barnabas (9:27) did to Paul, and because he wanted to show which intimate and deserving member of the early church was the one who introduced the late Gentile apostle to the apostles.

He who had such a definite intention when he reported the generous deed of Bamabas, by means of that intention, created that deed in the first place – created for Peter’s sake the “detestable” deed of Ananias and Sapphira – created the deceptive couple in the first place.

He, who first saw the community of goods of the primitive community as unconditional, who expressly reports (C. 4, 34) that all who had land or houses sold them and laid the money redeemed at the apostles’ feet, and afterwards not only ( C. 6.1-4) speaks of the administration of the “alms”, but also mentions (C. 12.12) houses owned by individual members of the community, can teach us as little about the property situation of the first Christian community as Epiphanius about the antiquity of his Ebionites when he tells us that they tell the same about themselves as the author of the Acts of the Apostles tells about the early community *).

*) In the present study, we do not have a direct interest in discovering the origins of the Christian community – we only examine what sense of time, what historical perspective, the Acts of the Apostles express and represent. Therefore, we cannot even consider inferring the form of the first community from the late testimony of Epiphanius. The criticism of the statements and hypotheses of Epiphanius is a separate matter – Dr. Baur’s criticism (ibid. p. 32) is therefore at least premature. Just because the Ebionites of Epiphanius claimed of themselves that they (haer. 30) sold their property in the times of the apostles and “added the proceeds to the apostles’ funds,” and because of their well-known hostility to the apostle Paul, the Acts of the Apostles written by the Pauline Luke could not have been authoritative for them – does this mean that this expression was not borrowed from this scripture, that it is significant for the early days of the community, and that it justifies historical conjectures? Therefore, can one assume that the Ebionites later represented their original poverty as a result of a free decision? At the time of Epiphanius, in the late fourth century, that passage of the Acts of the Apostles should not have become a common and prevalent historical category – it should have been impossible for unclear sectarians or Epiphanius himself to use it arbitrarily? However, the criticism of Epiphanius is a separate matter.

39

At the same moment, when he is calling the renunciation of personal possessions a general and unconditional one, he lets Peter speak against Ananias (6:4) as if he could have kept the field and withheld the proceeds. How, then, does he come to this inconsistency? What drove him to act against a note he had just written down?

40

He was interested in portraying Ananias, who could thus freely dispose of his own, as a man who did secretly what he should have done openly – as a man who secretly kept a part of the proceeds for himself.

But why did he care? Because Peter of the Acts, as bishop of the congregation – for that is at least how he behaves – takes the place of the Lord, and because the author wanted to show that what Ignatius says *) is true, that he who conceals from the bishop what he is doing serves the devil.

*) ad Smyrn. C. 9. ο λαθρα επισκοπου τι πρασσων, τω διαβολω λατρυει.

Peter thunders at Ananias that he has lied (5:4) not to men but to God – smashes Sapphira with the accusation that she and her husband have become one to tempt the Spirit of the Lord.

The couple wanted to see if it was true that the Spirit of the Lord was really in Peter, if Ignatius was right that “he who betrays the bishop, the visible one, mocks the invisible one” **).

**) ad Magnes c. 3

The attempt, of course, went badly, for the author’s main concern was to show that the theory developed in the letters of JgnatiuS was completely correct.

This late theory of ecclesiastical hierarchies was also in the mind of the author when he reported that the apostles, when standing in the hall of the sanctuary, formed a sacred group which the people dared not approach.

41

For if Peter is the bishop and representative of Christ, the apostles are that holy association and synod of God which the presbyters form *) – Peter with the apostles forms the holy collegium, to which the others, as the laity, show their reverence by respectful distance.

*) Ignat. Ad Trall. C. 3: honour the presbyters ως συνεδριον θεου και ως συνδεσμον αποστολων.

When Schneckenburger **) explains the predominance of Peter in the first part of the Acts of the Apostles “from the historical fact itself, that it was really Peter who everywhere led the word and powerfully guided the young church,” and when he also refers to the explanation of Jesus (Matt. 16:18) according to which Peter is the rock of the church, then to the word (Luke 22:32): “strengthen your brothers”, finally to the “old testimony” (John 21:15): “feed my lambs”, then I have proven with my critique of the Gospels that the dignities, which these sayings of the Gospel Jesus confer on Peter, were only created when Peter had become the bearer of the later ecclesiastical hierarchy, and as far as the “old testimony” of the fourth Gospel is concerned, then I have rather proven ***) that the author of it had the Acts of the Apostles in mind.

**) p. 158.

***) See my critique of the Gospels.

————————-

1.

The Miracle Workers

If only one question were asked, how the author of the Acts of the Apostles comes to portray the apostle, who only defeated his opponents with the force of his religious dialectic, as a magician, the man who led his historical work through sufferings, struggles and temptations, as a miracle-worker, who won followers and blinded his opponents through the splendour of his magical works, the answer *) that the author does not want to give a “complete” description of the apostle’s experiences, not an “exhaustive” account of his personal circumstances, and that instead of the dark and sorrowful side he rather “only allows the opposite side” of his life, distinguished by miracles and divine interventions, to “come to the fore”, would be far from satisfactory.

*) which, for example, Schneckenburger, op. cit. p. 60, has raised

If the man who disarmed the opponents by the “proof of the spirit” and opened a new era of world history and the sorcerer form an antithesis, where is the spiritual hero if only the adversary appears?

If the weakness that formed the glory of the apostle and the night of the miracle-worker are opposed to each other – when the earthen and frail vessel in which the apostle of the epistles delivered the heavenly treasure to his congregations, and the mighty hand of the miracle-worker, which with one blow throws the adversaries to the ground and convinces them by fear, are essentially different from each other – where is the Master, who was strong in his weakness, when only the man of fear casts awe?

8

One steps back – the other steps forward!

So only back? Is the One still present in itself? He is only in the background of the painting which the author of the Acts of the Apostles sets up? Behind the picture ——- in hiding?

But behind the picture of the Acts of the Apostles there is no space for this hiding place – in the back of the painting there is an unconditional emptiness in which no living being can breathe, no historical person can work and function.

Only the miracle-worker and sorcerer emerges – no! he stands alone there and there- the hiding place in which the spiritual fighter and religious dialectician can still hold on to necessity, can only assert himself by force, is only in the consciousness of the apologist who knows the apostle of the letters and still wants to keep him – absolutely wants to keep him – next to the hero of the Acts of the Apostles.

In vain! – the magician knows nothing of the religious dialectician, – the miracle-worker denies the spiritual hero – the painting of the Acts of the Apostles excludes the ideal of apologetic consciousness – the shining picture of the Acts of the Apostles wants to know nothing of a dark hiding place in which another Paul lives.

The opposite side of the apostle’s personality, which the apologist in the Acts of the Apostles alone brings to the fore,

The opposite side of the apostle’s personality, which the apologist finds in the Acts of the Apostles alone, is rather, according to the presupposition of this Scripture, that characteristic definiteness which expresses the nature of the apostle.

9

It is the opposite side according to the view of the apologist who compares his other knowledge and view of the apostle with the account of the Acts of the Apostles – according to the presupposition of this scripture, it is not a single page, but the characteristic expression in which the whole being of the apostle is exhausted – the whole, which excludes every other view.

————–

The question becomes more complicated for the apologist, and his attempt at a solution even more violent, when he observes how the miraculous activity of the apostle Paul has such an exact parallel to that of Peter that the latter cannot perform any miracle which the latter has not previously performed.

The lame man whom Paul heals in Lystra is like the one Peter healed at the temple, lame from his mother’s womb *); Peter as well as Paul look their lame man in the face with the same firmness before they proceed to the miracle **); the success that the lame man jumps up and walks is described both times with the same words ***), both times the people finally proved the greatness and reality of the miracle by the impression it made.

*) C. 3, 2. 14, 8. Χολος εκ κοιλιας μητρος αυτου. 

**) C, 3, 4. ατενισας εις αυτον.
C. 14, 9. ατενισας αυτω.

***) C. 3, 8.και εξαλλομενος εστη και περιεπατει.
C. 14, 10. και ηλλετο και τεριεπατει.

10

Pray to the saints at Lydda – so on a journey and in a friendly house Peter heals a gout-ridden man (C. 9, 32. 33.); so Paul rewards the hospitality with which a citizen of Malta accommodated him on his journey to Rome by healing his fever-stricken father (C. 28, 8) – both times names are mentioned: – the sick man whom Peter healed was called Aeneas, the man whose father Paul heals, Publius. 

Whereas Peter healed the sick, who were being dragged out into the street in anticipation of his coming, by passing his shadow over them, Paul’s sweatcloth and aprons demonstrated the same miraculous power when they were removed from his skin and held over the sick *).

*) Even the construction of the corresponding sentences is consistent:
5:15 ωστε . . . εκφερειν
19:12 ωστε . . . . επιφερεσθαι

Peter casts out the unclean spirits (C. 5, 16) – the same power Paul showed when he cast out the spirit of divination from the maid in Philippi (C. 16, 18-18), and in Ephesus it showed that the unclean spirits acknowledge him as the master who can become their master.

Peter awakens Tabitha from death in Joppa (C. 9, 36-41) – Paul (C. 20, 9-12) in Troas, Eutychus; – when finally Paul strikes the magician Elymas with blindness (C. 13, 6-11), he refutes the power of pagan magic just as Peter did when he fought with the magician Simon, and at the same time he inflicts a corporal punishment on his opponent that corresponds to the one Peter inflicted on Ananias (C. 8, S-24. C. S, 4. 5 ).

This is a part of that “side” of the apostle Paul’s personality which is only opposed to the picture of his character which he draws of himself in the epistles, but which is otherwise, as the apologist assumes, thoroughly “historical” – a part of those features from the life of the apostle, which the author of the Acts of the Apostles “included” *)  in his work only for the reason of making the image of his hero perfectly similar to that of Peter – a part of those features which the author alone could use, since he was only concerned with this “similarity of the” image of both apostles and since he did not want to present “a complete historical image of Paul”, but one that was as brilliant as possible’ **).

*) Schneckeuburger a. a. O. p. 57. 58. 

**) The same ibid.

11

For the apologetic point of view, on which alone this separation of a historical personality into two, still more into two opposite sides is possible, our question would be incomprehensible: “How did Paul come to portray only the one in his own writings, and whether his historian was allowed to portray only the other? The apologist will not even listen to the question whether the picture which the historian draws up when he omits the features which the hero has exhibited in his own writings as the characteristic – indeed the only characteristic of his picture – whether this picture can still be called historical and correct. The same apologist will answer the question whether the lives of two personalities, whose character is by nature quite different and almost “without” any points of contact, and who are active in “utterly different” spheres of life, can be so congruent that a geometrically exact parallel can be formed from their deeds and destinies, by leaving it as an absurdity.

12

At the most, he will reject the assumption of the possibility that the author of the Acts of the Apostles, in order to make the image of both apostles similar, has “interwoven” unhistorical features “into the image of Paul” as a “misinterpretation” *) – namely, he starts from the premise, that the shining image of Peter as certainly historically vouched or from the tradition of the author from the outset was fixed or handed down and that the same has now borrowed the corresponding traits from his common view of the image of the apostle Paul.

*) The same ibid.

This presupposition of the historical basis of the Acts of the Apostles, namely of the pre-existence of the miracle-worker Peter before the magician Paul,- i. e. The presupposition that the historical picture of the miracle-worker Peter already existed and was completed before the later historian formed a parallel to it from the life of Paul, we shall immediately resolve by showing which is the original of both miracle-workers and that the same creator who made the one after-image also made the other.

The original Peter and Paul of the Acts of the Apostles is the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. The author of the Acts of the Apostles had the latter – to put it cautiously at first: the Ur gospel, which is preserved in the writing of Mark, Luke’s gospel and the related evangelical sources – “in mind” when he borrowed from them the features from which he put together the picture of both apostles; – the literal coincidence betrays him and the faulty processing of some key words, which only have meaning and context in the writing of Mark, testifies against him.

13

The proof will overcome all the apologist’s presuppositions and make those questions, which he is not able to answer, together with all possible answers – even the correct answer, which would still be unsuccessful within the limited presupposition in which that “question” is held – unnecessary.

Peter’s healing of the lame man is modelled on the Gospel account of the healing of the gout-ridden man. “Get up and walk”, Peter calls to the lame man – “get up and take up your bed”, is the call with which Jesus lifts up the gout-ridden man – since the author of the Acts of the Apostles could not mention the bed in the healing of the lame man, he makes up for this omission when Peter heals the gout-ridden man in Lydda and calls to him: “get up and make your own bed ” *). Finally, both times when Jesus heals the gout-ridden man and Peter heals the lame man, it is said that the people present were amazed **).

*) Acts 3, 6: ‘Εγειραι και περιπατει.
Mark 2, 11: εγειραι και αρον τοω κραββατοω σου.
Acts 9, 33: κατακειμενον επι κραββατω. V. 34: αναστηθι και στρωσον σεαυτω.

**) Mark 2, 12: ωστε εξιστασθαι παντας.
Acts 3, 10: εκλησθησαν . . . εκστασεως.

While the healing of the lame man by Paul is simply modelled on the miracle performed by Peter on his lame man, the parallel healings of the gout-ridden Aeneas and the fever-stricken father of Publius have the opposite effect: the latter miracle of Paul is most carefully modelled on the Gospel original, and the author already had this later version in mind when he sketched out the side piece to the healing of Aeneas in brief. He was content to let Peter also reward the hospitality of the circle in which he found shelter by a miraculous healing, and relied on the reader recognising in this event the side piece to Paul’s later deed.

14

Paul did to the father of Publius what Jesus did to Peter’s mother-in-law when he stopped at her house – he healed him of a fever, only his act is a mere reward for hospitality, while Jesus’ act had a more far-reaching purpose and served to secure him a hospitable welcome in Capernaum for ever – i.e. in the Gospel this miracle is justified, in Acts it is an extraordinary splendour: Paul did the same thing for a one-time friendly welcome. i.e. in the Gospel the miracle is justified, in the Acts of the Apostles it is an extraordinary splendidness: – Paul did the same for a one-time kind reception that Jesus did in order to buy you “permanent” hospitality in Capernaum. More! The splendidness of Paul goes even further, the generosity of the “disciples” goes much further than the “behaviour” of the “Master” – it is not enough for Paul to free the “father of the public” from fever; immediately afterwards all the “sick” of the island come and are also all healed by him. Fortunately, this splendidness did not cost the apostle much, since his historian only had to copy the evangelical account of Jesus’ “first” entry into Capernaum, and after he had formed the side piece of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, he only had to copy *) the miracles that Jesus performed on all the sick people of Capernaum. But he was not happy. He lets all the sick of the island come, while the evangelist still knew that the sick were to be brought to the miracle-worker, – he could not make it comprehensible how the miracle, which the apostle performed in the interior of a private house, could alarm the whole community and bring all the sick to their feet, whereas in the Gospel the gathering of all the sick in front of Jesus’ house is economically motivated by the miracle that was performed in the synagogue on the “man possessed with the devil” before everyone’s eyes, and the haste with which the sick were brought that very evening by the fact that Jesus, as far as anyone knew, had only stayed as a guest in Capernaum. The author of the Acts of the Apostles finally attributes to the evangelist the phrase that the miracle-worker “joined” the sick person who belonged to his host **), and because he does not create the original, thus does not know the need for the economic context, he forgets to borrow the explanation from the original that the miracle-working guest was reported to the sick family member ***).

*) Mark 1, 32: εφερον προς αυτον παντας τους κακως εχοντας . . . . και εθεραπευσε.
Acts 28, 9. οι λοιποι οι εχοντες ασθενειας προσηρχοντο και εθεραπευοντο

**) Acts 28, 8 . . . . πυρετοις κατακεισθαι, προς ον προςελθωω.
Mark 1, 30. κατεκειτο πυρεσσουσα . . . , και προσελθων.

***) Mark 1, 30. και ευθεως λεγουσιν αυτω περι αυτης, και προσελθων.

15

The mass gathering of people from the surrounding towns to bring their sick to Peter in Jerusalem is modelled on the account of Mark, according to which the sick were brought to Jesus from the surrounding towns *) – that the sick were brought out into the streets and placed on stretchers so that when Peter passed, even if only his shadow overshadowed some of them, is a literal copy of the Gospel account, according to which, as soon as Jesus arrived in a town or village, the sick were taken to the market and asked to touch the hem of his garment **), – after the miraculous power had finally been transferred from the hem of Jesus’ garment to Peter’s shadow, it had become possible to impart the same miraculous power to Paul’s sweatcloths and aprons, and thus a kind of manifoldness to the parallel of both apostles.

*) Acts 5,16. συνηρχετο δε και το πληθος των περιξ πολεων . . . φεροντες ασθενεις . . .
Mark 6, 55. περιδραμοντες ολην την περιχωρον εκεινην ηρξαντ . . . . . τους κακως εχοντας περιφερει.

**) Acts 5, 15. ωστε κατα τας πλατειας εκφερειν τους ασθενεις και τιθεναι επι κλινων και κραββατων, ινα ερχομενου πετρου καν η σκια επισκιαση τινι αυτων.
Mark 6, 56. και οπου αν εισεπορευετο εις κωμας η πολεις . . . εν ταις αγοραις ετιθουν τους ασθενουντας και παρεκαλουν, ινα καν του κρασπεδου του ιματιου αψωνται.
That the sick (Mark 6, 55) were brought on beds (επι τοις κραββατοις) is replicated in Act. 5, 15.
The corresponding construction ωστε Acts 5, 15. 19, 12, especially with the following ινα C. 5, 15 is the topic of the evangelical report Mark 3, 10: ωστε επιπιπτειν αυτω ινα αυτου αψωνται.

16

If Peter and Paul are equal to their Master in this, yes, even superior to him in this, through the clumsiness of their historian, who did not see that the touch of Jesus’ garment healed only of sickness, while the demonic spirits only departed at the express commandment, that their shadow and their sweatcloths deliver people from “sickness” and demonic spirits *), only two single cases are reported by Paul – how he fought with the evil spirits – both nothing but variations on a Gospel theme’- both cases, however, also evidence that the author did not understand one of the most important Gospel phrases.

*) Acts 19, 12 is at least expressly said of Paul’s sweat cloths that before them the sicknesses departed and the evil spirits went out. When Peter, C. 5, 16, heals the sick and the possessed, it is not expressly said that it was through his shadow, as in v. 15, but this healing is just as little expressly described as being mediated by the will. In each case the author confuses what Marcus very strictly separates: the healing of the sick and the casting out of demons. Compare Mark 6:55-56. 3:10-12. 1:34.

17

The demons of the Gospels know Jesus as the Son of God, but Jesus “threatens them severely that they do not reveal him” (Mark 3, 11. 12), because only at the end of his public activity does he want to unmask himself as the Son of the Most High. When, therefore, the seven sons of a Jewish high priest in Ephesus, unknown in the real world, sought to exorcise the possessed by calling upon the name of Jesus, “whom Paul preaches” (C. 49, 13.14), when then, with an unmotivated transition to a special event, “the pure spirit (B. 15) replies”: I know Jesus well “and who Paul is, I know, and when finally “the possessed man” falls upon the seven summoners, maltreats them and puts them to flight, then the wonderful knowledge of the demons, which Jesus does not want to use for his person, is “a” glaring spectacle and exploited for an unattractive comparison between the superiority of the apostolic sorcerer and the impotence of some Jewish exorcists.

18

The other case, that a soothsayer *) who owned a maid in Philippi cries out to Paul and his companions: “these men find servants of God the Most High”, that Paul became annoyed by this incessant crying, that the apostle finally commands the soothsaying spirit to leave the maid, is likewise a copy of the Gospel original, but again a copy that misses the meaning of the original. When Jesus forbids the unclean spirits to make him manifest, he does so because he does not want to use their testimony for himself – when he casts them out, he does so not because he finds their cries annoying, but because he wants to have mercy on the “possessed” – when he finally also finds a host of sick and possessed people annoying, it is not their cries that annoy him, but their urging **), in that both the possessed and the sick best him regularly, – the latter because they were healed by the touch of his body. The author’s greatest oversight, however, is that he believes he must presuppose a spirit of divination, a special Pythonic kind of demon, in order to explain and make possible its knowledge of Paul and his divine destiny, whereas the demons of the Gospels as such, as “supernatural” beings, know whom they have before them.

*) πνευμα πύθωνος.

**) Mark 3, 11. ὅταν αὐτὸν ἐθεώρουν, προσέπιπτον αὐτῷ καὶ ἔκραζε λέγοντα.
Acts 16, 17.  κατακολουθοῦσα . . . ἔκραζεν λέγουσα.

19

When the author created the two revivals of the dead by Peter and Paul, he had in mind above all the account by Mark of the revival of Jairus’ daughter. As Jesus, on entering the house of Jairus, finds the swarm of weeping and wailing, so Peter finds the weeping and wailing widows in the house of Tabitha; Jesus drives the swarm of wailers out of the house, then goes to the corpse, grasps the hand of the child and calls out the awakening words to him; Peter does the same *). But if Jesus had a real reason for driving the strangers out of the house (for he wanted to keep the mystery of the following miracle away from profane curiosity, did not want the miracle as such” to become public), the apostle has no reason to drive away the complaining widows; – If Jesus, on awakening the child, has the parents at hand and can immediately instruct them to give the child food, Peter stands alone in his miraculous deed, and if he wants to bring the revived girl back into the circle of her own, he must, with the saints, call back the same widows whom he has just driven away. Even the name of the girl whom Peter awakens is derived from the account of Mark: for the evangelist gives the words with which Jesus overcame death in Hebrew: “Talitha kumi” and adds the explanation that this means interpreted: The author of the Acts of the Apostles also remarks that Talitha is translated as Gazelle, and thus leads us even through the consonance of the foreign word and through the concordant structure of the interpretation of the same *) to the source from which he has borrowed both – a result which retains its certainty, even if the author has made Gazelle, originally a tender metonymy for girls, an economic proper name.

*) Mark 5, 40. ὁ δὲ ἐκβαλὼν πάντας . . .  V. 41. καὶ κρατήσας τῆς χειρὸς τοῦ παιδίου λέγει αὐτῇ . . .
Acts 9, 40. ἐκβαλὼν δὲ ἔξω πάντας . . .  καὶ ἐπιστρέψας πρὸς τὸ σῶμα εἶπε . . . .

*) Mark 5:40: Ταλιθὰ κούμ ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον τὸ κοράσιον . . . .
Acts 9, 36: Ταβιθά, ἣ διερμηνευομένη λέγεται δορκάς.

20

The fact that the dead woman finally raises herself up and sits down, that Peter gives her back to her own, is borrowed verbatim from the account of the revival of the youth from Nain **).

**) Acts 9, 40: ἀνεκάθισε . . . . V. 41: παρέστησεν αὐτὴν ζῶσαν.
Luke 7,15: ἀνεκάθισεν . . . . καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτὸν τῇ μητρὶ αὐτοῦ.

The “purpose” and meaninglessness of a phrase in Paul’s account of the revival of Eutychus likewise leads us back to the Gospel account of the revival of the daughter Jairus. “Make no noise,” Paul cries, “for his soul is in him” – but why does he deny the real occurrence of death, why does he want to create the impression that Eutychus is not really dead? why, especially in the presence of the people who had picked up the young man who had fallen from the balcony, “dead” – really dead? He had no reason for this turn of phrase, nor could he hope to convince the eyewitnesses of the untruth of what they themselves saw. In the report of Mark, on the other hand ***), the denial of death has meaning, purpose and significance: – it is prepared, for Jesus, before entering the house of Jairus, rejected the people and his disciples except the three favoured ones – it is addressed to the right people, to the wailers who were in the porch of the house – it has real consequences, for Jesus drives the wailers out of the house and goes only with the parents, who knew the real facts only too well, and with the three disciples, who alone were worthy to see the most monstrous miracle with their own eyes, into the death chamber – it has its real purpose, for Jesus did not want the whole crowd to be drawn into the mystery.

***) Mark 5, 39: τί θορυβεῖσθε, . . . . τὸ παιδίον οὐκ ἀπέθανεν ἀλλὰ καθεύδει.
Acts 20, 10: μὴ θορυβεῖσθε, ἡ γὰρ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐστιν.

21

Finally, just as for the miraculous deed of Peter, apart from the account of Mark, the account of Luke of the revival of the young man of Nain is used, so the circumstance that Paul rushed over the dead Eutychus and embraced him lengthwise is modelled on the procedure followed by Elijah and Elisha in similar cases *).

*) 1 Kings 17, 21.  2 Kings 4, 34, 35.

———–

Now that the original text has fallen prey to criticism and has been recognised as a free, late creation, even one word about the historical character of the copy would be superfluous.

Therefore, instead of engaging in a useless argument with the apologist about the historical credibility of the miracle reports in the Acts of the Apostles, we can immediately add the remark, after the evident proof of their origin, that the godlike impression which the author ascribes to the personality of both apostles is only his own and free work.

22

When the miracles of Peter and the other apostles caused the people who “thought highly of them” to keep at a distance out of reverence and to leave them standing alone and exalted like a holy group in the temple hall (C. 5, 12. 13), the people of Malta shied away from Paul (C. 28, 6) as from a god.

When Cornelius pays homage to Peter as to a divine being and the latter has to raise him up with the words: “stand up, I am also a man” (C. 10, 25. 26), it is not as an event of the author that the “homage” of the citizens of Lystra, who want to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas after the healing of the lame man, bring both to despair, so that they have to shout to the overzealous (C. 14, 15): “we are mortal men like you!”

The writer of history, who has made his heroes into godlike miracle-workers, finally found it easy to instil in a part of their opponents the fear that in them they have to do with God Himself, that therefore also unconditional resistance against their value and their person might in the end be a struggle against God Himself. Therefore, when Gamaliel, as head of the Pharisees, confronted the “Sadducees” when Peter was on trial and urged them to be careful so that they would not end up fighting God himself, it was fitting that in Paul’s case the Pharisees also paralysed the Sadducees’ zeal for the same reason *).

*) Acts 5, 39. μήποτε καὶ θεομάχοι εὑρεθῆτε.
Acts 23, 9. μη θεομαχωμεν

———–

23

By pointing out afterwards how Peter’s victory over the magician Simon and Paul’s victory over the magician Elymas also touch each other in that both are the first foreign deeds and successes of both apostles, how furthermore the circumstance that just when the apostle converts the proconsul Sergius Paulus, his former name Saul gives way for the first time to the name Paul (C. 13, 9), seems to indicate that the great deed to the Roman, like Peter’s confession, earns him a new name, we note how another parallel, through the clumsiness of its execution, likewise betrays itself as a fabricated one.

Just as Peter completed the work of Philip on the Samaritans, a controversial mixed people who were undecided between Jews and Gentiles, by giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands (C. 8, 14-17), Paul also completed the work of a mixed family that occupied an uncertain position between Jews and Christians, the disciples of John at Ephesus, by “baptising” them and endowing them with the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands – so he was also like Peter in that he completed the work of another, Apollos, in these disciples of John. But it is precisely the wavering attitude that the author gave to the figure of the “latter” that proves both his intention and their weakness and powerlessness.

By letting Apostle Apollos, a man who (C. 18, 25) only knew the baptism of John, work there before the arrival of the Apostle in Ephesus, and by letting the Apostle find the disciples of John immediately thereafter (C. 19, 1), he wants to connect both, “those” Jewish teachers and “these” disciples, but he did not really make the connection and he could not, because immediately before he had Apollos introduced to all the secrets of the new teaching by Aquila and Priscilla.

24

In the disciples of John and their teacher Apollos he also wanted to set up the side piece to the Samaritans, who had received baptism, knew the Christian doctrine and only lacked the last perfection, the gift of the Holy Spirit – what does he do? He lets “Apollo”, although he only knew about the baptism of John *), nevertheless at the same time preach “thoroughly” about the Lord (C. 18, 25) – he calls the disciples of John, whom Paul finds and to whom the first elements of the Christian doctrine are unknown, disciples (C. 19, 1). 19, 1), disciples of the church, – as if a man who only knew the baptism of John could preach the Lord, as if the people who (C. 19, 2) had not yet heard a word of the Holy Spirit could be counted as disciples to the church!

*) Acts 18, [25 – corrected from 5]. ἐπιστάμενος μόνον τὸ βάπτισμα Ἰωάννου.
C. 8, 16. μόνον βεβαπτισμένοι . . . . εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ

The parallel (referring to a biblical reference) has failed and had to fail, as the Samaritans who received Christian baptism and doctrine could not be compared to those who only knew the baptism of John. To make the parallel somewhat possible, he had to bring Apollos and the disciples of John in the community so close that they were only lacking the Holy Spirit for completion. But they lacked more than that if they only knew John’s baptism. He wanted to create a hybrid species in the disciples of John like the Samaritans, but he forgets that the latter, when Peter took them under his hands, had already received the first Christian consecration, which was lacking in the former when Paul should only give them the last completion. And he has also not been able to explain how it was possible for Apollos, with his limited knowledge of divine salvation, to preach so “thoroughly” from the beginning that Aquila and Priscilla only needed to “explain” the way of God to him more “thoroughly” *).

*) Acts 18, 25. ἀκριβῶς  V. 26. ἀκριβέστερον

25

Instead of a mixed race, the author has created chimerical beings. That there were disciples of John he learned from the Gospels (Mark 2, 18) – he could not find them anywhere in the real world.

———————————

The Acts of the Apostles

a balancing of

Paulinism

and 

Judaism within the Christian Church.

——

by B. Bauer.

——

Berlin

published by Gustav Hempel.

1850.

iii

Foreword

After Schrader and Dr. Baur first noted the difference between the Paul of Acts and the Paul of the Epistles, the conformity of the “First” with Peter and the Pauline character of Peter of Acts *) – after Schneckenburger **) then proved in detail the conformity of the figure in which the Paul of Acts appears with that of Peter, there are still two points in dispute, two questions that await decision.

*) The former in the fifth volume of his writing: the Apostle Paul 1836, – the latter in his essays in the Lübinger Zeitschrift. 1836. 1838. 

**) in his writing on the purpose of the Acts of the Apostles. Bern. 1841.

The purpose and point of view of the author of Acts is still to be determined and the question of historical credibility, i.e. the question of whether the author of Acts created freely or used reliable sources for his composition, has neither been solved by Schnekkenburger’s effort to assert the Pauline character of this writing alongside that of the Epistles, nor by the admonition of Dr. Baur, who urgently recommends *) that “from the special purpose which the later living historian had, no too disadvantageous conclusion may be drawn about the historical credibility of the Acts of the Apostles in general, since the apologetic interest of the author does not outright excludes it, but only in a limited and modified way.”

*) Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ. Stuttgart 1845. p. 13.

iv

In addition, we have the natural explanation which Neander lastly and with the most assiduous effort gave to the Acts of the Apostles, i. e. that explanation which is satisfied and believes to have achieved all, when it has made one miracle after another into a half-natural, but in truth only more unnatural, event by the imposition of strange, natural or psychological elements, is abandoned to its own worthlessness and insignificance, in which it is forever exposed and even removed from the sphere of investigation as soon as the question has received its proper position, – we will lead the investigation to that point of unity in which the questions of the author’s purpose and standpoint, the question of whether he is a free creator or dependent on earlier works, the question of the time in which he wrote, will no longer appear as separate questions and their answer will depend neither on the violent presuppositions that Schneckenburger holds, nor on the precarious caution that Dr. Baur recommends.

From this point of unity of the investigation, which will clarify the relationship of the author of Acts to the Gospels in general, but especially to the Gospel of Luke, the relationship between Paul and Peter in Acts will receive its final clarification, and the difference between the former and Paul in the Epistles can only be fully established.

v

Raised to this point of unity, the investigation will finally prove its strength by drawing the Pauline epistles into its circle and subjecting them to the same question to which the Acts of the Apostles are subject. Dr. Baur, who still possesses undoubtedly authentic letters of the apostle in the New Testament canon, can only arrive at the “conviction” from the comparison of these with the Acts of the Apostles, “that in view of the great difference between the two accounts, the historical truth can only be either on the one side or on the other” *) – he must keep within this limited and arbitrary alternative, because the authenticity of the main Pauline Epistles is certain to him – but cannot both representations of the apostle be free works of reflection, late creations – cannot both representations have sprung from the same soil of deliberate reflection and on this soil still assert their difference, indeed, only now assert their difference with full force?

*) a. a. O. p. 5

Between the two accounts, remarks Dr. Baur **), “there is generally a similar relationship as between the Johannine Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels”, and so it is – we shall even prove the correspondence of the authorial relationship in the fact that in the Acts of the Apostles we find in the same way lost and imperfectly processed key words of the Pauline Epistles, as the dissonants of the fourth Gospel – partly also result from the fact that the author could not completely master the key words, echoes and borings which he borrowed from the Synoptic Gospels, But just as we have, with the help of our criticism, proved the difference between the fourth Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels, and at the same time the common origin of Gospel historiography in general from the formative Steflexioa, so we shall now also subject to criticism the boron assumption of the authenticity of the Pauline main Epistles, and bring the question from its previous half-ness to full and complete unity.

**) ibid. 

vi

The presupposition that “historical truth can only be either on the one side or on the other” can no longer assert itself before the seriousness of the question.

The Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Epistles are subject to one and the same question, and the following examination of the former can therefore only be the preparation for the critique of the Epistles.

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