Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)

Factuality of the Bible: answering Earnest Farr · Guestpost · answering Dick Harfield · Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)

On Quora, I posed a question, which was answered by Dick Harfield. This answer is quote on the previous post. However, here I will requote parts in answer. Why here, why not commenting on quora below his answer? Because he stopped further comments, after I had already given answers on the Pentateuch, the books of Ruth, Esther and Daniel. Separately, instead of making just one reply to the answer by Harfield. So, he stopped me, who had posed the question, to comment under his answer to it. Hence, I was unable to add the answer on Acts there, and I add it here instead.

Acts

Acts of the Apostles used to be regarded as an accurate and reliable history of the early church, At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sir William Ramsay stated:

Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.

Which would not preclude that he was a historian after the ideal of historians in his day.

New Testament scholars have reviewed the evidence and no longer hold that to be the case, generally regarding the book as propaganda rather than actual history.

For such, he cites Bart D. Ehrman and Richard Carrier, known (to others as to me) to be biassed against Christianity.
He also cites Uta Ranke-Heinemann and Thomas Kazen, whom I did not know prior to this and cannot pretend to know how they are perceived by others.

Acts contains some errors that can be demonstrated to be inaccurate.

O ... K ... this is a very far cry from non-historic, fictional.

As my claims is not just historicity, but inerrancy, I still need to adress the allegations, but not in order to defend the verdict of Sir William Ramsay.

A well known historical error has Gamaliel speak of the rebel Theudas, whom the first-century Jewish historian Josephus assigns to the time of the procurator Cuspius Fadus (44-46 CE) several years after the death of Gamaliel. Acts of the Apostles also places Theudas before Judas the Galilean, who “arose in the days of the census” which had occurred decades earlier.

A minimalist could answer, Gamaliel actually named Judas the Galilaean, but the awareness of the more recent and prominent Theudas prompted St. Luke to misquote Gamaliel. Not that exact wording of quotes was not held as a part of historical accuracy, the actual words (as long as the gist was not twisted) were fashioned by the rhetoric art of the historian to the taste or presumed such of his audience. This is why Caesar asks "you too, Brutus?" or "you too, son?" and asks it in Latin or in Greek depending on what historian reports. However, even so, it would on this minimalist view have been a blunder.

But I am not a minimalist. I consider it quite possible that one devious move against Christianity by the Jews (and completing it in Josephus' time) was historic revisionism to "prove" Christianity historically wrong.

For instance, St. Paul had spoken of Melchisedec as "a king of gentiles", some text versions may have had (I think this is how I recall it) "a gentile" even.

Subverted if Melchisedec was Shem, right? But according to the chronology for Genesis 11 that Josephus had learned as a child, close to LXX chronology, he couldn't be.

However, with the new chronology he learned as an adult, Shem could be that and Jews could claim that Melchisedec was Shem and St. Paul was wrong.

the father of Abraham, who accordingly was the tenth from Noah, and was born in the two hundred and ninety-second year after the deluge;

Josephus is giving LXX chronology in the sum. 292 years from Deluge to birth of Abraham. But look at his motivation:

for Terah begat Abram in his seventieth year. (70)
Nahor begat Haran when he was one hundred and twenty years old; (120)
Nahor was born to Serug in his hundred and thirty-second year; (132)
Ragau had Serug at one hundred and thirty; (130)
at the same age also Phaleg had Ragau; (130)
Heber begat Phaleg in his hundred and thirty-fourth year; (134)
he himself being begotten by Sala when he was a hundred and thirty years old, (130)
whom Arphaxad had for his son at the hundred and thirty-fifth year of his age. (135)
Arphaxad was the son of Shem, and born twelve years after the deluge. (12)

Now, does this actually add up to 292?

70 + 120 + 132 + 130 + 130 + 134 + 130 + 135 + 12 = 993

Now, 993 years is very different from 292 - couldn't Josephus count?

Probably forgot to check - or deliberately made a gaffe to give a hint about the earlier text tradition.

His detailed genealogy is given with the ages he recalled from childhood, when he had learned the Scriptures. His sum is the one Jews had agreed on.

So, it is possible that Josephus was also giving a wrong chronology on this issue, for similar reasons - someone (not necessarily himself, could well be a synagogue he felt he had to obey) wanted to prove St. Luke wrong. But hear me out, it is also possible that ... something else totally than fraud involving Josephus ... exonerates St. Luke from even minor error.

Internal evidence demonstrates that the author of Acts relied on Josephus’ account in Antiquities of the Jews, but misreported the chronology because of the roundabout prose in Antiquities.

St. Luke was a Greek and a physician. No one ever dreamed of disputing this claim by pretending his mastery of Greek was faulty. So, was the prose of Antiquities too roundabout even for St. Luke? Perhaps it's rather the modern commenter who bungles Josephus. Some late 20th / early 21st C. opponents of mine bungle my prose.

Acts can also be checked for accuracy by comparing its account with Paul’s epistles. Bart D. Ehrman writes, in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings:

In virtually every instance in which the book of Acts can be compared with Paul's letters in terms of biographical detail, differences emerge.

I am given no concrete instance, but in case others would give you such, I turn with confidence to Testify for sorting that kind of "contradiction claims" out. That team may bungle ecclesiology, bungle some parts of Christian morality (notably the ban on all contraceptive practises), but they (including the youtuber behind Testify) are fairly used to dealing with the type of claim Bart Ehrman makes in better detail than I could.

https://www.youtube.com/@TestifyApologetics

Richard Carrier says, in On the Historicity of Jesus, that the author of Acts

rewrites Homer several other times.

I am breaking off the quote, because I intend to actually take each item on, to the best of my understanding of what they mean.

Paul's resurrection of the fallen Eutychus is based on the fallen Elpenor.5

Since to the best of my memory of Homer, Elpenor was not resurrected, I fail to see the connection.

A quick look at wiki tells me Elpenor just fell to his death.

Tell a mortician all about how every death attestation involving a broken neck after a fall is fake, because it plagiarises Elpenor!

The visions of Cornelius and Peter are constructed frorn a similar narrative about Agamemnon.6

A quick look at wiki tells me:

Agamemnon then received a dream from Zeus telling him to rally his forces and attack the Trojans in book 2.

Book (or Song) two:

Stanley Lombardo's preview doesn't involve book II ... Alexander Pope, then. Even the summary at the top of book II, before translated verses, would explain why this didn't come to my mind as a comparison:

Jupiter, in pursuance of the request of Thetis, sends a deceitful vision to Agamemnon, persuading him to lead the army to battle, in order to make the Greeks sensible of their want of Achilles.

Neither Peter nor Cornelius was deceived by his vision. But is there a detail that can give some kind of understanding to what Carrier is claiming?

“Canst thou, with all a monarch’s cares oppress’d,
O Atreus’ son! canst thou indulge thy rest?[78]
Ill fits a chief who mighty nations guides,
Directs in council, and in war presides,
To whom its safety a whole people owes,
To waste long nights in indolent repose.[79]
Monarch, awake! ’tis Jove’s command I bear;
Thou, and thy glory, claim his heavenly care.
In just array draw forth the embattled train,
Lead all thy Grecians to the dusty plain;
E’en now, O king! ’tis given thee to destroy
The lofty towers of wide-extended Troy.
For now no more the gods with fate contend,
At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end.
Destruction hangs o’er yon devoted wall,
And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.
Awake, but waking this advice approve,
And trust the vision that descends from Jove.”

I think even I have had dreams which prompted me to act quickly or to wake up. Is this claim also a plagiarism of the Iliad?

Paul's farewell at Miletus is constructed from Hector's farewell to Andromache.7

The farewell at Miletus is in Acts 20:18 - 38.
The farewell of Hector is in Book VI.

The common theme is, "I will die, take care when I'm gone" so, I suppose no soldier who went to war ever and first took farewell of a loved one or a group of loved friends was ever real, since all of them are plagiarising Homer, according to Carrier.

Are there commonalities beyond the theme? I couldn't actually look that far, right now. Possible. And if St. Luke actually did make St. Paul's words a bit closer to Hector's than they actually were, see above, about "tu quoque fili?" vs "kai su Broute?" - historiography regarded speeches as a somewhat freely decorable art.

The lottery of Matthias is constructed from the lottery of Ajax.8

The lottery of Matthias goes back to the Urim and Thummim that God provided Aaron with, back in the Bronze Age.

And the lottery of Ajax is also took place (at least according to Homer, but why doubt it?) in the ... tada! ... Bronze Age.

A story of a lottery being a plagiarism of a story about a lottery when there is a Bronze Age connection to both, that's like a story of a phone call is a plagiarism of a story of a phone call. Carrier carries a certain lack of common sense with panache.

Peter's escape from prison is constructed from Priam's escape from Achilles. 9 And so on.

Priam excaped from Achilles by pleading. Peter doesn't.

Uta Ranke-Heinemann, in Putting Away Childish Things, also finds parallels to Greek mythology:

In the third of the legendary accounts in Acts, Jesus is supposed to have remarked to Paul as he lay on the ground, “It hurts you to kick against the goad” (25:14).

This is a quotation from the Bacchae by Euripides (d. 406 BCE). The only peculiar thing is that Jesus should quote a Greek proverb to Paul while speaking Aramaic ("in the Hebrew language").

St. Luke was arguably familiar with Bacchae.

The Aramaic proverb Our Lord actually used being exchanged (if so) for a Greek proverb is not even a problem for inerrancy, as long as they both mean the same thing. Then, there is a question whether it was really back then a proverb, or if it was back then just a quote.

However, let's see a bit more of lady Uta's astonishment.

The really strange thing is that with both Jesus and Euripides we have the same “familiar quotation” and the same situation. In both cases we have a conversation between a persecuted god and his persecutor. In The Bacchae the persecuted god is Dionysus and his persecutor is Pentheus, king of Thebes. Just like Jesus, Dionysus calls his persecutor to account, “You disregard my words of warning . . . and kick against necessity [literally 'against the goads'] a man defying god.” Jesus even uses the same plural form of the noun (kentra) that Euripides needs for the metre of his line.

The plural form kentra can obviously be put down to St. Luke being familiar with Bacchae.

But the closer parallel can also have been willed by God, as a further proof, that unlike other deities in Greek tragedies, Dionysus does not represent demonic activity.

Moses was demonised by Egyptians, they had to cease that and divinised him, then removed the story to another country, where Pentheus replaces Pharao.

Let's now take farewell (somewhat less drastically than Hector and St. Paul), from Uta.

Thomas Kazen says, in ‘The Christology of Early Christian Practice’, originally published in Journal of Biblical Literature, 2008:

When dealing with Luke’s descriptions of practice in the early Jesus movement in the first chapters of Acts, we find ourselves both earlier and later in time than with Paul. Earlier, because the narrative concerns the earliest post-Easter followers of Jesus in Jerusalem; later, because the narrative is shaped [written] toward the end of the first century.

St. Luke was obviously able to access narratives from early post-Ascension events from sources that had given him Gospel events.

While it would be naïve to take Acts as a historical report of early Christ-believers in Jerusalem, it would be equally simplistic to read Luke’s narratives as representing general Christian practice and belief in his own time and environment.

Yeah, right ... taking a thing at face value is not the default, to be argued against in case one disagrees, but "naïve" - Candace Owens had a remark about people with PhD's "believing their own magic" ...

Rather, we should regard these descriptions as revealing what some late-first-century Christians, such as the author of Acts, thought about practice and belief in the earliest Jerusalem community of Christ-believers during the thirties.

Thomas Kazen does not try to argue why St. Luke is supposed to write this "late first century" - except that he thinks his own guess of what went on in the thirties is better than St. Luke's account, which must therefore also be a guess, and obviously, as St. Luke didn't have his degrees, a worse one!

When I taunt people like Dick Harfield with having "Science" as their religion, I mean, among other things, that as I treat Catholicism and the Bible as a whole, where I can't cherrypick away things I doubt, Dick Harfield (and similar minded men) are treating "Science" - hence they will put Thomas Kazen's pretty obvious guesswork and Richard Carrier's obvious nonsense on par with the Periodic Table of Mendeleyev.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Vigil of St. Andrew
29.XI.2022

Vigilia sancti Andreae Apostoli.