Ingledsva
HEATHEN ALASKAN
Quirkybird said:
Quirkybird is correct.
In his "vision" in acts 9:6, he asks "Who are you Sir/Lord?"
He never met Jesus, he claims he had a vision of him.
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Who taught Christianity to Paul?
- Thread starter Shia Islam
- Start date
Quirkybird is correct.
In his "vision" in acts 9:6, he asks "Who are you Sir/Lord?"
He never met Jesus, he claims he had a vision of him.
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Paul didn't write Acts.
Dear Legion,
Since the author of both Luke and Acts was thought to be the same person and an associate of Paul, and his source of information, according to Luke 1:1-3, were not first hand witness accounts, then it seems most likely that Paul was the source of the information which was given with respect to Paul. Basically, there is probably only one source to all the information with respect to Paul. Only Paul could give the information of his encounter with a angel of light. All the information in Luke and Acts fails to meet the standards which were given by Yeshua in Mt 18:16, and also given in Dt 19:15, whereas to determine anything, which would be two to three first person witnesses. Anything give by a singe person is to be considered a lie. (John 5:31)
Ingledsva
HEATHEN ALASKAN
Ingledsva said:
Dudes, don't you know your Bible.
First did you note that "claims?"
He had no contact whatsoever with Jesus because he was chasing down Christians after Jesus was already dead.
Thus they needed a place to claim he had contact with him, - insert Acts 9:6 telling us the meeting was a "vision" of the dead Jesus.
This is the only way it can be claimed in 1Co 9:1 --
1Co 9:1 Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?
And the first question in Co 9:1 tells us why they needed it - his authority was being challenged. " Am I not an apostle? ..."
Forgot to add - This "THEY" is more then likely later people inventing, and trying to prove, a legitimate link to Jesus.
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That's why I said "the author of Luke/Acts", not "the authors of Luke and Acts.
Ἡμεῖς δὲ προελθόντες ἐπὶ τὸ πλοῖον ἀνήχθημεν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἆσσον, ἐκεῖθεν μέλλοντες ἀναλαμβάνειν τὸν Παῦλον, οὕτως γὰρ διατεταγμένος ἦν μέλλων αὐτὸς πεζεύειν. 14 ὡς δὲ συνέβαλλεν ἡμῖν εἰς τὴν Ἆσσον, ἀναλαβόντες
αὐτὸν ἤλθομεν εἰς Μιτυλήνην, 15 κἀκεῖθεν ἀποπλεύσαντες τῇ ἐπιούσῃ κατηντήσαμεν ἄντικρυς Χίου, τῇ δὲ ἑτέρᾳ παρεβάλομεν εἰς Σάμον, τῇ δὲ ἐχομένῃ ἤλθομεν εἰς Μίλητον
["We went up on the ship going forward to Assos, intending to take up Paul [on the ship], for having [already] arranged this, he was planning to walk there himself. When we met him in Assos, taking him up [on board] we went to Mitylene. And from there sailing away we arrived the following day opposite Chios. And the next day we approached Samos, and the next day we came to Miletus"]
This is an example of several of the infamous "we" passages in Acts. The reason they are infamous is what to make of the use of "we". In Greek, verbs have person, so no pronoun we is required. However, there are personal pronouns ("I", "me", "you", "we", etc.). Because they exist but are not needed to indicate who the subject of the main verb in any clause is, when they are used to indicate the subject it is for emphasis of some kind (much the way that, as Greek word order is very flexible, pulling words toward the beginning of a sentence can emphasize certain things). Ever "we" in my translation is simply the normal way of expressing we in Greek (through the verb) except the first one. Not only that, but the personal pronoun "we" in the first line is placed first in the sentence. The question then becomes "whose we?"
Under the tyranny of Formgeschichte, which consisted largely of the use of bad literary theory (as redundant as that is) misapplied to an oral/aural culture, the answer was "nobody". In other words, the "we" was a stylistic device in a narrative. However, to paraphrase Kelber, all the main assumptions underlying Formgeschichte must be considered suspect. Numerous studies have been devoted to the genre of the gospels and while the consensus seems to be that they are lives (more or less ancient biographies) I think that this is an anachronistic error. In an oral/aural world, literary genre doesn't exist. True, there are most certainly categories of ancient literature (no Greek would mistake Sophocles' dramas as being akin to Thucydides' history), but to the extent authors in the classical realm recognized "history" as a genre they did so by differentiating it from biography. This is because ancient history grew out of story-telling and required the kind of narrative (and temporal order) we find in Acts, rather than the kinds of accounts of specific subject arranged often freely like we find in the gospels. Ancient biographies were not narratives in that they did not tell a continuous story but tended to freely incorporate individual stories into an thematic structure intended to highlight certain aspects of the identity, nature, character, etc., of the biographer's subject. But just as the line between history and story-telling was to some extent always blurred, so to was the line between biography and various other types of literature.
Loveday Alexander in particular has examined Luke/Acts through the lenses of ancient literature and compared these works to technical/scientific manuals. However, her work relies too much on a false dichotomy between whether Luke/Acts is history or not history without taking into account that Greco-Roman historiography was (at least to the Greeks and Romans) different than biography (she also has placed most of her emphasis on the preface to Luke, which is indeed not what Greeks or Romans would have recognized as "history" because it lacks a narrative temporally ordered, but this doesn't mean that they would not recognize it as what we regard history to be (which includes the "history" of a person, or a biography).
Also, there's the little issue that the author of Luke may not be the author of Acts, although this is a minority position (and not mine).
The important things to consider, then, are the author's literary skill (whether it should be compared with history, technical writings, or biography of antiquity) is perhaps unparalleled in the NT (John being a possible exception, but the authors of John had the advantage of eschewing the focus on the Jesus-tradition the synoptics did and instead borrowing pieces from this tradition in order to build upon them to construct theological and Christological arguments.
The author of Acts is clearly capable of sophisticated narrative style, capable of rhetorical flourish, and (if we follow the consensus view that Luke/Acts were written by the same person, which I believe to be true) places great import on the notion of witnesses and authority.
To suppose, then, that the "we"-passages are literary devices immediately run into a problem: "The first person passages are not the compositions of a careful author or redactor, if carefulness means identification of first person characters or source authorities and attention to the problems created by first person passages in an otherwise third person account and third person sections in the few first person passages. If Luke thought that first person narration would prove that he was an ancient historian or was required in sea voyages in ancient literature, then it can only be concluded that he was poorly informed about the conventions of ancient literature"
Praeder, S. M. (1987). The Problem of First Person Narration in Acts. Novum Testamentum, 29(3), 193-218.
As the arguments that the "we"-passages are literary devices depends upon not only the author's literary skill but also what such a technique was intended for, we have to ask "why?"
One common answer was the author's desire for authority: He emphasizes in the preface of Luke that he is a careful, reliable source who has used reliable sources and in particular eye-witness testimony (which was valued far more than any text in antiquity). The problem with this solution, as the quote above points out, is that it relies on the argument that Luke had no real literary skill and was too inept to realize that awkward transitions to a handful of lines using the first-person plural wouldn't convince anybody capable of reading (a rare skill then) of any authority about anything. The author, however, does possess the requisite literary skill, and is in fact capable of such precision that Loveday Alexander regards the best analogues to Luke/Acts are found in technical literature of antiquity.
Moreover, the reason I chose the "we"-passage I did was because it makes clear that the we excludes Paul from the most emphasized first person plural device: Paul was not there when Ἡμεῖς...προελθόντες ἐπὶ τὸ πλοῖον ἀνήχθημεν.
To imagine that the author posses a degree of literary expertise in most ways but is incompetent when it comes to understanding how clarifying the subjects of sentences is important, or unable to realize that a few random and unimportant uses of the first person plural wouldn't convince anybody that the author was an eye-witness to anything important, fails to convince. The "literary skill" removes the author as far as possible in the few instances of the first person because there is not a single use of "I". This indicates the author's desire to distance himself from the narrative, not to gain authoritative status or for stylistic flourish. There is little reason to imagine why the author would use the first person in the few places it is used except that the author was actually present.
The problem here is the universally recognized inconsistencies between Paul's letters and Acts where they overlap. If Paul told these things to the author, then we shouldn't expect such inconsistencies (let alone the reticence of the author to attribute to Paul the status of apostle that Paul emphasizes repeatedly).
On what grounds was his authority being challenged?
I am late to this thread and this answer was probably already given, but I always assumed it was taught to him by the Apostles.
outhouse
Atheistically
Nope.
Jesus real apostles probably headed back to Galilee where they lived once their teacher died.
Think about it, the movement did nothing in Israel, it only grew in the Diaspora with Gnetiles and Proselytes
The gospel authors are unknown, and its likely his real apostles were illiterate peasants with no means to run around the Diaspora teaching.
Paul was not a real apostle?
The only one who ever referred to Paul as an apostle was Paul. Even Luke, which let's face it was written by a Paul groupie, does not refer to Paul as an apostle. Luke says there were 12 apostles, and Paul was not one of them.
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
the term 'apostle' means 'sent forth'
Paul was sent forth to the gentiles to preach. He calls himself, not one of the 12 apostles, but an 'apostle to the nations'
Paul makes no mention of twelve apostles, and why would he?
The problem here is the universally recognized inconsistencies between Paul's letters and Acts where they overlap. If Paul told these things to the author, then we shouldn't expect such inconsistencies (let alone the reticence of the author to attribute to Paul the status of apostle that Paul emphasizes repeatedly).[/QUOTE]
Dear sir,
Even the story of Paul's encounter of the angel of light has two very different accounts in the same writing. (Acts 9 & 22) In one account the people could hear, but in another they could only see. What the author of Acts had was either an account by Paul, and a second hand account from an associate of Paul, which was flawed, or two 2nd hand accounts from different associates of Paul, of at least one had to be flawed. Either way, they can not be first hand accounts of anyone but Paul. Therefore they cannot be used to determine any matter per what Yeshua said in Mt 18:16, and what is said in Dt 19:15 and John 5:31.
As for Paul being an apostle or prophet, Yeshua was clear about that in John 5:31, "If I alone bear witness of myself, my testimony is not true". Paul is simply not telling the truth.
As for what Yeshua said Paul actually was, you must read Mt 7:15-23.
Dear sir,
Even the story of Paul's encounter of the angel of light has two very different accounts in the same writing. (Acts 9 & 22) In one account the people could hear, but in another they could only see. What the author of Acts had was either an account by Paul, and a second hand account from an associate of Paul, which was flawed, or two 2nd hand accounts from different associates of Paul, of at least one had to be flawed. Either way, they can not be first hand accounts of anyone but Paul. Therefore they cannot be used to determine any matter per what Yeshua said in Mt 18:16, and what is said in Dt 19:15 and John 5:31.
As for Paul being an apostle or prophet, Yeshua was clear about that in John 5:31, "If I alone bear witness of myself, my testimony is not true". Paul is simply not telling the truth.
As for what Yeshua said Paul actually was, you must read Mt 7:15-23.
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
I think you'll find that he does:
Ephesians 19:1*Certainly, therefore, YOU are no longer strangers and alien residents, but YOU are fellow citizens of the holy ones and are members of the household of God, 20*and YOU have been built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, while Christ Jesus himself is the foundation cornerstone.
Galatians 2:8*for He who gave Peter powers necessary for an apostleship to those who are circumcised gave powers also to me for those who are of the nations; 9*yes, when they came to know the undeserved kindness that was given me, James and Ce′phas and John, the ones who seemed to be pillars, gave me and Bar′na·bas the right hand of sharing together, that we should go to the nations, but they to those who are circumcised.
Galatians 1:18*Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to visit Ce′phas, and I stayed with him for fifteen days. 19*But I saw no one else of the apostles, only James the brother of the Lord.
1Corinthians 15:3*For I handed on to YOU, among the first things, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; 4*and that he was buried, yes, that he has been raised up the third day according to the Scriptures; 5*and that he appeared to Ce′phas, then to the twelve....7*After that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles; 8*but last of all he appeared also to me
Romans 16:7*Greet An·dron′i·cus and Ju′ni·as my relatives and my fellow captives, who are men of note among the apostles and who have been in union with Christ longer than I have.
AmbiguousGuy
Well-Known Member
I dunno. I think anyone can be an apostle. It's easy, like being a prophet. All you have to do is claim you are an apostle or a prophet -- or both.
It's not like there are any such real things as apostles and prophets, after all. They're just labels we give ourselves.
Do you think there are such things as prophets -- meaning guys with special pipelines to God, through which God can send us actual, literal words?
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
lol, right.
Lets not mention the fact that he never included himself as one of Jesus 12 aposltes.