In II Thess 2:2, readers are warned not to believe forged letters.
Fun fact: II Thess is a forgery, warning people not to believe forgeries.
Now you may not believe II Thess is a forgery. That's up to you. But if you believe it is authentic then you are forced to admit that Paul himself warned the early church to be on the lookout for letters falsely pretending to be from him.
Such letters would claim to be from him, proving that just because a letter SAYS it's from Paul doesn't mean Paul wrote it.
Whoever LUKE was, he undermines Paul's claim to have received the gospel directly from God and not from the apostles that came before him. One of them is lying.
If Luke is lying, then how can he be trusted to give a reliable account of the resurrection? We KNOW he lied or was wrong about the circumstances of Jesus' birth (census in the wrong year, no flight to Egypt, Joseph would not have been required to go to Bethlehem, etc). What leads you to think he's above lying about the end of the story when he lied so casually about the beginning?
Because he was a doctor? He never claims to be a doctor. Never even claims to be Luke! Someone pretending to be Paul said Luke was a doctor. Acts doesn't make that claim.
If this were the claim of any other religion you would reject it for lack of supporting evidence.
Crucial learning not available elsewhere except in some instances from the school of hard knocks.
Actually, this book is a tremendous example to illustrate my comment from a half hour ago. I read this book this month. The story is tied in with people being subjected to cults and can mitigate, at least a little bit, vulnerability some people might have to cult recruitment. The author lives in the same city I do, I have met her. She's a great writer.
Reasonably so. I've met her, heard her teach on writing novels and choosing subjects based on items in news and read other of her books. Further, she has contemporaneously claimed authorship of the book. Nobody has (credibly) challenged said claim.
One of the challenges with critical Biblical research is finding unbiased researchers.
If someone goes in with the mindset that the Bible is absolutely positively the Word of God, you cannot expect that person to buck tradition even if the evidence leads away from it. I am impressed that the Nelson commentary admits Matthew did not write Matthew. But it really should be emphasized that people don't have a clue who wrote the gospels because, unlike Betty Webb, the gospel writers did not sign their work.
Luke, in particular, is written by someone who not only did not sign his work, but also did not cite his sources or explain his methodology, something historians of the time actually took the trouble to do. The closest Luke gets is at the beginning of his gospel, where he does NOT claim to have spoken to eyewitnesses but, rather, to have investigated other written accounts of the life of Jesus. We don't know much about these other accounts other than that the gospel we know as Mark was almost certainly one of them.
In Acts, the same author would have us believe that he was, at times, Paul's traveling companion. He wants us to think he was there. Many scholars believe that is not the case. We go back to Acts v. Galatians. If Paul is right, Luke is lying and unreliable. If Luke is right, Paul is lying and unreliable. It is not credible that both are right. The apostles, with Paul in their presence shortly after his conversion, would simply not have taken Barnabas' word that Paul had changed. They would have questioned him. They would have discussed his gospel and compared it to what they were personally taught by Jesus. And it defies reason that Paul would have been in the presence of the apostles without talking to them about the life, death and resurrection of the savior. Either Galatians or Acts is wrong about what Paul did after his conversion.
Is it credible to believe that a companion of Paul would get this detail wrong? Is it credible to believe Paul is lying about not getting his gospel from the apostles?
How many times do you find yourself needing to explain the difference between how Paul acted in the book of Acts and what he says is the right thing to believe and do in his own letters? One thing that becomes very clear is that the author of Acts was not as close to Paul as he would have you believe. Rather, this account is written by someone who is trying desperately to harmonize Paul with the apostles and present them as having some kind of continuity -- a continuity, it should be noted, that Paul himself does not claim. Rather, Paul would have believers reject anyone who disagreed with him -- even if it's an apostle. Read Galatians again. Paul is pretty emphatic about not being an heir to their doctrine.
The author of Luke-Acts wants people to think he was a companion of Paul. Why? Because that bolsters his credibility. (It worked! People believe these works are history because they were written by a companion of Paul. Never mind that Paul contradicted his accounts at every turn).
This was not an unusual occurrence in the ancient world. Heck, it's not even that rare these days. People claim to be eyewitnesses all the time to stuff that just never happened. Remember the pedophile ring operating out of a D.C. pizza shop? There were witnesses!
The author of the gospel of John would have you believe he was eyewitness to at least SOME of what happened in the gospel. So what if he totally forgot about the 40 days Jesus spent getting tempted in the desert after his baptism. So what if he was the ONLY one who remembered the raising of Lazarus from the dead. (Seriously: how do the other gospel writers get away without mentioning this mind-blowing miracle?) So what if he had Jesus cleanse the temple at the beginning of his ministry instead of the end? Isn't the point that he cleansed the temple?
Maybe. But if cleansing the temple is really what got Jesus into enough trouble for people to want him executed, then the writer of John would have known that it had to be near the end of his ministry. And if Jesus had cleansed the temple TWICE, once at the beginning of his ministry and again at the end, ONE of the gospel writers would have mentioned that he did it twice.
No one does, probably because it only happened once. IF it happened at all.
Bias works both ways. If a researcher goes in determined to undermine the "integrity" of the word, he will find errors and mistakes where none exist. "Answer a fool not according to his folly" does not contradict "Answer a fool according to his folly," for example.
So I tend to go with research that shows open mindedness. Again, I was impressed that Nelson admitted Matthew didn't write Matthew. They should go further and admit Mark didn't write Mark (or know Palestine), Luke didn't write Luke and John didn't write John. Scholars are in general agreement about the letters Paul did write and the ones he didn't. But there are a few that are questionable. Non-traditionalists do not believe he wrote Colossians or Ephesians. Traditionalists insist he did. I'm inclined to go with the non-traditionalists because they have nothing to gain or lose by their position. My position is not strengthened or weakened if Luke was a physician, or if he wrote Acts. He's still demonstrably full of it on enough crucial issues (the birth of Christ, the conversion a thousands on the day of Pentecost, the aftermath of Paul's conversion) to cast doubt on his credibility when it comes to the resurrection (about which, again, every single gospel writer disagrees on multiple mutually exclusive issues).
There certainly aren't many that claim, as a wise masterbuilder, to have laid the foundation, and then cautioned how others were to build thereon. Sure seems easy enough (relatively speaking) to build things from (or on top of) scripture... but quite fankly, I just don't see (nor do I believe) that it's possible to build thereon (as God intended) without the illumination of the holy spirit's working from within the mind and heart. So regardless of who anyone thinks did or didn't write certain Pauline Epistles, undoubtedly the acid test is how good or sound a foundation is revealed with them. Unless viewed in the right light, great masterpieces can go unnoticed and/or unappreciated.
The point being, it's not the character of the writer, nor diligent and careful textual criticism that will ever shed the right light on what is most important in scripture.
There certainly aren't many that claim, as a wise masterbuilder, to have laid the foundation, and then cautioned how others were to build thereon. Sure seems easy enough (relatively speaking) to build things from (or on top of) scripture... but quite fankly, I just don't see (nor do I believe) that it's possible to build thereon (as God intended) without the illumination of the holy spirit's working from within the mind and heart. So regardless of who anyone thinks did or didn't write certain Pauline Epistles, undoubtedly the acid test is how good or sound a foundation is revealed with them. Unless viewed in the right light, great masterpieces can go unnoticed and/or unappreciated.
The point being, it's not the character of the writer, nor diligent and careful textual criticism that will ever shed the right light on what is most important in scripture.
So, your point/conclusion is "what it is not?" How about being more specific about "what it is?"
There certainly aren't many that claim, as a wise masterbuilder, to have laid the foundation, and then cautioned how others were to build thereon. Sure seems easy enough (relatively speaking) to build things from (or on top of) scripture... but quite fankly, I just don't see (nor do I believe) that it's possible to build thereon (as God intended) without the illumination of the holy spirit's working from within the mind and heart. So regardless of who anyone thinks did or didn't write certain Pauline Epistles, undoubtedly the acid test is how good or sound a foundation is revealed with them. Unless viewed in the right light, great masterpieces can go unnoticed and/or unappreciated.
The point being, it's not the character of the writer, nor diligent and careful textual criticism that will ever shed the right light on what is most important in scripture.
Maybe I'm having a bad day or something but, at least to me, this sounds a lot like the argument people use when they say "Yeah, that Wierwille was a bum but, gosh darn it, he sure taught some good word".
He didn't read the articles. I'm not terribly surprised.
So the fact that the author lies about his own identity means nothing. Ok. Personally, I would think that lying about your identity would automatically fail any acid test. But who am I?
The articles do show how the fraud epistles distort Paul's message, but I suppose it's asking too much to read them. And Paul, supposedly, warning people to avoid fraud letters written in his name but subverting his doctrine... I guess that really doesn't mean much.
If we're still talking about building something, one need look no further than how the article's author builds to a conclusion in the final four or five paragraphs.
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waysider
If you are asking this question in earnest, you might want to consider exploring the works of Joseph Campbell.... The Power of Myth/The Hero's Journey/ etc. etc. etc. The Hero With A Thous
Raf
Tell me there's another way to read this (and by all means, go to the original post. I'm truly not doing the "evidence" part justice). Why would God deliberately make it harder for smart people t
Raf
Ok, TLC. Look, if you want to make this thread about your stamp of approval on our questions and answers, you go ahead and do that. I am deeply sorry that you do not have the patience or con
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Raf
Here's a good article on how people can learn from fiction.
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Raf
Another article summarizing scholarship on textual criticism.
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Raf
Here's a good review of Ehrman's book for those who don't wish to buy it or subscribe to his blog.
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Raf
In II Thess 2:2, readers are warned not to believe forged letters.
Fun fact: II Thess is a forgery, warning people not to believe forgeries.
Now you may not believe II Thess is a forgery. That's up to you. But if you believe it is authentic then you are forced to admit that Paul himself warned the early church to be on the lookout for letters falsely pretending to be from him.
Such letters would claim to be from him, proving that just because a letter SAYS it's from Paul doesn't mean Paul wrote it.
Whoever LUKE was, he undermines Paul's claim to have received the gospel directly from God and not from the apostles that came before him. One of them is lying.
If Luke is lying, then how can he be trusted to give a reliable account of the resurrection? We KNOW he lied or was wrong about the circumstances of Jesus' birth (census in the wrong year, no flight to Egypt, Joseph would not have been required to go to Bethlehem, etc). What leads you to think he's above lying about the end of the story when he lied so casually about the beginning?
Because he was a doctor? He never claims to be a doctor. Never even claims to be Luke! Someone pretending to be Paul said Luke was a doctor. Acts doesn't make that claim.
If this were the claim of any other religion you would reject it for lack of supporting evidence.
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Raf
A final note on fiction: Jesus used parables to convey truths. He never claimed those parables (like the rich man and Lazarus) actually happened.
So a problem with learning from fiction is a problem with learning from how Jesus taught.
Right?
Awkward.
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Rocky
Truth! I agree.
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Rocky
Crucial learning not available elsewhere except in some instances from the school of hard knocks.
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Rocky
Actually, this book is a tremendous example to illustrate my comment from a half hour ago. I read this book this month. The story is tied in with people being subjected to cults and can mitigate, at least a little bit, vulnerability some people might have to cult recruitment. The author lives in the same city I do, I have met her. She's a great writer.
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Raf
Are you sure she wrote it?
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Rocky
Reasonably so. I've met her, heard her teach on writing novels and choosing subjects based on items in news and read other of her books. Further, she has contemporaneously claimed authorship of the book. Nobody has (credibly) challenged said claim.
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Raf
So you are telling me you have a signed document with contemporaneous Witnesses vouching for the identity of the author. Fascinating.
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JayDee
https://twitter.com/bettywebb
I’ve never tried this so I’m not sure the link will open. Betty Webb has a Twitter account. She also has a Facebook page with basically the same bio.
Edited by JayDeeAdditional info.
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Rocky
Yes, it works.
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Raf
One of the challenges with critical Biblical research is finding unbiased researchers.
If someone goes in with the mindset that the Bible is absolutely positively the Word of God, you cannot expect that person to buck tradition even if the evidence leads away from it. I am impressed that the Nelson commentary admits Matthew did not write Matthew. But it really should be emphasized that people don't have a clue who wrote the gospels because, unlike Betty Webb, the gospel writers did not sign their work.
Luke, in particular, is written by someone who not only did not sign his work, but also did not cite his sources or explain his methodology, something historians of the time actually took the trouble to do. The closest Luke gets is at the beginning of his gospel, where he does NOT claim to have spoken to eyewitnesses but, rather, to have investigated other written accounts of the life of Jesus. We don't know much about these other accounts other than that the gospel we know as Mark was almost certainly one of them.
In Acts, the same author would have us believe that he was, at times, Paul's traveling companion. He wants us to think he was there. Many scholars believe that is not the case. We go back to Acts v. Galatians. If Paul is right, Luke is lying and unreliable. If Luke is right, Paul is lying and unreliable. It is not credible that both are right. The apostles, with Paul in their presence shortly after his conversion, would simply not have taken Barnabas' word that Paul had changed. They would have questioned him. They would have discussed his gospel and compared it to what they were personally taught by Jesus. And it defies reason that Paul would have been in the presence of the apostles without talking to them about the life, death and resurrection of the savior. Either Galatians or Acts is wrong about what Paul did after his conversion.
Is it credible to believe that a companion of Paul would get this detail wrong? Is it credible to believe Paul is lying about not getting his gospel from the apostles?
How many times do you find yourself needing to explain the difference between how Paul acted in the book of Acts and what he says is the right thing to believe and do in his own letters? One thing that becomes very clear is that the author of Acts was not as close to Paul as he would have you believe. Rather, this account is written by someone who is trying desperately to harmonize Paul with the apostles and present them as having some kind of continuity -- a continuity, it should be noted, that Paul himself does not claim. Rather, Paul would have believers reject anyone who disagreed with him -- even if it's an apostle. Read Galatians again. Paul is pretty emphatic about not being an heir to their doctrine.
The author of Luke-Acts wants people to think he was a companion of Paul. Why? Because that bolsters his credibility. (It worked! People believe these works are history because they were written by a companion of Paul. Never mind that Paul contradicted his accounts at every turn).
This was not an unusual occurrence in the ancient world. Heck, it's not even that rare these days. People claim to be eyewitnesses all the time to stuff that just never happened. Remember the pedophile ring operating out of a D.C. pizza shop? There were witnesses!
The author of the gospel of John would have you believe he was eyewitness to at least SOME of what happened in the gospel. So what if he totally forgot about the 40 days Jesus spent getting tempted in the desert after his baptism. So what if he was the ONLY one who remembered the raising of Lazarus from the dead. (Seriously: how do the other gospel writers get away without mentioning this mind-blowing miracle?) So what if he had Jesus cleanse the temple at the beginning of his ministry instead of the end? Isn't the point that he cleansed the temple?
Maybe. But if cleansing the temple is really what got Jesus into enough trouble for people to want him executed, then the writer of John would have known that it had to be near the end of his ministry. And if Jesus had cleansed the temple TWICE, once at the beginning of his ministry and again at the end, ONE of the gospel writers would have mentioned that he did it twice.
No one does, probably because it only happened once. IF it happened at all.
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Raf
I lost my original point in my last post.
Bias works both ways. If a researcher goes in determined to undermine the "integrity" of the word, he will find errors and mistakes where none exist. "Answer a fool not according to his folly" does not contradict "Answer a fool according to his folly," for example.
So I tend to go with research that shows open mindedness. Again, I was impressed that Nelson admitted Matthew didn't write Matthew. They should go further and admit Mark didn't write Mark (or know Palestine), Luke didn't write Luke and John didn't write John. Scholars are in general agreement about the letters Paul did write and the ones he didn't. But there are a few that are questionable. Non-traditionalists do not believe he wrote Colossians or Ephesians. Traditionalists insist he did. I'm inclined to go with the non-traditionalists because they have nothing to gain or lose by their position. My position is not strengthened or weakened if Luke was a physician, or if he wrote Acts. He's still demonstrably full of it on enough crucial issues (the birth of Christ, the conversion a thousands on the day of Pentecost, the aftermath of Paul's conversion) to cast doubt on his credibility when it comes to the resurrection (about which, again, every single gospel writer disagrees on multiple mutually exclusive issues).
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Raf
Interesting article on authorship of the Pauline Epistles.
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TLC
There certainly aren't many that claim, as a wise masterbuilder, to have laid the foundation, and then cautioned how others were to build thereon. Sure seems easy enough (relatively speaking) to build things from (or on top of) scripture... but quite fankly, I just don't see (nor do I believe) that it's possible to build thereon (as God intended) without the illumination of the holy spirit's working from within the mind and heart. So regardless of who anyone thinks did or didn't write certain Pauline Epistles, undoubtedly the acid test is how good or sound a foundation is revealed with them. Unless viewed in the right light, great masterpieces can go unnoticed and/or unappreciated.
The point being, it's not the character of the writer, nor diligent and careful textual criticism that will ever shed the right light on what is most important in scripture.
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Rocky
So, your point/conclusion is "what it is not?" How about being more specific about "what it is?"
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waysider
Maybe I'm having a bad day or something but, at least to me, this sounds a lot like the argument people use when they say "Yeah, that Wierwille was a bum but, gosh darn it, he sure taught some good word".
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TLC
It was stated in words that, evidently, must have escaped you. (Nothing too surprising about that though, eh?)
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Rocky
Still blaming others for your lack of clear transmission, eh?
However, please understand (if I wasn't clear enough) that I was asking for clarification. Which is entirely natural and not accusatory.
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Raf
He didn't read the articles. I'm not terribly surprised.
So the fact that the author lies about his own identity means nothing. Ok. Personally, I would think that lying about your identity would automatically fail any acid test. But who am I?
The articles do show how the fraud epistles distort Paul's message, but I suppose it's asking too much to read them. And Paul, supposedly, warning people to avoid fraud letters written in his name but subverting his doctrine... I guess that really doesn't mean much.
Ffs
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waysider
If we're still talking about building something, one need look no further than how the article's author builds to a conclusion in the final four or five paragraphs.
edit: referring to the Historical Paul article.
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TLC
You're clueless. Not that I'm terribly surprised.
Because I did read it, but disagreed with it.
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