Note: the lists are transcribed from RC's slides, but with some editing for coherence.
He proposes this sequence:
- Mark
- Matthew
- Luke / Acts
Was Luke a good historian? RC compared him to other ancient historians, and he decided that the answer is no. His reasons:
- Luke never identifies himself or gives his qualifications.
- He never names or evaluates his sources.
- He never discusses his methods.
- His preface does not mention any such details.
- He has some awful methods, like slavishly following his sources, and changing them here and there without stating that he had done so.
RC argues that Acts falls into another ancient genre: religious-propaganda novels. They all
- Promote some god or religion.
- Are travel narratives.
- Involve miraculous or amazing events.
- Include encounters with fabulous or exotic peoples.
- Feature chaste couples separated and reunited.
- Feature exciting captivities and escapes, and also excited crowds.
- Have divine revelations that are always integral to the plot.
- Often include themes of persecution and divine rescue.
Back to RC's talk. He explained how Acts fits those criteria very well.
He also calls Luke a liar, stating things about Paul that are contrary to Paul's genuine letters.
He then gets into Burton Mack's description of how improbable Acts is, like Jews converting after being told that they had killed their Messiah. Also, Peter and Paul both to have the same message, while in Paul's letters, Peter and Paul are at loggerheads on various issues, like how Jewish their new religion should be.
The characters in Acts use the Septuagint, in Jerusalem, of all places. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Old Testament / Tanakh done a few centuries earlier, and it has some discrepancies with Hebrew versions. Someone in Jerusalem could easily have caught those errors.
There are not only two miraculous escapes from jail, there is also the oddity that nobody cares about the escaped convicts.
Some defenders of Acts point to all the true background details that it contains. That is entirely correct, but that's typical of a work of fiction. We have some idea of Luke's sources. Many of the details of Judea seem cribbed from Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews.
Paul as Odysseus:
- Is shipwrecked with the same nautical images.
- Sees the appearance of a divine being who assures safety.
- Rides planks when at sea.
- Lands on an island and meets hospitable strangers.
- Is mistaken for a god.
- Is sent onward in a new ship.
Peter's vision (Acts 10) closely parallels Ezekiel's (1, 2, 4, 10). The heavens open, and both of them are commanded to eat something unclean. Both of them then balk at doing that.
Peter and Paul parallels in Acts, parallels going beyond having the same message. Each one:
- Raises someone from the dead.
- Heals someone with paralysis.
- Heals with a magical extension of himself.
- Defeats a sorcerer.
- Miraculously escapes prison.
- Gets called upon in a vision by someone or some people to save them.
- Walks the Earth, ending at Jerusalem.
- Is arrested as a result of a disturbance in the Jerusalem Temple.
- Is acquitted by a Herod and a Prefect.
- Is plotted against by the Jews.
- Is interrogated and beaten by the priests and the Sanhedrin.
- Knows that his death is foreordained and prophesies troubles to come for the church.
- Dies and then rises from the dead.
- Gets hailed as a god.
- Paul travels around a much bigger sea than JC does.
- Paul gets in much greater danger when at sea.
- Paul's trial is longer.
- Armies plot to assassinate Paul, then to rescue Paul.
- JC causes one temple ruckus, Paul two.
- Paul gets more followers after he gets resurrected.
- Paul gets all the way to Rome.
Paul even has his own version of John the Baptist: Ananias. Both of them have names that mean in Hebrew "YHWH is gracious" but in different orders.
So the Book of Acts is as historical as Apuleius's Golden Ass.