Piece of evidence that Acts is not all fiction?

[ficino]

Just tossing this idea into the mix. Don't know how it's been treated in the literature. My thought does not amount to a proof, just wondering.

In Acts 15:36-41, we are told that Barnabas wanted to take John Mark along in Paul's proposed visit to former converts, but Paul insisted that JM was not fit to accompany them, since he'd deserted them in Pamphylia. "The disagreement which ensued was so sharp that the two separated. Barnabas took Mark along with him and sailed for Cyprus. Paul, for his part, chose Silas to accompany him ..."

I can think of ways to spin this on an assumption that the whole story is fiction. E.g. the author wants to glorify Paul as a stickler for the straight and narrow, against Barnabas as a foil. The author, having introduced Barnabas, needs to get rid of Barnabas now so Paul can proceed to the heroic deeds that he accomplishes as leader with his main man, Jesus, and Silas only as running dog.

I can also think of a spin from history, if we hypothesize that there was a splinter group, against the Pauline group, that claimed Barnabas as a leading figure.

But such hypotheses seem, at least to me, to impute an unnecessarily convoluted narrative template to the author. Besides, the gain from such moves in the narrative seems outweighed by the loss incurred in admitting that apostles disagreed and split up. Are they still in high school? And do we know of a movement around Barnabas that was considered a heresy, or at least, a rival movement?

One may also think that if the account is fiction, the author would have made more of such a major dispute between two characters who, up till this point, play major roles. It's passed over in a couple of sentences. When Achilles breaks with Agamemnon, it kickstarts the Iliad.

On the other hand, it seems believable that in real life, alpha types would in fact disagree and split up, esp. over the place of a younger (cute?) junior partner.

This pericope is redolent of some historical basis to me. Am I wrong?

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Ficino,

Actual footage from Pamphylia of the fight between John Mark (clean shaven) and Paul (beard and mustache).

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

[Stephan Huller]

Am I the only person who notices that John Mark is the glue that holds Acts (and early Christianity together)? In the first half of the book you have John Mark as a witness of Peter and then John Mark as a witness for Paul in the rest. The editor only had Paul reject Acts in order to introduce/replace Mark with Luke as the authority on Paul.

[steve43]

There is nothing internal to Acts of the Apostles that suggest that it was written in any other time than the mid 1st century AD. In fact, the Delphic inscriptions that were discovered relatively recently lend credence to this.
But many people with too much time on their hands still seek to vie for the Winged Frog trophy with convoluted and outlandish theories.

[toejam]

^Many possible internal parallels to Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews makes me question your first sentence. I'm not convinced the author of Acts had Antiquities as a source, but it seems quite plausible. That's certainly not an "outlandish theory". If so, that would date Acts to at least post-95CE. Certainly there is enough internal to the Gospel of Luke (as well as its clear dependence on Mark and/or Q and/or Matthew) to show that it is at least post-70CE. The idea that it was written pre-Jewish War is untenable IMO.

[toejam]

That said, I agree with ficino that while Acts may not be a pure work of history, nor is it complete fiction either. I would describe it as religious propaganda. But propaganda can be a very valuable historical source.

[Peter Kirby]

The first question to ask is what genre Acts belongs to.

If it's fiction, then, as PJ suggests, certainly the authors of the day had the skill and resources to narrate this kind of fiction (albeit, not the multi-layered self-contradictory postmodern oeuvre sometimes suggested by, for example, our friend LC here - something unknown before modernity).

If it's not fiction, then the details of the argument start to matter more, about history or non history in its parts.

Personally I do not believe it is fiction. All the main characters and supporting cast were historical or at least considered historical. While the various non-fictional genres of the day certainly used a lot of made-up stuff, that does not in itself make Acts fiction. Most importantly, it explains a historical question, the real origin and early development of the cult, which is certainly not the kind of question that asks for fiction as an answer.

[RecoveringScot]

There is nothing internal to Acts of the Apostles that suggest that it was written in any other time than the mid 1st century AD. In fact, the Delphic inscriptions that were discovered relatively recently lend credence to this.
But many people with too much time on their hands still seek to vie for the Winged Frog trophy with convoluted and outlandish theories.

There is nothing internal to the NT documents which suggests that Jesus was not a divine god/man who was born of a virgin, was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of the Jews in a bizarre and patently unhistorical fashion even though he was a good man, was buried, reappeared and then rose from the dead bodily into heaven, being watched by his disciples to do so, having previously appeared in glory at the top of a mountain with sundry OT characters, who most certainly existed.

If you believe that you can believe anything about anything.

[ficino]

Jay, so far I'm thinking that the movie footage you posted supports what I propose in the OP. You posted a scene of some dramatic tension. All the drama of the presumed "histoire" in Gérard Genette's sense is absent from the passage in Acts. We don't even get much of a "récit." We only get a bald statement of a few (purported?) facts. Would we find a conflict and rupture between two major characters in, say, an ancient Greek novel or romance treated this way? Peter, you suggest that if Acts is fiction, the author/s had the resources to "narrate this kind of fiction." It's precisely the absence of features typical of fiction in this passage that originally made me wonder about it.

Perhaps there's literature on this passage in which critics go into the "does this ring as fiction" question, I don't know.

[steve43]

There is nothing internal to Acts of the Apostles that suggest that it was written in any other time than the mid 1st century AD. In fact, the Delphic inscriptions that were discovered relatively recently lend credence to this.
But many people with too much time on their hands still seek to vie for the Winged Frog trophy with convoluted and outlandish theories.

There is nothing internal to the NT documents which suggests that Jesus was not a divine god/man who was born of a virgin, was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of the Jews in a bizarre and patently unhistorical fashion even though he was a good man, was buried, reappeared and then rose from the dead bodily into heaven, being watched by his disciples to do so, having previously appeared in glory at the top of a mountain with sundry OT characters, who most certainly existed.

If you believe that you can believe anything about anything.

Well, we are talking generally accepted broad historical events and characters. And, BTW, the author of Luke and Acts was in Rome in A.D. 63 at the same time that a young Joseph bar Matthias, the future Flavius Josephus, was- and Josephus was on a diplomatic mission and would have been a high-profile figure in Rome at the time.

source Hagan "Fires of Rome"