Why Mark and Luke?

[Ben C. Smith]

Personally, I tend to lean towards option three, mostly because I think that Acts is a composite text that incorporates several distinct precursor texts. I think the later chapters about Paul's exploits look like they came from some pre-existing tradition about Paul, and the incorporation of a real travel diary (whether originally about Paul or not) makes this perfect. The beginning chapters with Peter and Paul in dialectic harmony and a Jerusalem community modeled after Plato's Republic looks like the work of the redactor to me. Then again, that's not much more than a gut feeling.

I have leaned toward option three myself a lot in recent times, though even more recently I have become more open to option 1. While I am fairly certain that Acts is a composite text of some kind (as you seem to think, too), Ehrman makes an interesting point in reply to those (like me) who have tended to think that the simple inclusion of a first person pronoun (at whatever stage of redaction) is not a likely way to perpetrate a fraud in a world of texts blatantly written in the names of major apostles like Peter and Thomas: Ehrman points out that the author of Acts, if the first person pronouns are fraudulent, could scarcely have succeeded at the fraud any more than (s)he did, inasmuch as it got Acts canonized and has tricked countless generations of churchmen and scholars, right up to and including the present day. And of course he is right: if Acts is a fraud, it is a resoundingly successful one. Maybe, on that score, it was the more subtle kind of fraud (adding a name to an anonymous text, for example, or introducing anonymous eyewitnesses) that was more likely to succeed in the long run, even in the early church, while the more blatant kinds of frauds (writing in the first person as Peter or other apostles) were too obvious and failed in the long run. (That is how it is today, as well; the more subtle the fraud, the more likely it is to trick people.)

[Ulan]

That makes sense. The Gospel of Peter or the Apocalypse of Peter failed in the end, although the latter came close to being canonized.
Trobisch shows nicely how a few, very limited name drops manage to connect the texts of the NT for a reader and cause the impression that all fits together, even if this is never stated outright. And although I have read quite a few texts recently that want to tell me that Acts is really more historical than its reputation among quite a few scholars suggests, I cannot really shake off the feeling that the whole Jerusalem part at the beginning of Acts sounds phony. This is particularly true for the whole Peter and Paul dynamic. In this sense, a subtle shift in pronouns is certainly a good way to give this text more weight.

Regarding this being a composite text, I think that's rather obvious from many elements, like for example the different definitions of apostle that are used in different parts of the text. If one assumes a single redactor for a larger part of the NT, that's quite a bit of work, and I'm sure he had to cut a few corners to get this out of the door.

[MrMacSon]

It is also curious that Marcion is said to be a "ship-owner" and the we passages being associated with sea travel and being backhanded evidence for his intimacy with Paul. What are the odds of that?

Marcion claimed to have some special relationship with Paul or at least the church established by Paul.

Marcion was a ship owner or at least associated with sea travel

Luke was backhandedly associated as THE beloved of Paul by means of a literary convention for sea travel passages.

Sea travel was the predominant manner of wider spread of new religions in those itmes - they took hold in predominant sea-ports which were usually more highly populated, thus having communities of various belief - it would have been easier to start a new one without the tensions in smaller communities with only one or two belief systems.

[Charles Wilson]

It is also curious that Marcion is said to be a "ship-owner" and the we passages being associated with sea travel and being backhanded evidence for his intimacy with Paul. What are the odds of that?

Marcion claimed to have some special relationship with Paul or at least the church established by Paul
Marcion was a ship owner or at least associated with sea travel

Stephan-

I don't want to ruin our deep and abiding friendship here or cause mental anguish by suggesting that "Paul" was "Mucianus" but it is important to note that there is a possible remembrance of "Marcion of Sinope" with The Pontus:
Tacitus, Histories, Book 3:

"A sudden outbreak had been excited in Pontus by a barbarian slave, who had before commanded the royal fleet. This was Anicetus, a freedman of Polemon, once a very powerful personage, who, when the kingdom was converted into a Roman province, ill brooked the change. Accordingly he raised in the name of Vitellius the tribes that border on Pontus, bribed a number of very needy adventurers by the hope of plunder, and, at the head of a force by no means contemptible, made a sudden attack on the old and famous city of Trapezus, founded by the Greeks on the farthest shore of the Pontus. There he destroyed a cohort, once a part of the royal contingent. They had afterwards received the privileges of citizenship, and while they carried their arms and banners in Roman fashion, they still retained the indolence and licence of the Greek. Anicetus also set fire to the fleet, and, as the sea was not guarded, escaped, for Mucianus had brought up to Byzantium the best of the Liburnian ships and all the troops.

"All the Best",
CW

[neilgodfrey]

Ehrman's "answer"....

I think you are putting "answer" in quotation marks because Ehrman was not really responding directly to Pitre; is that correct? (It took me a few moments to realize you were probably not saying that Ehrman's response falls so far short of credibility that it fails to deserve to be called an answer.) Just making sure....

Yes, I was juxtaposing Pitre's and Ehrman's views. I suspect Ehrman is expressing more widely held views among those who are not on the apologist side of the fence.

[neilgodfrey]

It's maybe not the most far-fetched postulation. However, does Ehrman provide some other rationale for the "we" passages in Acts? The tradition that he has pulled apart as an "attribution of convenience" is fair enough, as long as he has some viable explanation for the "we" passages. Scholarship's attempts at a non-traditional explanation aren't particularly convincing.

I don't know or recall what Ehrman has said about those we passages but I cannot take the we passages as evidence that Acts was written by a companion of Paul. There are so many other grounds for placing Acts itself in the mid second century. It was certainly not written prior to 70 CE.

My own view of the we passages is that they are a device to vicariously embrace the Roman readers in the story of the founding of the Roman church. But however they are explained, even if those passages are intended to suggest the participation of a companion of Paul, Acts itself was clearly not written by anyone of Paul's generation.

[neilgodfrey]

Maybe the we passages were meant to hint at the work being written by a traveling companion of Paul. Acts was written around or towards the time when Luke was being cast as Paul's companion and author of the gospel.

[Ben C. Smith]

It's maybe not the most far-fetched postulation. However, does Ehrman provide some other rationale for the "we" passages in Acts? The tradition that he has pulled apart as an "attribution of convenience" is fair enough, as long as he has some viable explanation for the "we" passages. Scholarship's attempts at a non-traditional explanation aren't particularly convincing.

I don't know or recall what Ehrman has said about those we passages but I cannot take the we passages as evidence that Acts was written by a companion of Paul. There are so many other grounds for placing Acts itself in the mid second century. It was certainly not written prior to 70 CE.

Ehrman has said that the passages are simply a fraud, designed to make the reader think that the author knew Paul. He writes in Forged:

But why would the author then speak in the first person on four occasions? Anyone reading this book so far should have no trouble figuring out why. The author is making a claim about himself. He is not naming himself. He is simply claiming to be a traveling companion of Paul’s and therefore unusually well suited to give a “true” account of Paul’s message and mission. But he almost certainly was not a companion of Paul’s. On the one hand, he was writing long after Paul and his companions were dead. Scholars usually date Acts to around 85 CE or so, over two decades after Paul’s death. On the other hand, he seems to be far too poorly informed about Paul’s theology and missionary activities to have been someone with firsthand knowledge. If the author is claiming to be someone he is not, what kind of work is he writing? A book written with a false authorial claim is a forgery. Obviously the authorial claim in this case is not as boldfaced as in, say, 1 Timothy or 3 Corinthians, whose authors directly say they are Paul. But the claim of Acts is clear nonetheless; the author indicates that he was a participant in and eyewitness to Paul’s mission, even though he was not.

It should not be objected that if the author wanted his readers to be convinced he was a companion of Paul, he would have been a lot more explicit about his identity, that is, he necessarily would have named himself or been more emphatic in his self-identification as a cotraveler with Paul. This kind of objection about what an author “would have” done is never very persuasive. For modern readers to tell ancient authors what they should have done in order to be more convincing is actually a bit amusing. Why should the author of Acts have done anything other than what he did? How could he possibly have been any more successful at deceiving his readers? He was spectacularly successful doing it the way he did. Readers for eighteen hundred years accepted without question that the author was none other than Luke, the traveling companion of Paul. By inserting just a small handful of first-person pronouns into his account the author succeeded in producing a forgery that continues to deceive readers down to the present day. The reason for the forgery, in any event, is clear, or at least one of the many reasons is. This author wants his readers to think he is Paul’s companion and therefore has firsthand knowledge of Paul’s mission. Paul, in this account, agrees with the apostles before him, especially Peter and James, on every point of theological and practical importance. The earliest church was in firm and essential harmony. Peter and Paul were not at odds, as other authors were claiming. Together they declared that salvation has gone to the Gentiles, who do not have to be Jews in order to be Christians.

Ben.

[gmx]

Thanks Ben. Sounds like Ehrman is very selective in his assessment of what you can and cannot assume about the motivations of a first century author. Apparently you can know with certainty that the "we" passages are an ingenious and intentional literary deception, but any other interrogations or assumptions about the author's activity are merely "amusing".

If the author / editor is compiling a narrative from multiple sources, and believes those sources to be genuine eyewitness accounts, he may not intend any deception in compiling them into a single, unified and consistent document. I think the intent to deceive is a pretty bold criticism of a document written two millennia ago, that we have very little data on with respect to its production.

[Ben C. Smith]

Contrary to Ehrman, I think the intent to deceive is a pretty bold criticism of a document written two millennia ago, that we have very little data on with respect to its production.

What do you think of the Epistle of the Apostles, written in the first person plural as if penned by them? What about the gospel of Peter, written in the first person in the name of the prince of apostles and accepted as genuinely Petrine in various quarters? What about 3 Corinthians, written as if by Paul? If these texts were not intended to deceive, what was their intent?