Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigrapha?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Adam
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Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Adam »

Secret Alias wrote:Well just to change the subject - mostly because you apparently didn't find my addition of the word 'career' in my last post as funny as I did - don't you find it odd that the Ascension only appears in Acts? I think it's very surprising. You'd expect to have THAT BEGINNING of Acts as the end of the gospel. That's its there says something about the earliest gospels I think.
Had to read through the thread thus far to see no has spotted this howler yet--or maybe no one is reading this thread.
Or maybe our SA (who apparently did NOT write The Real Messiah) earlier in the thread somewhere in the wall of text specifies that for this thread GLuke means Mcn. Anyway, probably post-Marcion we read Luke 24:50:

"When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 52 Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God."

Seems to me like they DID affix the Ascension to the end of the gospel as SA says we would expect.
Secret Alias
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Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Secret Alias »

But did that appear in the Gospel of Marcion? The ending of Adv Marc:
When they were doubting whether He were not a phantom----nay, were supposing that He was one----He says to them, "Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See1697 my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; for a spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have."1698 [7] Now Marcion was unwilling to expunge from his Gospel some statements which even made against him----I suspect, on purpose, to have it in his power from the passages which he did not suppress, when he could have done so, either to deny that he had expunged anything, or else to justify his suppressions, if he made any. But he spares only such passages as he can subvert quite as well by explaining them away as by expunging them from the text. Thus, in the passage before us, he would have the words, "A spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have," so transposed, as to mean, "A spirit, such as ye see me to be, hath not bones; "that is to say, it is not the nature of a spirit to have bones. But what need of so tortuous a construction, when He might have simply said, "A spirit hath not bones, even as you observe that I have not?" [8] Why, moreover, does He offer His hands and His feet for their examination----limbs which consist of bones----if He had no bones? Why, too, does He add, "Know that it is I myself,"1699 when they had before known Him to be corporeal? Else, if He were altogether a phantom, why did He upbraid them for supposing Him to be a phantom? But whilst they still believed not, He asked them for some meat,1700 for the express purpose of showing them that He had teeth.1701

[9] And now, as I would venture to believe,1702 we have accomplished our undertaking. We have set forth Jesus Christ as none other than the Christ of the Creator. Our proofs we have drawn from His doctrines, maxims,1703 affections, feelings, miracles, sufferings, and even resurrection----as foretold by the prophets.1704 Even to the last He taught us (the same truth of His mission), when He sent forth His apostles to preach His gospel "among all nations; "1705 for He thus fulfilled the psalm: "Their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."1706 Marcion, I pity you; your labour has been in vain. For the Jesus Christ who appears in your Gospel is mine.
Which is - when He sent forth His apostles to preach His gospel among all nations (siquidem et apostolos mittens ad praedicandum universis nationibus) this a reference to? Luke 24. 47 and Matt. 28. 19? I don't hear the ascension and you'd think he'd mention it given the context is clearly whether Jesus was a phantom or not?
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Adam
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Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Adam »

I'm not saying the Marcion's Gospel included the Ascension. I'm just saying you carelessly said that the gospel preceding Acts of the Apostles did not have the Ascension that we find at the start of the Acts of the Apostles. In Luke 24:50-53 it's right where you say it belongs, but you failed to clarify that you were limiting the "gospel" to mcn only.
Even the 1993 "Scholars Version" (I call it "the Scoundrels' Version") makes no differentiation in The Five Gospels. Are you implicitly conceding that the Jesus Seminar is Historicist?
Secret Alias
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Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Secret Alias »

Well to be fair, I was talking about the gospels before Luke.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Secret Alias »

We know of course that Mark ends with the empty tomb and so ignore the other endings. But these other endings linger long enough in our mind to help us ignore the incompatibility with the beginning of Acts. In other words, if Mark originally ended with the empty tomb Acts makes no sense. So the natural conclusion is that Luke rewrote Mark and then wrote Acts. But this is in itself bizarre because either (1) he used Matthew to write Luke but even by the time Matthew rewrites Mark there is no mention in Matthew of the Ascension. It only has the disciples 'sent out' to become apostles or (2) he used some common source with Matthew which again doesn't know about the Ascension.
My question had more to do with where Luke got knowledge of the Ascension if it wasn't in the gospels he had before him.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Secret Alias »

In a strange way then Acts becomes the second witness for something that Luke invented.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Secret Alias »

All the witnesses to Luke 24:51

Origenes (1 work(s))
Letter of James (Nag Hammadi)
Aristides Atheniensis (1 work(s))
Gregorius Nazianzenus (5 work(s))
Eusebius Caesariensis (5 work(s))
Ambrosius Mediolanensis (2 work(s))
Epiphanius Constantiensis (Salamiensis, Cypriota) (1 work(s))
Eusebius Caesariensis (5 work(s))
Eusebius Caesariensis (?) (1 work(s))
Hippolytus Romanus (Ps.) (1 work(s))

You don't find that surprising? I wonder what Aristides says
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Secret Alias »

And here is the explanation. Luke 24:51 only appears in some manuscripts - https://books.google.com/books?id=avaJA ... on&f=false

As I suspect, a late addition.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Secret Alias »

S* D some lat syr(s) only = "was lifted up" no ascension
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Adam
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Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 3:28 pm

Re: Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigra

Post by Adam »

That's what I was saying, SA.
Scholars tend to believe that the BEGINNING of Acts version of the Ascension precedes it being added to the end of Luke.
The anomaly remaining for you, SA, is that scholars tend to concede (apart from the ending verses and such) that GLuke was written before Acts.
Last edited by Adam on Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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