Moderator: andrewcriddle
Yes, the author of Luke-Acts knew about Josephus, but only his 'Wars', and not his 'Antiquities':Good point. I too tend to think that Luke-Acts postdates Josephus.
Yes, I am aware of your arguments in that arena. Thanks. One issue at a time here.Bernard Muller wrote:Yes, the author of Luke-Acts knew about Josephus, but only his 'Wars', and not his 'Antiquities':Good point. I too tend to think that Luke-Acts postdates Josephus.
http://historical-jesus.info/58.html
http://historical-jesus.info/59.html
From the point of view of the priority of Luke-Acts.Ben C. Smith wrote:Another possible indicator of Marcionite priority over Luke is the apparent anonymity of the former compared to the title of the latter. Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.2.3a:
Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it could not be allowed him to affix a title to that from which it was no crime (in his eyes) to subvert the very body.
As Mark Goodacre points out in his Dating Game series:
The more blatant signs, though, of the relative lateness of John and Thomas lie in their attempts at authorial self-representation. Where earlier Gospels like Mark and Matthew are anonymous and avoid attempting to project an authorial presence to lend authority to their work, the author of the Fourth Gospel makes claims to have been present, most notably in 19.35 and of course 21.24, “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and wrote them down (καὶ ὁ γράψας ταῦτα). We know that his testimony is true,” similar in style and literary function to the Incipit of Thomas, “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.” .... There is a trajectory among these early Christian texts, from the absence of authorial self-representation in Mark and Matthew, to hints in Luke and Acts (with the first person found in Luke 1.1-4 as well as in the “we” passages in Acts), to the marked but nevertheless still unnamed authorial presence in John, to the explicit self-representation of Didymos Judas Thomas in its Gospel’s Incipit, a naming that also leads the reader to pay special attention to Thomas 13.
Perhaps Marcion had reasons for not giving his gospel a good apostolic title like the canonical four (and many others); but maybe it is more likely that his gospel hailed from the days before those titles gained currency; his gospel persisted in its anonymity while others were gaining attributions left and right.
SInce Marcion and Luke are interconnected in some special way, it also seems to me to be a bit of a coincidence that Luke, a purported companion to Paul, should be the choice of gospel text; if Marcion followed canonical Luke and chose Luke to mutilate rather than Matthew or Mark or John or whatnot, then it seems odd that it would have nothing to do with the name of Luke. Yet, if it did have something to do with the name of Luke, why not retain the name? Why strip the name off of it?
Again, maybe Marcion had his reasons. But, on the other hand, maybe the trajectory is simple: Marcion actually chose his gospel, some kind of anonymous proto-Luke simply because he was familiar with it, perhaps from Pontus. The Catholics took his gospel and turned it into canonical Luke precisely in order to counter Marcion. This trajectory follows the pattern outlined by Goodacre above (from anonymous to named) and also explains why the Marcionite gospel would be associated with a companion of Paul while still remaining anonymous: the anonymity came first, and the name of Luke was attached later.
(Bernard, I know you will not agree with any of the indicators I have posted recently, since they lean toward Marcionite priority; but do you know of any other examples for Marcionite posteriority? You have given 2 so far, I think, and I have added 1. But, if there are more, I would love to have them.)
Ben.
At that point, none of the canonical gospels were considered "scripture", and a reader/hearer could feel that some facts in them could be wrong, that is, if s/he were even aware of this fact.maryhelena wrote:Both gMark and gMatthew have Herodias married to Philip prior to a marriage to Herod/Antipas.Bernard Muller wrote:Yes, the author of Luke-Acts knew about Josephus, but only his 'Wars', and not his 'Antiquities':Ben wrote:Good point. I too tend to think that Luke-Acts postdates Josephus.
http://historical-jesus.info/58.html
http://historical-jesus.info/59.html
[...]
gLuke drops the name of Philip as a previous husband of Herodias. Why? Antiquities tells a different story....that indicates to me that the author of gLuke was aware of Antiquities and followed Josephus in his update of the gMark and gMatthew Herodias story.
That would remove the prefaces, true enough, but why not retain the name of Luke, though? From the way Tertullian writes about it, it seems that the Marcionites themselves treated the text as anonymous. He contrasts the Marcionite gospel with his own preferred gospels in this respect, which suggests that not even the title had an author attached by name. Marcion was already accusing, rightly or wrongly, the church of having forged whole passages and adding them to the gospel; what was it, do you think, about the name attached to the gospel that created a line he would not cross? What is the difference between claiming that somebody added stuff to the anonymous gospel, and that somebody added stuff, including a still anonymous preface, to the gospel of Luke?andrewcriddle wrote:Marcion was required as part of his agenda to delete the first few chapters of Luke from his gospel and disconnect it from Acts. This would automatically remove the hints of authorship which we find in canonical Luke-Acts.
IMHO the original version of Luke-Acts was anonymous.Ben C. Smith wrote:That would remove the prefaces, true enough, but why not retain the name of Luke, though? From the way Tertullian writes about it, it seems that the Marcionites themselves treated the text as anonymous. He contrasts the Marcionite gospel with his own preferred gospels in this respect, which suggests that not even the title had an author attached by name. Marcion was already accusing, rightly or wrongly, the church of having forged whole passages and adding them to the gospel; what was it, do you think, about the name attached to the gospel that created a line he would not cross? What is the difference between claiming that somebody added stuff to the anonymous gospel, and that somebody added stuff, including a still anonymous preface, to the gospel of Luke?andrewcriddle wrote:Marcion was required as part of his agenda to delete the first few chapters of Luke from his gospel and disconnect it from Acts. This would automatically remove the hints of authorship which we find in canonical Luke-Acts.
Ben.
Ah, I see what you are saying now. So you would say that the (eventually) canonical version got named after Luke only after Marcion had adopted it as an anonymous gospel and taken his shears to it.andrewcriddle wrote:IMHO the original version of Luke-Acts was anonymous.
It may have been attributed to Luke on the basis of the "we" passages in Acts and the mentions of Luke in Paul's epistles.
This may be of interest reception of lukeBen C. Smith wrote:Ah, I see what you are saying now. So you would say that the (eventually) canonical version got named after Luke only after Marcion had adopted it as an anonymous gospel and taken his shears to it.andrewcriddle wrote:IMHO the original version of Luke-Acts was anonymous.
It may have been attributed to Luke on the basis of the "we" passages in Acts and the mentions of Luke in Paul's epistles.
Ben.
