Secret Alias wrote:I know its an old argument that no one pays much attention to any more but isn't it odd that Acts doesn't know anything about Paul's letters even though Paul is chiefly remembered for writing letters. It would be like writing a book about Jackie Robinson and failing to mention baseball.
I've seen stranger.
I once audited the glassblowers union in Toledo, Ohio, USA. The formal union name is "American Flint Glass Workers Union of North America". Now I was at that time not sure what the "Flint" signified, thinking it might have something to do with shaping blown glass with a piece of flint. However, the union was almost exclusively involved with production of automotive glass (windshields and side windows) so I felt their was another significance. Asking the union brass, I realized that while knowing what they made, how it was made, and a bit about the contentious days when they were competing with and eventually merging with a rival union, I realized they had no idea what the term "flint" signified! Reading their literature and their web site produced much the same results. The glass they worked with was "flint glass", but they had absolutely no idea how it got that name.
It seems that "Green glass" is used for blown glass, bottles and some window panes (the ones where the glass somewhat distorts the light passing through). There was another union that handled this kind of glass production, including glass blowing, in the Eastern US at the time that the Flint Glass union was first formed.
"Flint glass" on the other hand, which is what this union was working with when formed in the late 19th century, has additives that increase the clarity and make it more suitable for window glass and molded glass containers.
Only today was I able to find out what "flint" referred to. It refers to the flint nodules found in chalk deposits used as a source of high purity silica to produce a potash lead glass that was the precursor to English lead crystal, circa 17th century. In effect, it was an old fashioned English term for lead glass, but in the 19th century, old fashioned was the norm in the USA.
So, this union's entire literature, while going on quite a bit about union rivalries between green glass and flint glass workers, and their eventual consolidation in the USA in the 20th century, did not so much as explain the significance of the word "Flint" in their name, or more accurately in the name of the type of glass they primarily worked with before the consolidation of the unions.
This tells me that it is entirely possible for an organized and highly cohesive group of people to have absolutely minimal, if any, knowledge of the history of the material they produced and worked with their entire employed lives. If that is the case, then early Christians could utilize traditions and employ rituals the origins of which they had little or no knowledge.
DCH
I hope that Peter could cleanse some things