Is Acts the 1st Entirely Spurious Historical Pseudepigrapha?

[Secret Alias]

these days = ἡμέραις ταύταις. No one I think believes that Luke was writing the material 'as it happened' so I am not sure that this does anything to move the dating.

[Secret Alias]

ἡμέραις ταύταις however does seem to be a 'Luk-ism' - i.e. a figure of speech that appears in both Luke and Acts and thus represents (the presumed) final editor of the original material both in the gospel (in relation to earlier versions) and Acts (in relation to the Jewish Christian text).

[Charles Wilson]

As you will see, "The Apostles" will be DEFINED for you but there will be evidence left in the Data that the "Apostles" represent the Legions, especially the Ill-Fated 12th Legion, commanded by Cestius. They get mauled at Beth-Horon, where they lose their baggage, having NOT carried it in the middle of the traveling Group (Judas' guts spill out). They raze Lydda as the populace goes to Jerusalem for the Passover ("Desolate be his abode"). Cestius is replaced ("Let another his office take"). They were mauled and lost their Standard (Annals, with Corbulo looking on with tears in his eyes) and are represented in Acts as a Cripple, even giving the years since the event happened.

For the Record!:

Acts 9: 32 - 35 (RSV):

[32] Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints that lived at Lydda.
[33] There he found a man named Aene'as, who had been bedridden for eight years and was paralyzed.
[34] And Peter said to him, "Aene'as, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed." And immediately he rose.
[35] And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.

Numeric Nuttery is everywhere so there better be something other than straight subtraction here - there is. Let's see...ummm...70 CE subtract the 8 years of "Aeneas"' paralysis is...ummm...SIXTY-TWO!!!

What happened in 62? From the everpoliticized Wiki-P: " In 62, IV Scythica and XII Fulminata, commanded by the new legate of Cappadocia, Lucius Caesennius Paetus, were defeated by the Parthians and Armenians at the battle of Rhandeia and forced to surrender. The legions were shamed and removed from the war theatre."

Tacitus, Annals, Book 11:

"Meanwhile Paetus threw a bridge over the river Arsanias, which flowed by the camp, apparently with the view of facilitating his march. It was the Parthians, however, who had required this, as an evidence of their victory; for the bridge was of use to them, while our men went a different way. Rumour added that the legions had been passed under the yoke, with other miserable disgraces, of which the Armenians had borrowed imitations. For they not only entered our lines before the Roman army began to retire, but also stood about the camp streets, recognizing and dragging off slaves or beasts of burden which we had previously captured. They even seized clothes and detained weapons, for the soldiers were utterly cowed and gave up everything, so that no cause for fighting might arise. Vologeses having piled up the arms and bodies of the slain in order to attest our defeat, refrained from gazing on the fugitive legions...

"He further stated that Paetus had guaranteed by an oath, before the standards, in the presence of those whom the king had sent to be witnesses, that no Roman was to enter Armenia until Nero's reply arrived as to whether he assented to the peace. Though this may have been invented to enhance our disgrace, yet about the rest of the story there is no obscurity, that, in a single day Paetus traversed forty miles, leaving his wounded behind him everywhere, and that the consternation of the fugitives was as frightful as if they had turned their backs in battle. Corbulo, as he met them with his forces on the bank of the Euphrates, did not make such a display of his standards and arms as to shame them by the contrast. His men, in their grief and pity for the lot of their comrades, could not even refrain from tears. There was scarce any mutual salutation for weeping. The spirit of a noble rivalry and the desire of glory, emotions which stir men in success, had died away; pity alone survived, the more strongly in the inferior ranks..."

This is the Crippled 12th - "Aeneas". Now if we could find a reference to the 12th Legion in Acts in a different reference:

Josephus, Wars, 2, 19, 1 and 7:

"But when Cestius had marched from Antipatris to Lydda, he found the city empty of its men, for the whole multitude were gone up to Jerusalem to the feast of tabernacles; yet did he destroy fifty of those that showed themselves, and burnt the city, and so marched forwards; and ascending by Betboron, he pitched his camp at a certain place called Gabao, fifty furlongs distant from Jerusalem..."

"It then happened that Cestius was not conscious either how the besieged despaired of success, nor how courageous the people were for him; and so he recalled his soldiers from the place, and by despairing of any expectation of taking it, without having received any disgrace, he retired from the city, without any reason in the world...

"But when the robbers perceived this unexpected retreat of his, they resumed their courage, and ran after the hinder parts of his army, and destroyed a considerable number of both their horsemen and footmen; and now Cestius lay all night at the camp which was at Scopus; and as he went off farther next day, he thereby invited the enemy to follow him, who still fell upon the hindmost, and destroyed them; they also fell upon the flank on each side of the army, and threw darts upon them obliquely, nor durst those that were hindmost turn back upon those who wounded them behind, as imagining that the multitude of those that pursued them was immense; nor did they venture to drive away those that pressed upon them on each side, because they were heavy with their arms, and were afraid of breaking their ranks to pieces...So it was not without difficulty that they got to Gabao, their former camp, and that not without the loss of a great part of their baggage...insomuch that the soldiers, through the astonishment and fear they were in, left behind them their engines for sieges, and for throwing of stones, and a great part of the instruments of war. So the Jews went on pursuing the Romans as far as Antipatris; after which, seeing they could not overtake them, they came back, and took the engines, and spoiled the dead bodies, and gathered the prey together which the Romans had left behind them, and came back running and singing to their metropolis; while they had themselves lost a few only, but had slain of the Romans five thousand and three hundred footmen, and three hundred and eighty horsemen. This defeat happened on the eighth day of the month Dius, [Marchesvan,] in the twelfth year of the reign of Nero..."

Beth Horon is near Lydda. The above is where Judas' guts spill out. Cestius did not carry the baggage in the middle of the traveling Legion. It fell to the rear and was picked off by the Jewish fighters.

There's so much more here but at some point you have to ask, "How much is enough?" Acts is concerned with the 12th Legion, Mucianus and Julius Caesar's favorite, the Tenth Legion. The named Legions arrive at Jerusalem, level it and celebrate as Titus orders them about to different locales. Aeneas is the 12th Legion-as-Cripple. Paetus in 62, Cestius leading to the Destruction of Jerusalem.

CW

[perseusomega9]

jesus Christ those are dumb associations

[Charles Wilson]

jesus Christ those are dumb associations

Thank you, PSO9!.
I certainly appreciate cogent, tightly argued rhetoric and you have certainly presented a lot with that remark!

Next up in Acts: Mucianus makes his entrance, some Suetonius and some more of Annals (Claudius) and also some of Tacitus' Histories. Do you know what "Camarae Boats" are? The Cohibus river? Antonius Primus?
It's all there in Acts, unless you prefer Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

[neilgodfrey]

A are there any other examples of completely fabricated histories (besides the Torah)? Thoughts?

Some of those Mesopotamian chronicles or king lists suggest fabricated history when they extend back to pre-flood eras and give life spans of hundreds or thousands of years.

I don't know how much of Manetho and Berossus are mythical -- certainly the early passages of Herodotus are.

Following the Torah we have the history of Joshua, Judges, Saul, David, Solomon and the divided kingdom right up to the names just prior to the respective falls of Samaria and Jerusalem as all theological fabrication.

Homer was considered a historian and his Iliad was a foundational (and fabricated) epic of the Hellas.

But the closest fabrication to Acts is the work that it closely resembles in many respects, and that's the work that was based on Homer's epics, the Aeneid.

The Aeneid was the fabricated founding epic of Rome that at least a couple of scholars (Bonz and MacDonald) have argued is also the basis of Acts.

[Secret Alias]

That's interesting. I will have to look at the Aeneid. Thanks.

[outhouse]

Some of those Mesopotamian chronicles or king lists suggest fabricated history when they extend back to pre-flood eras and give life spans of hundreds or thousands of years.

True.

I love the tale of Ziusudra, there may be a historical core to the mythology, but as told, yes it is mythology.

[outhouse]

3. If Acts is entirely fictitious history where are other examples? The Pentateuch? The Book of Mormon?

Abraham
Moses
Noah
Exodus
Davids mythology possibly based on a bandit leader.
Solomons mythology


While Acts is steeped in rhetoric, mythology, fiction and perverted Jewish theology, it may have historicity at a core level in many areas.


Only by determining possible plausibility in each case, can this be addressed properly. Ehrman went into this last month.

[Secret Alias]

it may have historicity at a core level in many areas.

Sure but how do we know? And why should we give the benefit of the doubt to a work which begins with an absolutely implausible historical event (the Ascension) and which was explicitly referenced as 'spurious' by fellow contemporary Christians?