CADRE Comments

PART 8: LIKE ONE UNTIMELY BORN Starting from back here , I've been arguing that Mark (the GosMark author) didn't invent the tomb of Jesus Christ or even the emptiness of the tomb: the hypothesis doesn't fit the actual facts of the textual characteristics, and the implications of those textual characteristics, and so I would regard that theory as historically impossible (even though not metaphysically impossible) even if I was an atheist. But as tomb sceptics are well aware, the only earliest texts that mention a tomb are the four canonical Gospels -- and Acts, which people are sometimes less aware of, since the tomb and its emptiness are only mentioned by heavy implication once (in Simon Peter's first sermon) and only mentioned once explicitly in the first main report of a sermon from Paul of Tarsus. Some sceptics, not only Jesus Myth proponents (though naturally them, too), like to appeal to an argument from silence in the epistles (and RevJohn) about the tomb, ...

PART 7: DISAPPEARING ACTS OF THE TOMB Part 1 of this series is way back here. Recently I've been looking at curious problems surrounding the empty tomb narratives in the Gospels and how they point away , in one or two categories I think quite decisively, from GosMark's having invented the empty tomb. But enough about the Gospel accounts. How about some disappearing Acts? No, not the Ascension account in Acts. I'm talking about the tomb! 7.) The canonical book of Acts is quite notable, not only for having some seriously primitive(-seeming) language in talking about the risen Jesus, but in a lack of detail during reported preaching about the empty tomb. And by a lack of detail, I mean almost no mention of the tomb at all! To begin with, it's important to notice, and to keep in mind, that regardless of whether Acts and GosLuke were written by the same guy, and regardless of any redactional theories of Acts' composition; whoever put Acts together in its fina...

Recently, a friend pointed me towards a news article from Bible-News which claims that a new Chapter of Acts has been found -- supposedly a long-lost final chapter (Chapter 29). The news article apparently obtained its information from a book entitled The Lost Chapter of Acts by E. Raymond Capt (2009).  The article caught my attention because, of course, Acts ends abruptly in Chapter 28 with Paul in prison. This sudden ending without reporting Paul’s ultimate death at the hands of the Romans has led many scholars and other interested observers (such as myself) to conclude that Luke probably finished writing Acts while Paul was in prison and before his death. So, finding additional material which should be a part of Acts would be both challenging to the dating of the Acts of the Apostles (as well as the Gospel of Luke) and just plain fascinating to read. For those interested, the Bible-News article, which contains the entire text of the claimed new addition to Acts, can find i...

Back in 2006, I was working on an analysis of the Guard Story at the end of the Gospel According to Matthew during Easter season (naturally), when I became involved in an exchange on Victor Reppert's "Dangerous Idea" web journal with his friend the atheistic apologist Dr. Keith Parsons on hallucination theories and visions of Jesus by the first disciples. Along the way, the topic of a missing body logically came up, and aside from the usual points of discussion I provided some hints at what I was analyzing (but was not yet ready to publish anywhere); and also (somewhat more vaguely still!) hinted that this would also help provide an answer to a peculiar question often overlooked in apologetics for or against the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: why didn't the Sanhedrin fake providing a body?! It was this exchange which led directly to me being invited here to the Cadre as a guest author, and I eventually posted a series of articles on the Adventure of the Gu...

Jason dealt with Richard Pervo’s argument that Acts’ reference to Theudas in Gamaliel’s speech is evidence of dependence on Josephus. Because I think Pervo has been refuted on that point, I wanted to address another, related comment that he makes expressing skepticism at the possibility that Luke could have known about Gamaliel’s speech even if it had been given. Pervo raises two challenges to the authenticity of Gamaliel’s address in Acts: that it is to short to be authentic and that there was no possible source for Luke to draw on. Those who maintain that Luke here reproduces an actual speech have taken on a formidable challenge, not only because of its extreme brevity, but also because Acts represents the action as taking place behind close doors. Pervo, Dating Acts , page 152. In a footnote, Pervo claim that conservative scholar Ben Witherington “concedes that Luke may have concocted the speech, but allows for the possibility that Paul is the source.” That is quite a claim and...

Note: Part 6 of this series can be found here. It discusses how Dr. Richard Pervo, in his 2006 edition of Dating Acts , very briefly covers his main positive evidence in favor of his theory that the author of Acts used Josephus when referring to the rebellions of Theudas and Judas the Galilean--a very brief coverage that mainly involves mentioning the superficial similarity of topical order while repeatedly insisting that the author of Acts is in (even "embarrassing") error. After which, Dr. P suddenly switches to the position that the author did not make an error but intentionally took the information from Josephus in this topical order. As will be shown in the finale of this series, there are good reasons why he must have felt he had to try something other than error to explain the usage thereby! Since he doesn't spell out those reasons himself, however... Part 7 -- Thoroughly Sniffing The Thesis (Or Huffing It, Maybe) Let’s spell out the implications of Dr. Pervo’s ...

Note: Part 5 of this series can be found here. It discusses how Dr. Richard Pervo, in his 2006 edition of Dating Acts , and in regard to his theory of the author of Acts depending on reference to Josephus, ends up having to having to appeal to argument B not only to make argument A seem more plausible but to answer in a non sequitur fashion an oncoming critique of part of his argument for A--when the reason he explicitly started with A was to help make subsequent arguments for the dating of Acts post-Antiquities, including argument B, seem more plausible! So having spun the reader's head around a few times, he plows onward now to his strongest primary evidence. Part 6 -- Error, Error! (Or, wait, not...??) Having quickly leapt away from trying to explain how the 400 number can even plausibly fit into his theory (answering expected critiques of his argument there by spinning the reader around with circular plausibility appeals to a completely different dating argument which has noth...