Another nail in the coffin of Acts

[spamandham]

Act 11:25-26

And he (Barnabus) went forth to Tarsus to seek for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that even for a whole year they were gathered together with the church, and taught much people, and that the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

 

It would seem the term "christian" (christianos in the Greek) was first used when Barnabas went to Antioch to find Paul, which according to 12:1, was during the reign of Herod.

 

12:1

Now about that time Herod the king put forth his hands to afflict certain of the church.

 

It doesn't say which Herod, but we'll assume Herod Antipas (4BCE to 39 CE) rather than Herod the Great (37 BCE to 4CE). So, if we accept this portion of Acts at face value, that means the term "christian" was in use no later than 39 CE, which preceeds even Paul's writings by a good 10 or more years.

 

Come to think of it, it is rather interesting that neither Paul nor the Gospel writers used the term "christian", yet Acts claims it was in use (at Antioch with Paul no less!) no later than 39CE. Hmmmm.

[Lunar Shadow]

As you say Spam, yet one of many nails in the coffin

 

 

here is yet another nail in the NT coffin

 

Strangely, this is essentially where the story ends.  It is most curious that there was never any pronouncement by any central authority such as the Pope in all of Christian history as to which books belonged in the Bible, until 1443 A.D.  at the conclusion of the Council of Florence--yet this only carried weight in the West.  This pronouncement excluded Laodiceans and included Hebrews, thus effectively ratifying the 27 books that had been the staple of orthodox opinion since the 4th century A.D.  (M 240). This no doubt arose because for the first time in almost a thousand years scholars were once again starting to question the authenticity of certain books in the canon, for example the authorship of Hebrews.  A telling case is that of Erasmus, who, after being chastised by the Church, renounced his rational doubts about this and various Biblical books, on the ground that "the opinion formulated by the Church has more value in my eyes than human reasons, whatever they may be" (Response to the Censure of the Theology Faculty at Paris, 9.864; M 241).  No freethinker he.  No one can trust the opinions of such a man.  Nevertheless, the canon of Florence was still not enforced by threat of excommunication until the canon was made an absolute article of faith at the Council of Trent in 1546 A.D. Almost all the Protestant churches followed suit within the next century with essentially identical conclusions (M 246-7), dissenting only by excluding the OT apocrypha held as canonical by the Catholics.

 

Hebrews wasn't in the original cannon it was added in the 13th century

 

 

source http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ric...er/NTcanon.html

[spamandham]

Eusebius published a list of the Canon in 325 that started moving toward the present day canon. By the latter 4th century, the canon was set except for Epistles and Epistles of Paul.

 

http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_canons.htm

[Lunar Shadow]

Eusebius published a list of the Canon in 325 that started moving toward the present day canon.  By the latter 4th century, the canon was set except for Epistles and Epistles of Paul.

 

http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_canons.htm

 

 

 

but I guess the main question is... How could people take so freakin long to decide in a book that is suposedly divinly inspired???

 

 

well the answer is quite simple IT'S NOT DIVINLY INSPIRED

[MQTA]

It's interesting how someone can say "maybe God created the world 10 minutes ago and planted our history", or with evolution that He put those bones there to confuse us.

 

Basically they're saying go to a point in time, and then fill in the history so that it matches 'to date'. Gee, that seems like how the Bible was created, and all their stories.

 

It's all fantasy supposition.

 

People ask why we would spend all this time on copying it correctly, the scribes this, the scribes that. Well, OF COURSE they would, THAT was Their Job. With their technology, what ELSE was there to do anyway?

 

Besides fight, make wars, and force views on others.

[Mythra]

Here is another nail. The three different accounts of Saul's conversion.

 

In Acts 9, the guys that are with Saul hear a voice, but see no one.

 

Then, in Paul's account to the men of Jerusalem, the guys with him see a light, but hear no voice.

 

And, in the third account, as Paul testifies before Agrippa, the words of Jesus are totally different than in the Acts 9 account.

 

I guess they should have hired a proofreader to iron out the rough spots.

[MQTA]

Paul N Tobin writes about Acts here

 

A Christian might think that The Acts of the Apostles, which purports to be a historical account of the development of the early Church, provides complete information about this period of Christianity. However a closer analysis shows that this is not case.

 

First we note that although Christian tradition claims to know the author as Luke, the companion of Paul, the evidence shows otherwise. Indeed the author of the two volume Luke-Acts is unknown to us . [Or course, for ease of reference we will continue to refer to the anonymous author of Acts as "Luke"-but always remembering that this is merely a shorthand for "the anonymous author of the two volume work known to us as the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles"]

 

Furthermore, critical historical research over the past two hundred years have shown that our "Luke" cannot be considered a very reliable historian. In the twentieth century, with the advent of new methodologies of historical and literary research, scholars made another startling discovery: that the speeches in Acts are unhistorical and are essentially the literary invention of the author. Scholars have also noted that the picture of Paul as presented in Acts is not completely compatible with what we can derive from the genuine Pauline epistles.

 

While it is certainly not to be doubted that Acts contained some historical data, care and skepticism must be applied when using the information derived from it.

 

Best historical examination I found is Paul Tobin's Central Thesis.

 

A site worth every moment spent on it.

[Lunar Shadow]

hind sight being 20/20 I feel like such a fucking fool for not seeing the inconsistancies sooner you know what I mean?

 

but I guess the old saying is true. Christians don't really read the bible.