Jesus Puzzle: Chapter 24

Chapter 24 Critiqued:

Doherty wrote: “Justin Martyr, in the 150s, is the first Christian writer to make identifiable quotations from the Gospels, and to declare that he is doing so, though it is possible that he knows only Matthew and Luke” (TJP:259).

However, this is a moot point, because scholars are aware of a New Testament fragment of the Gospel of John that dates to around 130 C.E.

“In 1935 a small fragment turned up in Egypt that has been identified as a part of the Gospel of John. Although minute, its significance is great. The fragment is almost certainly not the original, but it probably is a very early copy of the gospel. It was produced in the middle of the second century, and, thus, sets for us a terminus ad quem for the gospel at c. 130” ( TNTEC:192).

Regarding Ignatius of Antioch Doherty wrote: “As noted in chapter 6, Ignatius is unlikely to be familiar with a written Gospel, for he would surely have pointed to one in support of his declaration that Jesus has been born of Mary and crucified by Pilate” (TJP:260).

Not necessarily. Ignatius would have been viewed as having authority since he was closely associated with Paul, Peter, and John.

Doherty continues: “Nor does he appeal to the idea of apostolic tradition, never suggesting that his biography about Jesus is knowledge that has been transmitted over the generations through apostolic channels” (TJP:260).

“I do not, as Peter and Paul, issue commandments unto you. They were apostles” (EITRSV:Chapter4).

Doherty continues: “Nowhere in all of his seven letters, written around the year 107 while he was being brought to Rome for execution, does Ignatius quote a single teaching of Jesus…” (TJP:260).

Yes, Ignatius does quote teachings of Jesus:

Ignatius wrote:
- “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it” (Matt 19:12) (EISSV:Chapter6, page 89).
- “Be in all things ‘wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove.’ (Matt 10:16) (EITPSV:Chapter 2, page 94).

Doherty wrote: “It casts doubt on everything Papias says, or is reported to have said. Alternatively, if Irenaeus is mistaken, it casts doubt on all the later traditions about Papias and his writings, including Eusebius” (TJP:265).

This is a false dichotomy, because it assumes that Jesus could not have actually made the statement each of these writers attributed to Jesus.

Doherty wrote: “Marcion chose an early form of the Gospel of Luke as his ‘canonical’ Gospel” (TJP:270). Along these same lines Doherty later wrote: “In addition, since evidence for the longer, canonical Luke cannot be found before Justin, and the two documents, Luke and Acts, surface only later in a close twinning which contains evidence that they were written/revised by the same author, it seems justified to date both Luke and Acts post-Marcion” (TJP:271).

Doherty provided no citation of an ancient source stating that Marcion utilized an early form of the Gospel of Luke.
There is no historical documentation that the Gospel of Luke had existed in an incomplete form prior to Marcion, based on the content from Chapter 27 of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies entitled “Doctrines of Cerdo and Marcion.” A portion of it states the following:

“Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most clearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord” (IAH:352).

No ancient source, to my knowledge, states that the Gospel of Luke Irenaeus refers to, was an early form of the Gospel of Luke.
Doherty elaborated on the notion that Marcion used an early form of the Gospel of Luke in the “Notes” section of The Jesus Puzzle. Doherty wrote:
- “Tradition, from the writings of heresiologists like Tertullian who wrote to discredit Marcion, says that Marcion used a gutted text of Luke’s Gospel, ridding it of passages he didn’t like. But another view, espoused by John Knox in Marcion and the New Testament (p.77-106), argues that the text Marcion used, or based his own upon, was an early version of Luke, one that was subsequently reworked and expanded by the church of Rome. (That expansion included the whole of chapters 1 and 2.) We can arrive at some of the contents of Marcion’s Luke only through Tertullian’s detailed refutation of the arch-heretic” (TJP:359).

Doherty acknowledged that tradition attested to the idea that the Gospel of Luke existed in its complete form when Marcion obtained a copy of it.
Rather than providing a citation of an ancient source documenting the existence of a early form of the Gospel of Luke, Doherty only mentioned a New Testament scholar’s speculative argument that there may have been an earlier version of the Gospel of Luke.

Doherty also wrote: “But one of the most effective arguments in favor of a post-Marcion composition of Acts is put forward by Knox (op.cit., p.119-123). Marcion chose an early form of the Gospel of Luke as his ‘canonical’ Gospel. Would he have done so if it were already attached to the Acts of the Apostles, a document which portrayed Paul in a way that directly contradicted Marion’s own view of Paul? Marcion claimed that Paul was independent of Jesus’ original disciples and was thus free of the “Jewish corruption” (in Marcion’s eyes) which those apostles had brought to Jesus’ teaching. Yet an Acts of the Apostles integrated with the Gospel of Luke would have discredited that very claim, making it highly unlikely that Marcion would have chosen to use Luke at all” (TJP:270).

Apparently, Marcion did not agree with everything Paul taught either since Marcion also dismembered Paul’s Epistles.
Therefore, I do not think it would matter to Marcion whether or not the Acts of the Apostles was bound to the Gospel of Luke at all since Marcion was more than willing to pick and choose which portions of documents he desired to use and mutilate.

Doherty wrote: “It is often argued that, since the author of Acts shows no sign that he is familiar with Paul’s letters, this must date Acts earlier than the formation of the first corpus of Pauline epistles. But whether a corpus had been formed or not, if that author knew anything of Paul (and how could he not, if he undertook to write a ‘biography’ of him?) he had to know that Paul was famed as a letter writer. Thus, no matter when Acts was written, its silence on the letters of Paul must be deliberate” (TJP:270).

Doherty conceded that the silence of Acts about Paul’s epistles would not prove that the author of Acts did not know Paul wrote epistles.
Colin Hemer provides several possible reasons for the author's silence below:

“Such an explanation might be sought in Goodspeed’s idea of a collection of the Pauline Corpus around AD 90. A theory tied to his view of the production of Ephesians as a covering letter about that date. See E.J. Goodspeed, Introduction (1937), pp. 210-221; New Solutions (1927), pp. 1-64; The Key to Ephesians (University of Chicago Press, 1956); ‘Ephesians and the First Edition of Paul’, JBL 70 (1951), pp. 285-291. Cf. also J. Knox, Philemon among the Letters of Paul (University of Chicago Press, 1935). These views depend on a nexus of hypotheses, such as a supposed posthumous neglect of Paul until the publication of Acts stimulated the collection. To dispute the reasoning does not disprove the contention, but it seems more likely that the process of collecting the letters began directly after Paul’s death. Conversely it might be argued that letters were of secondary interest when Paul was alive and might visit in person, but assumed a new significance at his death. This would suit even a supposition that Paul could still have been alive” (BOAHS:377).

On a side note, it is also important to point out that Irenaeus stated “those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us…”, because this indicates that there was some type of orthodox apostolic tradition of passing down Luke’s Gospel.
John A.T. Robinson wrote:

“Absence of reference to the epistles of Paul cannot be regarded as a decisive objection. For Luke it not writing his ‘life and letters’ any more than he is writing a biography of Jesus, and Paul himself sees his letters as stopgaps or preparations for the visits, and these are what Acts records” (RNT:87).

John A.T. Robinson continued:

“On the other hand, silence on the very existence of the epistles is, as Kummel says, a formidable objection, amongst many others, to a second-century date. It is unbelievable that a later writer should not have made use of them for his reconstruction or at least alluded to them” (RNT:87-88).

Doherty wrote: “Scholars have long noted that Acts contains a markedly primitive view of Christian theology. Like the Gospel of Luke, it has no explicitly redemptive interpretation of the death of Jesus. (In Luke, only if one appeals to the longer version of Jesus’ Eucharistic words found in some manuscripts-probably later accretions under the influence of other Gospels-is anything to be found on the subject of soteriology.) Paradoxically, this ‘primitive’ quality in both Acts and the standard Luke fits not the mid or late first century, when the Pauline type of cultic Christ was still the predominant expression of Christianity. Rather, it fits the mid-second century, when the new Gospel picture of Mark’s virtually human Jesus (see Note 80) had eclipsed the Pauline cosmic Son of God and redemptive Christ. Rather than the Christ of Luke-Acts being ‘pre-Pauline,’ as it is sometimes styled, it is post-Pauline, when the Q-like Jesus of the Synoptics had supplanted the spiritual Christ of the cultic movement” (TJP:271).

Doherty has presented a massive circular argument by arguing that the primitive quality in both Luke and Acts fits the mid-second century on the basis of Doherty’s own argument that Paul’s Jesus was not human, but that Jesus was believed to have become human only later as time progressed from the time of Paul’s writings.
In other words, Doherty is using his own theory to support his theory.

Doherty wrote: “That Paul was not widely known by the Christian world as a whole is something scholars have recently come to realize” (TJP:271).

Unfortunately Doherty provided no references to which scholars have come to realize that Paul was not widely known by the Christian world as a whole.
However, contrary to Doherty’s view, Paul was indeed widely known by the Christian world, and rather early at that.
In fact, Paul was known as early as around 95 C.E. by Clement of Rome in his epistle known as 1 Clement.
Bart Ehrman wrote: “The letter is generally recognized as having been written near the end of the first century, possibly around 95 CE during the reign of Domitian…” (LS:168).
Clement of Rome mentioned the martyrdoms of both Paul and Peter in 1 Clement 5:2-7:

“Because of jealousy and envy the greatest and most upright pillars were persecuted, and they struggled in the contest even to death. We should set before our eyes the good apostles. There is Peter, who because of unjust jealously bore up under hardships not just once or twice, but many times; and having thus borne his witness he went to the place of glory that he deserved. Because of jealousy and strife Paul pointed the way to the prize for endurance. Seven times he bore chains; he was sent into exile and stoned; he served as a herald in both the East and the West; and he received the noble reputation for his faith. He taught righteousness to the whole world, and came to the limits of the West, bearing his witness before the rulers. And so he was set free from this world and transported up to the holy place, having become the greatest example of endurance” (LS:170).

Paul was also written about by other Church Fathers:

Ignatius of Antioch wrote the following around 105 C.E.: “I do not, as Peter and Paul, issue commandments unto you. They were apostles” (ADOECB:502).
Polycarp wrote the following around 135 C.E.: “For neither I, nor any other such one, can come up to the wisdom of the blessed and glorified Paul” (ADOECB:502).
Polycarp also wrote the following around 135 C.E.: “You have seen before your eyes-not only in the case of the blessed Ignatius, Zosimus, and Rufus-but also in others among yourselves, and in Paul himself, and the rest of the apostles….They are in their due place in the presence of the Lord, with whom they also suffered” (ADOECB:502).

Doherty wrote: “Luke’s disregard of the epistles and ignorance of their content would have created the other striking feature of Acts: the contradiction of so much of its details with the information contained in Paul’s own writings” (TJP:271).

Dr. Ben Witherington III has argued that the claim that the events about Paul’s life as portrayed in the book of Acts is incompatible with information contained in Paul’s letters has been greatly exaggerated.
Dr. Witherington III wrote the following:

“We have four sources about Paul: (1) the Paul of the undisputed letters, (2) the Paul of the later canonical Paulines, if they are by a later hand, (3) the Paul of Acts and (4) the Paul of the later extracanonical sources, such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Comparing the portraits of Paul that emerge from these four sources of information would be a useful exercise. It is my judgment, however, that ‘major differences’ among the Pauls found in these four sources have been considerably overblown” (TPQ:9).
Dr. Witherington III continued: “As for the Paul of Acts versus the Paul of the letters, I have argued elsewhere that the former is on the whole quite compatible with the Paul of the undisputed letters-especially given that Acts focuses on Paul the missionary and his efforts in that role, not Paul the pastor of Christian churches, who is always to the fore in the letters (with the possible exception of Romans). It is not an accident that the one place in Acts where Paul sounds most like the Paul of the letters is his one speech in that entire book that is specifically addressed to his converts-the Miletus speech of Acts 20” (TPQ:9-10).

John A.T. Robinson wrote:

“The discrepancies with Pauline teaching have in my judgment been much exaggerated, and room must be allowed for two facts. (a) Acts is presenting Paul for the most part addressing those outside the church, in contrast with the epistles which deal with concerns between Christians. The only speech in Acts addressed by Paul to Christians is that to the elders at Miletus in 20.17-38, which we have already seen contains some remarkable parallels with the later Pauline writings. In Rom. 1:18-2:16 Paul shows how far he is prepared to go in accepting pagan presuppositions in addressing those outside the law; there is no fundamental contrast with the speech put into his mouth at Athens in Acts 17:22-31” (RNT:87).

Charles Talbert provided some examples of responses to the claim that the contents of Acts contradicts a vast quantity of information in Paul’s epistles. One of them is provided below:

“1) In Paul’s letters, his ministry includes miracles (2 Cor. 12:12; Rom. 15:19; 1 Cor. 2:1-4; Gal. 3:1-5; I Thess. 1:5). In Acts, Paul’s ministry also involves suffering (Acts 14:5, 22; 16:19-40; 17:5-9, 13; 18:12-17; 20:1, 3; 21:4, 11-14, 27-36)” (RLAIIMM:213).

Charles Talbert also wrote: “In this appendix, Harnack gives thirty-nine examples of facts in Acts 1-14 that can be confirmed from the Pauline epistles. A few examples will suffice:

(a) Jerusalem, not some town in Galilee, is the seat of the primitive community (Acs passim; Gal 2; Rom 15).
(b) Christian communities were also in existence outside Jerusalem, especially in Judea, at a very early date (Acts 9:31; 1 Thess 2:14; Gal. 1:22).
(c) The churches of Jerusalem and Judea had to endure persecution at the hands of their compatriots (Acts passim; 1 Thess 2:14).
(d) Barnabas is an important missionary to the Gentiles from the Jerusalem church, especially as regards Antioch of Syria (Acts 11:22-26; Gal 2:13). He worked side by side with Paul (Acts 11:25-11:22-26; Gal 2:13).
(e) Baptism was an act of entry into the Christian community (Acts 2:38; 8:12; 1 Cor 1:14; Rom 6:1-4). It was in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38; 1 Cor 1:13).
(f) The resurrection of Jesus was at the core of Christian proclamation (Acts 1:22; 2:32; 3:15; 5:30; 1 Cor 15:14, 17).
(g) Paul fled secretly from Damascus after escaping over the wall (Acts 9:23-25; 2 Cor 11:32-33)” (RLAIIMM:207).

Dr. Ben Witherington III offered an example of how the book of Acts is used for obtaining information related to the information contained in Paul’s letters:

“About Paul’s relationships with his coworkers Timothy and Titus we learn a few new things from the Pastorals, but again, nothing so novel that we could not have gathered most of it from the earlier Paulines with a little help from some traditions in Acts” (TPQ:10).

Joseph B. Tyson provided another example of how the book of Acts is used to date the composition of Paul’s epistles:

“Most scholars call attention to a kind of conformity between this letter and Acts, and they maintain that 1 Thessalonians was written in about the year 51. In narrating the second missionary journey, Luke traces Paul’s geographical movements from Philippi to Athens in general conformity with those given in the letter. So, if we employ Acts in the task of dating 1 Thessalonians, we would say that Paul was in Corinth at the time the letter was written, and, as we have seen, he was there from 51-53. Knox has shown, however, that nothing in the letter itself would force us to accept this date. He in convinced that the letter was written during Paul’s earlier period of activity-between 40-51-when he first visited Thessalonica” (TNTEC:318).

Doherty wrote: “Some of the details concerning Paul which Luke provided have been judged likely to be fiction: that he was a trained rabbi who studied under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), that he was a Roman citizen-which would make the final quarter of Acts pure invention, since Paul is sent to Rome as a result of his claim of Roman citizenship and the granting of his appeal to Caesar” (TJP:272).

Doherty provided no reasons for why these details concerning Paul which Luke provided have been judged likely to be fiction.
Many scholars actually deem the information that Doherty classified as fiction as being valid.
Dr. Ben Witherington III, for example, wrote the following regarding Paul being a Roman citizen:

“In terms of general historical probabilities, we do know of examples of Jews from before the middle of the first century A.D. (after which citizenship seems to have become more widespread) who were Roman citizens” (TPQ:70).

Dr. Witherington III continued:

“Also, it was perfectly possible for a person to hold more than one citizenship at a time, so we cannot dismiss the possibility of Paul’s Roman citizenship simply because he was a citizen of Tarsus (Acts 21:39)” (TPQ:70).

Doherty wrote: “As for charismatic activities, Paul provides no support for the idea that he performed miracles on the scale of those described in Acts, much less raised anyone from the dead (20:9-12)” (TJP:272).

Although Paul does not specify the type of miracles he performed in his epistles, Paul does mention the fact that Paul performed what the receivers of his epistles considered to be miracles.

Romans 15:18-19 states: “For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.”
2 Corinthians 12:12 states: “The indeed signs of the apostle were wrought among you in all endurance by signs both and by wonders and by powerful deeds.”

Paul most likely did indeed perform what the receivers of this epistle considered to be signs, wonders, and powerful deeds, because if Paul was lying about doing all of these amazing feats among them, Paul would have lost all of his credibility in their sight.
It would be ironic if Paul was lying, considering that Paul was trying to defend his title as an apostle by reminding the church at Corinth that he performed signs, wonders, and powerful deeds among them.

Further, according to Paul, miraculous abilities were not limited to Paul himself. Apparently members of the various churches Paul wrote to were capable of performing perceived miracles:

1 Corinthians 12:28-29 states: “And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues. All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?” (NASB).

Also, notice that powers of healing are mentioned within these verses.

Thus, Doherty’s conclusion that “Paul provides no support for the idea that he performed miracles on the scale of those described in Acts” is not supported by the contents of Paul’s epistles at all.

Doherty wrote: “Much of the Pauline chronology of Acts is incompatible with Paul’s movements as constructed from the letters” (TJP:272).
Doherty continued: “Acts’ repeated portrayal of Paul proceeding first to Jewish synagogues at each center he visits and there preaching his message unsuccessfully, has no support in the epistles, where Paul’s preaching to the Jews seems to lie entirely in his past” (TJP:272).

Acts 13:46 states: “And speaking boldly-Paul and Barnabas-and said: To you it was necessary firstly to be spoken the word-of God; since ye put away it and not worthy to judge yourselves of the eternal life, behold we turn to the nations (Gentiles).”
Consider the following quotation taken from Paul’s epistle to the Romans in relation to Acts 13:46:

Romans 1:16 à “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; power for of God it is to salvation to everyone believing; to Jew firstly and to Greek.”
Thus, despite Doherty’s claim that “Paul’s preaching to the Jews seems to lie entirely in his past,” Paul is still presenting the Gospel to Jews even though Paul is also presenting the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Doherty wrote: “Earlier writers who speak of Paul nowhere refer to the long sea voyage with its dramatic shipwreck” (TJP:272).

It is irrelevant whether or not earlier writers who speak of Paul refer to the long sea voyage with its dramatic shipwreck since Paul himself refers to being in danger at sea and shipwrecked.
Paul wrote the following:

“Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea” (2 Corinthians 11:25).

Doherty wrote: “Thus, Acts opens a window, not onto earliest Christianity, but onto the Christian ecclesiastical movement centered in Rome during the mid-second century, one which was seeking to establish a new orthodoxy based on the historical Jesus recently generated by the Gospels” (TJP:274).

The eminent atheist philosopher Dr. Antony Flew holds the extreme opposite of Earl Doherty regarding depicting what the early Jerusalem Christians believed. Dr. Flew stated:
- “Acts is clearly the very best thing we have got about the early church” (DJRFD:110).