Notes Critiqued:

• Doherty wrote: “Scholars claim that there is one passage in the New Testament epistles (though they admit that it is only here in the entire corpus) which contains a clear reference to the End-time coming of Jesus as a second coming: Hebrews 9:27-28. But is such a reference to be found even here?...If the ek deuterou in verse 28 means ‘a second time,’ the parallel with verse 27 is destroyed” (TJP:334).
  • Doherty failed to examine verse 28 in the broader context of Hebrews chapter 9, such as Hebrews 9:26-28.
  • Verse 28 parallels verse 26 perfectly since verse 26 states: “…But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
  • Verse 28 states Jesus will “…appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
  • Thus, Doherty’s objection that “…the parallel with verse 27 is destroyed..” is irrelevant since verse 26 is paralleled to verse 28.
    
• Doherty wrote: “In fact, certain preserved fragments suggest that earlier Jewish-Christian sects did indeed envision a heavenly origin for Christ, though not as a Son of God. ‘They (the Ebionites) say that he was not begotten of God the Father, but created as one of the archangels…that he rules over the angels and all the creatures of the Almighty.’ (Epiphanius, Refutation of All Heresies, 30.16,4; see E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, p. 158.)” (TJP:339).
  • Go here for a general introduction to who the Ebionites were and what the Ebionites believed.
  • Why would Doherty deem the fragments Epiphanius quotes to be true?
  • Elsewhere Doherty wrote: “Africanus comes to us only second-hand. No case can be made based on references like this, and it is a mark of how thin the evidence really is that they would be considered any evidentiary value” (TJP:203).
  • Doherty seems to display a double standard in this instance, because Doherty considers second-hand information to be valid in the case of Epiphanius, who wrote in the fourth century C.E. However, Doherty does not consider second-hand information to be valid in the case of other Christian writers apparently quoting earlier writers, such as Africanus.
  • Doherty should conclude that the information Epiphanius quoted is not reliable since this information is “only second-hand” if Doherty is to be logically consistent in his historical methodology.
  • Thus, Doherty has not provided any genuine evidence, by his own standards, that any “Jewish-Christians” “envisioned a heavenly origin for Christ.” At most Doherty would have provided evidence that Epiphanius, who wrote in the fourth century C.E., claimed some “Jewish-Christians” believed there was a heavenly origin for Christ.
• Doherty relies on Philo’s Allegorical Interpretation of the Law 1, 31, translated by C.H. Dodd, to argue that Paul’s “heavenly man,” Jesus, existed only in another dimension. (TJP:345). However, this article provides excellent scholarly background information on the text that Doherty rests his case upon. This article indicates that Doherty has misinterpreted Philo’s ideas.
• Doherty wrote: “Apollonius of Tyana was a neo-Pythagorean who lived until about the year 98. He was said to have been sired by the Egyptian god Proteus, to have preached the one true God, performed miracles, healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead. Following his own death, it was claimed he had himself risen from the dead, appeared to his followers to discuss immortality with them, and made a bodily ascent into heaven. The satirist Lucian in the middle of the 2 nd century makes a brief reference to him. His ‘biography’-in which it is impossible to separate fact from legend-was written around 220 by the Sophist Flavius Philostratus. See Philostratus: Life of Apollonius, trans. And ed. By C.P. Jones, G.W. Bowerstock (1970); and The Life and Times of Apollonius of Tyana, by Charles P. Eels (1967)” (TJP:355).
• N.T. Wright informs the reader that Apollonius of Tyana was not believed to have risen from the dead.
• Lucian’s reference to Apollonius of Tyana
• For an evaluation of the validity of the accounts of Apollonius of Tyana.
• Doherty wrote: “It is ironic that the Old Testament contains nothing about evil demons…” (TJP:355).
  • This is simply not true. The Old Testament does refer to demons in several texts:
  • Deuteronomy 32:17 states: “They sacrificed to demons who were not God, to gods whom they have not known, new gods who came lately, whom your fathers did not dread.
  • Psalm 106:37 states: “They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons.”
    
• Doherty wrote the following regarding the “we” passages in Acts( 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16) : “The puzzle was solved when Vernon Robbins, following earlier hints by scholars such as H.J. Cadbury, made a splendidly simple observation (see Perspectives in Luke-Acts, p. 215-229). All such passages in Acts begin with and most encompass sea voyages. This led Robbins to a survey of the depiction of sea voyages in ancient literature where he found that ‘One of the features of (sea voyage narratives in Greek and Roman literature) is the presence of first personal plural narration. Undoubtedly the impetus for this is sociological: on a sea voyage a person has accepted a setting with other people, and cooperation among all the members is essential for a successful voyage. Therefore, at the point where the voyage begins, the narration moves to first person plural.’ Luke is employing a common stylistic device of Hellenistic literature” (TJP:360-361).
• In response to this proposal originally made by Vernon Robbins Raymond E. Brown wrote the following: “In an oft-cited article V.K. Robbins offered examples of ‘we’ used in such sea travels in contemporary Greco-Roman literature. However, Fitzmyer has examined the examples and found them wanting; and it is far from clear that they explain satisfactorily the usage of Acts. If ‘we’ is purely conventional, why does this pronominal usage not appear throughout all the sea-journeying in Acts instead of in only a few sections separated by years in the narrative? Moreover, in the first ‘we’ passage (Acts 16:10-17), Paul is on land at Philippi in all but two verses. (See also 20:7-12; 21:15-18 within the second and third ‘we’ passages.) Finally, one could argue that ‘we’ in Acts should be related to the ‘us’ in Luke 1:1-2, which has nothing to do with a sea voyage.”
• Raymond E. Brown continues: “A simpler explanation regards the ‘we’ as autobiographical, so that the ‘we’ passages constitute a type of diary describing moments when the writer was with Paul. Normally, then, it would follow that the writer of the diary was the author of the whole Book of Acts, especially since the general style and interests of the ‘we’ passages are those found elsewhere in the book. Nevertheless, scholars who cannot reconcile the picture of Paul in Acts with the ‘real’ Paul revealed by his own letters have proposed that the author got the diary of a true companion of Paul and included sections of it at appropriate moments in the narrative he built around them. Before resorting to such a cumbersome solution we need to examine how irreconcilable Acts and the Pauline letters really are.”

• John A.T. Robinson wrote: “Moreover, the style of the ‘we’ sections of Acts (16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16) is, as Harnack showed, the style par excellence of the writer of the whole when freely composing in his own hand. There is no real ground for arguing that he is here using a source or traveling diary other than his own.”