Corpus-Paul

["Elli Elliott" <ellielliott AT email.msn.com>]

Thank you, John Hurd, for reiterating the basic issues in using Acts as "the
clothesline," as you put it.  (And didn't someone do this same thing once
already on this same thread?)

I would only add that there are additional difficulties in using Acts as
primary.  Besides it being later, etc., it also glosses over many issues
that are found in the letters in the interest of an idealistic telling of
the "legends of the founders."  In his letters, for example, Paul presents
the trips to Jerusalem as visits he made from his real base of operations in
the places where he was starting churches.  He certainly does not view
himself as making missionary journeys out from Jerusalem.  The notion of
neat and tidy "missionary journeys" as presented in Acts is IMHO suspect.  I
think it's far more likely that he traveled around in Anatolia and cities
near the Aegean and started groups/churches, some of which survived and we
know about and some of which didn't.  He may have made a total of three
trips TO Jerusalem.

This makes it harder to develop a chronology, I realize, but better to start
with the evidence in the letters and external evidence than material from
more than a generation later that is clearly organized according to
theological purposes and coherence in story-telling, not chronological
purposes.

From Galatians it would appear, also, that the conflict with Peter and
others at Jerusalem and Antioch was lot less amiable than Acts would have us
believe.

Elli Elliott (elli AT ria.net)
Pastor, Zion United Church of Christ, Sterling, Colorado
PhD, New Testament & Early Christianity, Loyola University Chicago