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corpus-paul - Re: Acts and Paul's relationship to Jerusalem

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  • From: Richard Fellows <rfellows AT intergate.ca>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Acts and Paul's relationship to Jerusalem
  • Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 13:37:49 -0800


Zeba Crook wrote:

>Phrases like "preaching to the converted" and "it's not news"
>are not rhetorical tactics; they are the measured words of a
>new contributor expressing *the scholarly consensus.*

To me these phrases seemed to imply a unanimity rather than just a majority
view. I took them to be equivalent to phrases like 'Everybody knows
that...' (used as a debating tactic). But I may have misread Mesfin's
intentions, so I will not press the point.

Mesfin wrote:
>However, my suggestion is
>a methodological consideration that all readers of the Pauline corpus can
>not ignore.

Mesfin, your point has been made recently by John Hurd. You may like to
look at my response of 25th Feb.

>The Lukan "Jerusalem motif" is quite evident everywhere in both Luke's
>Gospel and Acts. First, in the prologue of the Gospel, Luke associates the
>identity of Jesus with Judea- in Jerusalem- and (Temple, Simeon, Anna,
>etc.). Near the end of the Gospel the Lukan Jesus instructs the disciples to
>wait for the promise in "Jerusalem." Since the center of Israel is
>Jerusalem, Luke needed to establish the connection of Christianity in or
>near Jerusalem in his first 7 chapters of Acts. In Chapter 7 the long
>theological speech of St. Stephen followed by his death and at the closing
>of the chapter the Lukan Paul comes to the picture.

Perhaps I have missed something, but I don't quite see how all this
supports your hypothesis that Luke went out of his way to bridge the gap
between Jewish and Gentile Christianity by closely connecting Paul with
Jerusalem.

> Then throughout the book
>we read that Paul needed a Jerusalem visit every time he made a "missionary
>journey."

No, it is not Jerusalem, but Antioch, which commissions Paul's missionary
expeditions in Acts (see Acts 13.1-3; 14.26; 15.35-36; 18.18,22-23). None
of Paul's missionary journeys in Acts begin in Jerusalem.

> Luke labors to connect Gentile
>Christianity with Jerusalem for acceptance.

Could you give some examples?

Richard Fellows
Vancouver





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