The Acts of Apostles Was Composed Before 100AD

I will try to summarise both my positive and negative cases in this round. I don’t particularly appreciate Anna’s attempts to arouse ridicule and emotion with her previous round. This is a debate, thus arguments need to remain objective, and free from emotional biases and inputs. Calling my arguments “splattershot” etc. is simply a case of Pro superficially avoiding the point that was made.Positive CaseJustin MartyrBoom! Pro has struck a bullet with Luke 22:44-45… or has she? Ironically the only “Luke-exclusive” verse she has managed to conjure is one that is held is serious scholarly disrepute."These verses are absent from some of the oldest and best witnesses, including the majority of the Alexandrian manuscripts. It is striking to note that the earliest witnesses attesting the verses are three Church fathers – Justin, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus – each of whom uses the verses in order to counter Christological views that maintained that Jesus was not a full human who experienced the full range of human sufferings. It may well be that the verses were added to the text for just this reason, in opposition to those who held to a docetic Christology"Our earliest and best manuscripts of Luke, including P75 (175-225 AD), P69 (~250AD), Codex Vaticinus (325-350AD), and Codex Alexandrius (400-440) all omit these verses. These verses are no longer regarded as original to the Gospel in any shape or form, moreover these same verses have been interpolated into Matthew in miniscule family 13.[1] Mentions of this verse do not start until Sinaiticus which itself was marked by correctors at that time as doubtful.Most likely explanation? Justin Martyr was not quoting (and could not have been quoting) Luke, since the verse did not exist in his Gospel at that time. Given Luke is 25% longer than Marcion, the fact the only verse she can render is historically dubious. These verses are a later interpolation which eventually became the textus receptus (which is what Pro is using given her quotes from the KJV, which lacks any application of modern scholarship).While I regard his explanation of these verses as cogent, I do not need to go that far to discredit Pro’s argument.SummaryPro drops my manuscript arguments from silence, and Papias. Pro also fails with Justin Martyr, despite us having good reason to believe he would have included Luke or Acts exclusive quotes if they existed at the time. Her only substantive argument are from a Clementine quote (more one this later). If my rebuttal to that is cogent, then we have a very strong argument from silence against 1st century authorship of Luke.Marcion PriorityPro drops the bulk of my arguments for Marcion priority, including my argument form accumulation, and her defence to the Luke-response theory I can only state “I do not know how to refute an incredulous stare”. If the Marcion hypothesis is correct then it would be unsurprising, since he used Marcion virtually verbatim, and also Gospel of James. Thus the source hypothesis follows rather naturally for Acts. Pro also drops the lengthening of verses which would have aided his religion, including the parable of the vineyard, which makes absolutely no sense if Luke came before Marcion.Pro’s only defence against this are polemecists writing in the third century with docetic works. Pro argues that Iraeneus’ attributions of author should carry weight, but ignores my argument from silence on this matter, and the fact he blatantly gets several other attributions completely wrong. Assuming Irenaeus’s attributions leads to absurd conclusions (such that I have pointed out with Luke & Paul being their attributed people).Josephus & LukePro drops my arguments that there exist many strong parallels between the works of both, so I now only need to affirm priority here. Pro also drops my argument from Josephus’ childhood story to help establish historical priority.Mentions of ChristNote that even if Pro’s assertion of this passage is correct then it has negligible impact on my case (since it’s not necessarily from Luke he derives that). Furthermore the rules state that arguments from authority will carry no weight, yet this is Pro’s only defence of the passage’s authenticity.As for the passage, my argument is that it is a later interpolation, the reason being that earliest Christian sources do not quote this, most strikingly is Origen (184-253 AD), who wrote ~250k words in defence of Christianity, quoting from Josephus extensively, doesn’t quote this passage.[2] This makes absolutely no sense if we assume the passage is original to Josephus since it would have immediately made his case for him. The earliest quote of this passage is from Eusebius (260-339 AD), who himself is a known forger.Theophilus Of AntiochThis is again unsurprising given the nature of how the author of Luke uses his sources (even if we assume Pro’s position to be correct, this fact still stands). The fact that the level of use of “us” and “we” is relatively minor compared to the bulk of the narration really doesn’t raise many problems to the Theophilus of Antioch hypothesis. A parallel argument can be ran that whoever it is addressed to is already going to know about the other orthodox writings, thus a plagiarised source would be seemingly unnecessary. Clearly given the Gospel & Books own theology and intentions, the idea of completely honest history is not upheld, nor was it intended to be, facts were changed for theological purposes.[3]Negative CaseInternal EvidenceTerminus Ad QuoI reiterate what I said in the third round, all speculation of a travelling companion of Paul is for nothing if such an even is essentially impossible. The terminus ad quo is at least 70 AD, thus any argument which mandates an earlier date is doomed to failure.Pro attempts to dismiss my argument here as philosophical, ignoring that the entire process of inference and reason is grounded in philosophy. Without a good heuristic framework, then one cannot make reliable inferences. Our most successful framework for deducing reality is abductive reasoning, from which the scientific and historical methods are derived. Pro’s arguments require ignoring these highly successful routes of enquiry.Pro drops that she needs to break the uniformity of nature principle (unless Pro can demonstrate that precise premonitions occur today, which she cannot, and even if they could occur today, that they do so at a non-negligible rate). Note my framework does not rule premonitions/prophecy as impossible a priori, it states that even if it were possible, it would have a very low a priori likelihood of being the correct explanation. Thus other more simple and mundane explanations are far more likely (e.g. Luke died, got lazy, etc. etc. etc.) Pro attempts to reduce these mundane explanations to incredulity, but ignores that I was drawing a parallel to her alternative, and what is more likely in principleTravelling Companion of Paul in ~64 ADVirtually all of Pro’s arguments here are arguments from silence and traditional attribution. I am not impressed. Moreover, Pro doesn’t make the necessary justification as to why a silence about certain facts would not be expected if it was not written contemporary. Without this justification, her argument from silence is an inherently weak one. Pro can Gish Gallop things that are not mentioned within the text, but she will need to include good reasons why the author would include such events. Given that Pro cannot even make sound inferences as to the Book’s intended purpose (evidenced by my arguments that Luke is a response to Marcionism), I have no idea how Pro can make good inferences at to what we would expect to see in the Book of Acts, thus all her arguments from internal silence are unimpressive.Again, what is Pro’s explicit argument for an early dating here, why would we expect a story set about the early Apostles contain later references. For the stronger claim, why would we always expect later references in later written stories, the argument that pseudoepigraphy did not occur, given that we have numerous examples of such within just the NT canon, is unimpressive.Us & We PassagesPro already must concede that Luke is no stranger to using sources verbatim, since Luke must at the very least depend on one of the other two synoptic Gospels, Mark and/or Matthew for material. Thus it would be unsurprising for the author of Luke-Acts to redact existing sources at that time, including the “us” and “we” portions. Other possibilities are as a deliberate stylistic device as a deliberate deception, which again would not be surprising due to what we already know from pseudoepigraphy and within the “anti-Marcionite” framework.[4][5]External Evidence1 ClementPro drops that the letter is internally anonymous, and again so what if it refers to the Neroian/Dominitian persecution? Reference to something =/= it’s contemporaneous to something. Pro’s only argument for authorship here are orthodox motivated, polemicists that could only have been writing a century after this fact (assuming early authorship)?I think we can already scratch this argument of Pro’s. Pro is blatantly shifting the burden of proof (remember, BoP is shared in this debate, so Pro needs to uphold her own arguments) by assuming traditional authorship of this epistle. I already made the argument that attributed authorship (especially from religiously motivated apologists such as Tertullian, Irenaeus, etc.) is problematic, i.e. with at least four of the Pauline epistles and the other Gospels falsely attributed which Pro has dropped, and even 2 Clement (!).[6]SummaryNot much to summarise here. To voters, ensure you vote based upon the preponderance of the evidence as required in the rules. I thank Anna for a fun last debate on DDO. References1. http://goo.gl...2. http://goo.gl...3. B.D.Erhman “Orthodox Corruption of Scripture” p64.4. http://goo.gl...5. B.D.Erhman “Forged” p207.6. http://tinyurl.com...