The Acts of Apostles Was Composed Before 100AD

I thank Con for her opening arguments.RulesAnnanicole violated the rules of this debate by rebutting in the opening round “Round 2: Opening arguments (no rebuttals)”, however… being a nice guy I will let this slide.CorrectionI did mix up Luke & Acts in 1:1-3, in any case Con and I are not in disagreement here, Luke comes before Acts, and both share common authorship. Thus none of my arguments are affected.RebuttalsCon’s positive case comes in two parts: 1. Internal Evidence regarding the Apostle Paul 2. External Evidence of Clement of Rome Internal Evidence regarding PaulCon’s arguments regarding the internal evidence clearly mandate a pre-70AD hypothesis, otherwise her arguments from silence, and references to Caesar, etc. make absolutely no sense. However, a pre-70AD date is impossible historically if: 1. Con doesn’t challenge the common authorship and Luke’s historical priority over Acts 2. Con doesn’t challenge that Luke 21 is an explicit reference to the Olivet Discourse, an event that with virtual historical certainty took place in 70AD If both of these points are correct, then the only way the author could have written the Olivet discourse is if the chapter was a later addition or the author had some divine foresight. The evidence is against the former, there is nothing to suggest Luke 21 is anything other than original to the Gospel, and the latter is a priori highly unlikely if we assume the principle of uniformity of nature.[http://en.wikipedia.org...] The past is physically like the present, and hence foresight of the sort required for Luke is impossible. Con attempts an ad hominum attack by stating I am biased, but if Con is going to approach this subject honestly, then she must adopt historical methods, which prioritise explanations by their prior likelihood. Thus Con needs to demonstrate that prophecy of this form is a likely explanation before one approaches the evidence, this could be done by showing that prophecies do occur today, and their rate is above the expected noise level. She has spectacularly failed to do this.Simply put, no such event occurs verifiably today, despite there clearly being many prophetic claims today. I only need to cite the vast number of (failed) doomsday prophecies to make my case to this end.Thus we have good reason to believe that even if prophecy were possible, it would be an extremely rare & unlikely event since the number of confirmed prophetic claims vastly outweighs the number of “genuine” prophetic claim. Thus on every single route of historical investigation, a pre-70AD date is impossible and thus Con’s entire argument from internal evidence is moot.So, the question is, which is more likely: 1. Some form of post-diction which is well-within our background knowledge of possible explanations, and justifiable with theological motivations 2. Some person had some supernatural foresight into the future, of which no similar occurance can be verified today To the historian, the answer is obvious“Dinner, Movie, and Sex - But Skip the Orgasm”Con’s argument is essentially: 1. If the Book of Acts was written post-100AD, then it would contain further details of Paul2. It does not contain further details of PaulC. Therefore the Book of Acts was not written post-100AD Pro’s arguments for the first premise of this argument are left drastically wanting. She needs to actually affirm why we would expect the author of Acts to include these events. Also she ignores other explanations, for example hypothesis for the Gospel of Mark’s abrupt ending start as simple as a “missing page” in the Gospel. Even assuming the premise it was a historical account yields other explanations, such as Luke simply not knowing that happened to Paul (since he was imprisoned), etc. Similar mechanisms are easily possible for the Book of Acts, the explanation would be within background knowledge, and wouldn’t need to propose a physically untenable notion of prophecy to remain intellectually consistent. Con completely skips over these, since she is presupposing the premise that the book was composed virtually in real-time, and if her only argument for it being so are arguments from silence then the weight of my arguments from silence from both external and physical evidence carry much more objective weight.External EvidenceAttributions of AuthorshipNote that even if we accept all of Con’s dubious presuppositions, we are supposed to believe that Iranaeus, writing from 180 AD actually knew who composed these Gospels, when every single verifiable person before them did not cite any author names. Not Justin Martyr, Clement, Polycarp, Papias, NT Writers themselves, not the NT documents themselves with the exception of Paul actually allude to any name.Thus, we have serious reason to doubt that Iranaeus actually knew who authored several of the documents he claims to know. This on top of the fact that all of the Gospels are internally anonymous third person accounts (something Con values given her “we” and “us” argument), and the fact that four to seven of the Pauline Epistles are unauthentic leaves not much we can agree with Irenaeus on regarding attribution at all.Furthermore, Luke and Paul, assuming traditional attribution is correct, have inexplicable inconsistencies in their narratives, to quote Britannica:“That an actual companion of Paul writing about his mission journeys could be in so much disagreement with Paul (whose theology is evidenced in his letters) about fundamental issues such as the Law, his apostleship, and his relationship to the Jerusalem church is hardly conceivable”The Book of Acts portrays Paul as a miracle worker, yet such references are absent from the Pauline letters (e.g. Acts 13:6-12, 14:8-10, 20:7-2 etc.), and most importantly doesn’t reference Paul as an apostle, which is one of Paul’s most important theological positions.[ http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net...]Establishment of PriorityMoreover, Con does not establish historical priority of 1 Clement over Luke-Acts, thus until he does, this argument is unsound. Does Clement quote Luke-Acts, or does Luke-Acts quote Clement. Do they quote a common derivative source. The same applies to Polycarp, to which the “quoted” passage is less than impressive. How on earth is that supposed to be a convincing quote? The parallel is so vague that it could easily have come for another work, or have come from intermediary sources. Moreover ti doesn’t establish priority even if it is a quote.Clement of RomeI will address this in two parts:1. Traditional Attribution of 1 Clement to ClementCon gives absolutely no reason to believe that Clement composed this epistle, and her entire argument is unsound until she does so. The epistle is internally anonymous and there is no basis for this attribution assumption, since the internal and external evidence have no specific interpretation. [http://tinyurl.com...]2. Specificity to ActsThe parallel to Luke also exists within Marcion 6:38 (thus it does not establish a quoted Luke over Marcion), and the Parallel to acts is unimpressive, as it is both short and variant from the “quote”:“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)“And ye were all lowly in mind and free from arrogance, y ielding rather than claiming submission, more glad to give than to receive, and content with the provisions which God supplieth.“ (1 Clem 2:1)Given just 5 of 25 words parallel here, this is a weak quote at best, and certainly does not establish priority in any meaningful sense.“We” and “us”The vast bulk of the Book of Acts is not written first person, including portions which portray Luke's presence.[Acts 16:10–17, 20:5–15, 21:1–18, and 27:1–28:16] Thus, it seems much more likely that these are a separate account/writing that was later incorperated, since we would expect much more first-person accounting than is observed. Also, Luke never claims to be an eyewitness to any of the events he purports, and he is explicit in his prologues"Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us" (Luke 1:1-2) Nowhere does he mention in either account that he witnessed anything.SummaryI will defend/bolster my original case in the following round. So far, half of Con's case is physically impossible, and the other half is based on the flimsiest of evidence.