The Acts of Apostles Was Composed Before 100AD

Thanks Pro.PrefaceI will be defending my positive case in this round, however I will also address a few superficial points of Pro’s.Positive CaseAddress to TheophilusNote the scale of the work that the Gospel of Luke, and Book of Acts would have required. It would make absolutely no sense to compose such a work (with Acts being a much more original undertaking than the Gospel) and send it to an absolute nobody. The simplest and cleanest explanation is it is addressed to Theophilus of Antioch. Pro makes no attempt to discredit this outside of a bare assertion, especially given I have contrasted two other addresses to “most excellent”, also well-known positions of power.Furthermore, Theophilus of Antioch would provide a significant amount of explanatory power:1. Anti-Marcionite theology – which would corroborate Luke’s anti-Marcionite style in Acts, and also added Jewish references/heritage.2. Theophilus of Antioch didn’t seem to know about Jesus in his early life, writing over 29,000 words with only passing references to (unnamed) Gospels, such as his version of the trinity “In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man. Wherefore also on the fourth day the lights were made.” [1]Marcion PriorityJust to clarify for readers, Luke predates Acts, thus if Marcion predates (has historical priority over) Luke, then it also has priority over acts. Pro has not challenged my argument that the Gospel of Marcion (Gospel of the LORD) is a late composition, hence I only need to defend Marcionion priority to negate.Pro’s only defence to this largely comes from assertions from Tertullian, however Tertullian’s line of reasoning is found with him performing textual criticism on the two texts, the work of which si extant today in his five works against Marcionism, which is inherently polemic.[2] IF we accept the position that the Gospel of Luke was written early and Marcion was written ~120-130AD, then Tertullian is writing of events he is many decades removed from being contemporary (he was born in 160AD), thus he is unlikely to have reliable second hand evidence. His first hand evidence from his textual criticism I have argued against at length in my opening.Other Marcion OmissionsAnother major omission is the “Parable of the Tenets” (Luke 20:9-20), to which is anti-semetic, especially in Luke 20:19 where the parable in all three synoptics are clearly against Jewish leaders. If Marcion came after Luke it would be absurd to think he would omit this passage, as it directly supports his theology.GeneologyPro’s positive argument for existence of Jewish records prove nothing, since they presuppose that the Gospels were complete honest historical documents. A position that Pro has both not supported, and is flat out falsified by the level of disagreement within the synoptics. Details were changed left right and centre, apparently largely for theological reasons. Thus a complete fabrication isn’t particularly surprising (much like virtually all pseudoepigraph literature).[3]Argument From SilencePro has completely dropped these do far. Note that most of pro’s positive arguments are themselves arguments from silence. I admitted outright that arguments from silence are problematic, however I gave reasons to believe why my argument from silence is unusually strong. Pro’s argument from silence however is spectacularly lacking in the reasoning for:1. Why we would strongly expect the omitted material to be included2. Any abductive assessment of the early hypothesisAll of Pro’s arguments for #1 have been implicit, and rather spectacularly underwhelming. I gave a few examples off the top of my head, which are simple in nature as to why a writing would omit those portions, including the very basic “no reason to include that material for the purpose of the composition”. Even sheer laziness, or the death of the uthor would make for an explanation orders of magnitude more plausible than what would otherwise entail “a real prophecy occurred”. Thus Pro also drops point #2, it’s abductively absurd.Luke & JosephusPro seems to advocate for Lukan priority over Josephus, moreover the disagreements are likely born of theological motivations. Josephus simply does not have this level of motivation in his works, given they are of a historical nature, thus it doesn’t make sense for Josephus to cite Luke-Acts, which is a clearly a theological composition (especially given Josephus is himself Jewish). Furthermore IF Josephus had access to Luke-Acts, then we would expect at least some references to Jesus/Christ, even in passing/informative. However no such passage authentically exists in Josephus.Moreover, the quantity of parallels rules a common source unlikely, no such source is extant today either, and Josephus’ works were clearly prominent after publication. Furthermore, other parallels make no sense if Josephus used Luke as a source, for example the parallel of “The Boy Jesus at the Temple” Luke 2:42 is a parallel with Josephus’ own childhood story:“And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom…After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answer” (Luke 2:42)“Moreover, when I was a child, and about fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to learning; on which account the high priests and principal men of the city came then frequently to me together, in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law.”(Josephus' Life 1.2 8)Why on earth would Josephus base his own childhood story on a shared source, or Luke…Negative CasePlenty of space left, so will address Pro’s previous round.Factual errorsOlivet DiscourseThe events of the Olivert discourse foreshadow the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem. This was a misnomer rather than an error. In either case, it’s an event which depicts future events, thus by far the most likely explanation is that it is composed after these future events. (Expanding on this later)ApostleshipPro makes a valid point that there is one, exactly one allusion to the apostleship of Paul, but in doing do completely ignores this is literally the only reference in the entire text. Paul is always referred to as “brother” by other apostles, moreover the book itself sets the criterea for apostleship, and Paul fails every single one of them.“So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” … And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.”(Acts 21-25)Paul the non-miracle workerI have read these passages dozens of times, and I have yet to find a miracle in them. Maybe my eyes are fuzzy, or maybe Pro is seeing things.Paul vs ActsPro depicts the author as a travelling companion of Paul. However if this is true, then how is it possible the Paul knows virtully nothing of Jesus' life as a human. Jesus is entirely revelatory to Paul in his epistles.[8]Historical MethodIF Pro is not using a historical method to make her inferences, then she would be best served to actually provide her heuristic framework by which she determines the most likely explanation of facts. The historical method is a form of abductive reasoning, or inference to the best explanation, thus if Pro does not adopt this method, which has highly successful in virtually any fields of enquiry, including philosophy, diagnosis and not in the very least, the scientific method!Any set of facts can have multiple explanations, thus we must implement techniques from sorting the most likely explanations from the least likely explanations. In the historical method, and abductive reasoning, we have three general principles, the plausibility condition, the causality condition, and the inference condition.[5]Pro however violates the plausibility condition on an extreme level, and simply does not address any of my philosophical points regarding this. It is beyond what we have experience with, it violates the principle of uniformity of nature, and it is a non-simple explanation. All three are preferred by explanations within our already accessible explanatory set that puts the terminus ad quo past 70AD.Thus, if Pro is going to grossly violate these principles, then she better have some exceptionally high standards of evidence fulfilled in order to do so justifiably. Unfortunately these standards of evidence are simply inaccessible from this type of enquiry, and likely require modern instruments and data recording.Furthermore, Pro’s position becomes self-defeating if she must reject the uniformity of nature principle, since virtually all of our inferences about the past where this principle no longer held are unsound, and are in the realm of complete speculation. Without the assumption that the past is physically like the present we cannot do history.[6]Luke’s “tedious” explanationsI struggle to see a coherent argument from Pro here. Moreover her entire argument is based on a subjective assumption of what “contempory familiarity” entails. Given Luke clearly used older sources (at the very least other synoptic Gospels, and I argue, Marcion, Josephus and James), I hardly see the challenge this issues.References1. Apologia ad Autolycum Book 2 Chapter 152. Adversus Marcionem3. http://tinyurl.com...4. http://plato.stanford.edu...5. http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca...6. http://tinyurl.com...7. http://tinyurl.com...