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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Neglected Evidence For Acts' Material On The Resurrection Appearance To Paul

There are some good arguments that are often brought up for the material on Jesus' appearance to Paul in Acts, such as the authorship of Luke/Acts and the general historical reliability of the author. See, for example, my posts on such issues here, Craig Keener's video on Luke's historiography here, and a video featuring Lydia McGrew on the subject of hard things Acts gets right here. What I want to focus on in this post is some evidence that comes up less often. I'll occasionally mention more common arguments in the process of discussing the less common ones, but my focus here is on lines of evidence that have gotten less attention.

The Plausibility Of The Material

How much should we expect Paul to say in his letters about his experience seeing the risen Christ? He was writing letters, not an autobiography or a history of Christianity. And he was writing those letters to people who were already Christians, largely to people who had been Christians for a long time. As far as we can tell, every audience he wrote to in his extant letters already knew of him to some extent. They didn't need to be given introductory information about him. (Some of them hadn't yet seen him face-to-face, but that's a different issue.) Like any other writer, Paul assumed some background knowledge on the part of his audiences, and he was highly selective in what he did and didn't write. He often expects his audience to know more than what he addresses in his letters (e.g., 1 Corinthians 7:1, 2 Thessalonians 2:6). He surely said many things in other contexts that he didn't say in the letters we have. Even within the letters, we see him including details in some places that he doesn't include elsewhere (e.g., the details about his background in Galatians 1 and Philippians 3 overlap, but each document has information not included in the other). Given factors like these, though Paul's letters might include a more extensive account of Jesus' resurrection appearance to him, there's no reason to expect such an account in his letters.

On the other hand, the significance Paul and his audiences assign to topics like Jesus' resurrection and the appearance to Paul in particular give us reason to think the door is wide open for lengthier accounts of Paul's experience to have been recorded elsewhere. Paul opens most of his letters with a reference to his apostleship, and the subject comes up frequently outside of the opening of his letters. Having seen Jesus after he rose from the dead seems to have been a requirement for apostleship, a point Paul himself makes (1 Corinthians 9:1). And when writing to the Galatians, he comments on their knowledge of his background: "you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism" (1:13). He goes on to refer to how his background and the transformation that had occurred in his life were widely discussed among Christians (1:23). Given how much emphasis Paul places on his background in general and his having seen the risen Christ in particular and the implications of it, such as his apostleship, it's likely that his experience seeing the risen Christ is something he widely discussed. And other individuals and churches would have spread the information widely, much as Galatians 1 refers to how information on his background in general was widely disseminated.

It's undeniable that Paul knew more, and would have been asked about more, than what he says in his letters regarding his experience with the risen Christ. When did the event occur? Where did it happen? Did Jesus speak to him? If so, what did Jesus say? What was Paul's reaction? Was anybody else present? Etc. The idea that Paul only knew what he mentioned in his brief, summarizing accounts in his letters is extremely irrational. He couldn't help but know more. He was there. It was his experience.

Paul's unusualness should be considered as well. He's among the most significant leaders in Christianity, arguably the most significant, after Jesus. Paul traveled widely. He wrote many letters. Unlike other resurrection witnesses, he had been not only an unbeliever (like James and others), but even a prominent persecutor of the church who became a Christian in the context of seeing the risen Christ. For reasons like those, there probably would have been an unusually large amount of interest in the appearance of Jesus to Paul and an unusually large number of people who had information about it.

What we have, then, is a situation in which Paul's letters only address Jesus' appearance to Paul in brief, summary form, but with those letters suggesting that more information was likely widely known and widely discussed and that there's a large amount of potential, accordingly, to find that information elsewhere. That doesn't mean we should uncritically accept whatever we find in other sources, of course. But it does mean that the lack of a lengthier account in Paul's letters isn't much of a problem, and the door is wide open to finding such an account that's credible elsewhere. Looking for it in the gospels wouldn't make much sense, given that they're focused on an earlier timeframe. Looking for it in the non-Pauline letters of the New Testament wouldn't make much sense either, for the reasons mentioned above regarding Paul's letters, along with other reasons. And there's no reason to expect Revelation to have that sort of material. Acts is a good candidate, though. But before we get to Acts, I want to address one other issue.

The Difficulty Of Changing What Paul Reported

Since Paul had the sort of status outlined above and had it for a few decades, involving all sorts of travel, planting of churches, and so forth, the account he gave of what he experienced with the risen Christ surely was widely disseminated and often reinforced by the time he died. It would be difficult to get even a large percentage of Christians to accept a change in Paul's account. It would be even harder to do it with every or almost every Christian. And the larger the change involved, the more difficult it would be to successfully carry out the change.

The Date Of Acts

Since some of my arguments for an early date for Acts don't get discussed much, I'll link one of my articles on the subject. Keep in mind that though my article discusses why I think Acts was completed in the early to mid 60s, the material on Paul's resurrection experience would predate the time when Acts was completed, and the time when the author of Acts received that information about Paul would be even earlier.

Also keep in mind that eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Paul would have lived into the second century. The individual in question here is Paul, not Jesus. Paul didn't die until the 60s, and he seems to have still been highly active in his work as an apostle up to that point. Anybody who wants to date Acts beyond the time when eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Paul were still alive will have to date it well into the second century. And dating it so late is ridiculous for a lot of reasons, some of which I'll discuss below.

The Lack Of Rival Accounts

The author of Acts was interested enough in Jesus' appearance to Paul to mention it several times (including more briefly in passages like 9:27), with a more substantial amount of detail on three of those occasions. Two of those three lengthier accounts are attributed to Paul himself. The best explanation for why Luke discusses the appearance to Paul so much is that both Paul and the early Christians in general were discussing it a lot. One of the things Ananias is said to have told Paul is that "you will be a witness for him [Jesus] to all men of what you have seen and heard" (22:15). As the larger context suggests and as verse 14 makes even clearer, Paul is to be a witness of his experience with the risen Christ. The same sentiment is found in 26:16. That aligns well with what we see in the rest of Acts and Paul's letters. So, Acts gives us even more reason, like we have in Paul's letters, for thinking that his experience with the risen Christ was widely discussed, by Paul and by others.

The best explanation for the earliness and widespread acceptance of Acts' view of Paul's experience is that it's substantially the view that was disseminated by Paul and the earliest Christians. Anybody who wants us to think that the appearance to Paul wasn't discussed much beyond the brief summaries we see in his letters needs to argue for such an unusual scenario rather than just asserting it. Or if it's going to be suggested that the appearance was discussed significantly more in contexts outside of Paul's letters, but that the information disseminated in those contexts was widely lost and widely replaced with the view presented in Acts, that kind of unusual scenario would likewise need to be argued for rather than just asserted.

Notice that Acts presents its view of the appearance to Paul as a matter of public knowledge, known early and repeated before many early sources on so many occasions. It's known to Barnabas and discussed among the apostles (9:27), spoken to a crowd (21:30-22:15), presented to government officials (26:1-19), part of what Paul is to witness to before "all men" (22:15). Just after giving one of his accounts of his experience seeing the risen Christ, Paul comments that "the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner." (26:26) If the author was trying to replace an original view of the appearance to Paul with a more recent view that he preferred and that was significantly different than the original, you have to ask why he or his source did so in such a falsifiable manner. He could easily have presented his view of the appearance to Paul as something conveyed in more private settings and less often and could have offered some explanation for the prominence of the view he was trying to replace. Instead, the author shows no awareness of a rival view that he needs to compete with, and he presents his own view in a way that would be easy to falsify if it was incorrect. If some significantly different view than what we find in Acts was dominant for a few decades or longer, while Paul was alive and however long afterward, how could a work like Acts be written without any awareness of a rival account that needed to be interacted with? The best explanation for why the author of Acts presents his view of the appearance to Paul as if it has no rival is that it had no rival.

The Early And Widespread High Regard For Acts

An important line of evidence to consider when evaluating these issues is the early reception of Acts. And one of the things we need to recognize in that context is that the scriptural status of the gospel of Luke implies Acts' scriptural status. The gospel anticipates Acts (the "things accomplished among us" phrase in Luke 1:1 seems to refer to the history of the Christian movement up to that point in time, which is completed in Acts, as suggested by Acts 1:1), and Acts presents itself as a sequel to the gospel (Acts 1:1). The description of the scope of Luke's work at the opening of his gospel could be limited to the timeframe covered in that gospel, but the language is so broad as to be more likely to be about a larger timeframe. Furthermore, there's an early and long history of the large majority of people who accepted one of the two documents also accepting the other. It's unlikely that somebody who accepted the gospel of Luke as scripture wasn't aware that there was a sequel to the gospel of Luke or was aware of the sequel and rejected its scriptural status. Seeing both documents as scripture makes more sense than driving a wedge between two documents that are so connected.

And it was highly unusual for a document to be considered scripture. Even documents written by well-regarded disciples of the apostles, like Clement of Rome and Polycarp, were often not viewed as scripture. I've written before about the many early Christian documents, including first-century ones, that aren't even extant today. Luke/Acts provides us with some examples. The "many" accounts of Luke 1:1 didn't include the gospel of Luke and probably didn't include John, which would be written later, and it's very unlikely that Mark and Matthew were thought to constitute "many". Most likely, a majority of the accounts Luke refers to in Luke 1:1 weren't regarded as scripture.

The early acceptance of Acts as scripture is much harder to explain if its accounts of Paul's conversion are significantly different than what Paul reported. He's a prominent figure in Acts, and his experience with the risen Christ is given a lot of attention. It's not just a minor detail people could have easily overlooked or have regarded as insignificant. Considering the importance of his seeing the risen Christ and how often he mentions it in his letters, there had to be many people he discussed it with and, therefore, a large amount of potential for the Acts material to be falsified if it was substantially wrong. If Paul and the earliest Christians were circulating an account of Paul's experience that was significantly different than what we see in Acts, then early acceptance of Acts as scripture would be more difficult to explain.

And the evidence suggests that Acts was thought to be scripture early on, in the first century. See here regarding the reference to the gospel of Luke as scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18. That carries with it an implication of the acceptance of Acts as scripture, for the reasons mentioned earlier.

We've argued for Paul's authorship of 1 Timothy elsewhere on this blog, and others have argued for it. Even if the document is a forgery, an earlier date would be better than a later date at making sense of the document's widespread acceptance as a genuine letter of Paul. And it has some characteristics that make more sense earlier rather than later (e.g., the reference to two rather than three church offices in chapter 3). Paul probably wrote 1 Timothy, but it offers first-century support for the Acts material on Jesus' appearance to Paul either way.

In addition to the evidence from 1 Timothy, the widespread acceptance of Luke and Acts (as scripture and in other contexts) from the second century onward makes more sense if that acceptance goes back to the first century. In other words, even apart from the evidence we have in 1 Timothy, we have good reason to think there was early and widespread high regard for Luke/Acts. 1 Timothy 5:18 adds further weight to what's also suggested by a lot of other evidence.

For a discussion of an important, neglected example from the first half of the second century, see my comments on Aristides here. Notice how high a view of the gospel of Luke Aristides seems to have had, how he seems to combine material from Luke with material from Acts, how he expects Luke/Acts to be so accessible to non-Christians, etc. Just after mentioning Jesus' ascension, Aristides refers to how "these twelve disciples went forth throughout the known parts of the world, and kept showing his greatness with all modesty and uprightness" (Apology, 2). Keep in mind that he makes that comment just after focusing on the gospel of Luke and recommending that his pagan audience read the relevant material. What he says about the disciples' activities in the world is reminiscent of what we see in Acts. Right after mentioning the ascension, he mentions how the disciples "went forth throughout the known parts of the world". That resembles Acts 1:8, which has Jesus telling the disciples to go out into the world and mentioning the parts of the world involved, after which the ascension occurs (verse 9). Furthermore, Aristides' comment about the good character of the disciples as they went throughout the world wouldn't have to come from Acts, but it makes more sense coming from Acts than from any other source. Aristides had just mentioned material to read, with a focus on Luke, and Acts is a sequel to Luke that collects accounts of how the disciples behaved when going throughout the world more than any other early document does.

I'll briefly address one other line of evidence in this context. Luke/Acts wasn't just widely accepted and highly regarded in early mainstream Christian circles. It was widely accepted among other professing Christians as well. Irenaeus tells us that some heretics rejected some New Testament documents (Against Heresies, 3:11:7), but that most "do certainly recognise the Scriptures; but they pervert the interpretations" (3:12:12). Tertullian wrote, "that gospel of Luke which we at this moment retain has stood firm since its earliest publication, whereas Marcion's is to most people not even known, and by those to whom it is known is also by the same reason condemned." (Against Marcion, 4:5) Origen notes, "There are countless heresies that accept the Gospel According to Luke." (Joseph Lienhard, trans., Origen: Homilies On Luke, Fragments On Luke [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 1996], 67) The Marcionites are an exception to the rule who are often cited, but they don't overturn the rule. It seems that both Luke and Acts were accepted among the large majority of professing Christians, including ones who predated Marcion's movement.

Internal Evidence

For a summary of some internal evidence for the material in Acts about the appearance to Paul, see here. More could be added. For example, Jesus' use of "Saul, Saul" when he appeared to Paul (Acts 9:4) is reminiscent of Jesus' use of repetition elsewhere, including with people's names in particular ("Jerusalem, Jerusalem" in Matthew 23:37, "my God, my God" in Mark 15:34 [a citation of Psalm 22, but still one that Jesus chose to highlight and to cite with "my God" twice rather than once], "Martha, Martha" in Luke 10:41, "Simon, Simon" in Luke 22:31, "truly, truly" in the gospel of John, etc.). And the first thing he says to Paul consists of a question ("Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"). Jesus frequently opens conversations and parables with a question in the gospels. Notice the cumulative effect. Jesus starts the discussion with a question, says something twice for emphasis, and does so with a person's name in particular. So, Acts 9:4 parallels Jesus' behavior in the gospels in a few ways.

What's the alternative?

To prepare the way for the last subject I want to address, I'll take a few sentences here to summarize some of the points I've made above. Paul would have widely discussed his experience with the risen Christ in more detail than we have in the brief summaries provided in his letters. The author of Acts is very likely to have written when eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Paul were still alive, and the author says that his material on Paul's experience came from Paul himself and was widely disseminated early on, including before large groups, in public, among named individuals, in named places, and so on. Furthermore, the Acts material has multiple characteristics that a Christian fabricator probably wouldn't have included (e.g., Paul is blinded, which raises doubts about what he saw; his companions don't see Jesus; his companions hear Jesus, but don't understand what he says; his companions aren't referred to as converting to Christianity; there's less reference to the physicality of Jesus' body than Luke includes when addressing other resurrection appearances).

With those factors and the other relevant evidence in mind, we should examine the quality of skeptical alternatives to a traditional Christian view of what Paul reported and experienced. How well does a skeptical view of the appearance to Paul compare to a Christian view? Our scrutiny can't be a one-way street. Just as we apply scrutiny to Christian views, we also have to apply scrutiny to skeptical views. What we're after is the best explanation, not just a possible one. And just complaining that there isn't more evidence doesn't adequately address the evidence we do have. Part of what I'm getting at in this post is that we have more evidence than people usually suggest.

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