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The Apostolic Age Begins 1.1

Luke’s Acts of the Apostles
The Crucifixion
The Jerusalem Church

Abstract

Luke’s main purpose in Acts is to show that Christianity is the fulfilment of Judaism. It depicts the spread of the gospel as under divine protection and accompanied by signs and wonders even though Jesus had said clearly that there would be no such signs. The particular sign of the miraculous conversion of Paul is repeated several times. Acts fails to mention that James is Jesus’s brother, though Paul in a letter written much earlier admits it. Nor does Acts say anything about the martyrdom of James, and wrongly says Peter succeeded Jesus as the leader of the Jerusalem Church when all other evidence shows it was James. The lie was inserted by the Church of Rome, traditionally founded by Peter, to give it greater authority. It also aims to show that Romans are friendly and sympathetic people except when Jews annoy them.

Luke’s Acts of the Apostles

For events after the crucifixion, the main canonical works are the epistles, and the Acts of the Apostles, traditionally written by Luke. Luke was supposed to have been a Syrian doctor from Antioch, where he might have been influenced by the Essenes. He is said to have accompanied Paul on some of his travels and these are reflected in some passages of Acts in which the author speaks of “we”. Yet when the accounts of Luke and Paul himself are compared they are not always compatible. Luke frequently composes speeches for his heroes, speeches which he cannot have heard and which cannot be accurate.

Although ingenious scholars think they can detect traces of Acts in the epistles of Clement of Rome, the book does not seem to have been regarded highly by early Christians until it was cited and ascribed to Luke by Irenaeus and discussed extensively by him, and thereafter everyone quoted it, casting some doubt on its authenticity. The Christian scholar G W H Lampe observes (M Black & H H Rowley (Eds), Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, London 1962) that:

Acts gives the impression of being written, from a developed theological standpoint, a very considerable time after the events which it records.

Historical events which date the document are the death of Herod Agrippa I (10 March 44 AD) and Gallio’s consulship. The famine of Acts 11:28 is probably that of 46-48 AD mentioned in Josephus and Acts 5:36-37, 21:38 and Luke 3:1 might also imply that Luke had read Josephus.

The “we” passages are in essentially the same style as the rest of the books suggesting that, if they are taken from a diary, as many Christians like to believe, the diary must have been the author’s own. They might, of course, have simply been Luke’s recollections or the recollections of someone interviewed by Luke, a seaman perhaps—the “we” passages only cover sea-voyages and events that occurred immediately the voyagers went ashore—and the uniformity of style is simply because the author has completely rewritten his sources. Much of Luke’s gospel is rewritten rather than edited, Luke even rewriting large parts of Mark often incorporated almost verbatim into Matthew and other parts of Luke.

In important sections, Acts and Paul’s Epistles are incompatible.

In the accounts in his epistles, Paul tells us nothing of Ananias (Acts 9:10ff).
Paul tells a different story about the escape from Damascus in 2 Cor 11:32-33 from that related by Luke in Acts 9:23-25.
In Acts 9:26-29, Luke has Paul visiting Jerusalem longer than the two week visit Paul himself describes in Galatians 1:18-19.
Luke’s account of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 cannot be reconciled with Paul’s in Galatians 2:1-10.
Luke’s descriptions of the journeys of Silas and Timothy in Acts 17:15 and 18:5 conflict with Paul’s in 1 Thessalonians 3:1-6.

Some stories told by Paul in his epistles do not appear at all in Acts:

All the trouble in the church of Corinth that necessitated the two letters by the evangelist to the gentiles.
The sufferings of Paul at Ephesus (1 Cor 15:32; 2 Cor 1:8).
The collection for the Jerusalem church (Rom 15:25ff; 1 Cor 16:1ff; 2 Cor 9). though hugely important to Paul, unless it is extremely tersely at Acts 24:17.
The visit to Arabia (Gal 1:17).
Some of the sufferings of 2 Corinthians 11:23ff.

A more serious problem is that Luke does not particularly express the Christianity of Paul. The doctrine of the sacrificial nature of Jesus’s death and its atoning power, distinctively Paul’s, is not covered and the contrasts of grace and law, and faith and works are not brought out. The short account of justification in 13:39 is not characteristically Pauline. The seeming narration of Paul’s own words that Christ’s blood was a covenant-sacrifice in 20:28 seems to be the exception.

Though Paul is the main character in Acts, it is no more a biography than the gospels. The omission of stories told by Paul might be excused as superfluous to Luke’s theme—the progress of the Christian message from Palestine to the whole world. On the other hand, Paul admits in his evasive way to being a liar, so some of his tales are likely not to be true, or to be, at least, exaggerated. Since Luke did not have Paul’s letters to work from, he could not have known how Paul related the incidents, nor could he have been familiar with Paul’s thinking. If he travelled with Paul at all, he must have been a distant companion not an intimate one. Luke seems to have drawn upon tradition and not upon anything that Paul said to him.

The story does not naturally divide as convention dictates into three missionary journeys by Paul. The episodic nature of the narrative indicates its origin as a collection of traditions probably from the different early churches. Chapters 1 to 5 seem to be from the Jerusalem church. Then follows a cycle of tradition about the Hellenists and their missionary activities centred on Antioch. Traditions about Philip and Peter are interdispersed. Switches from cycle to cycle seem to occur at 6:1; 8:4; 9:31; 11:19; 12:1 but, from the evenness of the style, Luke has not so much edited the stories as completely re-written them.

There are two groups of manuscripts of Acts, the Alexandrian and the Western, the latter being a refined version of the former, expanded with new material to magnify Peter among the apostles (5:39; 11:1; 15:2,5) and reduce the importance Luke had given women in his gospel.

Any analysis of the age of the apostles and the earliest Christians beginnings, depends upon Acts as a source. But, Luke cannot as easily be restored as Mark’s gospel because nothing or little was added to the gospel that was false, though it was disguised. Part of Acts however are likely to be false, forgeries added to give spurious fulfilment of prophecies which forty years or so later were still unfulfilled, and Munchausen tales from Paul. Still, these are in the main recognizable. Where explicit commentary on Acts seems particularly revealing in the next pages, it has been added, but otherwise general summaries give the reader a broader overview.

The Crucifixion

After only a short time on the cross Barabbas was given a drink and quickly expired. The others crucified with him had to have their legs broken to bring on a quick death. Joseph of Arimathaea asked Pilate’s permission to take him from the cross. Pilate was astonished that he had so soon died and asked the centurion to confirm it, which he did, and permission was given. Joseph and Nicodemus, both behaving as if they had an interest in the body, wrapped it in linen and put it in a new tomb cut out of rock in a private garden. The tomb was sealed by a large rock pushed against the entrance.

After the Passover the two Mary’s and others, or Mary Magdalene alone, came to the tomb early on the Sunday morning to wash and prepare the body. The stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty. A young man (or two men) in pure white garments tells them that Jesus is risen and has gone to Galilee. At this point the earliest gospel ends (ignoring the final twelve verses which were added later).

The significance of the pure white garments is not that these men are angels of God but that they are angels (messengers) of the Essenes. Jesus had an important position in the Essene order. His body was removed so that he could be given a proper burial in a place approved by the community. The messengers from the sect give orders to the disciples—they are to escape to Galilee, out of Roman jurisdiction. Matthew says soldiers had been placed on guard to prevent the disciples from stealing the body but no other gospel mentions this and it is transparently an editorial addition to overcome the criticism that the body had been stolen by Jesus’s followers.

Immediately after the crucifixion the disciples had despaired and were incredulous to hear that the tomb was empty. This proves that Jesus cannot have taught his disciples to expect his bodily resurrection on the third day as the gospels maintain since otherwise they would have been expecting Jesus to rise, would not have despaired at his death and would have rejoiced to hear of the empty tomb. The five occasions Jesus spoke of his death and resurrection in the gospel stories look suspiciously like interpolations based on hindsight.

The Church’s attempt at accounting for the inconsistency of the Apostles’ behaviour was to accuse them of stupidity. Of course they were not stupid. If they were, Jesus must have been stupid to have chosen them. If they really did not understand when Jesus told them what to expect then his words must have been far more obscure than they are in the New Testament. The plausible explanation is that they were completely surprised by the news of the empty tomb. Jesus had made no prophecies about his personal resurrection. Their behaviour was therefore perfectly understandable. Their leader was dead, their rebellion had failed, God had not intervened—they despaired. Then someone had the temerity to steal the corpse! Tertullian, a Christian of about 160 AD, states that the body of Jesus was removed from the tomb by the man in charge of the garden wherein the sepulchre was situated so that his lettuces would not be spoiled by the crowds!

According to the verses added to Mark, it is Mary Magdalene who first sees the risen Jesus. As if to provide an explanation the author immediately tells us that Jesus had cast seven devils from her. It seems her madness was subject to relapses and further devils had then to be cast out. In short she was unreliable if not badly neurotic. Despite Jesus’s apparent prophecies, the disciples did not believe her.

Christian belief depends mainly on Jesus’s appearances rather than the empty tomb. Writing long before the gospels were written, in the earliest Christian works we have, the Apostle Paul never attempts to convince sceptics about the resurrection by quoting witnesses to the empty tomb. His evidence is Jesus’s appearances: to the women, to two disciples on the way to Emmaus, to Peter and others in Jerusalem, to the Apostles on a Galilaean mountain. Paul was not interested in the living Jesus but only in the resurrection and, as the first Christian writer, having heard of a hysterical woman’s reaction to Jesus’s crucifixion and abduction, he could have invented additional appearances to confirm it. He adds a remarkable appearance to a throng of 500 which even the gospel writers must have found stretched credulity too far.

If, as some suggest, Jesus did survive the crucifixion he could hardly have been making appearances all over the place within days. He had been horribly wounded in arms, feet and side. He must have been kept in a safe house for months to recover, moved only if necessary and when sufficiently fit would have been taken out of the Roman Emperor’s reach to Parthia.

The Quran says that Jesus survived because a substitute was crucified in his stead. According to the Basilidians, the substitute was Simon of Cyrene. Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels, from the point when Simon is mysteriously introduced into the account (Mt 27:32-44; Mk 15:21-32), are completely ambiguous about who was crucified. They could read that Simon was. Only at the point of death when they report that “Jesus” cries out is the doubt settled.

If these traditions hint at the truth, a lot could be explained. Simon had been substituted for Barabbas and had been crucified. But the Nazarenes did not want to risk the Romans finding out by leaving the wrong man hanging there. Most Romans would not have known Barabbas but collaborators would and the longer that Simon remained on the cross the more likely it was that the substitution would be noticed. So Simon was poisoned and whisked away by Joseph and Nicodemus after only a few hours on the cross when days would have been the norm. Of course, the problem was not solved because the Romans might want to inspect the corpse—so they disposed of it secretly! Jesus Barabbas was still alive but could only appear in disguise until such time as he could get away to the East. And so he does—there is a further tradition that Jesus eventually died in India.

If Jesus died on the cross, the disciples still thought that Jesus was alive and not just a vision. The author of Luke is at pains to demonstrate that Jesus was truly alive. In Acts he tarries for as long as forty days. But he was not recognised by Mary Magdalene nor by two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In his final appearance in John by the Sea of Galilee, the disciples again do not recognise him. If all this were true and not elaborations of a Pauline invention then it implies that Jesus was heavily disguised—or being impersonated! These people knew him extremely well, so why otherwise couldn’t they recognise him? If in disguise, he must have been hiding from the authorities! At his final appearance he behaves like a man about to depart quickly—to Parthia rather than Heaven—repeatedly urging his disciples to “take care of my sheep”—plainly meaning the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

The Jerusalem Church

Christians have usually assumed Peter, John, the son of Zebedee, and James, the brother of Jesus, founded the Jerusalem Church. But did they? There was an earlier organisation in or near Jerusalem because someone, apparently unknown to the disciples, provided an ass for Jesus’s entry into the city and also the upper room where the last supper was eaten. If a foundation existed during Jesus’s ministry, was it the Jerusalem Church?

There are only two explicit mentions of the Jerusalem Church in Acts, one at 8:1 and the other at 11:22. The word “church” is our translation of the Greek word “ecclesia” which literally means “the called”, a name that the Essenes gave themselves. In the Septuagint the words “ecclesia” and “synagoge” are used to translate words which mean “assembly” in Hebrew—words like “quhal”, assembly, “edah”, congregation and “yahad”, community. All are words popular in the scrolls to describe the institutions of the Essenes.

Supporting the idea that the church already existed is that it is led, not by Peter, Jesus’s supposed choice, but by James, called his brother. The epistles of Paul confirm that James was a pillar of the church along with Peter and John. Peter and John were already apostles but James was not (unless it could be shown he was James the son of Alphaeus). Why should he have been a founder of the Church? He was not one of the Twelve but must have been Jesus’s successor as practical head of a pre-existing Church.

The reason might have been that he was his blood brother and next in line—the royal line of David, the Sang Real, especially since, on James’s death, tradition has it that the son of another brother of Jesus, Jude, became leader. It is argued that the norm was for dynasties to head sects in Judaea at that time. The leaders of the Maccabaean revolt constituted a dynasty. The High Priesthood was partly dynastic. The Zealots seem to have been led by the dynasty of Judas of Galilee. If this is true, the clear succession of leadership suggests the sect was not newly founded at Jesus’s death.

Jesus’s family are depicted in the gospels as doubting Jesus, so it is mysterious that a brother should assume leadership on Jesus’s death. Acts fails to mention that James is Jesus’s brother, though Paul in a letter written much earlier openly admits it. Nor does Acts say anything about the martyrdom of James. Indeed Acts wrongly says Peter succeeded Jesus as the leader of the Jerusalem Church when all other evidence shows it was James. The lie was inserted later by the Church of Rome, traditionally founded by Peter, to give it greater authority.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.