Luke's sources for Paul's early biography

There's talk that Luke took Paul's dictation.

Luke's use of the Gospel of Mark (wholesale) hints that, before Paul, Luke didn't have firsthand access to Jesus' first generation of followers, nor even second. The Apostolic era is later, so those generations were accessible to Luke. But here, too, he could find documents - not least, letters attributable to Paul. Luke was not a muhaddith like Papias; Luke had a bias to written texts over oral tradition.

Paul did on occasion speak of his own past: such as in Galatians 1:13f, and in a (probable) "severe letter" now preserved 2 Corinthians 10-13 [UPDATE 12/12/23: I now think the Lachrymose was different so not preserved]. Some of these episodes end up in Luke's Acts. Let's talk Gamaliel as a test-case.

The Christian historian Luke holds Gamaliel as an important rabbi among the Pharisees; tending to moderation. This is in accord with the Jewish memory, as preserved (mainly) by Gamaliel's students. Luke also claims that saint Paul né Saul of Tarsus held himself out as a devotee of Gamaliel. THAT, I don't know.

Gamaliel's name is nowhere uttered in Paul's epistles - even in the disputed epistles. It also seems strange that on the one hand, Luke has Saul as a persecutor of Christians; and on the other, as a Gamalielite. Wouldn't such a one be a moderate? I mean, it is possible that Saul vacillated over his career in Judaism, before converting, but . . .

Pauline epistles survive in which the narrator declares himself an ex-persecutor; Galatians is the most important. If Luke had access to such, and to letters of Paul (or to Paul) as mentioned Saul's training as a Jew, he could reconstruct the events as he had.

But that doesn't mean we must. Can we trust such letters, not preserved to us, were authentic? 1 Timothy is not taken seriously by Paul's biographers; its narrator's self-image famously contradicts 2 Corinthians'. Pauline apocrypha went out early: also dismissed are 2 Thessalonians and Colossians.

Gamaliel, in retrospect

Gamaliel comes across in Christian literature as the mentor of Saul of Tarsus, even as a convert alongside him. The Copts were particularly prone to this. Much derives from Saint Luke's book of Acts, itself (I think) from now-lost early Christian writings. Which writings Luke had taken by faith.

Elsewhere in the first-to-second centuries' Judaism, we rarely find contemporary attestation of any rabbi, whose fame (or infamy) later Jews would remember. In such Jewish literature, Gamaliel is typical. In Christendom Luke will note our man in Acts; but nowhere names him in his Gospel.

We do have considerable attestation of first-century Judaean politics, at least. Roman-ruled Judaea hosted a Sanhedrin of Jews from various factions who met to arrange Jewish orthodoxy. The Sadducees from the Temple dominated this synod. To the extent Pharisees contributed to Sanhedrin, which I concede 30s AD Judaean politics could have forced; the Sadducees preferred Shammai's party.

I propose that Gamaliel did exist in the 30s-50s AD; but that he was on the outs, like the Essenes... and like the Christians. It was later, after the Ninth Of Av, that Gamaliel's successors raised his profile. Luke was among those who heard of Gamaliel.

Not so sure about Paul.

UPDATE 7/13: Luke's Quellenfrage belong in a Luke essay. The core of it was commented on 7/11 anyway... elsewhere.

Bull from the sea

2600 BC, during the Bronze Age, the Greek-Armenian ancestors had not yet embarked upon the wine-dark sea. Far south in the Cyclades, the islands were still populated by who-knows. Semites? Egyptians? Anatolians?

Some islanders from the Syra-Keros Culture found a small outcrop off the latter; it's its own island now, "Dhaskalio". They thought it was a grand place for a monument. So they quarried Naxian marble - a lot of marble. And they remade Dhaskalio into a fitting platform for a pyramid.

The researchers report to The Independent that the top of the pyramid was empty, at first. Also, they found 1,000 ritually broken religious marble figurines (mainly depicting women in symbolic form), again brought there [to Naxos] from all over the Cyclades archipelago. The figurines were from all over the Aegean; there's also obsidian tools and "blades" from Melos.

I think, here, is the Threshing-Floor rife in protohistoric Bronze Age farming-culture. Syra-Keros harvested (emmer) wheat, which they needed to thresh. 2600 BC is too early for horses, and I doubt they ever had much of a horse-culture in Keros or even Naxos. The animals in these islands tend small, like the sheep. But the Aegean shores did, by then, have cattle (even if they weren't retaining water so well). So the threshers were oxen.

Further, I am scenting the iron tang of sacrifices in the area. In the preliterate Near East, it was common for symbolic figurines be taken to the site of trade. There, mediators smashed the figurines in such a way as could only be deliberate. There the defaced images remained, to confirm receipt of the cargo. If the figurines were humanoid ...

Later, the pious locals contented themselves with smashing figurines in effigy.

The view from Tblisi

The Christian monastery at "Mount Sinai" might not be at the Israelites' Sinai, but it has earned its own importance in Christian history. Because the Roman Christians unilaterally stuck the name "Sinai" onto the site, and because it was, well, kind of dry and out of the way; it preserved a lot of manuscripts not preserved elsewhere. In 2005, a set of MSS rediscovered 1975 were published. Many MSS were in Iberian Kartuli, sometimes called "Georgian" today; Stig Simeon R. Frøyshov in 2012 published a summary.

I am sure that followers of Robert Hoyland's work - and of Stephen Rapp's - were hoping that there might be some Islam As Others Saw It in there. Well there wasn't. It's mostly eastern Christian liturgy. The base content isn't interesting to Muslims and it's not much more interesting to us Latins, influenced by Charlemagne as we are. But what it does give us, is a snapshot of the liturgies of early Iberia. Also of the Kartuli language still spoken there. And, it happens, of the Christian liturgies of the Late Antique Near East.

Christianity didn't start from the Caucasus; it started from Roman-occupied southwestern Syria. When the Iberian nation accepted Christianity, they had to learn how do Christianity. The Laz on the Pontic coast were beholden to the Greeks, and the Hayots of Armenia accepted much from northeastern Syria; but the Iberians over the hills chose to bypass it all, and to take it from the source. Then just prior to the Crusades, Iberian monks in Muslim-ruled Palestine moved their libraries to Sinai: some from Jerusalem, some from the laura of Mar / Saint / Agios Saba. The Iberians saved pretty much all of it, with few losses. As a result, there's a lot of early Jerusalem Christian practice in Kartuli, which later Christian reforms subsequently changed in Iberia as much as in Palestine; which stayed the same in Kartuli at Sinai.

Although Kartuli-language Christianity in Palestine (before the move) stayed Palestinian, Frøyshov points out that back home in Iberia the locals were drawing from further east. The Kura River flows to the Caspian, remember. Via Heinzgerd Brakmann, the ordination prayers in the MS "Tbilisi NCM A-86", had taken on additional prayers from Mahoze / Madain. These Iraqi prayers got to Iberia at some point after the Testamentum Domini, of the 300s AD; and before the MS's transcription circa 1000 AD. There's also a "Ninevite fast", by which we must read early Islamic Mosul.

I expect that non-Hellenophone Melkites all along that post-Byzantine frontier from Jerusalem to Tblisi (they say თბილისი means "warm" but, consider "theo-polis"...) never did close the door against the Nestorians. Under Islamic rule came several Christian attempts at rapprochement between communions - All In This Together, You Know.

There's even a Kartuli rite of marriage at Sinai! For Latins these days this is of interest, in that we're now being told that our sacrament derives from the Synod of Diren in the 670s AD. That one is "Nestorian" but for those early days, I never could much extricate Nestorian doctrine from post-Toledo filioque Catholicism. I'd love to see what relationship the Jerusalem(?) rite has with the Nestorian sacrament.

UPDATE 7/13 10:45 PM - This noonish post can just go to 7/9 because, why not.

Our side of the mithaq

Back in the late 1990s, some Chomskyite Zappa-fan entered a competition on topic of whether God existed or not. His tack was to run for the office. He conceded he'd already lost the competition on account of begging the question. But he laid out his platform, at least; and compared that with the Biblical god's platform. He didn't win the competition, and based on Trump's own secular election he sure didn't get himself elected to that more elevated position; but he did get himself interviewed on the radio. Got hisself linked on the Secular Web too.

I harbour no interest in running for such office (especially not now). But in that spirit, I propose a constituency, for any prospective deities over this universe. Assuming they want my vote.

And I am not begging the question as hard as he did. I already know that there are gods out in the multiverse (for the gamers: "astral plane", "limbo", "far realm"...), likely an infinity of gods. I also know that we're not infesting the body of any of them, dead or alive. The only options are that we're inhabiting some god's creation or else we're drifting in an amniotic (self-created) bubble. Either way, the gods are out there, on the outside. That discussion is settled.

What I want is a god worth the following. Some gods aren't worth it. Most gods aren't. I have read my Lovecraft as diligently as that other guy had read his Chomsky.

I request that the god keep his promises. Since he is Lawful, I don't demand that the god be infinitely wise and powerful; I know that is impossible, in a being of Law.

The god should, whether or not he created this universe of Law, at least respect its Lawful nature and intervene only to protect us. Mainly from Nyarlathotep, but also on occasion from our own most grievous mistakes.

The god should have some patience and mercy for us the humans. As a limited being (by Law), the god is capable of being flawed. I count mercy despite our deserts as a slight infusion of Chaos.

The god's doctrines should promote human life. They should, also, scale in accordance with humankind's ability to understand this universe. I expect that the god, as concerned with his own preservation, will not suffer a witch to live; "disgusting quislings" as I recall Lewis calling such. I can accept that; but, since we've already conceded the point, I request further exceptions to counter anti-human humans: exceptions for just-war and for lawful executions.

If the god didn't create this universe, I want one with at least so much sentimentality as to adopt it.

COMMENTARY 7/13: I'd had this in my mind for decades; only figured how to organise it all, this afternoon. So I'm backdating it to some day this week closer my other theologic musings.

How philosophers encounter the universe

Almut Hintze researching Zoroastrianism concluded that the Gathas imagined our universe as the body of a living god, infected with evil [summary here]. There's a lot of that in modern "environmentalism".

Gnostic Christianity believed that this universe is a Created Prison. Catholicism dresses it up better but, at base, agrees.

Atheists assume that our universe has no purpose, or (if you're a Lovecraftian) that we shouldn't follow whatever purpose the gods have laid out for it. So atheists don't care how we all came into being - with one exception.

The secular-humanists, with whom I hung out in the late 1990s, are an optimistic bunch. Humanists assume we inhabit an amniotic spacetime. That Seth MacFarlane joke about the pre-whisky Irish, riffing on "converting our bodies to pure energy"? An actual humanist thing.

Those atheists who aren't humanist, deep down, don't really think that the gods never existed. They suspect that the gods were here, once upon a time; but that they have abandoned us since.

Classification of universes

Such universes as can exist, exist in any one of these essential definitions:

• Amniotic fields in progress
• Discarded amniotic fields, which their gods had exited (not necessarily "abandoned" - see below)
• The bodies of living gods
• The bodies or fragments of dead gods
• Creations of gods

From the gods' perspective, universes have these purposes:

• The bodies of living gods
• Prisons
• None