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Paranoia for Fun and Profit
Darrell Doughty on Acts 18
James Patrick Holding
It's been a while since I have done something on the Robert Price School of Thought. Some may remember Price as the author of Deconstructing Jesus, an extensive puffed-chested tome that dismisses opposition often by explaining that they'd agree with Price's genius rewrite of Christian origins if they were not faith-flattened scared rabbits hiding under the bed of religion. It turns out the Price is not alone in this manipulative psychological warfare technique. His Journal of Hyper-Criticism -- I do mean, "Higher Criticism" -- is apparently home for others of this method who cannot get their works published in other journals because it frankly doesn't stand up well under peer review. By request, we are taking a look at one of these named Darrell Doughty, and an article titled "Luke's Story of Paul in Corinth: Fictional History in Acts 18."
The title tells you enough to start of the purpose, but for the new initiate, let's bring forth a sample of the sort of psychologization Doughty and the Price-camp engage. Here is a footnote from early in the game, #5:
Luke Johnson (The Acts of the Apostles, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992) declares that, since Luke rewrites his sources so thoroughly, the detection of specific sources is "hopeless" (3). "We cannot, because of Luke's artistry, determine the extent or even the existence of written sources" (7). One wonders, however, whether such praise of Luke's artistry does not conceal uneasiness about what might be discovered if such sources could be detected.
Oh! One wonders this, does one? One may also suffer extensively from a persecution complex. One may also pretend to be an expert psychologist, unearthing all manner of psychological disorder in one's peers who don't cooperate with one's worldview. Normal peer-reviewed journals reject this sort of tactic; for these folks, though, that's merely a sign of their own growing perfection and of the behind the times-ed-ness of those who reject their rampant genius. This, of course, in line with the methods of this camp to claim the argumentative high ground by declaring opponents to be deluded spin-doctors. ("All the world does wish me dead/Could I perhaps kill them instead?")
We will see this kind of down-the-nose snorting done excessively in Doughty's article; when it comes to actual argumentation, the word "ungrounded suspicion" emerges often, and is oft proceeded by words like "nitpicking". Doughty proposes to us that "the depiction of Paul in Acts 18 as the founder of the Christian community in Corinth is not only Luke's own construction, but is also an imaginative apologetic rewriting of earlier traditions having quite different views of Christian beginnings in Corinth" -- and to receive this revelation, we will "need to read Acts in a different way than is usually done." Which means, we need our glasses of ungrounded suspicion on, and we need to assume an air of personal superiority over the text. To this end we are told that there is something wrong with those who give Luke the benefit of the doubt, and find him innocent of error until proven guilty (a method we are sure Doughty will find useful up until the day he is arrested and taken to court for a crime he did not commit); that "the agenda now pursued is not historical criticism, but apologetic historicizing." Presumably I might gain respect by retorting in reply that Doughty's agenda is "not historical criticism, but serving as a tool of Satan and looking for excuses to justify disbelief." Such charges are nothing more from Doughty but the old Fundamentalism dressed to attend a new party. Doughty like his cohorts dresses his methods in the finery of the term "historical criticism" and thereby arbitrarily paint them with validation of their own designation. And to make sure you are properly put in line, they make such charges repeatedly, speaking constantly of "agendas" and "apologetics", and making accusations of "protect[ion] from things that we might rather not know" as though these magic words grant them the mantle of objectivity and reduce all opposition to squirming malcontents blinded by theology. Such arguments are then supported by creative psychoanalysis of the texts, oblivious to the complete lack of actual foundation that is supposed also to be missing from the work of their opponents. Once such charges are removed, we are left with nothing like an objective case from this camp. And to cap the matter, let the reader be reminded that such phraseology may as well be appropriated by the likes of an Acharya S or a Revilo P. Oliver to similar effect while contributing nothing to their arguments.
Doughty's article treats the entirety of Acts 18, but it will be sufficient for our purposes to treat only a portion of this material which will demonstrate that nothing of substance, merely ungrounded speculation, lies at the foundation of Doughty's exegesis. Our focus will be on Doughty's treatment of Acts 18:1-3:
After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth; And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them. And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.
It seems simple enough, but when you have become a tool of Satan  all kinds of ghosts start to emerge from passages like these -- hints of plots and plans and enemies of James Bond taking over the world. We are reminded to begin that "details such as those found here can certainly be invented." For example, Luke could have just looked at a map and made this up. Indeed so. So likewise could Doughty invent fictional tales of his education. He could hire people to pretend to be administrators at his former place of learning to write letters confirming his supposed education. He could hire a wayward telephone technician to rewire the phones so that when someone called to verify employment, the call went straight to a boiler room full of Doughty's lackeys who would confirm he really did get a degree in his field. What? How dare you reject this idea; you're just "protecting" Doughty's readers "from things that we might rather not know". In any event, it is under this rubric of presumed creativity that Doughty embarks upon a mission to detect "the historical significance" of these comments, and do so my "determin[ing] what their significance might have been for Luke himself." Yes, even your account of your trip to the grocery store is laden with hidden value. Be careful who you tell.
From here, after amazingly allowing that Paul obviously had to arrive at Corinth from somewhere (couldn't all the letters to the Corinthians be second-century forgeries?), a brief detour is made to 1 Thessalonians and details there corresponding with Acts, though not perfectly on a plain reading. Doughty admits that one "can certainly harmonize this diverse information in various ways" (note what we wrote of this here) but argues that "one cannot claim that such conjectures 'confirm' what we read in Acts 18:1.27 The only concrete evidence we have for a journey by Paul from Athens to Corinth is what Luke tells us in his own words." Huh? Doughty does not even make an effort to address these harmonizations; rather, he assumes that life is as one-dimensional as he supposes it to be, and opts for an explanation so lacking in concrete that Home Depot would need to call in an order:
The most probable explanation, it seems to me, is that the writer of 1 Thess made creative use of material from Acts. Silas was dropped from the picture and the role of Timothy was magnified because by the time 1 Thess was written Timothy had become a much more significant figure in the Pauline traditions. Paul's stay in Beroea (Acts 17:10-15) was dropped because in Luke's narrative it only elaborates and complicates the story of Paul in Thessalonica (17:1-9), and had little interest for the writer of 1 Thess. And for this reason in 1 Thess Timothy had to accompany Paul to Athens and then return to Thessalonica. The pseudonymous writer of 1 Thess remains vague about where "Paul" was when this letter was written because he had not yet read the harmonizing works on Pauline chronology by modern scholars supposedly demonstrating that his letter must have been written in Corinth.
This explanation is fifteen hundred times more tortuous than the most creative harmonization I have ever seen from any commentator; but Doughty feels that if he applies the label "CRITICAL HISTORY" to it, he can get away with anything. The package of gross assumptions is breathtaking: 1 Thess is pseudonymous and late; all sorts of flying interests in persons and place, otherwise unknown and unattested until we managed to read the massive psychologizing works on Pauline chronology by modern scholars like Doughty. Actual data in support of this view is hard to come by. The best Doughty can manage is this:
- Evidence for the dependence of 1 Thess on Acts would be the language in 1 Thess 3:2: kai epempsamen Timotheon... eis to stêrizai humas kai parakalesai. The word stêrizein ("establish") is used in Acts 14:22; 15:32, 41; 16:5; 18:23 (also 1 Pet 5:10; 2 Pet 1:12). The verbs stêrizein and parakalesein appear together in Acts 14:22 and 15:32. On the other hand, stêrizein (or epistêrizein) appears elsewhere in the Pauline writings only in Rom 1:11f (cf 16:25). Doughty left out James 5:8 and Rev. 3:2 when listing places where a form of sterizo occurs. The form in Acts also has a prefix: it is episterizo. Note how Doughty fudges by admitting the different form out of context, as though it were the non-epi form used in Acts. Note as well that Doughty avoids telling us that some form of parakalesein appears over 100 times in the NT. To use such a pattern as proof of "dependence" is so thin as to be larcenous. Why not argue that Acts 16:9 shows "dependence" on 1 Peter 5:12 because both use the words histemi and parakaleo in close quarters? Why not? Acts 15:32 even uses the words in the reverse order, no doubt to make it more difficult for Doughty to detect the relationship.
- Assuming that the writer of 1 Thess used Acts as a source would also explain the reference to persecution by "the Jews" suffered by the "churches of God in Judea" (1 Thess 2:14-15), which reflects very much what we learn from Acts (8:1; 11:49; 13:50!). Needless to say, that such persecution actually happened would explain the references just as easily. This is one of a handful of commonalities Doughty finds easier to explain with "dependence" than with historical reality. The reasons why probably reflect his uneasiness with viewing Acts as historical.
And yes, that's it. So the only data Doughty actually has in support of his dependence thesis is a thin correspondence of two words (one as common in the NT as ragweed) and reporting of the same events. Now aren't you glad you ran across this?
Now on the verse 2, "Aquila was certainly a Jew," Doughty says, thank heavens, but we are told: "...the explicit identification of Aquila as 'a Jew' is Luke's own work. The phrase 'Ioudai onomati 'Akulan ('a Jew named Aquila') is a typical Lukan construction (cf. 5:1, 34; 8:9; 9:10, 11,12, 33, 36; 10:1; 11:28; 12:13; 16:1, 14; 17:34; 18:7, 24; 19:24; 20:9, 10; 27:1; 28:7), particularly at the beginning of a new story (5:1, 34; 8:9; 9:10, 33; 10:1; etc.)." Yep, we sure needed THAT information to be convinced Luke wrote this story. Nothing has never been said with greater efficiency, and I do mean "nothing". It is news indeed that writers normally write with a certain style when telling us information. Did you know that? After several more lines proving that the sky is blue like this, we are told that this evidence that Luke actually composed the work he wrote shows that "there is no reason at all to think that the connection of the edict of Claudius with the arrival of Aquila and Priscilla in Corinth, and thus with Paul's own arrival in that city, derived from any presupposed source or 'tradition.'" Which even Doughty admits (with great consternation, no doubt ) doesn't make it untrue, even as he speaks out of the other side of his mouth now: "There is no historical basis here for Pauline biography." Make sure you understand that: If a writer writes of events in his own style of writing, that leaves "no historical basis" for a word that writer says. And here you thought it was all right to tell what happened in your own words; it actually proves you are unreliable.
In any event we are next assured that Luke had crazed ulterior motives for this simple sentence, and that "it is easy to ignore or misread the meaning of Luke's own story." Certainly, when we don our Urim and Thummin of "critical history," it becomes clear that Luke could not simply be telling us that Paul found a certain Jew named Aquila and Priscilla and stopped by to see them. Heavens no. Doughty starts with Haenchen's foray suggesting that A and P "were so important for the history of the Christian mission that Luke could not overlook them." That's fair enough, if only a little overblown behind the thesis: It stands to reason that A and P were important people somehow. Your average idiot might just say this was because they were prominent people and leave it at that, just as you might highlight your visit to the capitol office to shake hands with the governor of your state. But hark, Doughty says, let's consider what Luke says "more carefully" to find that lurking conspiracy. Doughty digs for hints of "redaction" (a word that in simple terms means, Luke took a basis of some sort -- assumed here to be a written source rather than an actual historical event -- and made some comments about it): for example, ..the reference to Aquila "having recently arrived from Italy" (prosphatôs elêluthota apo tês 'Italias) and its association with the edict of Claudius. None of this could be because Luke actually knew that Aquila actually did recently arrive from Italy; good heavens no. Through "careful analysis" we find all kinds of nefarious plots:
Already in v. 2 we are told that Paul "found" (heurôn) Aquila and Priscilla, and then "went to them" (prosêlthen autois), for which no real motivation is given. The word heurischô is often used by Luke, particularly in such contexts (cf. 9:33; 11:25f; 13:6; 19:1; 28:14). But it normally refers to "finding" something (or someone) after a search (cf. 11:26; 12:19; 17:6,27; 19:1; 27:6), or to "come upon" something by chance (cf. 9:33; 10:27; 13:6; 17:23; 28:14). In either case, however, one does not first "find" someone and then "go to visit" them.
One doesn't? That is surely news for all people; perhaps Doughty is thinking a little time out of mind here. One would indeed first "find" someone and THEN "visit" them if one is a little vague on where someone exactly lives. In this age when the White Pages had yet to be invented and street addresses with numbers and directory assistance were still in their infancy (there were operators in plenty, but no phones to answer), it is bewildering that Doughty does not think one living in the ancient world could endure such a process in order. What has Paul been doing for chapters upon chapters but traveling from town to town evangelizing and needing a place to stay? The Motel 6 at Corinth just wasn't open, but no doubt Doughty would call such common-sense answers "apologetic historicizing" and prefers to think of Luke portraying Paul as aimlessly finding and visiting people to no particular purpose relevant to the context.
And so it is that we would expect Paul to seek lodging with someone, and seek it indeed with tentmakers, people of his own trade, if possible; socially, persons of the same trade did tend to stick together along the same urban street, so that the full impact here is that Paul went to the street in Corinth where tentmakers were, "found" A and P (perhaps with no knowledge of them being there, and perhaps so, just not knowing in which specific shop on the street), and chose to "visit" them. A simple matter, really, but not in the Land of the Conspiracy, where we are told:
The phrase kai êrgazeto ("and he worked") reflects Luke's view that Paul always supported himself by manual labor (cf. 20:34). The phrase êsan gar skênopoioi tê technê ("for they were tentmakers by trade") seems tacked on at the end of v. 3, and is probably Lukan elaboration. The implication is that, at least in this instance, Paul worked as a "tentmaker." But Priscilla and Aquila seem to be primarily in view. And they are intentionally depicted by Luke as wandering tradespeople-not Christian missionaries.
Are they, now. It might never occur that A and P actually WERE such persons; moreover, it is apparently not a possibility that these persons were missionaries in their own neck of the woods for whatever length of time. In fact Luke doesn't "depict" any such thing as this -- Doughty adds the idea of their wandering-ness and non-missionary-ness arbitrarily, not as if Luke says: "...for by their occupation they were tentmakers, wandered around a lot, and never spread the Gospel message." Indeed Doughty goes as far as to claim that "Luke did everything he could to prevent any such assumption" that A and P were Christians. How so? Don your glasses again, the ride will get bumpy for a bit:
In v. 2 he explicitly identifies Aquila as "a Jew," and tells us that the only reason for Aquila's recent appearance in Corinth with his wife Priscilla is that they had been expelled from Rome along with "all the Jews." One would assume that they came to Corinth to pursue their work as tentmakers (v. 3b). In Luke's version of the story their common vocation now provides the reason why Paul found lodging with Aquila and Priscilla, and it is without doubt intended to deter the idea - which so many interpreters read into the text anyway - that Aquila and Priscilla were Christians when Paul first met them. In the original story of Paul's lodging with Aquila and Priscilla, however, it probably was assumed that Paul sought them out and stayed with them because they were Christians.
Sadly for Doughty's thesis, "Jew" in this age was more a statement of national origin (a person from Judaea) than of religion. Amazingly Doughty's comment makes Peter into a non-Christian (Gal. 2:14) by Paul's own testimony and Luke makes Paul himself a non-Christian (Acts 20:39). Not surprisingly Doughty, who elsewhere hints at someone hiding a concession in a footnote, hides in his own footnote the point that "the term 'Ioudaios does not necessarily imply that someone is not a Christian. This is true, of course..." Of course? Then, end of discussion. But more squirming yet: "But when the writer introduces a Jew who is already a Christian, he usually indicates this, directly or indirectly (cf. 16:1; also 9:10, 36; 11:27)." Check those cites, because behind them lies a serious problem that verges on malfeasance. 16:1 tells of Timothy, whose status as a half-Gentile is noted and plays an important role later. 9:10 and 36 name Ananias and Dorcas, neither of which makes a point of the person's Jewishness. 11:27 speaks of a prophet coming from Jerusalem and also says zero about being "Jewish" OR "Christian" except by context. These are all "indirect" references that have to be strained and stretched to see it as Luke "indicating" anything as though he had some purpose in mind to deny that A and P were Christians and did so by making sure it was understood that these other people were converted Jews. On such grounds do we find a slam against our Acts 18 couple. Common sense tells us, as Haenchen did, that two non-Christian Jews would hardly house the preacher of a controversial faith after being expelled from Rome; but we are assured that Luke's readers were as Doughty is, and that they would assume by this slim verse that something is amiss. After a side note in which we are told "Luke's portrayal of Aquila taking a vow and shaving his head (v. 18) indicates that he observes the 'customs of the Jews' in a serious way" (the antecedent here is ambiguous, says Witherington [557]; it has far more meaning to note that Paul took this vow than that some minor character did), we are told that later on in v. 19, when Paul goes to the synagogue to preach, "since Luke has related nothing to the contrary, the reader would also assume that in v. 26 Apollos must go the synagogue in order to meet Priscilla and Aquila because, from Luke's perspective, they are still Jews." The oddity that somehow these Jews (A and P) managed to get Apollos to thereafter preach a Christian message (v. 28) doesn't seem to strike Doughty at all, so intent he is on the idea that this is some conspiracy by Luke to (drum roll, please) "establish Paul as the founder of the Christian community in Corinth" and thereby in Luke's time show that A and P were not. The dull point in all of this is that neither Acts nor the Corinthian letters make a claim that Paul "founded" anything (though he might have, having had more time and gumption than anyone else), though Doughty dons the glasses once more and takes Luke's emphasis that Paul was the first Christian preacher in Ephesus as some sort of hint that there was an ever larger conspiracy afoot, that Paul's prediction of wolves attacking the Ephesian chirch (20:17-35) is part of some grand plot presupposing that the real Christianity was some other movement and that Luke is asserting the druthers of his version of the faith by making Paul predict the bad guys in advance. And how does one get from Ephesus to Corinth, then? These three verses in Acts 18 "originally related a visit by Paul with Priscilla and Aquila in Ephesus." You won't find a single text of Acts or a single text anywhere that says this; Doughty's only data otherwise is that A and P are elsewhere associated with Ephesus and not Corinth, though this makes a wonder of 1 Cor. 16:19 with A and P saluting a church in Corinth that otherwise has no obvious reason to know who these people are; Doughty in a footnote plies the fjord that, hey, maybe the Corinthians just happened to know these people by some other means like reputation; maybe they were known like in Rom. 16:3, to the churches of the Gentiles (when actually, Paul is speaking on behalf of the Gentile churches, thanking A and P; he is not sending personal greetings from them!). Doughty does take Rom. 16:3 as a point in favor of A and P being in Rome at some point, but conveniently concludes "there is no reason to regard this information as more reliable than the view in 2 Tim 4:19 that when Paul was brought to Rome in chains (1:16f), Aquila and Priscilla were still with Timothy in Ephesus." In other words, if we admit this bit of data, Doughty's thesis is embalmed before sunrise, so better to wave it off.
So it is that the grand conspiracy is laid out, such that Luke subtly slammed A and P to make Paul into the true founder of the church at Ephesus, when A and P actually were the real deal there, and "thereby establishing also the priority and authority of Luke's brand of apostolic and Pauline Christianity over against 'fierce wolves' and 'perverse teachers' in his own time." Of course it would be so much easier for Luke to have simply said outright that A and P were rotten eggs, but then we would never need Doughty to blow away the smoke and crack all the mirrors. This is a person who tells us in a footnote that "[w]e cannot employ what we know (or think we know) about [the Claudian expulsion] to elaborate what Luke tells us, or speculate about what Luke 'must have known' but didn't tell us," and then out of the other side of his mouth freely tells us with certitude that Luke was part of a grand conspiracy to make Paul into the real founder of the Ephesian church. The nature of Doughty's path is well exemplified by this footnote in closing, about the Claudian edict:
This conclusion can not be set aside no matter what exhausting historical labor might disclose about the reliability and meaning of what ancient historians relate concerning the edict of Claudius (e.g., R. Riesner, Die Frühzeit des Apostels Paulus [Tübingen: Mohr, 1994), 139-180). Such apologetic endeavors, in the spirit of Lightfoot and Zahn, while certainly learned, cannot substitute for critical analysis of the biblical texts themselves. The only evidence we have connecting Aquila and Priscilla with this edict is found in Acts, and this connection is entirely Luke's own creation, reflecting his own literary technique and serving his own purposes.
In short, Doughty's self-designated "critical analysis" supersedes anyone else's historical detective work, no matter how "learned", and his work earns the right to be called "critical analysis" while everyone else's work of the same caliber taking the texts at value rather than positing conspiracy earns the derisive snort of being called "speculation." What more needs be said of this? Wake up and smell the hypocrisy!
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