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Kind of like biting nails, it's a bad habit of mine to check out Infidels.org and see what the latest is, and see what the garbage truck delivered (not "picked up"). Most stuff loaded these days is either "existence of God" sort of stuff (they seem to love these "can't get your hands on the subject" items) or editorials by angry people who are p.o.'d about things like the extermination of the Canaanites or IN GOD WE TRUST being on coins. If it weren't for Kyle Gerkin and a few others the place would be an ideological ghetto. Today's subject is not someone who helps improve that evaluation.

Sid Green has authored two articles for ii.org; the most recent is titled, "Hidden History in Acts of the Apostles" and is the usual bucket of bologna we have become accustomed to finding from this bunch. Interaction with scholarship is minimal, and mixed with mythicist blatrimony (Wells, Ellegard) and the latest dying fad, Ronald MacDonald's Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. Most of the article is bland assertion rushed past in Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s racecar without substantiation. Funny stuff indeed, for one trained in the art of rhetoric. Let's do the usual for these days and intersperse comments in bold, since it is not too long (13 pages -- more than enough to do the job, is it not?).

"The Acts of the Apostles" is often said to be a work of early Christian history, and although it is poor history, Said by who this century? Colin Hemer in The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic Historiography provided a detailed rounding out of accuracies in Acts, a whole bookful, as if Green cared. Take this as just fish slapped on the counter and Green pounding his chest like Tarzan, as he coughs up the last gob of influenza. It's the way he'll be doing things throughout almost the entire article. it does reveal vital historical information. We can deduce that Acts was written close to the beginning of the second century, From below Green seems to mean "close" on the 1st century side. He doesn't name an exact date, but the most critical Biblical scholarship goes no later than 85-90 for this book. That's all we'll say, since Green doesn't explain himself further. We'll just refer folks here on pre-70 Gospel and Acts dates. but it was very little known for another century or so. Actually, "little used" would be a better word. Green can't say "little known" without knowing the minds of the authors, AND proving a late date. He does neither here but just gets on his roll and rocks. This early obscurity has served us well, because had the book been better known, its revealing information might well have attracted more interest from Christian editors. (Drum roll, as conspiracy is revealed) -- Funny thing is, Green DOES claim that editors got a hold of the thing. They just didn't do quite enough to hide the truth from his rampant genius.

Acts is a sequel to the synoptic story, beginning where the Gospels end, so the Gospels are necessarily a primary source. Not sure what Green means by "source" -- this usually means "it used the Gospels" but that doesn't seem to be the point Green makes beyond this. Some would say that the author did not see any Pauline epistles--he certainly mentions none of them--but it is possible that he saw some and certain that he did not see them all. Since it isn't important, I'll just note that there is indeed plenty of discussion on this point. But there is more to Acts than is derived from those two sources. There is invention of course, such as the story of Eutychus plagiarised from Homer in Acts 20, Yeah, right. This example was so exemplary of the fallacies in MacDonald's work that I used part of it in my review of HEGM in the Christian Research Journal. See a closer look here, Ch. 1. but there is also information that is unique among Christian writings, certainly very early, and perhaps the earliest records we have. Hmm, yet he wants a late 1st century date. Is this a matter of convenience we smell? What he wants to be early, will be dated early; the rest is late? You bet. The Lord whom we read of in the epistles appears to be a real figure from history, seemingly resurrected as the story begins, and seen by many at that time. Those who saw him c. 35 CE, as reported by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, were expecting action as implied by their eschatological beliefs. The Lord, as Messiah, would lead mankind through the last days, but his mission either failed or was indefinitely postponed, and Paul was the last to see him. The story had no end and the sightings petered out. The believers waited eagerly, but died disappointed, with Paul anxious to reassure those who feared they would die before the Lord manifested himself to all (e.g., 1 Thess. 4:13-17). Sorry to break this to Sid, but the mission succeeded and was fulfilled in 70 AD. Since this is also merely a brief note, we'll just provide a link to our series here. But this is one of his main foundations, and it is rotten already.

The Gospel account, on the other hand, has the Lord resurrected--not at the beginning of the story--but at the end of a prefacing drama inserted before the sightings occurred, giving an account of an earthly life. The drama ends with death and then Resurrection, now presented as a glorious fulfilment of his mission. The story that had no ending now becomes the ending itself, but of another story. The subsequent eternal waiting was forgotten at first, but later reentered Christian doctrine as a required vigil rather than a disappointment, with the faithful awaiting a parousia at some unspecified future date. This last bit is a rather confused miasma that looks to have been composed while on barbituates. If I read it right, Green seems to be saying that Acts somehow encapsulates the disappointment of the "failed" return of Jesus, but based on the link above, that's wrong from the get-go however you argue it.

Although the Resurrection is a common feature between the two categories of writing, skeptical observers have long agreed that the dichotomy between the epistles and the Gospels is close to absolute. The epistles were written closest to the time of the supposed events of the Gospels, yet they know nothing of them. When the Gospel story appeared a half-century later, almost all of the graphic detail, (biographical, historical and anecdotal), was new, unmentioned by any earlier writer. Yes, folks, it's the same old Wells-Doherty "why didn't they blab on and on and on about details like we would" routine. Check my answer here and ask yourself: Isn't Green just another low-context Westerner looking for beans in the bushes? Later Gospels, although dependent upon the work of the first evangelist for their story lines, do not become increasingly vague as time and mortality diminishes the inventory of human recollection, but rather they add even larger volumes of detailed information, a hallmark of legendary development. Not in the least, unless you beg the question of development in the first place, to say nothing of begging the question of compositional order (Mark first, Green means here). Green does not delve into specifics here, though, so we won't say more than that. The Palestinian apocalyptic believers in the risen Lord, known to the early writers, disappeared with the first Jewish revolt in 66-70 CE, but their expectations had been carried into the Diaspora by refugees from the persecution of the fourth decade. Perhaps half a century after the sightings, time, distance, and the bloody aftermath of the war stood between a new generation of Greek-speaking Diaspora believers and those original visions of the Lord. Orphaned sectarians, with no recourse to authoritative religious guidance, were the authors of the first Gospel. The well-accepted concept of Markan priority means that we need neither Matthew nor Luke to see how the story arose, such later elaboration serving only to confuse what we see of Mark's original understanding. Behind all of this blattery lies a spate of unproven and unsubstantiated assumptions. Green of course is not trying to reinvent the wheel, but readers are never told why to accept any of this, which makes regular Skeptical bleats that Christians do this rather ironic in context. The fact is that there is no documented proof that the Palestinian believers "disappeared" or that the Diaspora believers were "orphaned". If anything we have clear evidence of a line of authority through persons like Clement, Papias, and others that passed on the sacred tradition in the same way their religious, Jewish forebears did, and every sign that Christians in Jerusalem fled when they saw the signs Jesus predicted come to pass. As for "well-accepted" you all know what we say to that. The Markan author composed his work along the lines of a Homeric epic, so creating an all-time best seller. Here again, just accepting MacDonald uncritically; see link above. It hardly needs restating here that the details of his story, the Gospel story, were for the most part completely unknown to the writers of anything earlier, whether canonical or otherwise. In his biography of Paul, Fr. Jerome Murphy O'Connor lists everything that Paul wrote concerning the earthly life of Jesus. He writes:

Yet when we come to tabulate the references to the historical Jesus in the Pauline letters all we learn is that he was a Jew (Romans 9:4-5) of the line of David (Romans 1:3), who had a mother (Galatians 4:4), who was betrayed (1 Corinthians 11:23) and crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2 and passim), as a result of which he died and was buried (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

O'Connor complicates the issue, since anyone of the line of David is necessarily Jewish, with a mother and father, but still, what he identifies is little enough. Again, this is the same stuff Doherty preaches, so just see the link above. There is no indication from Paul of when this earthly life occurred, Uh huh. That's if you discount the reference to Pilate in 1 Tim. as being by Paul, which we assume Green does. Wonder if he can defend himself from this. Probably not. It would require more than sound bites. By the way, someone of the line of David could conceivably be of Gentile beliefs via intermarriage (or even apostasy, though that would be unlikely here). but the setting chosen by the Markan author is precisely in Pontius Pilate's prefecture, when we can also infer that the sightings of the risen Lord occurred. Yet we can't infer that this is when the death and life occurred. Interesting. Acts gives a description of the fervour that followed those sightings.

Acts was written later than the synoptic Gospels, of course, "Of course." Of course, and by how much? As noted, Green doesn't defend this specifically. reinforcing the Gospel story by portraying preparations for the End of the Age by those who thought the Messiah had just arrived as though they thought he had just departed. Again, this rests on assumptions defeated in the series linked above. The "end of the age" was in sight, yes -- but it didn't mean life wasn't pretty much going on as usual for anyone outside of Judaea. Yet the earlier belief can still be detected in its pages, along with early terminology and probably unique historical reporting, even if this is misrepresented in order to support the Gospel story. Since there is no "earlier belief" that is different, this already falls flat, but note in what follows as Green waxes eloquent with what he assumes proved. The average reader should be aware of such presumptive editorial lollygagging and not assume that Green has proven his basis or has any idea what he's talking about, just because he opens his mouth and sounds confident when he opens it. From where did the author, a gentile in the late first century, obtain unique information about a Jewish sectarian belief half a century earlier? I suggest that he relied partly on written Nazorean sources that have not survived. Note that Green has to invent mysterious "sources" out of nowhere to explain away history, after rejecting (with no basis given, other than his own inventions!) the record as it stands. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that what Acts tells us about the so-called Jerusalem Church, which it calls "Nazoreans" or "the Way," occurs nowhere else in Christian records, canonical or otherwise. That point must be underlined: That's probably a good idea, because it proves nothing and needs underlining in order to get attention. Creating out of whole cloth "written Nazorean sources" which are also assumed to not agree with the mainline faith is the height of fanciful creativity when your main proof is name given to the sect by OTHER persons. The theory runs the data rather than the other way around. The name was most likely applied derogatorily as an allusion to Jesus' origins in the dirtbag one-horse village of Nazareth -- which would be likely tactics in age when being from the wrong side of the tracks was a sure way to get insulted. Only Acts 24:5 gives us the startling fact I wasn't startled. Were you? Maybe Green leads a boring life. that the Greek word "Nazoraioi" is a proper name for a religious sect, with no attempt made to connect the word with "Nazareth." You have to ask yourself why at this point any "attempt" needed to be made, as Green does not explain the pressing importance of making such a connection. A high context reader would not need one, especially after reading Luke's first volume clearly making Jesus a denizen of Nazareth. Although Christian apologists will suggest that the word "Nazoraios" comes from the Hebrew netser, meaning sprout or shoot, (Isaiah 11:1), they accept without question that it means "from Nazareth." This is patently inconsistent, since no lexicon offers a confident explanation for the origin of the name "Nazareth," most of them saying "origin unknown." Why this is "inconsistent" is not explained. Contextually there is nothing else for it to refer to in Luke's writings. It is only by inventing an otherwise unattested context that Green can make this complaint sound valid. In any case the etymology of Nazoraios is Aramaic, not Hebrew, being a Graecised form of the word natsarraya meaning custodians or keepers (of the Law). The equally sectarian Samarians (sic), with their own brand of non-Temple Judaism, named themselves in the same manner, using the Hebrew word "Shomerim" which has the same meaning. Well, duh. Maybe Green just gave himself an idea for the etymology of the city of Nazareth's name, you think? You'll see where this may head -- Christianity as a "law keeping" faith. But note that "of the Law" is apparently not part of the meaning -- which leaves it open, even if Green is right, in terms of what the people would be "keepers" or "custodians" of. How about the kerygma of the Gospel in this case? Green never states whether he thinks Nazareth existed in Jesus' time, but as it is now known from a list of towns former priests were sent to, he's stuck with an etymology of unknown origin either way and his thesis has sum spalinin' to do. In the meantime a reader has sent us this note. He took a class at the University of Maryland on the history of the rabbinic movement: My professor's specialty is the history of the rabbinic movement. We did extensive study on one particular case text, Baba Metsi'a' 3 of the Mishnah, and that very passage deals extensively with the "shomerim." He translates the word "shomerim" as "bailees," "watchers," or "depositaries." It's largely based on a passage in Exodus 22. In any case, the word here is understood as strictly considered to refer to people who watch over animals or goods. It's a very financial, physical enterprise rather than a spiritual one in this particular case.

Only Acts, in half a dozen clear examples (e.g., 9:2 and 24:14), tells us that these "Nazoraioi" referred to their own belief as "The Way," exactly as the sectarians of the Scrolls described themselves. True as far as it goes. Witherington's Acts commentary [316] confirms this, but if Green wants to pretend this proves anything, he's in for a surprise. The discussion of "two ways", Witherington notes, was part of early Jewish and Christian lit, so that the two groups used the same name ("the way") tells us nothing more than that both groups knew well enough to borrow common language in their background. In the entire inventory of Christian writings, only Acts, endorsed by the historical records of Josephus and Philo, describes the collective of believers that existed after the Resurrection, telling how they were enjoined to sell their belongings and to give the proceeds towards the support of the community. The almost identical description by Josephus and Philo of such a sect, known to them as "Essenes," leaves little doubt that these are two accounts of a single phenomenon. Nice try, but no dice. To begin, the sharing of common resources was a feature of collective ingroups as a whole in the ancient world -- not specifically that of Judaism, though Jewish groups offered a more radical practice of such ingroup sharing, probably due to their status as an ingroup everyone else disliked. Second, Witherington [208] notes that unlike Qumran, there is no transfer of ownership of property and no indication that such acts were required, rather than voluntary as Acts depicts. Certainly some scholars, such as Robert Eisenman make little or no distinction between the sectarians and the so-called Jerusalem Church. Eisenman, note, who is also famous for collapsing down people in the NT into one person based on not only marginal similarities, but differences! Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer, a Jesuit priest, admits somewhat coyly that "Essene tenets . . . shed important light on the early chapters of Acts." Note how Green pretends Fitzmyer is "coyly" hiding something. He isn't -- he's saying no more and no less than that certain Essene tenets shed light on Christian practice -- as would be expected given certain similar orientations in their common Jewish background which hardly prove that they are the same movement. Green will not even discuss significant differences in the movements, of the sort that led Charlesworth to declare that if Jesus visited Qumran, the Essenes would have spit on him. Green offers only a few specifics which we will look at, and we'll do a larger project at a later date. Nor is identification of Essenism with "Early Christianity" restricted to modern scholarship, or to alleged crackpots. And to prove this, Green gives one example! Actually the identification is held by only a few crackpot scholars -- and by none working on the Dead Sea Scrolls legitimately. At the end of the fourth century, Eusebius of Caesaraea declared quite uncompromisingly, but incorrectly, that the first century report by Philo of the Egyptian Therapeut Essenes was undoubtedly a description of Christians. As he put it:

But that Philo, when he wrote these things, had in view the first heralds of the Gospel and the customs handed down from the beginning by the apostles, is clear to every one.Well, sorry, but if the match is incorrect, as Green admits, then what does this prove? Green is quoting something he admits is wrong as "proof" for his case!

Josephus called the members of the commune "Essenes," and in Acts they were "Nazoreans," so based on Acts 24:5 we can equate Nazoreans with Essenism in the era when the commune was formed. Notice that Green simply slides by here having made practically no effort to compare the groups in detail. He has proceeded on the basis of the thinnest of evidence concerning complex social groups. Further nomenclature, as noted by Alvar Ellegård for example, of more obviously self-descriptive terms shared between the early works of the NT and the writings of the Essenes, include "The Church of God," "The Perfect," "Saints," "The Poor," and "Sons of Light." Paul in particular uses these terms to refer to the so-called Jerusalem apostles (e.g., Rom 15:26, 1 Cor 16:1-3). Not quite that impressive. "Church" or assembly of God is something any Jewish-oriented group would reserve for itself. "The Perfect" is never used of the Christian church as a title in the NT. "Saints" uses a word that is related to the word "Holy" in "Holy Spirit" and would also be used by any Jewish group that knew the OT. "Poor" when used throughout the NT clearly refers to people in material poverty or other dire straits; more on this below. "Sons of light" is never used in a titular sense in the NT. While the dates of the Scrolls extend into the Herodian era, they give no hint that Essenism had recognised the arrival of either the Messiah or his precursor, who was foretold as coming to teach righteousness in preparation for the Messiah. The Nazorean phase of Essenism would have begun when the sightings occurred, but there is no written record of its history, unless I am correct and a bowdlerised secondhand form exists hidden within the pages of Acts. That's an enormous "unless" and will require a lot more from Green than matching of universalish titles. A comprehensive comparison of beliefs is what is really needed, but we don't get it. At the end of the first century the author of Acts represents the Nazorean apocalyptic experience as consequential upon the Gospel story he already knows, but this morsel of real history does not sit well with the Gospels. The original Markan Gospel had a resurrected Jesus who went nowhere, presumably remaining on earth to claim his throne. "Presumably"? The ascension of Jesus to beside the throne of God is amply attested in the epistles; Green will need more than a "presumably" to claim this one. The believers described in Acts are preparing actively for his imminent enthronement in an earthly realm, not lamenting his departure to sit at God's right hand in the heavenly kingdom. Sorry, but that's gonna need a lot more justification to be pulled out of the hat. Green doesn't explain what in Acts shows "active preparation" for enthronement on earth. Presumably as well we will be told that Acts 2:30 and 7:56 don't count.

The earliest type of Christian belief was a generic Gnostic form that we now call "Adoptionist." Specifically it involved the Lord being adopted, or appointed by God as His Son at the time of the Resurrection, exactly as we see expressed by Paul, Romans 1:1-4. No exegesis by Green, of course, who seems unaware of the difference between the titular "Son" as a title for Jesus on earth and his role as eternal Wisdom made clear in the Gospels and in the epistles. There is no language that specifically stands for adoptionism as opposed to birth; indeed Rom. 1:3 speaks of the Son as "made of the seed of David" which makes little sense under an adoptionist scenario. We would not expect to find this undeveloped Gnostic form in a late work, such as Acts, yet we do.

The first evangelist introduces his Jesus at the time of the adoption or divine appointment, which coincided with baptism, not resurrection. Nice try, but the Markan baptism isn't about adoption, it is about recognition. Green, like many critics, is oblivious to the point of the voice from heaven, which is to give a public testimony to Jesus' identity, in a collective society in which one did not proclaim one's own identity, but had to have it recognized by others. This does not equate with Jesus not being of his divine identity prior to the baptism. In other words, adoptionism is anachronistic. In Gospel chronology, the appointment has moved backwards about one year, yet in both stories it occurs at the time of the Lord's arrival. In the earlier belief he arrived by resurrection, As yet this has not been explained, but will be below. but in the first Gospel he appeared a year earlier, Green obviously follows the limited chronology, versus a longer one of 1-2 and a half years. Since he merely assumes it with no defense, little can be said in reply. on the banks of the Jordan, to be baptised, perhaps having come from Galilee, while the date of the Resurrection remained fixed.

The first Gospel killed off the resurrectionist form of Adoptionism, because the Lord had to be divine for the duration of his time on earth. As noted, identification of Jesus with divine Wisdom fairly well makes this attempt by Green moot. Later evangelists caused further apparent shifts, by adding prefacing birth stories, so the adoption again moved backward to the start of whatever period on earth was being claimed. This has been noted even by Christian observers such as Fr. Raymond Brown, in several scholarly works. Whatever the case, the Wisdom identification makes the point moot. No one who accepted the Gospel stories could accept also that Jesus was less than divine during his mission on earth, before the (Gospel) Resurrection, yet Acts 2:31-36 does indeed represent Peter as expressing this belief. No exegesis is offered, but Green presumably has a key in on 2:36, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." -- taking the reading that Jesus was "made" Lord and Christ but was not before. The problem here is that "Lord" and "Christ" are titles of activity in the temporal realm. They do not speak against the existence of Jesus as divine Wisdom in eternity, before he assumed the temporal roles of Lord and Christ to humanity, which of course did not exist in eternity. We need to view these titles, as Witherington notes, in terms of historical progression. Green also needs better comprehension of how the identity of Jesus was recognized via the various titles. The author half-adjusts it to Gospel standards, however, by saying that there was no bodily corruption before resurrection, implying the brief period of death described in the Gospel account. While partially consistent with the earliest writings, such as Romans, this hybrid notion cannot live alongside later ideas of Jesus' divinity, yet here it is, even later than all three synoptics. Given Green's limited knowledge of ideas of Jesus' divinity, especially related to Wisdom theology, this doesn't leave much to say.

The author of Acts is allowed an opinion, even if he asserts an archaic and superseded belief expressed as the words of Peter, but can he hold two opposing views about the divine appointment? Because at 10:37-38 he gives the opinion, again through Peter, that baptism, not resurrection, was the defining moment. The defining moment for what? Not for divinity; the passage only says God "anointed" Jesus at that time, and that only means to consecrate to a religious office. It has nothing to do with personal identity. And if the author is also the author of the Lukan Gospel, as he claims, then he has not two but three conflicting opinions, because the Lukan Gospel (1:35) assures us that Jesus was God's Son at birth. Notice that Green is mixing up titles in ignorance -- he does not know about Wisdom, an eternal title; "Son" in the NT clearly applies only to the incarnated Jesus (as would be expected, if that is when eternal Wisdom took on flesh, though obviously later writers could apply the title "Son" to the pre-incarnate Jesus proleptically) and "Lord and Christ" are titles of activity in the temporal realm (but could again be used proleptically). Acts simply fails to perceive the conflict here, the orthodox author seeming not to understand the Gnostic dogma behind the words in his sources. In truth, Green imagines the conflict through his own ignorance. Gnosticism has nothing to do with it.

Christian orthodoxy arose from retrogression of the divine appointment, from baptism, through birth, conception, until finally, as we see in the fourth Gospel, Jesus is deified, his divinity now arising at the dawn of time. Nope. Jesus identifies himself with eternal divine Wisdom in Matthew; with the eternal Son of Man in even Mark....we'll stop there, since Green doesn't even bother analyzing the claims of Jesus at all. The first evangelist was responsible for the initial shift. He understood the Lord to be living an earthly existence when the apostles, Peter, James, and Paul met him, and life precedes death, and resurrection must follow death. He therefore brought the adoption back to the beginning of his story to ensure divinity throughout the Lord's mission. He had not understood the Palestinian Nazorean belief in the Resurrection as the very means by which the Messiah had returned to earth from an earlier age, and that his person, seen by Cephas and other apostles was already a resurrected body. As noted above, this is a false understanding of the purpose of the baptism proclamation. Therefore any attempt to draw a parallel to "Nazorean belief" is moot.

Reconciling the Two Beliefs --As portrayed by Acts, Paul was one of the principals of the Nazorean movement. He was, I believe, trained by the Nazoreans to conduct his ministry, (see below) but by denying the Jewish Law he became apostate, escaping death by fleeing the wrath of his teachers. He later negotiated a truce, agreeing to take the good news of the resurrected Lord to the gentiles, leaving Jews to the 'Jerusalem apostles.' The standard line, refuted here, seems to be implied, though again Green delivers no specifics.

The antilegal Pauline belief may have been rather unimportant in its day, but by the end of the first century those who are seen today as "followers of the synoptic tradition" were seeking to detach their new belief entirely from Judaism--which for them meant Nazoreanism. Paul's legacy was a number of communities hostile to the Jewish Law, who now seemed attractive bedfellows. Without specifics, this is little more than vague claptrap; we need to hear how Paul was "anti-legal" (he was actually "anti-legalIST") and where this alleged "hostility" lies. There is none. This imposed a consequential need not only to integrate Paul into a sanitised history, but also to reconcile Pauline doctrine with the story line of the Gospels--by that time the essence of what Christians actually believed. In doing this, not always very successfully, we see with benefit of hindsight that Acts gives us more information than strictly necessary. In the Diaspora, the ideas leading towards Christian orthodoxy were in the ascendant, and the task for the author of Acts was retrospectively and anachronistically, to rehabilitate Paul as a leader in the orthodox hierarchy. He realised that while Nazoreanism in Palestine was a casualty of the recent war, it was still remembered, so he identifies the Nazoreans openly, but portrays them implicitly as Christians. He presents Paul not as an apostate renegade but as a Nazorean leading light, equal to or better than any other apostle. Paul is the hero, with Peter alongside as the foil that sets him off.Having presumed to prove his point, all of this is merely question-begging summary in context. It offers no details of the case, and argues nothing.

When it became clear that the Nazorean movement in Palestine was essentially extinct, any remnant had split into apocalyptic sects such as Ebionites, who were easily dismissed as heretics. The begged question made on the grounds of the tenuous equations above continues. With Judaea in ruins, the Greek Christian movement in the Diaspora had no difficulty in seeing the apocalyptic Nazoreans, in retrospect, as the 'Jerusalem Church,' and the time had come to delete Nazoreanism from the Christian record. Still on a roll, Green can document none of this fantasy theory other than by assuming it to be true, then reading it into the texts.

Essenism was very strongly dualist, tending towards the Gnosticism that thrived among the Diaspora post-Nazorean proto-Christians, There is nothing in DSS scholarship that would lead to the conclusion that the Essenes were in any sense Gnostic. "Dualism" is a broad word -- if you believe in good and evil, you are some kind of dualist! spawning dozens of variations. Dozens? Let's have Green name at least 24 then to prove his point. Although these led eventually to orthodoxy, each step along the way left behind a sect of diehards reluctant to move on. When these Gnostic sects came under fire from emerging orthodoxy, their Nazorean progenitor was also doomed to be written out of history. Orthodoxy set about showing that its form of Christianity was the original, that it had always been as it now appeared, and that any and all Gnostic forms were heretical aberrations. They would have to be. There is no place for any sort of Gnostic thought coming out of a movement that originated in Palestinian Judaism. This is essentially the stance taken by the Church today, which has Acts to thank for helping to create this misleading impression. Green as usual is long on proclamation, short on backing it up...

Jesus the Nazorean, or "Iesous Nazoraios" of the Gospels, however, was already the focal point of the new movement, so that the name itself had to be eradicated--a task obviously impossible to accomplish by editing manuscripts. The problem was solved not by changing the name but by giving it a new meaning. That objective, achieved by making the Greek word Nazoraios mean "from Nazareth," was ultimately effective, but it has never been satisfactorily explained from a Christian standpoint whose defence of it comprises some of the most limp and naive argumentation in the entire inventory of Christian apologetics. ...other than by assuming the very thing he does not prove. The question that needs to be asked is, if Jesus really was from Nazareth, what were people from that cerifiably-real first century village called? This deception cannot be laid at the door of Acts, of course, which received its fair share of the interpolations to reinforce the contrivance seen in Matthew 2:23, which was the lynchpin of this global forgery. The fourth Gospel, I suspect, included the "Nazareth" fiction ab initio, having been written after the deception was implemented in Acts and in the synoptics. So there it is: The deception is so good, it has removed all evidence that it was even done; and Green must even hypothesize (in the footnotes) that references to Nazareth were interpolated into the Gospels. A ruthlessly begged question and nothing more.

It is easily seen that Acts fails to achieve a complete reconciliation. Some early material is only halfway adjusted to Gospel standards, some not at all. Stephen accuses the Jews, in Acts 7:52, of persecuting those who predicted the coming of the "Righteous One"--but there is no record from elsewhere of persecution simply because of Messianic expectation. Well, sorry, but Acts 7:52 does not establish such a cause and effect relationship; it says, "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers..." In other words, they persecuted those who predicted the Messiah, but not BECAUSE they did so. Only Nazoreans were being persecuted for saying "He has already been seen--he is coming." Here the text has been partly adjusted to imply Gospel knowledge, but the underlying history, still visible, betrays a Nazorean agenda, proclaiming the "Righteous One" as Lord. Green's conclusion being based on a poor reading of the text, his response becomes moot.

Apostles and Disciples -- The poorly implemented reconciliation process left behind other loose ends. In Gnostic Christianity, the task of the Gospel Messiah was to pass on the secret knowledge to his twelve followers, (see Mark 4:10f.) who in turn would spread this gnosis to receptive people throughout the world. In post-Gospel terms they would propagate the kerygma. Sorry, no need to appeal to gnosis or Gnostics here. This is actually the normal ingroup-outgroup language of an honor and shame society. People outside the ingroup were presumed to have no right to information. The Gnostics were in the same kind of society and did things their way for the same reason -- as every other ingroup did. In the terminology of the first evangelist these followers were "disciples," but this is a word that early writers never use in any book of the New Testament. To Paul, and the early writers, the dissemination of the salvific knowledge was to be by "apostles." These were effectively missionaries, and by no means limited to twelve, as Paul called himself an apostle but not one of the twelve. This called for a way of reconciling the two terms. A mountain from a molehill. A "disciple" is a pupil or a learner; an "apostle" is an envoy, one sent on a mission. Two different purposes with no need to reconcile anything. All apostles were disciples; but not all disciples were apostles.

The council of Essene elders were twelve in number, So were Jacob's sons; so were the tribes of Israel. Hmm, you don't suppose... and because Paul needed authoritative direction he dealt with the leadership. We may be sure that Cephas, James, and John were members of the council, referred to as "the twelve" by Paul. In Acts 6:2 we see that the "twelve" called together "all the disciples," so now Acts has an unlimited number of disciples, a number of apostles unspecified, but suggesting strongly that they are the twelve. That would accord with the Lukan Gospel, 6:13, which refers to the twelve apostles as being a subset of a larger number of disciples, but is in disagreement with Paul and others. "Disagreement"? How can there by disagreement if Paul never mentions disciples? There would only be "disagreement" if he said there were NO disciples, ever, anywhere. But clearly there were many persons in a pupil-teacher relationship. In other words, disciples existed even if the word was not used. I suspect that the author of Acts was here attempting a reconciliation of differences in terminology but simply failed to square the circle. Whatever definitions are preferred today, conflicting usage in the NT is not hard to find. Too bad Green doesn't "find" any for us. Agaian, an apostle could be a disciple, but a disciple was not automatically an apostle. Nonetheless, Acts 1:13-14 now introduces a list of eleven post-Resurrection apostles, and Matthias is chosen to replace Judas Iscariot. And the problem here is, what? It is not explained.

The word "apostle" in the list of disciples given in both Mark 3:14 and in Matthew 10:2 is usually said to be because the list was borrowed from Acts and dropped into the Gospels as a harmonisation, notwithstanding the fact that they convert Judas the son of James into Thaddaeus. This is probably an early scribal adjustment to avoid confusion with Judas Iscariot, as neither the other Judas nor Thaddaeus, like most of the others named here, has any further role to play in any Gospel. It's more likely a case of Judas "non-Iscariot" changing his own name to keep from having the same name as Judas Iscariot. If your name were Ted Bundy or Adolph Hitler, I think you'd be inclined to change it, too. Neither is the word "apostle" seen again except for one further example in Mark. Given this, it is odd that Mark 6:30 suddenly introduces the term "apostles," and never repeats it. What's odd about it? We aren't told. The "one mention and that's all" is assumed to be enough to drop your jaw, but nothing is actually explained. It follows immediately after the story of the execution of John the Baptist, the last verse of which contains the word "disciples" referring to followers of John. It seems beyond doubt that a scribe changed "disciple" to "apostle," to avoid confusion with the disciples of John mentioned in the previous verse. Very creative, but why not solve it instead by saying, "the disciples of Jesus..."? There is thus a black-and-white division of terminology between the early writings and the Gospels, but Acts has an evenhanded thirty or so examples of either word, and still fails to reconcile the two terms convincingly. As if a need to do so existed, which Green still doesn't demonstrate. Since he doesn't, not much can be said.

The Poor -I mentioned above that the Essenes referred to themselves as 'The Poor,' which is 'Ebionim' in the Hebrew. It is difficult to see how the term preserved its status as a proper noun among Greek-speaking believers in the Diaspora. GAG! Yes, it would be hard to see, wouldn't it? Which is why it probably wasn't one. It would work fine as a title in a closed community like Qumran. In a more open setting, it would not. It would be stupid, especially since as the studies of Meeks and Judge have shown, early Christianity had more than the usual number of non-poor converts. Acts, like Josephus' account of the Essenes, describes how committed believers were obliged to sell all their goods and give the proceeds to the community, the community that we now know to be the Ebionim. Compare this with Mark 10:21 or Matthew 19:21. Yep, compare it to advice given to ONE guy -- not to other rich folks like Zaccheus! Not for the wealthy tribal chieftain Abraham, in Paradise! Not to Nicodemus! But wait, there's more on "poor" in a moment! From across the divide of time and war, the evangelists and less well-informed Diaspora-believers saw the word not as a sobriquet for their spiritual antecedents but as a literal reference to the impoverished. It is represented in the Gospels by the word ptochos, implying destitution, but Paul's training as a Nazorean would make him familiar with the specialised vocabulary of that movement, so when he wrote of the "poor," as a noun, he might mean the Ebionim. The author of Acts would also quickly appreciate, from his early source, that Ebionim were not destitute beggars but the Nazorean movement. Green again fails to substantially discuss specifics, so not much can be said, beyond:

Paul was enjoined by the "pillars" (Cephas, John, and James) not simply to remember the poor, but to continue to do so, when they authorised him to deliver the message to the gentiles (Galatians 2:10). Here Paul obviously refers to the Ebionim of whom the "pillars" were leaders, because to take "the poor" literally we would need evidence from the epistles that Paul's mission was focused on such charitable works. Got it. Try Acts 11, where there's talk of famine. Try Paul taking up a collection for the saints in Jerusalem. Was it to buy a new Rolls? The Gospel Jesus does show concern for such downtrodden folk, but that is because the character he was given reflected what was understood by the first evangelist, who was a gentile from Rome or Antioch. Oops, Green will take any excuse to explain things away that are contrary to his thesis. Now how is it that such an "understanding" came to be? Couldn't have been because Jesus actually had such a concern...nah, that's too inconvenient for Green's wacky thesis.

In the epistles some references to "the poor" are indeed recognisable as references to the Jerusalem Nazoreans, obvious examples being Romans 15:26 and Galatians 2:10. Uh, yeah. Rom. 15:26 speaks of a "contribition for these "poor" so it's rather convenient for Green that these "poor" really were materially POOR! Galatians 2 meanwhile is tied to the famine mentioned in Acts 11. Both examples employ the word ptochos, as in the Gospels. James's epistle also includes a handful of ptochos examples, but if ptochos has in fact replaced another word in the two Pauline passages, the implication of the Ebionim is still apparent from context. I.e., from the begged question Green brings to the fore, that "poor" = not really poor materially, but a group name. In the Gospels, we can agree that the evangelists really intended to mean literal poverty, using ptochos throughout for "the poor," and it is therefore possible that the Pauline epistles were edited to conform to this Gospel standard, to disguise Nazorean terminology. Pfft! The begged question is pursued further by hypothesizing unattested editing and unevidenced changes to explain why the evidence doesn't cooperate. The possibility is strengthened by 2 Corinthians 9:9 where we find the word penes, a synonym for ptochos according to Thayer, yet it is not precisely so, as it means one who has to work hard in order to exist, while ptochos means destitute, reduced to begging. Paul and James never use penes, except for this one occurrence, when Psalm 112 is quoted, and this simply must be penes because it is a direct quotation from the Septuagint. Such an ideal word from the scriptures would have served Paul well, but it is never seen again where it would be appropriate, the Gospel word ptochos being employed exclusively. Of course ptochos serves well too, so what is the point? The story of the poor widow in the Lukan Gospel, 21:2-3, uses the word "poor" twice in close proximity, so Luke uses penichros in one of the two instances as a matter of style, showing that alternatives were available, but the epistles apply ptochos systematically. And here also is the only place pentochros is used. What's the point? There is none. Now for some special points about the "poor". Malina and Rohrbaugh in their social science commentary note [48] that the term for "poor" here are "persons who are unable to maintain their inherited honor standing in society because of misfortune or the injustice of others" -- it is not to be understood in purely economic terms. The idea of that these people are socially vulnerable, not economically poor, though of course the economically poor were among those who were most socially vulnerable. Therefore it is not surprise the ptochos far outweighs the other words in usage. This also makes much of Green's attempt to abuse ptochos out of kilter.

The author of Acts would find similar allusions to the Ebionim in his early sources, and he too might have opted for the Gospel word ptochos in such cases, yet he uses a completely different approach. As we see in Acts 24:17, Paul had to travel to Jerusalem to bring his gifts to the poor, leading to the remarkable conclusion that he was obliged to undertake an arduous expedition simply to find poor people. Green is lost here; he needs to connect this to the famine of Acts 11, and the collection FOR Jerusalem Paul refers to in his letters. Where we see such possible references to the Ebionim, Acts never uses the word "poor" as such, avoiding it by speaking of "almsgiving" or in Greek eleemosune, thus implying beggarly recipients of charity, in four instances seen in 9:36; 10:4; 10:31; and 24:17. Some NT translations offer "gifts to the poor" for eleemosune, but in those that translate more literally, a word for "poor" is not to be found even in English translation. In light of the above, this makes sense. The "poor" are not simply those with no money but those with no honor standing.

An interesting example is the case of Cornelius, described in Acts 10, which is the source of the declaration of divine appointment at baptism, as discussed above. This possibly historical anecdote was included for its implicit refutation of the legalistic proscription of Jews visiting gentile homes. Cornelius is said to have given generously, 10:2, to "those in need," (Greek deomai) thereby again carefully avoiding the use of a word for "poor." The word actually means "the people" not "those in need". The word deomai is the word "prayed" and Green seems to have confused this for the NIV's "in need" which has no parallel in the text itself. Cornelius, a Roman centurion, is a believer, and his almsgiving as Acts would have it, in 10:4 and 10:31, is remarkable enough to warrant a visit to his home by Cephas. Such charitable donations would have to be both extremely large and made with unseemly publicity to warrant such attention. It is far more likely that his donations were to the Ebionim, and that Cephas, as senior apostle, was suitably grateful. In other words, his donations were made to a group whose existence Green has only assumed on the most tenuous evidence, and then he builds more fantasy evidence out of Cornelius' actions for this ghostly group.

When we see "poor" probably referring to the Ebionim in the epistles, ptochos, as used by the evangelists for literal destitution, has perhaps been introduced later as a disguise, when penes, for Ebionim, is both more suitable and is known to Paul and already employed by him in quotation. More certainly, in the early historical aspects of Acts, the use of any word meaning "poor" is studiously avoided. This is a gross effort of mind-reading; Green has no idea whether other words were "avoided" as if the writers thought, "I have to avoid using these other words." Nevertheless ptochos, because of what it means per Malina and Rohrbaugh, is the only word that carries the required connotations respecting the socially downtrodden. Penes does not.

The Tree -- The Cornelius pericope has another interesting aspect. Peter, having spoken out against the dietary laws and other restrictive Jewish practices, is made to say to Cornelius that it was the Jews who killed Jesus, by hanging him from a tree. This is generally taken by Christians to mean, of course, that it was the Romans who killed Jesus by crucifying him. Actually, no -- it's taken to refer to the Jewish leadership. Apologists usually explain the contradiction by accusing the author of anti-Semitism. No apologist I know of, sorry.

In another early work, 1 Peter, 2:24, we see a further mention of hanging from a tree as the fate suffered by the Lord. I strongly suspect that in the Paulines, the Greek word stauroo has been systematically inserted by Christian editors There are those ghostly editors again! Never mind textual criticism and evidence; Green's "suspects" are enough. to replace "hung from a tree" of which but one instance remains, where Paul, in Galatians 3:13, quotes Deuteronomy 21:22,23. Exactly as with penes (see above), to change this example would have invalidated the scriptural quotation, which would therefore unavoidably escape a systematic substitution process. Sorry to bust Green's bubble, but by this time Deut. 21:2-3 was applied to crucifixion. The connection of "tree" with a cross was already in the mix in the DSS [Witherington, Galatians commentary, 239].

Scholars often dismiss "hanging from a tree" as a mere circumlocution for "crucify," but this is not so. Yep, Green the nobody is right and all those scholars, whose arguments he won't tell us about, are wrong. Properly, the Jewish process was the display of the dead body of a criminal or a defeated enemy suspended on a stake or a tree. Unlike the Roman punishment, the body had to be taken down by nightfall for purity reasons, and the Gospel stories do indeed preserve this unusual detail of Jesus' execution. Transposing the account of an execution from a Jewish to a Roman context therefore would require a different reason for premature removal from the cross, and this too we see in the Gospels of course. The result is a much curtailed period of suffering for the Gospel Jesus, as Roman crucifixion victims would be expected to last for two or three days, or even longer, before dying of exhaustion, shock and thirst. All of this blatter is negated by the simple fact that "hanging from a tree" is indeed a circumlocution for crucifixion.

In the Gospels, the Lord's execution was of necessity carried out by the Romans, since the Jews allegedly had no mandate to inflict such punishment in that era. Indeed they didn't. See here. Hanging from a tree while the victim lived was introduced by the Hasmonean priest-kings, and used by Alexander Jannaeus on those who opposed his Sadducean practices. It is probable that the Teacher of Righteousness was killed in such a manner, or killed otherwise and his body then exhibited as a warning by his archenemy, nicknamed "The Wicked Priest" in the Scrolls. This oddball theory is held only by a few whackos like Allegro. As Charlesworth puts it, any suggestion to the contrary is "forced onto the texts" and "derives from contorted historiography and exegesis." Vermes has shown that this character can only be a Jewish High Priest. That much is right, but Vermes does not endorse the crucifixion thesis. Just to make it clear.

There are two half-adjusted references Note how Grene's theory manipulates the data rather than the other way around. Any reference that does not fit his thesis has obviously been "adjusted". to "crucifixion" in Acts, both spoken by Peter, specifically identifying the Jews as the perpetrators, (Acts 2:36; 4:10). Curiously, we also see three unadjusted references to "hanging from a tree." In Acts 5:30 and 10:39 it is again made clear, with words spoken by Peter, that such punishment was inflicted by Jews, rather than Romans. At Acts 13:29 Paul, not Peter, blames the Jews but says that they asked Pilate to have the execution carried out, as in the Gospel account. As noted above, "Jews" refers to the leadership and would also reflect standard practice for the Romans among conquered peoples. Locals did most of the enforcement and trials.

The possibility deserves consideration that here we have, from the early source that I posit, a number of recollections of the Teacher of Righteousness being hung from a tree by a Hasmonean High Priest. Since the idea of the ToR being hung is a delusion in itself, this is a dead letter argument, as is what follows. The implication for the Gospels is that the first evangelist, ignorant of history and isolated from informed sources, thought the Teacher to have been living a normal earthly life when Cephas and others saw him. This would necessarily lead him to misidentify the unpopular Caiaphas as the 'Wicked Priest' responsible for the death of the Teacher of Righteousness. Caiaphas would certainly have needed Roman authority to give effect to the thousands of expulsions of Nazoreans in the persecution of the fourth decade. The successors of those refugees were those who produced the first Gospel. They would have no difficulty in seeing Caiaphas, the tormentor of their forebears, as a "Wicked Priest," using the Romans as his instrument against the followers of the Teacher, and they would have supposed, by extension, against the Teacher himself. In addition, the scrolls referring to these figures predate the first century significantly. They cannot refer to Jesus or Caiaphas.

The New Testament of Damascus -- We can see that the author of Acts had some knowledge of Paul's adventures, and some similarities suggest that he saw something at least of the Pauline letters. Where Pauline information overlaps with that of Acts therefore, any differences are potentially important.

The Damascus Document (CD)--the first sectarian Essenic writing to be discovered (1896)--suggests, perhaps ambiguously, that the Teacher of Righteousness will return in the End Times. It also tells us, without ambiguity, that the Teacher made a "New Covenant," or "New Testament," for the community, in "the land of Damascus"--hence the name of the document. Some scholars opine that Damascus is Qumran, others propose a more general area near the Dead Sea, the home of the Essenes according to Pliny, while yet others propose the whole of Transjordan. There is scarcely a scholar to be found, however, who would suggest that the Damascus here is anything but a code name, or is in any way connected with the Syrian city.

Paul was on the road to Damascus, we will recall, armed with the writ of the High Priest to arrest members of The Way, when he was converted following his own vision of the resurrected Lord. Either or both of the accounts of his subsequent adventures (2 Corinthians 11 and Acts 9) have been corrupted by Christian hands, in my opinion, in order to avoid revealing the significance of the place-name "Damascus." As usual, when the data doesn't cooperate, Green hypothezies an unattested change.

When Pompey annexed Judaea in 63 BCE, the High Priesthood lost its temporal powers. Hyrcanus II and the High Priests who followed him had very limited authority, except for his nephew and immediate successor, the usurper Antigonus, who briefly defied Roman authority and paid with his life. The notion that a first-century High Priest could authorise a gang of thugs to go freely into Syria--a major Roman province far more important than Judaea--to kill, kidnap, or arrest people because of religious disagreement, is too absurd to warrant discussion. That's the easy way out. But: Even the most-conservative Christian commentators reluctantly admit that this is an insuperable objection to the account given in Acts. Like heck they do. I've been through the commentaries of Johnson, Polhill, Dunn, Witherington, etc. The fact is that we have no certain information as to whether the Sanhedrin had this kind of power [Johnson, 162], and there is also a question as to whether Rome was in control of the city at this time or the Nabeteans were. We do not know whether there was any sort of extradition agreement available. We do know that Damascus was known in Jewish history and thought as a place of refuge and exile, so that it is conceivable that Jewish Christians would flee there. We also know that the Sanhedrin had jurisdiction as a legislative body over Jews throughout the Diaspora [Kistemaker, 329], collecting the Temple tax abroad [Dunn, 121], and that Jews had the right of internal discipline in their synagogues [Polhill, 233; cf. 2 Cor. 11:24]. Therefore, we could readily conceive of some sort of right of extradition, especially since we know that the Romans granted this right to Judaea as a sovereign state under the Hasmoneans, and that privilege was renewed in 47 BC [Bruce, 233]. But the question is really not relevant, and much ink has been wasted on this topic, because we don't know whether Saul/Paul would have been successful in his intentions, whatever they were - he was stopped cold by his encounter with the Risen Christ! It may be that he had in his possession a letter of recommendation (cf. 2 Cor. 3:1) to present to Damascus authorities, in an attempt to get permission to arrest or perhaps only extradite Jewish Christians, and for all we know, he may have had them handed over; he may have been politely declined; he may have been kicked out of Damascus on his behind! We just don't know whether he was pursuing a legitimate course, or shooting the moon, because he never got far enough to tell. (Beside all of this, at the time, Caiaphas would still be high priest - and we know from the Gospels and from secular testimony that he and his family were not exactly law-abiding citizens!) If a High Priest were to attempt such a flagrant flouting of Roman authority, he would hardly equip his agents with incriminating letters of authorisation, and if brought to account for it, he himself would face almost certain execution. Sorry, but it would not be Roman authority subverted -- because it would be viewed as an internal, religious matter. From Acts 9:1-2 and 26:12, however, we can only infer that he did indeed authorise such an act of foolhardy rebellion, unless of course Damascus is in Judaea. And from this false start, Green hypothesizes further. As it is a false start, what follows is useless.

According to 2 Corinthians 11:32, Damascus was certainly in Syria, because there we see that Damascus was ruled by the Nabataeans under King Aretas. This verse is surely a Christian interpolation, using historical knowledge of the political map of the first century to relocate Damascus instead of having to edit out or modify every reference to it in all Christian scriptures. I.e., since it makes hash of Green's wacko theory, it needs an excuse to be made to go away. This is exactly the same technique used in Matthew 2:23 to obviate the need to remove every reference to "Nazoraios." The pudding is over-egged however, as forgeries often are, by making Paul swear that he is not lying--why should we think he was doing so?--and by saying "under King Aretas" to underline the point too precisely and too forcefully. More social ignorance by Green. Oaths like this one were typical rhetorical devices [Witherington Corinthians commentary, 458n] and do not signify forgery, but rather an authentic student of Greco-Roman rhetoric using standard presentation techniques. No one needed to be doubting Paul here for him to use this oath.

This interpolation was not made before the author of Acts saw the text or heard the story, as the Damascus of Acts could only have been within Judaea, where the authority of the High Priest had validity. It throws the gravest doubt on the 2 Corinthians account, as it appears today, and not only because it confirms the authorisation of the abductions by the High Priest. Once again Green excuses away any contrary evidence to his thesis. As it happens I have yet to see a scholar doubt the 2 Cor. account. In Acts, it is not Nabataeans pursuing Paul and forcing him to flee for his life from Damascus, but Jews. This is the likely truth, since arrogation of powers of life and death by Jews in the Syrian city would hardly have been tolerated by the authorities, whoever they were. These Jews were unopposed, obliging Paul to flee at night in a daring escape (9:23-25). Hardly an issue. Both parties would have their motives; the Jews for obvious reasons, Aretas because of his suspicion of Jewish preachers, helped along by his stormy relationship with the Herods [Witherington, 324]. Cooperation, intentional or otherwise, would not be impossible, and Luke's omission of Aretas may be related to Paul's lack of success in the Arabian mission (see above) - for to mention Aretas might require Luke to explain WHY Aretas was after Paul. Indeed if Luke is writing a trial brief for Paul, it would be best NOT to mention this sort of thing.

I do not intend to suggest by this that Acts is necessarily more accurate or reliable than Paul's epistle to the Corinthians. The Pauline epistles were only assembled into compendia early in the second century, previous to which they were not widely known other than to the recipients of the letters. Sorry, but the evidence of letter collections in the GR world indicates that Paul himself would be the one to collect his letters -- and if not him, Luke or Timothy, and this in the first century. In any event Green's designation is arbitrary, which is nothing new: The epistle in question may have suffered interpolation, as I suspect, at the time of the collection into volumes, a unique opportunity to do so before being widely circulated, but 2 Corinthians is still basically Paul's letter, as claimed. Yet more hypothesizing of interpolations, unevidenced by textual data, as the need arises to keep the theory afloat. Acts, on the other hand, is a selection of information taken from various sources, assembled as required to present a picture that conformed to the requirements of the developing orthodoxy. Enormously begged question, posed influentially. Acts does nothing to conceal the location of the Damascus camp because the author saw no such need, believing that everyone knew what he knew. Ah, so why doesn't this "high context" explanation apply to the alleged problem of lack of details of Jesus' life in the Gospels? Hmm? No "everyone knew what Paul knew" allowed? He did not wish to show Paul as a trainee Nazorean however, but as a super-apostle and a Nazorean leader, so he rather dishonestly builds up Paul's role as an apostle on a par with Cephas, John, and James. He did not know that within a few years the Pauline epistles would be widely seen, and might challenge what he wrote. They don't, and Green does not explain how they do, though he does try the standard tack:

We see that Paul returned to Jerusalem from Damascus immediately in Acts 9:26, to hobnob with the apostles, not unnaturally arousing fears in those who knew him as their persecutor. Yet in the first chapter of Galatians, long before Acts was written, Paul states clearly that he did not return to Jerusalem after going to Damascus, and did not see any apostles, but went into Arabia for an unspecified time. He then returned to Damascus, where he stayed for three years before going to Jerusalem to meet Peter (Cephas) and James. His return to Damascus suggests that he was not in fear of his life at the time, and that the attempt on his life was at the end of the three years, not immediately after his conversion experience. Nice try, but there is no "immediately" in Acts 9:26. Green is inserting it gratuitously. Luke alludes to "many days" in 9:23 which suggests an extended period -- how about three years?

Why, years after Paul wrote Galatians, would this three-year sojourn at Damascus be excluded from the story? The probable answer is suggested by Josephus and supported by the Scrolls. The Essene community had rigid entrance requirements. A novitiate program required an initial year of observation, followed by two further years of progressive examination and induction before full membership. Paul's conversion to the belief would necessarily lead to his enrolment as a novice, which would be for a period of three years. Nice try, but since there is no exclusion, Green is out on a limb yet again. All that follows is blatter. But Josephus tells us that the Essenes applied capital punishment to those who denied the Law, and Paul's life was indeed threatened at Damascus, and his attitude toward the Law needs no restating here. Reluctant to display Paul as a novice or junior in a world of Nazorean seniors, the author of Acts omits the subject of Paul's novitiate and patches around the time discrepancy that was thereby exposed. Again, the limited exposure enjoyed by Acts meant that Paul's conflicting account of the events following his conversion was not seen by those who edited the epistles for circulation. And, once again , when the evidence does not cooperate, Grene hypothesizes an unevidenced textual conspiracy. And if Green thinks Paul's three years match the Essene three years, how were they watching him from Qumran, and if they were watching, why did he not flunk out at once for allegedly preaching against the law? Green cites Josephus on this (War 2.8.7) and there's a lot he leaves out. Josephus tells of many practices of the Essenes which find no NT parallel. In particular, that one-year of observation included giving the initiate a hatchet and a special girdle to wear, plus a white garment. After that year the convert undergoes ritual washing (not at once, as in Christianity) and then after two years more he has "tremendous oaths" to take. The "capital punishment" is also a self-imposed starvation, and Josephus adds that the Essenes often showed mercy to those that did this to themselves. Green's fantasy world has a lot of work cut out for it. And this Green offers a conclusion hereafter summing his results. Here are ours: Green has proven nothing other than that he has a gift for manufacturing excuses when the evidence does not cooperate.