[zeek]

Originally Posted by awareness

How do we get historical confirmation of anything? We're stuck with books. Acts is one of them.

I agree that It would be nice to 'hear' from others, 'that were there,' beside Luke's (or whoever) secondhand account. The author of Luke, writing decades after the events he tells of, admits to gathering up all the stories available at that time. And the Pentecost event was one of them.

But as told all the disciples were there. Why don't we hear from them? What's up with that?

Early church father Irenaeus, late 2nd c., said :

"There are four principle winds, four pillars that hold up the sky, and four corners of the universe; therefore, it is only right that there be four gospels."

That's why there are only four gospels? But there were 12 disciples. Why not 12 gospels. Wouldn't that be better to base the number of gospels on, rather than the winds, pillars, and corners of the universe?

And we have many "Acts." We've got : "The Acts of John" ; "The Acts of Paul" ; "The Acts of Peter" ; and a dozen others. So why only one Acts in our canon, by a guy that's gathering stories, and telling them secondhand?

The Pentecost was a giant event. Nothing like that had ever happened, or happened since. It must have blown every bodies mind. Wouldn't everyone want to tell that story?

I guess not. Also, like you pointed out, no Recovery or Restoration will ever bring that back. The Eucharist is a very poor substitute. It's just killing Jesus all over again.


And we study it more than they do. Go figure.

I am aware that like me you are reading early primary Christian sources as well as studying the works of professional historians who have investigated the era. You have often commented on the fantastical character of the writings of authors from the early centuries of the common era. Burton L. Mack, scholar of early Christian history and the New Testament confirms this.

"An explosion of the collective imagination signals change, and the first Christian century experienced just such an explosion. It marks the time as uncertain and it registers an outpouring of human energy and intellectual activity in the production of myths.

Christians were not the only people creating new myths. The literature of the time is famous for its fantastic worlds and imaginary explorations of legendary figures. But Christians were the ones who managed the mythology that western culture eventually accepted as its own.

Christians have never been comfortable with the notion of myth or willing to see their own myths as the product of human imagination and intellectual labor. This strong resistance is not due to a perversity peculiar to Christians but is a peculiarity integral to the Christian myth itself. The Christian myth was generated in a social experiment aware of its recent beginnings, and because the myth was about those beginnings, early Christians imagined their myth as history.

The myth focused on the importance of Jesus as the founder figure of the movements, congregations, and institutions Christians were forming. Thus history and myth were fused into a single characterization, and the myths of origin were written and imagined as having happened at a recent time and in a specific place.

Christians of the second, third, and fourth centuries found themselves troubled by the resemblance of their myths to both Greek and Jewish mythologies. They could distance themselves from these other cultures and distinguish their myths from the others only by emphasizing the recent historical setting of their myths and the impression given by the narrative gospels that the myths really happened."

Mack, Burton L.. The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (pp. 207-208). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.