Note on Acts 17:28


I found that New Testament scholars in Adventism just follow the stream of trendy conclusions that conventional New Testament authors postulated that Paul, and other NT authors (Jude) cited from Greek Classics and Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha to make their points.

 

The issue is strongly a textcritical one when it comes to these outside sources: we do not have any manuscript of them predating 300 A.D. and when we do, like Qumran, it is wise to agree with F. M. Cross that the DSS format of the text does not compare to the elaborations, additions, omissions, and transformation of the printed editions in modern times.

 

Acts 17:28 as a case in point and also in the SS today

Acts 17:28 cannot be said to be a copy of a Classical Greek source.

 

The Greek particles “like also” argues against that view.

Paul is paraphrasing Psalm 139:13-16 in a way that compares very well with a phrase he saw in the Greek Classics, but is not quoting from. He is quoting from the Old Testament but told them just like I am using my sources in my tradition saying x like also in your sources of Greek literature you can find the same or similar.

Other references of socalled “plagiarism” in the New Testament must also be considered with the Old Testament first.

 

Our New Testament scholars must first study these so-called sources, like the Wisdom of Solomon for example which was found to be only in Greek and Latin (bad news because they are then late) and scholars like Speiser and Kahana in 1936 retrovert translated them back into Hebrew. Furthermore, note this: Nahmanides a Medieval rabbi said about it: “difficult Aramaic and the Christians have translated it from that language”.

 

Christian interpolations of Romans or Jude in the later Greek and Latin Wisdom of Solomon a possibility? No one raise this issue among conventional NT scholars and neither SDA NT scholars. It is only faith that brings the Book like Nickelsburg wants it, unchanged and exactly the same in form in the Second Temple Period!

 

The original author of Wisdom of Solomon furthermore, compiled his work with citations from the Old Testament: Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth, Isaiah, Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Numbers, Psalms. He also used books like Tobias, Sirach. He used additionally Jewish Midrash, Greek Classics and Popular philosophy. When this was translated then, it seems to me, in Christians hands during the “age of harmonization with Greek Classical studies upsurge” around 300 A.D. it appears to me that remnants of Paul and New Testament authors were interpolated into this Wisdom of Solomon.

 

See Fichtner’s article in ZAW 57: 155-192 for the OT references and sources listed here. Except the NT which I added.