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The Pharisees in Acts
- Thread starter hatsoff
- Start date
I think that Paul's conversion to Christianity was not as big a change as many might think. He persecuted the Christian Jews because they did not properly observe the law, and as a Pharisee he believed that observing the law was vital for all Jews if God was to send them a messiah. When he had his experience of the Road to Damascus he went from working to expediate the arrival of the messiah to working to tell people about the arrival of the messiah. His beliefs only changed in as much as he now believed the messiah had arrived.
He still considered himself a Jew, and he may well have still considered himself a Pharisee. He said he did, according to Acts.
If the author of Luke was a companion of Paul's then he likely had a very different view of Pharisees to the earliest Christians who had been persecuted by them. I do not think you need to go any further than that to explain how the Pharisees are regarded in Luke-Acts, which is enough to destroy the ThinkInstitute's argument for an early composition date.
He still considered himself a Jew, and he may well have still considered himself a Pharisee. He said he did, according to Acts.
Acts 23:6 Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”
If the author of Luke was a companion of Paul's then he likely had a very different view of Pharisees to the earliest Christians who had been persecuted by them. I do not think you need to go any further than that to explain how the Pharisees are regarded in Luke-Acts, which is enough to destroy the ThinkInstitute's argument for an early composition date.