I’m not sure what theory you are advancing. Paul had no long-term goals, because he thought the world would be melted in his lifetime. He was certainly subverting imperial values, but not to destroy the Empire, but to sit it out with a “purer” kingdom within it created by Christian action until Rome was literally vaporized by God.

I recommend this video by David Skrbina where he explains this theory in detail.
https://youtu.be/XMqvP2m1Dqs?si=gwlWNodFnVhKRmTm

I can also confirm that, at least in that church, the type of glossalalia depicted in Acts happened not a single time! Definitely never any fire or appearance thereof! And definitely never any real languages! Though there were certainly anecdotal accounts of speech in tongues where real languages were spoken! But somewhere else! Argumentum ad trust me bro! Hic Rhodus Hic salta!

That’s interesting apologetics on their part. And I wish I could use that argument. But it doesn’t really track usage.

You won’t find examples of epanô being used in the Roman-Hellenistic period in that same sense of “over.” It actually would mean, in respect to space, “in front of” or “in the presence of,” and even if it mean over, it would mean literally over (as in, “the top part of,” i.e. literally on their heads). Whereas when paired with a number it almost always means “above” in the sense only of number (i.e. “a larger number than five hundred”), hence why most Bible translations now so render it.

But even if we “re-read” Paul as clumsily meaning a spatial referent (a more competent writer of Greek would in that case have chosen a different preposition or construction), the most obvious sense then would be “appeared in the presence of” or “appeared before,” not “appeared up above” (much less so far above as to be in heaven—which Paul would understand to be thousands of miles away). And even if, even less competently, Paul was trying to mean “over,” according to current usage in his time he would mean literally on top of, not in the heavens vastly far away (which could describe the scene in Acts and thus have inspired it, as that’s where the tongues of fire are, but notice here we are several steps removed from the more obvious sense).

I suspect the apologists you cite are “abusing Greek” to invent a sense they want, in order to avoid doctrinal threat: Jesus is supposed to have ascended to heaven and not returned, so he doctrinally had to be “above” the five hundred in that sense. Ergo they “need” to make epanô mean that here. Standard apologetics. It is not based on any facts or logic regarding how Greek works, particularly when Paul wrote.

Hence Kearney’s argument is fallacious: it falsely presumes apologists never resort to specious means to get a result they want. It also falsely presumes Medieval Greek is the same was Hellenistic Greek, but I suspect even in Medieval Greek epanô was never really used in this sense, although I haven’t checked—but if it was, this evinces in them the fallacy of anachronism: misreading Paul as using a dialect that didn’t even exist at the time.

In truth had Paul meant this, he’d have chosen anôthen, not epanô. Or indeed he’d have used the actual phrase anôthen ek tôn ouranôn. One can posit he did and the text has become corrupted, but probability declines with complexity, and there are far simpler emendations one could then propose here.

John Chrysostom mentions in his Homilies of First Corinthians that:

“Some say that “above ,” is above from heaven; that is, “not walking upon earth, but above and overhead He appeared to them:”.

This interpretation survives in writings of Oecumenius (8th Century?) and Theophylact (11th century). The first of those writers says that some interpret epanô as “from heaven” (ek tou ouranou) and the other one that some think it means “from the heavens above” (anôthen ek tôn ouranôn). Peter J. Kearney in his article (“He Appeared to 500 Brothers (1 Cor. XV 6)” Novum Testamentum Vol. 22, Fasc. 3 (Jul., 1980), pp. 264-284) argues that this is at least acceptable Greek because none of the three interpreters either accept or reject it.

Se the reading could be: “he appeared once above five hundred brothers” or in your theory, “he appeared once above brothers at Pentecost” or similar.

So this could have been like The Fatima Sun Miracle where Jesus “appeared” from heaven.

That’s what the hypothesis proposes happened. Aretas started a border war with Herod. During which he was shockingly successful (as in fact he was). This is where the status of Damascus would be in question. Velleius intervened and restored the original borders.

That’s the only period of time in the first century that Aretas would have agents in Damascus Paul would need to run from. Even if Paul means some other kind of influence (as has been proposed, I’m not sure how plausibly; there could surely have been a Roman-subordinate ethnarch of a Nabataean quarter, but one then has to explain why that ethnarch would care about Paul and not the Roman-subordinate ethnarch of the Jewish quarter).

At any rate, see Taylor’s article in Revue Biblique for the status of the question (Taylor argues against occupation and in favor of Nabataean authorities under Roman rule, but in the process surveys the state of the field on the question). Damascus was actually on the border with the Nabataean kingdom at that time. Not hundreds of miles away. And had been under Nabataean rule before, again briefly, a century earlier. The Damascenes actually defected to the Nabataeans. If they could pull that off under the Seleucids, they could under the Romans (we can’t establish Damascus was Roman then; it may have been under Augustan gift to the Herods). In any event it was an obvious first strike target in any border war with Herod at the time; and any kind of influence could have been used to occupy it. Hence the hypothesis.

There are other hypotheses (e.g. that Aretas had ethnic or commercial authorities in Damascus subordinate to whoever was ruling the city, as the Jews did). But all require Aretas to be alive. Which sets a time on the event. Unless, of course, as I’ve noted, Paul was actually writing in the 50s B.C., and referring to the well documented control of Damascus by another Aretas in the 70s. Hence my mention of that possibility. But the evidence just doesn’t weigh strongly enough to assert that possibility is probable—much less (and this is the key point) more probable than any of the theories that have Paul refer to the Aretas of the 30s A.D. Ultimately it’s a wash: we can’t rule anything out, and there’s an equal chance on this evidence alone of it being the 70s BC or 30s AD. No other decade is possible. And the balance of remaining evidence falls on the latter. Likewise vs. hypothesizing it’s the error of a forger or anything else you imagine: all a wash. No evidence. No greater probability than any other solution. Which gives us no certainty. Just ignorance. Like most of what we run into with early Christian history.

It’s not circular, though, to put all the data together (Acts, the Gospels, the silences and contexts still in the Epistles, etc.) and conclude the balance of probability falls on Paul referring to an actual situation in the 30s AD. There is not sufficient evidence to weigh against all that for any other hypothesis. In fact, no evidence whatever. Other than the extremely late, indirect, and unsourced evidence of a sect of Medieval Christians claiming their religion began in the 70s B.C., and then inferring this means Paul lived then as well. That just doesn’t carry as much weight as all the other evidence. And that’s just where we are.

Paul’s word, the Talmud, Epiphanius. Three datum points for the 50’s BC. For the 50’s AD do we have any at all that don’t rely on circular arguments? If not, then no matter how improbable, the former seems the best we have got; or we have to say we can admit no dating at all I would have thought.

A million different things are possible (and we do know Christian sources suppressed stories of apostates: Pliny the Younger says essentially there were more ex-Christians for him to find than believers as of 110 A.D.). But for Paul, several others are more probable than this.

The most agreed upon theories in the field are that the author died before continuing the rest of the book or starting its sequel, the author’s sources ended at that point so there was nothing to continue, and that continuing to Rome’s persecution of Christians or execution of Paul (which Acts earlier hints at and thus knew about) would undermine the apologetical and propagandistic purposes of the author.

I suspect the middle one is the case. Our earliest source (1 Clement) says Paul died in Spain (the most “Western” province). Later legend had him executed in Rome by Nero (but, weirdly, not in connection with the burning of Rome). So it’s clear no one had any clear idea of what happened to Paul after a certain point. Acts lands him in Rome because he wrote a letter to Rome. But if Paul then went off to Spain and was killed, it may well be there was no surviving account of what happened to him. And thus nothing to write beyond his evangelism at Rome, ending on which served the propagandistic purposes of the author (Paul moves the center of evangelism from the Jewish capital to the Gentile capital of the Western world: Rome).

If something else even weirder happened, we have no evidence to support it. And speculation is idle at that point. But it’s true a Christian can’t be sure. The author of 1 Clement seems to think Paul died a martyr. But how did he know that? Or did even he know otherwise but that was the story he wanted believed? Etc. We can’t know. Which is the more worrying problem for Christian apologetics.

(I know there is also a question of the historicity of Paul and/or the historicity of acts or in this case the end of acts, but please lets assume that for the sake of my argument here.)

Now i know that there are various attempts for a logical, historical or apologetical explanation.

But I never read anywhere the following possible explanation. It springs to mind :

What if the reason that the author of acts ended his work so apruptly is PAUL FLIPPED under roman custody or flipped because he was buyed off by the Romans.

This may be improbable, but in no way impossible and would be a perfect explanation for acts aprupt ending by its christian author.

Assumingly in this case Paul had become a too important apostle of christianity to not be appreciated in acts, while it was too soon to spin a believed lie that would cover the flipping of Paul. That he fell from christianity.

In this case christian leaders assumingly would have considered him as a fallen apostle, like today the mormon offspring sect TEMPLE LOT considers Joseph Smith a fallen prophet.

No reason would there be to describe the fall of the apostle and it would be a perfect explanation for the aprupt ending of acts.

What do you say?