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  • From: "Fabrizio Palestini" <fabrizio.palestini AT tin.it>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles
  • Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 20:17:20 +0200


Dear David

> Still, I see these works being conveniently set aside as somehow
> irrelevant. The easy way to do so is to consider the issue of their
> authenticity "settled" by some previous authority. However, this is
> not just a JHC tactic.

Yes, I understand your position (though I don't share it completely). But no
problem!
Apart from the different (and somehow incompatible) starting points, each
theory can be tested from within, accepting for a while the assumptions and
verifying the internal coherence, elegance, simplicity and plausibility.
The whole discourse about possibility and impossibility of so long documents
(but this is absolutely not the only problem of the authenticity proposition
about 1Clement etc.), may be inconcludent, not however the internal test.
It seems to me that you don't have any fear to make this "intrinsic"
verific.
Whatever the results, I think that yours is the only scientific approach to
the question.
And this is enough for me.

>
> >>The JHC theory could offer the simpler and more coherent sketch (I
> think)...<<
>
> Well, you are entitled to your opinion.

Excuse me for the explicitly of this affirmation, but often I have problems
to translate my Italian thought. Something like "it seems to me..." and
"...perhaps a simpler and more coherent...(obviously to be investigated much
more deeply)" is better.

> but I have not seen them really develop the idea
> any farther than had the original Dutch Radicals. It seems they are
> just restating the case, again and again, as if the failures of the
> more traditional approaches to explain the anomalies within the
> Pauline corpus (and church tradition about him) leave the Marcionite
> alternative as the only remaining option. It is not.

I think that this is not the case. Actually Hermann Detering's "Der
Gefalschte Paulus" is a step forward: he tries to give explanation to the
whole mass of pauline textual evidences in the hypothesis of marcionite
origin underlining the plausibility of the priority of marcionite versions,
the points of contact between Marcion and Paul, the gentile-minded character
of the author, the superiority of the marcionite origin over the "pauline"
school (Marcion is a real man, the marcionite school has hystorical
evidences).
(Van Manen proposed a Pauline school, not Marcion as the author).
The first apparition of a pauline canon in marcionite circles is a
significative clue pro-Marcion.
The priority of the marcionite versions is another indicative clue.
All this force me to investigate first this option (not obviously to
automatically take it as good), but I have no problem with any other.

Moreover, Detering propose a theory about the origin of the pauline legend,
which finds his roots in Simon Magus. Then he compare the characteristic of
the two famous (we have knowledge of Simon Magus' importance only in a
indirect way, of course) men, and offer an explanation of the process of
differentiation between them (Paul, "The Small", being only the supernomen
with theological relevance of Simon).
In fact tha Apostolic Fathers speak of Simon Magus as Marcion's teacher, but
Marcion nowhere says so, only Paul.
The Kerygmata Petri and the PseudoClementines are understandable from this
standing point.

This theory is not the only explanation. But I want to see it tested with
all the others.
So I have the intention to present a more accurate sketch of it, but this
will need some time.
Moreover I am going to holiday!!
Could you have the patience to wait?
I think that the discussion will be very interesting (again, whatever the
result).

Thank you very much
Best regards

Fabrizio Palestini
















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