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  • From: "Mesfin Atlaye" <mesfin AT idirect.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Gal. 6:11
  • Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 21:29:08 -0500


Dr. Nanos wrote:

> Dear Mesfin,
> I hope you are going to pursue this line of investigation. There are many
> points to consider in making your case. The grammatical point is
important,
> but will probably not convince alone. Single grammatical points can be
used
> to confirm widely held views among those who hold them, but not usually to
> challenge them. I believe that you will find the grammatical matter you
> raise discussed in the sources I noted, and others too. I would think
> structural arguments dealing with epistolary style would be necessary, and
> interesting to examine closely.

Mark, thank you so much for your response. I certainly agree with you and
indeed I intend to pursue this investigation further. My enquiry is a humble
one: what kind and what level of education Paul had, if he had any. It began
very recently as a reaction to the suggestion made by some scholars such as
Deissmann that Paul was unable to write letters therefore he used amanuenses
(in both Paul and Light). Ever since biblical criticism (source-, literary-,
form-, historical-, rhetorical-, etc.) gained strong ground in the NT
scholarship it seems that there is nothing in biblical texts that can be
taken at face value. We can no longer think that Paul was a great orator,
based on the report in the Lucan-Acts, because we now realized that it was a
common practice in antiquities that writers had composed speeches and placed
them on the lips of their characters to advance their own thoughts; and in
that Luke was no exception. Also, we can no longer assume that Paul was a
great letter composer either, because in the antiquities both literate and
illiterate people used secretaries and often dictated their letters to them;
and Paul was no exception. So our option is to investigate if there is any
letter among the Pauline corpus that might have been written by Paul
himself- then to study the structure, style, and content of that letter to
further investigate how his thoughts were developed and argued and to
compare them to other contemporary works in the Greco-Roman antiquity. For
its many peculiar characters, perhaps, the Galatian letter was Paul's own
work from start to finish. Therefore, my doubt of the grammatical argument,
i.e. the use of the aorist indicative in Gal.6:11, is a deliberate one- call
it "Descartes' Doubt" if you will. But not the end by itself.

In my forthcoming (Fortress, Nov. SBL!) work
> on Galatians I argue that develops along a line that may be understood to
> elaborate a syllogism of ironic and rebuking style found in epistolary
> handbooks.

I am looking forward to read it when it is made available.

I am wondering if anyone has published a work arguing the possibility that
this or that letter of Paul was written by Paul himself vis-à-vis by
secretary. Once again many thanks for your comments and suggestions.

Regards

Mesfin Atlaye.
Ph.D student at Wycliffe College. TST, U of T
Toronto





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