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  • From: "David Inglis" <david AT colonialcommerce.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Paul on John the Baptist.
  • Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 14:30:58 -0400


John Dickson wrote:
> Rick Richmond asked and noted:
> > If The Baptist is the fountain head of the Palestinian Jesus movement, as
> > all four Gospels imply, how can it be that Paul knows nothing about John?
> Or
> > more specifically, How is it that in all of the material ascribed to Paul
> > there is not a single word about John the Baptist.
>
> Rick, I always find the assumptions behind such questions/proposals
> historically suspect. We have a corpus of just a handful of letters. Nothing
> can be made of such silence, in my opinion.

Nor must we forget that Paul's letters and the Gospels/Acts were written
for very different reasons. I see no reason why we should expect Paul to
include extraneaous material that did not bear upon his topic. In this
particular case, I think we should take Acts 19:1-7 as evidence that Paul
*did* know about John, and a better question is then: Why did Paul choose
not to mention John in his extant letters?

Dave Inglis
david AT colonialcommerce.com
3538 O'Connor Drive
Lafayette, CA, USA




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