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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Questions on Galatians
  • Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 15:42:20 -0400

Loren Rosson III says:

>>Not to be expeditiously dismissive of your argument, but it rests on two
radical assumptions -- one long put to rest, the other incredible. You've
argued this stuff before on the list (thoroughly and diligently I'll
admit)... but you is gonna have one tough sell with this one, friend.<<

I must point out that in Galatians, Paul speaks of Kephas in Antioch, not
Peter. Since there is a serious possibility that the two occasions of the
name Peter in Gal (according to NA27) are either a citation of a separate
document, and thus may not really equate Kephas with Peter, or an
interpolation (the old fashioned scribal gloss kind, not my new fangled evil
editor kind), to call the man who visits Antioch, who Paul refers to, as
"Peter" is making some serious presumptions.

To be honest, it does not matter to my evil editor hypothesis (the
hypothesis being evil, not the editor) whether the Peter and Kephas, in Gal,
are the same man. It *would* matter if the Peter of the Gospels and Acts is
the same as the Kephas of Galatians & 1 Corinthians, so thank goodness there
is only one other place, besides Gal 2:7-8, where this equation is made
(John 1:42). Seriously, then, it is those who say they *must* be the same
man who are basing it on only two equations (Joh 1:42 & Gal 2:7b-8) out of
155 cases of Peter and 9 cases of Kephas in the entire NT (4 each in 1 Cor
and Gal, plus the case of John 1:42).

Who long ago put it to rest? Dale Allison's 1992 refutation to Bart Ehrman's
1990 essay "Cephas and Peter"?* First of all, having carefully picked apart
both articles I can safely say that Allison did not engage every point made
by Ehrman, much less refute them conclusively (some yes, some no). Secondly,
both Ehrman and Allison almost completely ignored the possibility of Gal
2:7b-8 being an interpolation (Ehrman merely waved all such theories away as
unimportant, and Allison said nothing about them at all). To say that this
kind of interchange "puts the issue to rest" is to employ a logical fallacy
(the false dilemma fallacy of distraction). Or are you thinking of something
else?

As for the evil editor theory itself, "incredible is what incredible does,"
as Forrest Gump might say. All *I* can say is you can feel free to *try* and
reconcile justification by means of the atoning sacrifice of Christ with
that by Abraham-like faith in God's promises. Of those two systems of
justification, the one that is most consistently demonstrated throughout the
Pauline corpus is the latter, not the former. Brought together, they are
like oil and water, and to have come from the same hand requires Paul to be
either holding an incredibly complex theology, or be completely unaware of
the contrary nature of the systems, or to be employing a rare rhetorical
technique so badly that no one seemed to get it, either then or now (I do
not believe that there are any examples of it used in recorded ancient
speeches, although it is mentioned in one or more of the handbooks).

But, then, there I go again ... <g>

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

*Ehrman, Bart D, "Cephas and Peter," JBL 109, 1990, 463-474
Allison Jr, Dale C., "Peter and Cephas: One and the Same," JBL 111, 1992,
489-495






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