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  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: dhindley AT compuserve.com, Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Dutch Radicals and such
  • Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 05:09:46 -0700 (PDT)

[Loren]
>>Just because they seem like oil and water
>>to you doesn't mean they did for
>>Paul. History is full of religious leaders,
>>charismatics, fanatics, what-have-you, who make
>>outrageous claims, superimposing new theologies
>>on older ones, telling us the sun rises
>>at midnight.

[Dave]
>These differences are obvious enough to have
>driven a good deal of 19th century Pauline
scholarship,
>if Schweitzer is any indication ...
>If the differences and contradictions were not as
>severe as
>I suggest, how do we explain the advent of
>Dutch Radical movement?

In the same way we explain other groups of radical
critics (ever immerse yourself in Homer scholarship,
for instance?) who, for some reason, haven't been able
to live life. If you want to align yourself with the
movement whose many members denied the existence of
Jesus and the authenticity of even the most secure
letters of Paul, be my guest. But considering
everything that has passed for acceptable theology in
this world, Christ-atonement taken in conjunction with
Abraham-faith is a no-brainer -- or it should be,
regardless of how undigestable you or the Dutch
Radicals find it.

[Loren]
>>Christianity took on pagan elements (let alone
>>maintain Judaic ones),
>>and I'm amazed that you've been driven to a
>>conspiratorial "evil editor theory" over the
>>tension you espy between Christological atonement
>>theology and Abraham-faith.

[Dave]
>That "evil" was my tongue-in-cheek way of
>poking fun at myself, and also
>pokes fun at conspiracy theories in general.

Good -- I too enjoy having fun at my own expense (in
questionable contexts which have nothing to do with
this list). It's fun and healthy to laugh at
ourselves. But laugh a bit harder. :)

[Dave]
>I do not in fact require any
>evil political or religious conspiracies,
>no "creation out of nothing" by
>Constantine's spin doctors, etc.
>Whether it is the Jesus movement and its
>factions or Paul's movement, I see natural
>social-psychological processes driving their
>doctrinal development and their understanding
>of their historical foundations.

But you're blind to the natural social-psychological
processes which drove Paul's own development. It's
unfathomable to you that his thought could have
evolved and changed on some points over the course of
years; you stand in awe of the fact that he may have
said different things, adopted different rhetorical
strategies, according to context and audience; these,
despite the fact that they're inherent to the human
psyche. There's seldom anything like the purity of
systematic thought you want to locate in Paul, because
it just isn't real. When critics try to explicate it
-- or when novelists try to dramatize it -- it becomes
a downward spiral into reductionism.

[Loren]
>>Paul's theology is complex, surely, but not
>>"incredibly" so (interesting how you and I live
>>in different worlds on the question of what
>>constitutes "incredible").

[Dave]
>No, no, I meant to say it was "inedible." At least
>I have found it difficult
>to swallow, but I cannot imagine that I am alone.

Of course you're not alone. But you're not exactly in
solid company by jettisoning from the letters
everything relating to Paul's basic convictions about
Christ.

[Dave]
>Actually, I have very low expectations for the
>level of rhetorical skill that Paul might exhibit...
>Mark Nanos, for his part, had done his homework
>before writing _Irony of
>Galatians_, and he at least sees some rhetorical
>techniques being employed,
>mainly revolving around his use of irony.

Likewise, I have found the deliberative, epideictic,
and forensic models to be useless (or, at least,
superficial so as to be useless) in understanding
Paul. There is much about Mark's theory of ironic
rebuke, however, which I find helpful. And there are
other ways to view the rhetorical strategies found in
Paul.

Dave, you put me in mind of a local acquaintance whose
heritage happens to be Dutch and has developed a
theory about the evolution of the gospels with a style
and verve which harks back to these radicals. I don't
think it's too off-topic to mention it here. It's
called The Patchwork Gospels by Andrew Templeman,
consisting of a color-coded side-by-side comparison of
the gospel texts and their 2nd-century "originators"
-- Irenaeus, Marcion, Justin Martyr, Valentinus, and
Clement of Alexandria -- all of who, Templeman
insists, were not commentators on already-existing
gospels in whatever form, but the actual writers of
the gospels, which evolved as weapons of war between
orthodoxy and gnosticism. The intricate color-coding
puts the Jesus Seminar to shame. See:

http://www.jlc.net/~aretee/aretee/pwg.html


Despite the fact that I think the thesis of this book
is ridiculous and misguided to the core, I recommend
it as a useful **commentary** -- completely contrary
to the author's intent. Templeman insists that people
like Ireneus and Marcion were the originators of
(rather than commentators on) the gospels, but you can
still use the side-by-side comparisons in the opposite
direction, and I find it a handy ready-reference tool.
I always take the wind out of poor Andy's sails when I
tell him how useful his book is while being wrong.
Incidentally, he thinks Paul is a more reliable source
for understanding Jesus (though hardly reliable at
all) than the gospels.

Now, Dave, when are you going to publish your theory
(or make it accessible on the web)? You've been
working on this for a while.

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com


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