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  • From: Ron Price <ron.price AT virgin.net>
  • To: Corpus-Paul elist <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Word Frequency in the Paulines
  • Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:07:13 +0000

Peter Kirby wrote:

> ....... For a quick
> analysis, I chose to use just 8 chunks:
>
> 00 Romans + Galatians (9341 words)
> 01 First and Second Corinthians (11307 words)
> 02 Philippians and First Thessalonians (3110 words)
> 03 Colossians (1582 words)
> 04 Ephesians (2422 words)
> 05 Second Thessalonians (823 words)
> 06 First Timothy, Second Timothy, Titus (3488 words)
> 07 Hebrews (4953 words)
>
> I left out Philemon, for now, because it may be too short to analyze.
>
> Then one chooses a number of authors between which the chunks can be
> parceled out. I chose 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. (This also increases
> processing time. The program has to cycle through all possible
> permutations of author distribution.)

Peter,

If processing time is a problem, why not miss out Hebrews, as there are
surely very few people who argue that Paul wrote Hebrews?

> Here were the results.
>
> .......
>
> For five authors:
> Highest: Hebrews; Pastorals; 2 Thess; Ephesians; rest
> 2nd Highest: Hebrews; Pastorals; 2 Thess; Colossians; rest
>
> For six authors:
> Highest: Hebrews; Pastorals; 2 Thess; Eph; Philippians+1Thess; rest
> 2nd Highest: Hebrews; Pastorals; 2 Thess; Eph; Colossians; rest
>
> The results interpreted.
>
> .......
> Colossians is up in the air for me. For Philippians and First
> Thessalonians, I would take them as Pauline more probably than not.

For up to five authors the results seem consistent with the modern critical
understanding of the extent of Pauline authorship. But the method appears to
fail with six authors. The six-author result suggests that Colossians is
more Pauline than Philippians plus 1Thessalonians. But your conclusions here
don't reflect this.

Viewed from a different perspective, the method is fairly good, but not
quite good enough. However apart from the omission of Hebrews (being
essentially irrelevant) I can't off-hand think of an improvement to the
method.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm





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