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- From: "Frank W. Hughes" <fwhughes AT sunbeach.net>
- To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
- Subject: Re: Disputed Pauline letters
- Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 17:55:47 -0400
I don't want to get into an extended debate about Pauline authorship at this point either; but I strongly doubt that anyone can write on 2 Timothy or any of the other apparently pseudopauline letters and remain non-committal about their authorship for long. By the way, I am aware of Michael Prior's work on 2 Timothy (published in JSNTSup) and do think that there might possibly be a better case for its Pauline authorship than for 1 Timothy or Titus.
My experience has shown that authorship is usually the central interpretive issue in the disputed Pauline letters. Wolfgang Trilling certainly showed this to be correct for 2 Thessalonians in his 1972 monograph Untersuchungen zum 2. Thessalonicherbrief. I think if you are committed to historical-critical methods this will be the case. If, for example, 1 Timothy is an authentic letter by Paul, it has a completely different historical provenance and completely different rhetorical situation than if it is a pseudopauline letter. One problem that you will find is that if you give up Pauline authorship for the disputed letters, you also give up anything approaching a firm date for such letters. The fact that there is no evidence of any other Christian writer quoting them until the early second century (compared with 1 Clement's quotes of the authentic Pauline letters plus Hebrews) should give one pause to ponder.
Frank W. Hughes
Lecturer in NT Studies
Codrington College
-
Disputed Pauline letters,
Jeff Peterson, 03/30/1999
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
- Re: Disputed Pauline letters, Sheila E. McGinn, Ph.D., 03/30/1999
- Re: Disputed Pauline letters, Christopher Hutson, 03/30/1999
- Re: Disputed Pauline letters, Edgar Krentz, 03/30/1999
- Re: Disputed Pauline letters, Frank W. Hughes, 03/30/1999
- Re: Disputed Pauline letters, J.E.Harding, 03/31/1999
- Re: Disputed Pauline letters, Frank W. Hughes, 03/31/1999
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