Corpus-Paul

[Jeff Peterson <peterson AT mail.ics.edu>]

>Bob Kraft wrote:
>
>>>My suggestion would be to take the "3 Corinthians" materials and apply the
>same sort of observations. Ask if the same person who wrote 2 Timothy
>could have written 3 Corinthians, and why or why not. Then try to move
>from those observations to the question whether that person (or those
>persons) could have written Romans-Galatians and/or 1-2 Corinthians.

Luke Johnson's principal contribution to this discussion isn't the cases
he's offered for the genuineness of particular letters (though those are
important, as others on the list have noted) but rather the reminder that
ancient rhetorical education produced speakers and writers who were
proficient at varying their styles of address according to their purpose,
audience, etc. The label the rhetoricians supply is PROSWPOPOIIA
("assumption of a rhetorical persona"). So the question whether the author
of Letter A could also have written Letter B becomes more complicated to
answer.

One effect that the dominance of the seven-letter canon has had is that the
disputed letters are often read primarily to document points of contrast
with the generally undisputed letters (whether stylistic, theological, or
social-historical). Johnson has (I think) rightly emphasized the need to
read each composition on its own terms and base authorial judgments on the
exegesis rather than vice versa. The suggestion to begin this process with
3 Cor is an interesting one.

Jeff

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Jeffrey Peterson
Institute for Christian Studies
Austin, Texas, USA
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