Corpus-Paul

["Chris Cutler" <Chrisc AT powercall.co.uk>]

James Harding wrote:
> 
> The possibilities [That Paul spent time at Qumran]outlined below by Chris
Cutler have I think been 
> suggested before, and fairly universally dismissed. It would be 
> difficult to maintain that Damascus was a standard cognomen for 
> Qumran, since it is only characteristic of the D corpus of material 
> (the only complete copy of CD is MS A from the Cairo Genizah in any 
> case). Even if Damascus was a cognomen for Qumran, Paul would only 
> have been aware of it if he was linked with either Qumran or a 
> non-Qumran D community (a 'camp'), which makes the argument that Paul 
> spent time at Qumran circular-if he did not know CD, he could not 
> have linked Damascus and Qumran, but he could only have made this 
> link if he was linked with the community in the first place (IMO). 
> Furthermore, how could Paul have spent time at Qumran after his 
> conversion, as I think is being suggested? We are heading in the 
> direction of B. Thiering's 'Jesus the Man', whose argument is 
> extremely tenuous  and depends on an inappropriate reading of Qumran 
> and NT texts.
> 
> [original post snipped]

Chris replies:
Yes, you are probably right. I was doing a bit of 'envelope pushing' to see
where it led. Your observation that the cognomen is only characteristic of
D corpus material is helpful. I'm not sure about the circular argument. It
would hold if the writing were contemporaneous with the events described,
but   if he was linked with the community for a period, then wrote of his
pre-community experiences later he may well use Qumranian terminology.

Chris
--------------------------
Chris & Ariane Cutler
"Auditeur Libre"

What liberates is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we
were, whereinto we have been thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we are
redeemmed; what birth is, and what rebirth." (Exc. Theod. 78.2)