Corpus-Paul

["Frank W. Hughes" <fwhughes AT sunbeach.net>]

Thanks, Bob, for your clarifications on 3 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians. 
I'm pretty sure that what you are referring to re 1 Thessalonians had to
do with interpolation theories vs. literary integrity.

I was quite interested in what you said about 3 Corinthians and Acts.  I had thought you were referring to the Bodmer Papyrus (I think X) that mentioned fire coming into the womb of the Virgin Mary.  I remember David Wilmot referring to this as 3 Corinthians.  What do you do, by the way, with the letter Paul refered to in 1 Cor 5:9?

My own ideas about Paul are that it is difficult and probably misleading to think of Paul in terms of straight-line development.  I look on 1 Thessalonians as the last and only remnant of "the early Paul," i.e., the Paul before the Jerusalem Conference and Galatians.  Then the big turning point is what has been called the "Judaizer crisis."  This is where Paul begins to develop his categories of flesh vs. spirit as well as justification by faith.  What Paul is doing is going around forming Gentile or mostly-Gentile congregations.  Then, when Paul sees that he wants to go to Spain (a la Romans 15:14ff.) he realizes that he wants Rome to become his missionary center west.  He then writes Romans to unify the Jewish-Christian and Gentile-Christian house-churches into a unified Roman congregation, which he intends to "found" on his visit to Rome, for which the letter to the Romans is the literary and theological preparation.  It is to be carried to Rome by Phoebe, the diakonos (= minister) of the church at Cenchraea.  So at this turning point Paul realizes that since the Jerusalem Agreement is deader than a doornail, it is now appropriate for him to try to do something really new, for him: to form a mixed Gentile and Jewish Christian congregation out of the disparate house churches reflected in the greetings of Romans 16.

So, anyway, 1 Thess is important because it is the only witness to the pre-Galatians Paul, who is very likely pre-justification by faith as well.

This is more than enough for Good Friday!

Very good wishes,
Frank W. Hughes
Codrington College
Barbados