Corpus-Paul

["John C. Hurd" <John.Hurd AT Squam.org>]

Dave Hindley wrote:
>Just out of curiosity, does anyone consider the epistles heavily
redacted
>anymore?  It does appear to me to be the easiest way to explain the
>incompatable threads to be found in the Pauline corpus.

Yes, Bill Walker and some of his friends take this path. (Prof. William
O. Walker, Jr., Trinity University, San Antonio, TX).  "Heavily" is, of
course, a relative term, and some have gone much father than he in the
past, but from my point of view the term does apply to him.  He is a
responsible scholar and not a crazy.
    The problem with this approach is the same as the problem with the
literary dissection of the letters (e.g., Schmithals):  the idea is not
impossible, but improbable to a degree which depends on the complexity
of the hypothesis.  Such theories are also unverifiable and lack a
control.  In my experience, if we think that the source documents need
to be improved by editing, it means that we have not understood them
sufficiently.  One has only to look at the history of the discipline to
see how some of the difficulties that scholars in the past have had with
the sources smooth away with advances in knowledge and technique.  (This
is one reason why theories of interpolation were more popular then than
now.)
    At the 1989 annual meeting of the SNTS in Dublin Prof. Gehard Sellin
read a paper to the Corinthians Seminar titled, "1 Kor 5-6 und der
'Vorbrief' nach Korinth"  (later published in NTS, 37 [1991], 535-558).
He divides 1 Corinthians into eleven pieces.  I was asked to do the
response paper.  As part of my reply I did an analysis of the structure
of his argument and attached probability estimates to each step.  Then I
did the math which the structure required and came up with an over-all
probability of  about 8%.  His rejoinder was that scientific methods
were not appropriate this type of investigation.  (An enlarged version
of my paper is now published as "Good News and the Integrity of 1
Corinthians" in "Gospel in Paul: Studies on Corinthians, Galatians and
Romans for Richard Longenecker" edited by Ann Jervis and Peter
Richardson ['JSNT Sup. Ser., 108; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1994], pp. 38-62; and reprinted in my collection, "The Earlier Letters
of Paul" [1998].)
    Many scholars take 2 Cor. 6:14--7:1 to be an interpolation.  I agree
and consider it to be an inserted fragment of the "Previous Letter" (see
the argument in my The Origin of 1 Corinthians [1965, 1983], pp.
235-240), although there is no manuscript support.  With many, many
scholars I divide 2 Corinthians into 2 Cor. 1-9 and 10-13.  And I think
that 1 Cor. 14:34-35 is probably an interpolation.  Here there is
manuscript evidence.  But that is as far as I go with pre-editing the
source documents.  In any case, these decisions should not be a
preliminary step to the study of the text but only a last resort.

    Happy Easter to all!          --          John Hurd

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::   John C. Hurd          Internet: John.Hurd AT Squam.org
::  Prof. Emeritus, Trinity College
::  University of Toronto
::  Toronto, Ont., Canada