Corpus-Paul

["Stephen Nelson" <stephen_nelson AT hotmail.com>]

Greetings all,

I am delighted at the enthusiasm with which my original post has been 
met.  I will be very pleased to respond.  First, let me set out my 
fundamental concern.  I quote myself:

"It seems to me that the balance of evidence need not necessarily lead 
to this conclusion."

My basic point is that arguments against the authenicity of the 
so-called Pastoral Epistles have been uncritically accepted as fact, 
leading to much overstating of cases.  I would be equally concerned at 
someone asserting that 'everyone knows' the PE's are written by Paul, 
although on the prima facie evidence this view would be quite 
understandable.

Hence, in the discussion that follows, my concern is to correct 
scholarly imbalance, and show that the waters are far from clear - 
discretion may be encouraged.  Statements which suggest that it is 
evident that the PE's are pseudenonemous should be avoided.  The word 
evident points to evidence, and it is just that which does not allow 
such manifest confidence.

Allow me to deal briefly with two comments, before moving to Chris's 
excellent material.

A.  Jack Kilman suggests "[the PE's] reflect church structures not in 
place till long after Paul's death...".

The immediate question to ask is how we know?  I agree that there is 
Second century evidence for developed ecclesiasticity, particularly 
with the Ignatian epistles, but we do not know when this development 
began.  I Clement, from the 1st century, suggests an ecclesiastical 
hierarchy too.  Jack's argument betrays a common ciruclarity, vis:

1.  We know that the church in the 2nd century was ecclesiastically 
refined, and socially conservative.
2.  The PE's are ecclesiastically refined and socially conservative.
3.  Therefore, the PE's are from the 2nd century.

4.  How do we know that the church was ecclesiastically refined and 
socially conservative?
5.  Because the PE's reflect it.

As has already been pointed out today, there is evidence for the 
structures about which Jack is concerned being present in the 
infantile church, and hence there is no reason a priori to demand that 
the church of the PE's cannot reflect that of the late life of Paul.  
This  argument does not command respect.

B.  Jim West writes:

"Unless our original questioner requires more (which, honestly, can be 
found in any standard introduction to the New Testament), there really 
seems to me no need to add to what is already known and available."

I am happy to discuss Chris's ideas for the time being, but Jim is 
ducking out of the difficulties.  My very point was that the standard 
arguments in NT Introductions are potentially riddled with holes, and 
do not add up to a case that matches up to Jim's confident assertions 
of the non-authenticity of the PE's.  It is precisely these 'more 
evidences' that I was keen to draw out of Jim.  For now, though, I am 
happy that the point has been made, and if Jim does not wish to 
discuss them, I will take it that he agrees that his statements (if 
based upon these arguments) were over confident.

Moving on to Chris's material.  Chris has evidently invested a lot of 
time in considering these issues, and is to be congratulated upon the 
thoroughness of his scholarship.  I look forward to discussing his 
argument, but will need to spend a few days considering his points.  
For the mean time, allow me to ask the following question:

Upon what basis do we make historical judgements about Paul?  On the 
basis of Acts?  Kummel is the classic case.  He spends several pages 
arguing, on the basis of the incongruity of the historical information 
(derived from Acts), that Paul cannot have written the PE's.  Yet in 
the same book, he maintains that Acts is not to be views as a reliable 
history! So which goes?  Acts or PE's?  This needs to be considered 
with care.

In general I am unconvinced by the 'Youth' argument, although have not 
seen such a comprehensive statement as Chris's.  As an example, I 
refer to Dibelius and Conzelmann (themselves by no means supportive of 
Pauline authorship) who write:

"In 4:11, the exhortation to the leader of the congregation, which was 
begun in 4:6, is continued.  The problem here is the youth of the 
addressee (cf. Ign. Mag. 3.1).  That this problem is raised does not 
argue against authenticity, for the historic Timothy need not have 
been born before 30AD"  (Hermeneia Commentary, 70)

A further consideration is the artificiality of talking of the 
Pastoral Epistles as a chronological corpus.  Perhaps it would be 
wiser to look at them individually, as there is not really any reason 
other than that of convenience necessarily to group them together.  
More on this anon.

Finally, it is my contention that even if the balance of evidence does 
favour Pseudenonimity (of which I am as of yet unconvinced) that this 
comes far from solving the problems of the PE's.  Consider an 
adolescent with an untidy bedroom.  He wishes to use the floor, and so 
he scoops up the mess, and puts it on his bed.  Breathing a sigh of 
relief, he sets to what he wanted to do on the floor.  A few hours 
later, he yawns, and decides that it is time for bed.  But 'OH NO!' 
the bed has a load of rubbish on it - the problem has not been solved 
at all.  So he scoops the stuff back on to the floor, and sleeps.  The 
next day, the whole procedure is repeated until he finally realises 
that it is the mess that needs to be dealt with, not its location.  
Similarly, there may be historical difficulties with Pauline 
authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, which may lead one to favour 
Pseudenenimity.  But this has only scooped the mess onto the bed.  The 
historical (indeed and canonical and theological) problems will still 
exist.  Until a convincing reconstruction of the sitz im leben of the 
putative C2 epistles is given, I still maintain that a policy of 
asserting the certainty of non-Pauline authorship is at best unwise.

Yours,

Steve Nelson,
Wycliffe Hall,
Oxford


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