Corpus-Paul

[Jim West <jwest AT highland.net>]

At 10:56 AM 4/22/99 +0000, you wrote:

>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.  

Ok- I will engage...  Though I must say that i was not ducking; I was just
attempting to suggest that what I would say is already available in dozens
of places and surely listers have some of those resources at hand...  In
fact, it doesn't seem necessary to reinvent the wheel every time someone
disagrees that there are spheres, but if thats what it takes...   :-)

>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.  

Then you shall have them.

>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.

:-)  talk about baiting, but OK- here ya go:

Why the pastorals are not from Paul
(for full details- see the NT intro of Bart Ehrman, for example)- here I
shall merely list the reasons that demonstrate quite clearly (!) (to me
anyway) why Paul was not the writer of this stuff.

1- vocabulary and style.  I know lots of folk and have read lots of stuff-
and there are certainly style and vocabulary markers which characterize each
of us.  In fact, anyone who has ever picked up the NT can tell the
difference between Paul and John.  (In fact in grad school we had to do just
that- we had to read and reread the GNT until we could tell who wrote what
by the style and vocabulary).

2- false teaching attacked (as quite a different phenomenon than anything
Paul faced).  These heretics are not Judaizers- and it is, so far as we can
tell from the genuine epistles, a demonstrable fact that Paul struggled
against Judaizers alone.  Unless you care to show us where he argues against
some other heretical group.

3- church structure.  It is not saying too much to suggest that Paul's
churches were charismatic.  That is not the situation addressed in the
Pastorals.  Here we have clergy in distinction from laity- a condition that
did not exist in the church of Paul.


These three reasons seem convincing.  Now of course someone will say that
vocabulary has to be adjusted to situation.  Possibly- but it is no more
possible to escape ones writing style than it is to escape ones skin color.
Others will say that we have little info about 1st c. heretics.  True.
Still others will suggest that the structure of the church was more
definitive than we believe.  Possibly so.  But the weight of the cumulative
evidence is, in my view, insurmountable.

So, if someone has a reasonable explanation as to why Paul 1)uses a very
different vocabulary AND 2) denounces heresies he had not encountered AND 3)
describes church structures which did not exist in his lifetime THEN, and
only then, will I be persuaded that Paul actually wrote these letters.  

Best,

Jim
+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jim West, ThD
Petros Baptist Church- Pastor
Quartz Hill School of Theology- Adjunct Prof. of Bible

fax- 978-231-5986
email- jwest AT highland.net
web page-  http://web.infoave.net/~jwest