Corpus-Paul

["David Amador" <TheVoidBoy AT sprynet.com>]

Frank,

Thank you for your significant contribution to the field of study of 2
Thessalonians.  I have read your work and find it an excellent work of
scholarship.

However, I have a number of questions for you, as you may well guess.  Allow
me to elaborate...

>If Paul is
>as rhetorically effective as he is in Galatians and Romans (and I certainly
think 1
>Thessalonians as well),

That's a big "if", and it cuts to the heart of the problem of rhetorical
dispositio and reconstruction of the rhetorical situation (a la Bitzer,
i.e., historical reconstruction) as a means of identifying authenticity of
Pauline letters.  Why, besides disciplinary habit and theological necessity,
do we assume these letters were rhetorically effective in the way this
phrase must mean to you, i.e., that they did the job they were meant to do
for Paul to the intended historical audiences?  That the letters made it
into the canon?  If one is going to pursue a neo-Aristotelian (or, in your
case, a neo-Ciceronian) analysis, Corbett and his disciples have built a
major methodology whose steps we as biblical scholars simply cannot employ -
namely, thorough historical reconstruction of the time, place, audience,
physical setting, delivery, immediate reception by the audience, feedback
from secondary audience reception, editorializing discussion, cultural
adaptation or rejection, effect of discourse upon history.  We can't do any
of this.  And yet, by means of a strange disciplinary practice, we pretend
we can.

 why would Paul even broach the issue in 2 Thess 2:1-2 of
>whether or not his letters are authentic?

Since, therefore, anything is basic conjecture at this point, one simple
answer is because 1) Paul has no idea what is going on, only that a second
letter was required due to a exigence requiring clarification; 2) as nicely
described earlier in this list, because the orthodox reception of these
verses restricts a grammatical/syntactic ambiguity for the sake of later
translational purposes.

> Who would have forged a Pauline letter in
>Paul's lifetime?  Who would have wanted to?

Let's turn it around:  who would have forged a Pauline letter after Paul's
lifetime?   That seems to me to be a very dubious "ethos" risk.  And yet, I
can think of several reasons why Paul would have been worried to hear that
teaching purporting to be coming from him had disturbed the Thessalonikoi.
But, since it is my thesis that Paul had one devil of a time being
understood in the fashion he hoped to be, i.e., that he was a minister
constant having to adapt to changing circumstances, unanticipated
responses/reactions, uncooperative people (missionaries, converts, etc.) and
having to do it from hundreds of miles away through second-hand reports, it
would not surprise me at all that he had to address the issue of the
Thessalonikoi congregations a second time.

As always, if one starts with the assumptions of scholarly habits, rather
than question the myriad of semi-developed and inconclusive "facts" and
arguments that develop into a tradition of "assured results", one finds a
myriad of ways to dismiss these Pauline letters as secondary.  I find
absolutely no convincing argument, including the many offered here, that 2
Thess is pseudonymous.

And, as you know, Frank (but the others may not), I have no ideological or
theological issue with identification of Paul's letters as pseudonymous (I
think it likely that 1 Tim and Titus are); I have methodological issues.

-David Amador, Ph.D.
Santa Rosa, CA

P.S. Anders - if Paul is a Good Guy, are there any Bad Guys?