Corpus-Paul

[Anders Eriksson <aeriks2 AT emory.edu>]

David

To respond to your comment as of yesterday:

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

I wanted to ask the question if Paul was a nice guy, before going into the
question of whether he was a good guy. The "nicety" addresses the issue of
his behavior towards others, the "goodness" some kind of judgment in a
larger ideological scheme.

The larger ideological scheme I indicated in my previous post would be
something like salvation history.  Then Paul would be the good guy because
he made sure that the Christian gospel did not stay a Jewish sect but was
spread even to the Gentiles.

Who were the bad guys?  You know as well as I that if we start labelling
certain early Christians as the bad guys we would be making the same
argumentative moves of dissociation that Paul himself did.  And it was
those kind of argumentative moves that I questioned when Paul makes them in
his letters.  They are a little bit to black and white, aren't they?

I am thinkingof the following: salvation by faith or by works of the law;
if anyone does not recognize this (Paul's regulation for women to be
silent) he is not recognized (by God, maybe the last judgment is implied).

With greetings from Atlanta, where the reigning dichotomy is between the
World of Coca Cola and the opposing forces of Pepsi, and where no middle
ground is allowed.

Anders Eriksson

University of Lund, Sweden
Emory University, Atlanta