Corpus-Paul

["Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>]

At 09:52 AM 5/3/99 -0400, Sheila E. McGinn, Ph.D. wrote:
>Here is the review of Neumann as promised.  SEM
>--
...
>The Pastoral Epistles are
>assigned to non-Pauline authors.
...
>Neumann's finding that Eph, Col, and 2 Thess are "closest to the Pauline
>writing style" suggests that "there is little reason on the basis of style to
>deny the authenticity of the disputed letters." (217)

Thank you very much for posting your review of Neumann, from which I
have quoted these bits.  I am interested in this topic because a few
years ago, I attempted to classify the NT documents on the basis of
computer-analyzable stylistic criteria, in my case, the number of
shared three-word sequences between two documents.

Basically, my conclusions cohere with what are presented to be
Neumann's.  I found that Eph, Col, and 2 Thess were more similar
to Paul than to any other writer in the NT corpus and that there
was little stylistic basis according to my criterion to exclude
them from the other, non-disputed Paulines (e.g. Romans).  I also
found that the Pastorals and Hebrews were quite different from
the rest of the Pauline corpus.

As for the other bodies of literature in the NT, I also found that
the Johannine epistles were close to John, especially chapters
14-17, but Revelation and Jn7:53-8:11 were not Johannine.

Although I have not validated my method, I am encouraged by the
conclusions regarding Hebrews with Paul and Revelation with John.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page   http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35