Corpus-Paul

[David Barr <david.barr AT wright.edu>]

Not liking lengthy exchanges, I'll allow myself one response
and then leave it to others to decide whether to carry on
the debate.

George Goolde wrote:

> I admit that including the pastorals may somewhat - or as you feel, greatly
> - alter your reconstruction of Paul. 

Ah, but the question I would ask is how excluding them might
change your reconstruction of Paul?

> As I explained in my post to Sheila,
> I practice canonicity before I practice exegesis.  

This sounds odd to me.  Are you saying you decide whether a
writing is authoritative before you decide what it means?  

>That is, I attempt to
> determine the corpus and then Itry to deal with its ramifications.  I do
> understand that to be considered the "Word of God"  a writing must be
> authentic, thatis, it mustbe what it purports to be. 

But no writing ever "purports" to be anything.  It meerly
exists and the reader must do all the purporting.  You have
to decide is this a letter, an essay, an essay dressed up
like a letter, a sermon, a manual for instruction, or
whatever.  Or do you only permit God to use the simplest and
most straighforward of literary forms?  

>If the PE were not
> authored by Paul, then whoever authored lied about their source, hence they
> do not qualify as "holy men of God" according to 2 Peter 1:21.

Perhaps in the world you live in, but what if the 1st C
world were different?  What if there were a kind of writing
wherein an author consciously chose to express his/her
thoughts through the personality of another?  Would that
still be a lie?  Were all the authors of all the apocryphal
and pseudepigraphical writings unholy?

 
> This is why I questioned why anyone who rejects Pauline authorship would
> care who wrote them:  By my standards (not necessarily yours) they would be
> disqualified.
>

The question is not your or my standards, but there's. 

> Do you agree with this thinking?

Nope. 

David
-- 
David L. Barr
Professor of Religion
Wright State University
Dayton OH 45435
david.barr AT wright.edu
www.wright.edu/~david.barr