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Subject: Corpus-Paul

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  • From: kraft AT ccat.sas.upenn.edu (Robert Kraft)
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Cc: kraft AT ccat.sas.upenn.edu (Robert Kraft)
  • Subject: Revering Old Answers, Canonical Interest
  • Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 10:57:13 -0400 (EDT)


As a break from evaluating papers and exams, two short responses to recent
comments:

(1) Licia Kuenning wrote:

> Are we the first generation of people to
> know anything? Granted that those who put together the canon
> had their biases and limitations, and they didn't even have
> Windows 98, still they were temporally and culturally much
> closer to the authors of the writings in question than we are.
> Why shouldn't their judgment of what was authentic be worth
> something?

By this reasoning, Marcion's presentation and interpretation(s) of Paul
should receive much more attention from us. He was much closer, at least
temporally. I'm not sure any surviving assessments of Paul from antiquity
were closer culturally that we can become by consistent attention to the
surviving materials. Consistency of argument and method can be very
sobering! "Oldest surviving" is not always "best," especially once we get
past the first succeeding generation in historical continuity.


(2) George Goolde <goolde AT mtnempire.net> suggests:

> And isn't this why we are all together wrestling with these issues, since
> we see a need to "recognize" the canon. Admitedly we do it differently.
> It is a choice privilege to agree to disagree agreeably. . . .

Speaking only for myself, of course, a resounding NO. Canon is NOT an
issue or consideration that has brought me to this list; indeed, it seems
to me an idea that inhibits consistent historical critical investigation
of the "Pauline corpus" broadly construed, and too much focus on it per se
may be counter to the interests of the list as I understand them.

Bob
--
Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827
kraft AT ccat.sas.upenn.edu
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html



  • Revering Old Answers, Canonical Interest, Robert Kraft, 05/06/1999

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