Corpus-Paul

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

At 07:28 PM 10/24/99 -0700, Richard Fellows wrote:
>I have made a fist attempt at trying to quantify the probability that Titus
>and Timothy were two individuals (just for fun).  While the exercise is, or
>course, subjective, it is nevertheless informative.  It is clear that there
>is much agreement in the data that we have concerning 'Titus' and
>'Timothy'.  The task, then, is to calculate the probability that such a
>level of agreement would occur by chance if Titus and Timothy were
>different individuals.  How does one go about such a task?
>
>My method is to take the evidence for the Titus-Timothy hypothesis and
>divide it into self-contained, statistically independent, arguments.
> [...] Multiplying all the weightings gives a figure of
>50,000,000!  We must then divide this figure by  some factor to allow for
>any counter-arguments.  In my judgement we are left with at least 1,000
>,000.  So, the odds against Titus and Timothy being different people is a
>million to one!

I think a better approach from a statistical standpoint is to estimate
the odds that Titus can be identified with each possible candidate, for
example, Timothy, Silvanus, Apollos, Prisca, Aquila, Mark, Barnabas, 
Luke, and some otherwise unknown person, and then compare the relative
probabilities.

>For example, one of the arguments is that the name 'Titus' never appears in
>Acts.  This fact is not at all remarkable if Titus was Timothy, but is
>rather surprising if he was not, since Acts mentions all of Paul's other
>close colleagues (Timothy, Silvanus, Apollos, Prisca, Aquila, Mark,
>Barnabas, etc.  In my judgement this argument favours the Titus-Timothy
>hypothesis by a factor of 3:1, all else being equal.

If Titus is thought to be a praenomen to a more commonly used name, the
the fact that Titus is never so explicitly named in Acts may be attributed
to use of Titus' other name, and therefore would then be about equally
possible for all the candidates (expect Prisca), with some slight
differences in probability (less for Barnabas, I suppose; more for a Titus
Lucius = Luke?).  Therefore, this evidence from Acts, though perhaps
suggesting that Titus is another's name, does not sufficiently narrow
the identification to Timothy rather than Luke, for example.

You have mentioned 22 additional arguments, but I have not considered them
in this message.  Perhaps those arguments are more helpful.

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