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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Paul's Letters written as Scripture?
  • Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 18:16:23 -0500


Paul Toseland wrote:
It is often assumed that Paul wrote his letters to be read out loud in
the congregation, and that he intended them to be understood and to
achieve their goal at a first reading. However, since Paul makes such
extensive use not only of direct quotation from the LXX, but also of
allusions and echoes of the OT, it is questionable, to say the least,
whether his audiences would have been able to follow his arguments. Thus
in a recent article, Christopher D. Stanley asks,

'Is it possible that Paul might have misjudged the capacities of his
audience? To put the matter bluntly, did Paul's first century audiences
really understand his biblical quotations?' *

Dear Paul,
There are at least two different issues that it may be helpful to address separately. One is the issue of what Paul himself understood himself to be communicating with the many layers of meaning perhaps never-ending, as is the case among students of his letters to this day; similar is the rabbinic tradition of continually turning a comment over and recognizing another allusion, echo, meaning, application, etc. Because of his own level of education and his work to understand what he was now involved in, and to make it intelligible to other learned Jewish people for example (assuming that this was logically at least a part of his initial audience and perhaps an always present concern in terms of his own self-definition anyway), he would perhaps make many points that were of significance to himself or them that may not be grasped by others, even other Jewish listeners.

A second aspect of this first point is that among gentiles there would be many different levels at work, not least as a result of involvement in Jewish life or not prior to dealings with these matters within Christ-believing subgroups, and their level of knowledge would continue to change with time spent in these groups. (If the groups are Jewish subgroups [as I have argued for in Rome and Galatia], then the learning would continue essentially the same as in any other synagogue subgroup). So too would their grasp of what was communicated at the level of symbolic meaning; even if they might not be able to grasp every detail or explain them, they would begin to grasp the sense of what they heard or read, and this would change further with more involvement over time. In other words, Paul may very well have communicated many things that were over the heads of many of his audiences/readers, maybe even (many) of the leaders, but in many ways that tells us more about Paul than the audiences/readers. It might even be argued that he was not a good communicator at the level of those whom he was seeking to communicate with in the extant letters. The reader of the several Corinthian letters may wonder if perhaps he was largely misunderstood. How much was grasped, and by how many? And to what degree was the major result of his communication just at the level of the gist of his meaning, such as in articulating the symbolic world he was helping to create? I dare say that many students and church/synagogue goers get the sense of things when hearing/reading them, even if many subtle points are lost on them, and they could not communicate what was said to someone else very well afterward (how many times is it the exact opposite!). But they may still learn something, maybe even something that will significantly alter their conceptual world.

The other issue is the need to take each letter on its own terms concerning a matter like this. For example, I can well imagine Romans, written to people who did not know Paul (with a few possible exceptions listed in Rom. 16) was expected to be studied and discussed to ascertain the author's intended meaning. On the other hand, Galatians is a scalding letter of ironic rebuke, like parents deliver to teenagers when they fear that peer-pressure may win the day in the contest of competing values, with grave concern for the future of the child as well as family. While the author's meaning might create discussion and disagreement, it seems less likely that the author was interested in such results as much as in dissuading the reader/hearer from a course of action the author considered entirely unacceptable, so that the primary purpose was to communicate a rather simple message. Perhaps some of the arguments were made in anticipation of the results/questions that this message would hopefully generate, e.g., to answer the need for explanation by the peers, and arguements with them, when their influence was challenged.


Stanley maintains that Paul's 'implied readers' are

'Christians who are (a) broadly familiar with the Greek text of the
Jewish Scriptures, (b) able to realize immediately how specific
quotations fit into the developing argument of his letter, and (c)
willing to accept his quotations as valid renderings of the
authoritative text.' (p 143)

I would suggest that what the reliance on Jewish Scripture and modes of argument suggests, at least in the cases of Romans and Galatians, is that the "target readers" are "Christ-believing gentiles within Jewish subgroups (not yet Christians in the sense of institutional or primary identity)...[with the rest of his points as made].

[snip] In short, I am proposing that Paul intended
his letters not so much to be read, as to be studied. The role of his
courier was not merely to deliver the letter, but to lead study groups,
bringing out the intertextual effects and making known more fully the
apostle's mind. So the role of Titus, in the case of the 'Letter of
Tears'.

Some have suggested that the letter-carrier performed the reading, so that some interpretive aspects of the communication are lost to the later reader. I can well imagine the red-faced finger-pointing gestures accompanying Galatians as a sight to behold!

Regards,
Mark Nanos





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