Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>]

> 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