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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: what happened to Paul's epistle once written?
  • Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 19:18:37 -0400


Elli Elliott, in his response to a question by Régis Burnet, says:

>>Your other questions are all interesting questions for discussion,
and the vagueness of the information you are finding is due to the
lack of solid data. Your effort to "get the picture" is refreshing.
IMHO we can understand the words of the letters better when we have
some context in mind, visually.<<

Over at the Journal for the Study of Rhetorical Criticism of the NT,
there is James D. Hester's review of _The Thessalonians Debate:
Methodological Discord or Methodological Synthesis?_ (Karl P. Donfried
and Johannes Buetler, editors. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2000). I know the review considered a number of
issues relating to ancient epistolography, especially as it relates to
the question of whether epistolary or rhetorical analysis is the best
method for study of the Pauline letters. Hester provides quite a few
leads for those interested in these issues.

http://rhetjournal.uor.edu/DebateReview.html

>> Most scholars assume that the letters were read aloud in community
gatherings. I would have to assume that they were discussed, too. In
newly formed churches where everyone has made a conscious decision to
be part of the community, letters addressed to vital issues of
community life would surely have evoked lively discussion. If their
meetings were similar to symposia or meetings of collegia, as the
evidence suggests, this would of course be the case. (I don't have
bibliography for this readily at hand, but someone else on this list
must. There is a lot of current work on this.) If the letters were
important to people, they were saved and recopied (probably edited)
and apparently passed around to other congregations. Otherwise we
would not have them.<<

Has anyone read _Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World_,
edited by John Kloppenborg Verbin and Stephen G. Wilson (London:
Routledge, 1996)? It is *expensive* if available at all from the
publisher, but sounds very interesting. Most authors I have seen offer
models based upon the practices of the very elite of Graeco-Roman
society, as if there was a substantial correspondence between their
circumstances and those of Paul. Hmmm... Voluntary associations,
collegia, etc, would seem the more realistic environment to me.

For a different look at the possible circumstances under which the
books might have been preserved, I found a short essay by David
Trobisch very interesting: "The Oldest Extant Editions of the Letters
of Paul". It is an edited version of the first chapter of his book
_Paul's Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins_ (Fortress Press:
Minneapolis, 1994). He notes that there is very little evidence to
suggest that individual books were circulating widely before being
collected into a corpus. Trobisch thinks that it was Paul himself who
published an authoritative collection of his own letters, although I
am not convinced of this idea.

http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll?action=showitem&;
id=15

Regards,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA






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