Corpus-Paul

["John C. Hurd" <John.Hurd AT Squam.org>]

I apologize for being such tardy correspondent.  I am both busy and
reluctant to rehash material that I have published in detail.
    To Richard Fellows:
1)  One may not, as an historian, place on the table at one time primary
and secondary source materials.  I don't care that it is often done by
biblical (and other) scholars.  Thus to use Acts as the clothes line on
which to hang the letters is bad historical method.  So also is all talk
of "missionary journeys" when speaking of Paul and not just Acts.
Instead one must begin by laying out the primary evidence, i.e., Paul's
letters, and looking for clues as to their relative sequence.
2)  In the case of 1 Thessalonians one notes, e.g., that the disclosure
formula in 4:13 indicates that Paul is telling the Thessalonians for the
first time what to think about Christians who have died before the
Parousia.  How long would elapse between the founding of the
congregation and the death of one or more believers.  Not long, I think.

3)  As to awkwardness when the letters are conformed to Acts, take
Galatians, the letter with the most more or less biographical material.
If one catalogues Paul's visits to Jerusalem, Paul swears (1:20) that he
has made only two visits before writing the letter.  The letter,
therefore, must have been written before his third visit.  In Acts the
second visit is 11:30 and the third is 12:25 (according to the most
probable reading).
    If one catalogues Paul's visits to Galatia according to the letter,
there is the founding visit and a second, a visit implied by the use of
the comparative TO PROTERON in Gal. 4:13.  In Acts his first visit in in
16:6 and the second in 18:23.  Therefore according to Acts Paul must
have written Galatians before 12:25 but not until after 18:23.  I call
that awkward.  It seems that the more biographical material there is in
a Pauline letter, the worse the problems are for the attempt to fit it
into Acts.
    The whole history of the attempt to harmonize Acts and the letters
consists in trying to reverse the sequence of these two termini.  One
attacks the reading at Acts 12:25.  One attacks Gal. 4:13.  One attacks
Paul's count of his Jerusalem visits.  One disputes that Paul wrote
Galatians to the "Galatia" referred to in Acts.  One even makes
Galatians the earliest of Paul's letters, widely separated from Romans,
the letter with which it has the most in common.  The results have had a
major effect on the interpretation of the letters.
    When one asks bad historical questions, one gets bad answers.  The
whole puzzle results from the failure to recognize that the original
question was illegitimate.
    On all of this see the first chapter in my The Origin of 1
Corinthians.
        With best wishes,    --     John

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