Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT home.com>]

on 6/8/01 1:42 PM, Bob Tannehill at BTannehill AT mtso.edu wrote:

> Mark, I will try to clarify in response to your questions.
> 
> In my article I am not trying to argue that one position is right and the
> other wrong. I am trying to reflect on where we are, methodologically, as
> indicated by this recent discussion.
> [snip]


Dear Robert,
Thank you for the elaboration. I hope the following comments speak to some
degree to the methodological issues you seek to raise. It is wonderful to
have a senior scholar like yourself engage the C-P list.

As you know so well, the interpreter of Paul is engaged in a circular task,
and must try to keep many issues in mind at the same time, each effecting
and be effected by the other. On the one hand, the challenge to think more
historically, on the other, to recognize that the reason certain texts are
of special interest (to certain people, others to other people) is because
of one's concerns in the present. How many Pauline scholars would there be
after all, if there weren't any (different) people with any (different)
questions in search of answers for their world today? While the idea of
non-interested scholarship has been revealed as mistaken, ironically
perhaps, the challenge of honest historical enquiry has been made more
compelling than ever before. What still needs to change desperately for
Pauline scholarship to make historical advances--indeed, to be a historical
science at all--is the practice of historiography instead of ideology, or at
least, the recognition of the difference where it is present. It seems to me
that you are alluding to increasing just this kind of awareness in the
field.

I find the movement to pursue exegetical insights by attention to the
Greco-Roman as well as Jewish contexts of Paul and his communities
essential. The influence of empire has not been sufficiently appreciated in
past Pauline scholarship. Likewise, the concern to listen to what these
texts reveal about the paternalistic and politico-cultural biases of the
participants has not been sufficient. Did Paul challenge the Roman and Greek
cultural norms, while at the same time propagating them, probably unaware,
in the way he approached his communities, especially those who were silenced
by the very norms he was so quick to see as unjust when turned on himself?
Probably! If he was a human, how could he not do so? The challenge is for us
to help each other see the errors we cannot otherwise see, ever aware that
we are all made of the same stuff. Where Paul's voice is liberating, it
should be trumpeted. Where it is not, it should be criticized. But first it
should be discovered, as far as possible, as Paul's voice and not ours! As
Paul's wisdom or error, and not our own merely parading in disguise. At
least that is my view.

I agree with you. I do not see why development of these and other
methodological advances cannot be fully compatible. No, they will not fit
easily, but the search at the edges for clues about how the pieces went
together before they were scrambled, and how they might go together as we
try to unscramble our own place in the world, seems a viable and rewording
enterprise. But will not every person/group who comes to the task start with
different pieces of particular interest to themselves? And thus seem to be
at any given moment at cross-purposes? This puzzle ought not to be sold on
the children's shelf, to be sure, but it ought to be available at centers of
higher learning. Is that not the challenge?

Hopefully your essay will help us recognize some of the weakness and
strengths of the work brought to bear to date, and point us in promising
directions, where hard questions remain, indeed, where new questions need to
be imagined. I think Paul's voice can be put in service of anti-imperial and
anti-paternalistic interests, but also his voice can be--and so often has
been- used to the opposite purpose. So what was Paul's voice like, and why
does it matter to us anyway in the way we shape the communication of our
own?

Hope this is helpful; at least of interest. Perhaps it will provoke further
discussion on our of late oh-so-quite list?

Regards,
Mark
-- 
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
313 NE Landings Dr.
Lee's Summit, MO 64064
USA
nanosmd AT home.com