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  • From: "Elli Elliott" <elli AT kci.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Paul's Gospel
  • Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:17:25 -0600


Just to clarify --
(And I appreciate the quality of responses and thoughts on this.)

All I ask is that we start from the undisputed letters and not assume that
we can toss in the others as evidence about Paul as if they have equal
standing.

"Consensus" is always a tentative word in Biblical Scholarship, but on this
there is as much as we seem to get -- the 7 undisputed letters. That makes
the others, what? "Disputed." All I ask is that we recognize this. This
is not to say no one will dispute about the others, just that we recognize
the necessity to do so with evidence.

I recall that there is at least one scholar who disputes whether Galatians
is authentic. I'm sure there's someone out there who has made a case
against other undisputed letters. Yet even if I were to disagree with it,
the general agreement on the seven undisputed letters remains as the current
paradigm to which I must refer for common discussion in the field.

Note that I say this as someone whose work runs counter to previous
assumptions about Galatians and the early church. I'm not saying we should
assent to everything just because it's the prevailing view, just that we
have to hold a discussion with some recognition of what that prevailing view
is. That's what I'm asking for. Otherwise we get awash in a lot of
discussion that gets hard to sort through with any coherence.

Perhaps it would be good for Jeffrey to propose some of the general
assumptions -- NOT as a platform to which we must all agree, but as
assumptions we can agree are the general current paradigm.

Maybe framing such a list would itself be a good topic for discussion.

Elli Elliott
(The Rev. Susan M. Elliott, Ph.D.)
Zion United Church of Christ, Sterling, Colorado
Immanuel Congregational United Church of Christ, Brush, Colorado





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