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  • From: "David Inglis" <david AT colonialcommerce.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Peter and Paul
  • Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 13:33:01 -0400


Jeff Peterson wrote:

> A couple of comments on this interesting topic:
> 1. Profs. Maccoby and Krentz are of course right that 1 Peter is
> widely regarded as pseudonymous. I'm not sure the grounds are the
> strongest, however. Especially notable in 1 Peter is an
> eschatological expectation rivalling that of 1 Thessalonians in its
> immediacy (2:12; 4:7, 17), which is unfashionable for a proper
> =46r=FChkatholik. The letter's style poses problems for genuineness only
> on the assumption that early Christian letters were entirely solo
> productions, the named author locked in a room with papyrus until the
> letter was done; Paul's letters were not written this way, but rather
> with the aid of secretaries (Rom 16:22), and 1 Pet 5:12 suggests that
> Silvanus played such a role in that letter's composition, conceivably
> even serving as Peter's translator and editor in the composition of
> the letter; no surprise if one should find some echoes of Paul in a
> letter on which his one time co-worker collaborated. One wonders why
> a deutero-Petrine author would clutter his composition up with an
> allusion to so minor a figure; if the idea was to connect Peter with
> Paul and so unite Baur's polarized Christianity, something like 2 Pet
> 3:15-16 would seem more effective.

Well said. I am disturbed by the number of scholars who base their
evidence for pseudonimity on writing style and vocabulary. There are a
number of issues:

1) As has been pointed out recently (I'm not sure which list it was on,
sorry!) we do not have enough text by *any* NT author (even assuming the
whole NT is genuine) to know what any author's 'style' actually was.
There are simply too many variables; elapsed time from first to last
writing; intended readership; place and circumstances of writing; use of
scribes/secrataries, etc.

2) Several of the Pauline's are explicitely stated to be from two or more
specific people: Paul & Sosthenes (1 Cor); Paul & Timothy (2 Cor, Col,
Phm, Php), Paul & Silvanus & Timothy (1 & 2 Thess). In these letters we
should *expect* thoughts, phraseology, even possibly theology, to vary,
and (making the reasonable assumption that Timothy was given more
responsibility as time went on) that the later letters might vary more
from the Galations 'standard' than the early ones.

3) As Jeff points out above re. 1 Peter, why would a pseudonymous writer
want to suggest that Silvanus and Sosthenes were co-authors of a letter
from Paul? As for Timothy, if he became a major figure in his own right
then claiming that a letter was from both Paul and Timothy makes
reasonable sense, but on the other hand if Timothy *was* this important
then it makes it more likely that he provided some of the content of the
letters himself, and hence pseudonymity is not needed to explain the
differences.

4) Of the other Pauline's, Tertius was involved in writing Romans (Rom
16:22), and while Eph and 1 & 2 Tim do not mention any specific help, even
here Paul mentions being with other people who could have helped with the
writing.

5) It is reasonable to expect imprisonment to make a difference, whether
because Paul literally could not write due to being in chains, or perhaps
because he was with a restricted set of his companions at the time.

In fact, only Gal (See what big letters I make as I write to you with my
own hand), appears to claim to be exclusively Paul's own writing, and so
we should expect to see style and vocabulary differences throughout the
Pauline's. Similar logic applies to 1 & 2 Peter. Assuming they are
genuine, we have no way of knowing which (if either) were actually penned
by Peter, and how much help a scribe (e.g. Silvanus) might have provided.

Therefore, I believe any scholar who claims pseudonymity of any of these
letters on stylistic grounds is making an unwarranted leap in reasoning.
It needs to be first shown that the assistance provided by the people
named in the various letters can *not* account for the differences between
them, and only then should the claim for pseudonimity be made. I don't
believe this has ever been done.

Dave Inglis
david AT colonialcommerce.com
3538 O'Connor Drive
Lafayette, CA, USA




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