Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>]

While I find the effort to analyze the use of legal evidence construct a
methodology for supplementing historical enquiry interesting, if still
clearly underdeveloped, there are many elements of the supposed evidence
that have been referred to recently that are simple not in the evidence, but
in the interpreter's spin upon that evidence. These comments are more
analogous to a lawyer's spin on the evidence, and often show more about the
interpreter's disposition and story-line than the past for which he or she
seeks to speak. 

I wish to show a few examples of the problem without getting into the
methodology of this discussion itself, since I think that this problem
exists in both the traditional historical enterprise as well as the one
being advanced here. Much of the post is thus snipped to focus on this
supposed evidence, which I believe to be instead not evidence, but the
interpretation of it. In other words, however convincing the methodology
might become once worked out, it need not be hampered by poor appraisal of
the evidence itself, as it is in the post to which I respond.

on 8/27/02 2:22 PM, Eric Zuesse at cettel AT shoreham.net wrote:

> To wait for courts to do this for us is to wait forever and to wallow
> forever in the existing scholarly morasses, fads,
> Paul-as-anti-Semite-faith-over-Law before the Holocaust,
> Paul-as-pro-Jewish-respecter-of-Law after the Holocaust; and then, what's
> next and who really cares? I don't know about you, but I don't have the time
> to wait until I start to become scientific in my work; I cannot afford to
> wait forever to become scientific in my evidentiary standards and in my
> resulting historical researches and conclusions. Nor do I want to wallow in
> such fads or trends.

One brief comment on this attitude. It is naive, and shows the hand of the
interpreter just as much as those it criticizes for approaching the task
with different moral concerns that himself. The moral disposition of the
interpreter and the interest in being scientific are two separate topics,
which this kind of informal fallacious comment does not appear to recognize,
or if it does, seeks to be manipulative rather than fact-finding. It also
seems to suppose the role of the disinterested interpreter, which is, well,
naive, if not worse.

> As a legal investigator, I don't necessarily need to know exact dates, but I
> do often need to know the sequence, the order in which the various documents
> were generated.

To the degree that this does need to be know to use this methodology, this
is a major problem, since it begins with what are clearly hypotheses and
theories, and far from facts, regardless of how many interpreters may repeat
them. We do not know the order of these documents, and any theory that is
dependent upon this is already off to a highly dubious start...

> For example, I need to know that Galatians was probably
> written within a few years after the conflict Galatians refers to in
> 2:11-21,

But we do not "know" this... so your hypothesis is in trouble if this is
what it "need[s]"!

 >and that that conflict occurred within just a few days after the
> council in Jerusalem that's referred to in 2:6-10,

which we do not know, and most interpreters do not even claim...

 >and that Luke wrote Acts
> much later than Paul wrote Galatians,

which we also do not know, but most interpreter's believe to be the case...

 >and that Paul's account of that
> council in Jerusalem was almost certainly first-person and subject to being
> challenged by his letter's readers,

first-person is claimed by the document, so no problem, but whether his
readers know anything at all, let alone first-hand, is not probable. They
would be likely to know something from Paul, who founded their subgroup, but
there is no evidence of anyone else with first-hand experience among the
recipients of Galatians. Although many interpretive constructions place them
there, it is not in the evidence, i.e., text of Galatians or of Acts to
which you refer.

> whereas Luke's account of that council
> (if he presented any account of it at all in Acts) would have been neither
> first-person nor subject to such potentially adverse challenges.

this is again an interpretive decision; we do not know whether the writer of
Acts was present, or how reliable his sources were. It is a matter for
interpretation, not self-evident.

> Consequently, on this basis, using the scholarly consensuses dating those
> documents as my forensics base, I, as the legal investigator reconstructing
> those events from these documents, will use Galatians to formulate my
> theory, and will use Acts (if at all) only to test that theory.

This is fine, but it does not follow from the prior discussion of these
documents, and as already point-out, what these documents contain as far as
self-evident evidence is anything but that.

All of what you claim you "need to know" is anything but known, and much of
it represents interpretations that are not even held by most scholars.

> 
> This is not the way scholars create their interpretations/reconstructions of
> historical events, and so I certainly do not rely upon scholars as experts
> at interpretations/reconstructions/theorizing; but I do rely upon scholars
> as experts at the narowly "forensic" tasks of authenticating and dating
> classical documents.
> 
> I might also point out that, in a court of law, that's precisely where
> "experts" are supposed to be used--i.e., at the forensic judgments, and not
> at the legal-investigative (or "interpretive") judgments. The lawyer (or his
> hired legal investigator) is supposed to come up with the interpretation
> himself, and the lawyer will defend that interpretation/reconstruction of
> events in his presentations before the jury.
> 
> So, I am using scholars in the way that a lawyer uses forensics experts to
> authenticate and to date documents, but I am ignoring scholars'
> interpretations of these documents because scholars, unfortunately, are not
> well trained in how to interpret documents so as to reconstruct historical
> events from them.

The problem, noted already above, is that the "experts" are in the case of
the sequence/dating every bit as much interpreters as they are in those
other areas which you discount their voice as interpretive. You do not have
the evidence you claim, for we do not know the dates or sequence, do not
have the evidence required to do so, so we must hypothesize.

> 
> A legal investigator, since he is suspicious of everything and of everyone,
> questions the motives behind every document. This means that a big part of
> his historical reconstruction consists of reconstructing the motives behind
> the individual who wrote the given document.

Just a note on method; the historical investigator may need to be much more
sophisticated than you allege for the legal investigator, since
reconstructing the motives is one thing that no honest historian can claim
to know, but only surmise, and if a good historian, will at most guess at
the most probable with recognition of uncertainty. (sorry, getting into
critique of the method, which is not my intent here).

> Paul's readers could have, and probably did, speak with James's people, to
> hear their accounts, and probably James even sent his men to their
> congregations to present his side of these disputes and of what had
> transpired in the dispute at Antioch.

There is no evidence for this claim, it is an interpretation.

> 
> We indeed know that Paul's letter was being read by a congregation who had
> heard from James's people, and that at least one member of the congregation
> had been persuaded so much by James's people as to become circumcised
> himself (Gal. 1:6 & 5:7).

We know no such thing. You have gone from earlier snipped comments which
were rightfully tentative about this matter, to claiming evidence of it. But
it is an interpretation. Whatever happened in Galatia, Paul never says in
his letter that it has anything to do with James or representatives from
James. It is not in the evidence, but in the interpretative spin that this
claim is found. Moreover, the evidence does not say a member had been
persuaded to become circumcised, or that it was because of Jame's people. In
addition to adding to the texts, you are conflating comments made about
Antioch (which also do not say way you assert)  and about Galatia, two
different places with different people and events at two different times.
That is clear in the evidence.

> Luke's account faced no such audience/test; there
> is no indication in Acts that it was directed at an audience who were
> receiving contrary accounts of the same events.

This statement goes beyond the evidence; we do not know the nature and
proximity of Luke's audience, and it is highly likely that many different
stories were being told by different interested parties, pro and con, in any
first-century or even later environment, where the claims of this coalition
were concerned.

> 
> Above all, it's that Paul's letters were read by congregations who heard the
> opposed presentations from Paul's enemies. That was the very context in
> which these letters were written, and that's why these letters are so full
> of vitriole (such as Gal. 1:8-9 and 5:2-12).

This is an interpretation that goes beyond the evidence, which in the case
of Galatians, does not identify those whom Paul opposes in this letter, and
leaves it to our interpretation whether they had opposed Paul, or had
anything to do with--indeed, and knowledge of--James or his groups from
Jerusalem.

> 
> Luke's and the Gospelists' writings faced no such audience test, but were
> pure propaganda to fellow-believers--a much lower grade of "evidence."
> 
> Although I agree with Hyam about the necessity to distrust Paul's
> truthfulness and even honesty, I apply that same distrust to the
> truthfulness and honesty of all documents, including all classical
> documents, including the New Testament documents, including the Old
> Testament documents, including the Quran, including Plato, etc.

You do not seem to be very suspicious of interpretive constructions to which
you hold, so I wonder how much you distrust the evidence, or only that
evidence that does not suit your narrative goals. And this, I believe, is
where the role of the historian cannot be dismissed, regardless of their
(claim to) use of scientific method.

> 
> However, I should point out that your early dating of Luke-Acts is not a
> consensus dating, which would range from 75-90 CE.

Ah, so you recognize that this is but an interpretation of the evidence, not
the evidence itself!

> You can believe whatever
> you like, and scholars do, but that doesn't constitute evidence for
> anything.

Yes!!!

> To the extent that scholarship possesses expertise at all, it
> possesses expertise to authenticate and date such documents

Says who?

; and I'll go
> with a consensus-scholars' date of 50-55 CE for Galatians and 71-95 CE for
> Acts.

Lovely, but call it what it is, interpretation, not evidence/fact, and thus
sandy ground upon which to construct an ambitious project that supposedly is
more scientific than the others it seeks to correct.

> But as I had said, that's not nearly as important as their relative
> order: Galatians was substantially earlier than Acts; the scholarly
> consensus on that temporal order is overwhelming, even though you seem to be
> disinclined to accept it.

I believe that you are unaware of the just how much is in debate currently
among scholars who study these documents, especially as the practice of
historical method increases in sophistication, and even if there was a
unanimous agreement, how little this constitutes evidence rather than
interpretation. Perhaps you should spend some time studying the field of
enquiry as well as developing the methodology by which to supposedly correct
it. I find some of the methodological observations interesting and worth
further consideration. But no method can hope to correct a naive reading of
the evidence itself, or a failure to distinguish the evidence from its
interpretation; it might, however, provide a fancy new way to try to
manipulate to one's point of view while presenting it as something else. Or
should I be suspicious of all interpreter's but you?

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