Corpus-Paul

["David Inglis" <david AT colonialcommerce.com>]

Eric Zuesse wrote:
> 
> 3) The source documents concerning any given point in the historical
> reconstruction are the documents that the scholarly consensus evaluates to
> be the closest to the given historical event. For a simple example, the
> person of Peter: (a) Galatians is generally considered to contain authentic
> first-person witness references to Peter, whereas (b) Acts is generally
> considered not to do so, and (c) both 1 and 2 Peter are generally considered
> to be forgeries in Peter's name and produced later even than Acts. (d) The
> Gospels of Matthew and John presenting accounts of Peter as Jesus's favorite
> disciple are generally considered to be, if anything, perhaps as far removed
> from first-person testimony as are the forged letters in Peter's name.
> Consequently, amongst these mentioned sources, the best evidence for
> formulating hypotheses about Peter would be (a) Galatians. However, to the
> extent that a hypothesis that I am constructing on Peter must be based upon
> lower-ranked evidence (and I try to formulate all hypotheses upon best
> evidence if possible), I'll consult the highest-ranked document that refers
> to that particular matter. Furthermore, for confirmation of a hypothesis, I
> will always rely first upon the highest-ranked available document, and then
> work my way down; but I do not restrict myself to only best evidence for
> confirmation--only for hypothesis.

Eric,

You have just shown in the above text that you are doing exactly what you
claim not to do.  You are relying on "scholarly consensus" to deterime
what is "generally considered" to be the relative ranking of NT documents
(do you actually mean books here?), and hence as far as I can see your
evaluation is no more 'scientific' than that of anyone else.

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