Corpus-Paul

["David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

Eric,

You say "(a) Galatians is generally considered to contain authentic
first-person witness references to Peter" and "Consequently, amongst these
mentioned sources, the best evidence for formulating hypotheses about Peter
would be (a) Galatians."

This would be true if one follows the Textus Receptus, which mixes Cephas
and Peter almost indiscriminately, but what if you accept the "other"
consensus in which the Nestle-Aland GNT more likely represents the original
NT texts. Then only a parenthetic statement, vss 2:7b-8, uses the name Peter
while in all other cases in the Pauline documents only Cephas is referred
to. That renders the passage that contains "Peter" as suspect. If
eliminated, you are now talking about a document that contains authentic
first-person witness references to Cephas. The author of Acts only speaks of
Peter. To link them, you would be forced to harmonize the accounts.

How would *that* be accepted as evidence in a trial? As I said earlier ...
consensus is relative and the devil is in the details.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA