Corpus-Paul

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

Perry L. Stepp asks:

>>What is the current critical opinion regarding the date and paths by which
Paul's letters were gathered into a single (or even several) collection(s)?

[an interesting summary of Murphy-O'Connor's thesis from _Paul the
Letter-Writer_ was snipped for brevity]

How plausible?  And what alternative views are currently circulating?<<

As Kym Smith indicated, the best known advocate for an understanding of the
Pauline letters as intentionally published collection of letter groups for
which a sequence can be established is David Trobisch, especially _Paul's
Letter Collection_ but also, in the larger NT context, _The First Edition of
the New Testament_.

The scenario you outlined is certainly possible under Trobisch's way of
looking at things. However, as the slightly edited online version of the
first chapter of _Paul's letter Collection_ that follows indicates, there is
a problem that goes along with it:

>>I grew up with a picture of Paul traveling through Asia and Europe,
founding congregations, counseling and teaching the men and women who had
given their life to Jesus. If he could not visit them, he sent letters. When
Paul died, his letters were kept as treasures. Each church that had received
one of his letters saved it, had it read during worship services, and
exchanged copies of the letter with other congregations close by. Later the
congregations tried to complete their collection.

But this view does not match the uniformity of manuscript evidence.

I will have to explain this more closely. Today, before a book is published,
the author presents a manuscript to the publisher. The publisher very often
will suggest changes and will have the manuscript edited by professional
editors. After author and publisher agreed on the final version, one single
manuscript only is forwarded to the printer. This manuscript becomes the
ancestor of the whole edition or, in other words, this manuscript is the
archetype of the text tradition.

The view I grew up with does not suggest that there was any archetype of the
letters of Paul. There were several collections and different editors
combined these collections at different places until all known letters were
included.

[...]

Let me sum up the two points I wanted to make so far. First, the complete
manuscript evidence can be interpreted to testify to an edition of thirteen
letters of Paul with the order Romans 1 Corinthians 2 Corinthians Galatians
Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1 Thessalonians 2 Thessalonians 1 Timothy 2
Timothy Titus Philemon. Second, it is very unlikely that [any] two editors
would arrange the letters of Paul in this way independently of each other.

These two assumptions lead me to conclude that the canonical edition of the
fourteen letters of Paul as it is presented in the New Testament today goes
back to one single copy of thirteen letters of Paul, and that only the
letter to the Hebrews was added at a later stage of the text-tradition.

[...]

From the simple observation that the letters are named by their addressees,
we learned that the overall title of the canonical edition is "Letters of
Paul". The letters were arranged according to their addressees. The letters
to congregations form one group (Romans 1 Corinthians 2 Corinthians
Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1 Thessalonians 2 Thessalonians
Hebrews); the letters to individuals form the second group (1 Timothy 2
Timothy Titus Philemon) of the collection. Letters with identical addressees
are placed adjacent to each other (1 Corinthians 2 Corinthians; 1
Thessalonians 2 Thessalonians; 1 Timothy 2 Timothy).<<

http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=91
(mind the wrap)

Murphy-O'Connor seems to be blending the traditional concept of cherished,
privately circulated letters later collected together into a group with
Trobisch's suggestion that they were published as a single edition. If
Trobisch is right, *the mss evidence shows that this single edition served
as the archetype of all existing mss of Pauline letters*! If there were
smaller, *circulating* collections, as Murphy-O'Connor suggests, there is
little or no trace of them in the mss record.

Trobisch thinks that the initial group (Rom, 1-2 Cor, Gal) was edited by
Paul himself, although there is no direct proof of this. Even so, why do all
mss of the Pauline letters seem to stem from the same archetype? Why is
there little or no evidence for competing editions or individually
circulating copies of specific books? This publication history is
significantly more structured than most of us would expect from the loose
collection of early Christian congregations that supposedly made use of
them.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA