Corpus-Paul

[Shantz / Mills <milshntz AT istar.ca>]

Mark Goodacre wrote:

> Anyone willing to help me out with my earlier question on the thorn
> in the flesh?
>

Dear Mark,
    one recent theory is from John Ashton _The Religion of Paul the Apostle_
(Yale, 2000).  In his second chapter he suggests shamanism as the best 
parallel
to Paul's ecstatic experience and relates some of the literature about 
shamanic
initiation crises.  These are ethnographic reports of painful physical 
phenomena
that often accompany early experiences of trance.  As the shaman is trained 
and
practices trance states the pain goes away.  It is an interesting and 
worthwhile
point of comparison, but used in this case with a little less precision and
applied with a little more enthusiasm than perhaps it warrants.
    On the dating the same article by Christopher Morray-Jones already
mentioned, "Paradise Revisited" HTR 86 (1993), summarises opinion.

Colleen Shantz
St. Michael's College, Faculty of Theology
University of Toronto