Corpus-Paul

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

Stephen Carlson wrote:

>At 09:31 AM 2/20/03 -0800, David ATTBI wrote:
>>Please could I ask listers whether they think the evidence points to the
>>recipients keeping copies or not.
>
>I would think so to a certain extent if Trobisch's idea is right
>that the letter collection expanded in three or four stages--the
>new letters had to come from somewhere.

Stephen,

This is where Trobisch and I part company - I can't see any evidence for an
'expansion' process such as he describes.  However, I do believe that there
probably was a single 'expansion'.  First, I'd like to ignore Hebrews.  I
believe that the migration of Hebrews from it's 'size order' position in P46
to its current position after Philemon indicates that it's status as a
Pauline was in doubt from very early on.  Once Hebrews is taken out of the
picture, then, as Trobisch (IMHO rightly) points out, the uniformity of the
Pauline ordering in the MSS weighs very heavily against 'partial
collections' having been put together by Paul's churches.

However, my reading of the evidence of Marcion and P46 suggests that there
was an initial '10 letter' collection (everything apart from the Pastorals).
According to Epiphanius Marcion's collection contained (in this order): Gal,
1&2 Cor, Rom, 1&2 Thes, Eph, Col, Phm, Php (Tertullian swapped Phm and Php).
P46 contains Rom, Heb, 1&2 Cor, Eph, Gal, Php, Col, 1 Thes, and (most
likely) 2 Thes as well.  In other words (apart from Hebrews) the same 10
Paulines.

Most information I have read regarding Marcion claims that he actually
excluded the Pastorals from his collection.  However this is basically a
conjecture (I've not seen any evidence supporting this assumption), and it
is just as likely that he never knew them.  The idea that they were not
actually excluded by Marcion is supported by the fact that later Marcionites
*did* use the Pastorals.

So, I think we do have enough to indicate that a ten letter collection
existed.  As for the change of order from Marcion to P46, I can make a good
case for Marcion's order being chronological (a subject for a different
thread if anyone's even interested).  Then, when Marcion was excommunicated,
either the Church wanted to distance itself from Paul's letters afterwards,
or at least wanted to disassociate itself from Marcion as much as possible.
As a result, the Church had to come up with a new order if they were going
to continue to use the Paulines, and size order would have avoided many
arguments.

Finally, given that the Pastorals were written to individuals (assuming you
believe they are genuine) then they may well not have been collected and
published until after Timothy and/or Titus had died and their possessions
(including the letters) passed on to someone else.  As a result, they would
have been added to the previous 10 letters later on, and most likely added
at the end.

>On the other hand, I can
>well imagine that on[c]e a letter collection was circulating, it
>would have pushed out and suppressed the demand for individual
>letters rather quickly and effectively.

Makes sense to me.  However, this doesn't explain the overwhelming
'popularity' of Romans in the early centuries (at least, as based on extant
MSS).  This (please correct me if I've got it wrong) is the list of MSS
(excluding full collections) containing the various Paulines from the
2nd-4th centuries:

Rom             P27, P40, P113, 0220, P10, 0221
1 Cor           P15, 0185
Eph             P49, P92
1 Thes  P30, P65
2 Thes  P30, P92
Php             P16
Titus           P32
Phm             P87
Gal             None
2 Cor           None
Col             None
1 & 2 Tim       None

I know this is a different issue, but does anyone have a good explanation
for this?

Dave Inglis
davidinglis2 AT attbi.com
3538 O'Connor Drive
Lafayette, CA, USA