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  • From: "Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>
  • To: dhindley AT compuserve.com, Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul's churches copy his letters?
  • Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 18:40:51 -0500

At 12:25 PM 2/22/03 -0500, David C. Hindley wrote:
>Stephen Carlson says:
>>>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.<<
>
>Why so quickly? If assumed to be on account of some sort of authority
>attached to them, is that authority from Paul himself (which Trobisch
>himself will only claim for the initial collection - see above) or from some
>church body that acted as publisher? I would then have expected some sort of
>introduction (or postscript) demonstrating this: "Here ends the collection
>of letters published by Paul himself" or "We of the church that dwells at
>Rome have collected the letters of the holy apostle Paul ..." Unfortunately,
>they do not. The publisher could have been anything from a church organ to a
>well-to-do individual to a faction. The popularity and/or use to which a
>work or collection of works is ultimately put is not necessarily the reason
>for its publication, or an indicator of who published it.

I don't think that some introduction or postscript is necessary for the
letter collection to push out the distribution of individual letters.
First, letter collections were a common way to circulate letters,
and they have more content than a single letter. Second, it would
be difficult to collate the individual letter with the corresponding
letter in the collection, so differences between the letter in the
collection and the individual letter are either unknown or unimportant.
Third, to distribute the collection, one would have to copy the collection.
Substituting substitute in the local letter during this process is possible,
but takes extra effort and lack economy of explanation.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
>From scarlson AT mindspring.com Tue Feb 25 19:03:07 2003
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From: "Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>
Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul's churches copy his letters?
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At 05:16 PM 2/22/03 -0800, David Inglis wrote:
>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.
>
>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.

OK. We can take Hebrews out of the picture (it is why I wrote "or
four stages"). But what about the evidence that Trobisch did adduce
for the expansion process? What do you think of that? There is a
difference between there not being "any evidence" and not crediting
the evidence that Trobisch did bring to the table.

>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.

P46 is a defective MSS, missing the end, and the scribe's handwriting got
progressively smaller. Therefore, I am not so confident that we can conclude
that the Pastorals were in fact missing from P46. It's best to leave a big
question mark over this.

>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.

Tertullian claimed that Marcion excluded them. Whether that was Tertullian's
opinion or whether he was privy to facts that have not survived is a question
that requires much more study than I have given it.

>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.

However, as Trobisch pointed out, the dominant order is not strictly a size
order. Can you explain why Galatians usually comes before Ephesians?

>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.

Upon rereviewing Trobisch's book, I find that he does not present a clear
opinion as when the the Pastorals were added. The obvious conclusion to
me is that they plus Philemon were added in a third expansion, but Trobisch
did not go that far.

>>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?

Peter Head at the Toronto SBL (2002) read a paper that analyzed
early papyrus witnesses to the gospels and Paul in this period. He
concluded that all the papyrus witnesses to Paul he studied are
consistent with their being part of a letter corpus, but there
was little evidence in the papyri of a four-fold gospel codex.
Therefore, the greater "popularity" of Romans is better explained
as a preservation artifact promoted by the large size of Romans.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
>From M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk Tue Feb 25 19:12:08 2003
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On 25 Feb 2003 at 19:04, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:

> P46 is a defective MSS, missing the end, and the scribe's handwriting got
> progressively smaller. Therefore, I am not so confident that we can
> conclude
> that the Pastorals were in fact missing from P46. It's best to leave a big
> question mark over this.

And in this connection, cf. Jeremy Duff, 'P46 and the Pastorals: A
Misleading Consensus?', New Testament Studies 44 (1998), 578-590

Mark
-----------------------------
Dr Mark Goodacre mailto:M.S.Goodacre AT bham.ac.uk
Dept of Theology tel: +44 121 414 7512
University of Birmingham fax: +44 121 414 4381
Birmingham B15 2TT UK

http://www.theology.bham.ac.uk/goodacre
http://NTGateway.com




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