Corpus-Paul

["David ATTBI" <davidinglis2 AT attbi.com>]

A short while ago I came across a posting from:

David Barr david.barr AT wright.edu
Tue, 04 May 1999 09:35:02 -0400

in which he wrote:

>George Goolde wrote:
>
>>If the PE were not
>> authored by Paul, then whoever authored lied about their source, hence
they
>> do not qualify as "holy men of God" according to 2 Peter 1:21.
>
>Perhaps in the world you live in, but what if the 1st C
>world were different?  What if there were a kind of writing
>wherein an author consciously chose to express his/her
>thoughts through the personality of another?  Would that
>still be a lie?  Were all the authors of all the apocryphal
>and pseudepigraphical writings unholy?
>
>> This is why I questioned why anyone who rejects Pauline authorship would
>> care who wrote them:  By my standards (not necessarily yours) they would
be
>> disqualified.
>
>The question is not your or my standards, but there's.
>
>> Do you agree with this thinking?
>
>Nope.

This caused me to think:  Does it matter whether Paul wrote the Paulines or
not?  I think the clear answer is *yes*.  My reasoning is simple.  Suppose
(as above) "there were a kind of writing wherein an author consciously chose
to express his/her thoughts through the personality of another? Would that
still be a lie?" Surely it wouldn't matter whether there was an intent to
deceive, if the end result was that there was deception.  Unless the
originals came with some kind of 'disclaimer' then people would be deceived
(and perhaps some would say that millions of Christians *have* been
deceived).  In that case, the end result is a 'lie' or a 'forgery', and to
call it 'pseud' anything is really missing the point, isn't it?

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