Corpus-Paul

["Given, Mark Douglas" <mdg421f AT smsu.edu>]

Sorry I don't have time to write a lengthy response to this since I have a 
regional SBL to get ready for this weekend.  I would, instead, suggest having 
a look at my recent RBL review of Bo Reicke's, Re-examining Paul's Letters: 
The History of the Pauline Correspondence.  The review mentions a couple of 
good places to start reading and find plenty of bibliography about this 
issue.  Note especially the remarks about Reicke's arguments for the 
authenticity of Colossians and the difficulty many NT scholars have in 
learning to think like forgers.

http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/1781_3075.pdf

Bart Ehrman was my Doctorvater by the way.

Mark Given

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Today's Topics:

   1.   Does it matter whether the Paulines were written by Paul
      (David ATTBI)
   2. Re: [Corpus-Paul] Does it matter whether the Paulines were
      written by        Paul (Richard Fellows)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 17:25:21 -0800
From: "David ATTBI" <davidinglis2 AT attbi.com>
Subject: [Corpus-Paul]  Does it matter whether the Paulines were
        written by Paul
To: "Corpus-Paul@Lists. Ibiblio. Org" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <KNEPKCMPMKBCMMBMAHDBCENACAAA.davidinglis2 AT attbi.com>
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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




------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 22:01:38 -0800
From: Richard Fellows <rfellows AT shaw.ca>
Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul]      Does it matter whether the Paulines were
        written by      Paul
To: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <000001c2fa6f$ce025b50$68214e18@yourm5d4u9r2uv>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

David wrote:
> 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?

Does it matter whether Paul wrote the Paulines? This question is beyond the
scope of this list if it deals with present day doctrines or values, as this
list has a historical focus. However, this is the right forum to discuss
whether the PE were forgeries.

One paper which argues that they were forgeries is Eduard Verhoef
"Pseudepigraphy and Canon" Biblische Notizen, Heft 106, 2001. He quotes
Ehrman (The New Testament 343): "Forgers typically added elements of
verisimilitude to their works [...] In a forged epistle, for example, such
comments might include off-the-cuff references to an event that the reader
could be expected to recognize as having happened to the alleged author."

I think it is clear that the author of the PE had read the Corinthian
correspondence and that his texts shows that he misinterpreted it in several
places. In places the PE fit with 1 Cor, but they do so only superficially.
For example, the author has Paul leave Timothy in Ephesus, which accords
with 1 Cor 16:10-11, but Acts 19:22 and 2 Cor indicate that Timothy did not
stay in Ephesus.

The author seems to take small details from the genuine letters and make
plausible extensions to them. But his mistakes betray him. The same is true
of the way the author of Colossians used the names which he took from
Philemon.

Richard Fellows.



------------------------------

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>From MillerJimE AT aol.com  Sat Apr  5 00:54:17 2003
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Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Does it matter whether the Paulines were written by
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<<Does it matter whether Paul wrote the Paulines? This question is beyond the
scope of this list if it deals with present day doctrines or values, as this
list has a historical focus. However, this is the right forum to discuss
whether the PE were forgeries.>>

    This is also a good forum to discuss what they may have thought about
works we call pseudepigrapha.  A few things discussed here seem to contribute
little to this question.  For instance, the Pastorals place themselves in the
story of Paul by referencing people and events mentioned in his letters and
Acts.  This would happen if the Pastorals were genuinely Pauline, if they
were open fictions (widely known to be pseudepigraphs and meant to be read as
such), or if they were produced in order to fool most readers into thinking
they were Pauline.  Also, the Pastorals borrow some language, arguments, and
key Scripture references from Paul's writings.  Again this would happen if
they were genuine, open fictions, or deceptive fictions.
    I would like to muddy the waters by introducing a couple of other
options.  They may have been partially open fictions.  There might have been
an in-group who were expected to understand that the Pastorals were fictions,
and the in-group may not have cared whether outsiders took them as genuine.
Otherwise they may have been digests of Paul's teaching published by his
close associates  Would that be a true pseudepigraph?  Some of the works of
Aristotle are actually notes compiled by Theophastos and other followers, and
they are not treated as pseudepigraphs.  And the Pastorals may be both -- a
compilation known by the in-group to be written by Paul's associates, but if
outsiders are fooled -- what would be the problem?
    How do we figure out which option hits closest to the mark?
Jim Miller
>From scarlson AT mindspring.com  Sat Apr  5 15:05:29 2003
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Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Does it matter whether the Paulines were
  written byPaul
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At 12:54 AM 4/5/03 EST, MillerJimE AT aol.com wrote:
>    How do we figure out which option hits closest to the mark?
>Jim Miller

One treatment I rather like is James D. Miller, THE PASTORAL
LETTERS AS COMPOSITE DOCUMENTS (SNTSMS 93; Cambridge: CUP,
1997).  Is that your book?

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 davidinglis2 AT attbi.com  Sat Apr  5 15:34:59 2003
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From: "David ATTBI" <davidinglis2 AT attbi.com>
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Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Pseudepigraphy
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On Fri, 4 Apr 2003 Mark Given wrote:

> Sorry I don't have time to write a lengthy response to this since I have a
> regional SBL to get ready for this weekend.  I would, instead, suggest
having
> a look at my recent RBL review of Bo Reicke's, Re-examining Paul's
Letters:
> The History of the Pauline Correspondence.  The review mentions a couple
of
> good places to start reading and find plenty of bibliography about this
issue.
> Note especially the remarks about Reicke's arguments for the authenticity
of
> Colossians and the difficulty many NT scholars have in learning to think
like forgers.
>
> http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/1781_3075.pdf
>
Mark,

Thanks for this link.  I enjoyed reading your review.  I don't agree with
Reicke's chronology, but I can see how someone could arrive at that
particular sequence.  I do however agree with your last point regarding
forgery.  If you believe that the Pastorals (or any other Paulines, for that
matter) are forgeries, then you have to allow for all types of deception
being practiced by the author or authors, and to write a letter purporting
to have been written to a city largely destroyed by an earthquake would
certainly reduce the possibility of the forgery being uncovered.  Note that
I'm deliberately using the term 'forgery' here, since anyone going to these
lengths to disguise the origin of a letter certainly has an intent to
deceive.

On the whole issue of forgery/pseud***, I have found the 2-part discussion
here:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/pseudox.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/pseudox2.html

to provide some very useful information on the subject of
pseudonymity/pseudepigraphy in the NT.

However, the fact that any of the Paulines might have been forged doesn't
mean that they were, and this surely is the main problem.  It is possible to
construct a large number of Pauline chronologies, with many different
combinations of authorship by Paul and others, but as far as I can see it is
very difficult indeed to put these scenarios in any agreed order of
probability.

One of the problems I have come across is that many people still quote (or
otherwise use) scholarly statements on issues where these statements have
been shown to be incorrect by later research.  For example, one of these
issues is whether P46 ever contained (or could have contained) the
Pastorals.  A number of well-respected scholars have made statements the P46
never contained the Pastorals, whereas some fairly straightforward maths
shows that P46 certainly *could* have contained them, and in this context I
urge everyone to read Jeremy Duff, 'P46 and the Pastorals: A Misleading
Consensus?', New Testament Studies 44 (1998) (My thanks to Jeremy for
sending me a copy, and my thanks to Mark Goodacre for suggesting the
document in the first place).

I believe that many people use Pauline forgery (or pseudepigraphy if you
insist) as an easy 'out' when they come across something that doesn't seem
to fit, and aren't prepared to go back to square one and basically say "Can
I make everything 'fit' on the basis that Paul was involved with writing all
the Paulines?" (Note that I'm here allowing for, say, Luke actually penning
the Pastorals under Paul's direction).  My contention is that it is possible
to make everything fit on this basis, and so although Pauline pseudepigraphy
is possible (I don't see how anyone could ever *prove* that it didn't take
place), it isn't necessary, and indeed isn't probable.

Dave Inglis
davidinglis2 AT attbi.com
3538 O'Connor Drive
Lafayette, CA, 94549