Corpus-Paul

["David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

Loren Rosson III says:

>>Whenever dealing with religious figures (especially apocalyptic thinkers),
we should bear in mind that there is hope in contradiction. Or, if that
sounds lame, then we should accept that there is no need for people like
Paul and Jesus to have been consistent about everything. (So Dale Allison
reminds us over and over again.) Just because Paul's arguments about "Jews"
and women were later misused doesn't mean we should erase these traditions
from their original source. By all means let's advocate reinterpretation --
but not revisionism.<<

I've been watching this discussion from the side-lines due to lots of
not-so-fun personal stuff going on, but I had to chime in here. Using text
criticism to weed out interpolations has its limits as to the kinds of
interpolations it might help us identify. Isn't it going to be limited to
scribal comments and marginal glosses that have crept into the text after it
was published?

It seems short sighted if we simply assume that Paul's letters as we have
them, less scribal comments and copying errors that have changed them over
time, represent the text that Paul originally wrote (i.e., your "original
source"). I did not see much if anything said about the publication history
of the Pauline corpus (although I could have missed it). Interpolations that
end up in the text prior to publication, such as editorial changes made by
the publishing editor (to use modern terminology), have been mentioned in
passing, but not really given a lot of commentary.

David Trobisch does seem to have a point that the manuscript evidence does
not support the common perception that the manuscripts we have derived
solely from the eventual collection of independent letters that had been
preserved and copied and shared by the communities. His analysis, which is
based on the largest sampling of manuscripts to date, suggests our Pauline
corpus was published as a single edition and all manuscript traditions known
can be traced to it alone. While smaller collections were apparently welded
together to form the standard edition, there is little hard evidence
indicating that competing collections, even editions of the sub collections,
influenced the order of books when copied over the ages. So, if competing
collections of Paul's letters had previously existed, they did not seem to
circulate in Christian circles.

If so, then we have to ask ourselves hard questions about what, if any,
changes may have gone into that standard edition. It seems to me that the
only clues we have will be those identified by literary criticism.
Consequently, if 1 Cor 14:34-35 seems to be a literary aporia, then the
question of its originality is a legitimate one. An appeal to canon only
serves to preserve the traditions of the parties that consider the canon
closed and solely authoritative on matters of doctrine and faith. Not
everyone shares that view, and they have equal right to evaluate the texts.

I think there is also a difference between modern sensibilities driving
interpretation and interpretation having modern relevance. Sure there is a
certain amount of unavoidable crossover, where modern sensibilities drives
interpretation that (unsurprisingly) proves relevant, but I'm not about to
throw the baby out with the bath water. To say "Paul and Jesus [do not need]
to have been consistent about everything" as justification for throwing out
such literary issues as mere "revisionism" seems rash.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA