Corpus-Paul

[nanosmd AT comcast.net]

Edgar,

I will comment below yours. I am not at my own computer today, hence I will try to cut and make this work, but here everything you have written or cited from me is broken awkwardly.

 

>I would respond that your position is also
> based on a circular argument, going from letters later than 1 Thessalonians back to it.

Mark replies: I know that this is common wisdom, but is it not based upon deciding what he wrote first, one feature of which is his lack of use of Scripture, since it is supposed that he was not originally involved the controversies about circumcision and hence was not yet relying upon Scripture to warrant his view (or some such argument upon which the dating depends)? If so, the dating of 1 Thess. is also far less than certain, and based upon this same circular problem. It requires a portrait of Paul that is not known, but once created dictates when his letter was written in the development proposed in making that portrait.

> My position is that I account for each document on the basis of what is in it.

Mark: Ah, but that is also my position, and I do not even rely upon development theories of when each letter was written, for as far as I can tell that is only guessing, and then gets relied upon as if it was not, and so on, so that it forms the basis of what we know, when we do not.

> 1 Thessalonians is the earliest of Paul's letter. No Maybe about it.

Mark: Sorry; there is a big maybe as far as I can tell. Glad to learn otherwise! But at least for argument, it is best not to build upon it. Is it required for your view?

>
> No one can aregue against a "perhaps," as you state it above; but one can also state that "perhaps" he does not! A perhaps is not a conclusive proof.

Mark: Indeed, I agree. Hence, my point was to say that we do not know what I think was required for your point to be other than circular. If my reply is as well, that proves nothing more; I thought the way I stated it involved that admission ("perhaps" rather than "therefore"). The point is that what I think was an objection to my reasononing in the first post is not as sound as it seemed to be stated to be, nothing more.

Mark: I suppose that there is little disagreement between us (as you noted but I have cut), but it is good to be clear that we do not agree on the point that Paul cited Torah to legitimate his argumentative points to non-Jews, at least in some documents; right? Remember, for me, this was a building block to a more important point I tried to make about Torah, that your reply had suggested was not sound. I believe after this exchange that it is sound (that clearly Torah was not completed/finished/fulfilled in any universal sense, since Paul uses it as authority and expects even his non-Jewish addressees to accept it as authority); am I mistaken?

Mark

--
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
Rockhurst University
nanosmd AT comcast.net
http://home.comcast.net/~nanosmd