Corpus-Paul

[George F Somsel <gfsomsel AT juno.com>]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 05:50:28 -0600 "Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>
writes:
> on 1/18/05 2:43 PM, Tim Gallant at tim AT rabbisaul.com wrote:
> 
> >>>I continue to say that Paul from day one was building an 
> understanding of the
> >>>Hebrew Scriptures among his hearers.
> 
> To which Jim West (I believe) responded:
> >> To what end?  Would they have run down to the local Synagogue and 
> picked
> >> up a copy?  If they had, could they have read it?
> 
> And Tim Gallant replied:
> > That is not the point at all. The first century culture was not a 
> reading
> > culture, but that does not mean that it was not rooted in 
> literature.
> > 
> > In any case, when I said "Hebrew Scriptures" I was primarily 
> referring to
> > the corpus known to Jews as canonical, and not first of all to the 
> original
> > language. Forgive me for making the point muddy by using the term 
> "Hebrew."
> > 
> > I think it scarcely questionable that the LXX found wide usage 
> almost
> > immediately in the Gentile churches (if not outright immediately). 
> The
> > question is not so much whether the texts used from Eucharist to 
> Eucharist
> > were in Hebrew or Greek; the issue is that the LXX (whatever its 
> defects)
> > just as much as the Hebrew gives an accounting of *Israel's* 
> faith, gives
> > the creational and messianic background to Paul's preaching, and 
> everything
> > else one could desire.
> 
> Tim and Jim,
> I think that this issue is very interesting for the interpreter of 
> Paul to
> wrestle with. How did he expect non-Jews he addressed with the kind 
> of
> argumentation he in engaged in, which was largely reliant upon 
> Jewish
> Scriptures and methods (not to deny other interesting phenomena to 
> explore,
> i.e., Greek rhetoric, philosophy, religious expressions, politics, 
> etc.), to
> follow his arguments and find them convincing? All the more to the 
> degree
> that one grants/supposes that most if not all of them were poor and 
> unable
> to read his letters (but only hear them read), much less the passages 
> in
> texts to which he referred or to which he alluded (including echoes, 
> word
> and idea play, etc.). They often assume a level of learning that we 
> do not
> accomplish after studying these texts and traditions for many years 
> (and
> they don't provide the nice cross-referencing readily available to 
> us).
> Moreover, even if they could read these texts, how could they access 
> them in
> the pre-press age in which they lived, when such manuscripts were 
> cumbersome
> and expensive and rare, again, all the more to the degree that most 
> if not
> all were poor?
> 
> In addition to suggesting that many of these non-Jews had been 
> socialized
> into Jewish communal life to some degree before contact with Paul or 
> other
> Christ-believing teachers, it seems most likely to me that Paul and 
> these
> teachers continued to socialize them into Jewish communal life to 
> account
> for this expectation of his audiences. There they would hear the 
> Scriptures
> read regularly in the daily and weekly liturgical readings, and 
> discussed
> (of course the details of how this worked in the mid-first century 
> are a
> matter of debate). It seems to me that Paul's addressees in Rome and 
> Galatia
> at least, the two letters I have had the opportunity to investigate 
> in some
> depth, likely are meeting and engaged in Jewish communal life in 
> order to be
> expected to understand Paul's communication to the level his 
> arguments and
> citations of Scripture presume of them.
> 
> In other words, I do not think we can make the best sense of the 
> issue you
> are discussing by simply talking about these texts as if readily 
> available
> to and readable by the non-Jewish addressees in post-press terms, 
> and thus
> we must try to account for (largely oral) access to them via contact 
> with
> Jewish communal life. In my view, they functioned within subgroups 
> of the
> Jewish communities of Rome and Galatia (I am not yet prepared to say 
> for the
> other letters).
> 
> One other interesting thing that has occurred to me along this line. 
> If
> their access is largely if not entirely oral within Jewish communal 
> life,
> then it is interesting to wonder if Paul might have concentrated on 
> certain
> texts and concepts related to a) those most frequently read and 
> discussed in
> liturgy, etc., and b) those most likely read and discussed, for 
> example, in
> the liturgical reading cycle of Torah and Haftarah (I know, we 
> cannot prove
> what this cycle included, or even if it was practiced according to 
> later
> traditions) at approximately the time he wrote, or expected the 
> letters to
> be read, so that familiarity would be at its highest level. Then he 
> is
> putting his interpretive twist upon the Scriptures upon which they 
> have been
> recently reflecting according to other interpretations (with which 
> he may
> disagree, at least in these cases, because of his/their 
> Christ-faith). Pure
> speculation, but trying to work with the limitations of an oral 
> cultural
> phenomenon that these cases suggest.
> 
> Regards,
> Mark
> -- 
> Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
> Rockhurst University
> Co-Moderator
> http://home.comcast.net/~nanosmd/
___________________

While I would not suggest that the society of the time was literate in
the same sense that ours today would be considered to be (and even less
that of a generation or two previous to the current), let us not suppose
that the audience to which these writings were addressed were by any
means ignorant.  To use an example outside of the Pauline corpus, the
Apocalypse abounds in references which are only understandable to one who
has a most intimate knowledge of the OT writings.  If the hearers
themselves were unable to ferret out the allusions, presumably there was
someone there who was thus capable who would in turn explain it to the
audience generally.

george
gfsomsel
___________