vid

Ben: please, tell us in this thread if you host it

DCHindley

For anyone interested, S&H was kind enough to upload them to http://www.aohwell.com/religion/hindley until I find a more permanent home for them.

They are in both RTF and PDF format. Please forgive my late-night spelling errors in the introduction. However, if you were ever wondering what makes me tick ... Due to display differences between Word 97 under Win 95, the platforms current when these files were first created, and modern 32 bit word processors, the files with the two column tables appear to be mismatched by a line in some cases, but you will be able to relate the "interpolations" in the right hand column to the main text in the left hand column without any difficulty.

Happy reading.

DCH

mountainman

The actual number of documents that are classified as generally accepted genuine Pauline epistles have decreased in number over time. I take it that you are refering to the generally accepted genuine Pauline epistles of 2008 BC&H scholarship, and not of any prior period (or century).

Do you have any plans to analyse the known and generally accepted genuine Pauline forgeries, such as the letters that Paul purportedly wrote to Senecca?, etc. etc, etc.

Best wishes,


Pete

spamandham

:notworthy:

yes. The "2008 BC&H scholarship" 'genuine' letters. The advantage that the 2008 list has over prior lists, is that skeptics have at least had a shot at them.

If they are directly relevant to the exercise at hand, then yes. Otherwise, no. I am hoping to document and analyze what "Paul" might have actually believed in regards to Jesus (a real earthy flesh and blood Jesus? docetism? Jesus as symbolism derived through OT exegesis? Jesus {Joshua} as a legendary figure from the indefinite past?).

I have personally come across only a dozen or so places where 'genuine Paul' makes a Jesus reference that seems clearly down to earth, and have located scholarly ambiguity for many of them (see link in the OP), leaving me wondering if later editors inserted *all* such references into Paul's mouth pen.

I am presently left wanting by the lack of a concise scholarly analysis (or more properly, my inability to find such a thing) of all the passages in 'Paul' that appear to refer to a fleshy Jesus.

youngalexander

From the intro
Strueth! and
Ben?
Or have I misunderstood, (not unlikely in my case).

DCHindley

S&H,

You & MM say "The "2008 BC&H scholarship" 'genuine' letters."

When was this decided? As you know, I usually tune out 99% of what appears here on BC&H, but generally will at least look at threads related to Paul. I do recall plenty of posts on which ones should be excluded as authentic (all of them, usually).

Which ones were selected for this honor? Unfortunately, neither you nor MM provided any list.

In ancient times (the dark ages of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when deluded and foolish scholars used reason and philology to analyze documents) this was usually limited to Romans, the two letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, maybe Ephesians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon, occasionally 2 Thessalonians, Philippians or Colossians, but always excluding 1 & 2 Timothy & Titus.

My own deluded and foolish view, fueled by my insane refusal to accept the portrait of Paul as a schizophrenic genius (I seriously doubt that such a man could have successfully built the network of fellow-believers portrayed in Acts and implied in the letters themselves, regardless of which ones are assumed authentic), is that all the letters (not the anonymous one to "The Hebrews") are likely authentic at core, with an overlay of Christological commentary that in spite of common subject matter varies in opinion about Christ's nature, function and history, from book to book.

Might I humbly suggest that you instead compare and contrast the Christological statements from the entire Pauline corpus to see just how similar, or dissimilar, they are from book to book (and sometimes within books). The handy set of files available at http://www.aohwell.com/religion/hindley can be used for this purpose.

Even between the "probably authentic" and "probably inauthentic" books, the similarities are greater than the differences, but the dissimilarities of views about Christ suggest that Christology was still in development in the period any editor or editors might have been at work redacting them.

DCH

aa5874

The method of comparing the epistles for similarities does not really check authenticity, it only stipulates that the epistles under scrtinity were written probably by the same person or not.

If every single letter, including the Pastorals, were actually written by a single person called LUAS born in the 2nd century, a comparison check would give an erroneous finding of authenticity, since there would probably be no serious differences.

Authenticity can only be ascertained if there is a known credible authenticated original of a Pauline letter by which a comparison can be made, and even that may not be sufficient in every circumstance.

And my position is that the authors of the Pauline Epistles were alive after the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles were written, and that the authors of the Pauline Epistles used information found in the Gospels and were aware of Acts of the Apostles. And further Paul is just a name, he was just a fictitious character.

mountainman

Hi DCH,

The forged correspondence between Paul and Senecca etc needs to be explained in the first instance IMO. Who forged it, and when.



All I can say is that at the moment my view appears diamatrically opposed to this in that I find it reasonable to believe that the entire NT Pauline corpus of literature (inclusive of all the various known and acknowledged forgeries) is in fact wholly fabricated.

You mention "christology" thrice !!!



Christology and Cyril of Alexandria are highly related.
What do you know of the relationship?

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

The radicals will say zero, or even perhaps null (an empty set), so it depends where one places any (if any) authority.


I have often wondered whether in the fourth century when the Shepherd of Hermas was part of the (Constantinian) canon of the NT there were many references between the texts of Paul and that of Hermas.

Of course, we are looking at things from the 21st century, so it probably does not matter and is not important what the people of past centuries either beieved or did not believe.


And you can add to the murkiness of the total solution the references in the apochryphal literature as either about, or actually authored by the apostle Paul. Where do we place this weird shit? Where does the apochrypha about Paul and the fleshy Jesus fit into the jig-saw puzzle of ancient history? Why did apochryphal John's fleshy-docetic Jesus leave no footprint in the sand?

The C-Religion became a tax-exempt racket in the fourth century in the Roman empire.



Best wishes,


Pete

neilgodfrey

You might like to consider GoogleDocs as a publicly accessible home for them. At least for the rtf formats.

Neil