DCHindley

Morton may not have hit upon the set of characteristics that define "Lewis". Also, the disputed chapters may not have supplied a sample size large enough to yeild statistically reliable results.

In addition, the stylistic characteristics that distinguish the works of one author are not necessarily the same as those that distinguish the works of another. Even if Morton was on track, all that the analysis indicated was that Lewis may not have written those disputed chapters, not who did.

I wasn't able to tell whether samples of undisputed Lewis chapters/bppks were also analyzed as controls. Knowing Mortoin, they probably were. Were some of those also testing as inauthentic. I'll bet there is a good chance some did.

Was there a difference in genre between the base pool and the sample pool? How an author aproached a biography, say, may be different than s/he might approach history or a fictional short story. Even in fiction stories, how about the difference between science fiction and a period piece?

Dave

Julian

I believe that it is quite possible to determine Pauline (or not) authorship to the epistles. I do not believe that we will be quite successful in determining short interpolations, the sections being far too short for any meaningful numbers to emerge. However, since my motivating goal in the Pauline arena involve settling the pastoral matter once and for all, as well as showing that 1 Cor. 10-15 is not Pauline I do not have a problem with text volume.
It will always be a matter of degree when dealing with stylometrics and as long as we do not reach 100% many will remain unconvinced, but for the rest of us it may be possible to reach a number that will at least settle the matter.
Of course.
Not a terrible theory, actually. At least, not in the case of some of the letters.

Julian

mountainman

Your use of the term appears to be unrealistic: an interpolation
may also be an act of fraudulent misrepresentation. Fraud. The
classic example might be the interpolation of an extra zero on
a cheque.

The detection of such instances of interpolation, where the act
is a fraudulent misrepresentation of the facts is normally enacted
through failure of certain and specific series of integrity checks.
The author loses his or her integrity, due to an accumulation of
different bits of evidence, against that integrity.

DCHindley

It is the term commonly used in academia, although it usually refers to scribal glosses and comments inserted into the text where the scribe thought it should belong.

The term, in other contexts, means estimating a value based on other known variables. Like astrologers interpolate the position of planets based on the values found in tables.

In my hypothesis, the editor knew of Paul as the founder of a separate group whose members his own group sought to recruit (i.e., gentiles who revered the Jewish God). He managed to find a cache of letters (probably three bundles), but was disappointed to learn that this Paul knew nothing about his Christ!

So he interpolates his own commentary into the text, to show what Paul "really" meant to say. In reality it just didn't cohere very well, but did emphatically express his own Christ theology. Of course, he cannot help himself and adds digs at Jews and women.

What a guy (the editor, that is)!

Dave

mountainman

So have you given him (the editor, that is) a name
and a date of (hypothetical) activity?

DCHindley

I do not think he was a person known to history by name.

Dating him is kind of difficult. I am pretty sure that the earliest "christians" moved within Jewish messianic circles. Most were Jews hopeful for the realization of God's kingdom on earth, with the folks involved ranging from the mild to the wild. Some of these followed the teachings of Jesus. "Our" christianity developed from a subset of that movement that I speculate were former gentiles who fully converted to Judaism.

2nd century CE christian writers seem to have only the foggiest idea about the origins of their religion. Christianity as we know it from their own literature was a cult where "Christ" is the title for a divine savior figure. To explain how such converts, who historically have a reputation for becoming overly zealous as Jews (the Adiabene princes that Josephus speaks of come to mind), could have taken path so radically different from other Jews requires a pretty significant set of events.

I'd identify this event as the Jewish rebellion of 66-70+ CE. This war radically polarized Jewish-Gentile relationships in Coele Syria (the holy land). Large settlements of gentiles lived in areas nominally controlled by Jews, and larger numbers of jews lived in regions controlled by gentiles. Bonds of association and tolerance were broken irrecovably, and massacres occurred that were as bad as any in Bosnia-Herzogina or Rawanda in recent times.

It could not have been easy for the former Gentile converts, who would have had to bear grief from family, neighbors, everybody. When the fighting stopped, they were abandoned by kinsmen and considered with suspicion by other Jews. I think some had reached the breaking point, renounced their conversions, and radically reinterpreted their relationship to the God of the Jews.

Since it was inconceivable to them that they could have been totally wrong about what God wanted for them, in the end they decided that *they* (believing gentiles) were the true children of Abraham, and not the Jews, who they now blamed for the war and its aftermath. The defeat of the Jewish rebels was proof in the pudding that God had turned against Jewish nationalism. They incorporated some middle Platonic ideas and possibly some elements of already existant proto-gnostic myth about a divine savior from a more perfect realm, and invented the christ cult. When, possibly before the end of the 1st century (i.e., between 70 - 100 CE).

Paul's movement, which was populated primarily by gentile god-fearers associated with Jewish masters or patrons and their households, held some common beliefs about faith like that of Abraham. I'd date it to mid or early-mid 1st century CE. As a result, I'd date a recruitment drive by the christ cult member who edited the Pauline letters to early 2nd century CE.

Dave