jgibson000

What would you consider to be "evidential support" for authenticity?

JG

Steven Avery

And Wayne Brindle makes some very powerful points.

http://www.sbl-site.org/congresses/C...px?MeetingId=5
Pseudonymity and the Pastoral Epistles: An Evangelical Response to I. Howard Marshall’s “Allonymity” Proposa - Wayne A. Brindle, Liberty University

.... As literature, allonymity derives from pseudonymity, differing only in the degree of ideas carried forward from the background source. Ancient writers saw pseudonymity as an attempt to deceive readers concerning the true authorship of a piece of literature. Orthodox Christianity in the second century strongly objected to it. The Pastoral Epistles emphasize the importance of preserving Christian tradition as truth without distortion. Those who propose allonymity cannot legitimately separate it from the faults of pseudonymity. 2. Every viable scenario for an allonymous composition of the PE assumes an unstated but deliberate deception on the part of the author. If Paul was not the writer, the author gratuitously and unnecessarily set out to deceive his readers concerning numerous historical and personal details. 3. The alleged purpose of allonymous Pastoral Epistles contradicts the actual needs and life situation of Timothy and Titus following Paul's death. At least in the case of Timothy, he did not need a fictitious Pauline commendation in order to gain acceptance by the church at Ephesus, as is clear from the descriptions of Timothy's co-labors with Paul in Acts and 1 Corinthians....

Rick Brannan
http://www.pastoralepistles.com/Cate...+Epistles.aspx
Brindle's position was that when a the author of a document (and therefore sender, situation, etc.) is purposefully misrepresented (whatever the intentions of that misrepresentation might be) then the document itself is predicated on a falsehood and should be realised as such.... The recent work of Witherington, Towner and Brindle go a long way to show that pseudonymous documents weren't necessarily benign as many have stated, and that simply calling pseudonymity by another name (i.e. 'allonymity') doesn't do much to solve the problem.... the arguments for allonymity or "well-intentioned psuedonymity" are wanting because actual examples of well-intentioned pseudonymity in the early church were not exactly welcomed. Witherington and Brindle both provide examples of this.

Andreas Kostenberger critiques Marshall in these issuses and more
http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/p...20Epistles.pdf
http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/?cat=13

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

It's quite difficult to know when Paul's letters were written from the letters themselves an the light of history. People usually try to read Acts as the key and compound the problem. Some have tried to use the story of Paul being lowered from the walls of Damascus at the time of an Aretas as a historical marker, but the only verifiable time was Aretas III before Pompey arrived in Syria circa 65BCE, though obviously that's far too early, so apologists tendentiously relocate the event in the time of Aretas IV for no other reason than because he has the right name at the right time. Paul's letters therefore have very little attachment to chronology.


spin

Doug Shaver

How did second-century orthodox Christians know when it happened?

S.C.Carlson

I didn't know that the editors of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (or via: amazon.co.uk) were a bunch of tendentious apologists. I should ask for a refund!

Stephen

Toto

Wayne A. Brindle is an evangelical who teaches at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and starts from the proposition that the Bible is true.

Second century orthodox Christians might have strongly objected to deceptive or pseudonymous documents, but they certainly produced them and/or accused other Christians of producing them. It is somewhat ironic that Brindle quotes the Pastoral Epistles on the danger of such deception.

Gamera

This standard would appear to categorize all writings from antiquity as the result of pseudonymity, and probably most texts up until modern times.

I believe that virtually all texts from antiquity have authorship based on tradition and nothing else.

aa5874

You still have not resolved anything. Is Paul the person who wrote Timothy, Romans or any other epistle?

Romans 1:1, 'Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God'.

1 Timothy 1:1, 'Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope'.

The question is which of those verses are from Paul, if there was ever a Paul at all?

Doug Shaver

Nothing significant is certain when you talking about the origins of Christianity. However, the authenticity of a certain core of the Pauline opus seems to be the most parsimonious supposition.

If they were not written during the first century, then obviously Paul didn't write them. But that raises another question. Why did someone in the second century claim to be Paul when he wrote them? Without the epistles, nobody would have known Paul existed. In fact, if he didn't write the epistles, he probably didn't exist.

rob117

It goes like this-

We have letters by someone calling himself Paul. His life, as gathered from the letters, follows that of the figure Paul from Acts. Add that to the fact that Christian authors from the mid-second century attest to both the letters and Acts and consistently connect them, unless you can give a reason why the authenticity of the entire corpus is suspect the most parsimonious explanation is that those epistles that do not show obvious signs of pseudonymy should be assumed authentic. Pseudonymy is proposed in response to evidence against authenticity, not the other way around.

Since the non-pastorals are the ones that Acts echoes, it would make sense that those are the authentic ones.

And spin-

Damascus was transferred to Nabataean rule in 37 by Caligula.