Doug Shaver

I don't feel like debating the authenticity of the Pauline corpus. Make of that what you will.

spin

No question of authenticity has been asked. Can you date the production of the texts themselves?


spin

Doug Shaver

Yeah, right. I'm going to remember you said that.

The author refers a few times to an apparently well established Christian community in Jerusalem. That tells me that the letters must predate the Jewish War. I think it very unlikely that he would have made no reference to the war's consequences if it had occurred before he began his correspondence.

How long before the war they were written is hard to pin down. On that, I'm going along with the scholarly consensus mainly because I have no good reason not to. I do think it relevant, though, that he refers to some people as contemporaries who, by the early second century, were thought by some Christians to be the founders of their religion, and by that time the founding was thought by those Christians to have occurred not quite a century earlier.

I don't believe it was in fact founded then. I think it had been around for quite a while longer. However, I think Paul and the other putative founders did live approximately when the later traditions said they lived. It could not have been significantly later, and if it had been much earlier, there would probably be some hints in the evidence.

spin

This is a very heavy overreading of the data. There were messianists in Jerusalem according to Paul. They had very different ideas from him. They didn't receive his version well and Paul was pissed off.

You're not the one writing the stuff. It's better not to second guess what one doesn't know very much about historically at all.


spin

spin

Well, few real problems with the generally accepted texts.


spin