Toto

I am not familiar with the particular theological stance of that college, but I gather that Walker is not a fundamentalist. But he did feel the need for an epilogue saying that he was not trying to undermine the authority of Scripture or take things out of the holy Bible.

He believes that there must be interpolations, but that doesn't solve the problem of whether any particular passage is an interpolation.

As an analogy, I believe that there are criminals in Los Angeles, but if I am on a jury, the state still has to prove that the particular defendant on trial is guilty.

If you read his original, you might not be so confused. But I was trying to summarize the argument in a few words.

I have not surveyed the entire literature. but I gather that there is no generally accepted standard for deciding whether a particular passage is an interpolation. The question is debated, both as to whether there are significant interpolations, and as to whether particular passages are interpolations.

So I don't think that Munro's criteria are "accepted" in any sense, and even if they were, Walker might still be correct.

I said that this would make Doherty's job easier because Doherty seems to accept most of Paul's epistles as genuine, and then has to try to explain some difficult phrases that portray Jesus as flesh and blood. He could have made his job easier by arguing that those difficult phrases were added later.

Vorkosigan

Yes, that has often been my thought. But I think it is just too difficult to argue that, in terms of book length. Personally, given the pervasive editing of the other documents, it seems likely that most of the references in Paul are interpolations of one kind or another.

Also, perhaps Doherty was trying to be generous and letting the other side have the maximum possible case.

Vorkosigan

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Toto!

Thanks for the good summary of Walker's book.

I've read some of his stuff before, and I'm sort of of two minds about him. On the one hand, he's been one of the very few who are still trying to keep the flame of objective scholarship burning in this whole area, in these Dark Ages of NT scholarship... At least he's been trying to keep the issue of Pauline authenticity open... 99% of his colleagues couldn't give a damn.

But OTOH he still seems to be a bit too conservative and too cautious for my taste. I think it's a mistake on his part to say that the burden of proof lies with the questioner.

I think I'm with Darrell J. Doughty on this, since he "maintains that the burden of proof lies with anyone claiming the authenticity of any passage."

But Walker is definitely still a respected establishment scholar, so his work is very important, because he tries to keep the issue on the table. He did a lot of good work laying out the basic theoretical issues for any other scholar to follow in his tracks.

But, myself, I much prefer Winsome Munro's work, because she cut straight to the chase, and proceeded to stratify the whole of Pauline corpus into different editorial layers. Her early death was a tragic blow to honest biblical scholarship, because there was so much more that she could still have done.

But, as it is, her work is hardly known at this time to anyone.

I have access to Walker's book in my local library here, so I should investigate it further. In particular, I'd like to see if he mentioned some recently edited Old Syriac material, that seems to be very valuable for the issue of Pauline authenticity.

This is relevant to the textual evidence issue. Is Walker talking about the epistles of Paul in Old Syriac?

-- New Syriac MS 2530 in the Schoyen Collection, contains Romans 6:12 - 10:7
-- Sin. Syr. 3 (fifth century), contains Romans 11:6 - Hebrews 1f.

Apparently this was originally one and the same MS, and it seems to contain plenty of interesting variant readings.

Also, there's another area that I think hasn't been investigated enough, and that is Paul according to the Peshitta. There are all sorts of interesting variants there as well, but I'm not sure anyone looked into this recently, or ever.

The Peshitta is usually dismissed as "late", but in this case it may preserve some early material. I did find lots of good variant passages in the Peshitta that seem prior to the Greek Paul, when I looked into this last...

So this is some textual evidence for interpolations and variants that still needs to be looked into.

To my mind, the whole mainstream Pauline scholarship today is a Black Hole, filled with all sorts of crooked scholars who are doing lots of pseudo-scholarship, much of it circular and mutually self-contradictory. Anyone who wants to appeal to Pauline evidence for anything, and still hasn't done the basic investigation of authenticity issues is a pseudo-scholar.

All the best,

Yuri.

tovarij

Thank you for the post, very informative

My question is, are these passages the only ones he examines, and did you think he established they are interpolations?

Toto

I have a feeling that your will only find an answer to your questions when you read the book for yourself, after studying the techniques of literary criticism and analysis.

Those are not the only passages he examines, and he makes it clear that his book is only a start - there are many other passages that can be examined using his criteria.

Did he establish that they are interpolations? Yes, if you read all of his caveats and qualifications. This is a murky area. and whether you consider something an interpolation will depend on what burden of proof you require, what assumptions you make about the dating of the letters, and other things. If you want certainty, study physics or mathematics.

yalla

Toto
"The absence of a passage from one or more ancient witnesses. Only the doxology of Rom. 16.25-27 is missing from any of the witnesses.''

F.F.Bruce "The Epistle of Paul to the Romans" Tyndale NT Com. 1963 p.25ff

Rom. 1.7
The words 'in Rome' missing from Origen's text. "Also probably" from the text for Ambrosiaster's commentary. [See margins of texts of 1739 and 1908.]
Ditto for Graeco-Latin codex G.
Possibly ditto re ''in Rome" Rom 1.7 and Rom 1.15, for the ancestors of the codices D and FG [aka Z]

Rom 1.5
The words "that are in Rome" are omitted by G.

Epistle ends at 14.23 in Vulgate mss 1648, 1792, 2089
That is, no chapter 15.

There is more detail but it confuses me, I'm a mug at this but thought you might be interested.
cheers
yalla

Steven Carr

Lots of respected scholars think there have been big interpolations in Paul's letters

'At this point in the canonical 2 Corinthians, two letter fragments have been inserted: a letter of recommendation for Titus (at 8:1-24) and a letter concerning the collection (at 9:1-15).'

This is on page 150 of Social Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Malina and Pilch.

andrewcriddle

IIUC the suggestion here is that these pasages are fragments from another letter or letters by Paul and have been inserted into 2 Corinthians by the people who published Paul's collected letters.

This is rather different from the idea that non-Pauline pasages have been inserted into Paul's letters.

Andrew Criddle