Doug Shaver

I assume that certain Christian documents that seem to have been written sometime before the First Jewish War actually were written at that time. The author of those documents called himself Paul. I see no reason to call him by any other name.

The oldest extant copies of those documents were produced sometime around 200 CE. I do not assume that everything in those copies was in the originals.

sschlichter

I agree there is no reason to assume but Irenaeus quotes the verse in question (Gal 2:7-8) and attributes it to Paul in against heresies. (chap 13). This is before 200. Others even much earlier quote from Galatians 2 as well. There is no reason to assume, there is plenty of evidence that the Gal 2 we are discussing is the same one that Paul wrote.



Irenaeus

Let Paul himself convict them, when he says, that
one and the same God wrought in Peter for the apostolate of the circumcision, and in himself for the Gentiles. Peter, therefore, was an apostle of that very God whose was also Paul; and Him whom Peter preached as God among those of the circumcision, and likewise the Son of God, did
Paul [declare] also among the Gentiles.

Gal 2:7-8

(Gal 2:7) On the contrary, when they saw that I was entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised just as Peter was to the circumcised
(Gal 2:8) (for he who empowered Peter for his apostleship to the circumcised also empowered me for my apostleship to the Gentiles)

spin

No ambiguity over referents.

I love people looking for circularities!

We can easily say what the post-Pauline orthodoxy was. The problem is whether it originated with or even before Paul. Nonetheless, it's not hard to see advantages of injecting ideas into Paul. Given that opportunities were available -- they had the texts and showed they were willing to change them -- it's more likely that one should need to show that particular tropes were not purely post-Pauline. This is related to the notion of favoring the difficult text over the more familiar one, because a difficult one is more likely to be changed to the more familiar, for "more familar" here works just like post-Pauline orthodoxy.


spin

sschlichter

Like in Rom 10:13? Please help me understand what you are referring to and why it is relevant.

spin

(And what does kurios refer to?)

(First I need to clarify: kurios has two types of usage: 1. as a title ("my lord", "the lord Jesus") and 2. as a substitute for a name ("the lord said"). It is the second usage that is under consideration.)

There is no problem with kurios references in the LXX, because it is used to refer to god. In Paul somehow kurios gets used for both god and Jesus, though sometimes one might be able to discern which is which in other circumstances there is debate. I've argued that in a few clear instances where kurios means Jesus, they show hints of being interpolations. Later christianity with its brainless notion of the trinity has no problem because the retroject post-Arian solutions onto Paul.

The issue is, when a writer is trying to communicate, why use a term that the reader cannot discern the reference of? It is my understanding that a writer tries to be clear when explaining his/her ideas. Hence the Jesuine uses of kurios must be held as suspect.


spin

Doug Shaver

Not very long before. And I'd call it a paraphrase, not a quote. I will, however, stipulate that the paraphrase is semantically accurate and, as such, demonstrates that Irenaeus's copy of Galatians said about the same thing, in those two verses, as the textus receptus says.

I'm not trying to argue that Paul didn't write it. My not assuming that he did doesn't mean I have live doubts that he did. It contradicts nothing else that he wrote, so far as I can recall, and it is entirely consistent with what I think Paul and the pillars of the Jerusalem church believed about Christ.

avi

Discussing the presumed veracity of writings attributed to Paul, Steve writes:
This HCM method is genuinely mysterious to me. Are you using one unreliable source to verify another? How confident are you in the authenticity of Irenaeus? Personally, I have absolutely no faith that this guy ever existed:

Description of Irenaeus' masterwork, Adversus Haereses--in Latin, no copies still extant in the original Greek

Hmm....
I have some land for sale in the middle of the Florida Everglades: notwithstanding all the brouhaha about "global warming", let me assure you, Steve, that the glacier at the top of the mountain on the parcel adjacent to the property I offer for sale, is not melting.

Steve, how old, exactly, is this "very ancient" Latin text? Why does the Catholic church comment on the text's "scrupulous fidelity"? Are we then to understand that the Church acknowledges having distributed documents during the past two millenia, which were unscrupulously unfaithful to the original? Well, Steve, if that is the case, then, what makes this particular Latin copy pure as the driven snow?

Steve, how can it be "beyond doubt" that the existing Latin version is faithful to the original Greek? Refresh my memory here, isn't it the case that Jerome, or some other good hearted chap compiled the Latin Vulgate version of the New Testament, which, so far as I am aware, is replete with errors.....correct me if I am wrong here....Now, that is an OLD text...right? It is certainly reasonable to assume that the Vatican would not claim that the Vulgate was issued with deliberate mistakes, we assume, don't we Steve, that those errors were inadvertant, correct? Well, but the point is, that even with that ancient document, there are numerous problems, so, why should we take on faith the notion that the extant, ancient copy of Irenaeus is any less filled with "errors"--deletions, insertions, redactions, than Jerome's Latin Vulgate? In other words, why must we assume that Adversus Haereses is pristine, pure, and authentic, given a very long history of the Vatican having pursued an entirely different modus vivendi--i.e. spewing out whatever happened to be politically expedient. Wasn't it precisely the obvious fraud observed by Luther personally, on his visit to Rome, that led him to nail his theses on the door of the church? Why should this "ancient" copy of Irenaeus be regarded as legitimate, in the absence of a Greek original?

Steve, just so this point is crystal clear: Are you suggesting that Vatican assurances that Irenaeus' Adversus Haereses is authentic, provide sufficient weight to anchor this notion? To me, both Irenaeus and Paul represent floating jetsam in a very polluted ocean.

Perhaps my response has unwittingly (dim wittedly?) deviated from the original point of the thread: ok, how's this: "why do atheists seek evidence apart from documents issued by the Vatican?"

kaab

We have choice to trust or not. However, if one doesn’t trust it doesn’t mean that the source is not trustable.

angelo

Provide one iota of proof why the babble can be trusted.

Doug Shaver

True. But if one does trust it, that doesn't mean it is trustable, either.

More to the point, your personal assurance that we ought to trust it doesn't mean squat.