Freethought & Rationalism Archive

renassault · 04-07-2010, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

The is not reasonable certainty that any portion of the epistles are authentic, and even less so for 1 Cor 15. There is only unreasonable certainty.

The primitive arguments in Galatians, Romans and 1&2 Cor. over the Law and works alone were enough for Baur to put into his only 4 Pauline authentic letters (alongside, interestingly, Revelation as being by the St. John). 1 Clement knows some of the Pauline letters as well as Hebrews, which would mean they were written for a good time before him if they were spurious. No scholar really denies the authenticity of 7 of the 13 Pauline letters; the others are inferred from the style (e.g. Philemon). There's just too much of a reason to ascribe them to Paul as opposed to the other way around, much more so for a lot of other literature in the ancient world.

spamandham · 04-07-2010, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

The primitive arguments in Galatians, Romans and 1&2 Cor. over the Law and works alone were enough for Baur to put into his only 4 Pauline authentic letters (alongside, interestingly, Revelation as being by the St. John). 1 Clement knows some of the Pauline letters as well as Hebrews, which would mean they were written for a good time before him if they were spurious. No scholar really denies the authenticity of 7 of the 13 Pauline letters; the others are inferred from the style (e.g. Philemon). There's just too much of a reason to ascribe them to Paul as opposed to the other way around, much more so for a lot of other literature in the ancient world.

I don't find scholarly opinion polls persuasive in this field. History is not science, and Biblical history seems to be the red-headed bastard stepchild of the art of history.

I don't think any reasonable person would proclaim certainty over 2000 year old history, and even less so in regards to this field so filled with propaganda and pseudepigrapha.

renassault · 04-07-2010, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

I don't find scholarly opinion polls persuasive in this field. History is not science, and Biblical history seems to be the red-headed bastard stepchild of the art of history.

I don't think any reasonable person would proclaim certainty over 2000 year old history, and even less so in regards to this field so filled with propaganda and pseudepigrapha.

I'm pretty sure one can be certain about these things, even 2000 years ago, for the reasons mentioned above. Many things we are certain about that happened 2000 and more years ago (e.g. Augustus reigned from 27 BC - 14 AD).

hjalti · 04-07-2010, 11:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

There would be too many mss. by the time this new collection of 14 letters spreads to disappear.

Too many mss. of what? The single epistles? I don't see why you say that, and clearly there were not enough of them, since they have disappeared, unless you know of any.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

As mentioned, no one had the power to make that happen mechanically, and it would never happen naturally. Marcion's version of Paul's letters is clearly known and reflected in the mss.'s, some of them have the doxology after chapter 15 which was Marcion's redaction.

Whoa....we're talking about more than the doxology. Where are all the other differences between our version and the Marcionite one in the textual evidence?

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

That was likely done by the Corinthians themselves, if it's true. You think they made a ton of revisions to Paul's letter as well? That's speculative beyond proof and highly unlikely, as Paul was alive and the letter would have been copied and known for the 10 years until he died probably enough times to reflect it in the record. It just shows that in order for there to be a multitude of hidden redactions, one has to really will it.

renassault, I don't see why it's "speculative beyond proof and highly unlikely", if you're cutting together some epistles, why is it so crazy to think that you would add something to the letter?

And you don't know if Paul was alive when that was done, that's "speculative beyond proof". And how would those changes be "reflected in the record"? The edition with the interpolation would be the "original", the one we have all the copies of.

spin · 04-07-2010, 11:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

Quote:

Originally Posted by hjalti

Well, Walker shows that that's just not true.

I just read that chapter and.. this is the same plagued view he has as Price, who apparently summarized him: "Absense of evidence isn't evidence of absense".. umm in this case it is.

Unsupported assertion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

He cites C.K. Barrett's statement that the mss. can't tell us anything about the state of the Pauline literature prior to publication, which I find completely untrue,

Unsupported assertion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

if that's how Barrett intended it. He cites Ehrman's mistaken idea that Christian literature was in a "state of flux" prior to the late 2nd century.. that may be true for the canon but not the content of the letters.

Unsupported assertion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

If Ehrman is correct that various scribes changed the mss. from what they "said" to what they intended to "mean" there would be no families of mss. at all.

Unsupported assertion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

If Ehrman is correct that all/most textual variants originated during 2nd and 3rd centuries, it then makes you wonder how the changes became universal in the manuscript tradition.

Why don't you wonder a bit more in a focused manner, so that your wondering can be criticized?

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

The rest is just an explanation of the motivations and occasions there were for "corrupting" the corpus, all of which is in my opinion unlikely (e.g. texts did not have canonical status and thus were changed, yet see 2 Thess. 2:2, which clearly condemns forgeries, even if it itself is a forgery, nevertheless sees Pauline letters and other apostolic writings as not to be forged), not to mention that the above doesn't explain how they got into the mss. tradition.

Umm, 2 Thes 2:2 just doesn't say what renassault wants it to say. And once again we are left with an unsupported assertion: an opinion of what is likely. Conviction isn't objective argument.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

He compares the fact that there are no mss. of 10-Pauline letter collections or individual books around with the textual record of the individual Pauline letters. But that's the whole point: the 10-Pauline letter collection survives in the 14-Pauline letter collections that we have, and the individual letters in those, in the same way that early errors would make it into some of the manuscripts.

Finally he maintains that the other "extraneous" copies were neglected/suppressed due to the "standardized" copies of the collection. This runs into three huge problems. First, no one had that kind of power.

Unsupported assertion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

Second, apparently they had enough power to bust this book burning but decided to include a couple of interpolations for fun's sake (Romans 16:25-27, Ephesians, 1 Cor 14, etc).

?

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

Third, other lengthy deviations such as the Western Acts completely destroy this theory, not to mention that the East and West had different canons up until the 4th century!

Straying. I thought you were supposed to be talking about Pauline writings.

You cannot compare the histories of different corpuses of literature and expect them to have been treated in a similar matter, for you don't know the histories.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

My, the Church had the power to universally wipe out deviations to 98.5% in the Pauline letters in the 2nd century but not unite on the canon until the 4th. Surely, you can see something's wrong in claiming that the text was originally "in a state of flux".

Surely, you can see that you cannot overgeneralize the processes that may have been happening in the period between the writing and the final canonization.

Having to mark stuff of this caliber, one tends to be overgenerous and pass it, despite its not having dealt with the issues involved with any evidence.

spin

spin · 04-07-2010, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

I'm pretty sure one can be certain about these things, even 2000 years ago, for the reasons mentioned above. Many things we are certain about that happened 2000 and more years ago (e.g. Augustus reigned from 27 BC - 14 AD).

Yes, and they have evidence to back them up. Don't change subject and hope that it will make it so you sneak your stuff through with trojan argumentation.

spin

spin · 04-07-2010, 11:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

The primitive arguments in Galatians, Romans and 1&2 Cor. over the Law and works alone were enough for Baur to put into his only 4 Pauline authentic letters (alongside, interestingly, Revelation as being by the St. John).

Is there some reason to go back to the hits and misses of a century and a half ago? I doubt it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

1 Clement knows some of the Pauline letters as well as Hebrews, which would mean they were written for a good time before him if they were spurious.

Let's assume for a moment that there actually is some connection between 1 Clement and some of the Paulines. Can you establish the type of connection? If so, how?

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

No scholar really denies the authenticity of 7 of the 13 Pauline letters; the others are inferred from the style (e.g. Philemon).

Stylistically there is not enough content in Philemon to say anything definitive. The rest is one's tendencies.

As to the seven, how much of each was Paul responsible for and how would you know?

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

There's just too much of a reason to ascribe them to Paul as opposed to the other way around, much more so for a lot of other literature in the ancient world.

I have difficulty parsing this sentence. The first part is relatively clear as an unsupported assertion, but the structure of the second part and its relation with the first are not clear.

spin

aa5874 · 04-08-2010, 12:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

The is not reasonable certainty that any portion of the epistles are authentic, and even less so for 1 Cor 15. There is only unreasonable certainty.

The primitive arguments in Galatians, Romans and 1&2 Cor. over the Law and works alone were enough for Baur to put into his only 4 Pauline authentic letters (alongside, interestingly, Revelation as being by the St. John). 1 Clement knows some of the Pauline letters as well as Hebrews, which would mean they were written for a good time before him if they were spurious. No scholar really denies the authenticity of 7 of the 13 Pauline letters; the others are inferred from the style (e.g. Philemon). There's just too much of a reason to ascribe them to Paul as opposed to the other way around, much more so for a lot of other literature in the ancient world.

But, why did you ASSUME that you know when 1 Clement was written?

And the claim that "no scholar really denies the authenticity of 7 of the Pauline letters" may be false. You don't know all the scholars and you don't know all the opinions of all scholars regarding the authenticity the Pauline letters.

There is no external corroboration for any character called Saul or Paul in the 1st century before the Fall of the Temple who asked Jews and non-Jews to worship a man as a God.

The historicity of the character called Saul or Paul is completely uncertain, not even the Church writers appear to know what Paul wrote.

The Synoptic Jesus is not at all like the Pauline Jesus.

The Pauline writings are all part of a fraud with Acts of the Apostles.

It is irrelevant whether 1 Corinthians 15.3-11 was interpolated when the information in the Pauline writings appear to be later than the Synoptics or after the Fall of the Temple.

Johnny Skeptic · 04-08-2010, 06:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OAO

Most Bibles note when a passage is considered an interpolation by scholars; I haven't seen that for this passage, so I doubt that scholars think so in general. 3-7 is often thought to be an early creedal formula.

If First Corinthians 15:3-11 was an interpolation, how would it differ from how it is now? What are the criteria for determining what is and is not an interpolation? Why can't some interpolations be obvious, and some not obvious at all?

Johnny Skeptic · 04-08-2010, 06:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renassault

The parts of the New Testament where interpolations are cited, such as the doxology in Romans 16, or the "en Efesos" in Ephesians are all based on textual evidence, without which it is not really possible to maintain there is one.

Why do you believe that Paul wrote First Corinthians 15:3-11? What about the passage indicates to you that Paul wrote it?

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