Toto

ynquirer - the problem with your argument is that we don't have any individual letters of Paul, and we don't have any reactions from the communities that allegedly received them. All we have is a compilation of Paul's letters, but we can't be sure that it existed in the first century. And we know that there was a tradition of using the letter format to publish an essay, so we can't be sure that the compilation of Paul's letters was not written as a compilation, meant for the world rather than individual churches.

pharoah

The fact is that they DID accept some epistles and gospels that we know today to be anonymous or psuedographic as authentic writings from apostles.

ynquirer

This may be true but—what reaction is to be expected from the communities? The letters were intent to be read to the believers while assembled. Disagreements, if any, would be cleared through personal conversation. A written statement could too easily be charged of heresy. Written statements, therefore, would be issued only in especially heated controversies, and hardly in any form other than a full-fledged theology. Perhaps Hebrews is a reaction to one of Paul’s epistles, possibly Romans. Perhaps all or some of the non-Pauline epistles are reactions to Pauline ones: if so, we would have good examples of reaction from the communities but altogether lack any means to know for sure. In this particular instance, the argument from silence loses its teeth.

We can be quite sure that Paul’s letters existed in the first century of the Christian church. Marcion is a terminus ad quem.

Have Romans, for instance. Chapter 16 is full of personal greetings addressed to individual Christians that were supposed to belong in the Roman community. Either the letter is a letter proper or it is an essay forged as a letter—and this is not just “format.”

The only anonymous epistle so far known is Hebrews, which the church has always labeled so. There is evidence that the non-Pauline epistles are pseudoepigraphic. Let us assume they are so. No one of them is addressed to a local community; 1 Peter is addressed to so wide an audience as “scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia”; 3 John mentions one Gaius, who might be the addressee of a sort of essay against one Diotrephes; neither James nor 2 Peter nor 1 and 2 John nor Jude mentions just one name, whether personal or geographical. All of them might very well be such essays as conjectured by Toto. But Paul’s? Very unlikely.

Toto

Funny thing - those individuals can be identified as people Paul knew in Ephesus, and it's unlikely that they all just moved to Rome.

jakejonesiv

This statement makes no sense. Could you rephrase?

Jake Jones IV

ynquirer

Those that Acts 18 says Paul met in Ephesus are only Aquila and his wife Priscilla, and still it remarks that they came from Italy, expelled by emperor Claudius. Acts does not mention as Ephesians any one of the following “Romans”: Phoebe (the first addressee), Epenetus, Andronicus, Junias, Ampliatus and Urbanus (the latter two hardly plausible Ephesians), Stachys, Apelles, Aristobulos, Herodion, Narcissus and family, Tryphena, Tryphosa – and the list is not exhaustive.

Why do you say Paul knew all of them in Ephesus? What is your source if you are kind enough to educate me?

Toto

My source was Helmut KoestlerI myself have not tracked them all back to Ephesus.

Previous threads on Romans:

Did Paul Write Romans?

Epistle to the Romans is no evidence that Paul was in Rome

ynquirer

Marcion was born c. 85, travelled to Rome at some moment in 135 to 140, and we know he was excommunicated in 144. By then, he had worked with the Pauline epistles. Therefore, they were written at any moment before 144. If one accepts the Christian tradition that the church was established by Jesus himself and that he died c. 30, the conclusion is that the Pauline epistles were written at any moment from 30 to 144, roughly in the first century of the Christian church. If one does not accept such tradition and thinks—as many do now—that the church was established some decades later, my argument becomes stronger since that would imply that the Pauline epistles were written, say, in the first thirty to sixty years of the church, which would render a successful forgery much more difficult.

Thus, the question remains—where did Koestler get such information? As I showed in my previous post, however, some names, like Ampliatus and Urbanus, are unmistakably Roman, and this renders their connection with Ephesus doubtful to say the least. In any case, Paul didn’t need to know many of these people personally. At the time of writing Romans, which was probably before he met Aquila and wife in Ephesus—they still were in Rome—Paul most likely knew of them through Roman representatives meeting with him elsewhere.

S.C.Carlson

The idea that Romans 16 was a separate cover letter to Ephesus has been around for about two centuries in biblical criticism, but always more popular among German critics than elsewhere. Its most recent period of popularity was reinvigorated in the 1950s and 60s (toward the beginning of Helmut Koester's career) with the discovery of P46. However, since Harry Gamble's study of the problem, The Textual History of the Letter to the Romans (or via: amazon.co.uk) (Studies and Documents 42; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977), scholarly support for the idea has considerably cooled.

Stephen Carlson

aa5874

No way, you cannot prove that. There is no person named Saulus in the NT. How do you guys come up with those stories, without any supporting evidence whatsoever?