Malachi151

It seems like there is pretty good consensus that the Letters of Paul were written around 50-60 CE. How are these dates arrived at?

spin

Unfortunately through Acts.


spin

Toto

Dating Paul's Epistles

Dating Paul

Malachi151

Thanks Toto. Guess I should have searched

Seems a lo of people have proposed possible late dates, but what about what spin said, and what about the possibility that these letters were written in the 1st century BCE?

It seems that the presumption for 1st century CE is based purely on the belief that Jesus existed and died in the 20s or 30s CE.

Toto

Only one person to my knowledge has seriously proposed a late date, and I have never seen a case made for an earlier century, although I can imagine how one would go.

There is no record of these letters before Marcion, so a very early date would be hard to explain.

The traditional dating relies on a few historical characters from Acts who can be dated. It can only indirectly be dated based on an assumption that Jesus lived in the 20's-30's, because Paul mentions James the brother of the Lord, Cephas, and John, who are assumed to be associates of Jesus. But if you read up on it, you will find that there is no satisfactory way of tying all the events together with a consistent timeline.

gstafleu

Aren't the deeds and itinerary of Paul as they can be reconstructed from his letters different from what we see in Acts? And wouldn't that make Acts a rather suspect source for the dating of Paul? After all, we would be trying to extract historical facts from Acts about a person while it is clear that the historical facts that Acts presents about the person do not match what (we assume that) the person said himself.

Gerard Stafleu

Ben C Smith

Acts is usually used to date the Pauline letters, but this is because Acts gives us the most specific information. The cornerstone to this approach is Acts 18.12-17, which mentions Gallio, whose proconsulship the Gallio inscription fixes fairly exactly. Acts also details the various Pauline journeys, and its author claims to have journeyed with the apostle on some of those journeys.

Without Acts, things get trickier, but there is still plenty to go on. 2 Corinthians 11.32, which has been debated to death on this board, makes Paul a contemporary of king Aretas, and the Aretas in question cannot have been Aretas III, since at that time Corinth was in ruins; furthermore, even if the Aretas verse was interpolated, it is evidence that the interpolator thought Paul was a contemporary of Aretas IV. Philippians 4.22 refers to the household of Caesar, which must postdate Julius Caesar. There are several references in the Pauline corpus that make it look like the temple is still standing (2 Thessalonians 2.4; 1 Corinthians 10.18; Romans 9.4). 1 Clement 5-6 can IMHO only be referring to the Neronian persecution, and it numbers Peter and Paul both amongst its victims and as examples from our generation, making it a contemporary or near contemporary witness. Galatians 1-2 mentions James of Jerusalem as a contemporary, and James is placed in the middle of century I by Hegesippus, Josephus, the infancy gospel of James, and others.

Ben.

Toto

They are close enough for scholars to either believe that the one confirms the other, or that the author of Acts read the letters of Paul.

spin

But, of course, it couldn't have been Aretas IV either because Damascus was in Roman hands and the means to get to Damascus passed from Philip's kingdom upon his death to the Romans and then to Agrippa I. This means the text is useless for dating purposes. But it doesn't stop the thing from being trotted out uselessly, does it?

The temple of god? Lawless one taking his seat there? This is apocalyptic and needs no temple, just as the book of Baruch needs no temple for the writer to refer to the temple.

Again assuming that a citation regarding the temple means that a temple must have been standing. As there is nothing strange to talk about the temple after it had been destroyed, one needs a clearer marker.

?

Not of course the times of another reputed persecution under Domitian or even that alluded to by Pliny or some other??

And Hegesippus is a witness to the facts or you can at least check his sources somehow, right?

Come now. An obvious perversion of the text. There is no sign that Josephus's James reference mentioned by Origen touched on Jesus at all, so there is no marker regarding Jesus's James in Josephus.

You know you're just parading the same old stuff, Ben C, as though any port in the storm will do.


spin

Ben C Smith

I meant to ask you about this the last time round. The apocalypse of Baruch is set just before, during, and after the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians. So of course the text features the first temple. The text also briefly features the second temple by way of prophecy given to Baruch about what was future to Baruch (but past to the author of the pseudepigraphon). But where in the text is it implied that the second temple is still standing at the time of the writing of the book?

Ben.