spin

This thread's topic was looked at a year ago here.

The major part of the discussion revolved around 2 Cor 11:32,

In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me

People argued that the Aretas mentioned must have been Aretas IV king of the Nabataeans from 6BCE to 40CE (from memory), though we have no record of him ever having control of Damascus at the time. Aretas III definitely did have control of Damascus before Pompey the Great arrived there, but that was 100 years prior to the hypothesized occiupation by Aretas IV. (One will find various hypotheses concerning Aretas IV in the thread mentioned above. S.C.Carlson refers to an article by Campbell here, and the reference is discussed in the thread.)

Damascus at the time was in the hands of the Romans, though it is conjectured that perhaps it had somehow lapsed and the Romans weren't in control of it.

The reason for conjecturing Aretas IV's connection with Damascus comes from a border contention between Aretas IV and Herod Antipas mentioned in Josephus (AJ 18.5.1):

So Aretas made this the first occasion of his enmity between him and Herod, who had also some quarrel with him about their limits at the country of Gamalitis.

Gamalitis was quite a way north towards Damascus, so it is conjectured that Aretas may have taken control of Roman Damascus at that time, hence the context for the incident in 2 Cor 11:32.

However, Gamalitis was not in the territory of Herod Antipas, but in the territory of Philip, but this Philip had recently died and the territory passed into the hands of the Romans until Rome could decide what to do with it (AJ 18.4.6). A few years later Rome gave it to Herod Agrippa, so Gamalitis was in the hands of the Romans from the death of Philip until the gift to Agrippa. Any contention over Gamalitis had nothing to do with Herod Antipas -- it was not his for Aretas to contend with him about. Had Aretas IV contended for Gamalitis it would had to have involved Rome and I can't see Aretas being silly enough to take on Rome.

It is here that numerous historians come to the fore and consider that the text has a small mistake when it talks of Gamalitis; in fact they say it should be Gabalitis, which is more reasonably in Perea, closer to the traditionally held territories of Aretas IV. (Hoener, HW, Herod Antipas, Cambridge, 1972, p.254; Smallwood, EM, The Jews under Roman Rule, Brill, 1976, p.187; and Schuerer (+ Vermes etc.) vol.1, p.350.)

This explanation is much more in keeping with the real situation at the time. Had Aretas gone to war over Gamalitis, it would have been the Romans he would have had to deal with. If it had been Gabalitis, it would have been Herod Antipas.

Now the Syrian legate Vitellius, when ordered by Tiberius to bring either Aretas or his head to Rome, didn't attack any Nabataean forces between Antioch and Jerusalem, but marched them past Judea, obviously heading for the trouble area. Had the problem been over Gamalitis which was at that time in the hands of Syria, thus Vitellius, he would not have needed an order from Tiberius to deal with it. He was within his own right to take care of the problem. It was necessary for Herod Antipas to appeal to Tiberius for help. That's when Tiberius ordered Vitellius to get involved.

Obviously, Gamalitis had nothing to do with the contention between Herod Antipas and Aretas IV. There is therefore not one scrap of evidence which places Aretas IV or his representatives anywhere near Damascus. This leaves us with only baseless conjecture to give 2 Cor 11:32 any historical validity. The only Aretas involved directly with Damascus in history is Aretas III, who held the city briefly before 64 BCE.

I think therefore that 2 Cor 11:32 is no help in dating the Pauline corpus and is in fact a problem for the dating because it points to a very different period from the commonly conjectured historical context for Paul. Did Paul live 100 years earlier? Did the historical data we have get totally screwed up and it should reflect Aretas IV? Or is 2 Cor 11:32 simply based on misguided writing?

Dating the Pauline corpus from scratch doesn't seem to be easy at all.


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Clivedurdle

Is there anything else to tie Paul to a 60's BCE date then? Might Paul be a response to the teacher of righteousness? (Ellegard).

spin

Not as I understand. If Philippians 4:22 is Pauline (there is some doubt), then the reference to Caesar's household places Paul after the Roman republic.


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Solo

Are you refering to Baur and his followers at Tuebingen, or was there doubt cast by someone on this specific verse ? Thanx.

Jiri

spin

Sorry, it's been too long since I dealt with the Pauline corpus, so my memory of the sources of the issues has gone. Philippians is a text which evinces different sources, a part which is apparently Pauline recollection and other material. It is that other material which I was indicating. If that Baur's thought, then it's mine as well.


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Clivedurdle

http://www.believersweb.org/view.cfm?ID=814

So there is some doubt!

http://depts.drew.edu/jhc/baurphil.html

What is interesting is Baur uses gnosticism to count against Pauline authorship - i would argue with Pagels that that is in its favour.

Caesars household could actually be a very wide series of dates! and it only might help with dating this letter, not the entire work. Do we even have an earliest and latest possible date for any of the letters? What about use of terms like synagogue?

How gnostic was Marcion?