TedM

Thanks for your submissions, Toto. We'll see if this idea has legs, yet.

Here's what we now have:


ONGOING LIST (including the latest submission(s)):

Romans
1:18-2:29
13:1-7
16:25-27

1 Corinthians
2:6-16
10:1-22
11:3-16
13, entire chapter
14:33b-36

2 Corinthians
6:14-7:1

Galations

Phillipians

1 Thessalonians
2:13-16

Colossians


Don't forget to cut and paste ongoing list onto the bottom of your submission.

S.C.Carlson

E. E. Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Brill, 1999), has compiled a list of non-Pauline passages in Paul's letters, based on criteria similar to those of Walker. Ellis, however, concludes that these non-Pauline passage are pre-Pauline, not post-Pauline, largely because of the lack of variants in the manuscripts. (I also note that Ellis is more traditionalist than Walker, because Ellis also accepts the Pastorals as Pauline, though he relegated their discussion to an appendix.)

At any rate, if one subscribes to a different model of the textual history of the Pauline corpus than Ellis's, it may still be useful to know the non-Pauline passages that Ellis identified as pre-Pauline (excluding OT quotations).

• 1 Cor 2:6-16, 8:6, 10:1-13, 11:3-16, 12:4-11, 13:1-13, 14:34-35, and 15:3-7. These plus the OT quotes form 17% of 1 Cor. (The OT quotes are only 2% of the whole.)
• Rom 1:3-4, 3:25-26, 11:33-36, 13:1-7, and "probably" 1:18-32, 3:10-18, 4:1-25, 5:12-21, 12:9-21, and 16:25-27. These form 20% of Rom; with OT quotations, 27% of Rom is non-Pauline.
• 2 Cor 6:14-7:1 ("clear"); 1:7b, 4:14 ("probable"); and 6:4-10 ("possible"). Total non-Pauline: 11% (of which 1% is OT).
• Gal 2:16a, 4:21c-31; "probably": 5:19-21a, 22-23, 5:25-6:10; "possibly": 2:7b-8, 3:6-14, 26-28. (Total: 32%)
• Phil 2:6-11, 3:20-21, 4:5b. (Total: 7%)
• Eph 2:13, 4:7-16, 3:20-21, 4:4a, 5-6, 4:25-5:14, 5:21-6:9; "with some probability": 1:3-14, 2:4-10, and 4:21c-24. (Total: 54%)
• Col 1:12-20, 2:9-15, 3:5-4:6. (Total: 42%)
• 1 Thess 1:9b-10; "probably": 4:14a and 4:!5b-17; "reworked traditional material appear to underlie": 2:15-16, 3:11-13, 4:3-8, 5:2b-11b, 14b-24. (Total: 37%)
• 2 Thess 1:7b-10a, 2:3b-4, 7-12. (Total: 24%)
• 1 Tim 1:9-10a, 15, 2:5-6, 2:9-3:1a, 3:1b-13, 16, 4:1-5, 9-10, 5:5-6, 9-10, 17-20, 6:1-2, 7-8, 10a, 11-16. (Total: 43%)
• 2 Tim 1:7 9-10, 2:11-13, 19-21, 3:1-5 (Total: 16%)
• Titus 1:7-9, 12b, 15a, 2:2-14, 3:3-8a. (Total: 46%)

For what it is worth, Ellis argues that a lot of material he identifies as pre-Pauline misled previous investigators of the "Baur-Holtzmann school." But the reason I'm offering his itemization here, is that it provides one (traditional) scholar's assessment of non-Pauline passages, which overlaps Walker's list to a certain extent. For some of these but not all, I suppose that Ellis and Walker would agree that they are pre-Pauline.

Stephen

TedM

Thanks Stephen, but I need some clarification:

Isn't a pre-Paul passage very different than an interpolation? Is he suggesting that Paul used other's works in his original letter or than someone came along after Paul and inserted pre-Paul material?

Also, did you get my private message to you?

ted

S.C.Carlson

Some of the passages identified as pre-Pauline are indeed very different from interpolations, and it is reasonable to consider whether Paul adapted other people's material in composing his letters. Ellis excludes the possibility of interpolation on text-critical grounds (no manuscript support), but if you look at Ellis's criteria (non-Pauline vocabulary, disrupts the flow, etc.), they largely parallel the same criteria that other people use to argue that they are actually post-Pauline. For some of these passages, Ellis's work can be used to focus the discussion on whether they are pre- or post- Pauline, not on whether or not they are Pauline per se.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Stephen

Toto

I gather this is the sort of argument that Walker opposes when he argues that a lack of textual variation cannot be used as evidence against interpolations.

Ellis is reviewed here (by Mark A Chancey), available on Amazon. It appears that Ellis is not only "more traditionalist" but that he ignores a lot of evidence and modern analysis in his quest to support the essential historicity of the entire NT.

S.C.Carlson

Exactly. That's what makes his identification of non-Pauline parts of Paul more significant than otherwise.

TedM

It sounds like if we ignore the manuscript evidence we can include all of Ellis's non-Pauline passages as reasonably supported post-Pauline interpolations on other grounds? If so, I see no reason not to add them onto the list. Any that are known as being a pre-Paul creed or saying however should be excluded. Do you agree? Which of those can we exclude for pre-Paul 'creed' reasons?

ted

neilgodfrey

And not only the list, but the rationales for each! I don't know if all arguments for interpolations can be as succinctly packaged as the Conzelman example. I can think of several published multi-page arguments for the interpolation of just wee small passages. For my own satisfaction I wrote up a case for Rom.1:2-6 being an interpolation against Walker's criteria and it ended up 1300 words long.

Maybe a separate database, set out book and commentary style with links to fuller explanations, might be more appropriate?

N

TedM

Well, I was hoping for just a quick reference for 'starters', but agree that any short description is not helpful for an in-depth discussion. I was originally interested in just how much of Paul is considered interpolated, but now I question how meaningful the list would be since opinions are so varied. Also, I originally was motivated to have a reference list that might help to avoid the frustration of discussing a passage that seems meaningful only to find out that people consider it to be interpolated. It would be nice to know upfront. Another is to find out how skeptical people are here about Paul's work. Another is to maybe find out how skeptical scholars are about Paul's work. This is definitely one of those fields where a person can conclude that the more they know the less they know, but that depends on one's own level of criteria to begin with. Sorry, kind of rambling now..

Is this thread worth continuing?

ted

Toto

The lack of consensus seems to be between those who think that Paul contains interpolations, and those who reject the idea of interpolations. It might be worth while considering a list for the first group.