Duvduv

As we have discussed before, the epistles of "Paul" were always presented and discussed as a set, and the early writers never argued about the set, whether it was Irenaeus, Tertullian or John Chrysostom. Of course, as true believers they also never distinguished between epistles that were "authentically" written by Paul and others that were forged.

Thus, we never see someone argue that Galatians was not written by Paul or that Paul only wrote nine epistles or four epistles. No one ever claimed to have a more authentic version of 1 Corinthians or of Titus.

Of course it has never been explained by the apologists just how all these letters survived and where they were obtained from, seeing as that they were sent to disparate locations. All the points above would lead to question whether in fact the epistles were actually sent to any actual communities at all, and thus had no need to be "collected" because they were already one set, undisputed, and were never actually sent out to anyone.

Now for the sake of argument, if some are deemed to be "authentically" written by Paul, what kind of scenario involved the others that are in dispute (i.e. Titus, Timothy, Colossians, Ephesians)? Why would someone who liked the original epistles and believed they were actually written to a community fabricate letters in the name of Paul to other communities if Paul was already dead, and without even ensuring that elements of the letters such as style and language were the same as the "authentic" ones in their possession?

And in terms of timeline, how did it happen that they authors of the "unauthentic" epistles still never managed to find out anything about the gospel stories even after the death of Paul, even if Paul himself didn't know about the gospel stories?

And if a forger could forge the "unauthentic" epistles, then what's to say a forger didn't "forge" the "authentic " ones for the same didactic purposes as the writer of the unauthentic ones?

The whole idea of unproven "authentic" versus unauthentic epistles seems to be a red herring and a way of holding onto the tradition that there was a Paul to begin with.

There is no evidence that any of the epistles were actually written by someone named Paul. There is no evidence that any communities actually received letters that were addressed to them. There is no evidence that they responded and reacted to the epistles, and there is no evidence that they were "collected" or that there were disputes over the number or over any of the individual ones among the ancient writers.

dog-on

A lot of ink has been split regarding this issue, all the way back to Bauer and Van Mannen.

Not sure, in the end, how to really answer it, though I do gravitate towards the idea that these writings, at least some of them, did originate in what became the Marcionite community and that it is unlikely that even those considered authentic actually reflect the autographs.

hjalti

Duvduv, you seem to agree with the position that the epistles attributed to Paul have various authors. What word would you like to use for the process of collecting the writings by various authors (either by or falsely attributed to Paul) into a single collection in the New testament?

Duvduv

Since there is no evidence that the epistles were every put out individually, one must assume they were developed as a set. Of course if the set was completely produced by once central supervising authority one would not expect to see any contradictions among them. However if it simply involved cut and paste and then subsequent interpolation, I guess it would be hard to know whether in fact there was greater uniformity among the original documents.

Again, there is never a presentation of the epistles where the unauthentic ones or disputed ones are not included. Thus, epistles containing different language and style were presented as a set (before the gospel stories emerged). I suppose one scenario could be where different writers without any contact with one another but who identified more or less with the same ideas were assigned to write texts, which would account for some contradictions.

If I may so bold as to make a comparison. Let's imagine a number of religious Jews were asked to write letters about some basic teachings of Judaism. The letters would be similar, but there might be differences in emphasis if let's say one was a Russian Lubavitcher, another was a Moroccan Sephardi, a third was a Hungarian chassid, and a fourth was a German Orthodox Jew.

Duvduv

The problem is that there is no evidence of a "Marcion community" with its own teachings and writings except in the tales of a couple of Church-sponsored writers.

dog-on

Considering what was written about poor old Marcion, I tend to think that it was an actual issue for the 2nd century church.

aa5874

You bring up a very important matter.

If it is claimed that there was an Ephesian church since some time in the reign of Claudius and Paul died since the time of Nero how can it be explained that a Letter from Paul which would have arrived LONG after his death and would be OBSOLETE be accepted as authentic and Canonised???

Once the Colossians and Ephesians letters are NOT authentic then this signifies that it was NOT at all necessary for any of the letters to have been actually written by Paul, it was NOT necessary at all for them have been actually received by churches in the Roman Empire and that it was NOT necessary at all that Paul and the Churches did actually exist.

Once Colossians and Ephesians are NOT authentic and were written AFTER the Fall of the Temple, After Paul was supposedly dead and are now found Canonised it is virtually impossible to show that the other letters in the Canon did NOT follow the same route.

Apologetic sources claim Paul died under NERO but that he was AWARE of gLuke.

How could this be???

If the Pauline writer was AWARE of gLuke then he could have written ALL his Epistles AFTER c 70 CE.

The attempt to place the Pauline writer Before c 70 CE has turned out to be forgeries.

MrMacSon

wikipedia has an interesting commentary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors...ed.22_epistles

James The Least

David Trobisch points out a few interesting facts in his book Paul's Letter Collection. He proposes that Paul edited the letters (1 & 2 Corinthians, Romans, Galatians) himself and distributed them as a single book as a polemic against the church's early opponents. The letters were always intended to be a read as a single anthology, says Trobisch. In the oldest editions of the Bible, gLuke is immediately followed by Paul's letters -- not Acts like our modern Bibles.

I personally believe there probably was a Paul, but he wasn't an ethnic Jew or an ex-Pharisee. But then when I ask why a person would lie about such things as being "from the tribe of Benjamin," advanced in rabbinical education, I'm back to believing that it's just as likely that the early church simply invented such a person. The ex-Pharisee who persecutes the church but sees the error of his ways in a blinding flash of light at Damascus is too convenient a figure for church polemics to have been a real person.

outhouse

they were never a set

written over decades.




take into account we know there were more epistles that didnt survive.


how mant didnt survive??