mountainman

This question deals in the relationship between two specific evidence items. One of the evidence items is the Pauline Epistles and the other is the figure of Paul. In order to represent each of these two specific evidence items in the one question we need to make independent hypotheses about both the figure of Paul and the "pauline letters". You have elsewhere detailed the letters.


It is a question that I would be interested in but my point is simply this. Unless you adequately make well formulated hypotheses about BOTH what Paul is and what the pauline letters are, the question itself cannot be adequately addressed. Therefore I insist that the questions I posed above in relation to the hypotheses we can make, or need to make, or in some way can formulate about Paul, need to be addressed first.

You cannot avoid dealing with your foundational hypotheses about "Paul" and those about "the Pauline Letters" if you are intending to ask a question which examines the relationship between the two separate items.


Perhaps as a third question for discussion .....

The Forged "Paul-Seneca Letter Exchange" manuscripts of the 4th century

Any investigator can reference any item of the REGISTER of evidence items and somewhere above I introduced a third item of evidence that I would like to discuss after discussion of the question of the relationshipe between Paul and the "Pauline Letters". Nobody has addressed it. It is continually swept under the carpet. It is NEGATIVE EVIDENCE. We need to be made aware of our reactions to NEGATIVE EVIDENCE. See post # 261.

After discussion of the question about the relationship of Paul to the "Pauline Letters" I would like to discuss the question of the relationship of Paul to the forged "Paul-Seneca Letter Exchange" of the 4th century.

J-D

Agreeing with my point: in a context where it's evidence, that means it tells somebody something; in a context where it tells nobody anything, that means it's not evidence.

J-D

Not necessarily.That is not necessarily true.Insistence does not make you right.The question as stated does not deal with them as two separate items. The question is about the ascription to 'Paul', which is part of the letters, not separate from them.

mountainman

Examine your question .... 'Why are those documents known as 'the Pauline epistles' attributed to the authorship of somebody named Paul?'

'Why are those documents known as 'X1' attributed to the authorship of somebody named Y1?'


What is X1? Who is Y1?


Please define the underlying variables by a short provisional statement of what you would like them to represent in a hypothetical manner.

I am addressing "Paul" not as the subset of names associated in the manuscripts of the Pauline Letters, but as a possible historical figure in his own right that may THEN be associated with the names in other evidence. It should be clear I have been addressing the historical Paul as a separate item of evidence, in the same manner that the historical Jesus is being addressed.







See negative evidence at post # 261

Here is another question ..... 'Why are those documents known as 'the Paul-Seneca epistles' attributed to the authorship of somebody named Paul?'

'Why are those documents known as 'X2' attributed to the authorship of somebody named Y2?'

What is X2? Who is Y2?

Toto

I don't define postulate as "hypothesis."

We have no physical evidence for the existence of Paul. We have literature that purports to be written by Paul. We have accounts of Paul from unreliable sources. That's it. What's the point of speculating at length about whether "Paul" existed or not? Whether Paul existed or not, his letters exist, and represent the thinking of some early Christians.

If you look at the scholarship on Paul, almost all of it concerns the contents of his letters, and what they mean.

I don't recall saying that about Paul. Some scholars implicitly assume that Paul existed, wrote the letters, and/or that the accounts of his actions in the canonical Book of Acts actually happened. Unlike Jesus, Paul is not represented as divine, or with especially mythical attributes. The picture of Paul that one gets from his letters sounds like a realistic, familiar type of evangelical.

Robert M. Price, who thinks that Jesus was mythical and that most of Paul's letters are a product of much later editors, still thinks that there was a historical Paul, even if he was not a Christian.

I think they are engaged in literary analysis.

mountainman

That's quite obvious.

J-D

In the context of this particular question, which is the one Doug Shaver and I were discussing, 'the Pauline epistles' are a group of documents frequently referred to by that description, and 'Paul' is a name as occurring in those documents.

mountainman

The historical or ahistorical Paul is but one item in the list of items of evidence related to the hisory of christian origins. The point of formulating hypotheses about (each item of) the evidence is to be able to drawn all these hypotheses together in order to arrive at theoretical conclusions about the entire set of evidence.


His letters also include the "Seneca-Paul" forgeries, and also represent the thinking of some early christians.



Can you explain what the difference is between implicitly and provisionally assuming Paul existed and explicitly and provisionally assuming the same, given that the assumption is always provisional?




So do you think it's inaccurate or unreasonable to say that Price provisionally subscribes to the hypothesis that "Paul was a geneuine and authentic historical figure"? (Price, like Shesh, might not agree that this historical Paul is the one being attributed as the author of the pauline epistles)





Literary analysis is a subset of historical analysis. When one moves from the former to the latter discipline one's hypothetical foundations expand. I am not discussing hypotheses in literary analysis, but hypotheses in the field of history.

In the former it MAY BE immaterial to the analysis whether the author of the literature was who the literature claims him to be, or whether the author is a genuine and authentic historical figure. In the latter it is not immaterial to the analysis whether or not the author was a genuine and authentic historical figure.

How many PhD's have been allocated and filled for the literary analysis of known fiction stories? I hope you can appreciate the possible differences between the two fields, and therefore the different requirements that are to be associated with the formation of hypotheses in both fields.


Part of the problem as I see it is that most of our hypotheses have been inherited from the FAITH MODEL, by which I mean there have been centuries of scholarship which has never really questioned that Moses was the historical author of the Hebrew Bible, or that Paul was the author of the Pauline Epistles. In recent centuries everything is beginning to be questioned at a foundational level, and this essentially equates to a questioning and re-examination of the basic hypotheses that we are formulating or ACCEPTING and then running with as regards each item of evidence.

For example the questioning of the HJ by "Mythicist treatments" exposes the condition that the HJ is really a provisional hypothesis which has previously been accepted --- either explicitly or implicitly --- as true by most proponents to best explain all the available evidence.

Toto

I don't see any point to this whole discussion. Why would anyone want to combine hypotheses to reach conclusions?

mountainman

The statement also makes reference to an attribution of the authorship (of those documents) of somebody named "Paul". This SOMEBODY is quite obviously not the same things as these DOCUMENTS, since the former refers to manuscripts and the latter refers to a person, whether historical or otherwise. Therefore Y1 is not just representative of a name that appears in the letters, but ALSO must be representative of the name of some body - a human being (either historical or fictional) who is to be possibly associated with the authorship of those letters.

You have defined the letters X1. You have stated that the name of Paul appears in the letters X1, and this is true. What you have not yet independently defined is the SOMEBODY, also called Paul, to whom authorship of these letters is to be attributed.