TedM

This is an offshoot from the "Holding on the authenticity of the Pastorals" thread.

From what I can gather, three things are widely believed to be true which I am skeptical about after having done some reading:

1. The first is that the scholarly concensus that the Pastorals (1&2 Timothy and Titus) are not authentic to Paul is based on a good understanding of the statistical presentation. According to this Harrison's work AND YET
Of course, statistical methods have greatly improved, but as the above article shows, there is much to question even now, his conclusions here:

I question the legitimacy of a scholary concensus that was originally strongly influenced by unscientific statistics of Harrison, and suspect that the same level of carelessness has carried over even to this day.

Statistics can be misused or misunderstood easily, even among scholars.

I THINK I understand the following two, which deal with what I suspect are the most compelling arguments to scholars. I'm curious what the scholarly conscensus would say about these:


2. The use of HAPAXLEGOMENA. With regard to the New Testament, a hapaxlegomena is a word that occurs only in no other books of the New Testament. There are 175 in the Pastorals. According to the CE here the average number found per page in 1 Timothy is 11, and in Titus and 1 Timothy is 13, which is 2-3 times those found in Galations (4.1), Romans (4.3), 1 Cor (4.6), and 2 Cor (6.1), a significant difference for sure.

However, this same site points out that such a variance is NOT NECESSARILY UNUSUAL, and provides as evidence the avg number per page in different Shakespeare plays: On the low end are plays such as Comedy of Errors (4.5), Two Gentlemen of Verona (3.4), Taming of the Shrew (5.1) and Julius Caesar (3.4), and on the high end are Macbeth (9.7), King Lear (9.7), Toilus and Cressida (10.1), and Hamlet (10.4), which shows that the same author CAN write works with hapaxes occurring at a multiple of 2-3 times that of his other works!

Another point to consider is that hapax legomena's aren't evenly distributed throughout writings. According to www.tms.edu/tmsj/tmsj10h.pdf "the claim that hapax legomena are evidence of non-Pauline authorship is difficult to sustain. Second Corinthians alone contains no less than fifty hapaxes... And further, it is characteris-tic of Paul that rhetorically powerful passages as this tend to be hapax-laden. In support of this, Fee writes:'Five of the alleged NT hapaxes occur in a burst of rhetoric (verses 14-16a), and it is the nature of Pauline rhetoric to have a sudden influx of hapax legomena. For example, the outburst in I Cor. iv. 7-13 has six NT hapaxes……. Similarly, the rhetorical expression of apostolic ministry in II Cor. vi. 3-10 has four NT hapaxes…" "

And according to the CE site above:
One can certainly argue that the subject matter makes a significant difference, which is the argument put forth by those who believe the Pastorals are authentic.

The above example at the least would support the idea that it is prudent to NOT let the proportion of hapax legomena's affect one's decision with regard to authenticity until more research is done on the subject.



3. PARTICLES, PROUNOUNS, other FUNCTION WORDS. It seems that another popular argument is the TOTAL absence of 112 function words! That's a lot. According to this

IMO this is a very misleading argument because for it to have relevance it should be compared to how many function words are missing from the other Pauline works. A meaningful statistic would be the proportion of ALL of the Pauline functional words within the Pastorals to the TOTAL UNIVERSE of Pauline functional words as compared to the other individual letters. Based on this quote from the above site, it would appear that there is NO BASIS for this objection, as the 112 is not evenly distributed among the other letters and represents only about HALF OF THE TOTAL functional words that could have been 'picked'. In addition, the proportion seems to be actually HIGHER in the Pastorals than several of the other letters:

Have I misunderstood? Why isn't the 'scholarly conscensus' jumping all over this misuse of the 175 hapax legomena and the 112 functional words? Comments?

ted

Vorkosigan

A paper dealing with work from 1921, on a religious 'science' website that publishes both good and bad stuff, so long as it supports Christianity....... Can you find something more trustworthy and up to date, from a reputable source?

Vorkosigan

TedM

I quoted from 4 sites, and other than one of them that came from a fellow skeptic on the other thread who apparantly thought it argued against Holding's article, I got them from doing a web search for "number of hapax" and Testament, and that's what I got. The information on participles is I believe is from the work of Elderin in 1960. To answer your question: I really don't know where on the internet anything is that addresses the two issues by the kinds of sources you would prefer.

Regardless, I'm not sure how the source is relevant to any of the points I made. I did ask several times in the OP what would the scholarly concensus--that yes I am skeptical about--say about the two issues raised. I welcome any newer, more objective, information that disputes anything that I wrote.

ted

Toto

Why do you call Harrison's statistics unscientific? They were simple counts without any higher math, but hardly unscientific or careless. And why do you think that the modern consensus still depends on his work?

Vorkosigan

Ted, you have one cite from a paper at Atlantic Baptist U in Canada, low quality work, and another bit of low quality work from The Master's Seminary, another far-right training camp. It is pointless to refute that stuff because it has only one agenda, to justify by any means the inclusion of the Pastorals with the Paulines...

....which no one would do if they weren't canonized together. The bottom line is that the only reason we are having this conversation is because the Pastorals are canonized.

Vorkosigan

TedM

According to the article, they weren't based on the "science of statistics", and were indeed simple counts without any higher math. To make a judgement as to their meaning without having the tools to make valid comparisons is unscientific. That's what those that were convinced that his statistics supported inauthenticity did. Though it is easy to understand why one might be convinced, it was careless to attach meaning to his simple word counts given the state of science employed by Harrison..

The article said that many scholars were persuaded by Harrison's work. My impression was that it was highly influential, and such influence carries on even after logically refuted, and that people are people: easily influenced by numbers without really understanding the assumptions behind them. I'm sure the later work has been influential also, both to the many who are wowed by numbers they don't understand, and by the statistically-oriented, who think that their work reflects reality more than it really does. Human nature doesn't change that much. My opinions, of course.

ted

TedM

I don't see why the assumed agenda is relevant to the purpose of responding to their claims. Either they make valid claims or they don't. Either the scholarly concensus has addressed these things or they haven't. Either you have an informed opinion or you don't.

So what? They ARE canonized, and I am claiming that it appears that the so-called "scholarly consensus" appears to be full of hot air on this one. Either there is a good explanation for their seemingly outdated arguments using hapax legomena and function words that I haven't seen or it really is full of hot air.

I don't think your attack on my sources, which in great part includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, is of much value at this point. Your objections to my sources are clearly noted now. How about some objections to what they say? If you don't have any, please step aside and let others take a crack at it, ok?

ted

Ben C Smith

What I would love to see here is a fresh analysis of the authorship of the pastorals. I myself am not on very good footing arguing against Pauline authorship; I am much more comfortable arguing against his penning of Ephesians and Colossians. For the pastorals I have primarily relied on scholarly consensus, the relative lateness of their first attestation, and my own vague impressions of style (mainly in those frequent pastoral catch phrases, such as it is a faithful saying and I [solemnly] charge you).

Discussing the origins of the modern scholarly consensus is interesting in its own right, but does not really attack the problem frontally, since there is almost no such thing as an unassailable position in antiquity, consensus or not.

You may be right. But it would still be profitable to actually list the reasons why the pastorals cannot be Pauline. (Bear in mind that I do not think they are.)

Ben.

Vorkosigan

If only it were that simple TedM. But fundamentally people who post articles at these "universities" are liars and twisters for Jesus. And unfortunately I don't have the hours of study necessary to show how they have abused Harrison's original 1921 paper, nor in fact do I have a copy of the original work so I can begin this research.

Bring peer-reviewed research, not the Catholic Encyclopedia from the 19th century, and two biased articles from low quality apologetic schools. I am always open to new scholarship -- but it has to be scholarship, not apologetics.

Vorkosigan

TedM

This is the response I got also over on the 'Holding' thread. I'm not on a good footing either. Maybe someone else here can see the flaws in the two issues I raised, or knows where to find them.


True. I raised it because I think there is a tendency to use the scholarly consensus as support for one's own tendancy to believe something. These threads rightly note such support, but are also constantly questioning it, as I have done here.


The Holding article does that in general. I decided to look at two of the specifics for this thread. I agree with Vork that the scholarly view of such objections to the statistics is what we need to see here.

I would think that a number of people here who have looked into the issue some (Kirby, Carlson, others) might have some further information on these two issues.

Wish I had some. Of course that is what we need here. However, it's not like no one has ever posted things from articles on the web or published books before on these threads.

I am hoping someone else here is aware of the type of research you want to see here, because I don't even know where to begin to look.

Pretty extreme view, Vork. I would suggest that so-called scholars have their own presumptions also, and the fact that many jumped on the 'inauthenticity' bandwagon due to the statistics of Harrison's work is evidence of that.

ted