Vorkosigan

You're obviously attempting to be provocative. What exactly is it you want? Is there some topic you wish to discuss? Why not start a thread, then? If there is some book or article you take issue with, then it would probably be more helpful to start a new thread, rather than drive this one off topic. If you wish to dispute the specific facts of Maccoby's case, bring a few up.

Vorkosigan

FunkyRes

1 Timothy 2:5 does not seem like a "spiritual" view of Jesus by Paul-

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all men- the testimony given in its proper time.

This indicates that Jesus the man is the mediator, present tense- and THEN refers to the past tense of what this man did.

1 Timothy was written by Paul.
Paul did not believe the resurrection was only "spiritual" in nature.

not a theist

There is certainly no scholarly consensus that this is the case and in fact the majority of scholars would seem to favor a non-Pauline authorship of this epistle.

FunkyRes

Really?

It's Pauline in claim, and Paul's style.

Please reference who these "majority" of scholars are.

Peter Kirby

FunkyRes writes: Really?

For real.

FunkyRes writes: It's Pauline in claim,

So is 3 Corinthians and the correspondence of Paul with Seneca.

and Paul's style.

The computer says otherwise. See The authenticity of the Pauline Epistles in the light of stylostatistical analysis by Kenneth J. Neumann.

FunkyRes writes: Please reference who these "majority" of scholars are.

I am not going to spend more than five minutes coming up with this list. So keep in mind that it is woefully incomplete.

M. Dibelius, H. Conzelmann, A. Julicher, E. Fascher, W. G. Kummel, N. Brox, Ph. Vielhauer, J. Roloff, H. Merkel, U. Schnelle, N. Perrin, R. Bultmann, S. Davies, R. Price, J.D. Crossan, M. Borg, R.H. Fuller, G.D. Fee, H. Koester, G. Bornkamm, M. Goulder, C. Guignebert, H. Hendrickx, R. Hoover, A. Loisy, B. Mack, W. Marxsen, M. Goguel, H.M. Teeple, and G. Ludemann.

According to the Catholic exegete Raymond Brown, the idea that the pastoral epistles are pseudonymous is accepted by "80 to 90 percent of critical scholarship" (_An Introduction to the New Testament_, p. 639). By this, I suppose that Brown intends to speak of the scholars teaching in universities and colleges.

best,
Peter Kirby

FunkyRes

Could you reference what computer program was used to determine this?

I'd like to compare the early works of Alfred Hitchcock with the later, and Isaac Assimov as well.

There are some new terms that are used in the pastoral epistles that aren't used in earlier, but you'll find that with any author.

I'll see if I can get the "computer analysis" program or algorythm from the book you reference, if my Library has it (or can get it).

Peter Kirby

FunkyRes writes:

Could you reference what computer program was used to determine this?
I'd like to compare the early works of Alfred Hitchcock with the later, and Isaac Assimov as well.

There are some new terms that are used in the pastoral epistles that aren't used in earlier, but you'll find that with any author.

I'll see if I can get the "computer analysis" program or algorythm from the book you reference, if my Library has it (or can get it).

Well, I don't think that it is the kind of software you can pick up at Circuit City. It has been a while since I read that book, and I don't know what name or acronym was assigned to the computer program. I do not recall that the source code was listed in the book. You may be able to build your own program by following an algorithm similar to what is described in the book. You would have to find a corpus of English works all by the same author, such as Shakespeare perhaps (of course, computer analysis of Shakespeare has been published and you can look at that too for comparison). The work of Isaac Asimov for example would be difficult to use for computer analysis for the reason of getting the books in electronic form: this would be, strictly speaking, a violation of copyright (no electronic retrieval system allowed and so on).

That being said, it was your claim that the pastoral epistles were written in Paul's style. Now, if by this you meant that the pastoral epistles were written in Paul's style when the pastoral epistles are assumed to be part of Paul's style, that is called question begging, and I assume that you wouldn't want to go about begging questions. So I assume you mean that the pastoral epistles are in the same style as the epistles that are about universally accepted as genuine: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. The computer analysis merely confirms what careful researchers noticed as long ago as F. C. Baur: the pastoral epistles do not have the same idiomatic, syntactic, and rhetorical style as the rest of the Pauline corpus. Now, we can propose all kinds of explanations for this. Perhaps most scholars are right in saying that the pastorals were written after the death of Paul. Perhaps you are right in saying that Paul's style changed in his twilight years. Perhaps someone else is right in saying that Paul employed a different style in personal letters. Whatever the case may be, your claim that the pastoral epistles are written in the same style does not hold up.

best,
Peter Kirby

FunkyRes

Why would I need a corpus?

I would only need as much text as what we have in the Bible as attributed to Paul, no?

Otherwise the comparison would not be fair.

In favor of Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles is early church tradition, which I believe the "false pauline" epistles do not have.

If I'm not mistaken, all (or almost all) of the Pauline Epistles are included in a second century canon (well, list anyway) who's requirements were that they were authentic in claimed authorship.

Sure- that's over 100 years after the fact, but it still bears a lot of weight.

I'll see if I can find it.

With respect to computer programs, as a programmer I can testify they are only as good as the code behind them- so such a program would itself need to be tested against KNOWN single authorship and KNOWN different authors, with a success/failure rate.

Did the program include quoted passages from the LXX in it's analysis of the writers style?

Things like that need to be known before the program can be trusted.

The arguement for Pauline authorship that I received in my Later Pauline Epistles course (Houghton College in Houghton, NY- a Weslyan Methodist school) was that tradition had them written by Paul and at a later time than the Early epistles, and that the change in style and new phrases was not sufficient enough to demand a different author, but rather, would be considered within the realm of normal progression of style.

As such, since the early church tradition was there, the burden of proof for a seperate author rested on the skeptic.

FunkyRes

Here is one reference that notes the 13 Pauline epistles were accepted by late second century-

from <a href="http://answering-islam.org/Bible/pbntcanon.html" target="_blank">http://answering-islam.org/Bible/pbntcanon.html</a>

I'll see if I can find the early "list" I was speaking of- I remember it was very close to our own 27 books now, only having a few not listed.

Peter Kirby

FunkyRes writes:

Why would I need a corpus?

I would only need as much text as what we have in the Bible as attributed to Paul, no?

Otherwise the comparison would not be fair.

My use of the word corpus carries no information about the amount of text, as can be seen from the fact that I refer to the 'Pauline corpus' in the post just above. It literally means 'body'. In the context of Natural Language Processing, it means "A collection of writings or recorded remarks used for linguistic analysis." (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed.)

FunkyRes writes:

In favor of Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles is early church tradition, which I believe the "false pauline" epistles do not have.

If I'm not mistaken, all (or almost all) of the Pauline Epistles are included in a second century canon (well, list anyway) who's requirements were that they were authentic in claimed authorship.

Sure- that's over 100 years after the fact, but it still bears a lot of weight.

I'll see if I can find it.

You seem to have the Muratorian Canon in mind. This is something that is typically dated between 170 and 200; it mentions the (recent) papacy of Pius. As you say, it is over 100 years after the last letter of Paul was penned. As such, I am sorry to say that I have to apply my Hundred Year Rule on pain of being accused of hypocrisy. See, I do not uncritically accept the statement of any document written more than one hundred years after the supposed event, unless there are extenuating circumstances such as knowledge that the author depended on a first hand testimony. So I am afraid that I cannot follow you in depending on this weak reed for support, in fear that it will snap and leave us both for fools.

There is another point that is noteworthy and that I would like to incorporate into my web site once I learn more about it. It is possible that the Muratorian Canon dates to the fourth century. This has been argued at length by Albert Sundberg in "Canon Muratori: A Fourth-Century List" of the Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973), pp. 1-41. I have not read this article myself, so I mention its existence for the interested reader, but I do know that Sundberg has been followed by McDonald in The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon and by Koester in Ancient Christian Gospels. Again, I mention this for the interested and not as an established point. The Muratorian Canon is already too late to qualify as good evidence under my Hundred Year Rule (of course, others may have lower standards than I do).

The Muratorian Canon has this interesting passage:

"Further an epistle of Jude and two with the title John are accepted in the catholic Church, and the Wisdom written by friends of Solomon in his honour. Also of the revelations we accept only those of John and Peter, which (latter) some of our people do not want to have read in the Church."

Note that the author says that the Wisdom of Solomon, which is part of the Protestant Apocrypha, was "written by friends of Solomon in his honour." Do you believe this to be true, FunkyRes? Or do you believe the Muratorian Canon to be unreliable at least in part?

The Muratorian Canon also says that two epistles of John are accepted as canonical. So, which of the three epistles of John in the Bible do you wish to be rid of? Or do you no longer believe that the Muratorian Canon bears a lot of weight?

Although the author admits that some do not want it to be read, the author himself accepts that the Apocalypse of Peter is to be accepted. Would you go along with that, or do you think that the Muratorian Canon is mistaken?

FunkyRes writes:

With respect to computer programs, as a programmer I can testify they are only as good as the code behind them- so such a program would itself need to be tested against KNOWN single authorship and KNOWN different authors, with a success/failure rate.

Did the program include quoted passages from the LXX in it's analysis of the writers style?

Things like that need to be known before the program can be trusted.

Hey, what do you know? I am a computer programmer too. Cool.

For programmers, it goes without saying that a dumb program will make a perfect computer spit out dumb results, but it is worth mentioning for our non-programmer friends.

If I had to guess, I would think that the guys would have treated quotes differently. But I am not going to go out on a limb for a guess. I don't remember all the details, so I would have to go back to the university library to find all the details. I do not expect you to take anything on faith, so you may wait until you read the book yourself before you pass judgment.

FunkyRes writes:

The arguement for Pauline authorship that I received in my Later Pauline Epistles course (Houghton College in Houghton, NY- a Weslyan Methodist school) was that tradition had them written by Paul and at a later time than the Early epistles, and that the change in style and new phrases was not sufficient enough to demand a different author, but rather, would be considered within the realm of normal progression of style.

It is too bad that your school sheltered you from opposing opinions such that you did not seem aware of the names of the majority of critical scholars who think that the pastorals are pseudonymous. You could have found out both several names and several reasons for inauthenticity by consulting a piece of mainstream academic introduction to the New Testament such as that by Udo Schnelle or Raymond Brown (or, at the time of your schooling, that of Kummel or Perrin).

FunkyRes writes:

As such, since the early church tradition was there, the burden of proof for a seperate author rested on the skeptic.

But the earliest church tradition concerning the pastoral epistles comes from the Irenaeus of Lyons around 180 (or the Muratorian Canon, if it were earlier). The passage of over a hundred years is a pretty long expanse of time, so long that the "early" church tradition cannot be considered convincing evidence to critical historians. Skepticism is certainly reasonable when the traditions are so late.

Also, the early Christian tradition is controverted by other early Christian tradition that excludes the pastorals from the collection of Paul's epistles. The Chester Beatty Papyri (P46), which is usually dated around 200, does not include the pastoral epistles although it does include the other epistles of Paul found in today's Bible. Marcion's Apostolikon has ten epistles of Paul and does not include the pastoral epistles. We can call Marcion a 'heretic', but that doesn't change the fact that the tradition of including the pastorals among the authentic Paulines is not uniform. So what is perhaps the strongest point in favor of authenticity - early Christian tradition - is actually ambiguous and contradictory within itself. We should be skeptical of the authenticity of the pastoral epistles before we even examine the internal evidence.

best,
Peter Kirby