There are a huge number of books regarding Paul and the list appears to be ever increasing. I feel we still need to be reminded that our sources consist of P46, Marcion and various quotations by church fathers beginning in the late first century. In my opinion Acts can only be moderately trusted as can Jerome. It is so easy to overlook these stumbling blocks and accept Paul’s letters as they appear in our modern New Testaments.
I think the undisputed letters count as sources, and I think they are the most informative sources we have about Paul. There are, of course, big caveats: Some of them seem to be mangled, we only have one side of the correspondence, Paul is not a disinterested witness to his own life.
And I think there are some other early sources. For example, Clement mentions Paul, saying he went to Rome and even Spain. Still it isn’t clear how much trust we can put in these assertions (did Clement actually know Paul’s itinerary after the letters left off, or did he guess based on what Paul put in his letters? Being bishop of Rome, he may have had an incentive to place Paul in Rome, even if Paul didn’t make it there.)
One point is the Pauline forgeries. One doesn’t forge letters from someone not recognized as worth imitating. It is a testimony to Paul’s importance that somebody made up tales about him in Acts and someone forged letters in his name trading off his authority in the church. Strange if Paul wasn’t already a recognized authority.
That’s a good point Stephen. I certainly believe Paul was an important force in the early church. I feel frustrated that so many Christians, including some Evangelical friends of mine, read Paul’s letters in The King James Bible or some other translation, neatly versed and numbered, and believe these are the original words of Paul or in some letters his forgers. The true story is we have no idea what the original autographs of Paul were. All our complete copies of Paul’s letters come from several centuries after Paul. Much of our knowledge of the life and writings of Paul is pure conjecture derived from these late copies and from other sources quoting Paul.
Once upon a time, beyond the mountains and forests, there lived Paul. He lived a full life, traveled extensively, preached the good news in person and by letter. And then he died. All the recipients of his message died too. The world forgot about them all. Then, after 40 years, someone prepared a book that turned out to be extremely useful and everyone remembered Paul and his message. The true resurrection of forgotten Christianity or a made-up tradition. Up to You.
The world forgot about them all.
Well whoever collected and preserved Paul’s original letters didn’t forget. Whoever considered Paul enough of an authority to forge letters in his name didn’t forget. Whether Acts was written in the 80s or the 120s Paul was enough of a hero in the movement to warrant his own book.
We must use the same standards for Paul we use on every other ancient writing. If we’re lucky we have writings both by and about an ancient figure. Such is Paul.
Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and the ghostwriters responsible for the epistles 2 Peter and James had access to a collection of works by 3 or 4 authors 40-50 years after the supposedly original Pauline letters were written.
Such a dynamic Christianity known from Pauline letters, full of conflicts, rivalries and lofty raptures suddenly froze for 40 years. In its entirety. Then the Pauline Corpus appeared and all the evangelists, church fathers, disciples wrote on such a scale as if they wanted to make up for the time of stagnation. And they more than made up for it.
Ghostwriting is a standard for NT texts and others. And false authorial attribution.
The Gospels are a fictional biography of Jesus.
P. Corpus is a fictional story of a church from the 1st century.
Acts is a synchronization of both.
The beginning was given by a brilliant idea of Josephus, which he himself did not know how to use or did not intend to use.
Something like the Winklevoss brothers’ social algorithms that were supposed to be used in some small campus service. Someone else figured them out…
I’m currently reading a book about scientific discoveries in the 19th century. Many of them were made by unknown people who could not, did not want, and did not see the point in announcing them publicly. PR is important
Paul is the legitimate inventer and patent holder of the theological phrase “under the law”. I’m not aware of any Pharisee sources before Paul that used that phrase.
Whatever you are “under” is that which will save you from death. According to Paul, the Law of Moses cannot save anyone since all have sinned, hence they are not “under the law” anymore because of that and are now under and a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ and through whom grace be.
I think the apostle Paul was trying the theologically and politically trap people into declaring that Christ is God somehow. There’s three understandings of what the messiah is going around. Is the messiah God, or is the messiah a human being, or both. If they have presuppositions that the messiah is God then Paul explains to them why that Jesus is the messiah. If they think the messiah is a human being, then Paul explains it to them the same way that Jesus is the messiah but he was something more than a human being. If they aren’t sure then Paul explains it to them that the Church is the body of the messiah. Either way, Paul will eventually trap them into that the messiah is God. If they don’t accept that they aren’t welcome in the Church to be discussing the messiah and resurrection of the dead, and the basics that sin is the cause of death and Christ is the cause of life. You’re philosophically trapped trying to explain how it is that you’re alive still in the first place without Christ as the reason why. Sin causes death and all have sinned, so why is anybody still alive? They’re not really, they’re dead to sin unless they are in Christ who is the Church. Paul’s church.
Paul can be outwitted. It is not sin that causes death. No, death is the will of God. God forbids mankind to have eternal life. Adam and Eve got removed from the Garden of Eden because of that. Therefore we live and die according to the will of God. Even if ye never sin, thou will die one day.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)