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Paul and His Letters

Several Letters in One? What about Second Corinthians?

In recent posts I've been talking about 1 Corinthians and its understanding of the Christian community in the important city of Corinth. We know about the community because of Paul's letters written to it. In the New Testament of course, we have 1 and 2 Corinthians. (OUTSIDE the New Testament we have 3 Corinthians! It also claims to be written by Paul, but is a forgery; I'll talk about it in a later blog post). They are both pretty long letters, and give us a lot of information. That's especially true for a reason most Bible readers don't know, and would have no way of knowing. Scholars have long argued that 2 Corinthians is not just a single letter. Almost all critical scholars think it is two letters that have been cut and pasted together; and some scholars (including me) think it is actually five letters combined -- all written at different times for different occasions. That may really matter, because it means we can trace a bit of the *history* of the community's relationship with [...]

BDEhrman2021-05-11T20:27:09-04:00May 26th, 2021|Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s (Misunderstood) Message to His Corinthian Converts

I have been discussing how Paul established the church in Corinth; this is important information for anyone interested in knowing what kinds of problems arose in the church -- some of them rather amazing, for a group Paul calls "the saints"! Here is how I discuss Paul's message in my textbook on the New Testament: ****************************** During their stay in Corinth, Paul and his companions appear to have converted a sizable number (dozens?) of pagans to the faith. The book of Acts indicates that they spent a year and a half there. Paul himself makes no clear statement concerning the length of his stay, but there are indications throughout his letter that the Christians in Corinth, or at least some of them, had an unusually sophisticated understanding of the faith. Indeed, some of the Corinthians had so much knowledge of their faith that they took Paul’s gospel simply as a starting point and developed their views in vastly different directions. What can we say about the message that Paul originally preached to these people? [...]

BDEhrman2021-05-11T18:51:51-04:00May 22nd, 2021|Paul and His Letters|

How Paul Started the Church in Corinth

I have begun to talk about Paul’s church in Corinth and the correspondence he had with it. For a bit more background I want to explain how he actually started it. Corinth was apparently a city he had not visited before, yet he went there and managed to convert a large group of people to his Christian message. How did that happen? Here is how I explain what we know in my textbook The New Testament (Oxford University Press). ************************ After leaving Thessalonica, Paul and his companions, Timothy and Silvanus, arrived in Corinth and began, again, to preach the gospel in an effort to win converts (2 Cor 1:19). Possibly they proceeded as they had in the capital of Macedonia, coming into town, renting out a shop in an insula, setting up a business, and using the workplace as a forum to speak to those who stopped by. In this instance, the book of Acts provides some corroborating evidence. Luke indicates that Paul did, in fact, work in a kind of leather goods shop in [...]

BDEhrman2021-05-11T18:46:23-04:00May 20th, 2021|Paul and His Letters|

Paul and that Peculiar Church in Corinth

To explain why the Holy Spirit was so central to the earliest Christian communities we know about, we have to explore what we can know about earliest churches. The ones we know best about are those associated with Paul, since Paul is our earliest Christian author, and in his letters he refers to church activities. Nowhere is that more true than in the two-letter correspondence with the Corinthians. 1 and 2 Corinthians gives us a lot to go on when we want to know what this particular Christian community was like – that is, how it did as a distinct and coherent religious group in the midst of its wider society, what activities it engaged in as a group, how it was organized, how it worshiped, and so on. We know so much about such issues because the community was riddled with problems. Paul wrote his letters to address the problems, and so by looking carefully at what he wrote, we can understand not only what he thought was going wrong in the church but [...]

BDEhrman2021-05-11T18:22:47-04:00May 19th, 2021|Paul and His Letters|

Why the Spirit Mattered for the Earliest Christians

During the earlier parts of this thread on the Trinity, I kept thinking that by the time I got to the Holy Spirit there wouldn’t be much to say: it’s all about the Father and Son. And even as I started planning this final part on the Spirit, I thought I would do it in a post, maybe two. But now that I’m digging into it, I’m realizing that the one-or-two post thing doesn’t make sense without a lot of background. Now I’ve decided I need to take the long path to get there. Consider it the scenic route. I’ve been talking so far about the Spirit in the Hebrew Bible – from Genesis 1 up through the prophets. The Spirit is far more important for early Christianity, and hence for the New Testament, than for ancient Israelite religion (and hence the Old Testament), but I don’t believe I’ve ever articulated the reasons fully, either in writing or speaking. For a long time, I’ve thought it works like this, in a nutshell. (This may seem [...]

BDEhrman2021-05-03T11:15:40-04:00May 16th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Was Paul Peter’s Enemy?

In a lecture I gave recently, I was talking about "forgeries" in the name of Peter, Jesus' disciple -- that is, books that *claimed* to be written by Peter but certainly were not. They were written by Christians living later who *said* they were Peter -- possibly in order to get more readers for their books! There is a big question about the canonical books of 1 and 2 Peter. The vast majority of critical scholars (i.e. those who make their historical judgments apart from questions of what they would personally like to believe about the Bible religiously) agree that 2 Peter was not written by Peter; whoever wrote it, it certainly was not the author of 1 Peter. A lot of scholars, including me, somewhat forcefully, also argue that Peter could not have written 1 Peter either. But that's a topic for other posts (which I've made in the past). In my lecture I mentioned three others, that no one disagrees about: the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Letter of [...]

BDEhrman2021-04-29T10:11:39-04:00May 4th, 2021|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters|

Two Live Lectures This Sunday, On Hot Topics

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BDEhrman2021-04-07T20:55:06-04:00April 7th, 2021|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

The Importance of What Is Lost: Paul’s Letters

In a previous post I began to answer the question of which lost books of early Christianity I would most like to have discovered, and I started my answer with the earliest writings of which we are familiar, the letters of Paul, most of which (presumably) have been lost. I would love for us to find some of them. I doubt if we ever will, but who knows? Maybe someone will announce that one is to be published later this year! Seriously, we would all love to have more letters from Paul, and not merely for sentimental reasons (Oh, wouldn’t that be *nice*?). Paul is without a doubt the most important figure in the Christian tradition next to Jesus himself. His writings have served as a basis for Christian ethical and theological thought for centuries. And yet we know so little about what he thought and taught. When people read Paul’s letters, they frequently neglect to realize that these are all “occasional” writings. By that I do not mean that Paul occasionally wrote letters, but [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-24T17:41:48-04:00April 7th, 2021|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Live Lectures This Sunday, March 28! Teachings of Paul That Are Widely Unknown.

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BDEhrman2021-03-23T18:31:59-04:00March 23rd, 2021|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Lost Christian Writings I’d Love to Get My Hands On!

I thought it might be fun to intersperse some posts from years ago to break up here and there the thread on the Trinity, for those who have, well, lots of other interests too! So here's a good option. I did a short thread before the vast majority of you were on the blog (and maybe before you were born. :-) ) based on a question: among all the ancient Christian writings that have been lost, which ones would I especially love to get my grubby paws on? Here's the original question and my first response to it. QUESTION: What lost early Christian books would you most like to have discovered? RESPONSE: Ah, this is a tough one. There are lots of Christian writing that I would love to have discovered – all of the ones that have been lost, for example! But suppose I had to name some in particular. Well, this will take several posts. To begin with, I wish we had the other letters of Paul. Let me explain. In [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-09T18:44:45-05:00March 21st, 2021|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

But Maybe Paul Doesn’t Believe in the Incarnation….

There is a whole lot more that could be said about the Christ-poem in Philippians 2. You could literally write an entire book on just this passage. In fact, people *have* written books on just this passage. The most important one, a classic in the field, is by Ralph Martin, A Hymn of Christ (which in earlier editions was called Carmen Christi) (which is a Latin phrase that, unsurprisingly, means A Hymn of Christ :-) ). This passage has had more ink spilled over it by scholars over the last century than almost any other in the entire Bible (with the exception of John 1:1-18). In any event, to make sense of what I want to say here, it would help, if you haven’t done so, to read the other posts I’ve made on it. Here I just want to mention briefly an interpretation that is sometimes floated for the passage which takes it in a very different way indeed, as not being about incarnation at all. In this alternative interpretation, the passage is not [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-16T08:56:33-05:00February 16th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

More Comments on Paul’s Rather Astounding Christ Poem

My last couple of posts have been on the "Christ Poem" found in Philippians 2:6-10. Many years ago when I talked about the poem and argued that it was in fact a poem, a reader (who apparently knew Greek!) objected that the poetic lines I suggested don't actually work. I answered that question before moving on to showing just how amazing the poem is: it ends by giving the resurrected Jesus the authority of God Almighty himself. That may not seem surprising to Christians who already think it's true. But just imagine how it would resonate with someone living in the first century who knew that Jesus was publicly executed for crimes against the state. It might help if you imagine how you would feel if someone made a claim like this for someone who was condemned as an enemy of the of the state for insurrection against the United States who suffered the death penalty -- and someone claimed he had become God, the Lord of the universe. Uh, really? Yup, that's what Paul's [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-04T19:10:58-05:00February 10th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

One of the Most Important Passages of the NT: Paul’s Christ Poem

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BDEhrman2021-02-04T19:11:14-05:00February 9th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

An Alternative Christology: God Became Human

In my posts on Christology so far I have argued that different Christians in the early decades of the Christian movement maintained that Jesus had been exalted to a divine status at some point of his existence – at his resurrection, at his baptism, at his birth. I have called this a christology from below, or an “exaltation” christology; it is sometimes called a low christology because it understands Jesus to have started out as a human (down here with us) and to have been raised to a divine status. In this view he was not God from eternity past or a pre-existent being. He was a human being who was taken up to the level of divinity at some point (or, in the case of the Virgin Birth, that he came into existence at a point in time as a person who was partially human partially divine). But there was another kind of Christology which was also very early – earlier, in fact, than our earliest surviving Christian writer, Paul. This is the view [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-04T19:11:56-05:00February 7th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

The Earliest Belief in Christ??

In my past couple of posts I have claimed that the earliest understanding of Christ was a kind of "low" Christology, one that considered Jesus to be a full flesh and blood human being (as he considered himself!), and nothing more than a man, until at some point God exalted him and made him his son, the ruler of all, the messiah, the Lord. But "claiming" something is not the same as showing it. I realize a lot of people today don't really care about "evidence" or "proof," but are happy simply to believe what someone tells them, so long as it's someone they like for one reason or another. But I have to admit, I'm an evidence guy. I want to have *reasons* for what I think, and not simply agree with someone because they are saying what I want to hear. What then is the *reason* that I share the widely held view I've so far only "claimed"? In my previous post I talked about how scholars have isolated some of these pre-literary [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-18T10:00:49-05:00January 30th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

One of the Most Significant Passages in the NT: Paul’s Christ Poem

In my previous post I began to speak about the “incarnation” Christology found famously in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, 2:6-11. There are a lot of other things I want to say about this passage, all of them relevant to the issues I’ve been discussing. The first and most important thing is that it has been widely recognized by scholars for a very long time that this passage is something that Paul appears to be quoting, that it is not simply part of the prose letter. Moreover, it is frequently called (probably wrongly) a “hymn” (that’s probably wrong because – as I’ve been told by an expert in the field of ancient music, it doesn’t actually scan as music). But in any event, it is highly structured in a balanced fashion and thus seems to be more like a poem than like prose. The reasons for thinking that Paul is quoting rather than composing it are pretty compelling, and I will get to them eventually. For now I want to point out the rhythmic structure. [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-28T10:30:58-05:00January 9th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Paul Dictated His Letters: How Does That Complicate Finding an Original?

I have been talking about the problems in knowing what the “original” text of Philippians is. Even with the following brief review, the comments I will be making in this post will, frankly, probably not make much sense if you do not refresh your memory from my previous two posts. Here I will be picking up where I left off there. We have seen that knowing what the original of Philippians is is complicated by the facts that: 1) The letter appears originally to have been two letters, so that it’s hard to know whether the original of each separate letter is to be the original or if the final edited version which Paul himself did not produce is the original; 2) Paul dictated his letters, and the scribe who wrote down his dictation would typically have made a fresh copy of the letter after Paul had made a few corrections – so which is the original: what the scribe originally wrote or the fresh copy he made after the corrections? 3) And if Paul [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-23T10:08:58-05:00December 3rd, 2020|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters|

Why Finding an “Original” Text is So Unexpectedly Complicated

I have been asked to comment on whether we can get back to the “original” text of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and I have begun to discuss the problems not just of getting *back* to the original, but also of knowing even what the original *was*. In my previous post I pointed out the problems posed by the fact that Philippians appears to be two letters later spliced together into one. And so the first problem is this: is the “original” copy the spliced together copy that Paul himself did not create? Or is the “original” the product that Paul himself produced – the two letters that are not transmitted to us in manuscript form any longer, to which, therefore, we have no access (except through the version edited by someone else)? But there are more problems. Here I’ll detail them, in sequence as they occur to me. In what I am going to be saying now, I will simplify things by assuming that – contrary to what I’ve been arguing – Philippians is [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-23T10:13:20-05:00December 2nd, 2020|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters|

What Does It Even Mean to Have an “Original” of An Ancient Writing?

I have begun to answer a series of questions asked by a reader about the textual history of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. In my previous post I explained why some critical scholars maintain that the letter was originally two separate letters that have been spliced together. That obviously makes the next question the reader asked a bit more complicated than one might otherwise imagine. And it’s not the only complication. Here is the reader’s next question: QUESTION: Do you agree that the first copy of the letter written by Paul to the Philippians was also an original? RESPONSE: First off, my initial reaction that I gave a couple of posts ago still holds. I’m not exactly sure what the reader is asking. If he’s asking whether a copy of the original letter to Philippians is itself an original of Philippians, then the answer is no. It is not the original. It is a copy of the original. Big difference. But what if this copy was exactly like the original in every single respect – [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-23T10:20:35-05:00December 1st, 2020|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters|

Could Paul’s Letter to the Philippians be TWO Letters?

In my previous post I answered, in short order, a series of questions that a reader had about the “original” text of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. I will now take several posts in order to address some of the questions at greater length. Here was the first one: QUESTION: Would you agree that the letter written to the Philippians was an original writing of Paul? The short answer is Yes – it is one of the undisputed Pauline letters. The longer answer is, well, complicated. Scholars have long adduced reasons for thinking that this letter of Paul was originally *two* letters (or parts of two letters) that were later spliced together into the one letter we have today. I explain the reasons for thinking so in my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Here is what I say there. (If you want to follow the argument particularly well, I’d recommend reading the short letter of Philippians, and then reading what follows by looking up the passages referred [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-23T10:40:36-05:00November 29th, 2020|Paul and His Letters|

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