Loading...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 that Paul wrote his letters for particular occasions. The letters are addressed to situations that have arisen in his churches that need to be addressed, problems of belief and practice. When a church was having problems in one area (whether they knew it was a problem or not) Paul dealt with it in a letter – since he couldn’t be there to deal with it in person.
With the partial exception of Romans, that’s what Paul’s letters are: attempts to deal with problems as they have occurred. But what that means is that these letters are NOT systematic expressions of Paul’s thought, where he picks a topic and explains what he really, and fully, thinks about it. You will look in vain in these letters for a detailed and systematic exposition of Paul’s doctrines of God, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit and so on; or Paul’s teachings on important ethical issues. Whatever the problem is at hand, he deals with, often rather succinctly.
It is a huge mistake when readers – including scholars who should know better – try to
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Hi professor,
Totally unrelated to this post, but in your new book you are writing about Revelation, will you be touching on the subject that pshycoactive compounds are frequently mentioned in the bible and were possibly used to induce people into certain mental states which causes them to have visions? Which may have been the reason behind grand visions including the Ezekiel vision and the vision mentioned in the book of Revelation?
I think this is a subject that has been far to overlooked and would love to hear your opinions and theories as to wether or not you consider this a possibility.
This video goes into more detail here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgn_ddrdHKI
And this article proves in fact pshycoactive compounds were indeed used, via a recent discovery from archeologists.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cannabis-found-altar-ancient-israeli-shrine-180975016/
Anyways, great post professor, as usual, keep up the fine work!
I myself don’t think psychedelics of any kind had any impact on the author of the Bible. But it certainly can get media attention!
Psychedelics were used in ancient religions; not sure why the Judeo-Christian tradition would be an exception. Brian Muraresku makes an interesting case for it in his book.
I think John Allegro, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, wrote a book about the use of psychoactive drugs (principally magic mushrooms) by Jesus early followers. In fact, Allegro had become a Mythicist at that point and the book finished his career. Furthermore, some researchers believe the Pythia at Delphi, responsible for channelling the pronouncements of Apollo, were under the influence of narcotic fumes emanating from fissures in the cave where she sat.
Vastly more psychoactive stuff has been ingested by people who actually * can write * in more recent times, yet few have written influential game-changing tracts ‘under the influence’; so on the basis that humans are humans (people often try to say Ah, but they were different back then, but I think ‘not so much’ except that few could write), it seems this might be more a case of LOOKING for a desired answer; which might not hold;
Same with ancient cave drawings: ‘Ah, they were probably high’ – why? I mean, I have nothing against a bit too much wine, or a puff of weed, or – your choice – but do people then do or say or write profound things? I don’t think so – not usually.
Timothy Leary tried really hard to get people to believe we needed psychedelic drugs to be our best but it seems to me his thoughts high or sober were all simply his thoughts high or sober! Anyway, I think he had a lot of fun along the way.
You mention the possibility that maybe some of Paul’s lost letters had content that contradicted what he had said in other letters. I think this is completely plausible given that he wrote occasional letters. I think about this point when looking at 2 Thessalonians. It is a disputed letter, but not on the grounds of the other disputed letters. It is that Paul says something different about Jesus’ second coming from what he says in the first letter. What are your thoughts on whether 2 Thessalonians could have actually been written by Paul?
It could have been, but I think it’s highly unlikely, for just the reason you cite. I give a long and detailed explanation and argument in my book Forgery and Counterforgery; a shorter but covering the basics in my book Forged. — incase you’re intereseted
Paul’s letters are a one sided conversation. Limited in scope. Limited to, as you rightly point out, the situations Paul feels important to address in his time. His letters are time sensitive; women, slaves, customs of dress, congregational rules on widows, homosexuality etc. are not applicable for our day. They were what he felt necessary for HIS day.
We do him an injustice to attempt to apply his rules to a day he could not envision, our time, as we cannot TRULY enter his time.
For some church leaders Paul’s rules feel good to them. They mistakenly believe that rule keeping, Paul’s rules, will lead to righteousness. Yes, they teach faith but along with faith is the optical illusion of “purity” that comes from disallowing so called sinners close association.
Could you give us a list of lost Pauline letters for which there is evidence, either in the New Testament itself, Patristic writings or other sources?
IN 1 Corinthians Paul mentions his *earlier* letter to them, so that one is lost. Colossians mentions a letter of the Laodiceans, but it’s not clear if it means to or from them. The Muratorian Fragment mentions a letter to teh Alexandrians. We have a number of letters that do survive that are non-canonical: Laodiceans (not the one I mentioned above; this one was written later); 3 Corinthians; several letters to Seneca (with responses).
IN 1 Corinthians Paul mentions his *earlier* letter to them, so that one is lost. Colossians mentions a letter of the Laodiceans, but it’s not clear if it means to or from them. The Muratorian Fragment mentions a letter to teh Alexandrians. We have a number of letters that do survive that are non-canonical: Laodiceans (not the one I mentioned above; this one was written later); 3 Corinthians; several letters to Seneca (with responses).
Are you then proposing, Bart, that the ‘epistle to the Alexandrians’ and the ‘epistle to the Laodiceans’, both noted in the Muratorian fragment as ‘forged in favour of Marcion’s heresy’, might in fact have been genuine letters of Paul? If true, that would be intriguing; but do you have any grounds for thinking so?
Clearly, the collection of 13 ‘Pauline’ letters that would become canonical’ includes several whose ascription to Paul is commonly questioned (indeed by yourself); but do we have any substantial evidence for genuine letters of Paul with a wider circulation in the century after his death other than within this collection?
No, I don’t think they were written by Paul, but of course we don’t know. I don’t think six of the canonical ones were either. The only hard evidence we have of Paul’s other authentic letters are the ones he mentions or alludes to in the correspondence to the Corinthians and Philippians. But for me, at least, it defies belief that in a thirty year ministry these are the seven letters he wrote. He appears to ahve corresponded frequently with these two congregations.
Indeed Bart; there must have been more letters from Paul.
Pau’s letters may have been shared by recipients with other churches; but then to be copied/preserved, they would need to be considered of continuing value – beyond the topical context for which they were written. These, presumably, are the ones that survived; albeit that what most interests us of Paul’s thought is not neccessarily what these early communities would have considered of continuing value.
Looking at all surviving christian manuscripts of possible 2nd century date (28 of them), Orsini and Clarysse have noted that they split into: 11 Old Testament, 7 canonical New Testament, 4 Hermas, 3 homilies, and 3 apocryphal gospels.
The canonical New Testament manuscripts witness Matthew (3 times) John and Luke (both twice), the Diatessaron, and I and II Thessalonians (P30). It is notable that Hermas is observed more than Paul in these earlier manuscripts. Extending their study up to the begining of the 4th century, they find a further five manuscripts of Paul; John a further eleven times, Matthew and Luke both four times, and Mark once.
Suggesting that interest in Paul may have take off in the 3rd century
I think you hvae to look not jsut at mss but also use and influence of Paul on other authors. You might want to check out Benjamin White’s book on it, which shows that the idea Paul was avoided as (in TErtullian’s word) the “Apostle of the heretics” until Irenaeus is just not right.
Well, as you are discussing lost writings we would like to have, Bart; one, certainly might be Justin’s treatise ‘Against Marcion’. Justin must, surely, have set out his assessment there of Marcion’s use of Paul’s letters.?
But lacking that, I fully agree that Paul does not appear to have been ‘avoided’ in the second century; but I do think that interest in Paul’s letters changed. For Clement, Paul is pre-eminently an ethical guide to Christian living in the context of a predominantly pagan culture, and in expectation of the coming parousia. But the interest in Paul that develops from the early third century onwards is more focussed on salvation through being united in Christ; and hence brings issues of Christology to the fore.
But looking at the early Church through tallying its material artefacts and manuscripts – rather than in allusions in early writers – might suggest that we could be underestimating the importance of Hermas? In your fascinating series of posts here, you have progressed from the Christologies of the New Testament writers, to that of Marcion, then to those of his critics. Does Hermas fit into this schema; and if so, where?
Oh yes, I would love to get my hands on that one! And I’d love to know why Justin never quotes Paul since surely he knows his writings.
As to Hermas: yes, it was very popular for a while, much more, so far as we can tell, than books that later got included. Early in his career even Athanasius used it as scripture; later, of course, he advised it was simply “good for reading.” Others have disputed that. 🙂 (Many years ago I was at an SBL meeting and someone was reading a paper on the Shepherd. He started out by saying he wanted to propose a theory no one had had before bout why it didn’t make it into the canon. I leaned over to the guy next to me and whispered, “It’s too damn long!” It turns out, that was precisely the guys theory. My view is: it wasn’t hard to figure *that* one out. Just read, well, Parable 9….. Ai yai yai
But one of the remarkable things about Hermas, of course, is the rather brief and bizarre discussion of christology…
I have assumed that Justin doesn’t quote Paul, as he is restricting his Christian citations (in these surviving works) to those texts that are openly read in ‘public’ worship – the Gospels and Prophets. Which seems to be what he says at one point.
On Hermas; the puzzle for me is, given what we think we understand about the ‘orthodox’ Christologies of the 4th and 5th centuries, and given what appears to be Christological statements in Hermas, then how did the othodox read the Hermas without categorising it as heretical? Are we misreading the ‘orthodox’; or are we misreading Hermas; or were the ‘orthodox’ misreading Hermas?
Maybe an explanation could be that Hermas doesn’t really offer a Christology at all; in that he presents believers as having access to salvation through the Name of a Son of God/Redeemer figure. But that redeemer has no recognisable ‘Christ’ characteristics; either as Jesus of Nazareth, or as the Messiah of Israel. Instead, on one understanding of Parable 5, the believer is exalted to salvation through cohabiting with the Holy Spirit; not through being united with the death and resurrection of a Christ (neither historical event being mentioned).
Yeah, I don’t know about the weird christology; I suppose that’s why they said it was OK for reading but not for use in church? They liked the urgency of the message but not some of the bizarre comments? On the other hand, it’s so incredibly long, maybe the skipped that part…
I’ve read recently about someone named Hegisippus (if I’ve spelled it right) who is quoted by Eusebius but all we have are those quotes, the original writing being lost. It might be nice to have that. And I’ve read that missing parts of Josephus and Tacitus might have thrown more light on the character of Pilate, which would more likely than not totally refute the later gospel depictions of Pilate– it would be nice to have that as well. There are just too many pieces of the puzzle missing!
Hi Bart. I was raised Catholic but no longer identify as Catholic. A large part of the reason I left is because of my strong perception that the Catholic church, while claiming to be faithful to the “teachings” of Jesus, is in reality more faithful to its own manufactured tradition, or its “deposit of faith”. That tradition and the doctrines that have grown out of it seems so at odds with much of what the gospels actually relate about Jesus’ life and teachings. The Eucharist being a case in point. Any honest, even cursory reading of the stories of Jesus shows that he favored eating and celebrating with the “sinner”, over the pious. Indeed, much of his life was marked by a rejection of the purity standards of the day in favor of true communion with the everyday Joe, so to speak. Yet, the Catholic tradition, strongly stated by St. John Crysostom, brings the teaching back 180 degrees to high levels of demand for purity. Can you comment on my perception and share your thoughts on this subject? Thanks.
Yes, the CAtholic church since time immemorial has insisted that the faith develops over time and that the tradition after the New Testament is as important in many ways as the earliest tradition. This was one of the major disputes that led to the break off of the Protestants. Many Protestants want to get back to the “original” form of Christianity, but in fact none of them can, in part because already at the beginning there were lots of interpretations of almost everything; also we simply don’t have good sources for what most of the earliest Christians thought. But yes, a great deal of the Catholic tradition is different from what one would have found early on.
Catholics believe that the early Church who gave and formed the canon of the New Testament were Catholics would you agree or disagree, Professor?
There was no such thing at the Catholic CHurch in the modern sense in antiquity. So it depends what they mean. “CAtholic” must means “universal”– so people could call themselves catholic (“we have the religion that all Xns everywhere have) without being what we think of as Roman Catholic.
But didn’t the Church that formed the current New Testament canon also believed in oral tradition alongside scripture rejecting Sola Scriptura along with believing in the actual presence of Jesus in the Eucharist?
In other words wasn’t the Church in antiquity that gave us the New Testament canon closer in belief to those we now call Roman Catholics as compared to those we today call Protestants? Would the early church theologically side with Roman Catholics today or Protestants?
They would not have put it that way, I believe. When you read their theological tractates, for “authority” they cite the Scriptures, and when they appeal to tradition it is in support of their way of reading Scripture.
It is rumored that Paul’s lost “Letter to the Epicureans” contained terrific recipes.
If he originally told them that Christ would return before “their death”, and some of them did, in fact, die, wouldn’t he be *encouraged* to provide a reason for this contradiction? The “Lord’s Super” defense…?
I’m not sure what the Lord’s Supper defense is, but yes, it was a constant concern of early Christains, to explain it all.
I don’t want to put words in Nichrob’s mouth, but I’m guessing the “Lord’s Supper Defense” boils down to “If only you had observed the Lord’s Supper properly, none of you would have died before Christ’s return.”
If you were to summarize Paul’s most consistent message throughout the seven letters into one sentence, what would it be?
Christ alone provides salvation.
I’ve always been curious about the probable size of the Corinthian congregation. Paul makes them sound like a rowdy bunch of folks. Would you care to guesstimate how large this group would have had to be to accommodate all the reported confusion and infighting?
thanks
I’ve often wondered too. It would have to be dozens, but almost certainly could not be hundreds.
Dr. Ehrmam,
I know you have written at length about scribes sometimes changing and adding words to the gospel works. Did the same thing happen to the letters of Paul? Are there variations between the surviving texts?
Yup ,all over the map. I deal with some of them in my book Misquoting Jesus.
Why don’t the early Church Fathers mention other letters written by Paul? Or were any other letters written by Paul long lost by the end of the first century?
We don’t have extensive references to Paul at all until the end of the second century (Irenaeus) (Justin, for example, from whom we have three treatises, two of them long, doesn’t mention Paul); by then most of the letters were lost, destroyed, or simply stuck in someone’s attic.
I have come across scholars (eg Luke Timothy Johnson) who argue that all of the Pauline letters were written by Paul or at least preserve some subtantial passages written by Paul. Are there any reasonable grounds for thinking that, Dr Ehrman?
He’s a fine scholar and he makes the best case imaginable. I deal with his arguments in specific cases in my book Forgery and Counterforgery to show why I don’t think they are at all convincing in the end.
Thank you Bart; these are interesting speculations.
But to move for a monent from speculation on what may be lost of Paul’s letters, to how far what survives may represent a unified tradition; would I be justified in proposing that – with the exception of the final chapter of Romans – the content of Paul’s undisputed letters varies little in the surviving manuscript witnesses? Few would dispute that some lettters are composites from separate originals – and much we would have dearly liked to have may have been lost in the editing process; but can I assume that what we read now represents together a ‘letter collection’ that existed very much in this form from at least the mid second century?
Which is not so much the case with the Gospels; where there are some extensive ‘disputed’ variants of early date; sometimes involving tricky theological issues (where Romans 16 presents essentially personal greetings) .
Obviously, Paul did not write his letters in the expectation that they might become ‘scripture’; but that does seem to have happened to them willy nilly within around 100 years. At which time, the collection seems to be substantially fixed.
AT first I thought I knew what you were asking and then … I wasn’t sure. At first I thought you were asking whether our current group of thirteen letters were already collected as a group by the mid-second century or slightly before. I would say, no. The first solid evidence would be the Muratorian Fragment and Irenaesu, both in the 180s. Justin of Rome shows no knowledge of Paul’s letters. And our earliest mss do not have them all. And of course there were various churches that accepted *other* Pauline letters that didn’t get in (Laodiceans; Alexandrians — no longer extant; 3 Corinthians; etc.)
But are you asking if the scribes stopped changing the text of Paul’s writings in places by the mid-second century? Absolutely (and demonstrably) not.
I agree, Bart, that the full thirteen took time to become established; but it would not preclude Paul’s letters being a recognised as a ‘collection’, even though the exact composition of that collection remained in debate. And co-incidentally perhaps, the letters that would now be considered ‘undisputed’ appear all to have been within whatever contents may have been proposed by this, or that, church. The Muratorian Fragment provides these seven in a fixed sequence (ordine)- which certainly implies an established collection; albeit that this order is not that of the earliest manuscript collections.
Your argument from the surviving works of Justin is an argument from silence; and consequently has little force.
It seems commonly accepted that the surviving letter to the Laodiceans is unlikely to be the one mentioned in the fragment; but that in turn implies that the fragmentist’s letter must have been obviously spurious; had a genuine letter still circulated, the later ‘composite’ Laodiceans would scarcely have been composed.
Alexandrians is a puzzle; the fragmentist rejects it, though that is scarcely a definitive verdict. But if genuine, and surviving into the late 2nd century, should there not be more traces?
Have you read Harry Gamble (and the bibliography he deals with) on the letter collection(s) of Paul. It would be up your alley (Books and REaders in the Early Church); his teacher Nils Dahl wrote a seminal article. I do think there were collections, at least a couple widespread. I just don’t think our thirteen was some kind of original one. On Alexandrians: yup, I agree: surely if it were authentic there’d be some other evidence.
Thanks for the Gamble reference, Bart; you are right, it is very much what I was looking for. His speculation that a ‘letters to seven churches’ collection of Paul might go back to the first century was new to me; but I found it convincing. Which would also imply that the formation of a recognised collection of Paul’s letters would have preceded their being read in the liturgy by a century. Certainly P30 (if that is the earliest surviving fragment of Paul) is ‘collection evident’ in Michael Dormandy’s categorisation; consistent with a collection of nine (or ten) of Paul’s letters to the end of 2 Thessalonians; and around 212 pages long.
Which prompts the question of when the practice of reading from the Apostolos started? Justin witnesses liturgical readings from the Gospels (or ‘memoirs’) and from the Prophets; but not from the epistles. The Muratorian fragment talks of readings from ‘prophetas’ and ‘apostolos’; it is not explicit that Paul’s letters are included in the latter category, but I think that can be inferred. But does the fragment indeed date to the late 2nd century? And if so, is it the earliest such reference?
My view is that the Muratorian fragment is definitely second century, from around the time of Irenaeus. I think one of the big problems is that we have difficulty not thining in linear terms, that first the Christians did this then they started to do that and after ward they did this other thing — when in reality different communities did different things at different times. The fact that 2 Pet. 3:16 knows several of Paul’s letters and considers them Scripture would, it seems to me, suggest that in the author’s community they were already read in worship services, a good half century before the Muratorian Fragment.
Thank you Bart; very helpful.
I am interested that you may still to regard ‘citations as scripture’ on its own as an indication that a church or writer considered that author as ‘canonical’ for the purpose of reading in congregational worship. Gallagher and Meade, I think, propose great caution in applying this approach; as where we do have a defined ‘canon list’ from a writer, this commonly is much more restrictive than might be inferred from the range of their citations. Josephus being the obvious case in point.
And indeed the Muratorian fragment – which may or may not be a ‘canon list’ properly speaking; nevertheless does appear to distinguish a number of works that are not read in church; but are still read in other contexts (and presumably cited), for their moral and spiritual value.
My view is that “canon” refers to the books that are considered (by a person or community) “Scripture.” These books tend to be used in ways different from books not Scripture. If a book is used in that way (as established author by author) then it is probably Scripture, which means for that person/community it is in their canon. And yes, ususally proto-orthdox writers insisted that “Scripture” be read in church, not other books that are important or interesting.
Thank your Bart; but to me that prompts the question as to when this binary distinction – ‘Scripture’ and ‘not Scripture’ – developed into the triple distinction that we find in Athanasius in the 4th century?
For Athanasius, there is a limited list of ‘canonised’ books that are the only ones to be read in worship, ‘non-canonised’ books that are to be read to catechumens, but not read in worship, and ‘other books and apocrypha’. Athanasius includes books such as Wisdom, Sirach and Esther in this second, ‘non-canonised’ category; but appears to use the same citation formulae, including ‘as Scripture’, for these, in his writings, as he does for the ‘canonised’ books. So we cannot use Athanasius’s wider citation practice to identify his explicit ‘canon’.
Gallagher and Meade maintain that a counterpart underlying triple distinction can be inferred in other writers of the 4th and 5th centuries from whom explicit canon lists survive; Epiphanius, Rufinus and Amphilocius.
So, did practice change; and when?
I”m not sure there was a “canonical practice,” so to speak, that everyone followed at one time or another. I’d be interested in knowing places where Athanasius quotes books as Scripture that he does not include in his canon. That in itself is a tricky business, because he appears to ahve changed his views over his long career; the 39th Festal letter was written near the end (over four decades after Nicea!); earlier he appears to have considered the Shepherd scripture, but not, obviously, later. But if there are quotations of books as Scripture from the same period that he clearly rules them *outside* of Scripture, that would be interesting (and the sort of thing I should know!). So too with Eusebius: does he ever quote any of his antilegomena as Scripture? I very much doubt it and have never heard that he does, but if he does, that would indeed be worth knowing.
From Gallagher and Meade
Athanasius
– Apologia secunda (357 CE) 3:4; citations from Proverbs 19:5 and Wisdom 1:11; both as “what is written in the Holy Scriptures”.
Apologia secunda 11:2; citation from Tobit 12:7; “as it is written”.
– Second Discourse against the Arians (337 CE) 79; citations from Proverbs 14:16 and from Sirach 1:9-10 as; “found in Scripture”.
Epiphanius
Panarion 76.22.5; the Books of Wisdom and of Sirach are included among “all the Divine Scriptures”; although stated as outside the “number of specified books”
Rufinus
Commentary on the Apostles Creed; identifies a list of ‘ecclesiastical books’; as Wisdom. Sirach, Tobit, Judith, books of Maccabees, Hermas, Two Ways, the Judgement of Peter.
Amphilocus
Iambi ad Seleucam 251; States that not every book “with the venerable name of Scripture is safe’. Some are ‘pseudonymous’; and while, of these, some are ‘intermediate and neighbours to truth’, others are ‘spurious’. But does not name examples.
Gallagher and Meade do not collect any counterpart citations in Eusebius; though they do note that he categorises Revelation both in his ‘recognised’ and ‘disputed’ lists.
They propose that these writers present variations on there being an intermediate category of “books read for instruction’ that are accounted ‘Scripture’, but outside the ‘canon’.
Interesting. So what do they mean by “canon” if not “books that are Scripture”?
Different writers used the term ‘canon list’ in different ways; Gallagher and Meade are anthologising all lists called ‘canon lists’ from antiquity; so they adopt each writers’ criteria for their own lists. They do say it may be unclear how far a writer’s list is proscriptive; and how far descriptive. They further note that from the 4th century, the concern grew to restrict the status of ‘authoritative for ecclesiastical doctrine’ solely to the books of Scripture that were in the authoritative canon.
In simple terms though; the canon is a ‘bounded collection of Scripture’. These ‘bounds’ tend to be numerical; especially in respect of the Old Testament. So it was commonly recognised that the Hebrew Bible contained 22 books; without there being the same agreement as to which books constituted the 22; and which books are to be ‘counted together as one’ to correspond to the fixed number.
But necessarily, the idea that there is a bounded collection within Scripture leaves open the likelihood that there will be some books that will be Scripture, but outside the fixed number. Epiphanius says as much of Wisdom and Sirach.
I might add, if I may Bart, that a counterpart issue appears to be found in microcosm in respect of the Psalter.
Every Greek Psalter that survives included 151 Psalms. But almost all Greek authorities nevertheless stated that the ‘number of the Psalms’ must be 150. So one Psalm – the one that we now refer to as Psalm 151 – is commonly included as ‘outside of the number’; as indeed that we know know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that this Greek Psalm translated a Hebrew text.
So, full title of the Psalter in the Codex Alexandrinus is given as “Psalms 150 and the Autobiographical Psalm 1”.
In the same way perhaps, for Epiphanius, the ‘number of the Scriptures’ in Greek, for both Testaments, must be 27. Although the Greek 27 corresponds to a Hebrew 22 for the Old Testament. In the Peshitta Syriac , by comparison, the number of both Testaments is 22 (2 and 3 John, 2 Peter and Jude being outside the number). That doesn’t prevent Epiphanius (or various Syrian writers) from citing books ‘outside the number’ as ‘Scripture’, and as ‘useful for reading and instruction’.
Is it possible that Paul’s Christology had any influence on John’s Gospel? It seems that John’s Gospel has parallel meaning of Jesus, the Legend, as Pauls letters concerning the understanding of what Jesus was to represent.
It does not appear like it: when you look at what they actually say about Christ, they are very different. But they certainly do both think that in some sense Christ was a pre-existent divine being. John, though, does not at all think that Jesus was *elevated* in his status above wheere he was before the incarnation, and that’s a major point of Paul’s.
Prof, What is your opinion about the theory that God or gods were extraterrestrial beings from advanced civilizations who visited earth?
I’d say there is no reason to think so and hundreds of reasons for not thinking so.
There was some recent evidence for use of cannibis in early Israelite religion, IIRC. I think the article said it was the first evidence to date of psychoactive substances in Israelite worship.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52847175
What is amazing to me is that Paul was able to keep in touch with all these disparate and far-flung congregations in the 1st century, not to mention the apparent efficiency of the Roman postal system!
Ah, it was terribly inefficient. In fact, it didn’t even exist (except for official imperial business). Letter were delivered by whomever you knew who was going to a place.
Professor a question I find myself thinking about frequently is why do you think none of the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, at least) refer to Paul’s letters or to Paul himself? This seems really strange to me.
The main one is that they are discussing the life of Jesus, and Paul was not part of that story.
I’m somewhat confused about Paul’s attitude toward Jewish law as applied to gentiles. He thought gentiles were not required to observe the dietary laws or laws regarding circumcision but in Corinthians 14:34 he states women should remain silent “as the Law says”. Gentiles only had to obey the laws that Paul liked?
This would seem to be an early instance of what has been termed “cafeteria Christianity”. How do Christians reconcile this inconsistency?
I think it’s usually thought that he is not referring to the laws of Moses from Mount Sinai but to the Torah broadly, in this case, the story of Adam and Eve.
I have always been fascinated with how internally consistent Paul’s letters are especially when compared with the Gospels that have a fair number of contradictions within their own narratives and between the four. The Gospels being written at different times and for different audiences would partially explain these inconsistencies, but why don’t we see the same with Paul’s letters? If I had been an early church father putting the new testament together, I would have been tempted to clean up the Gospels so they agree a little bit more, but this type of editing, at least, wasn’t done. So why would the Paul letters be “adusted” but the Gospels wouldn’t Apparently by the middle to end of second century, the books that were to be included in the new testament were pretty well established. Over the pandemic, just for fun, I read quite a few of the non-canonical gospels and while fascinating, I had to agree with our early church editors that gave them a pass.
Bart, You ask the question of why church leaders might destroy some of Paul’s letters. We know that Marcion was a big fan of Paul. Could it be that Paul wrote what might have become to be thought of as “Marcionite”?
Interesting idea! If so, then probably the church leaders would have said “This letter is actually NOT by Paul. It’s a forgery!” (even if it was written by Paul…
I still don’t get the incredible audacity of Paul to subvert Jesus’ teaching for his own “epiphany” completely divergent of Jesus’s ideas on the Law. A Hebrew scholar named Hyam Maccoby wrote a book called “MythMaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity” in which he details the may inconsistencies of Pauls teaching vis a vis Judaism and even asserts his disbelief that Paul was actually a Pharisee or studied under Gamaliel.
Do you have any familiarity with Maccoby’s books? I’d be interest in knowing your opinions.
Maccoby was an erudite scholar. But I think almost all his views on Paul were wrong.
Is there anything interesting to be said about the pseudonymous Pauline letters in the New Testament (or outside, I guess?) Any chance that the same author wrote more than one of them? Has anyone/you looked at that question?
Oh yes, for a very long time. I have a very lengthy discussion of how scholars have dealt with these issues in my book Forgery and Counterforgery, along with setting forth the evidence for what I take to be the most plausible view, that one author wrote 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, but that three different authors wrote 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, and Colossians. And I do explain why it matters and what the different persepctives of these articles are. A shorter more accessible version is in my book Forged.
Thank you!
Is there a book you recommend about the influence of Greek Philosophy on Paul? He was Greek educated, he must have had some exposure to some of the Greek classics and Stoic philosophy of his time. Beyond the supposed conversation at Mars Hill in Acts 17:28 “In him we live and move and have our being” there are more examples that i could cite, but just wondering if anyone has done a good study on it that you recommend?
Thank you,
Dan Malane
I’m afraid the best books I know about this are very hard hitting scholarship (Troels Endberg-Petersen, e.g.); but maybe you could check out Kavin Rowe’s book on Paul and Stoicism? I think he sees them more in opposition, but he probably talks about other scholars who see the closer similarities.
An ex-colleague – a philosopher – recently published a book in which he argued that Paul actually only wrote letters to the Corinthians and that the corpus as we now have it was redacted in Ephesos during the second century. There, local christians added homologies of their own, using Pauls name to supply them with some authority. One of his arguments is that the majority of the letters we still have from the first century AD aren’t merely as long as the letters of Paul and that most of the latter have obviously been altered at some point. Another is that textually the letters appear less coherent than he would have expected. He however does not refer to any scholarly debate on the matter, which made me wonder: how sure can we be that the Pauline letters that we do have and are considered authentic were orginally more or less the same text as we have them today and what validity is there in arguing they might be redacted?
It’s all a matter of very careful textual analysis. You can demonstrate redaction only if you can show reasons for a passage being non-Pauline or inappropriate for its own context, etc.
Hi Bart. I am seeking some discussion on the differences between Paul and Jesus Re their thinking in the Law. Is it possibly that Paul exaggerated the uselessness/negativity of the Law?
It depends what you mean be exaggerated. That wold suggest there is some kind of objective truth that he stretched, but he and his followers thought that his views *were* the truth (not an exaggeration of it). He certainly had a different view of it from Jesus.
Then I don’t understand how this doesn’t make Paul a huckster or a fraud. Jesus teaches A, fairly strenuously at that, then Paul, who never met him, comes a long and says Jesus says B instead. What would Jesus have said if he revisited a church that Paul had just preached in Jesus’s name this “new” law or testament?
Paul is not talking about what Jesus’ taught. He’s talking about the significance of hisdeath and resurrection. And yes, my view is that Jesus would not have agreed with Paul. If you want to see that played out, watch The Last Temptation of Christ (it’s just one scene in a long movie, of course.)
“In other words, God was punishing them by afflicting or even killing some of them. That’s pretty serious.”
No doubt large books have been written analysing how the Biblical writers understood the concept of punishment, and how they saw it in relation to concepts like consequence or curse. And to what extent they invoked the concept loosely or strictly at different times. It is a point of contention in many a debate.
Dr. Ehrman,
There are Christians such as Catholics who would argue that their version of Christianity can be traced back to the Apostles, can this position be historically defended? Also were their other groups of early Christians each claiming and arguing that their version of Christianity can be traced all the way back to the Apostles?
Sincerely,
Shaikh
My sense is that almost all Christian groups think that about their understadings of the faith; many will admit that their views are *developed* beyond what the apostls said (as CAtholics of course do), but that ultimately they are essentially the views of the first followers of Jesus.
Thank you for your response, Dr. Ehrman. However, I more importantly was asking the question from a historical angle rather than a modern contemporary angle if that makes any sense? Also I would like to reiterate my second question from the last post where I was basically asking if there were different early groups of Christians claiming their version of the faith goes back to the Apostles? I think in a past post which I can’t find for some reason, you did mention how even the Gnostics claimed that their version of the Christian faith goes back to the Apostles.
Historically, no Christian group that I know of practices their faith the way the earliest Christians did. But I tried to answer your second question. All the early Christian groups on record claimed their views were those of hte early Apostles (proto-orthodox, various gnostics, Jewish Christian etc.; the one intriguing exception is Marcionites, who thought the disciples misunderstood Jesus and only Paul got it right)
/All the early Christian groups on record claimed their views were those of hte early Apostles (proto-orthodox, various gnostics, Jewish Christian etc.; the one intriguing exception is Marcionites, who thought the disciples misunderstood Jesus and only Paul got it right)/
Thanks! That’s the answer I was looking for.
Anyways is there a book of yours (or any book) that goes into further details on this?
Great. Mainly Lost Christianities.