Loading...In the 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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I wonder how modern Christians would handle a discovery of an authentic from Paul, especially if it contained blatantly unorthodox views. I’m not sure how the Catholic Church would handle it – other then they would do an infinitely better job of managing it’s impact than the Evangelicals. I have a pretty good idea what THEY would do. Still, I’d kind of like to see them squirm as they deny the new discovery’s authenticity while maintaining belief in the authenticity of the forgeries in the canon.
My sense is that if it contained blatantly unorthodox views most people would say that it wasn’t really written by Paul (even if it was!).
Professor Ehrman,
I have heard and read you to say that we have copies of copies of copies of copies of the Gospels. Are we any better off with Paul’s letters or any other books of The New Testament?
Same thing there!
So when the author of 2 Peter writes in chapter 3;
“Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.”
can we link this to the letters we know; or are these the ones that may have since been lost?
It’s impossible to say for certain.
“Maybe someone will announce that one is to be published later this year!”
Ahh, but then it would be changed to 2 years from then!
“But one might wonder, if it’s true that other letters were not deemed worth keeping – or in fact were deemed worth destroying – what made them that way?”
Perhaps they contradicted what some forger wrote in Paul’s name.?
In Pauls letters, he mentions that he’s done signs and wonders, and that the churches shouldn’t forget what he’s done for them. He’s also told them other apostles are doing the same thing.
I’ve always wondered about this because the people who he was writing to would’ve known he was lying about performing a “sign” if he said he did. There’s obviously a heavy theme of the 12 disciples doing miracles in Acts whether it was historical or for theological reasons.
So, were Paul and the other disciples known as miracle workers during their time? I know you don’t believe in miracles, but I’m guessing they did things people believed to be miracles.
Prof Ehrman
What is the earliest collection of Pauline letters we have? Did it differ from the one we have incorporated in the New Testament?
thx
Our earliest *known* collection of Paul’s letters was Marcion’s, who had ten of our letters, with the exceptions of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.
Interesting. I’m wondering if Marcion doubted the authenticity of the Pastorals or simply wasn’t aware of them. No way to ever know I guess. It is interesting that our earliest collection lacks them though. Are there theological reasons do you suppose that Marcion might have rejected them even if he had known of them? (Or was he just such an expert greek stylist that he could tell they weren’t the same author?)
It surely wasn’t because he did a stylistic analysis. But whether he didn’t know of them or didn’t approve of them — there’s no way to know!
I have seen a number of authors state that x,y or z was not likely a part of the early Christian tradition if not mentioned in Paul’s letters. Examples include the virgin birth and miracles performed by Jesus in the Gospels. Does this blog mean that you would give little weight to such arguments?
I think you have to gauge the probabilities on a case-by-case basis, judging on the grounds of what Paul *does* say and, just as important, on whether a Jesus tradition would have been a convenient datum to appeal to (had he known it) in order to make one of his arguments.
Mr. Ehrman, I have been a little perplexed about something you state in Forged. I know It’s not your most recent work but this has been on my mind for a year or two now. You state in Forged that Acts is a forgery because there are a few places where the author goes into first person descriptions, which is where the writers got the name for the Gospel of Luke. I also know that Luke is considered anonymous. My question is, that since Acts is considered a forgery and we know that Acts is the second volume of Luke’s gospel, why can’t we claim the same thing about the Gospel of Luke. Even though it doesn’t specifically state that he is the author, the inferences are certainly there. Unless acts is written by a different author than that of Luke, it seems to be a valid criticism.
I guess technically speaking you can’t call Luke a forgery because it does not, itself, make a false authorial claim; only Acts, written by the same author, makes that claim.
How about personal opinion then? When you say the words ‘technically speaking’, I get the sense that you may have a different personal view (based on.your ‘true story’ conversation with your children). My view is that since Acts is a forgery, so is Luke by proxy. If the Author of Luke intended to make his work a 2 volume set and intentionally deceived his readers in Acts (he did), it stands to reason he did at least some of those things in his first volume. Although authorship isn’t named, it’s implied through his second volume. Maybe my thinking is completely wrong. But that’s why you’re here. To help folks like me try to wade through the scholarship.
My personal opinion is that for the sake of clarity we need to be rigorous in our definitions. If a book does not claim to be written by someone other than the actual author (even if another book by this authors does make this claim) then in my view it is not a forgery.
Its a great pity Jesus didn’t hang about for another 30 years and then his followers wouldn’t have needed Paul. Maybe tongue in cheek but its a reality check about an emerging faith that had more questions than answers and still have today. Maybe more so as there would have been so few articulate educated people around to point out the errors in his theology and doctrines. His friends obviously had slaves as he said be kind to them and to know your Lord and Master etc. How can this possibly be ground breaking teaching of morality? Sorry but its all overblown and almost irrelevant by todays standards of morality. Nobody in their right mind could argue that adultery can be the only reason for divorce and shows a complete lack of understanding about marriage and about homosexuality. Two of the most important issues and they got it so so wrong.
Bart, I’m not sure we would have learned that much more had we had a thousand letters from Paul.
Same theme throughout.
Jesus had to die for your sins because God demanded that.
He is coming back shortly, and before many have died including himself probably.
Stop quarelling and behave yourself and don’t slide back into the world.
Obey your leaders and share your wealth around everybody.
Women be subservient to your husbands but don’t get married unless you are sex mad and btw don’t speak in church and wear a hat!
Keep the faith!
Dr. Ehrman, there is a problem with the Pauline Letters.
While Jesus says the Temple will be destroyed (therefore, not giving Jesus the benefit of prophecy, gospels are dated after AD 70) 2 Thess, not an authentic letter of Paul says a lawless one will exalt himself to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god. This happened during the Jewish Revolt. Therefore, this letter of Paul is written after AD 70, unless we can come up with incident prior to that.
1 Cor, 5: 7 speaks of Jesus as a paschal lamb sacrificed and 2 Cor, 3: 6 speaks of a new covenant, from authentic letters of Paul. The Gospels include a rationalization of why Jesus must be sacrificed and an interpretation of his crucifixion as sacrifice, and Communion representing a new covenant. The Gospels were written after AD 69. If Paul was attacked by Jews for telling Gentiles they did not need to be circumcised, the New Testament should also tell us that he was attacked for teaching the body and blood metaphor for remembrance of Jesus (paschal lamb) and for saying the Jewish covenant with God was null and void and a new covenant was needed. Paul could not have gotten away with this unless Temple authorities were too occupied with Civil War and the 1st Jewish-Roman War or slightly later when the Temple was gone. Therefore, 1 Cor. and 2nd Cor. need to be dated after AD 69, after Paul died.
Either we re-date these three letters or we say they were redacted after AD 69.
Your comments would be appreciated.
I”m afraid I’m not following your logic. We don’t know if Paul was attacked for these things or not.
I bet we’d be disappointed if we did find more letters that could absolutely unequivocally be linked to Paul. It would probably be the equivalent of a big book of Nantucket limericks but written by Tony Robins.
Dr. Bart, what do you think about those studies (e.g. Trobisch) which attempt to trace back to Paul himself as a possible editor of his own letters?
I think there is no real evidence for it.
I would LOVE to see about twenty of Paul’s *other* letters!
You should schedule another debate with Dan Wallace. He can then intimate, but not confirm, that he is working with a team that plans to publish these lost letters sometime in 2017; no doubt, all 1st century mss.
Great article, Dr Ehrman! If neither Paul nor anyone else at that time saw a need to write out a systematic expression of their thought on Christian doctrine (at least that has been preserved, but I highly doubt it), maybe it’s because they would never think of some book in the future (the Bible) being the absolute, infallible, inerrant standard for everything in life and doctrine…especially since Paul expected the imminent return of Christ.
If “God” intended for the Church to be a bunch of fundamentalists clinging to their Bibles, I would’ve expected to see one or more of the apostles being “inspired” to create a systematic expression of Christian teaching. Or if Jesus was creating a new religion called Christianity, rather than bringing in the end of the age (as he thought), surely he would’ve provided a systematic expression of inspired teaching for this new religion…or new stage of religion.
For the study of early Christianity, would it be more interesting to have writings of Paul’s opponents?
Ah — good point. Maybe I’ll post on *that*!
Is there any way to guesstimate how many ‘other’ letters Paul may have written via references in the ones we know he did?
No, he only refers to a couple concretely.
What are your thoughts that if Paul did not dedicate his work of spreading Jesus’ teachings, as well as many of his own, the possibility of a Christian religion today?
I think Paul was very important, but I don’t think he was exclusively responsible for the spread of the church.
Ahhhh…but do you think he is exclusively responsible for the current Christian doctrine of the church? I’m sure he tried to instill the basic tenets of the teachings of Jesus, but In your opinion, is modern Christianity really a misnomer for Paulianism?
No, I don’t think Paul invented Christianity. Maybe I’ll post on this at some point. Others were proclaiming Christ’s death and resurrection before him. But certainly the kind of Christianity Paul advocated seems different from the religion of Jesus himself.
Thanks for the explanation of “occasional” letters which mean that we should not search for a systematic theology in these letters. Of course, the big question is why did the early Christians save some of the letters and not others for inclusion in the Bible?
Yup, that’s the question!
There is always the possibility that they were destroyed somewhere along the way. If they didn’t agree with some group’s theology.
I have a question mostly. I know that there are seven letters which are accepted as Paul’s genuine letters. Also there are six letters allegedly by Paul which are considered as forgeries. Also Hebrews was falsely attributed to Paul. My question is simple. How do we know that Paul actually wrote these seven letters and that they aren’t forgeries like the six which are regarded as forgeries. It seems that all we can really know is that the author who wrote the seven letters accepted as Paul’s letters didn’t write the six which are rejected as forgeries. What is the actual evidence, however, that this write is actually Paul of Tarsus? This question has always bugged me but I have never seen anything on why we believe these seven letters are Paul’s. Thanks for the great articles.
Good question. Short answer: these seven appear to cohere in theme, theological outlook, and writing style to make them appear all to go back to the same author, and their concerns seem to be those that make best sense in the time Paul would have been writing (unlike the other six). And so these appear to go back to Paul.
Uncertain if this fits into this category, but there are novices such as myself at least who find Paul’s sudden official entrance into early Christianity from ‘stage right’ (or left) to be highly recondite.
Given what seems agreed as Paul’s virtual disconnect with what could be interpreted as kind of a central plan of 12 apostles and their direct successors for establishment of Christianity, what rationale could be proposed for this peripheral introduction?
Except for the often mentioned Gentile-Jew controversy was there any other significant cross-referencing among the early evangelizers, or has orthodox opinion considered that to be unnecessary? Is it maintained there are no resulting significant inconsistencies between the 12 and another furthermore apostle? Is this argued to be propitious uniformity of ‘revelation’, or were things eventually made (or interpreted) to turn out thusly?
I gather that (orthodox) Christianity fundamentally emerged from self-assumed authority of the “fathers” through the rubric of ‘unbroken tradition’, or something like that. Are they on record of logically accrediting Paul (for whatever merit) UNDER 12??? APOSTOLE –SUCCESSION AUTHORITY, interestingly enough. Otherwise, what or how??
I imagine these types of questions are not entirely new and would appreciate some reference to where they might be addressed.
I got a bit lost in the interweaving questions you ask. But if you would like to read about Paul’s conversion and his relationship to the Twelve, you may want to read my book on Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene.
Thank you, will examine this. Still digesting chapters in your “The New Testament”.
The bases of Christianity are what I understand as asserted revealed doctrines promulgated under the charge of 12 apostles as immediate and explicitly delegated emissaries of Yeshua.
The main question I have is what logic might there be for authentication of a manifest outlander, namely Paul, and his critically prominent role.
In my admitted nonexistent historical and biblical grounding, I’m not familiar with credentialing arguments for Paul either by the apostles themselves or orthodox Christian forbearers and early authorities.
Seems like the first movement or two beyond the apostles laid down a lot of the essentials of what came to be known as Christianity. My impression is of the early fathers being a second apostolate, something of a twist like latter Pauls in their own right!!
Paul’s authority was rooted in his claim that he had seen the resurrected Jesus who gave him his gospel and commissioned him to take it to the gentiles. (See Galatians 1-2)
I admit that I always remain hopelessly at a loss when reading and trying to interpret scriptural writing. That as it may, this passage, which I assume to be a key one, appears to be a message from Paul essentially credentialing himself, although it’s not evident to me the extent of the validation.
The lack of a firm consensus about Paul’s authority by apostles, or other early historical authorities as somewhat of a logical expedient, would be most curious in my estimation.
The Wizard of Jeez. What amazes me is the worlds acceptance of Paul’s bona fides in his role as the foundament of Jesus’ church.
The best conjecture I can imagine on “Who ordered that?” regarding Paul is that he tacitly became incorporated into the “canon” of early Christianity. It’s apparently the asserted ‘immediate’ succession/ tradition/ delegation/ commissioning of a “church” by the 12 (or however many direct associates of Yeshua) that provides Paul’s subsequent bone fides (as with everything else to follow in Christianity).
To my thinking, this is the only self-consistent rationale for Paul, which essentially uses 12-apostle authority to establish one more early apostle – as well as x-number of in essence succeeding apostles in the early church, say nothing of potentially indefinite number in I think Catholicism, Mormonism and possibly some others.
Dear Bart,
could you name some really good books or articles on authorship of Paul’s epistles? Are there any books that deals with all of the Paul’s letters or should I be looking for case by case books? Thanks for the help!
I give a very full treatment of all the disputed Pauline epistles in my book Forgery and Counterforgery, and there I cite all the most important bibliography for furhter reading.
Dr. Ehrman, hello!
How did we determine the seven undisputed letters of Paul are authentic? How can I learn more about this? I’m about halfway through “Forgery and Counterforgery” so forgive me if its in the latter half. Great book btw.
I think its so awesome you respond to so many of us (it looks like all of us actually). Thank you!
Spencer Black
The six disputed letters differ in significant ways in writing style, vocabulary, theology, and presupposed historical situation. It is usually thought that the other seven are widely coherent in these ways. So they appear to have the same author. And given the kinds of issues they address, it appears that the author would have been Paul.
I would be interested in your thoughts on 1 Corinthians 12-14 regarding the interpretation of spiritual gifts, in particular the meaning of “passing away” of spiritual gifts. There are those fundamentalists Christian sects who believe the spiritual gifts such as “healing” have passed away, yet there are others who belief such gifts have not and are still available through the spirit for those who seek. This seems rather odd to me, because in my way of interpretation all spiritual gifts originate with the one spirit, a universal spirit from which all things come. To connect to that spirit through belief, faith, and thought (prayer) is to avail oneself to the gifts. The “passing away” of spiritual gifts is merely the moving on to another level of those gifts, or perhaps to a different gift all together. “Passing away” does not mean they have died; it means the individual has moved on in life, knowledge, and wisdom.
So, how do you interpret this “passing away” of spiritual gifts?
Thank you in advance for your reply.
Paul thinks that the gifts are available only in the brief (so he thought) interim period between the time Christ was raised and everyone else would be when the kingdom arrived. In that short meantime, the Spirit was guiding the communities of believers by means of the gifts; they would pass away when “the perfect” arrived, that is, the fullness of God’s glory in the return of Jesus for judgment on the earth.
In Pauls letters, he mentions that he’s done signs and wonders, and that the churches shouldn’t forget what he’s done for them. He’s also told them other apostles are doing the same thing.
I’ve always wondered about this because the people who he was writing to would’ve known he was lying about performing a “sign” if he said he did. There’s obviously a heavy theme of the 12 disciples doing miracles in Acts whether it was historical or for theological reasons.
So, were Paul and the other disciples known as miracle workers during their time? I know you don’t believe in miracles, but I’m guessing they did things people believed to be miracles.
I don’t know if I’d use the term “lying,” especially since I”m not exactly sure what he’s referring to. Maybe some people who converted that no one in a million years would have thought would do so. But in any event, yes, apparently Paul and others were indeed thought of as miracle workers in their own day — just as people are todqy (without necessarily lying about it).
I see. Do other liberal scholars agree that Paul and the other apostles were at least seen as miracle workers during their lifetimes?
I suppose most would agree that Paul reminds his readers in a couple of places that he did miracles. I’m not as confident about other apostles, since we have almost no record of them, but I don’t think it’s implausible. IN my book Triumph of Christianity I argue that belief that Jesus’ followrs could do miracles (for centuries) led to most of the conversions.
Dr. Ehrman, in a couple recent interviews I’ve heard you speculate that if Paul founded 30 churches and wrote just 2 letters to each per year over 20 years, he could have written 1,200 letters. First of all, that doesn’t quite add up, because ostensibly, he didn’t found all 30 churches all at once, but rather over a couple decates. More importantly, from what I imagine life was like for anyone who wasn’t born into idle wealth back then, even two letters a year per church seems high to me. As you’ve pointed out, the letters we have now were not just written to say hi, how’s it going, he was addressing a specific question or situation. How often do you think that came up? Has anyone has done a peer-reviewed study on letter writing habbits in the ancient world, especially the habbits of those who did not belong to the elite?
By the way, I’ve really been enjoying the podcast. Megan Lewis is a great host.
That’s right. I”m imagining thirty as the average over decades, not all at once. I’m just using it to make a simple illustratoin. (If he founded five one year and fifteen another year, he’d average ten between those two years).
The reason for “two a year” is that in a couple of the letters (2 Corinthians, Philippians) we have clear indications that a series of letters has gone back and forth in a cshort period of time.
And oh yes, there are many books devoted to the issue of letter writing in antiquity. One of the first chances I had to write a book review for a scholarly journal (over 40 years ago now) was a book on the topic that was written in German! My mentor asked me to do it so I couldn’t very well say no….