The Best Argument Against Nihilistic Mythicism

[stephan happy huller]

Agreed. But back to the main argument of the thread, I've struggled and continued to struggle with the question of how much of the present Galatians was original (= Marcionite). I am open to rejecting much of chapters 1 and 2. I just wonder how far we can go with that when the early Church Fathers tell us Paul went beyond Peter's gospel. The bit about Paul condemning Peter to his face seems to fit. Indeed I have a hard time believing that Acts retelling of the story could be part of a "plot" to convince people to accept the myth about their conflict.

[Blood]

But are you suggesting that the Pauline epistles were wholly counterfeit? No historical apostle?

Even if the Pauline epistles were wholly counterfeit, it's possible that there was an authority figure in the tradition (maybe even a real person) who existed prior to the attribution of letters to him (Paul). This is exactly what scholars believe happened in the case of absolutely every other apostle: Peter, James, Jude, John, Thomas (apocryphally), and the Twelve (apocryphally), for example, as well as a number of sub-apostolic figures: Barnabas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement, etc.

There's a blind spot in the case of Paul because people haven't really fairly considered the alternative hypotheses. Too much has been built on the hypothesis of authenticity to make it very easy to imagine. People grow up thinking about a historical letter writer Paul, and those kinds of impressions are powerful. But, logically, it is very easy to imagine and is very well-supported by the historical principle of analogy as being one of several plausible hypotheses to be considered.

Lots of considerations would have to factor into a final judgment, but a hypothesis of a wholly counterfeit epistle corpus is definitely in the race.

What he said.

[Blood]

Apologists wanted the Pauline epistles to be early and authentic, because if they're not early, they're inauthentic. And they imagine that would destroy Christianity. They gave up the others only after a prolonged battle kicking and screaming all the way, and only accepted the seven as a kind of truce: OK, we will let the liberals take the other six as long they let us keep the seven as authentic, and let us call the remaining six "pseudepigrapha" from "the school of Paul," not forgeries. Pure apologetics. The canon, absurdly, remains unchanged.

And here's where I part company with the conservatives, liberals, and mythicists: the Pauline epistles are not early. They do not pre-date Mark. They all are late retrojections masquerading as authentic apostolic teaching, the same as James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1 & 2 John, etc -- all written around the same time as Acts.

[stephan happy huller]

Its not the same thing. The Marcionite devotion to the Pauline corpus is unprecedented. There are no parallels with the other instrumentum.