Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Fri Jul 03, 2020 7:26 am
I see no method that has been proposed which is not just based on a series of assumptions about the texts which can indicate which of these is more likely than not. As such, the silence of Tertullian cannot indicate the textual reliability of the passage either.
When you say 'the texts' I presume you're referring to Galatians 1 and 2, particularly the end of chapter 1 and the first part of chapter 2.
The issues with those passages goes beyond Tertullian's silence.
Gal 1:18-24
These verses are unattested as being in Marcion. Irenaeus (
A.H. 3.13), Tertullian’s quotation of Marcion (
A.M. 5.3.1), Augustine (
Quaestionum Evangeliorum 2.40, Migne
PL vol. 35 col. 1355), John Chrysostom (Commentary on Galatians 2.1, Migne
PG vol. 61 col. 633), a certain Greek
Catena in epistulam ad Galatas (e cod. Coislin. 204, page 27, line 10), the Bohairic Coptic version, and a manuscript of the Vulgate have Galatians 2:1 without the word “again.”
There is some level of expectation that Tertullian would have quoted it in an attempt to show subordination of Paul to Peter and James.
Some or all of these verses are considered an interpolation on other grounds by J. C. O’Neil (
The Recovery of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, p. 25), Frank R. McGuire (“Did Paul Write Galatians?“), Hermann Detering (“The Original Version of the Epistle to the Galatians,” p. 20), David Oliver Smith (
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul, p. 72), Robert Price (
The Amazing Colossal Apostle, p. 415), and in some comments online.
http://peterkirby.com/marcions-shorter- ... -paul.html
G. D. Kilpatrick - in Peter, Jerusalem and Galatians 1:13-2:14
Novum Testamentum Vol. 25, Fasc. 4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 318-326 - examined Gal 1:13-2:14, noting these verses have a large number of unusual features. He says "we can only conclude that a real difference of language exists between Gal 1:13-2:14 and the Pauline epistles as a whole."
In
Against Heresies Irenaeus appears to quote the usual reading of Gal. ii, 1 – “went up again to Jerusalem“ – but makes no specific reference to the Pauline visit described in Gal. i, 18f. Where Tertullian, in his
Prescription against Heretics, alludes to Paul’s having gone to Jerusalem to meet Peter it soon becomes apparent that Tertullian is simply reading his own interest in Peter into the account of the meeting with Peter, James and John.
Frank R. McGuire, in 'Did Paul Write Galatians?',
Hibbert Journal, 1967, 66 (61): 52ff, proposed, reiterated, or noted -
- Galatians is a response to Acts.
- more than one „Paul“ had a hand in the writing of Galatians.
- Galatians and II Corinthians are not by the same writer
- "the underlying implication [of Galatians], as Paley observed [in Horae Paulinae], is that Paul’s own commission was „inferior and deputed“. Accordingly, the first chapter of Galatians emphasizes the divine origin of his apostleship while the second emphasizes Paul’s independence of Jerusalem."
Paley had concluded the author of Acts had not read Galatians as he (and we) know it today, "otherwise he would not have omitted the Arabian interlude and various meetings between Paul and Peter."
But McGuire induced that
absolute neglect of Galatians is not the problem. The actual literary problem is Luke’s apparent relative neglect of the epistle. How can he have made limited, largely negative use of Galatians, as he seems to have done, without knowing its contents? Was Galatians there for Luke to know, or is it the Pauline writer who makes limited, negative use of Acts?
To repudiate Luke’s image of Paul, Bruno Bauer was to declare sixty years after Paley's Horae Paulinae, was part of the purpose of Galatians. Several modern scholars who accept the traditional authorship of Galatians have come remarkably close to saying the same thing e.g. Johannes Weiss (Earliest Christianity) suggests that Galatians was directed against some account not unlike Acts.
Christianity was not 1st century, messianic Judaism hellenised by Paul or anyone else, Bauer contended, but an originally Greek religion judaised in the second century. Acts, with its „apostolic decree“ and the like, is an expression of this quasi-Jewish movement and Galatians a literary reaction. That the author of Galatians had read Acts, Bauer evidently never got around to demonstrating in concrete terms.
McGuire looked at the internal evidence -
Let us tentatively suppose, with Enslin, that Paul’s flight from Damascus is most reliably described in II Cor. xi, 33-3; that the account in Acts ix, 23-5 is secondary, the same incident being only barely alluded to in Gal. i, 17. Paul has somehow antagonised the Arabian political authorities and has taken refuge in Damascus. The „governor under King Aretas“ has posted a guard on the city walls, with orders to arrest Paul should he venture outside Damascus, hence his unceremonious escape – not from immediate danger, however, but through danger.
Luke, wishing to commend Christianity to the Roman authorities as apolitically inoffensive movement, represents Paul as the victim of Jewish persecution for purely religious reasons. Not only his liberty but even his life is threatened by local Jews, yet in Acts ix, 26 we next find him in Jerusalem. Although Jerusalem would be the least likely destination for a Paul who had fled from Damascus for the reason given in Acts, in the light of II Corinthians – which does not say where he went – it does not seem at all unreasonable. But where doe she go in Galatians? Into Arabia – where, on the evidence of II Corinthians, the danger is greatest.
Despite the marked similarity of the two epistles, I submit that Galatians comes from a later hand and presupposes the reader’s knowledge of II Corinthians. If Paul did go to Arabia, what did he do there and how long did he stay? In the absence of such details, Gal. i, 17 serves no other purpose than to improve on the earlier first-person account and refute Luke’s version of his movements between Damascus and Jerusalem.
The remainder of Galatians 1 is at variance with the first half of Chapter 2 of the same letter. In 1, 15-19 „Cephas“ (Simon Peter?) and „James the Lord’s brother“ emerge as well known apostles; in 2, 2f if they are merely reputed pillars of the church at Jerusalem, and Paul gives the impression of meeting them for the first time.
. . // . .
Treating Acts ix, 26f as the account of Paul’s first visit to Jerusalem, Tertullian seems to apply both Gal. ii, 1-10 and an account similar to i, 18f to the second visit. Moreover, in this instance Tertullian is writing primarily for orthodox consumption; in his early 3rd century anti-Marcionite treatise, where he must meet hostile readers on their own ground, Tertullian refers to Paul as going up (not „up again“) to Jerusalem after fourteen years „so great had been his desire to be approved and supported by those whom you [Marcion] wish on all occasions to be understood as in alliance with Judaism!“ Obviously Marcion’s text of Galatians did not include the account of a previous visit „after three years“ and Tertullian, if indeed he had ever seen such a reading, was not inclined to take it seriously.
According to the original text, then, Paul returned to Damascus after his sojourn in Arabia (Gal. 1, 17) and did not go up to Jerusalem until whatever is implied by „after fourteen years“; whether a full fourteen years later, or in the fourteenth year of his apostleship, makes little difference.
A second writer considers an interval of three years sufficient to demonstrate Paul’s independence of Jerusalem; he may also have noticed, as William Paley was to do some 1600 years later, that the „many days“ which the Paul of Acts spends in Damascus could have amounted to three years.
The author of Gal. 1:18-24 did not bother to coordinate the second chapter with his own account; perhaps he hoped to displace the earlier Pauline version of Paul’s first apostolic contact with the church at Jerusalem. To differentiate between the two visits now recorded, a still later „Paul“ inserts the word „again“ so conspicuously absent from Tertullian’s reading of Gal. ii, 1. Perhaps from the same hand comes such incongruities as Peter at the head of a mission to the circumcised (ii, 7-8),* anticipating the arrangement to which Peter becomes a party in the verse that follows.
While the narrative of Galatians is more plausible if stripped of known or demonstrable interpolations, the second chapter is still basically nonsensical. It does not become less so in light of Acts-Luke’s fifteenth chapter, the reader’s acquaintance with which is tacitly presumed throughout, it simply makes the unintelligibility more understandable.
Frank R. McGuire, 'Did Paul Write Galatians?', Hibbert Journal, 1967, 66 (61): 52ff
* There's many scholars who've had issues with Gal 2:7-8, too -
- Ernst Barnikol, Der nichtpaulinische Ursprung des Parallelismus der Apostel Petrus und Paulus (Galater 2 7-8) (Forschungen zur Entstehung des Urchristentums des Neuen Testament und der Kirche 5; Kiel: Muhlau, 1931)
Translated into English by Darrell J. Doherty with B. Keith Brewer as
- Ernst Barnikol, 'The Non-Pauline Origin of the Parallelism of the Apostles Peter and Paul', J. Higher Criticism 5/2 (Fall 1998), 285-300.
Barnikol referred to Gal 2:7b-8 as a textual problem representing apostolic parallelism in the second century, and offered insights into the history of the origin of it.
- William O Walker Jr, 'Galatians 2:7b-8 as a Non-Pauline Interpolation', The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 4, Oct 2003, pp. 568-587.