David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

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Giuseppe
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David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by Giuseppe »

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The David Oliver Smith's book is arrived and the excessive curiosity moves me already at the end of the book, where he lists the passages that, breaking the chiastic structures etc, are probably interpolations.

I don not list all them here, but only the more relevant for me:
  • Galatians 4:4, "born by woman, born under the law", with my great consternation, is not an interpolation, for Smith.
  • 1 Corinthians 9:5-7 is an interpolation.
  • Galatians 2:2b is an interpolation.
  • 1 Thessalonians 2:15a, c and 16b is an interpolation.
I would like to find by part of Smith an answer to the following caustic comment by Robert M. Price in the foreword, but at the moment I have not found it, only an entire section titled "the undisputed letters":

Who would write actual, personal, casual letters, even dealing with important matters, with such exciting complexity? I think of what Austin Farrer said about Mark's gospel: the more literary, the less historical. The more artifice went into it, the more artificial is the result.

(p. x)
schillingklaus
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by schillingklaus »

Chiasms are the result of late forgery, as best seen in the case of Mark's gospel or the Roman Canon Missae. Thinking of chiasms as something original is hilarious and abstruse.
Giuseppe
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by Giuseppe »

True, but the fact is that David Oliver Smith sees chiasms everywhere in the 99% of the epistles.

So, accepting the Smith's conclusions, I am put before an AUT-AUT: acceptance of them all as genuine, or (AUT) rejection of them all as too much complex to be true letters.
Giuseppe
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by Giuseppe »

Now I have found the implicit answer by David Oliver Smith to the Robert M. Price's challenge:

Paul's use of the repetition of words, phrases, and abstract concepts into clearly defined literary units is common to the seven undisputed letters but this quality is missing from the six other letters in the cannon that claim to have been written by Paul.

(p. 357)

So the principal Detering's axiom, that the 7 undisputed letters fail the test when the same criteriology that has proved the falsity of the other epistles is applied on them, results to be confuted by the fact that the complexity (meant by David Oliver Smith in his book) does a difference between the 7 epistles and the other false epistles.
gryan
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by gryan »

Giuseppe wrote: Mon Aug 01, 2022 10:23 pm
  • Galatians 2:2b is an interpolation.
Re: "Galatians 2:2b is an interpolation."

Did you intend Gal 2:7b-8?
schillingklaus
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by schillingklaus »

There are many different ways of forging and faking something; so there is no argument5 against the falsity of all epistles.

If chiasms are everywhere, it means just that it has been reworked profoundly everywhere by some chiasmolatrist.
Giuseppe
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by Giuseppe »

gryan wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 4:54 am
Did you intend Gal 2:7b-8?
no, I intend precisely Galatians 2:2b.

In addition to break chiastic structures:

If v. 2:2b is removed, the letter still makes sense. In fact, it makes more sense and does not contradict Gal 1:16-17, or 2 Cor 11:5 and 12:11 as does canonical Gal 2:2b. It makes no sense for Paul to get a revelation from God about Christ and then ask other apostles if his revelation was accurate. A revelation from God would trump advice from men.

(ibid., p. 232)
gryan
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by gryan »

Giuseppe wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:09 am
gryan wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 4:54 am
Did you intend Gal 2:7b-8?
no, I intend precisely Galatians 2:2b.

In addition to break chiastic structures:

If v. 2:2b is removed, the letter still makes sense. In fact, it makes more sense and does not contradict Gal 1:16-17, or 2 Cor 11:5 and 12:11 as does canonical Gal 2:2b. It makes no sense for Paul to get a revelation from God about Christ and then ask other apostles if his revelation was accurate. A revelation from God would trump advice from men.

(ibid., p. 232)
Ok, I disagree based on my reading of context. And what about his view of "to them we did not" Gal 2:5?

Standard text with my proposed interpolation in brackets:
"...[to them we did not] yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you."

vs. without my proposed interpolation:

"... we yielded in submission for a moment..."
Giuseppe
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by Giuseppe »

Your argument is not based on chiastic structures, that is the originality of the Smith's approach.
gryan
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Re: David Oliver Smith on the interpolations in Paul

Post by gryan »

Yes, I saw David Oliver Smith talk about his work on chaistic structure as a tool for detecting interpolation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuMR2zHeWpk

I agree with him that chiasic structure does appear in Paul's writings. It is a tool that needs to be used in combination with the full range of other tools (eg. my exegesis of Gal 2:16-19 where I connect "consult with flesh and blood" with "James the Lord's brother" thru an ABCCBA chiastic structure).

I think the prevailing scholarly argument that Paul did not learn anything from the apostles before him and that he got all of his gospel from revelation is a gross misreading of Paul. David Oliver Smith takes that wrong exegesis to its logical wrong conclusion when he treats Gal 2:2b ("...set before them...the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain") as an interpolation, but does not question "to whom not" in Gal 2:5.

As I see it, there is one key point in Galatians where Paul acts on "revelation" and he does so against the stream of "some from James" and Peter and even Barnabas: this is in Antioch, a place where Barnabas had been eating with Gentiles. When Peter came, Barnabas withdrew and separated himself because of "fear of the circumcision". They expected Paul to participate in this "play-acting" just as he had done previously in Jerusalem when they had all "yielded in submission" to the false brothers for an "hour" (by asking Titus/Timothy to excuse himself from the dining/meeting room). But for Paul, in the Antioch context, that "hour" was up.

I think my interpretation draws out a coherent sense of the standard critical text of Galatians 2 (minus "to whom not" in 2:5 and 2:7b-8 which I regard as interpolations), but I admit my reading goes against scholarly consensus and it would require a full essay to defend it.
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