Not to ruin a good discussion, but the Acts of Paul feature both exploits and letters.
Some late second century sources feature the letters (inscription of Abercius, martyrdoms).
Ignatius and 1 Clement (forged or not) mention life and letters.
Revelation has letters to seven churches.
The gospel known to us as "Mark" may or may not stink of Pauline theology, depending on who you ask I guess.
The ending of Hebrews (which may have been added later) betrays dependence on Paul's letters (in an effort to look like them?).
The Pastoral epistles are a forged epistolary novella attributed to Paul (after Marcion). Private of course, explaining their absence from the canon. [Or so I would guess.]
Paul's sayings are sometimes word for word sayings of Jesus, attributed or not.
I don't know. Someone started a rumor about the limited impact of these letters of Paul once, and it doesn't really stand up.
The best explanation of Acts here, IMO--
Given the fact that Acts is post-Marcionite and anti-Marcionite, it deliberately avoids the subject of the letters in order to "rob Paul" from the Marcionites (giving him an orthodox story) without giving any credit to the letters they loved.
Peter Kirby wrote:Secret Alias wrote:It's hard to know what to conclude from this.
One possible take on this, in the history of interpretation, is to say that Acts was relatively close to the life of Paul (ca. 70-100) and that it was written before his letters acquired the stature that began sometime in the second century.
I don't actually support this, BTW.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
