Accepted interpolations in Paul's 'authentic' epistles

[Ben C. Smith]

For those who might need an aid, and can view Excel files, behold, one is here:

Copy of (Hindley) Inflected Greek Unicode Letters & Numbers.xlsx

DCH

Wow, David, you even included the wau and the sampi.

I wanted to wau folks with a sampi of just how many inflected Greek letters there are (about 266). It is no wonder that OCR software has such a hard time with Ancient Greek. Sometimes the sheer stress of picking the right ones to post on this forum causes me to get dieresis.

[DCHindley]

While "few authors have argued against ..[the] seven ['authentic' Pauline] epistles" -

Not sure what this means. There was a whole thread on the subject, with the participation of Roger Parvus, in which I provided a list of scholars who question their authenticity, with annotations, in a quote I lifted from a modern critic who defends their authenticity. Schweitzer also discusses radical critics and others who suspected that the middle recension (= shorter Greek) Ignatian letters were spurious.

"...even the least disputed of letters, such as Galatians, have found critics.[12] Moreover, the unity of the letters is questioned by some scholars. First and Second Corinthians have garnered particular suspicion, with some scholars, among them [biblical scholars] Edgar Goodspeed and Norman Perrin, supposing one or both texts as we have them today are actually amalgamations of multiple individual letters. There remains considerable discussion as to the presence of possible significant interpolations."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorshi ... d_epistles

12 for example, F. R. McGuire, even though otherwise critical scholars like A. Q. Morton saw this text as the benchmark for refuting Pauline authorship of most other epistles; see A. Q. Morton and J. McLeman, Paul, the Man and the Myth (1966). Additionally, Robert Price argues that Galatians was written by Marcion; see RM Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament (2006).

I think that this touches on the quotation from Barrett by Walker:

Barrett reminds us that ‘the evidence of the [extant manuscripts] can tell us nothing about the state of the Pauline . . . literature before its publication’

[Underlining is mine]

An interesting discussion about editing of letters for publication by original authors, which might include deleting unnecessary names and side references, possibly merging more than one letter together, etc., is in David Trobisch's Paul's Letter Collection-Tracing the Origins (1994). He proposes, citing examples, three stages of Development of a letter collection:

1. Authorized Recensions = The author of the letter prepares letters for publication.
2. Expanded Editions = After the author’s death these editions are expanded. Further editions of
published and unpublished letters are produced.
3. Comprehensive Editions = All the available editions are combined.

In his later book First Edition of the New Testament (2000) he suggested the addition of keyword "links" between otherwise independent books in the five collections of books commonly known as the NT (e = four gospels; a = Acts of the Apostles and general epistles; p = Pauline corpus both with and without Hebrews; and finely r = The Revelation all by its lonesome).

For giggles & kicks, I analyzed the table of NT MSS by category in this book and found an error:

Category	Total	Percent	e	a	p	r
e	2,123	67.2%	2,123	0	0	0
ap*	273	8.6%	0	273	273	0
p	222	7.0%	0	0	222	0
eap**	150	4.7%	150	150	150	0
r	130	4.1%	0	0	0	130
a	87	2.8%	0	87	0	0
apr	76	2.4%	0	76	76	76
eapr	59	1.9%	59	59	59	59
ea	11	0.3%	11	11	0	0
er	11	0.3%	11	0	0	11
pr	6	0.2%	0	0	6	6
ep	5	0.2%	5	0	5	0
ar	3	0.1%	0	3	0	3
ear	2	0.1%	2	2	0	2
Total	3,158	100.0%	2,361	661	791	287
TNT (p83)			2,361	662	792	287
Variance*			0	1	1	0

* variance should be added to category "ap"
** not in Trobisch's table. Number derived from Text of the New Testament (I think it was the one by Aland)

I have brought this to his attention while not on his boat, which I think kind of annoyed him.

As we all know far too well, I am a bad and evil man ...

DCH

[MrMacSon]

There was a whole thread on the subject, with the participation of Roger Parvus, in which I provided a list of scholars who question their authenticity,

Cheers. Do you have a link to that specific post?

[DCHindley]

There was a whole thread on the subject, with the participation of Roger Parvus, in which I provided a list of scholars who question their authenticity,

Cheers. Do you have a link to that specific post?

I think it was here in the thread Apelles and the gospel of John.
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 006#p47866

DCH

[MrMacSon]

I think it was here in the thread Apelles and the gospel of John.
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 006#p47866

Cheers; there's a lot there about the Ignatian letters, but I don't see anything substantial about the Pauline letters.

[DCHindley]

I think it was here in the thread Apelles and the gospel of John.
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 006#p47866

Cheers; there's a lot there about the Ignatian letters, but I don't see anything substantial about the Pauline letters.

I thought your question was about where I had laid out the arguments against the authenticity of the Ignatian epistles.

Didn't Neil link to his blog where he had provided the appendix to Sturdy's book that presented all the verses in the Pauline letters that have been contested, and by whom? That list seems pretty complete.

As for Albert Schweitzer, see the Word version of the book (it's out of copyright) below.

(Schweitzer, Albert) Paul & His Interpreters, draft 2 (1912).doc

See especially chapter V (5) page 117ff

(1008 KiB) Downloaded 190 times

Any errors in detail in this version are mine alone, not Schweitzer's or his translator's.

DCH

[MrMacSon]

Didn't Neil link to his blog where he had provided the appendix to Sturdy's book that presented all the verses in the Pauline letters that have been contested, and by whom? That list seems pretty complete.

Cheers - http://vridar.org/2014/09/08/list-of-sc ... erpolated/

As for Albert Schweitzer, see the Word version of the book (it's out of copyright) below.

(Schweitzer, Albert) Paul & His Interpreters, draft 2 (1912).doc

Any errors in detail in this version are mine alone, not Schweitzer's or his translator's.

DCH

Cheers.

[TedM]

Thanks to everybody for your replies. A list of 50 different scholars and 100 suspected verses of interpolations wouldn't quite get me the answer I'm looking for even.

Here is a site that lists the top 10 interpolations of the NT, according to this bloggers view: http://yuriystasyuk.com/top-ten-deleted ... inal-text/

9 of his 10 are from the gospels. It appears to me that the fact that those were deleted from our bibles over time suggest that there is wide agreement that wording that used to be included shouldn't be there - ie clear interpolations whether intentional or not. So, I was wondering if there are any such complete verses in the Pauline epistles - so widely believed to not belong there that they actually have been REMOVED? Then I wondered more generally if there are verses that all but the most conservative scholars believe were not original, but have been retained anyway -- sort of like the idea that few scholars believe 2 Peter was written by Peter but the book is still included in the NT!

[Adam]

James Charlesworth picks out this:
"Second Corinthians 6:14-7:1 appears to be an interpolation. It contains termini technici atypical of Paul in Romans and his other nondisputed epistles. The following concepts and terminology are not found in Paul's genuine letters: righteous, light and Christ versus iniquity, darkness and belial. In fact these terms are typical of the essenes."
The passage is anti-Semitic, it could be said.
He cautions, however:
"We need to avoid the errors committed by the luminaries R. H. Charles, in his commentary on revelation, and R. Rultmann in his commentary on the Gospel of John. both tended to think the extant texts on which they were working resulted from an ecclesiastical redactor who was either stupid or did not comprehend the author's original work."
Above from his chapter in Reimund Bieringer Ed. of Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. pp. 263-64.
Also in keeping with the theme of the book, he regards as an interpolation Jn. 14:16b, "which appears to be a later addition to the Gospel of John...U. C. von Wahlde concluded that 8:31 and 10:19, which especially contain the nouns Youdaioua and Ioudaiois, were redactional expansions to the Gospel of John." P. 265.

[andrewcriddle]

IIUC most scholars regard Romans 16:25-27 as probably post-Pauline.

Andrew Criddle