neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Wed Feb 09, 2022 11:05 pm
I have just caught up with comments on Vridar and responded to your question there but given the delay in my response I think I owe you a double response so here's the second:
The first problem I have with dating the letters of Paul to the first century is that there is no independent evidence to point to such a date. The first time we hear of the letters is after Justin and in the middle of the second century.
It is around the same time -- mid second century -- that we have other writings promoting Paul suddenly emerging: the Pastorals, Acts of the Apostles, Acts of Paul and Thecla. Paul became a major figure in the sources from the second century. Before then, nothing.
If Paul had been an apostle of any renown in the first century, would we not expect that churches he wrote to would have kept more than a handful of letters from him? And would not the letters they received have been preserved in tact? But our collection of Pauline letters consists of a mere handful and some of those are clearly redactions of bits and pieces from here and there. That makes little sense to me if the letters were written by a prominent and controversial originator in the religious sphere in the first century. We would expect local traditions to have been preserved and written about and his letters preserved in their original state. But we have silence and a mixed bag of writings not making any impact until the second century.
Neil,
Thanks for answering this. I thought it was a good question, but didn't respond to it myself because I agree with ABuddhist that the seven generally accepted Pauline epistles were probably written in the first century (and I think before 70 CE) so it wasn't really directed to me. I want to reformulate the question I think ABudhhist was suggesting: If the Pastoral epistles were written at the same time as the seven generally accepted epistles, why are the seven so much better at maintaining the illusion that they are early? Why don't they also assume the developed hierarchy of the later church? (ABuddhist also says they allude to a gospel story in one place, but I'm not sure what he's referring to there. That's an argument commonly brought against 2 Peter).
I would add a further argument with regard to 1 Timothy. In chapter 4, the author has Paul giving instruction on what to do in a situation that he says will occur after his death. Richard Bauckham (of all people) has pointed out that this is an instance of the fictional Testamentary genre. The author has to make it clear to his actual audience that Paul was addressing them and their concerns and not some other issue that occurred in his own time. We find this in 2 Peter, and in Paul's farewell speech in Acts. (I would add the Gospel of Mark as well, Jesus knows he is going to die and is frequently or usually addressing the situation his followers will face after his death - but that's a bit off topic). We don't see this in the seven generally accepted letters. Paul appears to be addressing issues that were plausibly being faced by a pre-70 audience.
There's a somewhat similar issue with 2 Thessalonians. The author of the letter (whether Paul or, as I think, not) seems to be aware that there are false letters claiming to be by Paul circulating in his own time (2.2), a situation of which the seven do not seem to be aware. The author signs the letter as Paul, which does also in some of the the seven, but then draws attention to his signature as the distinguishing mark in all his letters (3.17). It's not in all his letters, and none of the seven show this concern with needing to authenticate themselves at a time when false letters of Paul are known to be circulating.
So the false letters of Paul seem to give away the actual time of their writing in a way the seven generally accepted letters do not. There are several ways I can imagine to push back on what I'm claiming. First, there are exceptions. For instance, 1 Thess. 2.14-16, which seems to presuppose a different and later situation could be an authentic part of an inauthentic (or later) letter, rather than a post-Pauline interpolation, which is what I tend to think it is. Second, these are largely arguments from silence - the question is why don't the seven have features that give away their late date that are found in the acknowledged (at least by me and a large number of scholars) false Paulines. (But then, so is the fact that the letters aren't explicitly referred to until the second century.) Third, the tell-tale signs of pseudepigraphy are not uniformly distributed throughout the acknowledged false letters - explicitly addressing the false situation is in 1 Timothy but not in others; the need to authenticate the letter at a time when pseudepigraphic letters were in circulation is in 2 Thess. but not in others. So we can imagine that particular telltale signs of pseudepigraphy or a late date might not be present in late or pseudepigraphic letters. But I think the question remains of why the seven do a much better job of at least appearing early than the pseudepigraphs.
I'm also a bit skeptical about some of the arguments in your last paragraph. Should we necessarily suppose that the churches would have preserved more letter of Paul? I seriously doubt that the brothers and sisters to whom Paul wrote were aware that the letters he wrote them would later be accepted as scripture and treated them as such. Also, the letters that have survived, except for Philemon, are unusually long for ancient letters. They address important topics. I can't remember who posed this first, but someone asked: if we discovered Paul's grocery list, would we count it as scripture? Of course, I think an early church would not have made an effort to preserve Paul's grocery list if they had it. Maybe Philemon is more representative of what most of Paul's letters were like than are the others among the seven and Philemon was preserved mostly by accident while the other short and unimportant letters perished.
Also, why do you suppose the letters of Paul would have been preserved intact if they were authentic. I think changes in the course of transmission are to be expected. People were making changes to the gospels both before and after the Four became generally accepted by the great church. Why should we expect Paul's letters, if authentic, to have escaped this?
Best,
Ken
Ok - one other point that occurs to me - there's the argument about the difference between the Pastorals and the epistles to churches. One of the difficulties with passing off a forged epistle as an authentic one is that people tend to be suspicious of letters they've never heard of before but have allegedly been around for a long time. 3 Corinthians and Laodiceans did not make it into the canon. One of the reasons scholars have suggested that the Pastoral epistles are addressed to pastors (Timothy and Titus) was to provide a cover story for why no one had heard of them before if they had been around for a long time. The reason was that they were private letters addressed to individuals, not letters addressed to churches meant to be read aloud to congregation. They had only recently become public knowledge when discovered among Timothy and Titus's private papers and are only now being published.