We wouldn't need hostile corroboration to justify an acceptance of the traditional New Testament authorship attributions. The evidence we have from Christian sources is credible. It's early, widespread, and comes from sources who were in a position to know the relevant issues sufficiently well.
Disciples of the apostles lived into the second half of the second century. When Polycarp visited Rome in the middle of the second century to discuss some issues of controversy with the Roman bishop Anicetus, for example, he surely would have interacted with the beliefs of the Roman Christians on issues of New Testament authorship. We have some idea of how those documents were used at that time in Roman church services, for example, from sources like Justin Martyr. Would documents like the gospels and the letters of Paul have been used without any reference to their authorship? When controversial issues arose, like the ones Polycarp discussed with Anicetus, New Testament documents would have been cited in the process. The concept that somebody like Polycarp could live for several decades as a Christian and travel and involve himself in teaching and controversies, as he did, yet have little effect on the authorship attributions of his day, is untenable.
When there were significant disputes over New Testament authorship, such as who wrote Hebrews or whether Peter wrote 2 Peter, those disputes were explicitly and widely acknowledged. Even insignificant disputes, such as those involving the absurd claim that the heretic Cerinthus wrote the gospel of John (a view advocated by only a small minority), left traces in the historical record. For these and other reasons, which I outline here, we have good reason to trust the New Testament authorship attributions of the early Christians.
And just as we should question the motives of the early Christians who commented on such issues, we should question the motives of non-Christian sources as well. It's not as if a Trypho, a Celsus, or a Porphyry is sure to have no bad motives, and to be highly knowledgeable of the subjects he discusses, because he's a non-Christian. We wouldn't conclude that a New Testament authorship attribution must be wrong just because an opponent of Christianity suggested that it was. But the testimony of non-Christian sources is one line of evidence among others. It has some significance.
We know that the early enemies of Christianity were concerned about the subject. The early Christians made much of the significance of eyewitness testimony, for instance, as did the surrounding culture of their day, and Porphyry's efforts in arguing against the traditional authorship attribution of the book of Daniel are a reflection of what we could see with the New Testament documents. But we don't. One of the most significant indications of how the early opponents of Christianity viewed the authorship attributions of the New Testament documents is the lack of interaction with arguments against those attributions. The early Christians widely interacted with Porphyry's arguments against Daniel, and they widely discussed disagreements on issues like who wrote Hebrews and whether the apostle John wrote Revelation. As the historian Paul Maier notes, Dionysius of Alexandria's arguments against Johannine authorship of Revelation are reminiscent of "a good, critical scholar", and the modern scholars who reject Johannine authorship do so "for the very reasons advanced by Dionysius" (Eusebius - The Church History [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1999], p. 285). The people of that time didn't have our level of scholarship, much as we don't have the level of scholarship that will exist a hundred or a thousand years from now, but they weren't so ignorant as to be deceived by a long series of New Testament forgeries that appeared thirty, fifty, or eighty years after the purported authors had died. And if the early Christians had been so undiscerning, at least their enemies would have had reason to exercise more discernment.
Even when a book's authorship attribution was widely accepted, there was an awareness that the attribution could be incorrect. Origen repeatedly affirms the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, yet he's aware of the possibility that Celsus and other critics of Christianity might deny it (Against Celsus, 4:42). When Origen comments elsewhere that the gospels are "unquestionable in the church" (cited in Eusebius, Church History, 6:25:4), he isn't referring to ignorance of other possibilities or a refusal to consider counterarguments. He's referring to a consensus that was reached by a community of people who were concerned with evidence and had repeatedly shown a willingness to question other books.
Augustine refers to how critics of the gospels in his day would "assert that the disciples claimed more [in the gospels] for their Master than He really was" (The Harmony Of The Gospels, 1:7:11; see also 1:16:24), and would object that Jesus didn't leave any writings Himself, but there seems to have been widespread acceptance of the attribution of the gospels to Jesus' disciples (Matthew and John) and their followers (Mark and Luke). These critics weren't objecting to the authorship attributions, but were objecting on other grounds instead. Other sources suggest that Augustine's assessment was accurate.
Below are some comments Charles McIlvaine wrote on this subject in the nineteenth century. His focus is on the gospels and Acts, not the entirety of the New Testament, and I don't agree with every comment he makes. He's discussing enemies of Christianity such as Celsus and Porphyry, so he doesn't mention some less hostile sources who could be included. For example, heretical groups like the Ebionites often accepted the authorship attributions of New Testament documents they opposed, even though arguing against those attributions, if that seemed plausible to them, would have been more effective. The historian Philip Schaff gives another example:
"These heretical testimonies [in support of the fourth gospel] are almost decisive by themselves. The Gnostics would rather have rejected the fourth Gospel altogether, as Marcion actually did, from doctrinal objection. They certainly would not have received it from the Catholic church, as little as the church would have received it from the Gnostics. The concurrent reception of the Gospel by both at so early a date is conclusive evidence of its genuineness. 'The Gnostics of that date,' says Dr. Abbot, 'received it because they could not help it. They would not have admitted the authority of a book which could be reconciled with their doctrines only by the most forced interpretation, if they could have destroyed its authority by denying its genuineness. Its genuineness could then be easily ascertained. Ephesus was one of the principal cities of the Eastern world, the centre of extensive commerce, the metropolis of Asia Minor. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were living who had known the apostle John. The question whether he, the beloved disciple, had committed to writing his recollections of his Master’s life and teaching, was one of the greatest interest. The fact of the reception of the fourth Gospel as his work at so early a date, by parties so violently opposed to each other, proves that the evidence of its genuineness was decisive. This argument is further confirmed by the use of the Gospel by the opposing parties in the later Montanistic controversy, and in the disputes about the time of celebrating Easter.'" (History Of The Christian Church, 1:12:83)
Charles McIlvaine's focus, below, is on the most hostile enemies of Christianity, not individuals who considered themselves Christian. But we should keep groups like the Ebionites and the Gnostics in mind, since much the same can be said about them.
I've read all of the extant fragments of Celsus, but I haven't read all of the relevant fragments by or about the other sources McIlvaine discusses. (For those who have read some of these fragments in the works of R. Joseph Hoffmann, see here for a discussion of some of the problems with relying on his material.) I can't affirm everything McIlvaine writes below. I'm quoting him because he's generally credible, he makes some good points, and I agree with the general thrust of his comments. He writes:
It may be said, with some appearance of a plausible objection to the testimony hitherto produced, that it is all derived, either from the devoted friends of the gospel, or else from those who professed to be its disciples. Is there no testimony from enemies? The books of the New Testament were widely circulated; christian advocates, in their controversies with the Heathen, freely appealed to them; Heathens, in their works of attack and defence, must have spoken of them. In what light did they regard them? Did they ascribe them to their reputed authors, or question their authenticity? Now we do not grant that the testimony already produced is justly liable to the least disparagement on account of its having been derived exclusively from the friends of Christ. That certain ancients believed the facts contained in Caesar's Commentaries has never been supposed to diminish the value of their testimony to the authenticity of that work. We will take occasion, by and by, to show that the very fact that an early witness to the New Testament history was not an enemy, but a friend, of the gospel, and had become a friend from having been once an enemy, is just the ingredient in his testimony that gives it peculiar conclusiveness. Still, however, we are under no temptation to undervalue the importance of an appeal to the opinions of adversaries. Let us inquire of enemies as well as friends -- and first of Julian.
Julian, the emperor, united intelligence, learning, and power, with a persecuting zeal, in a resolute effort to root out christianity. In the year 361, he composed a work against its claims. We may be well assured that if any thing could have been said against the authenticity of its books, he would have used it. His work is not extant; but from long extracts, found in the answer by Cyril, a few tears after, as well as from the statements of his opinions and arguments by this writer, it is unquestionable that Julian bore witness to the authenticity of the four Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles. He concedes, and argues from, their early date; quotes them by name as the genuine works of their reputed authors; proceeds upon the supposition, as a thing undeniable, that they were the only historical books which Christians received as canonical -- the only authentic narratives of Christ and his apostles, and of the doctrine they delivered. He has also quoted, or plainly referred to, the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians, and nowhere insinuates that the authenticity of any portion of the New Testament could reasonably be questioned. Let us ascend a little higher.
Hierocles, president of Bithynia, and a learned man, of about the year 303, united, with a cruel persecution of Christians, the publication of a book against christianity, in which, instead of issuing even the least suspicion that the New Testament was not written by those to whom its several parts were ascribed, he confines his effort to the hunt of internal flaws and contradictions. Besides this tacit acknowledgment, his work, or the extracts of it that remain, refer to, at least, six out of the eight writers of the books of the New Testament. Let us ascend still higher.
Porphyry, universally allowed to have been the most severe and formidable adversary, in all primitive antiquity, wrote, about the year 270, a work against christianity. It is evident that he was well acquainted with the New Testament. In the little that has been preserved of his writings, there are plain references to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Galatians. Speaking of Christians, he calls Matthew their evangelist. "He possessed every advantage which natural abilities or political situation could afford, to discover whether the New Testament was a genuine work of the apostles and evangelists, or whether it was imposed upon the world after the decease of its pretended authors. But no trace of this suspicion is any where to be found; nor did it ever occur to Porphyry to suppose that it was spurious." How well this ingenious writer understood the value of an argument against the authenticity of a book of scripture, and how greedily he would have enlisted it in his war against christianity, could he have found such a weapon, is evident from his well known effort to escape the prophetic inspiration of the book of Daniel, by denying that it was written in the times of that prophet. We may ascend still higher.
Celsus, esteemed a man of learning among the ancients, and a wonderful philosopher among modern infidels, wrote a laboured argument against the Christians. He flourished in the year 176, or about seventy-six years after the death of St. John. None can accuse him of a want of zeal to ruin christianity. None can complain against his testimony, as deficient in antiquity. An industrious, ingenious, learned, adversary of that age, must have known whatever was suspicious in the authorship of the New Testament writings. His book entitled "The True Word," is unhappily lost, but in the answer, composed by Origen, the extracts from it are so large that it is difficult to find of any ancient book, not extant, more extensive remains. The author quotes, from the Gospels, such a variety of particulars, even in these fragments, that the enumeration would prove almost an abridgement of the Gospel narrative. Origen has noticed in them about eighty quotations from the books of the New Testament, or references to them. Among these there is abundant evidence that Celsus was acquainted with the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John. Several of Paul's Epistles are alluded to. His whole argument proceeds upon the concession that the christian scriptures were the works of the authors to whom they were ascribed. Such a thing as a suspicion, to the contrary, is not breathed; and yet no man ever wrote against christianity with greater virulence. Hence it appears, "by the testimony of one of the most malicious adversaries the christian religion ever had, and who was also a man of considerable parts and learning, that the writings of the evangelists were extant in his time, which was the next century to that in which the apostles lived; and that those accounts were written by Christ's own disciples, and, consequently, in the very age in which the facts there related, were done, and when, therefore, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have convicted them of falsehood, if they had not been true." "Who can forbear (says the devout Doddridge) adoring the depth of divine wisdom, in laying up such a firm foundation of our faith in the gospel history, in the writings of one who was so inveterate an enemy to it, and so indefatigable in his attempts to overthrow it." Who, I will add, can help the acknowledgment that in Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, and Julian, all of them learned controversialists, as well as devoted opponents and persecutors of Christians, extending their testimony, from the seventieth year after the last of the apostles, to the year of our Lord 361 -- every reasonable demand for the testimony of enemies is fully met, and a gracious Providence has perfected the external evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament?
Some of Plato’s epistles were universally regarded as authentic in antiquity, but this doesn’t prevent modern critical scholarship from questioning it. And this isn’t nearly the problem that questioning canonical texts is. Why? Because few people hold to the authenticity of Plato’s epistles as some sort of dogmatic cherished belief. Few are threatened by the spurious nature of some of Plato’s letters. So free inquiry can occur. People are free to be open minded. How open minded are you about the canonical texts?
ReplyDeleteThe authenticity of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was never questioned in antiquity. This again does not prevent modern critical scholars from rejecting it as spurious, which they do for good reasons. See for instance Goodspeed here:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/goodspeed/ch14.html
Reason 21 seems to me to completely put this question to bed. I'll quote that one reasone here:
"21. Not only are all nine letters used in Ephesians, but the remarkable thing is that they fully supply all the material that it contains. They satisfy it. The writer of Ephesians has used them and nothing else, except a little of Luke-Acts and some Septuagint texts. But that Paul's knowledge of his own mind should have been confined to what he had said in the nine letters which are all that we possess from him is out of the question. Paul had an extraordinarily fertile and active mind, and he had much more to say than is preserved in the hundred pages of the nine letters. The only possible explanation of the fact is that the writer of Ephesians knows the mind of Paul only through these nine letters; he has no independent access to it. This is a point that has never been dealt with by the adherents of the Pauline authorship, to which, of course, it is fatal. It requires no corroboration from the twenty points, small and great, listed above. It reveals the author of Ephesians as dependent for his knowledge of the mind of Paul upon the nine letters which we know and proves beyond all doubt that he was not Paul."
Apparently Goodspeed elsewhere lists in columns everything in Ephesians and exactly which section in Romans the text is coming from, which section in Colossians the text is coming from, etc. Those texts not from any other NT text are right out of the Septuagint. This is simply impossible for someone that just sits down to right an occasional letter. Ephesians is a Pauline pastiche that is intended as an intro to the other Pauline texts. The failure of anybody, Christian or non-Christian, to recognize these facts centuries ago, changes nothing about the facts.
The readers should know that Jon Curry has repeatedly left past discussions on authorship issues without addressing what's been written in response to his assertions. See the following thread for some examples of the unreasonable claims he's made in previous discussions about authorship issues:
ReplyDeletehttp://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/where-jon-currys-honesty-has-led-him.html
In this thread, he writes:
"Some of Plato’s epistles were universally regarded as authentic in antiquity, but this doesn’t prevent modern critical scholarship from questioning it."
You aren't telling us which writings of Plato you have in view, how they're comparable to the New Testament documents, and why you conclude that they're inauthentic.
And the issue isn't whether "modern critical scholarship questions it". I didn't suggest that hostile corroboration of New Testament authorship prevents modern scholars from questioning the authorship of the documents.
You write:
"And this isn’t nearly the problem that questioning canonical texts is. Why? Because few people hold to the authenticity of Plato’s epistles as some sort of dogmatic cherished belief. Few are threatened by the spurious nature of some of Plato’s letters."
The primary issue in this thread is hostile corroboration. Men like Celsus and Julian the Apostate didn't have a "dogmatic cherished belief" in the traditional authorship attributions of books like the gospels and Acts.
Even among Christians, the suggestion that they had a "dogmatic cherished belief" in something like the Johannine authorship of the fourth gospel doesn't explain how belief in Johannine authorship originated. As I explained to you in one of the many previous threads that you left, any "dogmatic cherished belief" on such an issue would have to interact with contrary data. An employee's desire for a larger paycheck has to interact with that employee's other desires, such as a desire to know how much money he actually has and a desire to maintain a good reputation, as well as the desires of an employer and a bank that don't want to give him more money. A desire to make $500 a week more than he actually does isn't likely to be sufficient to convince him, his family, etc. that he does make that additional $500. When he goes to the bank, the teller isn't going to accommodate his desire.
Similarly, any desire that some early Christians may have had for Johannine authorship of the fourth gospel would have to interact with previous claims made about the document's origins, the contemporaries of John who were still alive, heretical groups that had an interest in diminishing the perceived authority of the document, non-Christian sources who had no desire to attribute the document to John, etc.
As I've explained to you before, we have many examples of the early Christians' willingness to question the authorship attributions of books that were highly regarded (Hebrews, Revelation, etc.). The reason why only the earliest documents were considered for canonicity was because there was an interest in apostolic documents. People thought highly of the writings of men like Justin Martyr and Augustine, but they didn't therefore claim that such documents were scripture or had apostolic approval. Telling us that the early Christians might have had a "dogmatic cherished belief" doesn't give us any reason to believe that it was so, doesn't interact with the other factors involved (like the ones I've mentioned in this post), and doesn't refute anything I wrote at the beginning of this thread.
You write:
"Apparently Goodspeed elsewhere lists in columns everything in Ephesians and exactly which section in Romans the text is coming from, which section in Colossians the text is coming from, etc. Those texts not from any other NT text are right out of the Septuagint."
First of all, how do you supposedly know that these other documents were written prior to Ephesians? You don't.
Secondly, you've argued in the past (see the link at the beginning of this post, for example) that documents like Colossians have "dead give away" signs that they're forgeries. Yet, here you're quoting with approval Goodspeed's argument that assumes the authenticity of such documents.
Third, quoting Goodspeed's assertion that nine other Pauline letters "fully supply" the material in Ephesians isn't enough. Why should we accept that assertion? The vocabulary isn't identical. And general conceptual similarities wouldn't be sufficient evidence that Paul wasn't the author. There would be no need for Paul to demonstrate the "fertile mind" Goodspeed refers to in every letter he writes, especially given the evidence we have that Ephesians was intended as a circular letter meant to address issues of general interest. And when Ephesians expands upon concepts seen elsewhere, such as the expanded discussion of marriage in Ephesians 5 (more detail than in Colossians), why should we not see such expansion as an illustration of Paul's "fertile mind"? Goodspeed claims that Ephesians doesn't reflect Paul's "fertile mind", yet elsewhere in that article you've cited he argues against Pauline authorship on the basis that Ephesians is too different from other Pauline letters.
Fourth, you need to address how the early sources (Christian and non-Christian) would have been universally mistaken about the authorship. As I discuss in one of the articles linked at the beginning of this thread, pseudonymity was rejected by the early church. They thought that Ephesians was Pauline in the sense of having been authored by Paul. And the Ephesian church survived and was prominent well past Paul's lifetime. In the early second century, Ignatius of Antioch writes to the church in Ephesus in a manner that imitates and alludes to Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Ignatius was familiar with Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and he expected the Ephesian church to recognize his allusions to that letter. (See Clayton N. Jefford, The Apostolic Fathers And The New Testament [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006], pp. 41-42, 138-139.) These were contemporaries of the apostles, a bishop of a church in contact with Paul (Antioch) writing to the Pauline church of Ephesus. They were in a position to be well informed about whether Paul wrote the document we're discussing. Similarly, Polycarp, a contemporary and disciple of the apostles who was in contact with multiple Pauline churches, cites Ephesians as scripture (Letter To The Philippians, 12). In other words, we know that Ephesians was used and highly regarded early on, during the time of the contemporaries of the apostles, and among the Ephesians themselves. It's unlikely that these early sources were using Ephesians as a document they considered pseudonymous, since there are no traces of such a view in the sources who lived just after that time and, instead, we see just the opposite (opposition to pseudonymity and widespread belief that Paul wrote the document).
For those who are interested, J.P. Holding's article on Ephesian authorship responds to the article Jon is citing:
http://www.tektonics.org/af/ephauth.html
You tell us that Goodspeed's point 21 "completely puts this question to bed". You also approvingly quote Goodspeed's reference to how his point 21 puts this issue "beyond all doubt". So, you apparently want us to believe that the lack of unique material in Ephesians is so significant as to "completely put this question to bed" and move us "beyond all doubt". Would you explain how a lack of unique material in a circular letter intended for a general audience supposedly outweighs the universal testimony of the relevant external sources, including the Ephesian church itself and people in contact with it?
Also, would you tell us which traditional authorship attributions for the New Testament you accept? In the past, you've suggested that even documents like 1 Corinthians and Philemon (widely accepted as authentic even by liberal scholars) have qualities that are a "dead give away" of forgery. I think that it would be helpful to the readers to see just how radical your views are. Or have you changed your mind again?
"And this isn’t nearly the problem that questioning canonical texts is. Why? Because few people hold to the authenticity of Plato’s epistles as some sort of dogmatic cherished belief. Few are threatened by the spurious nature of some of Plato’s letters.So free inquiry can occur. People are free to be open minded. How open minded are you about the canonical texts?
ReplyDeleteThis objection, if true, cuts both ways.
Many "modern text critics" and apostates like Mr. Curry here hold to the inauthenticity of NT documents as a dogmatic, cherished beliefs. They are threatened by the authentic nature of the material, therefore, they shut down "free inquiry."
I'd also add that if Mr. Curry would bother to crack a few commentaries and survey texts on the NT, he'd find that the majority of liberals and apostates will not bother to interact with conservative scholarship. I hate to sound offensive, but its rather incestuous to look through their indexes, footnotes and bibliographies. Conservative indexes &tc however, contain a plethora of references to the contrary position, so, the side that is truly "open minded" here is not Mr. Curry's.
I'd add that Harold Hoehner, in his standard commentary on the Greek text of Ephesians, has an exhaustive discussion of authorship. Has Jon ever bothered to work through Hoehner's meticulous and detailed defense of Pauline authorship?
ReplyDeleteYou aren't telling us which writings of Plato you have in view, how they're comparable to the New Testament documents, and why you conclude that they're inauthentic.
ReplyDeleteShall I haul out the grass to prove to you that it is green? Just do any web search on the authenticity of Plato's writings. Here's one that pops up for me:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2003/2003-01-28.html
Notice that this text was never questioned until 1836 when Schleiermacher called it into question. The issue isn't settled even today, but it's not settled by the fact that it was never doubted in antiquity.
A couple of other exmaples come to my mind now in response to your recent post. You appeal to Ignatius to show that Ephesians is authentic. But the Ignatian epistles are themselves highly dubious, first called into question by none other than John Calvin and the Reformers for many reasons, including their obvious monarchichal bishop propoganda, which represents a later stage of Christianity. Will you be siding with the Catholics and telling John Calvin he's out of line because these were never questioned before?
These letters come in multiple lengths, which already tells you that Christians are feeling free to forge whatever they see fit and pass it off as authentic from Ignatius, including a letter to the Virgin Mary. Is that authentic? In fact we have two traditions about Ignatius' martyrdom. A later one indicates that he was simply killed in Antioch by Roman soldiers. Seems pretty reasonable. But instead you must subcribe to this other tradition which claims that he was marched from Antioch to Rome. Why? We don't know, and it seems highly unusual. Unless of course this is simply to provide a fictive framework for these letters that he supposedly writes to churches that he passes along the way. This just seems fake, which is why Calvin rejected all of them.
Then there's the Pseudo Isodorian Decretals, which again were never questioned until the Reformation. When they were seriously challenged by the Reformers defense of them was hopeless. Should we really be surprised if other texts, like the gospels, whose incorrect attributions are perhaps not as transparent, should be accepted universally?
It seems that if you are consistent you would have responded to the Reformers and say "Bishops were concerned about authorship issues. Bishops discussed arguments about how some texts were dubious. Questions about authorship would have come up and been discussed." And I'd say "Well la-dee-freaking-da." Who cares? That means nothing.
With regards to Goodspeed's table, I haven't seen it myself, so I couldn't comment on the differences in the wording. The point is not to argue the merits of the authenticity of Ephesians, but to show that your logic is flawed. If Goodspeed is right, then Ephesians is a forgery, and it doesn't matter that nobody recognized this, whether Christian or not.
Though I don't know why you're having difficulty seeing that if in fact Goodspeed is right, and it can be shown that everything in Ephesians either closely matches another NT text or is taken from the Spetuagint, this shows that in fact it is a Pauline pastiche and not an occasional letter that he just sat down and wrote. For him to just sit down and write a document that maps to other texts in this way would simply be impossible. It would be like having your DNA match somebody else. Why would it just all fall into place and match so perfectly? That's just a coincidence? Or Paul for some reason thinks he needs to just copy verbatum things he's written in other letters? The explanation that this is a Pauline pastiche intended as an intro to the rest of the Pauline corpus (as Goodspeed explains in the article I linked to) just makes too much sense.
My point regarding dogmatic cherished beliefs is not that early critics of Christianity had a dogmatic cherished belief in authenticity (why would you think this is my view) but that you and modern conservative Christians do. You don't get too excited about challenges to the authenticity of Plato's works or the Pseudo Isodorian Decretals because in those cases you have no apologetic agenda in favor of them because dogmatism is not involved. It's unfortunate, because this stifles free inquiry. I think if you were to discuss Caliph Uthman's revision to the Quran and whether or not it is original to Mohamed, you'd be able to do it in an open minded way because you have no theological committment to the view that it is authentic to Mohamed.
Even among Christians, the suggestion that they had a "dogmatic cherished belief" in something like the Johannine authorship of the fourth gospel doesn't explain how belief in Johannine authorship originated.
Why would you think that my statement about dogmatic cherished beliefs is intended to explain how belief in Johannine authorship originated?
With regards to my views on Pauline authorship, I'd be happy to discuss it, but this means completely shifting topics, and I don't want to discuss all of these different issues at one time. It's distracting and unhelpful to anybody else that may want to read. It sort of contributes to the "fog machine" that I know you're so fond of. Do you want to continue discussing my main points here (universal attribution, Christian or not, proves little to nothing, and your double standard in defending universal attribution in the case of your cherished dogmatic views but not so much in other cases (Plato, Pseudo Isodores, etc). I'm sure there are other examples I could dig up.) These are my main points, and I think if you want to get that precious last word so that you can later talk about how I "left the discussion" you're going to have to stick with this stuff. So I don't anticipate we'll be talking about my view on Pauline authorship here. But it's your call.
ymcyaMany "modern text critics" and apostates like Mr. Curry here hold to the inauthenticity of NT documents as a dogmatic, cherished beliefs. They are threatened by the authentic nature of the material, therefore, they shut down "free inquiry."
ReplyDeleteWhy would I care if for instance Paul really wrote Ephesians? How does this make any difference in my life? Why would this be a dogmatic cherished belief for me? If Paul didn't write it though, this has serious consequences on your views. The logical dominoes start to tumble.
I'd also add that if Mr. Curry would bother to crack a few commentaries and survey texts on the NT, he'd find that the majority of liberals and apostates will not bother to interact with conservative scholarship.
Far be it from me to defend the state of modern critical NT scholarship, with its proto-feminist interpretations and “Father-Mother” readings in the NRSV. “Jesus really existed and he was anti-globalization, anti-American, and pro-choice just like me and all my liberal buddies.” I think this is perhaps a point upon which we can both agree, Gene.
Another example is the books of Moses. Jason mentions that they were questioned by early Christian critics, but how many centuries had passed before that happened?
ReplyDeleteFor some reason for Christians this is one of those dogmatic cherished views, but frankly I don't see why it has to be. Some Christians think if it's not written by Moses this would make Jesus a liar, but I don't see that. He's not giving a treatise on authorship when he refers to the books of Moses. He's just referring to them as they are commonly understood. They don't themselves claim to be written by Moses. Moses is just a prominent character within them, so tradition ended up ascribing them to him, but if they were written by him why do they list Edomite Kings that hadn't yet existed in his day, why does it refer to Moses as a figure of the past (from that day to this, there's never been a prophet like Moses) why does it refer to events in Moses life and explain that they happened before the Canannites were expelled (something that hadn't happened in his day). Would you expect Jesus to explain all of these things before referring to them?
It would kind of be like if I believed that Francis Bacon really wrote Hamlet. In typical conversation I'm not going to say "As Francis Bacon said, 'To thine own self be true'". I'm not going to refer to my private knowledge because everyone would just be confused. "I thought that was Shakespear's Hamlet?" they'd say. So I don't see this as a big deal.
Jon Curry writes:
ReplyDelete"Notice that this text was never questioned until 1836 when Schleiermacher called it into question. The issue isn't settled even today, but it's not settled by the fact that it was never doubted in antiquity."
Again, I haven't argued that "never having been doubted in antiquity" is something that "settles" authorship issues in the sense of preventing any scholars from questioning a work's authorship. My original post in this thread refers to hostile corroboration of New Testament authorship as "one line of evidence among others". I've repeatedly referred to how authorship judgments are made by means of analyzing both internal and external evidence. I haven't argued that agreement among ancient external sources "settles" the issue in terms of evidence, much less in terms of bringing about agreement among all scholars of modern times.
You write:
"A couple of other exmaples come to my mind now in response to your recent post. You appeal to Ignatius to show that Ephesians is authentic. But the Ignatian epistles are themselves highly dubious, first called into question by none other than John Calvin and the Reformers for many reasons, including their obvious monarchichal bishop propoganda, which represents a later stage of Christianity. Will you be siding with the Catholics and telling John Calvin he's out of line because these were never questioned before?"
If you weren't so ignorant of the subject, you would know that Ignatius' letters reflect a variety of views of church government. He advocates a monarchical episcopate at times, but he also reflects less developed forms of church government in other contexts. He probably refrains from discussing the monarchical episcopate in his letter to the Romans, and refrains from mentioning the bishop of Rome by name, because a monarchical episcopate hadn't developed in Rome yet. Nothing in his letters requires a date past the early second century.
And Roman Catholics aren't the only ones who have defended the authenticity of the letters. They were defended by many sources prior to the Reformation and many Protestant sources since. They're accepted by the consensus of modern scholarship. Why would you single out the Catholics of Calvin's day?
You write:
"These letters come in multiple lengths, which already tells you that Christians are feeling free to forge whatever they see fit and pass it off as authentic from Ignatius, including a letter to the Virgin Mary."
You keep repeating arguments already refuted. As I explained to you in one of our previous discussions that you left, the fact that "Christians are feeling free to forge" tells us something about those Christians, but it doesn't tell us the same thing about the Christians who aren't doing the forging. Just as some people forged documents in ancient times, some people forge documents today. I addressed this issue in depth in a previous thread that you left:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/healthy-and-unhealthy-skepticism.html
You write:
"In fact we have two traditions about Ignatius' martyrdom. A later one indicates that he was simply killed in Antioch by Roman soldiers. Seems pretty reasonable. But instead you must subcribe to this other tradition which claims that he was marched from Antioch to Rome. Why? We don't know, and it seems highly unusual."
You say "we don't know". Have you researched the issue? If you had, you would know that historians have reasons for accepting one report over another, for accepting one text of a document rather than another, etc. with regard to Ignatius, just as they do with other historical figures. The fact that multiple reports or multiple texts exist doesn't prevent us from discerning the true and the false.
You write:
"Then there's the Pseudo Isodorian Decretals, which again were never questioned until the Reformation."
That's false, and you've been corrected on this issue before. I gave you citations of multiple sources that refer to people who questioned the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals prior to the Reformation. You keep repeating arguments already refuted.
And if you want us to think of a New Testament document in a manner similar to how we think of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, then you need to argue for such a parallel. A vague suggestion of a parallel isn't enough.
You write:
"With regards to Goodspeed's table, I haven't seen it myself, so I couldn't comment on the differences in the wording."
If you had read much of the relevant literature on Ephesians, you would know what sort of linguistic similarities are involved. But you don't know much about the subject.
You write:
"The point is not to argue the merits of the authenticity of Ephesians, but to show that your logic is flawed."
You and Goodspeed commented on the authenticity of Ephesians. You used the term "completely put this question to bed". Goodspeed used the phrase "beyond all doubt". Now you tell us that you don't want to "argue the merits of the authenticity of Ephesians". You should have thought of that earlier.
You write:
"If Goodspeed is right, then Ephesians is a forgery, and it doesn't matter that nobody recognized this, whether Christian or not."
Since your argument depends on "If Goodspeed is right", then it's relevant for me and others to point out that Goodspeed is wrong.
And where have I denied that external testimony can be wrong? I haven't.
You write:
"Or Paul for some reason thinks he needs to just copy verbatum things he's written in other letters?"
Ephesians doesn't "copy verbatim" what's in other Pauline letters. Again, if you had done much research, instead of just briefly looking for sources online that would support your desired conclusion, you might know that. See the discussion in D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo, An Introduction To The New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005) and the Ephesians commentaries by Peter O'Brien and Harold Hoehner, for example.
You write:
"Why would you think that my statement about dogmatic cherished beliefs is intended to explain how belief in Johannine authorship originated?"
You were responding to an article in which I was addressing what ancient sources believed about authorship. It's therefore relevant for me to respond to you by pointing out that your reference to "dogmatic cherished beliefs" doesn't explain what I was addressing.
You write:
"With regards to my views on Pauline authorship, I'd be happy to discuss it, but this means completely shifting topics, and I don't want to discuss all of these different issues at one time. It's distracting and unhelpful to anybody else that may want to read. It sort of contributes to the 'fog machine' that I know you're so fond of."
If you don't want to "shift topics", then why did you respond to my post about what ancient sources believed concerning authorship issues by discussing the alleged "dogmatic cherished beliefs" of modern sources? If you can discuss how modern people interact with the evidence, then why is it unacceptable for me to discuss how you interact with the evidence?
You write:
"universal attribution, Christian or not, proves little to nothing"
In what sense? In the sense of possibly being wrong? Since the apparent implications of internal evidence can be wrong as well, should we conclude that internal evidence, like what you've cited for Ephesians, "proves little or nothing"? The fact that external sources can be wrong doesn't change the fact that they're some of the best evidence we have for making historical judgments. They don't have to "prove" something, in the sense of always putting an issue at the level of certainty by themselves, in order to be significant. The external testimony for Ephesians doesn't have to give us certainty by itself in order to be highly significant.
You write:
"and your double standard in defending universal attribution in the case of your cherished dogmatic views but not so much in other cases (Plato, Pseudo Isodores, etc)."
I've discussed that issue in one of the previous threads you left. I documented that the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals were not universally accepted, and I explained why they're different from the New Testament documents in other contexts. You keep ignoring large portions of the relevant evidence, and you keep ignoring what people have written in response to you in the past.
You write:
"Why would I care if for instance Paul really wrote Ephesians? How does this make any difference in my life?"
It would add weight to your assertions about widespread acceptance of forgeries. It would also further your arguments about early Christian eschatology. As I've documented in our previous discussions, Ephesians is inconsistent with your claims about what the early Christians believed concerning Jesus' second coming.
You write:
"Another example is the books of Moses. Jason mentions that they were questioned by early Christian critics, but how many centuries had passed before that happened?"
How does the passing of time help your argument? If a document like Ephesians wasn't written until something like thirty or forty years after Paul's death, then we would expect people living near that time to be aware of such a fact more easily than people living a thousand years later.
Again, I haven't argued that "never having been doubted in antiquity" is something that "settles" authorship issues in the sense of preventing any scholars from questioning a work's authorship.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not saying that this is your argument either. You're arguing that there was widespread acceptance of these books. Polycarp must have talked about these issues (though we have no evidence of this) Polycarp must have been satisfied that they were properly attributed (though we have no evidence of this) and so we should be too. Celsus didn't dispute authorship attributions (though there's no real reason to think he was even aware of the authorship attributions) so we should accept them too.
I'm saying absolutely not. None of that matters much, if at all. I can produce texts that were universally accepted, and this doesn't settle the issue. The vast majority of critical scholars may be right. Ephesians may be a forgery. Plato's writings may be in some cases inauthentic, despite universal acceptance in antiquity. These issues need to be settled on the merits not on this argument "They believed it way back when, so we should too."
I haven't argued that agreement among ancient external sources "settles" the issue in terms of evidence, much less in terms of bringing about agreement among all scholars of modern times.
Then why do you quote Schaff as follows?
"The fact of the reception of the fourth Gospel as his work at so early a date, by parties so violently opposed to each other, proves that the evidence of its genuineness was decisive. "
This is just absurd. Decisive? It's not remotely decisive
If you weren't so ignorant of the subject, you would know that Ignatius' letters reflect a variety of views of church government. He advocates a monarchical episcopate at times, but he also reflects less developed forms of church government in other contexts.
This is somehow supposed to make these texts authentic? In six of his supposedly authentic letters no one would dare so much as pass gas without the bishops approval. Regard the bishop as "the Lord himself", "give you heed to the bishop, that God also may give heed to you", "Do nothing without the bishop" etc. Yet to the Romans, where prayers from the whole Christian community are requested, not one word is said about the bishop. And in fact, since supposedly Ignatius thinks the whole church revolves around the bishop you'd think he'd be very concerned about his replacement in Antioch, but in fact he writes this in his Epistle to the Romans:
"Remember in your prayers the church which is in Syria, which has God for its shepherd in my stead. Jesus Christ alone shall be its bishop -- He and your love." (Rom.9:1)
What?? In all the other letters the Bishop is as God. He's the center of everything. Yet in Romans, not only does Ignatius say nothing about heeding the Bishop, he goes so far as to say that he's not even concerned about his replacement in Antioch. This makes him authentic in your view? Why wouldn't these facts rather make you suspicious that Romans has to be written by someone other than the person that wrote the other six letters?
You say that the consensus of modern scholarship "accepts them". Accepts which? The long versions, short ones? They can't all be genuine. And with all the interpolations in the supposed genuine ones, how are we to know what is what? And did you know that the consensus of biologists is that man and apes have a common ancestor, that the consensus of astrophysicists is that the universe is billions of years old, and that the consensus of geologists is that there was no world wide flood. Do these nose counts prove anything, or should we instead talk about arguments?
the fact that "Christians are feeling free to forge" tells us something about those Christians, but it doesn't tell us the same thing about the Christians who aren't doing the forging.
What do you mean? I had said that clearly Christians felt free to forge texts in Ignatius name. Having quickly disposed of several of the forgeries we obviously need to approach anything written in his name with an awareness that Christians are prone to this behavior, so we can't just assume a letter is authentic even if we can't disprove it. You respond and say this tells us nothing about Christians that don't forge documents. Which Christians do you have in mind? What is your point? This seems completely incoherent to me, and is in no way a response to what I said.
Since your argument depends on "If Goodspeed is right", then it's relevant for me and others to point out that Goodspeed is wrong.
My argument does not depend on Goodspeed being right. To refute your argument that this external evidence is "decisive" all I need to do is show that internal arguments are relevant and can overturn these external arguments, and they do so when your external evidence is just about as strong as it gets (in the case of Ephesians there is total unanimity that it is authentic to Paul according to the ancients.) The very fact that you argue against Goodspeed on the merits shows that you concede my point. Otherwise you would ignore the internal argument and just point to the universal acceptance of the text in antiquity.
Jon-Why would you think that my statement about dogmatic cherished beliefs is intended to explain how belief in Johannine authorship originated?
Jason-You were responding to an article in which I was addressing what ancient sources believed about authorship. It's therefore relevant for me to respond to you by pointing out that your reference to "dogmatic cherished beliefs" doesn't explain what I was addressing.
You need to read and think about what I write more carefully. You can't just read it, assume it is written in response to one specific argument in your post and respond to it on that basis. You need to read it and try to determine which argument it is in response to. That would be like me quoting your response on Goodspeed and criticizing you because this doesn't explain Moses. I think it is clear that my point had nothing to do with explaining how belief in Johannine authorship originated, just as your response to Goodspeed has nothing to do with the authorship of the Pentateuch.
If you don't want to "shift topics", then why did you respond to my post about what ancient sources believed concerning authorship issues by discussing the alleged "dogmatic cherished beliefs" of modern sources?
Because this point exposes the fallacy of special pleading that you are guilty of in this post. When a canonical authorship attribution is accepted by all sides in antiquity (like Celsus as well as Polycarp, though again I would point out that we don't know that Celsus accepted the authorship attributions. He may not have been aware of them, which indicates that Christians themselves didn't know when Celsus wrote. We also don't know what Polycarp thought) that's proof in your mind that it is authentic. If anyone disputes it you get up in arms and "defend the faith." When the same things happens with regards to issues that have nothing to do with your dogmatic cherished views (like Plato) we don't see any Triabloggers getting up in arms. Why the difference? It's special pleading again. One standard for your dogmatic cherished views, another for everything else.
The fact that external sources can be wrong doesn't change the fact that they're some of the best evidence we have for making historical judgments.
Perhaps in some cases this is the best we have, but it's still very poor and proves little. Who wrote Matthew? If all we had was the word of the gullible Papias, the forged documents of Ignatius, or the word of Mr. "Lying for the Kingdom" Eusebius, well we might as well place our bets and assume Matthew. It's all we have. Since Matthew is the most common male name in the Roman Empire at that time, we might just get lucky. But we'll probably lose our money.
If a document like Ephesians wasn't written until something like thirty or forty years after Paul's death, then we would expect people living near that time to be aware of such a fact more easily than people living a thousand years later.
Maybe not. It depends on the textual critical techniques that were able to be developed a thousand years later.
Jon Curry wrote:
ReplyDelete"And I'm not saying that this is your argument either."
Then what's the relevance?
You write:
"Polycarp must have talked about these issues (though we have no evidence of this)"
Historians regularly assume that common events occurred when we have no record of those events. Historical sources don't record everything that occurred during a given period of time, but it's reasonable to conclude that meals were eaten, that people living within the same house had conversations with each other, etc., even if such events aren't mentioned by the extant sources. I gave some examples of reasons why we could expect Polycarp to interact with the authorship attributions of his day. He was a bishop, he was involved in some of the religious controversies of his time, etc. Instead of interacting with such data, you just make a vague reference to how "we have no evidence of this". Are you suggesting that in order for us to conclude that the bishop of Smyrna probably influenced the authorship attributions of books that his church considered scripture, we would need to have a historical source telling us that such a thing happened? Are you suggesting that it's more likely that all of his disputes with Anicetus, his teaching of the people of his church, etc. didn't involve any discussion of who wrote the books being used in such disputes and such teaching? And the same is probably true of other disciples and contemporaries of the apostles?
You write:
"Polycarp must have been satisfied that they were properly attributed (though we have no evidence of this)"
If Polycarp and the other people alive during the apostolic era disagreed with the attributions of the books, then where do you think that disagreement is reflected in the historical record?
You write:
"Celsus didn't dispute authorship attributions (though there's no real reason to think he was even aware of the authorship attributions)"
That's a ridiculous claim. Celsus refers to gospel accounts as having been written by the disciples, for example. And we have many reasons to expect Celsus to have been aware of what the authorship attributions were. See, for example, what I posted from Richard Bauckham and Martin Hengel in a recent thread that you participated in:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/07/significance-of-eyewitness-testimony.html
As Bauckham and Hengel explain, documents like the gospels would have circulated with labels, oral reports, and other forms of author identification. Many of the New Testament documents name an author within the main body of the text, and others describe the author in some manner (the "we" passages in Acts, etc.). Celsus wrote close to the time when men like Irenaeus and Theophilus of Antioch were writing, when we know that authorship attributions were widespread.
You write:
"I can produce texts that were universally accepted, and this doesn't settle the issue."
Again, something doesn't have to "settle the issue" by itself in order to be significant.
You write:
"Plato's writings may be in some cases inauthentic, despite universal acceptance in antiquity. These issues need to be settled on the merits not on this argument 'They believed it way back when, so we should too.'"
Saying that something attributed to Plato "may" be inauthentic isn't enough. You need to tell us whether you think it's inauthentic, why you think it is inauthentic if that's your position, and how the relevant Biblical documents allegedly are comparable.
And who's making "this argument" you're referring to? I haven't.
You write:
"In all the other letters the Bishop is as God. He's the center of everything. Yet in Romans, not only does Ignatius say nothing about heeding the Bishop, he goes so far as to say that he's not even concerned about his replacement in Antioch. This makes him authentic in your view?"
The "this" you're referring to isn't the only data involved. Again, if the Roman church had a system of government that Ignatius disagreed with, he would have a reason to want to avoid discussing the issue. He was traveling to Rome for execution, and he wanted the assistance of the Roman church in receiving him and settling his affairs. Even if he hadn't disagreed with the Roman form of church government, he could still have different interests when writing in different contexts. It's not as if his comments on church government are the only means we have of evaluating his letters. We also have his comments on other subjects, his language, external attributions, etc.
He doesn't say that he's "not even concerned" about his replacement in Antioch. If the process of finding a replacement would take more time, then his church would temporarily be without a bishop. It doesn't therefore follow that he "wasn't even concerned" about such a replacement. And if his church was without a bishop because of his absence, then the implication is that there was a monarchical episcopate in his church. The letter to the Romans does, therefore, indirectly refer to a monarchical episcopate in Antioch, even though it doesn't refer to one in Rome. Ignatius emphasizes the monarchical episcopate more in his other letters, but it's present in the letter to the Romans as well, though not in the form of a description of Roman church government.
You write:
"You say that the consensus of modern scholarship 'accepts them'. Accepts which? The long versions, short ones?"
Since there's a consensus in accepting the shorter letters and nothing close to a consensus for the longer ones, I'm referring to the shorter.
You write:
"And did you know that the consensus of biologists is that man and apes have a common ancestor, that the consensus of astrophysicists is that the universe is billions of years old, and that the consensus of geologists is that there was no world wide flood. Do these nose counts prove anything, or should we instead talk about arguments?"
You're misrepresenting the context of what I said. I was asking you why you singled out the Catholics of Calvin's day as those I would be siding with in accepting the letters of Ignatius. I was giving examples of others who agree with my conclusion. It doesn't therefore follow that I was appealing to a "nose count" without addressing arguments.
You write:
"Having quickly disposed of several of the forgeries we obviously need to approach anything written in his name with an awareness that Christians are prone to this behavior, so we can't just assume a letter is authentic even if we can't disprove it. You respond and say this tells us nothing about Christians that don't forge documents. Which Christians do you have in mind? What is your point? This seems completely incoherent to me, and is in no way a response to what I said."
A phrase like "Christians are prone to this behavior" can have more than one meaning. Since your assessment of forgeries in early Christianity in our previous discussion was erroneous, I posted a link to that discussion, in which I interacted with what you argued there. In that thread, I address issues such as how widespread forgeries were and how Christians viewed the forging of documents.
And you're once again criticizing an argument I haven't made. I haven't suggested that we "just assume a letter is authentic".
You write:
"My argument does not depend on Goodspeed being right. To refute your argument that this external evidence is 'decisive' all I need to do is show that internal arguments are relevant and can overturn these external arguments"
What you're saying is that internal evidence could overturn external evidence, even if Goodspeed's example of such a case is erroneous. But you initially presented his example approvingly. And I haven't denied that internal evidence is to be taken into account. You're now citing Philip Schaff's use of the term "decisive" (by means of his quotation of another source), but I didn't cite Schaff for his source's evaluation of whether the evidence was "decisive". Rather, I cited Schaff to give another example of heretical corroboration of a document's authorship attribution. Since I said earlier in the article that such external evidence is "one line of evidence among others", and since I've repeatedly affirmed that internal evidence is to be taken into account, it doesn't make sense to ignore what I said elsewhere, ignore the context in which I was citing Schaff (and the source he quoted), and assume that I agree with them in their comments on issues other than what I quoted them for.
Besides, I doubt that Schaff and his source intended the absurd interpretation you're applying to their comments. Schaff includes a discussion of internal evidence in his evaluation of the New Testament documents on the page I linked to. I doubt that Schaff or the source he quoted meant to suggest that if the fourth gospel referred to its author as a female, for example, we should ignore such internal evidence on the basis of the external evidence they discuss. They're assuming that the internal evidence is such as we know it to be. But even if Schaff and his source, or one of them, were thinking along the lines of what you're suggesting, I didn't cite them for that purpose.
You write:
"I think it is clear that my point had nothing to do with explaining how belief in Johannine authorship originated, just as your response to Goodspeed has nothing to do with the authorship of the Pentateuch."
Again, since my post was addressing the evidence for New Testament authorship, then it's relevant for me to point out that your comments "had nothing to do with explaining how belief in Johannine authorship originated".
You write:
"When the same things happens with regards to issues that have nothing to do with your dogmatic cherished views (like Plato) we don't see any Triabloggers getting up in arms. Why the difference?"
Because Triablogue is a Christian web site that discusses matters pertaining to Christianity. If a work is falsely attributed to Plato, George Washington, or the New York Times, such a false attribution isn't as relevant to a discussion of Christianity as New Testament authorship is. Likewise, a political web site can be expected to give more attention to political issues than to religious issues. And a web site authored by Plato scholars probably will show more concern for what Plato wrote than for what the apostle John wrote.
Aside from the Christian nature of this web site, some issues in life are more important than others. A letter attributed to Plato doesn't have the same potential significance as a letter attributed to the apostle Paul. Why should I be equally concerned about the two?
You write:
"It's special pleading again. One standard for your dogmatic cherished views, another for everything else."
Where did I say that a different standard should be applied to Plato? I didn't. The fact that I haven't been discussing Plato's authorship of a document at this Christian web site doesn't prove that I would apply different standards to Plato if I were discussing his authorship of a document.
You write:
"Perhaps in some cases this is the best we have, but it's still very poor and proves little."
That's an assertion, not an argument. I've repeatedly explained the significance of external testimony, such as in my citations of Martin Hengel and Richard Bauckham in the thread I've linked to above, in my discussion of Ignatius and Polycarp with regard to Ephesians above, etc. If you want us to believe that external evidence is "very poor and proves little", then explain why.
You write:
"Who wrote Matthew? If all we had was the word of the gullible Papias, the forged documents of Ignatius, or the word of Mr. 'Lying for the Kingdom' Eusebius, well we might as well place our bets and assume Matthew."
I've responded to your assessment of Papias and Eusebius in previous threads, threads that you left. The sources we have for Matthew's authorship of the first gospel consist of far more than the three you've cited.
Again, how many of the New Testament's traditional authorship attributions do you accept? Earlier, you suggested that even documents like 1 Corinthians and Philemon have "dead give away" signs of forgery. How many times do you think that everybody was wrong about the authorship of a New Testament document? How do you think such universal forgetting of the author (or universal forgetting of the original anonymity of the document, for example) was replaced by a universal attribution to the wrong person?
Another whole lotta nothing in your last one. I could continue to try and get you to recognize and focus on the points I'm actually making or respond with arguments that really matter, but I'm learning that it's a never ending thing. So let's move on to Pauline authorship.
ReplyDeleteAgain, how many of the New Testament's traditional authorship attributions do you accept? Earlier, you suggested that even documents like 1 Corinthians and Philemon have "dead give away" signs of forgery. How many times do you think that everybody was wrong about the authorship of a New Testament document? How do you think such universal forgetting of the author (or universal forgetting of the original anonymity of the document, for example) was replaced by a universal attribution to the wrong person?
I'm going to take your questions in reverse order, since the first one will result in a more lengthy response. How do people forget the original author? The answer is that most don't. When an early Christian was presented with a text that was claimed to be written by Paul, he probably wasn't previously even aware that someone else had written it. He's never seen it before, looks at it. It's claimed to be from Paul. It's probably pretty exciting for him, and he's happy to hear it is from Paul, because that gives him access to this great hero of the past.
As far as how many times do I think people were wrong, I'm not sure what you are asking. Are you asking how many times individual people were wrong? Well, since there are about a billion Christians today, I guess it would be at least a billion times. Why does this matter?
Now to the main question. How many NT traditional authorship attributions do I accept? My answer is that I would tend to disagree with the consensus of scholarship on this point and regard Paul as a heroic figure of the past that people wrote in place of. This really shouldn't be viewed as so outrageous when you consider that this is exactly what happened with Peter. Consider the Petrine texts even leaving aside 1 and 2 Peter. You have the Docetic Gospel of Peter, the Acts of Peter, the Letter of Peter to Philip, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Kerygmata Petrou of the Pseudo Clementines. Why is it so outrageous to think that it's possible that the same thing happened with Paul, especially since internal evidence indicates it (which I'll get to below)?
What I've learned so far is that this view is much like the view that Jesus was a myth. The view was popular at the turn of the century. But rather than deal with the arguments, critics just laughed them off and talked about how these people are radical. This is your approach. In your first comment here you bring this subject up because you "just want readers to see how radical I am." Call a few names. Laugh about it. This is how the Jesus myth view is dealt with. From what I gather the same is true of the arguments of the Dutch radicals on Pauline authorship.
Christians like you will just say that it's just so stupid there's no point in dealing with it. But it was obvious to me when I first considered it that it wasn't stupid and deserved a more meaningful response.
I'll present a brief overview of the evidence against Pauline authenticity. I know how you'll respond. You'll say that nothing I've said logically requires that Paul didn't write these things. That's true. But it is irrelevant. The way textual critical studies are done is you look for clues. You don't have to find evidence that demands one conclusion over another.
For instance, very subtle changes in writing style are used to identify one author from another. These things are like fingerprints. These techniques are used all the time. For instance the author of the book "Primary Colors" was identified this way. English courts use writing style techniques to determine if additional material has been added to a will. These are subtle things. Your rejoinder that they don't "logically require" the conclusion is not relevant.
Now to my survey, which is really a summary of points made by Robert Price, which in turn is a summary of some of the arguments made by the old Dutch radical critics.
As I'm sure you are aware, pretty much all critical scholars admit that Paul could not have written 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. The vocabulary issues and things like the implied church structure (again like Ignatius representing a later, catholicizing of Paul) rule out Paul. Defending traditional authorship is exclusively the work of conservative apologists since as I say all critical scholars recognize these as forgeries.
Most critical scholars think Paul did not write 2 Thess. It appears to be an attempt to undo the damage done by 1 Thess which suggested that the day of the lord was at hand (2 Thess 2:2). This of course implies that 1 Thess was already doubted, at least by the author of 2 Thess. I Thess seems to be dealing with issues that arose later. At 5:19 you have these instructions about testing prophets whose utterances had come to be suspect. Kind of like saying “I know you’re tired of this stuff, but press on and continue with the testing because he just may be genuine. But if he stays around mooching off of you and in a prophetic utterance says hand over the cash, kick him to the curb. He's a false prophet.” This was more of an issue later in Christian development. We also have this "I adjure you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the brethren." OK. What did you think we were going to do with it? It sounds kind of like a person that wants to pass this text off as if it is a normal Pauline epistle. "Treat this like you would treat a real Pauline text."
Ephesians is also doubted by most critical scholars for reasons I've already explained. In addition to Goodspeed's table, you also have these long sentences, again completely outside the style of Paul, where these Pauline phrases from the other texts are linked together with clauses, again suggesting that this book is nothing more than an attempt to patch together Pauline phrases gleaned from other texts. The first chapter in Ephesians is only two sentences in Greek. The Pauline pastiche theory fits this data perfectly, whereas the view that Paul just sat down and wrote it and it mapped to this style so well just seems impossible.
Colossians contains Gnostic content which implies a later stage of Christianity. Christ is the pleroma (fullness) of the deity. He was put to death by the evil archons (Demiurge?), whom he disarmed (of what? The law?). This is Gnostic terminology.
Philippians reads sort of like a last will and testament. Kind of with the attitude of "What would the great man have said on his death bed." This is a genre that is inherently pseudipigraphical. It is filled with irony as Paul discusses his last moments leading up to his trial, with the reader knowing full well what had happened to him. Oh, to know and understand the sufferings of Christ. And he hasn't reached perfection yet, but he strains on, runs that race for the higher calling. All the while the reader knows that Paul did suffer, and did attain the perfection by dying as a martyr. Paul says he will soon either die or be re-united with the Philippians, and though he'd rather die and be with Christ, he can't help but think he'll be spared so the Philippians can joy in his salvation and he can minister to them (which of course he does continue to minister to them by virtue of these spurious letters written in his name). So pregnant with irony in light of what is known to the reader this just seems to me clearly to be written by someone that just knows too much about exactly what happened to Paul, and he wrote with that in mind.
With Galatians and I Corinthians you have independent factions with rival conceptions of how Paul operates. In Galatians he's an independent maverick that got the gospel from none other than the risen Christ himself. As opposed to I Cor which says that he got the very heart of the gospel directly from the Jerusalem apostles. There are indications that these texts are patchwork quilts. For instance, what of sectarian strife? At the beginning of I Cor Paul knows all of the issues, what's going on who's involved. Later (11:18) he talks about how he hears there are divisions and he's tempted to believe it, as if he knows nothing of it. In one section women can prophesy in public (11), a few chapters later (14) suddenly they can't. Then you have these comments that look like retrospective statements about Paul's ministry as if it's over and done with. Reference to "traditions" as he taught them. That implies that this is somebody else writing long after the fact. Paul as a maverick missionary of a brand new religion is unlikely to refer to his own teachings as "traditions." Then there's the whole "I, Paul, laid the foundation here, Apollos built upon that and others will continue to do so." This again looks like we're looking back on Paul's ministry as if it is a thing of the past that can now be evaluated.
Romans implies knowledge of the destruction of the temple. Chapter 11 talks about how the Jew's table has become a death trap, and that the Jews en masse had rejected Christianity. Can this really be clear to anybody writing no later than 63 under Nero?
Sprinkled throughout all of these texts we have all of these "I, Paul" references, which as I've said before and as Bart Ehrman also taught is a technique used by forgers, common in many other documents we all recognize as pseudonymous. If you sit down and write an occasional letter you don't spend a lot of time making strong overtures to prove that you are you. This is something that is done by somebody that has pseudonymity on the mind.
Also we have this anxiety even among some of our very (supposedly) earliest epistles of Paul making sure he points out that he's writing with his unique writing style to give his letters an authenticating mark (I Cor, Gal, Col, 2 Thess, Philemon). Even if you accept this as genuinely from Paul this tells you already that there must be a cottage industry of Pauline forgeries even at these earliest stages.
But this exposes these documents as forgeries. This is a literary device used to pass off a document as if it is from Paul that would not be used by Paul had he actually wrote it. If you have a strange way of writing you don't within the body of a written document discuss the idiosyncratic loops and markings. You just let the exaggerated writing style speak for itself. However, if you are somebody other than Paul and you want to pass a document off as if it is from Paul you have to actually talk about the strange writing style and describe it. This way when a person that is reading what they think is just a copy of what was earlier written by Paul, the message is communicated to them that as originally written this letter contained Paul's unique writing style.
You may ask, how else would Paul communicate this to these people? Remember Paul never tells anyone to copy his letters. He would communicate his writing style by writing with his own hand, and anybody looking at the letter would be able to see it. By describing it in this way the forger exposes this as a literary device, which assumes the whole thing is fake.
Now, I know you can look this through your evangelical lens and shoe horn all of these contradictions and tells into your own paradigm. You can figure out a way to reconcile the Paul who gets his gospel from the Jerusalem apostles with the Paul who gets it from Jesus himself, or how women can prophesy in one context and not in another, etc. But for me this is about clues and tells, and it just seems to me that my paradigm, which allows I Cor and Gal to represent rival conceptions of Paul's ministry, or how my paradigm allows Ephesians to be a Pauline pastiche just explains so much of the data so fully, that I prefer it to the evangelical position. You can call me names (radical, extreme, etc) all you want, but that doesn't really matter to me. What does matter to me is if my arguments are bad and if your paradigm explains the data better. So you can waste keystrokes on name calling if you like, but what I'd really be more interested in is criticisms of the arguments. And not just "Here's a possible way to understand the data" but "Here's a better way to understand the data."
In one section women can prophesy in public (11), a few chapters later (14) suddenly they can't
ReplyDeleteWow, what stunning exegesis.
What you do, rather constantly, is simply repeat objections as if they have not been answered.
Let's take this one:
In chapter 11 we have a descriptive statement about what was going on. It's isn't a statement about what they can do, but what they were doing. Where is there a concession or command in chapter 11:5 about women and prophesying?
In chapter 14L34, we have an instruction, not a description.
It's as if I said, "When the boys and girls cross the street alone, they look both ways," then several paragraphs later write, "Do not let the children cross the street alone." There is no contradiction there. In the one, I'm simply describing what is happening with respect to current events, and in the latter I'm issuing an instruction.
If this is an example of the best you can do, you're doing our job for us.
This really shouldn't be viewed as so outrageous when you consider that this is exactly what happened with Peter. Consider the Petrine texts even leaving aside 1 and 2 Peter. You have the Docetic Gospel of Peter, the Acts of Peter, the Letter of Peter to Philip, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Kerygmata Petrou of the Pseudo Clementines. Why is it so outrageous to think that it's possible that the same thing happened with Paul, especially since internal evidence indicates it (which I'll get to below)?
A. The works you've named come from long after the time of the claimed author's death.
B. There is a great deal of consensus from the Early Church Fathers that they knew these were forgeries.
C. Neither A nor B are descriptive of the conditions with respect to the Pauline corpus.
So, all we have here are you assertions.
Colossians contains Gnostic content which implies a later stage of Christianity. Christ is the pleroma (fullness) of the deity. He was put to death by the evil archons (Demiurge?), whom he disarmed (of what? The law?). This is Gnostic terminology.
ReplyDeleteWow, here's another example. Do you not know the difference between words and concepts?
These are words used in context, and the Christians and the Gnostics both used koine Greek.
And if Christ is the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form. He is repeatedly spoken of here in respect of his fleshly body; and Christ created all things.
That isn't Gnosticism. In Gnosticism Jesus only seemed human and the Demiurge, not Christ, created the world. Christ's fullness of Deity in bodily form is spoken of in present tense as well - also not a Gnostic concept.
An "archon" is simply a ruler. The Archon in Gnosticism is nowhere present here. Shall we list all the other pieces of literature where the word is used, and shall we attribute them all to Gnosticism?
Where's your argument that these words mean what you say?
I might add that the words are used here because Paul is refuting early Gnosticism.
ReplyDeleteWhat you've done is reverse the letter to make it agree with those whom the letter refutes.
Gene, I haven't denied that you can break out Archer or Geisler or Holding and show that we don't necessarily have a contradiction at I Cor with the prophesying of women. I don't have to think it is logically necessarily contradictory to conclude that it is contradictory.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of Bart Ehrman's story about a paper he wrote in school, spending pages and pages attempting to reconcile an apparent contradiction in the Bible. His teacher graded it, and I think he commended the work. But he offered Ehrman an alternative explanation in a brief note as part of his grade. "Maybe it's just wrong." Don't forget that that is a possible explanation as well.
As far as the Gnosticism in Colossians, Price points out at this article:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/apocrypha.html
that Christians often argue and concede that Paul is using Gnostic terminology, but supposedly this is done with "tongue-in-cheek" to foil his opponents. So I would expect this is a reasonable way of reading it.
Notice that all Jon can do now is parrot price. Yet he says I've "broken out Archer and Holding."
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, I didn't break out Archer and Holding. I simply spoke from my own independent exegesis of the text. Unlike Mr. Curry, I can read the text on my own.
And it's apparently okay for Curry to parrot Price, but it's not okay for us to refer to Archer or Holding. That's a double standard. Why should we prefer Price?
This is an objection that Curry doesn't really believe is true, because if so, he wouldn't quote Price ad infinitum.
I don't have to think it is logically necessarily contradictory to conclude that it is contradictory.
No, what you need to do is show the contradiction from exegesis of the text. One text is descriptive, the other is prescriptive. One is a description of what is happening; the other is an injunction. It's as simple as that. There is nothing convoluted about it. I'm simply taking the text and giving it a fair and accurate reading.
As to Colossians, quoting Price is not an exegetical response. Why should I accept what Price has to say? Why don't you ever present both sides of the coin and then tell us why we should prefer the one you choose? How does Price's "exegesis" fit the context of the letter? The letter is written to refute not support Gnosticism.
And Price has a nasty habit of arguing that 2nd century Gnosticism is the lens by which we should evaluate the NT, but where's the supporting argument? Price is a hack, plain and simple. How about giving us some material from a standard commentary.
Oh, and by the way, the article to which you refer is to 1 Corinthians, not Colossians. If you can't get that right, why should I trust your ability to interpret the NT texts?
And who says that these terms are being used "tongue in cheek?" Rather, they're simply koine Greek words that have many uses. Not every use of "pleroma" is referring to Gnosticism. Rather, Paul here takes the words used by the false teachers and uses them against them.
In Gnosticism Jesus is an Aeon. In Gnosticism, the pleroma is all the aeons together. If you and Price are right Jesus is here the whole of the Aeons. Where is this in the text?
In Gnosticism of the age in view, Jesus only seemed human. Here, he is spoken of as being a real human with a real body. The Demiurge is the creator, not Jesus, in this version of Gnosticism. In this text, Jesus is the creator of the material world.
In Matthew Jesus "fulfills" the law. That's the verb form of "pleroo." "Pleroma" is simply the noun form of the verb. Is Matthew a Gnostic document too?
You've provided, as I expected, no rebuttal, just a string of unsupported assertions and question-begging responses. Yawn.
Jon Curry wrote:
ReplyDelete"When an early Christian was presented with a text that was claimed to be written by Paul, he probably wasn't previously even aware that someone else had written it. He's never seen it before, looks at it. It's claimed to be from Paul. It's probably pretty exciting for him, and he's happy to hear it is from Paul, because that gives him access to this great hero of the past."
You're not addressing the problems with such a view, which have been explained to you many times. You do the same later in your post, repeating arguments you've used before without interacting with previous responses.
The concept of forgery was known to people of New Testament times and was something they were concerned about, as Glenn Miller documents in his article I've cited many times in discussions with you (http://christian-thinktank.com/pseudox.html). These issues are also discussed by many New Testament scholars whose works I've referenced for you in past discussions. There was widespread awareness in ancient times that more needed to be done to verify a document than accepting an internal claim to authorship because it makes a person "excited" or "happy".
Because of their content, the letters of Paul provided many means of authorship verification and falsification for their ancient audience. The letters name individuals who were with Paul when he was writing (Romans 16:22, 1 Corinthians 1:1, Colossians 4:10). They refer to channels of communication that existed between Paul and the audience (1 Corinthians 16:10-18, Ephesians 6:21-22, Philippians 2:19-30). They refer to people sent by Paul (Ephesians 6:21-22, Philippians 2:19-30, Colossians 4:7-9) and Paul's intention to visit his audience (Romans 15:24, 1 Corinthians 4:17-21, Philemon 22). There are references to physical evidence of Paul's authorship (1 Corinthians 16:21, 2 Thessalonians 3:17, Philemon 19). The individuals and churches Paul was in contact with had channels of communication with each other (1 Corinthians 16:3, Philippians 4:16, Colossians 4:15-16). Some of the letters refer to the public nature of their initial reception (Galatians 1:2, Colossians 4:16, 1 Thessalonians 5:27). Etc.
The relevance of this sort of information depends on the authorship theory that's proposed. If Paul and other relevant sources were still alive at the time when the alleged forgery was received, then they could testify against it. If such sources were dead at the time, then the lateness of the forgery would create suspicion. People reading a passage like Colossians 4:16 or 1 Thessalonians 5:27 wouldn't expect such a letter to have been unheard of until something like twenty or fifty years after Paul's death. People like those named in Romans 16 and 1 Corinthians 16 would be expected to know about letters Paul allegedly wrote with their assistance or in their presence or with a greeting to them by name.
If a document like 1 Corinthians is forged in the nineties, for example, the Corinthians are going to want to know why they hadn't heard of it before, why the messengers the letter refers to either never arrived or never mentioned such a letter when they did arrive, why the other people described as being with Paul never mentioned it, why Paul never mentioned it, etc. If the Corinthians were "excited" and "happy" to think that Paul would write them such a letter, it's doubtful that the heretics and other non-Christians who didn't agree with the content of the letter, and hadn't heard of such a document during Paul's lifetime or in the decades just afterward, would share such "excitement" and "happiness". And if this same sort of process occurs over and over again, sometimes with multiple letters within the same community or written to the same individual (Corinth, for example), it becomes increasingly unlikely that such a suspicious chain of events would produce such widespread acceptance of the documents as authentic.
You write:
"Why is it so outrageous to think that it's possible that the same thing happened with Paul, especially since internal evidence indicates it (which I'll get to below)?"
It isn't a matter of what's "possible". The issue is probability.
You write:
"What I've learned so far is that this view is much like the view that Jesus was a myth. The view was popular at the turn of the century."
What do you mean by "popular"?
You write:
"But rather than deal with the arguments, critics just laughed them off and talked about how these people are radical."
Arguments against Jesus' existence have been addressed repeatedly, at the scholarly level and elsewhere, and historians and other relevant sources frequently explain why they believe in Jesus' existence. For example:
http://www.bede.org.uk/price8.htm
http://www.christiancadre.org/cpricevirt.html
http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/jesusexisthub.html
You write:
"For instance, very subtle changes in writing style are used to identify one author from another. These things are like fingerprints."
No, they aren't like fingerprints. And if they were, you don't have Paul's fingerprints or those of any amanuensis he might have used. As Douglas Moo explains:
"Ancient authors gave to their amanuenses varying degrees of responsibility in the composition of their works - from word-for-word recording of what they dictated to quite sweeping responsibility for putting ideas into words." (The Epistle To The Romans [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1996], pp. 1-2)
As Craig Keener explains with regard to the apostle John:
“Besides any skills John had acquired [which could change at different times in his life], he undoubtedly would have had help; even the most literate normally used scribes, and Josephus’s staff included style editors to improve his Greek. John would have been an unusual writer if he published the work entirely by himself.” (The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003], pp. 101-102)
As Glenn Miller notes with regard to his own writings in the article linked above, people often change their writing style to some extent over time. (He compares some of his more recent articles to articles written in previous years.) They stop using words they used previously. They recognize a grammatical or stylistic problem with some construction they were using, so they make a change. Etc. Your "fingerprint" approach is ridiculous, and combining it with your underestimation of external evidence results in absurd conclusions that even the likes of the Jesus Seminar and Bart Ehrman find unsustainable.
You write:
"The vocabulary issues and things like the implied church structure (again like Ignatius representing a later, catholicizing of Paul) rule out Paul."
Your post makes many claims like the ones above without even attempting to offer documentation or interact with the widespread counterarguments.
You write:
"In addition to Goodspeed's table, you also have these long sentences, again completely outside the style of Paul, where these Pauline phrases from the other texts are linked together with clauses, again suggesting that this book is nothing more than an attempt to patch together Pauline phrases gleaned from other texts."
You keep referring to Goodspeed, yet you've failed to interact with much of what we've said in response to him, and you told us earlier that you hadn't seen his "table" that you refer to. Your arguments about the language of Ephesians are answered in sources we've cited, such as Hoehner and Carson and Moo.
And if you're going to appeal to a standard of "Pauline style", then where are you getting it? Goodspeed argued that several of the Pauline letters are authentic, so he used those letters as a standard. What's your standard? Which Pauline letters would you consider genuine?
You write:
"So pregnant with irony in light of what is known to the reader this just seems to me clearly to be written by someone that just knows too much about exactly what happened to Paul, and he wrote with that in mind."
How are we supposed to know what phrases like "pregnant with irony" and "knows too much about exactly what happened to Paul" are supposed to mean in this context? You're not giving us much reason to agree with your conclusion.
You write:
"Romans implies knowledge of the destruction of the temple. Chapter 11 talks about how the Jew's table has become a death trap, and that the Jews en masse had rejected Christianity. Can this really be clear to anybody writing no later than 63 under Nero?"
Romans 11 refers to a remnant of believing Jews, which is a repetition of an Old Testament theme (Romans 11:2-5). Nothing in the passage suggests the destruction of the temple as a past event. To assume that the table of Romans 11:9 is a reference to the temple, and that it's already been destroyed, is dubious. That's not what Psalm 69 meant in its original context, and nothing in the context of Romans 11 suggests an application of the theme as narrow as yours. All that's suggested in Romans 11 is widespread Jewish rejection of Christ, followed by the application of general Old Testament themes concerning the consequences of such sin, which had occurred as early as Jesus' earthly ministry. That's why He was crucified.
You repeatedly have to read dubious assumptions into the text, like the ones quoted above, in order to arrive at your conclusion that a document is a forgery. You expect us to follow such weak appeals to internal evidence while rejecting universal external testimony, including the testimony of contemporaries of the apostles and corroboration from hostile sources. Evidence such as your reading of Romans 11 isn't comparable to universal external attribution across a wide spectrum of sources.
You write:
"Sprinkled throughout all of these texts we have all of these 'I, Paul' references, which as I've said before and as Bart Ehrman also taught is a technique used by forgers, common in many other documents we all recognize as pseudonymous. If you sit down and write an occasional letter you don't spend a lot of time making strong overtures to prove that you are you."
I've repeatedly answered you on this point, and you keep ignoring what you've been told. Interested readers can see my exchange with Jon at:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/healthy-and-unhealthy-skepticism.html
Bart Ehrman doesn't agree with your previous claim that a phrase like "I, Paul" is a "dead give away" of forgery. Ehrman accepts the authenticity of documents that contain that phrase, such as 1 Corinthians. And people in ancient extra-Biblical sources referred to themselves in such a manner, in contexts like the ones I explained to you in the discussion linked above. The fact that forgeries sometimes use such language doesn't prove that the language is a "dead give away" of forgery. Forgeries often imitate what's found in genuine documents. That makes for an effective forgery. A forger might use the phrase "I, Paul", but so might Paul. People often say "I", followed by their name, in a legal context or for emphasis, for example, and Paul often wrote in such contexts.
You write:
"But this exposes these documents as forgeries. This is a literary device used to pass off a document as if it is from Paul that would not be used by Paul had he actually wrote it. If you have a strange way of writing you don't within the body of a written document discuss the idiosyncratic loops and markings. You just let the exaggerated writing style speak for itself."
Again, you're repeating an argument I addressed elsewhere, and you ignored much of what I wrote then. Here, again, is the thread in which I previously addressed your argument:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/healthy-and-unhealthy-skepticism.html
As I told you there, Paul would sometimes only write a portion of a letter himself. An amanuensis would write the rest. And Paul would mention his handwriting for the sake of reminder or emphasis or for the benefit of people listening to the letter being read by somebody else (rather than seeing the letter themselves), for example. As I explained to you in the thread above, F.F. Bruce cites some examples of similar practices in extra-Biblical literature:
"Cicero seems commonly to have written his letters himself, but where he uses an amanuensis, he indicates that the letter-closing is in his own hand (cf. Ad Att. 13.28: hac manu mea, 'this in my own hand'). In another letter he quotes a sentence from one which he himself had received from Pompey and says that it came in extremo ipsius manu, 'at the end, in his own hand' (Ad Att. 8.1)." (Word Biblical Commentary: 1 And 2 Thessalonians [Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982], p. 216)
Gene has addressed some of your other arguments, and interested readers can consult the commentaries and other sources Steve Hays and I have cited and the relevant material in the archives of this blog and elsewhere. (Glenn Miller and J.P. Holding, for example, address some of the relevant issues.)
The fact that some ancient sources showed an awareness that some documents were forged says basically nothing about whether or not they vetted specific books. Even scholars of highest rank, such as Jerome, can be misled by what to us is a transparent forgery. Jerome lists Seneca in his catalogue of Christian authors as he is duped by the supposed letter from Seneca to Paul. How much more likely is it that people of less learning could be duped.
ReplyDeleteYou mention statements of verisimilitude, which my comments from Ehrman already dealt with. See here:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/reworked-hallucination-theories-and.html
The forger is not an idiot. He knows to add references to (past) important people to make off the cuff remarks which gives the appearance that this really has the form of a genine letter from Paul. This proves nothing.
You think that early Christians would have been constantly running around sniffing out error, with Paul "testifying" against false attributions, and anybody referred to running around clamping the lid on false references, like Priscilla saying "I don't remember this letter, and anybody greeting me." Or the people in Corinth saying "I don't remember this letter." But who is Priscilla and how do we find her? What if she never sees the letter? What if there is not enough continuity between the church at Corinth in the 50's and the church at Corinth when they first saw it (maybe as late as 130)? Who knows? But this view you have of these early Christians as truth detectors, sniffing out error and clamping the lid on them, like modern day myth busters, seems highly anachronistic.
With regards to your amanuenses, that's one way to look at it. You have to stretch this to explain a whole new vocabulary that is foreign to Paul and his amanuenses when he wrote Romans and Galatians. Positing different authors explains more and explains it better in my opinion. Your opinion is of course the opposite.
Goodspeed argued that several of the Pauline letters are authentic, so he used those letters as a standard. What's your standard?
I don't know why this matters. If Goodspeed thought some of Paul's letters were authentic, so what? The point is, the author of Ephesians used letters that he also thought were authentic to Paul in composing the Pauline pastiche known as Ephesians. Goodspeed's opinions on these other matters are utterly irrelevant to the argument I'm making about Ephesians.
With regards to Philippians, your response is basically that you don't agree. To me all this irony is just thrown in you face. "Gee, I wonder how this trial will turn out, and well, I haven't reached that perfection yet, but I just strain on and run that race for the higher calling." You don't see it and I guess I can't say I'm surprised.
With regards to Romans 11 you say it may not be a reference to the destruction of the temple. I guess there's not much more to say on that.
Your explanation is of course consistent with the external evidence. You think this is very important, but I've shown throughout this thread that external support in the case of ancient texts just doesn't mean much.
You complain that I repeat arguments I've made before, but I'm just doing this to put everything in one place. Plus your responses don't adequately address my points.
Ehrman didn't say "I, Paul" is a dead give away to forgery, but he did say specifically that this is a technique used by forgers. Nothing you've said changes that, and this is found throughout the Pauline corpus. Again, you're making a prophet out of me by arguing that this doesn't logically require that this is not Pauline, but as I've already explained, that doesn't matter.
You say nothing about the retrospective statements in I Cor which imply that Paul's ministry is over and done with. You say nothing about how the Bible itself tells you that there was a cottage industry of Pauline forgeries. These are key points that should be addressed.
"Cicero seems commonly to have written his letters himself, but where he uses an amanuensis, he indicates that the letter-closing is in his own hand (cf. Ad Att. 13.28: hac manu mea, 'this in my own hand'). In another letter he quotes a sentence from one which he himself had received from Pompey and says that it came in extremo ipsius manu, 'at the end, in his own hand' (Ad Att. 8.1)."
Notice the key differences here. A quick 'this in my own hand' is subtle, but apparent to a person reading the original copy. As from Pompey what you get is Cicero describing what Pompey had done for the benefit of the reader of the original autograph. This is quite different from Paul, who writes.
See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!
This is like saying:
I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm alternating between italics and bold. This is my distinguishing mark so you can really tell it's from me.
It is absurd to describe the idiosyncratic writing style. You don't get this from Cicero. We wouldn't know that the letter from Pompey was written in his own hand if Cicero didn't tell us, but with Galatians the author writes it in such a way that when it is copied it is communicated to the reader of the copy that Paul wrote in his own hand. That's the key difference.
Jon Curry writes:
ReplyDelete“The fact that some ancient sources showed an awareness that some documents were forged says basically nothing about whether or not they vetted specific books.”
The sources I cited, such as Glenn Miller’s article, don’t just refer to the fact that “some ancient sources showed an awareness that some documents were forged”. He addresses the educational system of the ancient world, the common beliefs of Jews and Christians, examples of Christian efforts to weed out forgeries, etc. We have examples of actions taken by the early Christians that would have guarded against forgeries, such as the use of known messengers between an author and his audience and the use of recognizable handwriting, but we wouldn’t need such specifics in order to draw conclusions about what’s probable from more general information.
You write:
“Even scholars of highest rank, such as Jerome, can be misled by what to us is a transparent forgery. Jerome lists Seneca in his catalogue of Christian authors as he is duped by the supposed letter from Seneca to Paul.”
You keep misrepresenting the issue under consideration by referring to what “can” happen, what’s “possible”, etc., as if we can’t establish a probability if a contrary possibility exists. If Jerome is credible in the large majority of his authorship attributions, especially when addressing documents of his day written to him or his immediate associates, for instance, then citing an example of his being wrong about a document attributed to somebody living a few hundred years earlier doesn’t change the fact that he probably isn’t going to be deceived about a recent document written under circumstances like those surrounding Romans or 1 Corinthians. If somebody wanted to argue that Jerome was wrong about his attribution of every letter sent to him by his contemporaries, the case wouldn’t be advanced much by citing his false judgment about a letter of Seneca. We would be particularly unimpressed with your citation of the Seneca letter if the letters attributed to Jerome’s contemporaries mentioned many other individuals who knew of the letters and were in contact with Jerome. We wouldn’t expect Jerome to be mistaken every time, especially if the author were somebody as significant as the apostle Paul. It would be even more unlikely that the other people of Jerome’s day would be deceived along with him, with no dissenting voices, with hostile corroboration, etc.
You write:
“You mention statements of verisimilitude, which my comments from Ehrman already dealt with…. The forger is not an idiot. He knows to add references to (past) important people to make off the cuff remarks which gives the appearance that this really has the form of a genine letter from Paul. This proves nothing.”
I wasn’t addressing verisimilitude. I was addressing the existence of sources relevant to verifying or falsifying an authorship attribution. If a letter attributed to Paul refers to individuals, such as those mentioned in Romans 16 and 1 Corinthians 16, as being in a position to know about the letter in question, then the fact that nobody had heard of the letter for twenty or fifty years after the time when the letter allegedly was sent would create suspicion. The more individuals who were involved, the more difficult it becomes to explain why the letter was previously unheard of. This is why I mentioned the networking that existed among the early Christians. Individuals and churches were frequently in contact with one another. Writing a passage like Romans 16 or 1 Corinthians 16, or referring to how Timothy or Tychicus is with the author and is on his way to visit the audience of the letter, is a poor way of advancing a forgery.
A passage like 1 Corinthians 16 suggests a highly public knowledge of and reception of the letter. No forger would be able to control every person who knew Paul, every person who knew the people mentioned in passages like 1 Corinthians 16, etc. If you propose that the forger was able to remember or attain historical details so as to make the letter seem authentic, then other people alive at that time could remember or attain other historical details, such as discussions they or others had with Paul and other relevant sources and the fact that nobody had previously heard of the letter in question. If you put the forgery at a later date so as to avoid some of these difficulties that a forger would encounter, then other difficulties are increased. The larger the time gap between the alleged writing of the letter and the time when people had heard about it, the more suspicious it becomes. Some of Paul’s contemporaries and people who knew him would have lived into the late first and early second centuries. Some of the Pauline letters have to not only exist, but also be widely recognized and used, in the late first and early second centuries (as reflected in Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, etc.).
You write:
“What if there is not enough continuity between the church at Corinth in the 50's and the church at Corinth when they first saw it (maybe as late as 130)?”
If Paul was supposed to have written to the Corinthians more than seventy years earlier, they would have recognized that it’s highly suspicious for the letter to not have been heard of until the year 130. And if another letter arose under similar circumstances (2 Corinthians), they would have even more reason for suspicion. If they also heard of something similar occurring with other documents (Romans, Galatians, etc.), then it’s highly dubious to suggest that the response to such a scenario would be universal attribution of the letters to the apostle Paul. Heretical groups that opposed Paul’s teachings, such as the Ebionites, wouldn’t have uncritically gone along with such a suspicious scenario.
Is it your position that every early patristic document that uses 1 Corinthians, such as First Clement and the relevant documents of Ignatuis, are also forgeries?
You write:
“But this view you have of these early Christians as truth detectors, sniffing out error and clamping the lid on them, like modern day myth busters, seems highly anachronistic.”
Instead of burning a straw man, why not respond to what I’ve actually argued? The ancient Christians, like other ancient and modern communities, would have consisted of a large variety of people. Some would have been more knowledgeable, more discerning, or more experienced than others. Some would have come from a background of poverty and ignorance, while others would have come from a background of wealth and education, and many would have been somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum. But figuring out that it’s suspicious that a document allegedly written around the year 55 isn’t heard of until the year 130 doesn’t require the techniques of “modern day myth busters”. It also doesn’t require advanced techniques to do things like having trustworthy messengers communicate information between an apostle and a church or between one church and another. The early Christians wouldn’t have been so incompetent as to not preserve any documents from the apostles, then begin having a desire for apostolic documents decades later and thereafter accept a series of forgeries that arose long after the apostles had died. Why would the desire for documents not arise until so late? Why would people not be suspicious of the earlier absence of the documents?
You write:
“With regards to your amanuenses, that's one way to look at it.”
I cited some New Testament scholars stating the historical fact that ancient authors frequently used amanuenses. That’s not just “one way to look at it”. It’s a historical fact.
You write:
“You have to stretch this to explain a whole new vocabulary that is foreign to Paul and his amanuenses when he wrote Romans and Galatians.”
That’s an assertion, not an argument. We’ve cited scholars, such as Hoehner and Carson and Moo, who document that the vocabulary isn’t “a whole new vocabulary”. As Gene mentioned earlier, you keep substituting assertions for arguments.
You write:
“The point is, the author of Ephesians used letters that he also thought were authentic to Paul in composing the Pauline pastiche known as Ephesians.”
You keep making references to Ephesians as a “Pauline pastiche” without interacting with what we’ve argued in response. Repeating your initial claim doesn’t address the arguments written in response to it.
And the fact that people like Goodspeed and the alleged forger of Ephesians thought that they had access to some genuine Pauline letters doesn’t explain how you can argue against a letter attributed to Paul by claiming that it differs from Pauline style. How do you sustain such an appeal to Pauline style without a base of genuine Pauline letters to which you can appeal?
You write:
“With regards to Philippians, your response is basically that you don't agree. To me all this irony is just thrown in you face. ‘Gee, I wonder how this trial will turn out, and well, I haven't reached that perfection yet, but I just strain on and run that race for the higher calling.’ You don't see it and I guess I can't say I'm surprised.”
No, my response with regard to Philippians is not to just say that I don’t agree. Rather, my response was to tell you that your analysis was too vague. How do the comments you’ve paraphrased from Philippians allegedly indicate that the letter is inauthentic? Making a vague reference to how the comments are “ironic” isn’t enough.
You write:
“With regards to Romans 11 you say it may not be a reference to the destruction of the temple. I guess there's not much more to say on that.”
I said more than what you’re claiming I said. As I explained, Paul refers to widespread Jewish rejection of Christ while a remnant accepted Him (Romans 11:2-5). He then cites some Old Testament passages about hardening and the consequences of sin. One of the passages he cites is Psalm 69, which mentions the “table” you referred to earlier. Psalm 69 isn’t referring to the destruction of the temple in its original context, and Paul’s application of the passage in Romans 11 doesn’t suggest that a destruction of the temple has occurred. You aren’t interacting with what I said. And you aren’t giving us any reason to interpret Romans 11 as you have. The reason why “there's not much more to say on that” on your end is because you haven’t yet thought of a way to argue for your position. You had no good reason to interpret Romans 11 as you did in the first place, and now you’re trying to avoid discussing the passage further.
You write:
“You think this is very important, but I've shown throughout this thread that external support in the case of ancient texts just doesn't mean much.”
Eyewitnesses in a court of law are sometimes unreliable, but we don’t conclude that the testimony of such witnesses “doesn’t mean much” as a general principle. Something can be reliable most of the time without being reliable all of the time. External evidence is foundational to historical research. Even if a few documents attributed to Tacitus, for example, have similar language and other internal characteristics in common, how do you know that the common author is Tacitus rather than somebody else? How do you know that a person didn’t change his position on an issue he wrote about in two different documents, that he didn’t use an amanuensis in one place while not using one elsewhere, etc.? External evidence plays a major role over and over again. You don’t like its implications in the context of Christianity, but it doesn’t therefore follow that external evidence “doesn’t mean much”.
You write:
“Ehrman didn't say ‘I, Paul’ is a dead give away to forgery, but he did say specifically that this is a technique used by forgers.”
You aren’t interacting with what I said on this subject in my last post.
You write:
“You say nothing about the retrospective statements in I Cor which imply that Paul's ministry is over and done with. You say nothing about how the Bible itself tells you that there was a cottage industry of Pauline forgeries. These are key points that should be addressed.”
I addressed your “cottage industry” argument in the previous thread that you left. I’ve linked to it repeatedly in this thread.
Regarding whether Paul’s ministry was finished, here are the arguments you put forward to support that conclusion:
“Then you have these comments that look like retrospective statements about Paul's ministry as if it's over and done with. Reference to ‘traditions’ as he taught them. That implies that this is somebody else writing long after the fact. Paul as a maverick missionary of a brand new religion is unlikely to refer to his own teachings as ‘traditions.’ Then there's the whole ‘I, Paul, laid the foundation here, Apollos built upon that and others will continue to do so.’ This again looks like we're looking back on Paul's ministry as if it is a thing of the past that can now be evaluated.”
You make no attempt to document that the Greek term in question “implies” that a “long” time has passed. And if Paul is writing to a community founded years earlier, then he can speak of building on a foundation without suggesting that enough time has passed for Paul to be dead. People can add to a foundation as soon as the foundation is laid. People would have been working among the Corinthians all along. They wouldn’t have waited until Paul was dead before building on what Paul began. Paul traveled widely. People were frequently building on his work as he moved on to other places. There’s no suggestion that Paul had died. The fact that you have to rely on such weak internal arguments reflects how desperate you are.
You write:
“Notice the key differences here.”
I was interacting with all of your claims about Paul’s handwriting, not just the “key differences” you want to focus on now. Earlier, you made claims relevant to my citation of Cicero and Pompey. If you want to adjust your argument now so as to accommodate what I’ve cited, that’s not my fault.
You write:
“A quick 'this in my own hand' is subtle, but apparent to a person reading the original copy.”
Why is Cicero’s comment acceptably “subtle”, whereas Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 16, 2 Thessalonians 3, etc. allegedly aren’t?
As I’ve explained to you repeatedly, Paul would have been writing to multiple audiences. Some people would see the original letter, but others would only hear it being read or would read a copy rather than the original. In the previous thread I’ve linked to above, I explained how what Paul wrote in the passages under discussion makes sense in light of at least one of these multiple contexts in which he was writing.
The comment in Galatians 6 that you’re focusing on now makes sense in multiple contexts. It makes sense as something used for emphasis. It makes sense as something used as a reminder. If the whole letter had been written in Paul’s handwriting, it doesn’t therefore follow that the readers would be thinking about the relevant implications of that handwriting throughout their reading of the letter. If Paul wants to emphasize the significance of that handwriting at a particular point in his letter, where that significance is especially relevant, then it makes sense to comment at that point about his handwriting. It also makes sense to write such a comment for the benefit of people hearing the document being read rather than reading it themselves and for the benefit of people reading later copies of the letter.
As I told you in the previous thread I linked to above, the fact that such things have to be explained to you is ridiculous. It’s even worse when you continue to misrepresent the subject after having had these things explained to you in another discussion.
ReplyDeleteEhrman didn't say "I, Paul" is a dead give away to forgery, but he did say specifically that this is a technique used by forgers. Nothing you've said changes that, and this is found throughout the Pauline corpus.
Yes, it is a technique used by forgers, but you have to connect that to these texts being forgeries. Why does "I, Paul" signal "forgery!" in these letters?
The reason that Paul says "I, Paul" so frequently, particularly in the Corithian letters is to invoke his apostolic authority, for there were those who frequently challenged his authority. It is only nature, then, to remind his audience that this letter is coming from him and reflective of his actual thoughts, not what somebody was saying he said.
Further, these are nearly all addressed to churches planted by Paul. He uses "I, Paul" because they would know this. As the planter of the church and an apostle, he would have the most authority and he would be highly familar. In the case of the Thessalonian letters, he states his love and appreciation for them. "I, Paul" here is used to remind them that he himself is praying for them and loves and appreciates all they have done and their perseverance in the faith.
Ironically, in drawing attention to this issue and calling these works forgeries, you, Mr. Curry, are placing yourself in the position of those in those churches who were challenging Paul's authority. Apostates often have a way of zeroing in on elements of a text that actually indict them. Congratulations.
We keep coming back to the same fundamental disagreement. Your "myth busters" view of early Christians, clamping the lid on false attributions is a view I completely reject. I place heavy emphasis on the fact that people simply hear what they want to hear. You dismiss that thinking that the contrary evidence is too overwhelming. But we just have too many examples of this in history.
ReplyDeleteWe've talked about Sabbati Sevi before. Further details that we haven't discussed illuminate the issue more. Keep in mind that since we are closer to him in time we have better access to some of the goings on.
You say that people referred to would have sniffed out these errors and corrected them. In the case of Sabbati Sevi, not only did he convert to Islam, which still didn't stop his devoted followers, but even his chief disciple claimed he did no miracles. This didn't stop people. How much less would someone named Priscilla be able to prevent people from believing what they wanted to believe.
Remember also that a document like Romans is representing one of the early Christian factions. Adherents to that faction are going to press hard for acceptance of the text. They might say, hey, I don't want to observe the law. I don't want to have to go to the temple every year. I can't afford that. Get circumcised? You've got to be kidding. We don't have to do that and we have proof, and I don't care what some old woman (Priscilla) claims. This is from Paul.
I could list so many examples of large groups of adherents continuing to believe despite overwhelming contrary evidence. How much more so a text get by that doesn't have so much overwhelming evidence against it.
You keep misrepresenting the issue under consideration by referring to what “can” happen, what’s “possible”
It's not misrepresentation to talk about what "can" happen and what's "possible." These things do happen, so clearly they are quite possible with regards to Christianity. That's relevant. Neither of us know for certain what did happen. We do know that scholars of the highest rank can be duped by transparent forgeries, like Jerome with regards to Seneca. That's relevant. It shows that the same scenario with regards to a book like Ephesians is not only possible, it's plausible.
If Paul was supposed to have written to the Corinthians more than seventy years earlier, they would have recognized that it’s highly suspicious for the letter to not have been heard of until the year 130.
I entirely disagree. If you replace the word "would" with "could" then I agree. They may have considered things as suspicious. But they may not have. The tendency to hear what one wants to hear and believe what one wants to believe is extremely powerful. This is a side of real humans that you ignore.
Is it your position that every early patristic document that uses 1 Corinthians, such as First Clement and the relevant documents of Ignatuis, are also forgeries?
I do side with Calvin and the Reformers on Ignatius, and against the RC, such as Cardinal Newman, who wrote: "the whole system of Catholic doctrine may be discovered, at least in outline, not to say in parts filled up, in the course of his seven Epistles". I haven't looked into the Clementines.
How do you sustain such an appeal to Pauline style without a base of genuine Pauline letters to which you can appeal?
I don't know why you're not getting this. The "base" is the letters the author of Ephesians had that he thought were written by Paul. The base in my mind is several spurious texts that were thought to be written by Paul at the time.
There's nothing vague about my comments regarding Philippians. You're not saying anything in response.
With regards to Romans, is it your view that there is some rule which would prevent an NT writer from taking an OT text out of context?
Eyewitnesses in a court of law are sometimes unreliable, but we don’t conclude that the testimony of such witnesses “doesn’t mean much” as a general principle.
But testimony by ancient, illiterate, superstitious people from 2K years ago is quite a bit different from testimony of scientifically and verbally literate people from today.
You say you dealt with the "cottage industry" argument elsewhere. It's not really so much as an argument as much as it is an undisputed fact, which should color our approach to all the Pauline texts. It does color mine, but not yours apparently.
I need to document what the "Greek term in question" means? I'm just going with standard English translations of Paul's writings. If the word "tradition" shouldn't mean "tradition" that's your burden to prove. You argue with regards to the "foundation" that it could be, might be, could possibly be. I'm not denying that, but I'm looking for a better way to understand the text, not a possible evangelical way. Your way is not better.
The argument I make regarding writing styles stands despite everything you've said. Look at me. I'm writing in bold. My view makes better sense than yours.
With regards to these early Christians that are likely to be "suspicious" about early Christian forgeries (which were widespready) here's an interesting quote from Origen.
ReplyDeleteHe next proceeds to recommend, that in adopting opinions we should follow reason and a rational guide, since he who assents to opinions without following this course is very liable to be deceived. And he compares inconsiderate believers to Metragyrtae, and soothsayers, and Mithrae, and Sabbadians, and to anything else that one may fall in with, and to the phantoms of Hecate, or any other demon or demons. For as amongst such persons are frequently to be found wicked men, who, taking advantage of the ignorance of those who are easily deceived, lead them away whither they will, so also, he says, is the case among Christians. And he asserts that certain persons who do not wish either to give or receive a reason for their belief, keep repeating, "Do not examine, but believe!" and, "Your faith will save you!" And he alleges that such also say, "The wisdom of this life is bad, but that foolishness is a good thing!"
After some further comments he replies:
In the next place, since our opponents keep repeating those statements about faith, we must say that, considering it as a useful thing for the multitude, we admit that we teach those men to believe without reasons, who are unable to abandon all other employments, and give themselves to an examination of arguments; and our opponents, although they do not acknowledge it, yet practically do the same.
Hey, so what if we teach them to believe without reasons. You do it too, and besides, who has the time to critically examine things. People taught in this way are supposed to be trusted by us thousands of years later? Mostly illiterate unthinking people who believed without reasons way back when, and this is supposed to be relevant to our decision to accept these things. This is why I say this external evidence matters very little.
Jon Curry writes:
ReplyDelete"Your 'myth busters' view of early Christians, clamping the lid on false attributions is a view I completely reject. I place heavy emphasis on the fact that people simply hear what they want to hear. You dismiss that thinking that the contrary evidence is too overwhelming. But we just have too many examples of this in history."
You need to interact with what I wrote in response to your earlier claims. I cited Glenn Miller's work on this subject and some relevant work by New Testament scholars, and I discussed some of the details of the historical context, the contents of the documents in question, etc. that would make a successful forgery unlikely. For you to respond to such arguments by making vague references to how you "completely reject" my view and think that "people simply hear what they want to hear" isn't enough. It's also not enough to appeal to "examples of this in history", since each case has to be judged individually. There are forgeries in history, but there are genuine documents in history as well. Vague comments like the ones you've made above are insufficient, and they don't answer the more detailed arguments I've offered.
You write:
"You say that people referred to would have sniffed out these errors and corrected them. In the case of Sabbati Sevi, not only did he convert to Islam, which still didn't stop his devoted followers, but even his chief disciple claimed he did no miracles. This didn't stop people. How much less would someone named Priscilla be able to prevent people from believing what they wanted to believe."
When I discussed Sabbati Sevi in the past, you ignored much of what I wrote. And you're discussing him now as a substitute for discussing other issues I addressed in my last post.
To repeat what I've said about Sabbati Sevi before (so that you can ignore it again, but also for the benefit of other readers), we don't have evidence against something like Paul's authorship of 1 Corinthians that's comparable to the evidence we have against Sabbati Sevi. You haven't given us reasons to trust the early followers of Sevi comparable to the evidence we've produced for trusting the early Christians. We've addressed in depth issues such as the early Christians' moral standards, their concern for eyewitness testimony, their view of forgeries, etc. You haven't offered any comparable analysis of the early followers of Sevi. And not everybody believed that Sabbati Sevi performed miracles. The disciple of Sevi you're referring to (Nathan) was just that: a disciple. Yet, he denied the miracles in question. Other followers stopped following Sevi, and the enemies of Sevi denied the miracles. For the authorship of 1 Corinthians to be comparable to such a situation, we'd have to see a seventeenth chapter in 1 Corinthians that denies its Pauline authorship (like Sevi's apostasy), a denial of Pauline authorship by the earliest Corinthian Christians (like the denials by Sevi's leading disciple), denials of Pauline authorship by Corinthians who left the Corinthian church (like the followers of Sevi who left the movement), and denials of Pauline authorship by early heretical groups and other opponents of Paul (like the denials by Sevi's enemies).
You're also ignoring problems with your claim that "people simply hear what they want to hear", problems that I've pointed out to you repeatedly. As your own Sevi example illustrates, a desire that Sevi be the Messiah they wanted him to be didn't prevent people from denying that he performed miracles, eventually leaving the movement, realizing that they had to address his apostasy, etc. As I explained earlier, a desire for a larger paycheck isn't likely to be sufficient to convince a man, his family, and others around him that he makes more money than he actually does. The desire for more money will be accompanied by other desires and will have to interact with reality, including other people who don't have that desire. If we applied your ridiculous reasoning consistently, we wouldn't be able to accept any historical account from people who desire what they're reporting. Why believe what a Roman source reports about a Roman victory in war or something commendable done by a Roman politician? After all, a Roman source would desire that such things would be true.
You write:
"Remember also that a document like Romans is representing one of the early Christian factions. Adherents to that faction are going to press hard for acceptance of the text. They might say, hey, I don't want to observe the law. I don't want to have to go to the temple every year. I can't afford that. Get circumcised? You've got to be kidding. We don't have to do that and we have proof, and I don't care what some old woman (Priscilla) claims. This is from Paul."
For reasons I explained earlier, there would have been far more than "one old woman" involved. And the opposing "factions" you refer to would have had a motive to question Pauline authorship. If people like Priscilla and these factions were arguing against Pauline authorship, then where's that dispute reflected in the historical record? The early Christians frequently acknowledged and discussed other authorship disputes.
We've discussed in depth some of the reasons we have for thinking that the early Christians had sufficient concern for evidence. You keep asserting that they might have had the mindset you describe above, but such assertions aren't sufficient to make your case. The sort of evidence we've cited from Richard Bauckham, Glenn Miller, and other sources can't be dispensed with by making vague references to how you can imagine people behaving as you describe above.
You write:
"I could list so many examples of large groups of adherents continuing to believe despite overwhelming contrary evidence. How much more so a text get by that doesn't have so much overwhelming evidence against it."
It's not just that you don't have "so much overwhelming evidence". The problem is that your alleged evidence of forgery isn't even close to convincing, much less "overwhelming". Citing a passage like Romans 11:9 or 1 Corinthians 3:10 as convincing evidence that such documents are forgeries doesn't even come close to bringing the term "overwhelming" to mind, unless we're thinking of an "overwhelmingly bad argument".
You write:
"Neither of us know for certain what did happen. We do know that scholars of the highest rank can be duped by transparent forgeries, like Jerome with regards to Seneca. That's relevant. It shows that the same scenario with regards to a book like Ephesians is not only possible, it's plausible."
Our historical judgments are about what we think is probable, not what we think is possible. To say that something is possible isn't of much significance if the evidence suggests that it's not probable. And I've explained why what happened with Jerome isn't comparable to the situation with a document like Ephesians. Instead of interacting with the details of my argument, you make vague comments like the ones above.
You write:
"I do side with Calvin and the Reformers on Ignatius, and against the RC, such as Cardinal Newman, who wrote: 'the whole system of Catholic doctrine may be discovered, at least in outline, not to say in parts filled up, in the course of his seven Epistles'."
You're repeating what you said earlier about Roman Catholic support for my position on Ignatius, but you aren't interacting with what I said in defense of my position in my last post on the subject. Yet again, you're giving us repetitions of vague arguments we've already answered rather than addressing the details of what we've written in response.
You write:
"I haven't looked into the Clementines."
I referred to First Clement, not "the Clementines". And your ignorance of First Clement's use of Pauline documents is another reflection of how poorly prepared you are to discuss these issues.
You write:
"The base in my mind is several spurious texts that were thought to be written by Paul at the time."
If the texts are spurious in your opinion, then they can't be a base for you to make a judgment as to whether a document is consistent with Pauline style. You criticized Ephesians as inconsistent with Pauline style in the context of discussing evidence that Ephesians is a forgery, but if Ephesians is inconsistent with the style of forgeries, then that's not evidence against the authenticity of Ephesians.
You write:
"There's nothing vague about my comments regarding Philippians. You're not saying anything in response."
Here's what you wrote in your last response, when I asked for clarification:
"To me all this irony is just thrown in you face. 'Gee, I wonder how this trial will turn out, and well, I haven't reached that perfection yet, but I just strain on and run that race for the higher calling.'"
How is such "irony" supposed to be convincing evidence of forgery? You don't tell us which specific passages in Philippians you have in view for the first comment ("I wonder how this trial will turn out"), and you don't explain how something like wanting to press on in the Christian life is "ironic" in a way that suggests forgery. The idea that comments like the ones quoted above are supposed to lead us to the conclusion that Philippians is a forgery is ridiculous. It's not just conservatives like me who don't see the logic in your argument. Neither does almost every liberal scholar in the world.
You write:
"With regards to Romans, is it your view that there is some rule which would prevent an NT writer from taking an OT text out of context?"
No, and that's why I went on to explain that there's nothing in the context of Romans 11 that leads to your conclusion either. Since I did more than just cite the original context of Psalm 69, why are you only responding to that original context and acting as if you don't know whether I think that only the original context is relevant? If I thought that only the original context is relevant, why would I have gone on to discuss the context of Romans 11 as well?
You've had multiple opportunities now to explain in detail how you get a past destruction of the temple from Romans 11. You've repeatedly failed to give us such an explanation.
You write:
"But testimony by ancient, illiterate, superstitious people from 2K years ago is quite a bit different from testimony of scientifically and verbally literate people from today."
I've addressed your characterization of the ancient world elsewhere. Glenn Miller addresses this issue in depth (http://christian-thinktank.com/mqfx.html). I've also repeatedly given you examples of how the people in law courts aren't always "scientifically and verbally literate people". We often make judgments, in law courts and elsewhere, based on the testimony of children and other people who aren't relevantly more qualified than people in the ancient world. And when the issue under consideration is something like being able to discern that an alleged Pauline document appearing in the year 130 is suspicious, how "scientifically and verbally literate" does a person have to be?
You write:
"You say you dealt with the 'cottage industry' argument elsewhere. It's not really so much as an argument as much as it is an undisputed fact, which should color our approach to all the Pauline texts. It does color mine, but not yours apparently."
Calling the existence of forgeries "an undisputed fact" doesn't address what I said about those forgeries in the other thread I linked to. You never responded to my last post in that thread. And nothing you've said above answers what I said there.
You write:
"I'm just going with standard English translations of Paul's writings. If the word 'tradition' shouldn't mean 'tradition' that's your burden to prove."
The meaning of "tradition" is what's under dispute. You can't just assume your meaning, then claim that any disagreement with that meaning is equivalent to denying that "'tradition' means 'tradition'". I don't know of a single translator of a major version of the Bible who agrees with you in rejecting the Pauline authorship of 1 Corinthians. The people producing these translations don't seem to intend "tradition" in the sense in which you're interpreting it. Similarly, people often use phrases like "starting a new tradition" and "family tradition" without thinking that the people who originated the tradition have long been dead.
You write:
"You argue with regards to the 'foundation' that it could be, might be, could possibly be. I'm not denying that, but I'm looking for a better way to understand the text, not a possible evangelical way. Your way is not better."
Asserting that your interpretation is better doesn't give us reason to think that it's better. And I didn't just say that my view "could be" correct. I explained that people can build on a foundation as soon as its laid. Why don't you interact with that statement? I also explained that Paul traveled widely, so that the work of building up a church would fall into the hands of other people within a short period of time. Again, why don't you interact with that statement? If Paul goes to Corinth, preaches the gospel there, then leaves, why would it be unreasonable for him to refer, several years later, to how he laid a foundation that others built upon?
You write:
"The argument I make regarding writing styles stands despite everything you've said. Look at me. I'm writing in bold."
You're ignoring what I said. How many times have these things been explained to you now? Again, if Paul had written the entire letter, people wouldn't be thinking about the implications of his handwriting during their entire reading of the letter. And many people wouldn't see the handwriting, since they would either be listening to the letter being read or would be reading a copy of the original. You keep ignoring these facts, even after they're explained to you repeatedly, which suggests that you're being dishonest, not just careless.
You write:
"With regards to these early Christians that are likely to be 'suspicious' about early Christian forgeries (which were widespready) here's an interesting quote from Origen."
I doubt that you've read much of Origen's treatise against Celsus. I've read it in its entirety. So I know that you're leaving out some relevant information.
Before I discuss this issue further, though, I want to say that your frequent failure to give us documentation for such quotes is irresponsible. You need to make more of an effort to document your claims.
Regarding the passages from Origen, it should first be noted that the sort of material Richard Bauckham and Glenn Miller discuss in the sources I've cited covers far more sources, including the more relevant earlier sources, and goes into far more depth. But even your representation of Celsus and Origen is problematic. As Robert Wilken notes:
"It is also likely that Celsus was acquainted with the first Christian apologetic writings, specifically the work of Justin Martyr, whose apologies had appeared approximately two decades before Celsus wrote his True Doctrine. Some scholars believe that Celsus wrote his book in response to Justin's work and that the specific form of his argument can be attributed to his familiarity with Justin....Though Celsus might make rhetorical points against Christian reliance on faith instead of reason, his more serious arguments assume that Christian thinkers wished to be judged by the same standards as others....Christians and pagans met each other on the same turf. No one can read Celsus's True Doctrine and Origen's Contra Celsum and come away with the impression that Celsus, a pagan philosopher, appealed to reason and argument, whereas Origen based his case on faith and authority....Pagan critics realized that the claims of the new movement [Christianity] rested upon a credible historical portrait of Jesus. Christian theologians in the early church, in contrast to medieval thinkers who began their investigations on the basis of what they received from authoritative tradition, were forced to defend the historical claims they made about the person of Jesus. What was said about Jesus could not be based solely on the memory of the Christian community or its own self-understanding." (The Christians As The Romans Saw Them [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984], pp. 101, 200-201, 203)
The passages you've cited from Origen are Against Celsus 1:9 and 1:10. Here's what Origen goes on to write just after your first quote:
"To which we have to answer, that if it were possible for all to leave the business of life, and devote themselves to philosophy, no other method ought to be adopted by any one, but this alone. For in the Christian system also it will be found that there is, not to speak at all arrogantly, at least as much of investigation into articles of belief, and of explanation of dark sayings, occurring in the prophetical writings, and of the parables in the Gospels, and of countless other things, which either were narrated or enacted with a symbolic signification, as is the case with other systems." (1:9)
Just after what you quoted, Origen comments that it would be a good thing for a person to devote his entire life to the intellect. He goes on to comment that most people can't or won't do so, however, and that the same sort of situation exists among non-Christians. He goes on to comment that Christianity has the advantage of giving the less intellectual person a better belief system (morally, for example) than what somebody like Celsus offers. Origen isn't commending the non-intellectual life or claiming that no Christians are interested in evidence. His response to Celsus arose out of a concern for an intellectual defense of Christianity, and he repeatedly commends the intellectual life and refers to Christians who so live. But the large majority of humans don't live the sort of philosopher's life that he describes above.
Origen goes on to explain (1:13) that Celsus is misrepresenting what Christians mean by passages like 1 Corinthians 3:18-19. He goes on to comment:
"And although, among the multitude of converts to Christianity, the simple and ignorant necessarily outnumbered the more intelligent, as the former class always does the latter, yet Celsus, unwilling to take note of this, thinks that this philanthropic doctrine [Christianity], which reaches to every soul under the sun, is vulgar, and on account of its vulgarity and its want of reasoning power, obtained a hold only over the ignorant. And yet he himself admits that it was not the simple alone who were led by the doctrine of Jesus to adopt His religion; for he acknowledges that there were amongst them some persons of moderate intelligence, and gentle disposition, and possessed of understanding, and capable of comprehending allegories." (1:27)
In other words, as Robert Wilken explains above, Celsus acknowledges that some Christians are more knowledgeable, despite his assertions in some places that all Christians were ignorant. Anybody who has read Against Celsus, as you apparently haven't, should know that Celsus was inconsistent at times. He would act as if all Christians are ignorant at one point, yet acknowledge at another point that some Christians are intelligent.
Origen goes on to comment that the earliest Christians wouldn't have left their traditional religion (Judaism) and have risked their lives for Christianity unless they had evidence for the faith in the form of miracles (1:46). He goes on, a little later, to cite multiple lines of evidence for Jesus' birth in Bethlehem as fulfilled prophecy (1:51), after which he comments that "reasons of no light weight are assigned by those who have learned to state them, for their faith in Jesus" (1:52). Later, he comments that Christianity is different from pagan belief systems in that it has "the support of much evidence" (1:67). He appeals to the significance of hostile corroboration (2:14), eyewitness testimony (3:23), etc. Origen comments that Celsus misrepresents Christian interest in the intellect, and he gives examples of Biblical commandments to pursue wisdom and the requirement that church leaders be knowledgeable (3:44-58). In summary:
"Accordingly, we do not say to each of our hearers, 'Believe, first of all, that He whom I introduce to you is the Son of God;' but we put the Gospel before each one, as his character and disposition may fit him to receive it, inasmuch as we have learned to know 'how we ought to answer every man.' And there are some who are capable of receiving nothing more than an exhortation to believe, and to these we address that alone; while we approach others, again, as far as possible, in the way of demonstration, by means of question and answer. Nor do we at all say, as Celsus scoffingly alleges, 'Believe that he whom I introduce to you is the Son of God, although he was shamefully bound, and disgracefully punished, and very recently was most contumeliously treated before the eyes of all men;' neither do we add, 'Believe it even the more on that account.' For it is our endeavour to state, on each individual point, arguments more numerous even than we have brought forward in the preceding pages." (6:10)
Though most humans don't pursue much of an intellectual life, Origen comments that "many also of the most enlightened of men" become Christians (7:54).
Origen doesn't attempt a detailed treatment of every line of evidence for Christianity. And some of his arguments are better than others. But you don't have to agree with everything Origen wrote, or think that his treatment of every issue is sufficient for every context, in order to recognize that he and the Christians of his day were far more concerned about reason and evidence than your quotes suggest.
It's also not enough to appeal to "examples of this in history", since each case has to be judged individually.
ReplyDeleteAgain, Jason, I really don't think you understand my argument. Since you don't know what I'm arguing, you don't know the purpose of my examples.
We don't know exactly why people accepted certain attributions. You talk about how these texts just must have had headings, must have had labels, must have had oral tradition associated with them, parents and grandparents and great grandparents (in your mind) just must have had great reasons, so we should accept these things too. All of these imaginative reasons (again, for which there is no actual hard evidence) proves the case in your mind.
What I do instead is I talk about actual evidence. Not creative speculations that support my case for which there is no evidence. I talk about actual people. What did they accept and why? We have real evidence that the brightest minds accepted transparent forgeries. We have real evidence that typically devoted followers are not swayed by solid evidence to the contrary. We have real evidence that texts were accepted for purely doctrinal reasons as opposed to evidential ones (as I mentioned at Healthy and Unhealthy Skepticism. I will address your arguments from there in a moment).
When you see this from me you erect your straw man. "Jon argues that since certain people accepted erroneous things for bad reasons, therefore everyone must have. That is illogical."
But that is not my argument. My argument is, let's establish general behavior. In general did people accept texts for good reasons? In general were these people critical thinkers? In general was it hard to sway early Christians with forgeries? The answer is no, no, and no.
The same applies today. Why do Christians today accept these texts? I heard a lecture from Josh McDowell. He said at many of the speeches he gave he'd ask the listeners "Give me one reason why we should think the Bible is true." I believe he said he never got anything like a decent reply, despite the fact that in his mind there are a thousand good responses to that question.
So what does this mean? People are very easily swayed by forgeries. Christians are often taught to believe without reasons. Can we have any confidence that these attributions are accurate based upon the agreement of these types of people. I say absolutely not. They could be right. A broken clock is right twice a day, right? But we can't have any confidence they were right. Of course Jerome's error doesn't show that everyone else made the same error with regards to the gospels. It simply shows that it is easy to do for the educated, and therefore easy to do for the uneducated, and therefore easy to do for anybody.
Since I talk about actual evidence, instead of imaginative speculation about grandparents, supposed labels, and supposed headings, it makes for something we can actually debate, like Serapion.
I had quoted a conservative website that claimed Serapion first permitted a reading of the Gospel of Peter because it had Peter's name attached, but he later rejected it primarily for doctrinal reasons. I will summarize your reply.
1-You say this doesn't mean he thought it was canonical. That doesn't matter. The point is he originally accepted it because he thought it was from Peter, but later rejected it because he decided he didn't like the doctrine.
2-You say that my website is wrong in saying he recommended it because it contained Peter's name. You say he may not have thought it was by Peter but perhaps about Peter. I'm not sure I'm grasping your argument but if I have understood you right then you appear to be wrong. The translation at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serapion_of_Antioch
says that the gospel is "put forward under Peter's name." Another translation
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/serapion.html
has "transcribed with the name of Peter." Both of these indicate he had assumed it was by Peter. If this does not address your argument, then please clarify your argument.
3-You say the website is wrong to suggest he rejected it for heretical content, but did so "knowing that such were not handed down to us" (i.e. evidential reasons). But that's not clear. Knowing that such were not handed down could just as easily mean "knowing that such teaching was not handed down" i.e. this is heretical based upon what I think correct teaching is. The Wikipedia article has "knowing that such things as these we never received" i.e. teaching such as this wasn't received.
4-You say that even if it was merely rejected for doctrinal reasons, this is not equivalent to my "this is what I want, so this is what is apostolic." But I'm just showing that your claim about their concern for apostolicity really devolves to "this is what I like so this is what is apostolic" with a specific example. Again, you with speculation that they just must have been myth buster types, talking to parents, grandparents, rabbi's, etc without evidence. I'm bringing forward hard evidence that debunks your assertions.
I've addressed your comments on Sabbatai Sevi in the other thread. In sum you respond with mostly true statements that have nothing to do with the point I'm gleaning from the example of Sabbatai Sevi. I'll comment on further comments you have made, which continue to demonstrate the same point.
As your own Sevi example illustrates, a desire that Sevi be the Messiah they wanted him to be didn't prevent people from denying that he performed miracles, eventually leaving the movement, realizing that they had to address his apostasy, etc.
I don't deny any of this. It is again irrelevant to my point that people have an amazing ability to hear what they want to hear. I suspect you will reply and say you don't deny this, but when you say that contemporaries would have still been alive and this would have prevented false attributions you are denying my claim that people rather than changing their opinions due to the corrections of the contemporaries in fact will not change their view if they don't want to. I have actual examples (more than just Sevi, many modern examples) where this is the case.
As I explained earlier, a desire for a larger paycheck isn't likely to be sufficient to convince a man, his family, and others around him that he makes more money than he actually does. The desire for more money will be accompanied by other desires and will have to interact with reality, including other people who don't have that desire.
This is completely incoherent in that it is in no way analogous to anything I said. A desire for a larger paycheck runs into roadblocks that an imaginary friend who walks with you and talks with you and tells you that you are his own won't run into, or that a false attribution to a text won't run into. When the store owner won't let me buy food because I don't have any money, that has a way of making a person face reality. How does the false belief that Paul wrote Ephesians ever stop me in the same way?
If we applied your ridiculous reasoning consistently, we wouldn't be able to accept any historical account from people who desire what they're reporting.
Here again you are really just not grasping my argument. Is it my argument that if a person reports on something they like, then what they report cannot be true. See, normally I don't even bother responding to this nonsense, but since you're expressing so much indignation that I haven't responded to your so called arguments, I'm being a little more detailed here. This is a waste of my time, but I do it once more here just to show that your claim that I don't respond is itself nonsense. Since you aren't responding to my actual views initially I see no point in replying to you. There's nothing to reply to.
And the opposing "factions" you refer to would have had a motive to question Pauline authorship.
I don't see the faction that thinks the adults need to get circumcised, make trips across the world to perform sacrifices, observe all of these dietary restrictions getting a whole lot of traction in Rome or Galatia.
You're repeating what you said earlier about Roman Catholic support for my position on Ignatius, but you aren't interacting with what I said in defense of my position in my last post on the subject.
I really wonder what "arguments" you think are so critical that I haven't replied to. You speculated about a possible motive for his change in tone in the Epistle to the Romans. I speculated back. I offer further speculation from another author below. You've asked why I singled out Calvin, and I didn't respond because I didn't think it was a very important question. Do you think it is? If so, I'll say I single out Calving because as I understand he is among the first to question them (which proves that universal attestation doesn't help) and also because a major reason we conclude that these texts are spurious is the obvious Roman Catholic propaganda they contain. Nothing you've said shows that claim to be false.
You replied to my point that these texts are already replete with interpolations and modifications as if it doesn't matter. I showed that it did and you replied with vague reference to a place where this point was supposedly dealt with. I see nothing at that link (healthy and unhealthy skepticism) that addresses my point. You say Christians opposed forgeries. That's irrelevant to my point that forgery is all over the Ignatian Epistles as all sides agree, so this means we need to approach them with skepticism. What in the thread you linked to is in any way relevant to my point (once more for emphasis because you often miss my point) that forgery is all over the Ignatian Epistles as all sides agree, so this means we need to approach them with skepticism. I think you are again waving towards a website that contains supposed refutations that really aren't there.
Until you point to an argument, or make one, I stick with my original point. These documents represent Catholicizing propaganda. Cardinal Newman could see it. John Calvin could see it. He wrote: "There is nothing more abominable than that trash which is in circulation under the name of Ignatius". Don't want to forget your citation. "Instit." lib. i. c. xiii. § 29
It looks like if in fact the Ignatian Epistles are forgeries, this again shows many of your arguments to be erroneous. WD Killen wrote a book on church history, which can be downloaded here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16700
His arguments really show that the belief these are genuine is almost comical. Apparently all the pomp and circumstance of Ignatius travels to Rome escaped the notice of all Christian writers, even those in his supposed path, for a good 100 years, when finally Origen mentions portions of them (Killen argues that Irenaeus knew of Ignatius, but not of his epistles, or the fictitious trip to Rome, and Polycarp is referring to a different Ignatius. I have also heard the claim that Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians may also be spurious, but have not examined that claim. I say that just to clarify that I don’t necessarily agree with Killen with regards to his argument about Polycarp.)
Killen asks an interesting question that I wonder if you can answer:
There is every reason to believe that, as edited by Dr Cureton, they are now presented to the public in their original _language_, as well as in their original form. Copies of these short letters are not known to be extant in any manuscript either Greek or Latin. Dr Cureton has not attempted any explanation of this emphatic fact. If the Epistle to the Romans, in its newly discovered form, is genuine, how does it happen that there are no previous traces of its existence in the Western Church? How are we to account for the extraordinary circumstance that the Church of Rome can produce no copy of it in either Greek or Latin? She had every reason to preserve such a document had it ever come into her possession; for, even considered as a pious fraud of the third century, the address "_to her who sitteth at the head_ in the place of the country of the Romans," [410:1] is one of the most ancient testimonies to her early pre-eminence to be found in the whole range of ecclesiastical literature. Why should she have permitted it to be supplanted by an interpolated document? Can any man, who adopts the views of Dr Cureton, fairly answer such an inquiry?
Killen argues that Ignatius virtually ignores Scripture, which he finds quite anachronistic. More like an RC. He argues that his language to Polycarp is inconsistent with Polycarp's young age (26). The forger thinks Onesimus is still alive, but in fact he's been long since dead. With regards to your explanation of his epistle to the Romans, here's Killen's alternate way of looking at it.
The fabricator proceeds more cautiously in his letter to the Romans. How marvellous that this old gentleman, who is willing to pledge his soul for every one who would submit to the bishop, does not find it convenient to _name_ the bishop of Rome! The experiment might have been somewhat hazardous. The early history of the Roman Church was better known than that of any other in the world, and, had he here made a mistake, the whole cheat might have been at once detected. Though his erudition was so great that he could tell "the places of angels," [418:3] he evidently did not dare to commit himself by giving us a piece of earthly information, and by telling us who was at the head of the Church of the Great City in the ninth year of the reign of Trajan.
On the other hand the writer is unaware that in the actual time of Ignatius Antioch was really the pre-eminent Christian location, and would not have acknowledged Rome as the capital of Christianity. The forger is living in a later time when Rome has gained the eminent position. Again from Killen:
Hence he here incautiously speaks in the language of his own age (i.e. post Antioch pre-eminence, and Roman pre-eminence), and writing "to her _who sitteth at the head_ in the place of the country of the Romans," he says to her with all due humility--"I am not commanding you like Peter and Paul" [419:3]--"Ye have taught others"--"It is easy for you to do whatsoever you please."
The writer uses words as they were understood in the 3rd century, rather than the early 2nd (chastity taking on the meaning of celibacy, "bishop" in the full flowered Roman sense as opposed to a biblical sense.)
Then there is the ridiculous, unrealistic zeal he has, in that he just can't wait to be eaten by dogs, etc. Again, Killen:
The writer is made to assure the believers in these great cities that he has an unquenchable desire to be eaten alive, and he beseeches them to pray that he may enjoy this singular gratification. "I hope," says he, "_through your prayers_ that I shall be devoured by the beasts in Rome." [425:1] ... "I beg of you, be not with me in the love that is not in its season. Leave me, that I may be for the beasts, that by means of them I may be worthy of God.... With provoking _provoke ye the beasts_ that they may be a grave for me, and may leave nothing of my body, that not even when I am fallen asleep may I be a burden upon any man.... I rejoice in the beasts which are prepared for me, and _I pray that they may be quickly found for me_, and I will provoke them that they may quickly devour me." [425:2] Every man jealous for the honour of primitive Christianity should be slow to believe that an apostolic preacher addressed such outrageous folly to apostolic Churches.
Is that unrealistic portrait not enough to convince you these are a joke? Killen also shows that the issues addressed were issues that arose later in church history:
Ecclesiastical history attests that during the fifty years preceding the death of Cyprian, [425:3] the principles here put forward were fast gaining the ascendency. As early as the days of Tertullian, ritualism was rapidly supplanting the freedom of evangelical worship; baptism was beginning to be viewed as an "armour" of marvellous potency; [425:4] the tradition that the great Church of the West had been founded by Peter and Paul was now extensively propagated; and there was an increasing disposition throughout the Empire to recognise the precedence of "her who sitteth at the head in the place of the country of the Romans." It is apparent from the writings of Cyprian that in some quarters the "church system" was already matured. The language ascribed to Ignatius--"Be careful for unanimity, than _which there is nothing more_ excellent" [426:1]--then expressed a prevailing sentiment. To maintain unity was considered a higher duty than to uphold truth, and to be subject to the bishop was deemed one of the greatest of evangelical virtues. Celibacy was then confounded with chastity, and mysticism was extensively occupying the place of scriptural knowledge and intelligent conviction. And the admiration of martyrdom which presents itself in such a startling form in these Epistles was one of the characteristics of the period. Paul taught that a man may give his body to be burned and yet want the spirit of the gospel; [426:2] but Origen does not scruple to describe martyrdom as "the cup of salvation," the baptism which cleanses the sufferer, the act which makes his blood precious in God's sight to the redemption of others. [426:3] Do not all these circumstances combined supply abundant proof that these Epistles were written in the time of this Alexandrian father? [426:4]
This seems to me to completely put the lie to the bulk of your arguments. Why don't all of these churches get up in arms when these epistles first made their appearance? "Hey, we in Smyrna don't remember these things. We in Rome don't have a letter." What about all these people named and the networking? Why aren't the contemporaries of the people named, some of whom just must have been alive, and out stumping like modern day myth busters, clamping the lid on all of these false claims? Your view is anachronistic, and proven false by these spurious epistles.
If the texts are spurious in your opinion, then they can't be a base for you to make a judgment as to whether a document is consistent with Pauline style. You criticized Ephesians as inconsistent with Pauline style in the context of discussing evidence that Ephesians is a forgery, but if Ephesians is inconsistent with the style of forgeries, then that's not evidence against the authenticity of Ephesians.
I give up on this one. Maybe someone else can explain it to you.
You don't tell us which specific passages in Philippians you have in view for the first comment ("I wonder how this trial will turn out"), and you don't explain how something like wanting to press on in the Christian life is "ironic" in a way that suggests forgery.
Again, back to proving the grass is green for you. Here is a definition of dramatic irony:
"Dramatic irony lies in the audience's deeper perceptions of a coming fate, which contrast with a character's lack of knowledge about said fate."
So I need to spell it out for you? "I wonder how this trial will turn out" is Phil 1:20-26. This depicts Paul as on the eve of his trial, not knowing how it will turn out. That's called dramatic irony for the benefit of the reader, a common fictional depiction. "Ridiculous" you say, but then that just about sums up the totality of the response to the Dutch Radicals.
If I thought that only the original context is relevant, why would I have gone on to discuss the context of Romans 11 as well?
Here's the totality of your argument on Romans 11
Romans 11 refers to a remnant of believing Jews, which is a repetition of an Old Testament theme (Romans 11:2-5). Nothing in the passage suggests the destruction of the temple as a past event. To assume that the table of Romans 11:9 is a reference to the temple, and that it's already been destroyed, is dubious. That's not what Psalm 69 meant in its original context, and nothing in the context of Romans 11 suggests an application of the theme as narrow as yours. All that's suggested in Romans 11 is widespread Jewish rejection of Christ, followed by the application of general Old Testament themes concerning the consequences of such sin, which had occurred as early as Jesus' earthly ministry. That's why He was crucified.
Paul refers to a remnant. OK. So what? Next you do nothing but deny that this is a reference to the temple. Then you say my reference is dubious. Then you say the point about being out of context. So far this is the only relevant point, so I'm asking about it and you don't want to answer. Next you say the context doesn't suggest it, but you don't explain how, so there's nothing to respond to there. Next you talk about how Romans 11 is about widespread Jewish rejection, as if a reference to the destruction of the temple wouldn't fit perfectly here. You don't say why my understanding is a problem. You offer 1 solitary argument about using Ps 69 out of context, and when I ask about it you don't want to interact with my question. This is why I don't interact with your "arguments". You give me a lot of words but not a lot to actually interact with, and when I do try to interact you just ignore it and talk about how I didn't interact with other non-arguments.
Let's get a little more specific regarding the context. Paul asks in verse 1 "Did God reject his people?" He answers with a no. Now, what has prompted this question? Why would his listeners think for some reason that it appeared that God had rejected the Jews? You know what would fit perfectly? The destruction of the temple. And then what kind of sense does it make to talk about a remnant, as with Elijah? It appears for some reason that the readers think that something bad has happened to the bulk of the Jewish people. Paul says don't worry. There is still a small contingent that is OK. You know what would make perfect sense of that? The destruction of the temple. Then Paul talks about a prophecy about these events, as if to say don't worry, this is part of God's plan, and he still has things under control. What words are contained in this prophecy? "Let there table become a snare and a trap." You know what fits perfectly with that? The destruction of the temple.
Paul follows this by saying basically their loss is the Gentile's gain. God has turned his face from them and in so doing has turned his face towards the Gentiles. But what can this be referring to? What is it that makes it clear that they have "stumbled" and are in a position to look to the Gentiles and be jealous in Paul's mind? Could it be that the destruction of the temple is proof that God has turned his face from them, and in Paul's mind salvation is now coming to the Gentiles through the gospel? That seems to fit very nicely. Please explain with specifics how this interpretation violates the context.
So let's notice the difference between you and me. You talk about a remnant, and how this is an OT theme, but you don't explain the relevance this has to an argument against my interpretation. You assert that I'm wrong, and that my interpretation is dubious. You say my application is "narrow" though you don't really make any arguments or explain why I'm "narrow" or even why "narrow" is wrong. You describe some of Paul's points in vague terms as if this means something. I talk about the text and make actual logical connections in support of what I'm saying. You put a lot of words on the page, but you don't make a lot of arguments. I respond to arguments, so I usually don't have much to respond to in your case. Arguments are specific things. I think you need to familiarize yourself with what an argument is.
And when the issue under consideration is something like being able to discern that an alleged Pauline document appearing in the year 130 is suspicious, how "scientifically and verbally literate" does a person have to be?
Quite. These are not necessarily simple matters.
You never responded to my last post in that thread. And nothing you've said above answers what I said there.
Actually, nothing that you had said answered what I had said there. My point is that even if we accept your view that a book like 2 Thess, or Galatians is authentic we have to concede that contemporaneous with Paul we have a cottage industry of Pauline forgery. This is obviously a problem when we're talking about ancient history, for which evidence is scanty as compared to the modern day. This is something that is basically undeniable. What did you say in response in that thread that really addressed this point? There are forgeries in the modern day? What relevance does that have? You couldn't produce evidence in the modern day of forgery as widespread as it was at the early stages of Christianity (in terms of percentages) initially. In desperation you appealed to the existence of junk mail. But this only proves my point. This makes it difficult to identify when junk mail is authentic. The existence of forgery today doesn't suddenly mean it becomes easy to distinguish authentic writings from forged ones in antiquity. The undisputed fact that there was a cottage industry of Pauline forgery at the time of the writing of the supposed Pauline texts in the NT clearly requires us to approach any supposed Pauline text with skepticism, and just makes authentication of any particular document less likely. If we were talking about a person that wasn't a mythic hero of the past that people wanted to write in the name of, then we'd be able to have more confidence. As it stands we are forced to concede that we have less confidence. If there is something relevant at the other thread that actually shows me to be wrong here, please point to it. I don't think there is anything there.
Similarly, people often use phrases like "starting a new tradition" and "family tradition" without thinking that the people who originated the tradition have long been dead.
Could be, might be, it's a possibility. It's also a possibility that this is a writer writing long after the fact that is concerned that certain Pauline "traditions" are about to be abandoned, so he anachronistically refers to them in that way. Again, you're arguing for what's logically possible, but I explained in my original post that that is not the issue.
Asserting that your interpretation is better doesn't give us reason to think that it's better.
That's really my point to you. "A person could possibly refer to a family tradition." That doesn't make your view accurate, or better. Again, you aren't making arguments. You're just asserting logically possible ways to understand the text.
Again, if Paul had written the entire letter, people wouldn't be thinking about the implications of his handwriting during their entire reading of the letter. And many people wouldn't see the handwriting, since they would either be listening to the letter being read or would be reading a copy of the original.
Well, you're ignoring what I said. I said that Paul does not tell anyone to copy his letters. So he has no reason to assume that this is what is happening, which in your mind would require him to describe the idiosyncratic style for the benefit of a person reading a copy. However, this is precisely what a forger would be thinking, which is why the forge theory makes better sense. And as far as people listening, please give an example of a public reading where the writer describes his handwriting for the benefit of a listening audience. This just seems weird.
So I ignore you because your arguments just make no sense, or they deal with things I've already addressed, or (as is usually the case) you just miss the actual point and argue for something not in dispute (the evidence against Sabbati Sevi is stronger than the evidence against Christianity). It's not dishonesty, though I suppose that makes you feel better.
I await your long, 40 page reply, which will ignore my points, argue in favor of points not in dispute, and which you can in the future point to and say "See, you didn't respond to me. You are a lying liar that misrepresents and lies. And I'm not committing a fallacy because I define ad-hominem differently."
Jon Curry said:
ReplyDelete"My argument is, let's establish general behavior. In general did people accept texts for good reasons? In general were these people critical thinkers? In general was it hard to sway early Christians with forgeries? The answer is no, no, and no."
You haven't "established" any such thing. If historians accept hundreds of Jerome's authorship attributions (letters he received from contemporaries, works he attributed to earlier Christians, etc.), how does citing his mistaken judgment about something attributed to Seneca "establish general behavior"? And where have you "established general behavior" about "critical thinking"? You haven't. You haven't produced anything that goes into the sort of depth we see in Glenn Miller and other sources I've cited. Instead, you jump from century to century, cherry picking an error of Jerome in one century, some followers of Sabbati Sevi in another century (while excluding the people who responded to Sevi more reasonably), etc. Then you assume that such behavior is what's "general" for the early Christians. And we're supposed to take that alleged general behavior of the early Christians as an explanation for something like a universal attribution of 1 Corinthians to Paul. Why should anybody find such a procedure convincing?
Even if 90% of the early Christians had been as unreasonable as you're suggesting, why aren't the 10% reflected in the historical record? Why didn't the early enemies of Christianity and the relevant heretics notice that a document like 1 Corinthians didn't arise until several decades after Paul's death? Or why did they notice, but not make enough of an issue of it to leave traces in the historical record (as so many of their other arguments left traces)? Why do the early Christians repeatedly express concern about forgeries and take steps to avoid them, such as in the examples Glenn Miller discusses (http://christian-thinktank.com/pseudox.html)? Why did the alleged forgers think they needed to follow the conventions of Greco-Roman biography, include the sort of verisimilitude you referred to earlier, etc. if the people they were trying to deceive were so undiscerning that they wouldn't even be suspicious if an alleged Pauline letter didn't arise until the year 130? Why do the letters of Paul stop early on? If the early Christians were so undiscerning, then why not keep producing letters of Paul into the late second century, third century, and beyond?
You write:
"Since I talk about actual evidence, instead of imaginative speculation about grandparents, supposed labels, and supposed headings, it makes for something we can actually debate, like Serapion."
As I explained earlier, historians regularly reach conclusions based on what you're calling "imaginative speculation". We don't need a historical report specifically stating that Paul ate food most of the days of his life in order to conclude that it's probable that he ate food most of the days of his life. The reason why you don't want to apply to the New Testament what we know about common ancient literary practices is because you don't like the implications.
You write:
"I had quoted a conservative website that claimed Serapion first permitted a reading of the Gospel of Peter because it had Peter's name attached, but he later rejected it primarily for doctrinal reasons. I will summarize your reply."
You then go on to misrepresent or ignore much of what I had argued. Why don't you quote what I said instead of summarizing in your own words?
You write:
"The point is he originally accepted it because he thought it was from Peter, but later rejected it because he decided he didn't like the doctrine."
As I documented in the other thread, Serapion doesn't just reject the document because "he didn't like the doctrine". I explained why he rejected it in the other thread, and you're ignoring what I said.
You write:
"You say that my website is wrong in saying he recommended it because it contained Peter's name. You say he may not have thought it was by Peter but perhaps about Peter. I'm not sure I'm grasping your argument"
If Serapion initially thought that it was a document about Peter rather than by Peter, then the issue of the canon wasn't involved, and he can't be said to have accepted a forgery in Peter's name.
You write:
"The translation at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serapion_of_Antioch says that the gospel is 'put forward under Peter's name.' Another translation http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/serapion.html has 'transcribed with the name of Peter.' Both of these indicate he had assumed it was by Peter."
You're quoting Serapion's description of the document after he read it. You're quoting what he wrote after the incident had occurred. One of the issues under consideration here is why he initially said that the document is acceptable to read. He didn't read it himself until later, and he rejected it as unacceptable at that point. He then refers to it as going under the name of Peter. Again, I address this issue in more depth in the other thread.
You write:
"You say the website is wrong to suggest he rejected it for heretical content, but did so 'knowing that such were not handed down to us' (i.e. evidential reasons). But that's not clear. Knowing that such were not handed down could just as easily mean 'knowing that such teaching was not handed down' i.e. this is heretical based upon what I think correct teaching is. The Wikipedia article has 'knowing that such things as these we never received' i.e. teaching such as this wasn't received."
If the sentence is "not clear", then the passage doesn't make the point you originally cited it for. You're the one who originally cited Serapion. If his meaning is unclear, then that's more of a problem for you than it is for me.
But even your Wikipedia translation refers to "writings" earlier in the sentence, before what you quoted. There is no plural term such as "teachings" in that sentence to align with the plural "such things as these". The second translation that you linked to reads "no such writings have been handed down to us". Paul Maier's recent translation of Eusebius just uses the term "such". The same is found at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250106.htm. Either way, Serapion is making a historical appeal.
You write:
"Again, you with speculation that they just must have been myth buster types, talking to parents, grandparents, rabbi's, etc without evidence."
I've already addressed your "myth buster" straw man. And since all humans have parents, and it's common for children to live with parents and speak with them and learn from them, why would it be unreasonable to think that one generation influenced another? It's common for communities to have teachers and leaders, such as rabbis. Serapion's reference to what was handed down is an appeal to something delivered to his generation by a previous one.
He's addressing apostolic authority. What would be passed on in this context would be something from the apostles. He's referring to the historical Peter and other historical apostles and what was passed on from them.
You write:
"When the store owner won't let me buy food because I don't have any money, that has a way of making a person face reality. How does the false belief that Paul wrote Ephesians ever stop me in the same way?"
It doesn't have to "stop me in the same way" in order to cause problems that would be easily noticed. How many people have to go to a store in an attempt to get food before realizing that they don't make as much money as they desire to make? They realize what's happening long before then. They know the difference between a desire and reality. If they hear their employer tell them that they'll make a particular amount of money if they accept the job, they don't assume that there's something wrong with their hearing and that their employer must have mentioned the amount of money they desire to make. The memory of having never heard of 1 Corinthians prior to the year 130 would be similar to hearing your employer tell you that you're going to make less money than you desire. And the non-Christians around you aren't going to have your desire that 1 Corinthians was written by Paul. You've given us no reason to think that all, or even most, Christians would believe in Pauline authorship just because they desired it, much less do we have reason to think that non-Christians would be as careless as your theory requires.
You write:
"Is it my argument that if a person reports on something they like, then what they report cannot be true."
That's not what I claimed you said.
You write:
"I don't see the faction that thinks the adults need to get circumcised, make trips across the world to perform sacrifices, observe all of these dietary restrictions getting a whole lot of traction in Rome or Galatia."
Those aren't the only reasons people can have for opposing Paul. He addresses a lot of issues in his letters, and people can disagree with him on one point or many. It's not as if he could have only one type of opponent. And they wouldn't have to live at a location like Rome or Galatia in order to influence people. I've already cited the example of the Ebionites.
You write:
"This seems to me to completely put the lie to the bulk of your arguments. Why don't all of these churches get up in arms when these epistles first made their appearance?"
The question assumes that the letters are inauthentic, which I don't think they are. I also don't think that the early Christians were as concerned about the writings of Ignatius as they were about the writings of the apostles. The letters of Ignatius wouldn't have been as widespread or read by as many people.
I don't have the time or desire to interact with what you've cited from W.D. Killen, particularly given how much of my material you've ignored. Your list of proposed forgeries keeps getting longer, and it seems to be based primarily on what you come across using Google searches that are done without much discernment.
You write:
"So I need to spell it out for you? 'I wonder how this trial will turn out' is Phil 1:20-26. This depicts Paul as on the eve of his trial, not knowing how it will turn out. That's called dramatic irony for the benefit of the reader, a common fictional depiction."
People often wonder how something will turn out. The fact that fiction sometimes imitates life in that context isn't sufficient grounds for concluding that a document containing such material is a forgery. If Paul wrote the letter, he would know what was occurring within his mind.
You write:
"You don't say why my understanding is a problem."
Yes, I did say why it's a problem. You haven't given us any reason to conclude that the table in question is a reference to the temple. A table isn't a temple. And if the table refers to something other than the temple in Psalm 69, and what it refers to there would make sense in Romans 11, then you ought to give us a reason why we're supposed to take it as a reference to the temple instead. The possibility that he would do it isn't enough. You have to give us a reason to think that the table is the temple and a reason to think that a past destruction of the temple is in view. You've done neither.
You write:
"Why would his listeners think for some reason that it appeared that God had rejected the Jews? You know what would fit perfectly? The destruction of the temple."
Since Paul doesn't mention the destruction of the temple, we ought to look instead to what he does mention. Romans 11:1 follows chapter 10. The closing verses of chapter 10 discuss the disobedience of the Jewish people, their rejection of the gospel. A rejection of the gospel would suggest their alienation from God without any destruction of the temple.
You write:
"It appears for some reason that the readers think that something bad has happened to the bulk of the Jewish people."
Yes, not believing in Christ is "something bad", as Paul explains in chapter 10. You still haven't shown that a past destruction of the temple is in view.
You write:
"Paul says don't worry. There is still a small contingent that is OK. You know what would make perfect sense of that? The destruction of the temple."
The problem, for your interpretation, is that a view of the passage not involving a past destruction of the temple "makes perfect sense".
Earlier, you said that the forgers would write with verisimilitude, and that they "weren't idiots". But you want us to believe that the forger of Romans had a past destruction of the temple in view throughout the passages you've cited, not just in one verse or one phrase. Did he lose his sense of verisimilitude for several verses, and did his readers for hundreds of years not notice your interpretation that "makes perfect sense"?
You write:
"Please explain with specifics how this interpretation violates the context."
It doesn't have to "violate the context" in order to not be suggested by the text or context. You're making the assertion that Romans probably is a forgery because it refers to the destruction of the temple as a past event. You carry the burden of proof. I don't have to demonstrate that interpreting the "table" of Romans 11:9 is something that "violates the context", for example, in order to conclude that you've given us no reason to believe that the temple probably is in view.
You write:
"Quite. These are not necessarily simple matters."
I was addressing the circumstances of Christians alive at the time when these alleged forgeries arose. It's "not necessarily simple" to determine that an alleged Pauline document unheard of prior to the year 130 is suspicious? What would be difficult about it? What's difficult about realizing that a Pauline letter shouldn't go unheard of for several decades past Paul's death? What's difficult about realizing that it's suspicious if the same thing occurs again with another document, and another, and another, etc.?
You write:
"My point is that even if we accept your view that a book like 2 Thess, or Galatians is authentic we have to concede that contemporaneous with Paul we have a cottage industry of Pauline forgery."
That depends on what you mean by "cottage industry". And methods were available for avoiding forgeries, such as using recognizable handwriting and credible messengers for verification, as well as consulting Paul himself when he was alive. When he died, that would have been an indication that it was time to stop looking for Pauline letters.
You write:
"You couldn't produce evidence in the modern day of forgery as widespread as it was at the early stages of Christianity (in terms of percentages) initially. In desperation you appealed to the existence of junk mail."
You're distorting what was discussed in the other thread. You made a lot of claims that you aren't mentioning. You said, for example, that "If it [forging] were often it wouldn't be written up in the paper. It's rare enough that it is news." You mentioned the low number of books in bookstores that are forgeries, so my giving examples of modern forgeries in non-book formats was relevant. You referred to how forging was "widespread" among Christians and argued that such forging would be contrary to my view that the early Christians had high moral standards. But if a small percentage of the population produces the forgeries, then it can still be accurate to refer to Christians in general as having had high moral standards. Some of the arguments you made in that other thread are different from what you're arguing now. There's nothing "desperate" about what I said. You were using some different arguments than you're using now, and citing something like online forgeries (which you call "junk mail") was relevant to what we were discussing. If you're going to argue against the morality of ancient Christians in general by citing forged letters or forged apocalypses, for example, then I could argue against the morality of modern Americans in general by citing something like forged e-mail. It's not as though dishonesty is no longer involved once a forgery takes an electronic form.
And why should we accept your appeal to percentages above? If the apostles and their associates only author a particular number of documents, and a small percentage of the population decides to forge a larger number of documents, how do the implications you've suggested follow? How do you know how many forgeries there were? If you're going to include something like the letter Paul refers to in 2 Thessalonians, even though it isn't an extant document, then should we also include other documents not extant? If you're going beyond the time of the apostles, should we also include the genuine documents written during that period? What about the thousands of letters attributed to Cyprian, Jerome, Augustine, and many other sources? Do we include those among the genuine documents? You need to go into much more detail about what percentages you're referring to, how you arrive at those percentages, and why they supposedly have the significance you claim they do.
You write:
"You're just asserting logically possible ways to understand the text."
You made the assertion that the term carries with it a particular implication regarding how much time has passed, and you used that assertion as a justification for concluding that 1 Corinthians is a forgery. It's not my responsibility to prove that the term doesn't have that time implication. You carry the burden of proof.
You can't deny that the context supports my view. The context is a letter that's supposed to represent what Paul wrote. And Paul uses the term to refer to Christian teachings. But you want us to believe that the term was used in a way that contradicts the context repeatedly (1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, etc.), and that the forgers you claimed were writing with verisimilitude became careless. You then dismiss the universal attribution of these letters to Paul among external sources. And, apparently, almost every scholar in the world, including liberal scholars who are opposed to Christianity, hasn't noticed what you have. You tell us that you don't need to address the Greek term. You supposedly know what's meant because of the implications of the English. And you don't have to document it. It's just obvious.
You write:
"Well, you're ignoring what I said. I said that Paul does not tell anyone to copy his letters. So he has no reason to assume that this is what is happening, which in your mind would require him to describe the idiosyncratic style for the benefit of a person reading a copy. However, this is precisely what a forger would be thinking, which is why the forge theory makes better sense. And as far as people listening, please give an example of a public reading where the writer describes his handwriting for the benefit of a listening audience. This just seems weird."
Have you consulted any commentaries? It doesn't seem that you make much of an effort to research these things.
Galatians was sent to multiple churches (Galatians 1:2), and other churches would have interest in an apostolic document. Copying of the letter could be expected.
As for why Paul would write what he did in Galatians 6:11, we aren't told enough to be confident about a conclusion, as far as I can tell, but there are some reasonable options. As I've said before, if he was including handwriting for purposes of authentication, then what he wrote at that point wouldn't be of much significance. If he wanted to write "this is my handwriting", he could do so, or he could write something else. If he wrote the whole letter himself, he could be placing emphasis on the closing portion of the letter. He may also be alluding to an eye problem (4:13-15) with reference to what follows (6:12). Paul had suffered for the gospel, as he'll soon go on to say more explicitly (6:17), in contrast to the false teachers who were trying to avoid persecution (6:12). He could also be referring back to verse 10, with the implication that the Galatians shouldn't view him as an enemy (4:16), but as somebody writing in love (6:10), in his own hand (6:11), perhaps with the large letters meant to suggest passion rather than emphasis.
Again, your perception that Galatians 6:11 is "weird" is a meager basis on which to dismiss the universal external testimony for the Pauline authorship of the letter. You've given us no good reason to think that Galatians 6:11 is inconsistent with Pauline authorship, no good reason to think that the ancient Christians wouldn't have been suspicious of a forgery appearing several decades after Paul's death, and no good reason to think that the enemies of Christianity wouldn't have noticed and made much of the lateness of the document and the implications of that lateness. It's even more ridiculous to suggest that the same sort of process occurred several other times. If the early Christians were so desirous of Pauline letters, why didn't they get some from the apostle before he died? And why didn't they keep imagining that they were finding Pauline letters beyond the time of Marcion?
You haven't "established" any such thing. If historians accept hundreds of Jerome's authorship attributions (letters he received from contemporaries, works he attributed to earlier Christians, etc.), how does citing his mistaken judgment about something attributed to Seneca "establish general behavior"?
ReplyDeleteAs John has established that early Christians were superstitious and gullible by today's standards, I have established that early Christians are easily duped by forged documents written in the name of mythic heroes of the past. Seneca's letter to Paul. Jesus letter to King Abgar, Jude being duped by "Enoch", etc. This is the data that we have. What data have you presented that shows that early Christians in general were capable of identifying spurious documents written in the name of mythic heroes when the anachronisms aren't transparent? You've shown that they concerned themselves with these issues, but this doesn't show that they were capable or effective at identifying spurious texts. So since you've given zero data points in support of your thesis, and I've given several in support of mine, who of us has a better claim at having established general behavior?
Even if 90% of the early Christians had been as unreasonable as you're suggesting, why aren't the 10% reflected in the historical record?
Maybe the 10% left Christianity, and as Christians assumed power under Constantine they destroyed all evidence they could which showed their claims to be false. I'm unaware of any anti-Christian polemics that survived the Christian purges other than that which is preserved in the writings of Christians themselves (and hence rebutted). Porphyry's works were banned and burned, and we only have fragments which remain which are brought forward only to be refuted by Christians. Here is another case of Christian forgery. Christians tampered with his works, presenting him as a Christian. Eusebius buys off on it, as does Theodoret. You finally get out to Augustine and he finally spots it as a forgery, but this didn't stop orthodox Christian scholars from continuing to adhere to it's genuineness for centuries. Again, general behavior shows a pattern of Christians accepting spurious documents uncritically, with one or two very rare standouts recognizing it. But they are ignored.
Why do the letters of Paul stop early on? If the early Christians were so undiscerning, then why not keep producing letters of Paul into the late second century, third century, and beyond?
The same reason spurious documents written in Peter's name eventually ended.
We don't need a historical report specifically stating that Paul ate food most of the days of his life in order to conclude that it's probable that he ate food most of the days of his life.
Gosh, we assume Paul ate food without evidence, so why not also assume that there was tons of evidence in favor of your attribution claims also without evidence? I don't think so.
You then go on to misrepresent or ignore much of what I had argued. Why don't you quote what I said instead of summarizing in your own words?
You then go on to completely fail to document even one misrepresentation or one instance where I ignored what you said (though you did continue to assert it). Why not show me the supposed misrepresentation or where I've ignored you?
And since all humans have parents, and it's common for children to live with parents and speak with them and learn from them, why would it be unreasonable to think that one generation influenced another?
Because you assume the one generation influenced the other in a manner that just assumes the truth of all of your conclusions.
The memory of having never heard of 1 Corinthians prior to the year 130 would be similar to hearing your employer tell you that you're going to make less money than you desire.
My "memory" of what happened to me 80 years ago when I was 20 and now supposedly I'm 100 and I'm going to jump around and object that I have no memory of this?
Jon-"Is it my argument that if a person reports on something they like, then what they report cannot be true."
Jason-That's not what I claimed you said.
Yes it is. You had said:
If we applied your ridiculous reasoning consistently, we wouldn't be able to accept any historical account from people who desire what they're reporting.
How does my reasoning entail that you can never accept any historical account from people who desire what they are reporting? Wouldn't that mean that if a person desires what they report, this means the report cannot be true? And where do I suggest such a position? I would say the straw man is the most common fallacy you engage in, though special pleading runs a close second.
I also don't think that the early Christians were as concerned about the writings of Ignatius as they were about the writings of the apostles. The letters of Ignatius wouldn't have been as widespread or read by as many people.
That doesn't matter to your argument. Your argument is that Romans can't be spurious because the Roman church would recognize that they hadn't possessed the document in the past, and it has now just appeared. It doesn't have to be widespread for this argument to work. It's just a matter of whether or not the document was at Rome. The exact same thing is what you should expect of the Ignatian epistles. If these are forgeries, then your argument just doesn't work.
People often wonder how something will turn out. The fact that fiction sometimes imitates life in that context isn't sufficient grounds for concluding that a document containing such material is a forgery.
The fact that life sometimes imitates fiction isn't sufficient grounds for concluding the document is authentic.
Yes, I did say why it's a problem. You haven't given us any reason to conclude that the table in question is a reference to the temple. A table isn't a temple.
But you haven't suggested what it is referring to. And the temple is symbolic of a table, i.e. a place where food is consumed. The temple is the place where the sacrifices occur. Subsequent to a sacrifice the sacrifice is consumed, kind of like what you do at a table.
The closing verses of chapter 10 discuss the disobedience of the Jewish people, their rejection of the gospel.
But there is no distinctive occurrence to show that the Jews had in fact rejected Christ on your view. There is on my view. On your view, why is it clear to those in Rome that the Jews had been rejected by God because of their rejection of Christ?
Yes, not believing in Christ is "something bad", as Paul explains in chapter 10.
You're not interacting with what I'm arguing. I've said that it is clear to the Romans that something bad has happened to the Jews. Of course you think rejecting Christ is bad, but this doesn't explain how it is that the Romans know that the Jews have rejected Christ. Do they have surveys? Do they conduct phone polls? How do they know this? I can explain why they know it and you can't.
The problem, for your interpretation, is that a view of the passage not involving a past destruction of the temple "makes perfect sense".
You haven't explained how they know that God has turned his face from the Jews. You haven't explained what the "table" is referring to. You haven't responded to my question about your argument that the context of Ps 69 doesn't have a destruction of the temple in view. How does this mean your view "makes perfect sense"?
You're making the assertion that Romans probably is a forgery because it refers to the destruction of the temple as a past event. You carry the burden of proof.
This is not a case where your view is true unless proven false. You haven't given any reasons to think any of these Pauline texts are authentic, beyond your reference to spurious Ignatian epistles or the testimony of gullible, superstitious Christians that are obviously easily duped by forgeries, and who are also taught to believe without reasons. How about making some internal arguments for why we should accept a book like Romans?
And methods were available for avoiding forgeries, such as using recognizable handwriting and credible messengers for verification, as well as consulting Paul himself when he was alive.
It is my position that Paul was not alive when these were written. If you are going to critique my view you can't just start with evangelical assumptions and say "Hey, since Paul is alive when these appeared (since I'm just going to beg the question and assume he wrote them) he could have been consulted to determine if they were genuine." That is a case of question begging and is obviously illegitimate. Methods were available to recognize forgeries, but how about some evidence that these Christians that would have been the first to come into contact with these texts on my view were capable of utilizing these methods.
But if a small percentage of the population produces the forgeries, then it can still be accurate to refer to Christians in general as having had high moral standards.
We've already been through this, and you've retreated from the claim that early Christians had high moral standards as I've already pointed out (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/08/canon-chronology.html), now saying that you don't need to demonstrate high moral standards. You've given us no reason to think they had above average moral standards, which is why you stopped defending this claim.
If you're going to argue against the morality of ancient Christians in general by citing forged letters or forged apocalypses, for example, then I could argue against the morality of modern Americans in general by citing something like forged e-mail.
Feel free to argue against the morality of junk mail distributors. I'm with you on that, and it is irrelevant to my point. If you're getting claims about Hugh Hefner becoming a Christian, or philosophy professors being embarrassed by Christian students, or miracles, or Imam's being embarrassed by Christian people, and all this is coming from forwarded emails, you should be skeptical. This doesn't suddenly mean we should trust your early Christian sources.
If the apostles and their associates only author a particular number of documents, and a small percentage of the population decides to forge a larger number of documents, how do the implications you've suggested follow?
Simple mathematics. It doesn't matter if a small number of people are involved in writing forgeries. The issue is the number of forged documents as compared to the number of authentic documents. If the ratio is higher, then we are forced to start with a presumption in favor or opposed to authenticity in a manner consistent with that ratio. This is simply Bayes Theorem again, which you've asserted is not worth studying in your view because it is a waste of your time. Maybe it's time you look into it, so you can understand these issues.
If you're going beyond the time of the apostles, should we also include the genuine documents written during that period? What about the thousands of letters attributed to Cyprian, Jerome, Augustine, and many other sources? Do we include those among the genuine documents?
You of course categorize your documents based upon whether or not someone would even be interested in forging one document in another person’s name. You also consider whether or not we have first hand knowledge that say for instance people are forging documents in Paul's name. The Pauline epistles say that people are forging in Paul's name. If we likewise have a lot of evidence that people are in fact forging in Augustine's name, then that is a factor. Does Augustine say that people forge in his name? If so,then there is reason to think that we need to be concerned about this in his case.
You made the assertion that the term carries with it a particular implication regarding how much time has passed, and you used that assertion as a justification for concluding that 1 Corinthians is a forgery.
I'm basing my claims on the English translation of the Greek terms. It is anachronistic (though not impossible) for the founder of a religion to refer to his own teachings as "traditions."
You can't deny that the context supports my view. The context is a letter that's supposed to represent what Paul wrote. And Paul uses the term to refer to Christian teachings. But you want us to believe that the term was used in a way that contradicts the context repeatedly (1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, etc.),
I don't know why this means the context supports your view. I don't see how my understanding contradicts the context.
and that the forgers you claimed were writing with verisimilitude became careless.
That's what spotting forgery is all about. You look for places where the forger slipped up.
You then dismiss the universal attribution of these letters to Paul among external sources.
And with good reason.
And, apparently, almost every scholar in the world, including liberal scholars who are opposed to Christianity, hasn't noticed what you have.
Also every expert in radiometric dating hasn't noticed that C14 and Potassium Argon dating methods don't actually work, and in fact the earth is a mere 6K years old instead of 4.5 billion. But then, so what?
You tell us that you don't need to address the Greek term.
I'm treating the Greek term the same way all the Bible translators rendered it in English. If you think they're all wrong, make your argument.
perhaps with the large letters meant to suggest passion rather than emphasis
It's hard to know how to respond to this kind of reasoning.
Again, your perception that Galatians 6:11 is "weird" is a meager basis on which to dismiss the universal external testimony for the Pauline authorship of the letter.
But then, my description as "weird" is not the basis on which I dismiss the authorship attribution, but I know that makes for a convenient straw man.
If the early Christians were so desirous of Pauline letters, why didn't they get some from the apostle before he died?
Because people become more and more impressive in legend the further we get from their actual lives. Paul may not have been as wonderful as people eventually thought he was when he was actually alive.
And why didn't they keep imagining that they were finding Pauline letters beyond the time of Marcion?
How do we know they didn't? Had the people at Nag Hammadi not hidden away some of those old texts about Jesus in response to Constantine's orders to have everything burned we'd have never known that some people viewed Jesus as the reincarnation of Seth, or Zoroaster. The orthodox tradition burned the evidence away.
Correction on my comment regarding Bayes' Theorem. You had said that making calculations using Bayes Theorem was unnecessary and a waste of time, not that studying it is a waste of time.
ReplyDeletehttp://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/cooking-books.html
But perhaps if you would invest some time in this by plugging in numbers and seeing how it works you would understand issues relating to prior probabilities on issues such as forged documents. It really isn't unnecessary, nor would it be a waste of your time.
Jon Curry wrote:
ReplyDelete"As John has established that early Christians were superstitious and gullible by today's standards"
I've explained why you're wrong in your claims about what John was arguing, and I've explained why John was wrong in what he did argue:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/07/significance-of-eyewitness-testimony.html
You write:
"I have established that early Christians are easily duped by forged documents written in the name of mythic heroes of the past. Seneca's letter to Paul. Jesus letter to King Abgar, Jude being duped by 'Enoch', etc."
And there were many ancient non-Christians who accepted forgeries (http://christian-thinktank.com/pseudox.html). Many critics of Christianity have accepted forgeries (http://www.tektonics.org/af/bogusq.html). As I documented in another thread, forgeries have been widespread in many societies and contexts, including in modern America (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/healthy-and-unhealthy-skepticism.html). Using your reasoning, we should conclude that external attributions among such sources are therefore of little significance. We can speculate that ancient non-Christian documents, for example, are forgeries based on the same sort of weak internal evidence that you cite against the Biblical documents. I can reject Cicero's letter I referred to earlier, on the basis that I think it's "weird" and suspicious that he refers to the fact that his handwriting is appearing in the letter. I can reject Porphyry's Life Of Plotinus on the basis that he repeatedly refers to himself with the phrase "I, Porphyry" in that document. I can reject the Annals of Tacitus on the basis that I think it "makes perfect sense" for a portion of the document to have been written under circumstances that postdate Tacitus, even though there's nothing unreasonable about reading that portion of the document as consistent with a date prior to Tacitus' death.
You ask, in another thread (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/08/canon-chronology.html), how we know that the earliest gospels were the same as our gospels, yet you've repeatedly treated ancient non-Christian documents for which we have much less textual evidence as reliable. If external testimony is so insignificant, then why accept any ancient document attributions? How would internal evidence of linguistic consistency between documents, for example, lead us to confidence about an authorship attribution if we don't first know what language patterns to assign to an individual by means of external testimony? I've repeatedly asked you such questions about non-Christian documents, such as the Annals of Tacitus, and you keep ignoring those questions. Your reasoning would lead to radical revisions not only of Biblical scholarship, but also of many other fields of historical research.
And contrary to what you claim, Jude's use of 1 Enoch doesn't establish that he was "duped" by it. We've addressed Jude's use of 1 Enoch elsewhere at this blog (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/02/hey-jude.html), and you haven't interacted with that material.
The Seneca and Jesus letters you're referring to aren't mentioned by any of the earliest Christians, and they're only rarely mentioned in later sources. You still haven't interacted with much of what I said earlier about Jerome and Seneca. As I explained in that context, you can't just mention some forgeries accepted by some sources. You have to also take into account how much access the relevant sources had to the relevant evidence (the Corinthian church would have been in a better position to evaluate 1 Corinthians than they would have been in to evaluate 1 Enoch), how widely accepted a document was (source X isn't responsible for the bad judgment of source Y), how important the document was to the people evaluating it (how much its authenticity was of concern to them is relevant to how much effort they would have made to discern its authenticity), how often they rejected forgeries, etc. Listing documents in the manner you do above isn't enough.
You write:
"What data have you presented that shows that early Christians in general were capable of identifying spurious documents written in the name of mythic heroes when the anachronisms aren't transparent?"
You're adding qualifiers you didn't add earlier. Previously, you suggested that the desire that a document be genuine was sufficient for it to be accepted. But now you're adding the qualifier that "the anachronisms aren't transparent". As I explained before, if the Corinthian church didn't hear of 1 Corinthians until around the year 130, that would be highly "transparent".
You write:
"You've shown that they concerned themselves with these issues, but this doesn't show that they were capable or effective at identifying spurious texts."
You haven't even attempted to interact with the large majority of what I've cited from Miller, Bauckham, Carson, and other sources. I and the sources I've cited have discussed specific cases in which the early Christians reached some of the same conclusions that modern scholars have reached about the linguistic evidence and other internal data. We've cited examples of Christians questioning documents that had no unorthodox doctrine or what you've called "transparent anachronisms". I've used 2 and 3 John as examples in the past, repeatedly, and you've repeatedly ignored what I've said. I've cited the example of Dionysius of Alexandria's research into the language of the Johannine documents and external evidence for a second John who lived in Ephesus. Glenn Miller discusses the example of Dionysius of Corinth, who was able to detect tampering with his own writings within his own lifetime and warn other Christians about what was being done. I've discussed some of the techniques for avoiding forgeries that the early Christians were aware of and utilized, such as the use of distinctive handwriting and credible messengers. You've ignored the large majority of what I've cited.
You write:
"So since you've given zero data points in support of your thesis, and I've given several in support of mine, who of us has a better claim at having established general behavior?"
As if all of the material I've cited from Miller, Carson, and other sources is "zero".
You write:
"The same reason spurious documents written in Peter's name eventually ended."
Shifting the focus from Paul to Peter doesn't remove the problem for your argument. If people weren't concerned about evidence, but instead accepted documents according to their desires, then why would they only accept documents as apostolic until a particular time?
You write:
"Gosh, we assume Paul ate food without evidence, so why not also assume that there was tons of evidence in favor of your attribution claims also without evidence?"
That's not what I said. Rather, I cited scholars such as Martin Hengel and Richard Bauckham discussing known literary practices in the ancient world, I cited what would commonly occur during ancient church services according to descriptions we have from some early sources, etc. I didn't ask you to accept a claim "without evidence". The known literary practices are evidence. The descriptions of church services are evidence. Similarly, you've made assumptions based on what was common in the ancient world, such as a common lifespan and the probability that gospels would be given titles when people possessed more than one of them. You've been doing what you claim I shouldn't do. Why do these things have to be explained to you? Why do you have to be corrected so many times before you realize how unreasonable your objections are?
You write:
"You then go on to completely fail to document even one misrepresentation or one instance where I ignored what you said (though you did continue to assert it). Why not show me the supposed misrepresentation or where I've ignored you?"
I did. Again, you originally said that Serapion's position was "since I want certain books it must be that those books are apostolic" (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/healthy-and-unhealthy-skepticism.html). I demonstrated, in that thread, that such a characterization of Serapion was false. I also demonstrated that the web site you quoted on the subject was mistaken in how it characterized what happened. As I explained, Serapion didn't say that the canonicity of the Gospel of Peter was the issue he was addressing. Rather, he was addressing whether the document could be read. Not only did he refer to "reading" the book, not whether it should be accepted into the canon, but he also treated the issue of whether it should be read as one of not much importance, as I documented, which he surely wouldn't have done if he had canonicity in mind. In this thread, you've responded by saying that Serapion "originally accepted it because he thought it was from Peter" and that whether he thought the document was canonical "doesn't matter". But as I explained earlier, canonicity was the issue we were originally discussing, and Petrine authorship would have canonical implications. As I explained in the other thread, Serapion is unlikely to have treated the issue as one of so little importance, as he initially did, if he thought that a document actually authored by Peter was involved. You haven't interacted with that issue.
You also ignored other points I made, such as the distinction Serapion made between "you" and "they" when addressing who associated the document with Peter. I went on to explain how Serapion's appeal to apostolicity (what was "handed down") was a historical argument, and I emphasized that point again in my last response to you in this thread. Yet, you made the following ridiculous objection:
"Again, you with speculation that they just must have been myth buster types, talking to parents, grandparents, rabbi's, etc without evidence."
If Serapion refers to what was "handed down" in the context of what the historical apostles taught, then he's referring to receiving something from historical predecessors. My claim isn't "without evidence".
I shouldn't have to keep repeating these things. My original response, in the previous thread, documented multiple problems with your argument, and you chose to not respond to it for several months. When you did eventually respond in this thread, after being criticized for not responding earlier, you "summarized" my arguments without quoting them, and you ignored a large amount of the original context and what I wrote in that context. Why don't you quote what I said in the original thread, not just summarize it in your own words, and defend what you originally argued in that thread? Your original argument was erroneous, as you surely realize by now.
You write:
"Because you assume the one generation influenced the other in a manner that just assumes the truth of all of your conclusions."
How does it "assume the truth of all of my conclusions"?
You write:
"My 'memory' of what happened to me 80 years ago when I was 20 and now supposedly I'm 100 and I'm going to jump around and object that I have no memory of this?"
A memory going back eighty years wouldn't be needed, and people wouldn't just be relying on their own memory. A person in his sixties wouldn't expect to have not heard of Romans or 1 Corinthians during the several decades of his life, if the document was authentic. And that person in his sixties would have been in contact with other people, including older people, who never mentioned such a document in the relevant contexts. What you seem to be suggesting is that people wouldn't consider it suspicious to have never heard of 1 Corinthians before, since the letter was received from Paul several decades earlier. That's absurd. People wouldn't expect to stop hearing of an apostolic document for several decades after its initial reception. The Pauline letters, which you've said were written with verisimilitude, refer to a high view of apostolic authority, the reading of Paul's letters in church services, etc. Similarly, documents like First Clement and Polycarp's Letter To The Philippians frequently discuss, quote, or allude to New Testament documents, including the Pauline letters. The authors expect their readers to be familiar with the documents. Justin Martyr refers to how New Testament documents were regularly read in church services, and the earliest patristic sources repeatedly refer to New Testament documents as scripture. The idea that people wouldn't be suspicious of an alleged Pauline document that they had never heard of before the year 130, because they wouldn't expect to hear about the document after its initial reception, is untenable. The fact that you would put forward such an argument, then repeatedly stand by it after having its problems explained to you, reflects how desperate and dishonest you are.
You write:
"How does my reasoning entail that you can never accept any historical account from people who desire what they are reporting? Wouldn't that mean that if a person desires what they report, this means the report cannot be true?"
No, you've misread what I wrote. Not accepting a historical account isn't equivalent to concluding that it's false.
You write:
"That doesn't matter to your argument. Your argument is that Romans can't be spurious because the Roman church would recognize that they hadn't possessed the document in the past, and it has now just appeared. It doesn't have to be widespread for this argument to work. It's just a matter of whether or not the document was at Rome. The exact same thing is what you should expect of the Ignatian epistles. If these are forgeries, then your argument just doesn't work."
The issue is probability, not whether a document "can't be spurious". The existence of exceptions to a generality doesn't prove that appealing to the generality "just doesn't work". As I said before, we don't reject eyewitness testimony in a court of law just because eyewitness testimony is sometimes unreliable.
And why would factors such as the perceived authority of an author and the frequency with which a document is read "not matter to my argument"? It's easier for a smaller number of people to be mistaken. The number of people involved is significant. Whether people would expect to have heard of a letter of Ignatius previously, or to have a detailed knowledge of the letter's contents, would depend on how widely and how often he was read. He wasn't an apostle. His writings weren't considered scripture. The longer versions of his seven letters wouldn't be coming from an absence of any Ignatian documents, but rather would be altered versions of the originals, similar to Mark's gospel with an added ending.
You write:
"The fact that life sometimes imitates fiction isn't sufficient grounds for concluding the document is authentic."
I didn't argue that Philippians should be accepted as authentic because "life sometimes imitates fiction". Instead of interacting with what I said in response to your argument about Philippians, you're reversing my response and applying it to my position. That doesn't make sense, since I haven't used an argument for Philippians that's a reversal of your argument against it. And reversing my argument against your position doesn't answer my argument against your position.
You write:
"But you haven't suggested what it [the 'table' of Romans 11:9] is referring to."
I wouldn't have to do so in order to note that you've given us no reason to view the table as the temple. But as I said before, the same meaning as is used in Psalm 69 would be applicable in the context of Romans 11.
You write:
"And the temple is symbolic of a table, i.e. a place where food is consumed. The temple is the place where the sacrifices occur. Subsequent to a sacrifice the sacrifice is consumed, kind of like what you do at a table."
Tables have a lot of associations, not just with the temple in Jerusalem. You're not giving us any reason to think that an association with the temple is in view. If Psalm 69 isn't referring to the temple, then why should we assume that Romans 11 is? And how do you allegedly know that the table (supposedly the temple) is destroyed? Even if we assumed that the temple is being referred to, why wouldn't it be a "snare", "stumbling block", etc. by leading people into error, such as animal sacrifices that God no longer accepts? Why would the "snare", "stumbling block", etc. involve the destruction of the temple?
You write:
"But there is no distinctive occurrence to show that the Jews had in fact rejected Christ on your view. There is on my view. On your view, why is it clear to those in Rome that the Jews had been rejected by God because of their rejection of Christ?"
If Jesus had been crucified, church leaders like Paul had been persecuted, and there had been rejection of the gospel in other forms, then a destruction of the temple wouldn't be needed in order for people to perceive that the Jewish mainstream was alienated from God. The question of Romans 11:1 comes just after a description of rejection of the gospel in Romans 10:16-21. We don't need to read a past destruction of the temple into the text in order to explain Romans 11:1, since the verses that come just before 11:1 explain 11:1 sufficiently.
You write:
"Of course you think rejecting Christ is bad, but this doesn't explain how it is that the Romans know that the Jews have rejected Christ. Do they have surveys? Do they conduct phone polls? How do they know this? I can explain why they know it and you can't."
You don't have to know something by means of a survey in order to have a perception that something is true. If the destruction of the temple can suggest to people that there's been a general rejection of Christ among the Jews, then why can't something like the crucifixion of Christ do the same? And how would the destruction of the temple specify whether a majority of Jews are alienated from God? It could suggest alienation among those who still follow the temple system, but whether those people are currently a majority of the Jewish race wouldn't be specified.
You write:
"You haven't given any reasons to think any of these Pauline texts are authentic, beyond your reference to spurious Ignatian epistles or the testimony of gullible, superstitious Christians that are obviously easily duped by forgeries, and who are also taught to believe without reasons."
The first post in this thread discusses corroboration from non-Christian sources, so your claim that I've only offered evidence from Christian sources is false. And my first post in this thread cites Dionysius of Alexandria as an example of a Christian who wanted evidence and wasn't "easily duped by forgeries". I've also cited a large amount of other evidence for early Christian discernment, from Glenn Miller, Richard Bauckham, and other sources, and you've ignored the large majority of what I've cited.
You write:
"How about making some internal arguments for why we should accept a book like Romans?"
If you don't accept any document as Pauline, then how would I argue from internal evidence that Romans is Pauline? You wouldn't accept any linguistic consistency with other documents, since you don't accept the Pauline authorship of those other documents. And arguing that the document is consistent with a pre-70 dating wouldn't lead to the conclusion that Paul wrote it. As I explained before, external evidence is foundational to historical research. Something like internal consistency or an internal authorship claim doesn't lead to the conclusion that a person wrote a document unless there's accompanying external evidence.
You write:
"It is my position that Paul was not alive when these were written. If you are going to critique my view you can't just start with evangelical assumptions and say 'Hey, since Paul is alive when these appeared (since I'm just going to beg the question and assume he wrote them) he could have been consulted to determine if they were genuine.' That is a case of question begging and is obviously illegitimate. Methods were available to recognize forgeries, but how about some evidence that these Christians that would have been the first to come into contact with these texts on my view were capable of utilizing these methods."
Why are you so careless so often? Here's the comment you made earlier, to which I was responding:
"My point is that even if we accept your view that a book like 2 Thess, or Galatians is authentic we have to concede that contemporaneous with Paul we have a cottage industry of Pauline forgery."
I then said:
"That depends on what you mean by 'cottage industry'. And methods were available for avoiding forgeries, such as using recognizable handwriting and credible messengers for verification, as well as consulting Paul himself when he was alive. When he died, that would have been an indication that it was time to stop looking for Pauline letters."
I was responding to something you said about the circumstances when Paul was alive. Yet, now you're criticizing me for responding as if Paul was alive. I was interacting with the scenario you proposed. To criticize me for assuming your own scenario when I responded to you is absurd.
You write:
"We've already been through this, and you've retreated from the claim that early Christians had high moral standards as I've already pointed out (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/08/canon-chronology.html), now saying that you don't need to demonstrate high moral standards. You've given us no reason to think they had above average moral standards, which is why you stopped defending this claim."
You're repeating an argument I've already refuted. As I explained to you in a previous thread, a high moral standard can be common. The fact that something is "average" doesn't prove that it isn't "high" in the sense in which I was using the term.
You write:
"Feel free to argue against the morality of junk mail distributors. I'm with you on that, and it is irrelevant to my point."
I've already explained why something like forged e-mail is relevant to what you argued in the other thread I linked to. You're ignoring that explanation I gave, probably because you know that you were wrong.
You write:
"If the ratio is higher, then we are forced to start with a presumption in favor or opposed to authenticity in a manner consistent with that ratio....You of course categorize your documents based upon whether or not someone would even be interested in forging one document in another person’s name. You also consider whether or not we have first hand knowledge that say for instance people are forging documents in Paul's name."
I was responding to what you had argued in another thread. But now you're adding qualifiers you didn't mention in that thread. You're describing how you would approach the issue now, after your initial arguments in the other thread have been critiqued. That's not the context I was addressing in the comments you quoted. See the paragraph in my post prior to the ones you quoted before making your comments above. You're taking what I said out of context.
You write:
"The Pauline epistles say that people are forging in Paul's name."
You said that there was a "cottage industry" of forging at the time. What passages lead to that conclusion?
You write:
"It is anachronistic (though not impossible) for the founder of a religion to refer to his own teachings as 'traditions.'"
All that you're doing is asserting your previous claim in different words, still without any supporting argumentation.
And Paul wasn't "the founder" of Christianity. As he explains in the document we're discussing in this context, he received from other people some teachings that he was passing on (1 Corinthians 15:3). Jesus taught Paul, and some of Paul's material, such as the creed of 1 Corinthians 15, was received from other church leaders. When Paul had passed information on to his disciples, multiple steps of the passing on of information would have taken place.
You write:
"I don't know why this means the context supports your view. I don't see how my understanding contradicts the context."
The context of documents like 1 Corinthians and 2 Thessalonians, documents that refer to Christian teaching as "tradition", is Paul's communication with these churches (Corinth and Thessalonica). Both documents portray themselves as letters of Paul. If the term "tradition" is one that shouldn't have been used by Paul in these passages, as you claim, then the term is inconsistent with the context.
You write:
"Also every expert in radiometric dating hasn't noticed that C14 and Potassium Argon dating methods don't actually work, and in fact the earth is a mere 6K years old instead of 4.5 billion. But then, so what?"
I'm not a young earth creationist.
You write:
"But then, my description as 'weird' is not the basis on which I dismiss the authorship attribution, but I know that makes for a convenient straw man."
You're ignoring most of what I said about Galatians 6:11. You've also ignored much of what I, Steve, and Gene have said about other Pauline documents, like Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.
Whether the author of Galatians was Paul or a forger writing with verisimilitude, you have to give an explanation of why he referred to large letters in Galatians 6:11. I've offered multiple options, and you haven't given us any reason to reject any of them. You can't argue that referring to large letters was the only way the author could convey the concept that handwriting was involved, since handwriting can be referred to without mentioning large letters, as we see elsewhere (1 Corinthians 16:21, Philemon 19, etc.). Why, then, are large letters specified? You have no good reason to consider Galatians a forgery.
You write:
"Because people become more and more impressive in legend the further we get from their actual lives. Paul may not have been as wonderful as people eventually thought he was when he was actually alive."
Earlier, you argued that the forgers wrote with verisimilitude. The letters of Paul repeatedly assume that his audiences considered him highly authoritative, were in frequent contact with him, had messengers communicating between him and them, etc. Yet, we're supposed to believe that people who lived under such conditions weren't interested in Pauline letters and wouldn't have received any? The earliest patristic documents assume a high view of apostolic authority, repeatedly make reference to the importance of apostolic documents, etc., as I explained above. If that sort of concern for apostolic teaching existed among contemporaries of the apostles, then why should we think that contemporaries who lived something like three or four decades earlier had a significantly different view?
You write:
"Had the people at Nag Hammadi not hidden away some of those old texts about Jesus in response to Constantine's orders to have everything burned we'd have never known that some people viewed Jesus as the reincarnation of Seth, or Zoroaster. The orthodox tradition burned the evidence away."
The fact that you choose to appeal to such speculative scenarios reflects the weakness of your position. You're giving us no documentation and little specificity.
Since other governments and communities have been involved in destroying documents at times, should we propose similar speculative scenarios in those contexts? The Romans sometimes burned documents, for example, such as the burning of Christian documents during the Diocletian persecution. May we therefore propose major revisions of Roman history based on speculative scenarios like you describe above? When the United States government destroys some documents, may we speculate about major revisions of United States history?
Are you suggesting that Constantine destroyed traces of the acceptance of these Pauline documents intentionally or unintentionally? Are you suggesting that he destroyed traces left by a small group of people or a large number of people?
This portion of our discussion originated when I asked why the process of adding Pauline letters to the canon didn't continue beyond the time of Marcion. I was referring to the behavior of Christians in general, not just a small number of Christians.
To compare the lack of reference to such additions to the canon to the lack of reference to some beliefs held by some Gnostics would be absurd. We wouldn't expect such Gnostic beliefs to leave many traces in the historical record, given how small and uninfluential the groups were and how easy it would be for people to address Gnosticism without discussing those beliefs in particular. But if the orthodox mainstream kept adding Pauline letters to their canon beyond the time of Marcion, we would expect to see that fact reflected in the historical record much more than the Gnostic beliefs you've described.
Why would people at the time of Constantine decide to eliminate evidence of Pauline books that the mainstream accepted? If they were accepted by the mainstream, why would the mainstream want to eliminate traces of the acceptance of those books? Did the Christians you claim were highly undiscerning become highly discerning at the time of Constantine? Did they become so discerning that they knew that they had to eliminate all traces of the evidence you're referring to? Were they so skillful as to not leave any traces in the historical record as they did it?
If there are historical traces of the destruction of the Gnostic documents you refer to, and the efforts to destroy all of the traces of those documents failed, then how likely is it that the much larger effort needed to destroy all evidence of the acceptance of later Pauline documents would leave no traces in the historical record and would be more successful than the easier effort against Gnosticism? Since many people under Constantine weren't Christians, and since other parts of the world had no Christian rulers and wouldn't have prevented people from discussing what had happened, why do we find no traces of what happened with these Pauline documents? What about the many Christians and non-Christians alive at the time who would have remembered reading about those Pauline documents, would remember previously hearing of the documents Constantine had destroyed, etc.? Have you considered how many people would need to be involved, how many thousands of documents would have to be searched, how much editing would have to be done, etc.? Did Constantine monitor all future documents, such as letters sent from one person to another, in order to be sure that nobody mentioned what had happened? If not, then why would such a major effort involving so much work and so many people go unmentioned?