Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Paul

  • Date and Authorship Notes

    Two weeks ago I participated in a conversation with Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. regarding how scholars determine date and authorship. Readers who consult more than one Bible Handbook, Bible Dictionary, or introductory material from more than one study Bible will find that there can be considerable variation in the information regarding a particular book. Elgin and I only touched on a few of the key issues.

    Here’s the YouTube:

    I know many of you will not want to watch an hour long discussion. I want to write a few notes here. I’ll provide a link to this post to Elgin, and if he wants to respond on his blog, I’ll provide a link to it here. I don’t actually intend to argue with any of his views in these notes.

    Let’s consider a hypothetical case from modern life, the college term paper. Here we have strong external evidence that the material was written by the student, as that student turns it in, perhaps even saying, “Here’s my paper!” There’s a title page with the student’s name. Depending on how one applies the analogy, one might consider the title page internal or external evidence. (Some authors are named internally in New Testament documents, while some are named in titles added later.)

    A responsible and reasonably intelligent professor, however, will have to consider the possibility that the student has plagiarized the paper. How might this be done?

    Bypassing modern methods of checking the internet, the professor might consider the student’s style as demonstrated in other assignments, as well as the student’s level of learning. A poor student who suddenly turns in a top notch paper might be suspect. References to things the student is unlikely to know, or to experiences the student is unlikely to have had might also trigger interest.

    Before there were easily available internet searches, a professor would be limited to using his or her memory and library resources. Now a good deal of potential material can be checked quickly and automatically.

    This would be internal evidence, looking at the nature of the document. The synoptic problem in the gospels starts with the fact that there are close parallels between the first three gospels, closer parallels than most believe can be explained by common oral sources, so students of the gospels look for a pattern of copying between these three. Who was first? Explaining common text between Matthew and Luke, text that does not occur in Mark, on the assumption that Mark was written first, results in the idea of Q, a hypothetical written source.

    But the analogy also provides us a reason why scholars tend to examine the internal evidence closely, even though there may be quite strong external evidence in favor of a particular author. They see potential motivation for an author to have attributed a letter to a more famous person, thus giving it greater authority. On the other hand, the motivation might be to honor the person named.

    In the video I refer to the example of Colossians. What’s interesting in that case is that the main arguments against Pauline authorship result from the theological positions taken and some of the vocabulary used. Standing against this is the fact that the author named in the book is Paul (but see above regarding reasons to question this). If one tries to date the book much later, then it is likely there would be no church in Colossae, as it was largely destroyed by an earthquake in the early 60s CE. Thus both the author’s name and the destination of the letter would be a literary device.

    Thus your answer to the question of authorship is going to come down to whether you evaluate the internal evidence (style, vocabulary, theology) as sufficiently strong to overcome both the book’s own attribution and early church testimony, or perhaps that internal evidence as sufficiently weak.

    My personal view is that  it is very probable that Paul is the author of Colossians, and that the difference in theme results from a difference in the issues to which he was responding, and in turn the differences in style and vocabulary are due to the differences in theme. I think it also unlikely that a letter to a church in a city recently devastated by an earthquake will not mention [ed 022815] such an experience, and this suggests to me a date earlier than Paul’s death. It is also less likely that a letter will be written in Paul’s name while Paul is still alive to repudiate it.

    But notice that I state this as a probability. Historians don’t generally dealing in proving this or that in an absolute sense. They look at probabilities. I think it is most likely, but not absolutely certain, that Paul is the author.

  • Paul Was a Sexist Simpleton?

    Well, no, I don’t think so, but in one of the best demonstrations I’ve seen of how not to argue, that is a view attributed to others by writer Andrew Wilson on the New Frontiers Theology Matters blog (HT: 42).

    Within evangelicalism, four main lines of interpretation can be discerned. (Outside of evangelicalism, the response is fairly simple – Paul was a sexist simpleton who didn’t know any better; we’ve been enlightened now, so we should ignore him – although one wonders if the catastrophic track record of post-1960s white people when it comes to marriage will cause this approach to lose its lustre).

    Now it’s hard to tell just who this statement refers to, because evangelicalism is so loosely defined these days. I know I’ve been accused of ignoring Paul. But I get part of the foundation of my egalitarianism from Paul, while at the same time looking to him as a master of working with the culture as he found it. In other words while I suppose someone might find reason to call Paul sexist, though I think they’d be wrong to do so, calling him a simpleton is utterly ridiculous.

    (I’m not going to go through the rest of the article, but there are other, less glaring problems in characterizing the evangelical streams the author refers to.)

    So who might we say, “resembles” that remark? I know of nobody who does. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but I am a member of a church that ordains women in leadership, and is egalitarian in its theology, and I’ve never encountered anyone who would say something like this about Paul.

    What I have encountered are a few people who think all complementarians are either secretly sadistic tyrants or, at a minimum, enablers of the same, something that I again know from personal experience is not the case.

    We’re going to make enough mistakes in understanding and characterizing one another’s positions. We need to avoid this kind of statement in Bible study.

     

  • Series on Chauvinistic Passages in the Bible

    Christopher Smith has written a three part series on chauvinistic passages in the Bible. The passages are:

    In general I agree with what he writes, though I think the balance of evidence is slightly in favor of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. I tended the other way on that passage before reading Gordon Fee in his The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICOT) pp. 699-708. Despite accepting Fee’s arguments on that passage, however, I cannot agree that Paul was essentially egalitarian. I think he points an arrow in that way, but I don’t think he ever brought it to pass, and other passages cited in the series indicate this as well.

    I would add I believe that a Biblical writer and/or church leader may be right for his time and place and yet be wrong for another.

    I commend the entire series to you to read, as well as the discussion I’m having with Jeremy Pierce in the comments to this post, in which Jeremy says I’m being unfair, and I’ve said a few less than complimentary things about what he has to say. I find Jeremy extremely worthwhile to read, even when he’s annoying me. Read and judge–or enjoy–or both.

  • Property May Stay with Breakaway Churches

    According to a story on MSNBC.com, some breakaway Episcopal churches in Virginia may be able to keep their property rather than having it go to the denomination.

    This is a ruling on only one point, and it is based on a law from just after the civil war when there were many issues of this type in the southern states. It will only be applicable in Virginia. It is nonetheless good news for those congregations.

    While I do not sympathize with all the reasons why these congregations are separating from their denomination, I do think it is foolish and not very Christlike for the denomination to try to keep the property. In many jurisdictions, the property will legally belong to the denomination, but when a congregation separates, the denomination is likely to end up with empty property. They can, of course, sell it for cash, which provides them with some resources, but they do so at the cost of such good will as may remain. They also provide a spectacle of bad behavior for the world.

    As I did when I wrote about this type of issue before, I will quote Paul to the Corinthians: “Wouldn’t it be better to be wronged” (1 Corinthians 6:7)?

  • Which Paradigm to Check

    David Lang has written an interesting post at Better Bibles dealing with the complementarian/egalitarian debate. Readers of this blog will realize that I’m not terribly moderate on this particular issue–I’m passionately egalitarian.

    David does make a good point about polarizing arguments, however:

    . . . In the process of trying to persuade those who disagree with us, we often become even more polarized in our views. We get so frustrated with the other person for not agreeing with us and so flustered by their arguments, that we begin to shore up our own arguments and press the text to say something more clearly or explicitly than it really does. This is especially true when we see the stakes as being high. . . .

    It’s quite true that overstating one’s case can both drive neutral parties away and alienate opponents so that dialog becomes much more difficult if not impossible. I would say on the other hand, speaking from personal experience, that one can be so careful not to overstate one’s position that it becomes unclear just what the position is.

    People will then congratulate you for being a peacemaker, but the problem continues. You can spend so much time framing a debate, that the debate itself gets lost.

    David’s comments are not without merit, however. And I will keep them in mind as I state things fairly forcefully. But perhaps I will restrain myself from time to time!

    But the key point to which I wanted to respond is this:

    As I’ve observed the gender role debate, I’ve seen this dynamic played out over and over again. There is a finite set of Biblical passages which the two camps must deal with. . . .

    It’s a simple statement and is perhaps not David’s main point, but it becomes my main point. Why? Because I do not believe that this debate is a matter of dealing with a finite set of Biblical passages. We are warned to check presuppositions, so the presupposition I want to check is this very one.

    To me, the issue is not a finite set of Biblical passages. I happen to believe, for example, that at least in some of his churches, Paul did not permit women to teach. I don’t think Paul would, in his context, have advocated ordination of women. The “finite set of passages” position seems to rest on the idea that the Bible is primarily a set of theological propositions, and if we can just straighten it out so that all of them say one thing, that is the theological answer.

    I would suggest instead looking for the principles on which the various individual judgments were based. To me particular counter-examples to male leadership, such as Deborah in the Old Testament and Junia in the New are that much more significant because of the fact that they occurred in overwhelmingly male dominated societies. That is an interesting factor, whether or not there are particular texts that speak against women in leadership or not.

    This leads me to believe that I don’t have to “deal with” all of these passages, at least in the sense of explaining that they really express an egalitarian ideal. What I’m looking for is what are truly the basic principles of the kingdom.

    When I have found those I try to apply them to living in a modern society. What worked in Paul’s churches may not work in today’s churches and vice-versa. What I must be careful to do is to make sure that my behavior today is based on the same principles.

    I take this a bit further, however. It is not merely Biblical passages that are involved, but also church traditions, and most importantly the present day guidance of the Holy Spirit. Now I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit will guide us into violating the principles that are expressed in scripture, but he certainly can guide us into seeing how those principles are to be applied in a modern context. All of this is accomplished using our reasoning powers–always under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or so we’d all like to assume.

    The paradigm that I would like to see shift is one that expects us to explain all of the texts one way or the other, and takes a look at the general trend of scripture–the trajectory, if you please–to see where God is leading us.

    I do believe passionately that God is leading us to more equality in ministry. I believe this because I see it happening in scripture–some of the time. I believe it because women have stepped up throughout church history. I believe it because I see genuine calls and gifting amongst women in areas the complementarians would reject. But most importantly, I see anything less than equality in the church as unworthy of the incarnation. The Word becoming flesh dwarfs these kinds of human barriers.

  • Information on FV (Federal Vision)

    I found the this post on the Federal Vision (FV) because the author tracked back to a post on my Threads blog that is related to my Look at New Perspectives on Paul entry. It’s not my intent to discuss the FV and the relationship of the Westminster Confession to the new perspectives on Paul, nor do I plan to debate the doctrinal issues of the PCA directly. But I suspect that most readers of this blog are not PCA and might want to know what those things are since I referenced them.

    Having provided these links, my plan is to blog about materials I read on NPP strictly from the point of view of their accuracy. Are the new perspectives giving us a better idea of what Paul meant or not? I won’t be trying to fit those ideas into a particular doctrinal perspective. I do have one, of course. I don’t deny having biases and preconceptions. I’ll do my best, however, to set them aside.

  • Martyn on Historical Methods (Galatians)

    I’m doing a run through J. Louis Martyn’s commentary on Galatians (Anchor Bible)Galatians (Anchor Bible), and enjoying it a great deal. He has a paragraph on historical methodology to which I want to call your attention:

    Convincing attempts to present a chronology of Paul’s travels and labors are based on a simple rule: Our first and decisive attempt to discern the chronology of Paul’s work is to be made on the basis of the letters alone. As a second and separable step, we may turn to Acts. Even in that second step, however, one accepts from Acts only points of confirmation and supportive elucidation. . . . — p. 17

    This is a key dividing point in Biblical studies generally between those who accept Biblical inerrancy, particularly in his stronger forms, and those who do not. If one believes the Bible is in all cases historically inerrant, one will tend to accept all Biblical sources equally, though with due consideration to perspective. One might even tend more readily to accept Acts as the better historical source, seeing as it was ostensibly written with the intent of presenting a historical account. (In fact, Acts was more written with an apologetic intent, but that is another issue.)

    If we look at Biblical texts from a historian’s point of view, we will take a different approach. In that case, a document written by one of the primary characters is a primary source of information, while a history written by someone else, based on such sources, even though he presumably had access to witnesses and to better documentation that we have today, is still a secondary source. Your first and best option is what you can learn from the primary sources.

    In taking such a historical view, however, one needn’t be quite as pessimistic about the historicity of Acts as Martyn appears to be, by accepting only “points of confirmation and supportive elucidation.” Acts must be itself evaluated as an historical source, and it appears to me that Martyn himself gives it a fairly substantial role in areas other than chronology in the rest of his commentary.

    Whichever side of this divide you are in terms of approach to studying the Bible as history, you need to be aware of the divide, because it will color debates, especially in online forums and the blogosphere where a large number of different viewpoints clash quickly. Understanding the methodology behind such choices is important. If two people are not in agreement on the weight to be given the various sources, they are unlikely to come to the same conclusions about any particular historical event.

    An interesting example of a later connection between the story in Acts and that in the Pauline letters comes in relation to Acts 15 and the Jerusalem conference. It is interesting to note that Paul’s accusation against the teachers, that they were “troubling” (Galatians 1:7) uses the same Greek word as does Acts 15:24 in describing what certain people had been doing in the gentile churches. Is it possible that Paul is specifically referring to the decree of that conference? A combination of texts from Galatians could be used to gather a more precise idea of the nature of that Jerusalem meeting. (Note that while the connection is mentioned, Martyn does not bring up the issue of historicity in connection with these two verses.)