These past few weeks I’ve been trying to untangle my way through the data strands that seem to relate to Christian origins and early development (again) and I find myself coming back to the chimerical figure of Paul (again).
When I reach this point, as I have done so many times before, I tend to seek out (again) critics of the radical views and defenders of some form of canonical figure. This time, one of those critics I have dusted off from my database of electronic files is Richard Carrier. About nine years ago he posted The Historicity of Paul the Apostle in which he sharply criticized the arguments of Hermann Detering and Robert Price proposing that Paul was not a historical person. In this post I am more interested in what he has to say about Detering’s case than Price’s since it is Detering’s work (and works he engages with: Schoeps and Schwegler in particular) that I have been deeply immersed in recently. Carrier writes of Detering:
The best formal attempt to argue for the non-historicity of Paul is that of Hermann Detering (see The Fabricated Paul). I cannot ascertain his qualifications in the field. But his writings are well-informed. They just trip over logic a lot. His case is not sound. Nor is anyone else’s I’ve examined. They falter on basic methodology (like ignoring the effect prior probability must have on a conclusion, or conflating possibility with probability) and sometimes even facts (e.g., Detering seems to think self-referencing signatures commonly appear only in forgery; in fact, they are commonly found on real letters—I’ve seen several examples in papyrological journals).
Before I continue, some readers may think that my focus has been slanted towards “extreme” or “fringe” positions — terms that I find problematic despite their appearance in scholarly publications — but I must hasten to explain that the reason I don’t post so often on mainstream views is simply because they are widely recognized and readily accessible for anyone interested anyway. There are in fact two recent works on Galatians in particular that have made rich contributions to reading that epistle in new ways but within the parameters of “mainstream scholarship” that I would like to post about here, too. But I need to see if I can unravel a few questions relating to core issues first. Everything in its time. And speaking of time, I do point out again that the post by Carrier I am addressing is almost a decade old so I am not assuming he would necessarily write the same today.
I must also make it clear that I am not addressing the Paul-Simon Magus connection argument even though that was the focus of Richard Carrier’s criticism. I will address what I consider a few less well-founded criticisms of Detering, however.
But to the chase, and I have no doubts that that will be a collegial dialogue. (I further note that the blog post of 2015 has a tone of one of those pieces “written on the fly” — leaving the reader with the impression that more care and detail would have been added in a different venue at another time.)
Carrier’s first specific criticism:
Detering seems to think self-referencing signatures commonly appear only in forgery
I do not see evidence to support that criticism in any of Detering’s work, including in the specific item I understand Carrier was addressing: The Falsified (or Fabricated) Paul. The specific passage in focus here is Galatians 6:11
See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!
The link is to a page with thirty plus translations of the same passage.
Detering’s focus in The Falsified Paul is the inconsistency among scholarly exegetes:
The writer’s reference to his handwriting in 2 Thessalonians 3:17—’I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write’—is regarded by most exegetes as a sign of the letter’s inauthenticity. Why is the corresponding reference in Galatians not so regarded?
(Detering, p. 55, my bolding)
What would interest me is a comparison of the specific terminology of the signatures we have in the Pauline letters and an explanation for these statements. A quick cross check on ChatGPT yields the following instances:
Self-referencing signatures in ancient letters were a way for the author to authenticate the document, demonstrate authority, or add a personal touch. Here are a few notable examples from different cultures:
1. Letters of Cicero
- The Roman statesman Cicero often ended his letters with a personal note or signature. In some letters, he explicitly mentions writing with his own hand, such as in a letter to Atticus: “Ego enim has quidem, Attice, litteras scripsi meis manibus.” (“For these letters, Atticus, I wrote with my own hand.”)
2. Aramaic Letters from Elephantine
- In the 5th century BCE, Jewish mercenaries stationed at Elephantine in Egypt sent letters back and forth, some of which include self-referencing signatures. For example, in a letter from the archive, one of the writers adds a line in his own hand, noting that he wrote the letter himself as a way to authenticate it.
3. Papyri from Oxyrhynchus
- The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, a collection of Greek texts from Egypt, includes many personal letters where writers occasionally mention that they are writing with their own hand. For instance, one letter might end with the phrase “ἐγὼ αὐτός,” meaning “I myself,” to indicate the writer’s personal involvement in the composition.
4. Babylonian Cuneiform Tablets
- In ancient Mesopotamia, some cuneiform letters on clay tablets were signed by the scribe or author. Although they might not have used the phrase “with my own hand” due to the nature of the script, they often included personal seals or mentions of the scribe’s name as a way of authentication.
5. Biblical Letters
- As mentioned earlier, Paul’s letters in the New Testament include self-referencing signatures, such as in 2 Thessalonians 3:17, where he writes, “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand,” to assure the recipients of the letter’s authenticity.
6. Egyptian Hieratic Letters
- In some ancient Egyptian letters written in hieratic script, the writer might add a personal note or a self-referencing line at the end of the letter to indicate that the content was personally composed or approved by them, though this was less common than in Greek or Roman letters.
These examples show that self-referencing signatures were a widespread practice across various cultures and periods in antiquity, often serving as a way to authenticate or personalize a document.
Unless Paul expected the original single letter to “the Galatians” — presumably implying a very wide geographical area with multiple church assemblies — should be preserved for a reading (and visual inspection) in each church area, without it being copied, one must wonder what such a distinctive handwritten signature was likely to accomplish. Did not the author expect the letter to be copied by another hand? In the case of Cicero writing to Atticus I can understand such a signature. But in a letter to be circulated among a wide geographical distribution of churches? Not so much. Either way, such a signature cannot serve as decisive evidence for the historicity of its claimed author.
With respect to Carrier’s criticism of Detering, I may have missed the evidence for Detering seeming “to think self-referencing signatures commonly appear only in forgery“. If that has been a point in any of his arguments it is one I have not recently located — though I cannot say I have read everything or even most of his works, in English or German.
Carrier launches into the main body of his criticism with “The Prior Probability” rubric. Now I like Bayes’ theorem. It has a place in research of any kind, as the cover and title of Sharon McGrayne’s book on the theory demonstrates: 
- McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy. New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012.
Don’t knock Bayes’ theorem.
But historians work with multiple tools, not just one. And much depends on the way we conceptualize the questions. Here is an example of what I mean:
Jesus belongs to several myth-heavy reference classes. He is a worshipped savior deity. He is a legendary culture hero. He is a Rank-Raglan hero. And he is a revelatory archangel (already as early as the earliest writings we have, granting the letters of Paul are such). All of those classes of person already start with a high prior probability of being mythical, because most members of them are mythical (or for culture heroes, about even). And these are beings all of whom are claimed to be historical, yet are usually in fact mythical. Just like Jesus.
(Carrier, The Historicity of Paul the Apostle)
Agreed. But we can make it even simpler. The Jesus that all historians have to work with is a literary Jesus — by definition. He is found in no other ancient place than literature or inscriptions or scribblings. The same, we must hasten to add, is true of any “historical” person — whether we are talking about Winston Churchill or Julius Caesar. What I am saying is that history is dead; it no longer exists; there is nothing there — except in written or other forms of recording. All our historical persons live only in our minds as we read the surviving records. Some of those imagined figures once had a historical reference figure who was real — but that reality now escapes us in its fullness and can only be reconstructed according to our “best lights” of imagination fuelled by inscriptions or writings or other evidence. The historian’s job, or at least one of them, is to study those texts and images to discover what led to their creation, whether it was a reality or a fiction.
Yes, Bayes’ theorem can help us answer the question of whether certain texts and images reflect a real or an imaginary figure as their source of inspiration. But there is a but. It begins with how we frame our question.
So let’s get back to Paul. In contrast to Jesus, Carrier writes:
Paul … falls into the class of ordinary persons who wrote letters and had effects on history. In ratio, most of such people claimed to exist, actually existed.
So in Carrier’s blog post of nearly ten years ago Jesus was presented as a miracle working, death-defying man-god — a clearly mythical figure — while Paul was, by strikingly mundane contrast, an “ordinary person who wrote letters and had effects on history”.
That starting point is where I have a problem.
No, Paul did not write letters like any “ordinary person”. An “ordinary person” reveals their personality or their ideas through letters. Contrast Paul as a letter writer as summed up by Albert Schweitzer:
The odd thing is that [Pauline scholars] write as if they understood what they were writing about. They do not feel compelled to admit that Paul’s statements taken by themselves are unintelligible, consist of pure paradoxes, and that the point that calls for examination is how far they are thought of by their author as having a real meaning, and could be understood in this light by his readers. They never call attention to the fact that the Apostle always becomes unintelligible just at the moment when he begins to explain something; never give a hint that while we hear the sound of his words the tune of his logic escapes us.
(cited in Hart, 131f)
Carrier referred to an article on Paul by James Tabor and it is worth returning to Tabor’s words in this context:
There are four different “Pauls” in the New Testament, not one, and each is quite distinct from the others. New Testament scholars today are generally agreed on this point.
(Tabor referencing F.C. Baur and more recent scholars such as Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Jerome Murphy-O’Conner)
So which one is “the historical Paul”? We know that the author of Acts most certainly did not consider an “ordinary letter writer” to be the historical Paul.
I could fill several posts pulling out similar statements by scholars testifying either to the obscurity, or to the anything-but-ordinary “incomprehensible genius”, of a figure behind the letters.
Furthermore, on what basis can we assert that Paul “had effects on history”? Does not the evidence indicate that Paul’s letters had been somehow lost or forgotten while the churches grew, and that it was only from the mid second century that the letters were coming to light and being embraced. Christianity was evidently well established quite apart from any memory of Paul by the early second century. That sounds like Paul had little impact on history in the first century. Does not the evidence rather suggest that Paul was a product of second century history?
Another question comes to my mind here: Is it not somewhat hard to understand how a “brilliantly inconsistent” thinker could have had a serious and long-lasting impact on many other persons? A philosopher can be expected to write with a bullet directed point of view. Paul’s many contradictions, non sequiturs and mis-matches are sometimes said to be indications of his febrile genius or simply of an expansive and fluctuating intellect. Maybe that was the case. I wonder how many such persons have dramatic impacts on history, though. (I am open to being better informed here, so leave a comment if you can contribute to this point of discussion.)
Let Bayes be used to test the different options.
Carrier writes,
We can say several things about what are regarded as the six authentic letters of Paul . . .
- First, they all cohere in style (idioms of vocabulary, connotation, grammar, punctuation, sentence length). The forged letters do not. They neither cohere with each other (except when produced as a unit, like the Seneca correspondence), nor with the style features of the authentic six. So one person did write those six (even if, as the letters openly state, they also reflected the views of a co-worker whom Paul sometimes names in each case).
No, they do not all cohere in style. I recently posted Harold Hoehner’s demonstration that Galatians has a style quite distinct from other letters attributed to Paul. Douglas Campbell in Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography, reminds readers that Paul’s letters are…
characterized by a remarkable variation in argumentation, structure, and expression. Just Romans and 1 Corinthians, whose authenticity is usually uncontested, when placed side by side, seem to come not infrequently from overtly different places in conceptual terms. Meanwhile, adding only 2 Corinthians and Galatians to the comparison diversifies the overall situation further, creating a fundamental methodological challenge. How are interpreters to supply a unified account of various aspects of Paul himself as his texts strain in multiple directions?
The same scholar addresses the range of stylistic differences that have divided scholars over questions of authenticity of both whole letters and parts of letters. While Campbell seeks to resolve many of these arguments (including with a discussion on computer assisted stylometric analysis), his detailed work is at the same time a reminder that scholars have long been troubled by what they see as a lack of coherence and inconsistency of style in the letters of Paul. Paul may have used a vastly varying range of styles or maybe we should test the idea of multiple authors as the preferred explanation — either way we must explain the lack of coherence in style! It makes no difference to the question of historicity. But let’s adhere to the real state of the evidence.
Carrier’s next claim:
Second, they are stitched together from pieces of other letters. Each full letter named in the New Testament actually contains pieces of several letters, whose full content and original destination are now lost (see OHJ, p. 511). Sometimes so badly connected up as to be nearly unintelligible (e.g. the transition between 1 Cor. 8 and 9: OHJ, pp. 582-83). One does not forge letters that way. Which makes this another good indicator that these are not forgeries. Rather, someone tried to semi-reverently keep an original collection, but just the parts they liked, and assembled them together into a new whole in the most logical way they could. Their meddling after that was small and nitpicking, as the manuscript evidence shows, or blatant and obviously un-Pauline, as some of the interpolations made before 150 A.D. show.
Here Carrier is assuming that a historical Paul wrote the pieces of letters stitched together when in fact that is the question being raised. If we have a “Pauline school” of scribes, with different authors contributing individual perspectives to a whole, we then have a literary corpus not unlike some of the Old Testament works claiming to be by this or that prophet or by Moses himself. Collaborative efforts found ways to accommodate different perspectives up to a point, often stitched somewhat crudely together. This is arguably part of the catholicizing process that we see in other New Testament writings (especially Luke and Acts). So the evidence is open to multiple interpretations.
Next,
Third, they all make arguments and interact persuasively in a context where the Jewish temple was still standing and its cult operating. And in a context where views of Jesus and the Church that appear in the Gospels have not yet come to exist (not even to denounce or counter or rebut, much less use or co-opt or transform). This is very unlikely unless the letters were written before the year 66 A.D. (when the Jewish War began, an event wholly unknown to the author), and before the Gospels were written (which could be as early as 70 or 75 A.D. for Mark).
This is a common point of view but it is not a solid argument. The most basic principle of dating documents is to begin where we have the most certain evidence. That means it is sound method to begin with the middle of the second century for the indisputable existence of the Pauline letters. It is only in that century that we have independent confirmation of the existence of the letters. As we work back we rely more on hypothetical reconstructions. Mark “could be as early as 70” but it could equally be as late as the second century (cf arguments for the influence of Josephus and the abomination of desolation pointing to Hadrian’s time). There are passages in Romans and 1 Thessalonians that make a lot of sense in a context after (even well after) the destruction of the temple and end of its cult. So the historical context is not so clear cut. Similarly for the opponents of Paul that we read about in Galatians and the Corinthian correspondence. Scholars have had to assume the existence of various types of “heresies” for which we have no first century evidence. It is only when we come to the second century that we begin to read evidence for the existence of “false gospels” and some Christians attempting to impose circumcision on believers and the heated controversy over the teachings and authority of Paul vis a vis Jerusalem apostles. The second century does indeed look very much like a potential home for the letters of Paul. I elaborate a little on this point in addressing the next section of Carrier’s argument.
In Carrier’s view,
That third point is important, because the letters explicitly present themselves internally as having been written in the 50s A.D. . . . So the congruence of that fact with their content totally ignoring later existing doctrinal and tradition battles in the Church is very likely if the 50s is indeed when they were written.
I have to disagree. It is in the second century that we find debates over circumcision and whether the law should be obligatory on Christians (one example: Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho), over whether meat sacrificed to idols should be eaten, speaking in tongues (Montanism in Asia Minor from the 150s), questions of celibacy, the competitive status of Paul and the Twelve (Marcionism from the 140s). It is as if Paul’s letters (and the Jerusalem council of Acts 15) had all been forgotten somehow. But how convenient it was that in the midst of those competing claims we find the first evidence of Paul’s letters and, lo and behold, they happened to give decisive — “historical” — answers to such pressing second century questions.
Carrier continues:
Note that letters that don’t speak to a forger’s own time and circumstances, even covertly or obliquely or prophetically, run counter to a forger’s interests; the last thing forgers want to do is work hard to produce a document that is circumstantially obsolete before it is even published.
Circumcision and the requirements of the law were questions in Justin Martyr’s time (mid second century) and Justin had no knowledge of a first century apostolic council to bring to bear on the discussion. The Elchasite “heresy” originated in the early second century (the time of Trajan) and was so significant that it became influential in the subsequent rise of Manichaeism and Islam. The Elchasites taught a “gospel”, a “good news” that required circumcision for believers in Christ (who happened to be a great angel from heaven) and revered certain days and “elements of the world” (water, heaven, earth, bread, oil, salt, wind) — blithely unaware of Paul’s letter to the Galatians that sought to combat the distinctive features of that second century “heresy”.
So I do sympathize with Carrier when he writes:
I can’t even think of a single example of an ancient forger successfully ignoring all the central doctrinal and tradition disputes of their own day merely to produce a convincing period-accurate but thereby contemporarily-irrelevant document. The temptation to support or attack the then-going views (usually by fabricating early support for them, e.g. 2 Peter) is simply too strong, and in fact is the usual motivation for forging documents in the first place.
Very true. But I believe he is mistaken when he adds, “In short, the letters of Paul make no sense in the second century.” On the contrary, the second century is when we find the most relevance for Paul’s letters.
As far as I aware we have no evidence outside the letters themselves (and Acts) for these controversies existing in the first century.
Carrier:
Most Detering-style arguments are based on claiming hundreds of interpolations in these letters that conveniently and circularly support Detering’s conclusions, all based on a series of ad hoc assumptions about the second century history of the Church, when in fact almost everything we know about that is speculation, not established fact. The more assumptions you have to rely on, and the more conveniently complex they are, the lower the prior probability of your thesis. Speculation in, speculation out. Detering does not seem aware of this logical fact. He thus falls into the common trap of all bad historians: any theory you can gerrymander to fit all the evidence must be true. Because look how well it fits! Sorry. Illogical.
I don’t know the evidence on which Carrier bases the above characterization of Detering’s arguments. I have not seen arguments of his that are “based on claiming hundreds of interpolations . . . . and . . . . ad hoc assumptions about the second century history of the Church”. On the contrary, I have seen in Detering’s works an abundance of documented source material from the second, third and fourth centuries that address the state of “the Church”, with varying degrees of reliability, in the second century. I have translated a 270 page essay by Detering on this era and you can make the judgment for yourself. As for the 85 page book Falsified Paul a word search on “interpo” (for interpolation/interpolator…) yields only three hits. Nor should we overlook the undeniable fact that letters and biographies of Paul really were written by forgers in the second century. We have several of those forged letters in the New Testament (the Pastorals, for example). And we know for a fact that there were disputes about what was original in Paul’s letters, what had been cut out by opponents, and so forth. This situation is a fact that any historian must be aware of when examining the evidence.
It is true that the state of the evidence does not often allow a historian to do more than reconstruct “a more plausible scenario” for early Christianity. To that extent there is inevitably a degree of speculation in our reconstructions. The use of Bayes can help us refine the “most plausible” scenario. But when it comes to the question of “how/when/where Paul began”, whether as a historical figure behind the literature or as the literary figure itself, I think at least some “Detering style arguments” are well worth serious consideration.
Campbell, Douglas A. Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing, 2014.
Carrier, Richard. “The Historicity of Paul the Apostle.” Richard Carrier (blog), June 6, 2015. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7643.
Detering, Hermann. “Die Gegner des Paulus – Judaistenthese 2. Jahrhundert – Radikalkritik,” July 4, 2018. http://radikalkritik.de/die-gegner-des-paulus-judaistenthese-2-jahrhundert. — Translation: The Opponents of Paul: A Second Century Judaizers Thesis
Detering, Hermann. The Falsified Paul: Early Christianity in the Twilight. Journal of Higher Criticism, 2003.
Tabor, James. “The Quest for the Historical Paul.” Biblical Archaeology Society, June 13, 2024. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/the-quest-for-the-historical-paul/
Hart, Patrick. A Prolegomenon to the Study of Paul. Leiden ; Boston: BRILL, 2020.
And with thanks to Chrissy Hansen’s articles alerting me to more works to read and ideas and criticisms to ponder, if not always to agree with.
Neil Godfrey
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re: “An “ordinary person” reveals their personality or their ideas through letters”.
I’ve written thousands of letters. But, when they’re not “personal”, I don’t reveal much about myself “personally” at all. A lawyer can write letters all day long, dealing with legal matters, and never reveal a thing about him/herself at all. Same thing with a business owner, dealing with business matters.
I don’t quite “get” this idea that “An “ordinary person” reveals their personality or their ideas through letters”. Sometimes they might, but sometimes, they might not. It can very well depend on the purpose of the letter they’re writing.
You go on to say “Contrast Paul as a letter writer as summed up by Albert Schweitzer”, then you offer a quote by Schweitzer. But, what does the quote show? It shows what Schweitzer had to say about Paul’s writing. Why? Because Schweitzer was taking issue with other scholars “that write as if they understood what they were writing about”.
So, exactly what are we to “contrast” Paul with??? Is there a “standard letter writing style” that is commonly used to determine whether someone has written a “good” letter? (This line of reasoning is not making a great deal of sense to me, but maybe I’m missing something).
Then, you bring up Tabor’s “four Pauls”, and ask “So which one is “the historical Paul”? We know that the author of Acts most certainly did not consider an “ordinary letter writer” to be the historical Paul.
Wait. The ONLY “Paul” we need to be interested in IS the “letter writer”. Who cares what Luke says about Paul? Who cares about Tabor’s “Legendary Paul”, or “Ecclesiastical Paul” or the “Theological Paul”? All that’s at question is whether there was a man named Paul who wrote letters circa 50-62 pertaining to Jesus and the “church”. And for that matter, we don’t have any need whatsoever to know anything about the “personal life” of the letter-writing Paul. All we need to know is whether some or any of the letters attributed to “someone named Paul” were actually written by “someone named Paul”.
(I find myself drifting further away from grasping why on earth anybody needs to know that there was anything other than a letter-writer named Paul).
Not defending Carrier here, but, later on you quote Carrier saying “the letters explicitly present themselves internally as having been written in the 50s A.D. . . . So the congruence of that fact with their content totally ignoring later existing doctrinal and tradition battles in the Church is very likely if the 50s is indeed when they were written”.
Then you disagree. Well and good. But, you disagree, saying “It is in the second century that we find debates over circumcision and whether the law should be obligatory on Christians (one example: Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho)…” (and, followed by other examples).
My thought: So what? Sure, we see debates about circumcision (and other things you mentioned) in the second century – but not EXCLUSIVELY in the second century. We certainly see evidence of debates about circumcision and food offered to idols, etc, in first-century writings as well. So – I don’t get your point here at all. If those debates were EXCLUSIVELY second century, then you might actually have a point, but, otherwise, I don’t see that you do.
I think I’m going to leave off here.
I’ll just address your final point for now. You say that we have evidence for the various debates (circumcision) being prevalent in the first century. No, we only have Paul’s (and Luke’s) claims for these things. There is no independent evidence for any of those conflicts that I am aware of being part of the first century. They only appear with independent witness in the second century — the same time we have our independent evidence for the existence of Luke-Acts and Paul’s letters.
I have since added a line in the post to make that point clear.
The template Carrier assigns to Paul is an “ordinary letter writer”. We think of Cicero, Pliny the Younger and so on. They write what they are thinking about and we do feel we have a personal contact with them by reading their letters. They may be forgeries and we may be deceived, but we are being deceived in a way that assumes we know that an “ordinary letter writer” does allow us to feel we know the person. This is one of the noteworthy points about the letter genre itself. Even a lawyer writing a letter conveys what he thinks and intends. And Pliny reveals his personality and character often in his official correspondence with the emperor. Tomes have been written on “the personality” of Paul on the basis of his letters. Whether that personality is historically genuine or a fiction is another question.
As for not being interested in any Paul other than a letter writer, if our question is inquiring into the historical Paul then we simply must take into account all the Pauls that are on the table — and they are not all letter writers. That’s the simple fact of the evidence. Why would we decide to investigate the Paul of the letters in preference to the Paul in Acts? I agree with you that the letter writer Paul is primary, but we need a decent argument to begin at that point and not simply assume it, yes?
Also, whoever is writing these letters is not in a culture where letters are massively produced and send and basically menial formalities, at least in this context (that would probably be more the domain of merchants, bankers and government workers). They are not writing dry legal reports, and they’re not the product of a highly literate culture who has for centuries discussed and changed and developed writing styles for different occasions and goals. Writing styles did exist, but as I understand it they were a reflection of oratory styles because everyone read everything out loud those days, with very little exceptions. So writing was about being convincing and entertaining just like when orating, ‘professional distance’ hadn’t been invented yet.
And this is all the more the case because these letters are about religious doctrines and precepts and all that jazz! A letter to a group of fellow believers in mind that does not reflect the author’s personal beliefs is a truly rare find, even if they’re just honestly conflating their own opinions and feeling with those of [insert authority here]. Religions like Christianity are very personal affairs after all.
On the other hand…. “watch this space”: commentaries go into some detail about the sophisticated/learned rhetoric in the Epistle to Galatians.
I think this is the article I have been most waiting for – a reply to Carrier’s take on Detering.
There is no doubt that 99 times out of a hundred he (Carrier) is the smartest person in the room, yet he comes across as always far too certain of himself. I get the impression that he needs Paul for his theory, or more likely, needs to be careful to keep his mythicism untainted from perceived “quackery”?
I am certainly a Paul-fence sitter on this issue. I think that maybe Romans and Corinthians could be the original Paul from which all later Paul writings and legends derive from. However, even if that is the case, I think ‘Paul’ is an enigma, and that the Paul of Romans and Corinthians is a literary creation, even if it does borrow from the writer’s experiences somewhat.
It is troubling if Carrier has made false arguments about 2nd century issues – it seems very sloppy for someone of his caliber?
Nevertheless, such a late date for the epistles is very awkward – it would squeeze a lot of Christian evolution into a very short time. I would have to wonder then if there is anything we can assume is 1st century?
Nevertheless, if that is where the evidence points, then a little bit of awkwardness is a small price for truth.
Thanks for this Paul Primer series – I have certainly learned heaps, even if I am less certain of what to conclude!
If Christianity was emerging for other reasons and under circumstances other than those indicated in both Acts and the epistles and well before the epistles emerged, then it is not such a “tight squeeze”. Christianity is still emerging and expanding in particular in the wake of the destruction of the first temple in 70.
Perhaps you can share your views on the two issues that I think constrain the dating of the earliest letters of Paul.
1./ gMark appears to depend on Romans and 1 Corinthians
2./ Marcion had a gospel in the early-mid 2nd century – was it a synoptic gospel that relied on gMark? (if it was proto-Luke or an expurgated Luke, then it was still dependent on gMark)
If gMark was written just after the Bar Kokhba revolt (I think this is your preferred theory now?), what is a good date for Romans and 1 Corinthians in your opinion?
My “preferred theory now” is nothing more than “what I happen to be pondering at the moment” — and no other opinions expressed earlier are ruled out; they are still viable options to return to.
I don’t know what evidence necessitates Mark’s dependence on Romans and 1 Corinthians — you are probably more up to date with the latest readings than I am on that one. My initial thought, though, is: Should we presume dependency when “from the same sector of thought/ideas” will also explain the evidence?
Is there any strong reason to date Romans and 1 Corinthians earlier than the 135 CE?
As for dating Mark by means of referencing Marcion, again I am not up to date with the latest readings on this question, but a question I would like to address is how much of the evidence we have about Marcionite works could actually be based on Marcionites (or Marcion himself) after 144? (Should everything said to be “from Marcion” actually be from the person and should we rule out the development of writings after Marcion? I seem to recall something in either Tertullian or Irenaeus opening up this possibility. But again, for now I defer to others who are more up to date on the lastest works here.
I doubt I am more up to date on this, apart from having read Carrier’s article about the relationship between Paul and Mark (as @IsaWP refers to below).
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15934
The argument for dependency does seem to be that Mark copied actual structures from Romans, not just ideas. Sounds convincing, but Carrier does always seem convincing even when he is wrong! 🙂
Or maybe if you are thinking in terms of a gradual flowing “evolution” spaced out over time as opposed to a sudden flurry of literary creativity in response to a particular situation — I think the historical record favours the latter over the former option.
I certainly can imagine creative bursts, and the 1st war as a Cambrian explosion does make sense.
I am reading E Doherty’s book at present, so I am now familiar with the pre-gospel variety he describes.
But, it is because of the huge number of works that seem to be pre-gospel that I think the gospel based Christianity must have been delayed. The fact that even the ‘inauthentic’ Pauline letters are pre-gospel seems to suggest some time gap. (assuming reference to Pilate is a later interpolation)
Of course, the first gospel(s) may have been understood as an allegory, and an intruder into the scene, so just was not taken seriously for a length of time, but that still represents a time gap for development of the idea, even if not the actual writings.
I have no problem with various letters of Paul being written before 144, by the way. I certainly don’t try to squeeze everything post Marcion’s break with Rome in 144.
I was going to make a separate comment about this but I think I could as well make it a reply to you.
Speculation aside, Carrier wrote a whole post about Pauline influences on Mark (post 15934 on his blog). In OHJ the Epistles get an ‘100% expected on mythicism, 34,7% expected on historicity’ (a fortiori), but I don’t remember how much it is dependent on the Epistles being early and don’t have the time to reread it right now. (That said, I don’t think late Epistles do better for history… because this makes for a particularly unremarkable Jesus who was not important enough to mention until after the destruction of the temple in the 70s.)
Mark using Paul is at the same time tantalizing and disappointing. Mark scraping his story together out of Hebrew scriptures, Homer, Paul and possibly more – even if cleverly done – does not leave a lot to the imagination, whether you want to imagine historical or fantasizing sources for the rest.
Just from skimming Carrier’s post I don’t think much is stopping us from turning most of that evidence around and look at it like Paul’s letters being written on the basis of Mark. And Matthew, I suppose, I leave that to the experts to figure out. This will leave Mark with one source less but still plenty.
But that does leave US with a weirdly vague Paul, doesn’t it? At least early vague Epistles could simply point to an earlier and higher Christology than commonly believed. Late vague Epistles is a whole different land. I think there’s a lot to question here either way, although I’m largely underinformed about Paul so I’m loathe to start speculating.
One other factor to consider is the wide variation in “christologies”. We are accustomed to assuming that “Christ crucified” is the cornerstone of Christianity, but not all Christian authors in the early layers of documents gave much thought to the cross and what for others was seeing the crucifixion (cum resurrection) as major theological turning point. Maybe Matthew and Luke with their Christ as both a teacher and a crucified one were early catholicizing efforts seeking to unite two types of Jesus Christs. I’m just thinking “aloud” here. After all, the Jesus in Mark can hardly be characterized as a teacher. We are never told what he taught, only that he “taught with authority” such that others were “astonished”.
I am quite open to Mark being written around 70 but equally open to it being composed some time in the first half of the second century. I see more relationship between the prophecies of false christs (Mark 13) and the movements among Diaspora Judeans in the time of Trajan than I do in the time of Josephus (I’m imagining a gulf between bandits and false prophets on the one hand and “genuine” “false christs” on the other).
Maybe Mark and Paul were from a common sector of early “Christianity” rather than one being dependent on the other.
“After all, the Jesus in Mark can hardly be characterized as a teacher.”
Ha, that’s true. The difficulties of writing a character smarter than you, I imagine 😛 At the very least ‘the Gospel according to Mark’ can be very entertaining. What a silly bugger it is sometimes.
For sure, Mark could be later too. That was just the earliest I’d accept if it wasn’t the Epistles, with my current knowledge.
Something I almost included but I had to leave out because I rewrote my comment too much. I don’t trust the dating of when Jesus was supposed to be around either. It all comes down to the gospels, doesn’t it? And it’s not that everything in the gospels *must* be wrong, it’s that every single little thing *can* be wrong. It’s annoying, but also very interesting.
>After all, the Jesus in Mark can hardly be characterized as a teacher. We are never told what he taught, only that he “taught with authority” such that others were “astonished”.
If I may think aloud here in response, Jesus in GMark is presented as teaching – but through parables, which he admits are used by him in order to conceal from ordinary people the truth. But unless I am greatly mistaken in my reading comprehension, Jesus is never said in GMark to teach his inner followers this (alleged) truth, nor is the reader told what the (alleged) truth is.
Mark 4:34 does say “But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything” — but curiously the narrative shows the disciples not understanding anything at all. So what are we to make of 4:34?
I concede that I did not remember that verse. But 2 things are notable about that verse within GMark. 1stly, Jesus’s deciples are not presented as if they had received a complete explanation – which is why I had forgotten that such a claim was even made in GMark. 2ndly, Jesus’s complete explanation is not presented to the reader even in summary form, meaming that the reader does not benefit from Jesus’s allegedly true teaching/explanation.
Over the last 25 years I have come to question Paul’s identity more and more. At first, looking at the historical references within Paul’s letters, I noticed a problem with his timeline. None of the explicit references are consistent with his traditional timeline. Rather, they are only consistent with people, places, and events in the first century BCE.
As I considered these problems, I looked more carefully into Paul’s self description and became aware that his use of martial titles, illustrations, and self-identification seemed to paint him as a diaspora military leader.
Looking at his themes vis a vis his audience, it became apparent that the recipients of his letters could be seen as members of mixed military units consisting of observant Jews, Hellenistic “Jews”, and perhaps gentiles. In that context, he would be addressing the necessity of unity and finding common ground to avoid contention in the ranks.
Being aware of the “Nomina Sacra”, the abbreviations found in all the earliest manuscripts, it became apparent that all the key terms could easily be interpreted to fit other historical figures from the first century BCE. For instance, if the earliest manuscripts faithfully reproduced his abbreviations, Paul never spelled out the Name “Jesus” or “Christ”.
Interestingly, all the early manuscripts exist in the Codex format rather than scrolls. This phenomenon is inconsistent with the wider context of the period. Normally, all documents of the period were preserved on scrolls. The codex was an invention for quick communication between the Roman legions ca 50’s BCE. The use of the codex remained the exclusive format for military communication for centuries…except for this presumed “Christian” anomaly.
This paradigm led me to the tentative conclusion that Paul’s writings were originally not “Christian” at all, nor was he writing to Christians. Rather, he and his audience were likely Jewish military Auxiliaries engaged in the Roman civil wars; the existence of which there is ample evidence. In this sense, Paul was attempting to keep peace in the ranks of conscripts (ekklesia) who had differing beliefs on Torah observance.
These letters were likely later found by Marcion and put to a new use in a completely unrelated context; repurposed for circumstances in the second century CE.
For more background, see my articles at Debunking Christianity “Reassessing Paul’s Timeline” Parts I and II.
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2022/03/reassessing-pauls-timeline-by-bart.html
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2022/03/part-2-reassessing-pauls-timeline-by.html
Re “Agreed. But we can make it even simpler. The Jesus that all historians have to work with is a literary Jesus — by definition. He is found in no other ancient place than literature or inscriptions or scribblings.”
So, the Catholic Church’s apostolic tradition is bunk/propaganda as I suspect?
Re: ChatGPT
Has it become more reliable lately? It’s been notorious for confabulating scholarly looking references.
Re: Priors
Prior probabilities are distilled from the entire existing corpus of scholarship. There is no way to objectively quantify such priors, i.e. every scholar will have different priors. So Carrier’s invocation of priors is meaningless.
I always treat ChatGPT with caution. It can be worse than useless at times. But when it works it can be brilliant. I think it worked passably well in the way I used it in the post.
As for your criticism of priors, do you on that basis discount the entire Bayes’ theorem as a tool for establishing probability itself? I am quite willing to begin a detailed process of analysing the evidence and testing a second century hypothesis for Paul’s letters by beginning with Carrier’s prior probability for the likelihood that the letters were by Paul in the 50s CE. I have no problem beginning there and working from that point to sift through the evidence and see where it leads. If the detailed steps of analysing each data point supports Carrier’s prior probability then the second century Paul hypothesis is wrong and that’s that. I will have to write a new post correcting the one here.
If those detailed steps lead the other way then we arrive at a new and higher probability for a second century hypothesis instead and we have found that the prior probability for a 50’s date for the letters is countered by the weight of new evidence and analysis of the initial evidence.
The server has stopped notifying me of followups (yes, checked my spam folder).
If you can agree with Carrier on what the priors are, fine. But there is no objective way to resolve disagreements about priors (try arguing with someone who’s sure Jesus was historical), and the usefulness of Bayes’ theorem diminishes as that disagreement increases.
What I mean is that whatever one’s priors at the outset, ensuing testing or evaluations of data points will still take us to the same point. Some priors will mean a more circuitous route to get there. I’m thinking of the use of Bayes in locating a missing aircraft, for example. If one investigating team is convinced that X is the most likely starting point and another team believes the best point is Y, by constant refinement as they undertake the search they will still end up at the crash site, Z.
I wouldn’t bother arguing Bayes with anyone who is not interested in arguing Bayes. But what I would do is continue to use the same logical processes step by step — only without any Bayes terminology.
All Bayes is, is a formal coding of the fundamental processes of normal healthy and valid reasoning. Its use can help alert one to otherwise overlooked data, hidden assumptions, etc.
If someone wanted to argue with me that Jesus was definitely historical, or argue some other point that depended on the belief that Jesus was historical, I would call the discussion back to the evidence and method (I’d refer to standard assessment of source material as is normative among historians — if not among many biblical scholars) — and if we couldn’t agree on basics of methods then the discussion would indeed by pointless, as you infer.
I once did begin a clear, step by step discussion with James McGrath, beginning from first principles, clearly setting forth meanings and definitions etc — and it went well right up to the point where he suddenly saw that the logic and evidence was going to steer him away from his apologetics. So he pulled the plug and went into his usual MO.
Perhaps to clarify my view of working with Bayes — I keep in mind Thomas Bayes “discovery” of the method. He began with nothing better than a guess at the position of a billiard ball on the table (his back was turned to it) — the guess could position the ball anywhere — it didn’t matter where. What counted was the addition of more data and a steady refinement of his initial guess as more billiard balls were added and he was told where each was in relation to the first. In this first Bayesian mind game the prior could have been anything. What counted was how one processed each subsequent bit of data.
Yes, if you have enough tests to run, any starting point (priors) will, with a high degree of probability, converge to the same conclusion. But there’s not much testing possible with early Christianity – there’s no lab for running experiments. So the priors matter a great deal there.
Actually, I was too categorical there. There are some priors so discrepant that no amount of testing will make them converge. As an extreme example, consider the fundamentalist belief that god planted fake fossils just to fool atheists. No amount of paleontology will ever convince them that dinasaurs were real.
One can imagine less extreme versions in the domain of history with a similar problem – new tests may not speak directly to the priors.
Very true re the believer. But the same believer would not be interested in doing Bayes — would dismiss it as “human wisdom”.
I still am unable to imagine a scenario where priors are “so extreme” (or less so) such that Bayesian reasoning fails. Isn’t Bayes about “speaking directly to the priors” anyway — and if new evidence doesn’t fit then we start with a new hypothesis and begin a new line of Bayesian reasoning.
But even speaking of “Bayesian reasoning” seems a bit over done anyway. Bayes is nothing more than a way of bringing to consciousness the different steps of what we do when we apply our everyday reasoning to a historical problem.
When we’re addressing human behavior, nothing is really off the table, e.g. conspiracy theories entailing destruction, suppression, and/or concoction of evidence are pretty resistant to rational argument. Is it going too far to say that almost every theory of early Christianity partakes of some elements of conspiracy theory?
IMO, the only possible “evidence” (if there is any) of a Paul from the 1st Century would be if the persons he addressed in Romans could be reliably identified and their presence in Rome verified @ 50 CE.
Otherwise, as to the inconsistent and confusing writing of “Paul” (whoever it was) this may be because several letters were patched together as Carrier states. However, I note that the “style” is consistent with what NLP calls “hypnotic language”.
I also think that the apostle Paul was not the apostle of Christians, in any way, as Christians think. Paul, or someone else, described a feeling when he came to know his inner self: the Son of God is in him. (Gal 1:16)
Isaiah’s Ascension 10:20-24 and Philippians 2:6-8 speak of the same thing: the incarnation!
In both writings, “forma-μορφῇ-morfi” plays a major role. In the Philippian hymn, the pre-existent being (the son) exchanges the “form” of God (Phil. 2: 6) for the “form” of the servant (Phil. 2: 7). In the Isaiah vision, he follows the form of the inhabitants of the lower five heavens. (The vision of Isaiah 10:20: “… in the fifth heaven he formed the form of the angels, and they did not praise him, because his form (μορφῇ-morfi) was like theirs.”) So a change of form is a kind of metamorphosis. From one form to another form. From the form of God, the heavenly form is transferred to the form of humans, and from this human form, given to death by God, it is embodied.
God himself gives the Son to death. But why is this necessary? Why does God have to give his Son to death, why didn’t God entrust this to people? Because the Son in this narrative is not a real (flesh and blood) person, but a spiritual entity in a state/form similar to humans (Romans 8:3; Phil2: 6-8). How can anyone accept the boy’s blood if he doesn’t have it?
“Paul never spelled out the name ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’.” writes Bart. We agree that he never wrote the name of Jesus, but he wrote the name of Christ/anointed one.
The death of the Christ/Anointed One is for those who begin to believe in Him. So Paul preached Christ as crucified, and with this his aim was to bring his audience from faith in Christ to faith in the Son of God. Paul identified the visible with Christ, the visible as his old man crucified with Christ, and himself with the invisible, internal, renewed spiritual man: “For now we see dimly through a mirror…” (1Cor 13:12). “Look only at the things in front of you! If someone has believed that he is the Anointed One, let him, starting from himself, consider that as soon as he is the Anointed One, so are we.” (Chiah; 2 Corinthians 10:7)
I am Hungarian. Unfortunately, the wind is blowing in our direction, that is, we made Christianity this way. The Council of Nicaea was busy with giving some convincing explanation for Easter, and this explanation is there, you can read it. And our predecessors liquidated Rome on the occasion of the Council of Nicaea, because of the great Christian persecutions.
Why equate Jesus with Christ/anointed? You don’t have to! It’s not allowed! Paul never expected that when he wrote Christ/anointed, we would automatically think of Jesus. That’s not what he taught! Let’s look at an example from Galatians. Let’s leave the introduction and look at verse 5:
“I marvel that you are so quick to follow another gospel than the one who has called you by the grace of Christ. Few want to confuse and pervert the gospel of Christ.” Galatians 1:5-6.
Paul is talking about Christ here, the anointed one. It is not inserted here that Jesus. Simply Christ/anointed.
And there are many of them in the New Testament. A lot! Why do we use Jesus? Because somewhere, sometime, some editors started using the name Jesus. You shouldn’t do that!
Based on what has been said so far, we can strongly guess that in Paul’s theology, “Christ/anointed” is nothing but the dead (in our case, the one given to death by God) Son. This idea seems to be confirmed when Paul says that “Christ became a curse” because “everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed.” With this, Paul refers to Deuteronomy 21:22-23, if we look more closely, it becomes clear what was meant by a tree in Judaism, and why this can be experienced in Paul. It is very important to know that hanging or nailing to a tree was not a specific method of execution according to the Torah. Four possible executions were used: strangulation, burning, sword and stoning. Of these, burning was the most cruel. In this case, a rope was tied around the neck of the person to be executed by pulling both sides, all while standing, and when he opened his mouth, hot lead or metal was poured into his mouth. The point is that they were hanged on a tree only after the execution. Therefore, there was already a dead man hanging on the tree, a corpse that had become a curse, which indicated the curse. Paul refers to this when he says that the Christ/Anointed One became a curse. That is why the death of the Son did not happen on the cross, or did happen, since God had already done this before, giving the Son to die, but becoming a curse, that Christ became a curse.
In Gnostic teachings, unlike the heavenly spheres, human existence is corrupted by sin and in a state of damnation, therefore it is God who gives the Son to death (Romans 8:32; 1 Cor 11:23, Phil 2:6). -7), who as Christ/Anointed put an end to the curse of the law 🙂
The offering of the Son to death can also be seen in action in the purpose of the Lord’s Supper defined by Paul:
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, proclaim DEATH to the Lord until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:26).
A bad disciple is the one who does not remember the Lord’s death (not his death on the cross) (the already mastered Son who rose from the dead and was glorified), that is, not the Son’s death by God.
Realizing this could put an end to the problem of the historical Jesus! Jesus is not mentioned in my Pauline letters. Only the Son and only the Christ/Anointed One!
Please read the guidelines for making comments here — see the link in the right hand column of this page. Your comments are not addressing the point or arguments in my post but are promoting other theories that belong in another place for discussion. Understand that this blog is NOT about “debunking Christianity” or “proving Jesus did not exist” — nor even trying to prove Paul did not exist. My interest is to understand the origins of Christianity by applying the normative standards of historical research.