2023-05-06

Bruno BAUER — Seven (now Eight) Works Translated into English

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by Neil Godfrey

Until recently, an English translation of Bruno Bauer’s Christianity Exposed (1843) has only been available through a library or Edwin Mellen University Press. Now, however, Google Books has made Bruno Bauer’s famous work public — though it is in German. BUT the better news is that when one opens it in Google Reader and runs a cursor over the German text, a little box pops up giving one the option to have an instant translation of the selected text! Nice. — https://books.google.com.au/books/about … edir_esc=y Click on the READ EBOOK link in the left margin.

I have translated seven volumes of Bruno Bauer’s works into English and make them freely accessible here. I am not a German speaker and the Fraktur or Gothic font is not my closest friend so I have relied heavily on machine translation tools — Google Translate, DeepL and ChatGPT, often comparing them paragraph by paragraph for the preferable rendering into English. I have made an effort to manually check all pages for accuracy and comprehensibility but unfortunately the complexity and highly abstract commentary by Bauer sometimes stretched me to the limits of my abilities. Most of the text, I trust, is easier to read than those sections, but I encourage anyone who sees errors or can propose better translations to let me know.

Christ and the Caesars is commercially available — or rather it is very difficult to obtain — so I have provided here a fresh translation for open access.

BRUNO BAUER: Critique of the Gospel of John – English translation 1840

BRUNO BAUER: Critique of the Gospel History – English translation 1841-42

BRUNO BAUER: Acts of the Apostles – in English 1850

BRUNO BAUER: Criticism of the Gospels and History of their Origin – in English 1850-51

BRUNO BAUER: Theological Explanation of the Gospels – English translation 1852 — Primarily a response to David Strauss and his Life of Jesus and the assumption of oral tradition behind the gospels

BRUNO BAUER: Criticism of the Pauline Letters – in English 1852

BRUNO BAUER: Christ and the Caesars – in English 1877

Albert Schweitzer on Bruno Bauer

One might suppose that between the work of Strauss and that of Bauer there lay not five, but fifty years—the critical work of a whole generation. . . .

The only critic with whom Bauer can be compared is Reimarus. Each exercised a terrifying and disabling influence upon his time. No one else had been so keenly conscious as they of the extreme complexity of the problem offered by the life of Jesus. . . .

For us the great men are not those who solved the problems, but those who discovered them. Bauer’s Criticism of the Gospel History is worth a good dozen Lives of Jesus, because his work, as we are only now coming to recognise, after half a century, is the ablest and most complete collection of the difficulties of the Life of Jesus which is anywhere to be found. . . .

Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. Translated by W. Montgomery. A. & C. Black, 1910. pp. 151, 159

 

 

 

 


2023-04-10

BRUNO BAUER’s work on Paul’s Epistles – now available in English

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by Neil Godfrey

Another worthy study is now available in English — most belatedly, unfortunately, since it was first published 170 years ago in German! Again, see the right margin of this blog for links to works by Bruno Bauer:

Again, I have made it available as a single PDF file, too, though I expect over time I will see little corrections will be needed and there will be revisions. See vridar.info for the pdf.

(I have also completed a draft translation of another multi-volume work: Kritik der evangeliſchen Geſchichte der Synoptiker = Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics. I will need to spend a little time checking for major errors and any gaps before making it available. Hopefully no more than a few weeks. I will probably post an appendix from it before then, though — I was quite pleased to see that Bruno Bauer is another who found no evidence for popular messianic expectations in Judea prior to 70 CE and that the gospels actually serve as evidence against that common notion.)


Third and Last Section – g. Conclusion

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by Neil Godfrey

118

Conclusion

The final conclusion of the investigation into the relationship between the Pauline letters and their position in relation to the Acts of the Apostles will be provided by the decision on the letter to the Galatians.

It is certain that the Pastoral letters are the last products of this epistolary literature. The first letter to the Thessalonians presupposes the Acts of the Apostles and, apart from the Corinthian and Roman letters, also presupposes the Galatian letter with its current introduction. 

The author of the letter to the Philippians, a letter that concludes the series to which it belongs, used the second letter to the Corinthians, the first and second sections of the letter to the Romans, and the first letter to the Thessalonians. 

The letters to the Ephesians and Colossians presuppose familiarity with the first letter to the Corinthians and with the letter to the Galatians. 

When the third section of the letter to the Romans was written, the Acts of the Apostles did not yet exist, for the author of the latter has (in the speech of Paul to the elders of the church of Ephesus in Acts 20:35) inserted the catchphrase of that section regarding the reception of the weak in a completely foreign context and on a highly unmotivated basis *)—at least in its current form, the Acts of the Apostles did not yet exist even then, when the concluding section of the letter to the Romans was written, for the one who gave the Acts of the Apostles its final redaction imitated, in his reference to the words of the Lord, which he added to his unmotivated exhortation to receive the weak, the example of Christ for the reception of the believers among themselves (Romans 15:7). 

The first section of the letter to the Romans is the oldest product within the circle of this literature, for it was known to the author of the first letter to the Corinthians, which immediately follows it in time and reproduces the catchphrases of his dialectic *) concerning sin as the sting of death and the law as the power of sin —if even the third section of the letter to the Romans precedes the Acts of the Apostles, then even more so does the first letter to the Corinthians, which was before the author of that section.

It can even be demonstrated that the Apollos of the Acts of the Apostles owes the essence of his character, his attitude, and his successes to the first letter to the Corinthians: he was originally (Acts 18:24) an Alexandrian Jew, hence speculatively educated,**) and thus represents in his beginnings human wisdom, whose contrast to the divine the author of the first letter to the Corinthians deals with in the section in which he sets Paul and Apollos against each other—he goes from Ephesus to Achaia and Corinth, thus coming to the stage he occupies in that letter—by his struggle with the Jews, he performs a great service for the believers here, thus doing again what the Apollos of the first letter to the Corinthians does, he waters the planting that Paul has laid out***): only the author of the Acts of the Apostles has, in his own way, subjected the Alexandrian-educated dialectician both to Paul and to Christian Judaism, by giving him through Aquila and Priscilla, that couple friendly to the Gentile apostle, the Christian completion (Acts 18:2, 3, 26)—finally, that unmotivated and highly unfortunate appeal of the apostle to the selflessness he has shown in providing for his own livelihood *) was formed according to the presuppositions of the first letter to the Corinthians.

*) Acts 20:35 πάντα ὑπέδειξα ὑμῖν ὅτι οὕτω κοπιῶντας δεῖ ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι τῶν ἀσθενούντων.
Rom 14:1 τὸν δὲ ἀσθενοῦντα τῇ πίστει προσλαμβάνεσθε.

*) 1 Cor 15:56. Rom 7, 8-13

**) The writer of Acts even marks him out. emphatically (ibid.) as a scientifically educated man ανηρ λογιος.

***) Acts 18:27-28. 1 Cor 3:6

*) In that speech to the ecclesiastical leaders of Ephesus (Acts 20:33-34).

120

I must admit that I am not yet able to make a definitive decision regarding the relationship between the Second Corinthians and the Acts of the Apostles. However, one thing is certain: the Second Corinthians presupposes a detailed treatment of Paul’s life. Its author firmly assumes that the life of the Apostle was distinguished by miracles and miraculous experiences. He already lives with the idea that suffering was the essential attribute of the Gentile Apostle but was always resolved into victory through divine miraculous help (Ch. 6:5-10). Even the enumeration of his sufferings, such as being beaten by the Jews and then whipped (Ch. 11:24-25), corresponds to the order in which the Gentile messenger,**) after being persecuted and mistreated by the Jews in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, is whipped in Philippi in the Acts of the Apostles. The fact that the alms collected in Antioch and sent by Paul of the Acts of the Apostles and his fellow traveler Barnabas to the brothers in Judea is referred to as a service also agrees with the usage of the Second Corinthians. One of the two, the author of this letter or the author of the Acts of the Apostles, must have had the other’s work in mind, but who? The way in which the latter (Acts of the Apostles 24:17) describes the gift that Paul brings to Jerusalem as one that he sacrifices to his people as his personal gift seems to me to be compelling evidence that the author of the Second Corinthians had an earlier treatment of the Acts of the Apostles in mind, and that the one who gave the latter work its final redaction borrowed its keywords from that letter.

**) Acts 11:29εἰς διακονίαν.  Compare 2 Cor 8:4; 9:12

121

Therefore, there must be a kind of pivot point where the Galatians letter stands: the letters that precede it do not yet know the present Acts of the Apostles, and among those that follow, the first Thessalonians and Philippians letters assume familiarity with it, not to mention the pastoral letters.

So what about the letter itself?

It knows the present Acts of the Apostles*). When Paul is brought into conflict with it, whether he should circumcise Timothy, who had a Jewish mother but a Greek father, but circumcised him because of the Jews among whom he lived, the conflict is just as naturally shaped as resolved. In contrast, the corresponding conflict in the Galatians letter, as I have shown, is already flawed and misshapen in its conception, and the author of this letter neither understood nor dared to give it a real solution, a real conclusion. Although he would like to contrast with the flexibility that Paul shows in the Acts of the Apostles, he would like to bring it about that the apostle freed the Greek Titus from the claims of Judaism, and yet he is so dependent on his original, the Acts of the Apostles, that he borrows a turn of phrase*), which would lead to the apostle submitting to the consideration of the Jews. Only the embarrassment into which this dependence on his original has entangled him is so great that he leaves the sentence that the turn of phrase demands unfinished and drops the verb completely.

*) Therefore, I must also overturn the opposite assumption that I left standing in my work on the Acts of the Apostles.

*) that expression that describes the authoritative character of the consideration for the Jews – Gal. 2:4 διὰ δὲ τοὺς παρεισάκτους ψευδαδέλφους. Acts 16:3 διὰ δἐ τοὺς Ἰουδαίους τοὺς ὄντας ἐν τοῖς τόποις ἐκείνοις

122

The Paul of the Galatians is so jealous of his independence, which is even guaranteed by a special divine revelation, that from his side, it is inconsistency, false concession, even mistrust in the revelation he received when he goes to Jerusalem and presents his Gospel to the apostles of circumcision, whom he himself despises as only supposed pillars of the Church – even for the express purpose of testing his concern that he might be or have been running in vain, at the right source, at the right authority. Even this inconsistency can only be explained by the dependence on the Acts of the Apostles, in which the outbreak of the Antiochian discord over the validity of the law of circumcision – a discord that could not be resolved outside Jerusalem, naturally led to the sending of Paul and Barnabas to the apostles and elders of the early Church, to obtain a decision from them (Gal. 2, 2. Acts 15, 2).

123

The comparison between Paul and the original apostles was accompanied by a clause, as was also the decision that Paul and Barnabas received from the council in the Acts of the Apostles*). The Paul of the Galatians assures that he made every effort to fulfill the obligation that clause imposed on him to support the poor of the original community, just as in the Acts of the Apostles, the decision of the Antiochene community to send aid to the brothers in Judea is carried out by Paul and Barnabas**). The recognition by the original apostles in Galatians, upon seeing the grace given to Paul, that he had the right to testify to the community, is imitated in the Acts of the Apostles by the joy Barnabas felt when he saw the grace of God among the believers in Antioch, whose conduct he had investigated on behalf of the original community in Jerusalem***). Finally, in the Galatians, when the communities in Judea hear that the one who once persecuted them now preaches the faith he once destroyed, we hear in this stiff and laboriously formed sentence the patchwork of keywords from the Acts of the Apostles’ account of the impact that Peter’s report on the conversion of Cornelius had on the community in Jerusalem and the news of the conversion of the former enemy of the community †).

*) Gal 2:10 μόνον.  Acts 15:28 πλν.

**) Acts 11:30 ὃ καὶ ἐποίησαν.
Gal. 2:10 ὃ καὶ ἐσπούδασα αὐτὸ τοῦτο ποιῆσαι.

***) Gal 2:9 καὶ γνόντες τὴν χάριν τὴν δοθεῖσάν μοι . . . . . δεξιὰς ἔδωκαν ἐμοὶ . . . .
Acts 11:23 καὶ ἰδὼν τὴν χάριν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐχάρη.

†) Gal 1:23 μόνον δὲ ἀκούοντες ἦσαν ὅτι ὁ διώκων ἡμᾶς ποτε νῦν εὐαγγελίζεται τὴν πίστιν ἥν ποτε ἐπόρθει, καὶ ἐδόξαζον ἐν ἐμοὶ τὸ Θεόν.
Acts 11:18 ἀκούσαντες δὲ ταῦτα . . . . ἐδόξαζον τὸν Θεὸν.
Acts 9:21οἱ ἀκούοντες. . . . ἔλεγον· οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ πορθήσας
Compare also Acts 8:1, 3 22:4  Gal 1:13

124

The haphazard way in which the quarrel between Paul and Peter is brought about in the Galatians is also due, as we can now demonstrate with certainty, to the clumsiness with which the author copied his original: only in the Acts of the Apostles is the accusation made by the Jewish faction against Peter that he has entered and eaten with uncircumcised people naturally brought about – only here is it really justified that Peter is living like a Gentile – only here was there a real reason for complaints against him (Acts 11:2-3).

In short, it is not the author of the Acts of the Apostles who is strange to Galatia, as I once thought, nor is Galatia a threatening land for him because of the struggles presupposed in the Galatians, which Paul must quietly and loudly pass through – but the author of this letter chose it as the scene of his struggles because it was still, as it were, virgin territory, not yet occupied by the Acts of the Apostles, which only presupposes communities here in general, and his successor, the author of the letter to the Colossians, followed him in choosing Phrygia as the scene of his struggles, which is only mentioned in passing in the Acts of the Apostles. *)

*) After this result, one can judge how well-founded all the previous analyses were of the “Galatian” and “Colossian” heresies and their relationship to the “seduced” communities.

Until now, the contradictions that I have demonstrated in the assumptions of the Galatians, for example, have been overlooked. Instead, people have attributed to the “seduction techniques” of the heretics in individual communities what was, in fact, encountered by the authors of these letters as a general ecclesiastical condition. Unfortunately, the authors of the letters had to force this general condition into the entanglement and history of a single community, since they had to assume that Paul intervened in these situations and had to fight personal adversaries who were trying to turn his followers away from him. The inner struggle of the church with its own Judaism, the struggle of its freedom with its own bondage, was now turned into an intrigue of individual Judaizing heretics who wanted to make up for the damage that Paul had done in individual communities, resulting in the relapse of Pauline free thinkers into bondage, and the Apostle’s clumsy wounds over the possibility that a community he had just engendered and that had just been securely free, had allowed itself to be lured back into legal servitude.

125

We are able to test the validity of the above conclusions by examining the relationship between the Pauline letters and the various redactions that the Gospel of Luke underwent, as well as the Luke writings that were used by Ur-Luke, the author of the first redaction.

The letters that presuppose the current Acts of the Apostles also know the accompanying Gospel of Luke, and their diligent use of it testifies to the authority it had already gained in the circles in which they themselves originated.

For example, how does the author of the Galatians come to call the original apostles “those who were reputed to be something” (Galatians 2:2) without any preparation for this abrupt expression and without any explanation of it, before he designates them in verse 9 as “those who were recognized as pillars,” and in verse 6 as “those who were supposed to be something”? He has before him the clumsy expression of the Gospel of Luke (in the section dealing with the dispute among the disciples at the Last Supper), “who should be the greatest among them.*)

*) Gal 2:2 τοῖς δοκοῦσι.  Ch. 2:6 τῶν δοκούντων εἶναί τι  Ch 2:9 οἱ δοκοῦντες στῦλοι εἶναι.  Compare Ch. 6:3
Luke 22:24 τίς αὐτῶν δοκεῖ εἶναι μείζων.

126

The assertion of the Apostle in the Philippians’ letter that he forgets what is behind and strains toward what is ahead is reminiscent of the saying of the person who is focused on what is behind, imitated **). Additionally, the “rejoice” in the Philippians’ letter and the designation of the Apostle’s co-workers as those whose names are written in the book of life echoes the saying, “rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Philippians 4:3, Luke 10:20).

**) Phil 3:14  τὰ μὲν ὀπίσω ἐπιλανθανόμενος.  Luke 9:62 βλέπων εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω

The remark in the Ephesians’ letter that one should not be swayed and tossed by every wind of doctrine is based on a symbolic application of Luke’s account of the storm on the sea. Only Luke explicitly mentions the disciples not only battling against the storm wind but also against the waves.***)

***) Eph. 4:14 κλυδωνιζόμενοι. Luke 8:24 τῷ κλύδωνι

The frequent recommendation of prayer found in all these later letters aligns with the assumption in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus sought prayer in solitude. Moreover, the exhortation in the Colossians’ letter (4:2) to stand firm in prayer reflects the praise that Luke’s Gospel gives to shameless persistence in asking (Luke 11:8).

127

The lost catchword in the Galatians letter about the false friends who want to “exclude” the believers, as well as that in the first Thessalonians letter about the Jews who want to hinder the apostle from bringing salvation to the Gentiles, is taken from the lament in the Luke Gospel about the legal experts who have taken possession of the key to knowledge and prevent those who are entering *) – likewise the catchwords in the exhortation of the Ephesians letter: “therefore, gird up your loins,” and the exhortation of Luke: “let your loins be girded” **).

*) Gal 4:17 ἐκκλεῖσαι ὑμᾶς θέλουσιν. 1 Thess 2:16 [corrected from 1:16]  κωλυόντων.  Luke 11:52 τοὺς εἰσερχομένους ἐκωλύσατε.

**) Eph 6:14 στῆτε οὖν περιζωσάμενοι τὴν ὀσφὺν ὑμῶν.
Luke 12:35 ἔστωσαν ὑμῶν αἱ ὀσφύες περιεζωσμέναι

—————————-

On the other hand, the one who composed the original version of the current Luke’s Gospel, known as “Urlukas,” already knew the first Corinthians letter – he could have taken the twisted wording of the saying of the Lord, according to which his followers should take up their cross daily,***) only from the naturally related expression of the same letter: “I die daily.” He also used the category of the faithful steward in addition to that of the faithful servant in the parable of the wise servant †), only because of his dependence on the same letter. The addition to the interpretation of the parable of the sower (Luke 8:12), “so that they may not believe and be saved,” which is patterned after the first section of the letter to the Romans, is just as unnecessary, since the fate of those who are like the seed that fell on the path is already sealed by the fact that the devil comes and takes the word from their heart, as the birds come and eat the seed along the path in the parable itself.*) Likewise, Urlukas, like the authors of the later letters, remained faithful **) to the supposed Pauline category of “the kingdom of God” (the abstraction and universalization of the kingdom of heaven, which is the standing category of the original gospel). The Apostle’s phrase in the first Corinthians letter (15:9) that he is the least of the apostles seems to me to be too natural and much too fully worked out, and the contrast to which the glory of the grace that has raised him above all other apostles forms (v. 10) seems to me to be too subtly elaborated and motivated for me to believe that the author had that saying in mind, which in the Luke’s Gospel ***) is nothing more than a lost cause. The most I could agree to is that the gospel source material that Urlukas and the author of the first Corinthians letter used contained that saying in a more appropriate, more prominent position. However, it is certain that there was already a gospel document before Urlukas that took a reconciling view of the apostle to the Gentiles. The mechanical and inappropriate manner in which the saying about the foreign exorcist is inserted in Luke’s Gospel (9:49-50), which represents the father who revealed this to the wise and understanding but hid it from the infants, leads us back to an original gospel source from which the author of the first Corinthians letter borrowed the material for his antithesis between the divine favor of the foolish and the humiliation of the wise (1:27) and for the hidden wisdom of God (2:7).

***) Luke 9:23 ἀράτω τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καθ᾿ ἡμέραν 1 Cor 15:31 καθ᾿ ἡμέραν ἀποθνήσκω.

†) Luke 12:43 is the name of this servant, the Matth. 24:45 [corrected from 24:25] ὁ πιστὸς δοῦλος is also δοῦλος, against it V. 42 πιστὸς οἰκονόμος — compare 1 Cor 4:2.

*) Even in the redaction that Urlukas gave to the parable itself, it is an inappropriate exaggeration when that seed (v. 5) is also trampled.

**) Compare, for example, the natural wording of 1 Cor. 4:20 with the convoluted wording of Luke 17:20.

***) Luke 9:48 “Whoever is the least among you all is the greatest.”

129

In short, my discovery that the author of the first Corinthians had access to that Gospel text from which Urlukas borrowed a great deal of his enrichments of the primitive Gospel has now also been secured from this perspective – as for the other letters, I believe I have done enough for the beginning if I founded the rational basis for research, even though the futility of the questioning corresponds to that of the most decisive answers – supported by this success, I therefore turn back to the Gospels to first determine their relationship to the ecclesiastical literature of the second century.


—————————-

 


BRUNO BAUER: Criticism of the Pauline Epistles – in English: TOC

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by Neil Godfrey

Criticism of the Pauline Epistles

3 sections in one volume

by

  1. B. Bauer

Berlin, 1852

Published by Gustav Hempel

Reprint 1972 – Scientia Verlag Aalen

Machine translated by Neil Godfrey from https://archive.org/details/kritikderpaulini0000baue/page/n81/mode/2up – March 2023

Contents

First Section

The Origin of the Letter to the Galatians

Preface__________________________________________________Page 3

Introduction (1:6-10)________________________________________ ” 8

The Call of the Apostle (1:11-16)_______________________________ ” 13

The Apostle’s Relationship with Jerusalem (1:17-2:14)_______________” 15

The Theme of the Letter (2:15-21)______________________________ ” 27

Doctrinal Controversy (3:1-4:31)________________________________” 33

Exhortations and Conclusion (5-6)_______________________________” 57

Second Section

Origin and Composition of the First Letter to the Corinthians

Introduction (1:1-9)___________________________________________Page 3

Factions in the Church (1:10-4:21)________________________________ ” 6

Concerning Immorality (5:1-6:20)_________________________________” 34

Concerning Food Offered to Idols (8:7)______________________________” 42

Concerning Eating Meat Sacrificed to Idols (8:8-11:1)__________________” 48

Concerning the Lord’s Supper (11:2-34)_____________________________” 62

Concerning Speaking in Tongues (12:1-14)___________________________” 66

The Resurrection (15)____________________________________________” 70

Conclusion (16)_________________________________________________” 74

Third and Final Section.

The Second Letter to the Corinthians________________________________Page 3

The Letter to the Romans___________________________________________” 47

The Pastoral Letters________________________________________________” 77

The Letters to the Thessalonians______________________________________” 89

The Letters to the Ephesians and Colossians_____________________________” 101

The Letter to the Philippians__________________________________________” 110

Conclusion________________________________________________________” 118

 


BRUNO BAUER: Criticism of the Pauline Letters – in English

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by Neil Godfrey

Machine translated by Neil Godfrey from Kritik der paulinischen Briefe – March 2023

  1. Contents of the three volumes
  2. Section 1: Origin of the Galatians Epistle
  3. Section 2: Origin of the First Corinthians Letter
  4. Third and Last Section – a. 2 Corinthians
  5. Third and Last Section – b. Romans
  6. Third and Last Section – c. The Pastoral Epistles
  7. Third and Last Section – d. The Letters to the Thessaslonians
  8. Third and Last Section – e. Ephesians and Colossians
  9. Third and Last Section – f. Philippians
  10. Third and Last Section – g. Conclusion

 

I compiled the table below to illustrate Bruno Bauers’s conclusion (see “10. Third and Last Section – g. Conclusion”) on the order in which the New Testament works were composed:

Pastorals The final documents
Philippians

1 Thess Philip Eph Col

Galatians

Acts – Luke  ?=====? 2 Corinthians

Possibly Part 2 of Romans precedes Acts-Luke – but not absolutely certain

Part 3 of Romans

Ur-Luke

1 Corinthians 

part 1 of Romans

1st Gospel Document The earliest document

 


2021-05-10

Did Paul Quote Jesus on Divorce? — Getting History for Atheists Wrong (Again) — #5

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by Neil Godfrey

Continuing from Getting History for Atheists Wrong (Again) — #4

An examination of the claim that “Paul refers to his teachings that Jesus made during in his earthly ministry, on divorce . . .”

Source-Data Interpretation External facts / context related to interpretation
1 Corinthians 7:10-11

To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 1 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

Paul is recollecting the teaching of Jesus found in Mark 10:9-12 and Luke 16:18 that others had passed on to him. (“Paul cites Apostolic, Jewish-Christian tradition as his source of authority.” (Tomson, 117))

Mark 10:9-12

… Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. … Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.

Luke 16:18

Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

 

Paul insisted he learned nothing from others about the gospel of Jesus

Galatians 1:11-12; 2:6

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. 

. . . As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message.

One wonders if it was possible that this rudimentary principle, which is alien to ancient society but was recognized by the whole of primitive Christianity, should have remained unknown in Corinth. At all events it is expressed in such a way that it sounds as if Paul was making it known for the first time. (Conzelmann, 120)

Baur has objected that if Paul had meant to cite a positive command of the Lord, he must have used the past παρήγγειλεν (He commanded), and not the present. . . . No doubt it might also be that the apostle meant to say he had received this command by revelation (Godet, 332f)

Paul omits the limitation put by the Lord on the command not to separate: “unless it be for adultery.” (Godet, 333)

Thus Paul not only corrects himself, but knowingly cites Jesus’ prohibition of divorce and passes it on in indirect discourse to married believers in an absolute, unqualified form, as coming from the risen Christ. Cf. 14:37, “a commandment of the Lord. (Fitzmyer, 292)

What can be said as to which of the Gospel traditions is closest to the Pauline formulation? There is hardly any agreement between the various discussions of this question. . . . the question as to which of the various Synoptic formulations seems presupposed by Paul’s formulation must be left open. (Dungan, 133-134)

Paul makes no attempt to cite the words of the historical Jesus  (Collins, 269)

[Elsewhere when delivering moral teachings] Paul … characteristically gives no indication that he is aware that he is using the language of Jesus, or acting in obedience to his precepts (Barrett, 112)

The context of I Cor 7:10 (vv 1-9) suggest Paul is addressing couples who are challenged by one party wishing to become an ascetic (an issue found frequently in second-century sources) so the situation is different from the divorce sayings in the gospels:

Paul’s specific references to the teaching of Jesus are notoriously few. . . Paul is dealing (perhaps not exclusively) with marriages that are threatened by an ascetic view of sexual relations. (Barrett, 162f)

Others think that the question of a possible divorce has arisen in Roman Corinth because some Christian spouses there were already abstaining from intercourse for ascetic reasons (Fitzmyer, 291)

It is undeniable that Paul felt sympathetic to the ideal proposed by the ascetics, but he could not permit it to be imposed as a general rule. (Murphy-O’Connor, 605)

Doubts against the historicity of the teaching of Jesus in Mark 10:9-12 —

The arguments against authenticity are: the Markan version reflects the situation of the early community; the variations in the tradition suggest that the community struggled to adapt some teaching to its own context; the appeal to scripture in vv. 6-7 is not characteristic of Jesus but reflects the Christian use of the Greek Bible; familiarity with Roman rather than Israelite marriage law in vv. 11-12 indicates a later, gentile context. Further, the roles of Jesus and the Pharisees seem reversed: here the Pharisees view the Mosaic law as permitting divorce, whereas Jesus cites the scripture in support of a more stringent view. (Funk, 88f)

and in Luke 16:18 —

Matthew adds infidelity as the one exception to the absolute rule on divorce. A different version is found in Mark 10:2-12//Matt 19:3-9, in which divorce is made contrary to God’s order in creation (‘What God has coupled together, no one should separate’). The confusion in the transmission of the tradition led many Fellows to designate this saying in Luke as gray [=”Jesus did not say this, but the idea is close to his own”] or black [=”Jesus did not say this. The saying comes from a later time”]. The confusion in the jesus tradition is matched by confusion in the lore of the period. (Funk, 360)

–o–

The above are not intended to suggest they are the only factors to be considered. Some of the sources quoted above attempt to answer the negative considerations I have cited. Example, in response to Baur’s point about the past tense, Godet writes,

But the command of Jesus is regarded as abiding for the Church throughout all time. (Godet, 332)

Opposed to the arguments against authenticity, Funk et al first lists those “for”:

The arguments in favor of authenticity are: remarks on the subject by Jesus are preserved in two or more independent sources and in two or more different contexts; an injunction difficult for the early community to practice is evidence of a more original version; Jesus’ response is in the form of an aphorism that undercuts social and religious convention. Further, the Markan version implies a more elevated view of the status of women than was generally accorded them in the patriarchal society of the time, which coheres with other evidence that Jesus took a more liberal view of women. (Funk, 88)

It’s an interesting question, the source of Paul’s appeal to “the command of the Lord” here. As one commentator remarks with some puzzlement, Paul only cites the command to offer a contradiction to it — accepting the possibility of divorce anyway. (The word “separation” is said to be used often enough for “divorce”.) The rationale of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark for forbidding divorce is an appeal to Genesis and creation — the same rationale we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some commentators say that Paul is appealing to Jesus’ command this time because he knows he is contradicting the Hebrew Scriptures, but it is also pointed out that the Scriptures themselves are contradictory: God hates divorce, he says through his prophets, but through Moses he permits it. Should we see here in this section of 1 Corinthians another allusion to the author presenting himself as a prophet of God, as another Moses, even — declaring the law of God but at the same time acknowledging some flexibility, as per the Old Covenant?

Re: “teachings that Jesus made during his earthly ministry, . . .  on preachers and on the coming apocalypse

Continuing in the next post.


Barrett, C. K. A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. 2nd ed.. Black’s New Testament Commentaries. London: Black, 1971.

Collins, Raymond F. First Corinthians. Sacra Pagina. Collegeville, Minn: Michael Glazier, 1999.

Conzelmann, Hans. 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Edited by George W. MacRae. Translated by James W. Leitch. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975.

Dungan, David L. The Sayings of Jesus in the Churches of Paul; Use of the Synoptic Tradition in the Regulation of Early Church Life. Fortress Press, 1971. http://archive.org/details/sayingsofjesusin00dung.

Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans, 1987.

Fitzmyer, Joseph A. First Corinthians. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2008.

Funk, Robert W., Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar. The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus: New Translation and Commentary. New York: Polebridge Press, 1993.

Godet, Frédéric. Commentary on St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. Translated by A. Cusin. Vol. 1. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1889. http://archive.org/details/commentaryonstpa01godeuoft.

Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. “The Divorced Woman in 1 Cor 7:10-11.” Journal of Biblical Literature 100, no. 4 (1981): 601–6. https://doi.org/10.2307/3266121.

Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. The New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 2000.

Tomson, Peter. Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles. Netherlands: Brill, 1991.



2019-11-09

Three Lessons from Classics for Biblical Studies?

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by Neil Godfrey

Some interesting points I came across while reading A. J. Woodman’s Rhetoric in Classical Historiography and some of his references:

Initial eyewitness claims not followed up

Earlier in this same chapter Thucydides drew a distinction between events which he experienced himself and those which were reported to him by others (22.2). Although  he never gives us any indication of how many, or indeed which, events fall into each category . . . 

(p. 26)

The implication is that Thucydides’ rhetoric is designed to impress; there is no evidence of any truth to the claim. Indeed, works demonstrating Thucydides’ reliance upon literary sources (e.g. Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristarchus of Syracuse) — sources that Thucydides attempted to deny — are listed. That reminded me that we never read in Luke-Acts which events are derived from the “eyewitnesses” apparently referenced in the prologue.

Poetic devices appearing in prose

Herodotus often echoes the rhythms of poetry, and some passages of his prose can actually be turned into verse without too much difficulty. . . . . [Thucydides] . . . concludes, perhaps significantly, by reproducing the hexameter rhythm of an all but complete line of epic verse.

(pp. 3, 9)

Prose authors periodically break into poetic rhythms. That makes me wonder if there are similar practices in philosophical or epistolary literature from the era of the Pauline letters. Paul is sometimes said to be incorporating earlier hymn verses into his letters; what is the likelihood he authored such passages himself?

Grounds for suspecting interpolation

To be considered for inclusion in the category of ancient interpolations in Aristophanes a word, phrase or passage must satisfy two conditions: first, there must be grounds for thinking that Aristophanes did not write it, or at least not with the intention that it should stand where it now stands in the text; and secondly, there must be grounds for thinking that it was present in at least one copy of the text earlier than the dark age which separates late antiquity from the Photian renaissance.

Sounds reasonable. The criteria would open floodgates of possible interpolations into the NT texts, though.


Dover, Kenneth J. 1977. “Ancient Interpolation in Aristophanes.” Illinois Classical Studies 2: 136–62.

Woodman, A. J. 2004. Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies. London : New York: Routledge.



2016-01-16

The Function of “Brother of the Lord” in Galatians 1:19

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by Tim Widowfield

James the Just
James the Just

It seems hardly a month passes without somebody on Vridar bringing up Galatians 1:19, in which Paul refers to James as the “brother of the Lord.” Recently I ran a search for the phrase here, and after reading each post, it struck me how much time we’ve spent wondering what it means and so little time asking why it’s there in the first place.

What is the function of “brother of the Lord” in that sentence? Notice we can ask this question without raising the hackles of either the mythicists or historicists. Forget what it might mean. Forget (at least for the moment) who you think wrote it. It could have been Paul. It might have been the very first reader who added it as a marginal note or a scribe at some point along the transmission path. Instead, let’s ask why.

It would appear on the surface, at least, that “brother of the Lord” is a kind of descriptor. In other words, it tells us which James Paul met. Since 1:19 is the first time Paul mentions James in Galatians, perhaps that’s why we see it here. But then why didn’t Paul do the same thing in 1 Corinthians, which he probably wrote in the same year?

1 Cor 15:7  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. (ESV)

One could argue that since he’d already referred to “the twelve” in 1 Cor 15:5, Paul didn’t need to explain which James he meant. In fact, he may have been reciting an early resurrection credo, and as such everyone would already have known who all the characters were — Cephas, the Twelve, the 500 brothers. They needed no introduction, so to speak.

Which James?

On the other hand, one could argue that in Galatians Paul could only have meant one James. He was, after all, starting an extended tirade against the Jerusalem pillars, and his Galatian audience would surely have known who he meant. He probably told that story all the time — “Then James sends a bunch of his thugs up to Antioch, and old Cephas is like, ‘I’m not eating with those Gentiles. No way!'” Continue reading “The Function of “Brother of the Lord” in Galatians 1:19″


2014-09-17

A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 13: Simon/Paul and the Law of Moses

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by Roger Parvus

For all posts in this series: Roger Parvus: A Simonian Origin for Christianity

Previous post in this series:  Part 12: A Different Perspective on the Corinthian Controversy (conclusion)

We finally come to the question of how my Simonian hypothesis would deal with the inconsistent Pauline position regarding the Mosaic Law.  Like resurrection, the Law was a subject about which Simon of Samaria’s teaching differed significantly from that of the proto-orthodox. So if the Paul who authored the original letters was Simon, we can expect to find in the canonical versions signs of proto-orthodox intervention aimed at the correction of his errors on that issue.

Most of what the Apostle wrote about the Law was in the context of its relationship to sin and justification. It is thought that Gal. 2:16 is the earliest mention in the letters of justification/righteousness/rectification (dikaioō; dikaiosynē) by faith apart from works of the Law. Teachers— again, apparently connected to the Jerusalem church—were pushing his Galatian faithful to receive circumcision and observe at least some parts of the Law. The teachers were likely preaching a justification that was in some way connected with the Law. The Apostle responded with a letter that put a different twist on this.

 

Justification and Law in the Apostle’s gospel 

Justification becomes easier to understand if God’s beef was with the sinfully proud spirits who ruled the world.

Regarding justification by faith William Wrede long ago pointed out that:

The Reformation has accustomed us to look upon this as the central point of Pauline doctrine, but it is not so. In fact the whole Pauline religion can be expounded without a word being said about this doctrine, unless it be in the part devoted to the Law. It would be extraordinary if what was intended to be the chief doctrine were referred to only in a minority of the epistles. That is the case with this doctrine: it only appears where Paul is dealing with the strife against Judaism. And this fact indicates the real significance of the doctrine. It is the polemical doctrine of Paul, is only made intelligible by the struggle of his life, his controversy with Judaism and Jewish Christianity, and is only intended for this. (Paul, p. 123)

laurenceAscensioIsaiaeVatisBut if justification by faith was not at the center of the Apostle’s gospel, he did see it as at least a nonnegotiable implication. And this makes sense if, as I proposed in posts 7 through 9, the written source of his gospel message was the Vision of Isaiah. For the Vision foretells that preachers will be sent out into the whole world (Ascension of Isaiah 9:17, in the L2 and S versions), but does not say that the Law or Law observance will be part of what they preach. The Law is not mentioned at all in the Vision nor does it say anything about a distinction of Jews from Gentiles. It condemns the spirit rulers of this world and offers a life in heaven to their subjects, but gives no special prerogatives to the Jewish ones. The idea that the message must first be offered to Jews and only afterwards to Gentiles is absent.

One could easily conclude that if the Vision doesn’t require circumcision or Law observance as conditions for liberation from the rulers, it is wrong for preachers of the gospel to require such. Apparently all that is required to benefit from the preached message is to believe it and, while waiting for the imminent destruction of this world, to conduct oneself in a way pleasing to the God who graciously initiated the rescue.

Moreover, in the Vision the sinfulness that is spotlighted is that of the rulers of this world. It is their pride that God forcefully condemns. He sends his Son to

judge and destroy the princes and angels and gods of that world, and the world that is dominated by them. For they have denied me and said: “We alone are and there is none beside us.” (Ascension of Isaiah 10:12-13).

In the Vision men come across not as the guilty, but as the victims. Their plight is to live in a dark world run by rulers whose “envy of one another and fighting…” make it a place where “there is a power of evil and envying about trifles” (Ascension of Isaiah 10:29). The “angels of death” (10:14) keep those who have died locked in Sheol until the Son comes to free them.

In Galatians a similar emphasis has been noted by some scholars:

The redemption is, according to Paul, in a phrase which is brief and yet exact, release from the misery of this whole present world (Gal. 1:4). Every other conception of it, even release from sin, would be too narrow. The character of this present world is determined by the fact that men are here under the domination of dark and evil powers. The chief of these are the flesh, sin, the Law and death. (William Wrede, Paul, p. 92)

For Paul, the problem that needs to be addressed is not so much ‘sins,’ transgressions of divinely given commandments, as Sin, a malevolent enslaving and godlike power under which all human beings are held captive. (Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians: A Commentary, p. 35)

So it may be that the Vision of Isaiah holds the key to a correct grasp of what Paul meant by “justification.” Scholars have always had a hard time explaining that doctrine. A big part of their problem may be their belief that God and men were the parties at odds. Justification becomes easier to understand if God’s beef was with the sinfully proud spirits who ruled the world. In this case the Son’s intervention in the world not only vindicates God vis-à-vis these pretentious rulers, it also vindicates men in regard to them. God, by initiating the destruction of the world and its rulers, has in effect acquitted their subjects. His condemnation of the rulers has freed those they heavy-handedly ruled. Continue reading “A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 13: Simon/Paul and the Law of Moses”


2014-07-17

A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 12: A Different Perspective on the Corinthian Controversy (conclusion)

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by Roger Parvus

In this series I have been examining passages in the Pauline letters from a particular angle. Marcion claimed that the man who wrote the originals was someone who did not believe the god of the Old Testament to be the supreme God. And the letters, said Marcion, had been interpolated by someone who aimed to Judaize them. These claims combined with certain commonalities between Paul and the infamous Simon of Samaria—a man whose teaching allegedly did place the god who made the world far below the highest God—are what led me to consider whether the author of the original letters could have been Simon. Was the name Paul, i.e., the little one, a name that Simon who claimed to be “somebody great” (Acts 8:9) either at some point adopted himself or had given to him by followers or enemies? And could the many inconsistences in the Paulines have been caused by an early interpolator whose insertions were meant to make the original letters compatible with his proto-orthodox beliefs and more moderate toward Judaism?   

It is with these possibilities in mind that I have been re-reading the letters. I want to separate the apparent zigs from the zags, and then look to see if the zigs are plausible as expressions of Simon’s teaching and the zags as proto-orthodox insertions.

In this post I will consider whether 1 Corinthians 15 in its current state makes sense as an early (c. 130) proto-orthodox sanitization of a passage by Simon that denied the resurrection of the body.

 

English: folio 150 recto of the codex, with th...
English: folio 150 recto of the codex, with the beginning of the 1. Epistle to the Corrinthians (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This approach will be continued in this post on chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, a passage in which—if my Simonian scenario is correct—I would expect to find proto-orthodox intervention.

For the main subject of the chapter—the resurrection of the dead—is one about which proto-orthodox belief differed from that of Simon. The Father of Gnosticism is said to have taught that man’s spirit is the only part of him that is from the highest God and, as such, is the only part that can survive the coming destruction of this world. Man’s body is the inferior work of the inferior angels who made the visible world and is radically unfit for the highest world.

In contrast, the proto-orthodox held that this world including the human body is fundamentally good, having been made by the one true God, the God spoken of in the Old Testament Scriptures. The body, as God’s work, possesses a definite dignity, a dignity that can be marred by sin but can also be restored by him.

Thus proto-orthodox resurrection of the dead is resurrection of the whole man, including the body. For the proto-orthodox, denial of the resurrection of the body is the same thing as denial of the resurrection of the dead. And such denial is incompatible with really being a Christian.

For if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians … who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians… (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 80)

In this post I will consider whether 1 Corinthians 15 in its current state makes sense as an early (c. 130) proto-orthodox sanitization of a passage by Simon that denied the resurrection of the body.

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Initial observations 

Is it plausible that the real Paul would have failed to have his gospel summary make explicit mention that the death was by crucifixion?

I expect that many readers of Vridar are already familiar with Robert M. Price’s article in which he argues that 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 is not a window… into the earliest days of Christian belief,” but rather a “piece of later, post-Pauline Christianity” (“Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a Post-Pauline Interpolation”, in The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, edited by Robert M. Price and Jeffery J. Lowder, p. 69 ) The article can be read online at Prices’s website: www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com.

Contradicts Galatians
Among the reasons Price gives for rejecting the authenticity of the pericope is its contradiction of Galatians 1:1, 11-12. In the Corinthians passage the Apostle has apparently been taught his gospel by human predecessors, but in Galatians he says he did not receive it from man. Thus it would seem, as Price points out, that

If the historical Paul is speaking in either passage, he is not speaking in both. (p. 74)

Suspicious Christophanies
Price also has numerous issues with the pericope’s list of Christophanies. And he proposes that in reality verses 3 and 9-11 are

part of an apologia for Paul made by a spirit kindred to the writer of the Pastorals. The writer wished to vindicate Paul’s controversial heresy-tinged apostolate in the eyes of his fellow “early catholics” by doing what Luke did at about the same time: assimilating Paul to the Twelve and James. (p. 90)

I basically agree with Price on the above points and would add a few other observations.

Overlooked crucifixion
For one thing, the gospel summary in the passage simply says

that Christ died (15:3)

Christ crucified
Christ crucified (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

without specifying that the death was by crucifixion.

But earlier in the same letter great emphasis is placed on the manner of the death. The Apostle proclaimed

Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:22)

and insisted that when he was among the Corinthians he

resolved to know nothing… except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2).

Given the circumstances, is it plausible that the real Paul would have failed to have his gospel summary make explicit mention that the death was by crucifixion?

It is unrealistic to think that the afterlife only came up much later in the Apostle’s dealings with his churches. . . .

The passage would have us believe that he had never previously told the Corinthians that they will one day have a body like the one the risen Christ has.

Omitted teaching
And at face value the passage would have us believe that the Apostle had previously neglected to tell the Corinthians what their afterlife existence would be like.

The passage does not say that the Apostle had preached the resurrection and that his hearers had not understood it; nor does it reproach them for forgetfulness.

It is important to realize this: the passage does not say that the Apostle had preached the resurrection of the dead and that his hearers had not understood it. Nor does it reproach them with forgetfulness of what he had said about that doctrine.

What it says is that the Apostle had preached the gospel to them—a gospel that included the resurrection of Christ—but it makes no claim that he ever addressed the nature of their own afterlife in any of his instructions. This passage together with the defense of resurrection that follows it would have us believe that he had never previously told the Corinthians that they will one day have a body that is like the one the risen Christ has. It wants us to believe he had wrongly assumed all of them would deduce that on their own, and so he had never expressly said a word about it.

To me this supposed omission on the Apostle’s part is suspicious. The nature of the afterlife is just too central and important a matter to have been completely left out by him. It is unrealistic to think that it only came up much later in the Apostle’s dealings with his churches. It is the kind of thing that would have come up from the beginning in all kinds of discussions about Christian hopes and expectations.

Continue reading “A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 12: A Different Perspective on the Corinthian Controversy (conclusion)”


2014-07-13

Mark, Canonizer of Paul

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by Neil Godfrey

dykstra1Until recently I have had little interest in arguments that our apparently earliest written gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was composed as an attempt to teach the ideas of Paul as found in his letters. After reading Mark, Canonizer of Paul by Tom Dykstra I am now more sympathetic to the possibility that the author of this gospel really was writing as a follower of Paul.

Dykstra introduces his argument by pointing out how curiously uninterested the author of the Gospel of Mark is in the contents of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus is said to teach with authority and crowds are said to be impressed with his teachings but exactly what he taught in the synagogues or to those who crowded around to hear him in a house is left unsaid. Jesus does teach a lot of parables warning hearers of the consequences of not believing the gospel but the content of that gospel, the detail of what they must believe, is never stated. About the only teaching Mark’s Jesus is said to have delivered is little more than “Keep the commandments”.

Then there is the curious ending: why does Mark virtually leave the resurrection details out of the story altogether?

Dykstra sums up his argument:

The explanation I offer in this book can be summarized as follows. Mark’s primary purpose was to defend the vision of Christianity championed by Paul the Apostle against his “Judaizing” opponents. He undertook this defense because epistles written in the Apostle’s name were no longer deemed adequate, possibly because Paul himself was no longer around to personally defend his authority. Mark didn’t report any new teachings of Jesus because none were available to him: his main sources were the Old Testament, the Homeric epics, and Paul’s epistles, not the disciples or oral tradition. And so he wrote a Gospel that implicitly validated the authority of Paul and his epistles. . . .  My goal in this book is mainly to present the evidence for a literary relationship between Mark and Paul’s epistles. (p. 23, my bolding)

This situation makes sense, Dykstra suggests, if Paul had died and his teachings were in danger of being eclipsed by his opponents.

In chapter two and relying primarily upon Michael Goulder’s argument in St. Paul vs. St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions Dykstra presents a scenario of a sharp divide between two different types of gospels. Goulder was reviving (and responding to criticisms of) an 1831 interpretation by Ferdinand Baur.

Peter’s mission believed that the heavenly kingdom had already arrived and believers were already enjoying the resurrected life, while Paul stressed that the resurrection was yet to come and believers’ present life was more like the crucifixion. . . . Peter’s mission stressed tongues and visions and gifts of the spirit, while Paul’s stressed love and charity; Peter’s mission stressed the need to give away all of one’s possessions since the end had already come, while Paul’s mission advised people to keep working and earning a living. As will be seen, some of these differences are reflected in the text of Mark’ Gospel. (p. 35)

If the evangelist wanted to create a narrative to bolster the embattled teachings and authority of Paul he would need to project a dispute of his own and Paul’s day back into that narrative. The narrative would also need to show that apostles who came prior to Paul, even those claiming to be his brothers and those who were reputed as “pillars” in the church, failed to understand Jesus.

Continue reading “Mark, Canonizer of Paul”


2014-03-31

A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 10: A Different Perspective on the Corinthian Controversy

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by Roger Parvus

When I finished the previous post of the series, I expected to go on to a discussion of the eschatology in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians. But while working on that, I quickly realized that chapters 1 through 4 of the letter should be examined first. They provide some necessary background on the situation in the church at Corinth.

So this post will consider these earlier chapters from the perspective of my hypotheses that the Paul who wrote the Corinthian letters was Simon of Samaria, his gospel was based on the Vision of Isaiah, and his letters were subsequently interpolated (as late as 130 CE) by a proto-orthodox Christian.

I have already discussed 1 Cor. 2:6-9 in part 7 of the series. My interpretation of that passage will be incorporated here into a view of the Corinthian controversy as a whole.

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Disruptive Wisdom in the Church at Corinth

1 Corinthians begins with four chapters in which the Apostle expresses concern about some kind of wisdom that, in his absence, was being put forward by certain Christians at Corinth and was giving rise to factions in the church there. The nature of the troublesome wisdom is unclear but, from a consideration of the entire Corinthian correspondence, it seems to me most likely that it was the product of people laying claim to the gift of prophecy. Its proponents likely believed that their wisdom, like the Apostle’s own (1 Cor. 2:6-9), was revealed by God.

ellisAs we saw above, in the Pauline letters, and especially in 1 Corinthians (2, 12-14), certain believers have gifts of inspired speech and discernment. They are called pneumatics and, broadly speaking, they exercise the role of prophets. Among other manifestations they are said to speak ‘wisdom of God’ (2,7,13) or to be ‘wise’ (3,18; 6,5; cf. 14,29 diakrinein) or to have a ‘word of wisdom’ (12,8) and to speak ‘in knowledge’ or to ‘have knowledge’ or ‘a word of knowledge’ (8,10; 12,8; 14,6). The terms wisdom and knowledge are used of pneumatic gifts in other parts of the Pauline literature and occasionally they appear in tandem, both in Paul and elsewhere. (E. Earle Ellis, Prophecy and Hermeneutic in Early Christianity, p. 50)

The Apostle refers to the purveyors of the wisdom as fellow workers, but it becomes clear in the course of his presentation that he views at least some of them as competitors and has serious reservations about whether their teaching is in harmony with the gospel.

That gospel, as I proposed in parts 7 through 9, was likely derived from the Vision of Isaiah, and for the Apostle its truth was confirmed by the divine revelation that he himself had received. He has no comparable assurance for the suspect wisdom. Those pushing it apparently accepted, at least initially, the Apostle’s gospel beliefs, for without that minimal commonality it is hard to see how he could have allowed them to operate at all in his community. And he does say that they were building on the foundation— Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:11, 1:23 and 2:2)—that he himself “as a wise master builder” (1 Cor. 3:10) had laid down in Corinth. He makes clear that use of that foundation is non-negotiable:  “No man can lay a foundation other than the one that is there” (1 Cor. 3:11).  To try to substitute another would in effect destroy the edifice, and “if any man destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that man; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy” (1 Cor. 3:17). But building on the right foundation is not enough. What is built on it must be able to survive the coming conflagration and the Apostle seems to doubt that the materials being used by his competitors at Corinth will pass that test.

Thus we are apparently dealing with wisdoms inspired by different spirits and, according to Simon/Paul, only one of them—his—certainly comes from God.

The Apostle’s repeated belittlement of mere “wisdom of word” and “wisdom of man” and “wisdom of the world” seems to be an indirect putdown of what his competitors are teaching. His wisdom is from God. He is not so sure about the source of theirs.

Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not in wisdom of word, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. (1 Cor. 1:17)

We have not received the spirit of the world but the spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. And we speak about them not with words taught by the wisdom of man, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms. (1 Cor. 2:12-13)

We speak wisdom among the perfect, but wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nought. But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, that hidden wisdom which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this world understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.’  (1Cor. 2:6-9)

The “wisdom of man,” as the Apostle uses the expression, is an inferior wisdom whose source is merely “the spirit of man that is in him” (1 Cor. 2:11). And the source of the “wisdom of this world” is “the spirit of the world” (1 Cor. 2:12), i.e., the ignorant angel who together with his spirit underlings are the “rulers of this world” (1 Cor. 2:6). Later, as the situation further deteriorates at Corinth and the Apostle comes to view the competing wisdom as “a different gospel” (2 Cor. 11:4), he supplies the name of the angel. He is “Satan” who “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). Thus we are apparently dealing with wisdoms inspired by different spirits and, according to Simon/Paul, only one of them—his—certainly comes from God.

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The Eschatological Theme of the Wisdom of this World

Continue reading “A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 10: A Different Perspective on the Corinthian Controversy”


2013-11-24

Paul’s Letters As Sources for Acts (Acts Seminar Report)

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by Neil Godfrey

The Acts Seminar Report (Acts and Christian Beginnings) maintains that, contrary to the view that has long been widely held among biblical scholars, the author of Acts (with the routine caveats we call him Luke) did know and use the letters of Paul.

datingActsI begin with some comments by one of the Acts Seminar Fellows, Richard Pervo, in his 2006 work, Dating Acts, because thy sum up some of the apparent reasons scholars have traditionally rejected the idea that Luke knew (or used) the letters of Paul.

[Morton S.] Enslin states that rejection of Paul’s letters as a source for Acts was a result of the reaction against the Tübingen school and claims that this reaction became like its polar opposite, “une sort de these qui n’a pas besoin de demonstration,” [=”A type of thesis that requires no proof”] the “assured result of higher criticism.” (p. 54)

Scholars who have considered Luke to be primarily an historian have argued that he could not have known of the letters

because they would have clarify some issues and correct some errors. (p. 137)

Those who have seen him as a theologian have been able to argue that Luke’s Paul was so different from the Paul of the letters that Luke must have chosen not to use the letters

because they presented a different theology. (p. 137)

Pervo, however, was able to note that a growing appreciation of Luke as an author allows us to acknowledge that as a creative writer Luke was free to use or not use sources as he willed. Scholars have also come to increasingly accept that even as an ancient historian his purposes differed from those of modern historians.

I love Pervo’s conclusion, and I am sure Thomas Brodie (whose latest publication I have been blogging about) would, too:

That is to say that the question can no longer be dismissed by resorting to the shoulds and woulds that posit what Luke would have done and how he should have used Paul. Statements of this nature reveal what their proponents would do, but shed no light upon ancient practices in general or upon Lucan practice in particular. They are egocentric and anachronistic.

Especially painful for some has been the inevitable conclusion that, if Luke knew Pauline letters, he ignored them at some points and contradicted them at others. Why this experience should be more painful than it is with regard to the Gospel of Mark — which Luke also ignored at some points and contradicted more than once — is not perfectly clear, but there can be no doubt it has been a burden.

As Enslin says, “The common denial . . . that Luke knew or used the Pauline letters needs fresh consideration instead of automatic repetition.” As the followers of the Artemis of Ephesus allegedly learned (Acts 19:21-40), constant reiteration of a claim does not make it valid or effective. (pp. 54-55, my formatting and bolding, italics original)

So why would Luke have created such a different Paul from the one found in the letters? And why would he have used the letters to create that different Paul? I’ll return to that question at the end of this post.

It’s time to look at what the Acts Seminar says about the evidence. (It’s brief. I could not hope to cover Richard Pervo’s 100 pages of packed argument and illustrative tables here. I have posted a few detailed arguments, however, coincidentally by another who was a Seminar Fellow, Joseph B. Tyson: How Acts Subverts Galatians; Dating the Book of Acts, 6, late date reconsidered (Paul’s letters).)

Words Taken Out of Paul’s Mouth

Continue reading “Paul’s Letters As Sources for Acts (Acts Seminar Report)”


2013-10-06

A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 3: Three Deutero-Paulines

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Roger Parvus

This is the third post in the series: A Simonian Origin for Christianity.

From the previous post:

Cerdo, from Antioch, learned his doctrines of two gods from the Simonians. (Irenaeus: Against Heresies, 1.27,1).

Cerdo, like Marcion after him, also believed that the Pauline letters had been interpolated and some forged. (Tertullian: Against All Heresies, 6.2).

Cerdo arrived in Rome shortly before Marcion. Marcion incorporated much of Cerdo’s teaching in his own work, Antitheses. (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 7,25)

In the previous post I showed how my hypothesis would tie the inconsistencies in the Pauline letters to the early conflict between Simonian and proto-orthodox Christians.

  • The inconsistencies would have resulted from proto-orthodox interpolations made to letters that were of Simonian provenance.
  • The intent behind the interpolations was to correct Simonian errors.
  • I noted how the earliest known Christian to claim that the Paulines had been interpolated was someone associated with a Simonian from Antioch.
  • And I provided from the first chapter of the letter collection an example of an interpolation that appears to have Simon in view.

In this post I want to show how the three earliest Deutero-Pauline letters would fit into my hypothetical scenario.

I will show how Simon’s successor, Menander, makes a good candidate for author of the letters to the Colossians and the Ephesians.

And I will propose a new explanation for why 2 Thessalonians was written.
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Three Deutero-Paulines: Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians

Colossians and Menander

Even though what the extant record says about Menander is meager, the little it does provide is sufficient to show that he should be considered a good candidate for author of Colossians.Justin, our earliest source on Menander, says that he, like Simon, was originally from Samaria but “deceived many while he was in Antioch” (1st Apologia, 26). His activity in Antioch occurred presumably in the last third of the first century. And the theological development that occurred within Simonian Christianity when Menander succeeded Simon looks very much like what took place between the seven so-called undisputed letters and Colossians, the earliest of the Deutero-Paulines..

In Colossians, someone claiming to be Paul says that those who have been baptized into Christ have already experienced a kind of spiritual resurrection. . .

This is something the author of the seven undisputed letters never says. For him, resurrection is something he is striving to obtain.

There are many considerations of both writing style and theological content that have led scholars to recognize that Colossians is a pseudepigraphon. But one of the most easily-noticed ways it differs theologically from the undisputed letters is in its eschatology. In Colossians, someone claiming to be Paul says that those who have been baptized into Christ have already experienced a kind of spiritual resurrection. He tells his readers that God “made you alive with him [Christ]” (Col. 2:13). They were “raised with Christ” (Col.2:12 and 3:1). And he locates this resurrection in baptism (Col. 2:12).

This is something the author of the seven undisputed letters never says. For him, resurrection is something he is striving to obtain: “if somehow I might obtain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:11). It is part of a salvation that will be obtained in the future. Continue reading “A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 3: Three Deutero-Paulines”