I overlooked William O. Walker Jr’s arguments for 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 being an interpolation in my previous post and have since added his name. The insert now reads:
* Two outlier voices arguing that 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 is a non-pauline interpolation into the original letter are those of
Widmann, M. 1979. “1 Kor. 2:6-16. Ein Einspruch gegen Paulus” ZNW 70: 44-53.
Walker, W.Jr, 2002. Interpolations in the Pauline Letters. Bloomsbury T&T Clark, London. pp. 127-146.
Widmann’s arguments are challenged by
O’Connor, J.M., 2009. Keys to First Corinthians: Revisiting the Major Issues, Oxford University Press, New York. 257-260
Walker’s argument takes O’Connor’s rebuttals into account and attempts to strengthen Widmann’s case.
I may set the pros and cons for interpolation in a future post. In this post I assume the passage was penned by Paul.
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Things like this make me think radical agnosticism about Jesus’ historicity is warranted. There are many passages thought to be supportive of either mythicism or historicism that others have thought were interpolations.
It’s not just the passages. Many of the characters in the stories have no primary sources. I am having a discussion about mythicism on another forum and the pro poster, who is apparently a Tim O’neil fan, said that Paul going to Jerusalem and talking to “James the Brother of the Lord” was a historical fact, it can’t be fiction.” And I realized that there’s no basis for that. First of all, we don’t know a thing about Paul. Who he was, where he was, what he did outside of what he writes about himself. And there are serious scholars who thing Paul is a character. But, that notwithstanding, look at the Church’s that Paul was writing too. They were on the other side of the Mediterranean from Jerusalem and far inland in most cases. No one in those Church’s had any way to verify Paul’s tales. For all we know, or could know, Paul made the whole Jerusalem trip up to pump up his authority, and how he met the leaders of the movement and they sent him out into the wilderness to preach to the Gentiles, blah, blah, blah. I think that the ENTIRE enterprise needs to be rethought, especially seeing how contemporary movements have been born and grown.