Month: August 2024

2024-08-27

“I am not persuaded” — valid criticism or merely posturing?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography
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How often does one encounter the “I am not persuaded” copout? I call it a copout because it usually functions as an easy escape for one who is unable to say why a disliked argument is faulty. Here’s a formal response to the “I am not persuaded” line:

How might we recognize inappropriate doubt masquerading as valid criticism? Such doubt generally does not attend to the actual data and its explanation, falsifying it directly. It begs the question. Or, more commonly, it suggests a comparative situation but fails to supply the comparison; a given argument might be pronounced insufficient to convince, but what exactly establishes argumentative sufficiency is not stated (and usually cannot be). Of course, such judgments are meaningless without an overt standard or measure of sufficiency. And that measure is the data itself in relation to the broader object under investigation and the current explanation in play! Do these actually match up, or is a problem discernible in their relationship(s)? If the latter, the appropriate critical process should elicit doubt, along with the modification or abandonment of the hypothesis. Modification or the clear provision of an explanatory alternative is a signal that the appropriate critical method and doubt are operative. Without these elements, a doubting critic runs the danger of merely posturing.

Campbell, Douglas A. Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2014. p. 18

2024-08-25

Questioning the Identity/Historicity of the Apostle Paul

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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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.

 

2024-08-17

What Others have Written About Galatians — A Computer Analysis

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Stylometry

Stylometry is the mathematical analysis of style in writing. Style can come in the form of word choice and vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, grammatical usage, and other factors. People have been looking at the style of the New Testament books for nearly as long as they’ve been in existence. Early Church Fathers, for example, debated over the style of Hebrews and if Paul was the author or not. However, our very limited ability to navigate Koine Greek meant we would have to find another approach to stylometry. This is where computerized stylometry comes into play.

Computerized stylometric analysis of the New Testament goes back to the 1980s with Anthony Kenny’s A Stylometric Study of the New Testament. . . . 

Unsurprisingly, stylometry has come a long way since the 1980s. Recently, researchers have been able to be as precise as knowing whether Donald Trump wrote a given tweet or one of his interns did, and identifying J. K. Rowling as the person behind the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

(Britt and Wingo, loc 2823, Kindle)

You can read more about the program (Stylo) used by Britt and Wingo on the New Testament and other early “Church Father” writings at

  • https://journal.r-project.org/archive/2016/RJ-2016-007/index.html
  • https://github.com/computationalstylistics
  • https://computationalstylistics.github.io/publications/stylo

So what did their analysis show about Galatians? Here is a composite image of the results of the program’s analysis of various works. On the left you can see that the program, Stylo, groups modern authors correctly. In the middle image we can see the Stylo results for various ancient authors such as Josephus, Origen, and others. Again, the results are what we would expect: noncontroversial works by Josephus are all grouped together, for example. The third image on the right covers results for some of the New Testament letters. The first two chapters of Galatians are closer in style to the letter of 1 Peter and part of 2 Corinthians. (2 Corinthians is widely thought by scholars to be a stitching together of several letters.)

Galatians

I quote here the commentary by B&W on Galatians. Marcion was the second century leader of a form of Christianity that claimed to have been the true followers of the apostle Paul and that the original twelve apostles had failed to carry on the true message of Jesus. Other “proto-orthodox” Christian leaders accused Marcion of falsifying the letters of Paul and argued that Paul and Peter and the other disciples were all united in their theological outlook. Marcion famously went to Rome with his gospel, bringing with him a large sum of money as a gift. In 144 CE the leaders of the church in Rome rejected Marcion’s gospel and his money.

Galatians is a heavily interpolated text, making a clearer stylometric read difficult. The first two chapters of Galatians seem to be a mishmash of writers attempting to explain Paul’s backstory, including striking parallels to Marcion’s personal story. Throughout the second half of the 2nd century and into the 3rd century there are varying accounts of what the letter said at the time, so we know it was still going through edits quite late. On the other hand, in line with what Tertullian says about Marcion “discovering” the letter, the content in chapters 3-6 tends to align more with Marcionite theology aside from verses scattered here and there which seem to contradict the bulk of the content. Such verses are likely from a later early church editor sometime in the process of the creation of our canonical version of the letter.

What seems most likely is that Galatians 3-6 represents the original content of the letter as drafted by someone in Marcion’s church. This was written prior to the falling out with the Roman church, so likely the late 130s or early 140s. Then, after Marcion is excommunicated, more biographical information is added into Paul primarily in chapters 1 and 2. Significant portions of the content in these chapters seem to reflect Marcion’s experiences, and they are likely projections of Marcion’s biographical information back onto Paul. This would explain why the authors look slightly different but still within the larger branch. It could be the same author at a different time or someone else writing a bit later. Eventually, other church leaders affiliated with the Roman church would add verses throughout the text to try to make Paul more acceptable to their theology.

Regardless, both sections of the text come up in the same general group as 1 Corinthians and the majority of the Romans segments. This indicates that no matter how many hands were initially involved in writing the letter, it was written around the same time and by the general same group as the other two letters. These three letters, along with parts of 2 Corinthians makeup whatever the core Paul character might have been. 

(Britt and Wingo, loc 3454-71, Kindle)

Britt, Matthew, and Jaaron Wingo. Christ Before Jesus: Evidence for the Second-Century Origins of Jesus. Cooper & Samuels, 2024.

What Others have Written About Galatians – Harold Hoehner

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Paul’s letter to the Galatians has “always” been understood to have been as certainly “Pauline” as his letters to the Romans and Corinthians. Other New Testament epistles (e.g. Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy) have fared less well in the authenticity stakes along with reasons explaining why someone other than Paul wrote them: difference in style and vocabulary, difference in themes and theological perspectives.

Most lay people like me would assume that scholars have rigorously applied the same criteria to all of the New Testament Pauline letters and on that basis have determined that Galatians passes all the tests to qualify as genuine.

But most lay people, me included, would be mistaken. One scholar has taken the trouble to apply the same standards to Galatians as are used to prove the inauthenticity of other epistles and finds that Galatians likewise falls short. Yet, no matter, he still believes Paul wrote Galatians. Criteria are no more than guidelines, after all. They are not immutable laws. Here is what he wrote (with my bolding):

If the criteria used to demonstrate non-Pauline authorship of the disputed Pauline letters were applied to the letter to the Galatians, many issues would arise that would indicate that Galatians should be considered as one of the disputed letters. . . . .

(1) Impersonal Nature: According to Gal. 1:1-2 this letter is addressed to the churches of Galatia. The first thing to notice is that he addresses “churches” which is not found elsewhere in Pauline literature. . . . . This is the only time he addressed churches in the plural. He could have used “to the saints who reside in Galatia,” which would be more traditional Pauline style.

If Paul wrote Galatians, it is interesting to notice that there are no personal greetings to individuals in the various churches of Galatia which seems strange since he had been with them only a short time ago (1:6, 13; 4:13-14).

(Hoefner, 153f)

Than point 2, Language and Style:

It is thought by many that Ephesians has too many unique words to be Pauline. Statistics shows that Ephesians has 2423 words with a total vocabulary of 527 words. When the data from Morgenthaler were put into a database, it is interesting to note that among the 527 words in Ephesians, 35 words appear only in Ephesians within the NT; and another 44 words appear in Ephesians not found elsewhere in Paul’s writings, but they appear elsewhere in the NT. Using the same method, among the 519 words in Galatians, 30 words occur only in Galatians within the NT; and another 55 words occur in Galatians not found elsewhere in Paul, but they occur elsewhere in the NT. . . .

Lincoln notes that Ephesians has not only distinct vocabulary but more importantly it has distinct combination of words or phrases (15 of them) “unique within the Pauline corpus and reflect this letter’s distinctive mode of expression.” Hence, it would indicate that it was not written by Paul. But there are even more expressions in Galatians which are unique within the Pauline corpus. . . . So many unique expressions (20 of them) in such a small book (8% shorter than Ephesians) would seem to argue for a non-Pauline authorship of Galatians.

Further, the frequent use of the prepositions έκ and ύπό in Galatians would point to a non-Pauline authorship of Galatians. . . . .

The style of Galatians differs from Paul’s other letters. In reading the Greek text one becomes aware of disjunctures of logic. For example, the curse in verses 1:8-9 has ended abruptly.24 Then the logic is hard to follow in verses 10-11. It seems that verses 10-11 really go back to verse 1 rather than verse 9. . . . 

Curiously, there is no thanksgiving in Galatians. In all the other Pauline letters with the exception of the Pastoral epistles and possibly 2 Corinthians 1:11 (cf. Rom. 1:8; 1 Cor. 1:4,14; Eph. 1:16; Phil. 1:3; Col. 1:3; 1 Thess. 1:2; 2 Thess. 1:3; Philm. 4) Paul gives thanks for his addressees. Does this suggest that Galatians was written by the same hand as the Pastorals? . . . .

(p. 155, 161ff, )

Hoehner next turns to “historical considerations“. He contrasts the well-known discrepancies between the Acts narrative of Paul on the one hand and what we read in Galatians on the other. In the latter Paul is at pains to dissociate himself from the Jerusalem apostles. Hoehner reads the works as historical artefacts and believes Acts is to be preferred since its author, Luke, was a close companion of Paul and not likely to have been mistaken. The letter to the Galatians is also at direct odds with Jewish believers, another notion not found in Acts.

Next, there are “theological distinctions“:

First, there is in Galatians an emphasis on grace. The writer explains that if justification were through the law the death of Christ was of no purpose (2:21). Simply stated, the writer states that justification is on the basis of grace by means of faith (2:16-21). However, the writer also maintains that grace can be lost. . . . In the accepted Pauline literature there is no indication of falling from grace.

Second, along with grace there is in Galatians a significant emphasis on faith. The use of the noun “faith” in Galatians is almost twice as frequent per 1000 words (9.85) as in Romans (5.62) . . . .

Third, the law is another prominent subject in Galatians. . . . .

Finally, there is a great emphasis on the Spirit.

On the other hand, the absence of the parousia [return of Christ from heaven] in Galatians is worthy of note.

(p. 166f)

Hoehner notes that other scholars have seen evidence that the author of Galatians appears to have tried to pass himself off as Paul by borrowing from other Pauline epistles:

Gal 6:1 “he that is spiritual” 1 Cor 2:13 “These things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual”
Gal 6:6 “Let him who is taught the word share all good things with him who teaches” 1 Cor 9:7-14 & 2 Cor 11:7-10, 12, 13-18
 
Gal 6:5-8 5 For each one shall bear his own load.6 Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches.

7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. 8 For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.

 2 Cor 9:6 “But this I say: He who soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he who soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.”

Conclusion:

There are more arguments that could be used to bolster the supposition that Paul did not write Galatians. However, space limitations curtail further development. Certainly not all the arguments are of equal weight. However, these among other arguments are used to demonstrate that the disputed letters were not written by Paul. But interestingly these same arguments are not applied to the Hauptbriefe [= main letters — Romans, 1& 2 Corinthians, Galatians]. Everyone assumes that they are the genuine letters. I remember discussing this over dinner with a NT professor from Germany who accepted pseudepigraphical works of Paul. I suggested that the same authorship criteria should be applied to Galatians as are applied to the disputed books of Paul. He concurred. Another well-known NT scholar sitting next to him said, “Don’t do that, I like Galatians.” I replied, “That is a good existential reason for supporting the Pauline authorship of Galatians.” He saw my point.

What is my actual position? Personally, I think we are using a double standard. We apply these rules to the disputed books of Paul but not to the Hauptbriefe. Those who have attempted to raise the question of authenticity of Galatians have been quickly dismissed and ignored. How dare anyone question the authenticity of Galatians! Furthermore, many arguments used against the authorship of the disputed letters are invalid. Yet, all too often NT scholars use these arguments to demonstrate inauthenticity of the disputed Pauline letters but do not use them on the undisputed letters. . . . Variations can be accounted for due to differences in content and differences in the character and needs of the recipients of the letter. Furthermore, it must be accepted that a creative person such as Paul is not sterile in his expressions; allowances must be made for development in his own thinking. These elements are evident even in his undisputed letters. In addition, it is rather limiting to determine Paul’s style and vocabulary based only on the writings that are canonical. If more of his writings were available, it would be easier to evaluate variances and consistency of vocabulary and style. Content, mood, and recipients all affect the vocabulary and style of an author whether it be in the first or the present century. In fact, repeating the same content in identical or nearly identical circumstances would still produce variances in vocabulary, style, and sentence length. Authors are not machines that duplicate these entities. . . .

Do I think Paul wrote Galatians? Yes. To be sure there are some difficulties, as mentioned above, but they are not insurmountable. May I say in closing that it is much easier to write a paper marshalling arguments for the inauthenticity of a biblical book than defending its authenticity. It is much easier to engage in destructive criticism than constructive criticism. When I do not accept authenticity of a work the burden of proof demanded of me is not as great.

(pp 168f)

I have several problems with the above conclusion. Yes, variations can be accounted for — up to a point. But though authors are “not machines” they are distinct personalities with their own unique, well, “personalities”, like fingerprints, and that includes distinctive modes of verbal expression. There is a limit to the extent to which I can change my style and manner of speaking — and writing. Changing writing style is easier, I suppose, if I take the time to study and work at rephrasing what I have written. But then the task of disguising myself would become more important than what I am wanting to express.

But why take the line that one finds arguments “not insurmountable”? That sounds like there is a preferred default position that should be defended as long as possible. Is that an objective position?

Notice, further, the assumption that in Paul we have a “creative person” who is presumably capable of writing in such a varied manner. Is not this a circular argument — assuming that style and themes that would otherwise indicate a different author can be found within the single person as large as Paul?

The other difficulty I have with the conclusion is the notion that testing a document for authenticity should be considered either “destructive” or “constructive” criticism. That smacks of ideological or apologetic bias. What is wrong, what is “destructive”, about questioning and determining the authenticity of a document? Should not the historian be interested in establishing “the truth” of a matter? Whether a document can be demonstrated to be written by X or Y is surely a good thing in its own right. If it means having to revise traditional beliefs, that is also surely a positive step.

Hoehner, Harold W. “Did Paul Write Galatians?” In History and Exegesis: New Testament Essays in Honor of Dr. E. Earle Ellis for His 80th Birthday, edited by Sang-Won Son, 150–69. New York: T & T Clark, 2006.

 

2024-08-10

Is there Evidence for Christianity before Constantine? (Or, Some Fundamentals of Doing History)

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Historical Methods and Historiography
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Is it necessary to have archaeological evidence to be reasonably confident that Christianity in some form existed prior to the fourth century? Some people think so, or at least they claim that the lack of archaeological evidence is reasonable grounds for doubting the existence of Christianity prior to Constantine. Let me explain why I believe that that view arises from a misunderstanding of the nature of evidence and how historical events are reconstructed by historians.

Now it is certainly true that there are clear cut cases where archaeological evidence does nullify written historical narratives. Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the medieval stories of King Arthur, said to have performed his various exploits in late Roman times, are fictions. Similarly, archaeology has overthrown the historicity of the Genesis Patriarchs, the Exodus, the Israelite conquest of Canaan and the vast united kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon.

But what happens when we have no explicit archaeological evidence for a historical narrative? The archaeological evidence that specifically informs us about the conquests of Alexander the Great is virtually nonexistent. We have coins with Alexander’s bust stamped on them but they don’t tell us about his military adventures from Egypt to India. For that information we only have very late (Roman era) written accounts. Fortunately, however, the authors of those histories inform readers that they were drawing upon historical records composed by Alexander’s contemporaries. Further, given the widespread influence of Greek culture and Greek settlements throughout the Levant and Mesopotamia after Alexander’s time, we have good reason to believe that something dramatic happened to give rise to this new situation, and the surviving testimonies of historians who read writings of Alexander’s contemporaries are thus by and large made credible.

Again, we have no archaeological evidence from the fifth century BCE testifying to the historical existence of Plato. There are no surviving manuscripts of Plato’s works from his own time. But we do have scores of later manuscripts that are evidence for an activity of reasonably faithful copying of Plato’s dialogues. We can cross check these writings with manuscripts of copied works of other authors who were evidently contemporaries of Plato. So we again have reasonable grounds for believing in the historical existence and literary productivity of Plato.

But what is the difference between primary and secondary sources? It is on this question that I understand some doubts about pre-Constantinian Christianity arise.

Ranke, Leopold von (1795 – 1886)

Primary sources are those that clearly belong to the period being investigated. Secondary sources are from times later than the events or persons being studied. One biblical historian whom I have quoted in the past because he wrote at some length on this question is Niels Peter Lemche. Lemche takes readers ‘back to the basics’, in this case to the writings of the “father of modern history”, Leopold von Ranke.

When von Ranke and historians since his time are referring to an acknowledged contemporary source, they indicate first of all that kind of information which can be dated without problems. They also say that the source must physically belong to the period about which it is taken to be firsthand information. A slab of stone with an inscription found in situ, that is, where it was originally placed by the person who erected the stone to commemorate some event of his own day, is without doubt a primary and contemporary source. A description of the same item found in some ancient literary source is, however, not a contemporary source except in the case where it goes back to the same time as the stone inscription. Thus Livy’s description of the Second Punic War is not a contemporary source, as it is removed by about two hundred years from the days of Hannibal and Scipio. Suetonius’s life of August is not a primary source because it is about a hundred years later than the time of August. The Monumentum Ancyranum1 can, however, be considered a firsthand piece of evidence from this period, since it relies on an official document from the days of August, and was placed on his temple in Ankara shortly after his death.

1. An inscription found on the Temple of August in Ankara, based on an official document authorized in the last year of August’s reign (C.E. 14), partly based, however, on an earlier source, the Res Gestae, and edited before it was published. The inscription has been known since 1555.

Lemche, Niels Peter. The Israelites in History and Tradition. London : Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998. p. 22

A Digression on Leopold von Ranke and Positivist History

Now the mention of Ranke has the unfortunate side effect of causing some readers to roll their eyes in despair while complaining, “But von Ranke was a positivist and that kind of history went out of fashion by the middle of the twentieth century.” To those who react that way (and there are a good many biblical scholars who are guilty) I must point out that “positivism” is too often confused with a preoccupation with “getting the facts right”, or with a history that is “all about ‘the facts'”. No, that’s a misunderstanding of positivism.

Positivism in history is an attempt to treat history as a science, as an effort to discover laws of historical processes, as summed up in an earlier reference if mine to Collingwood. The facts are still bedrock.

We have heard of “history wars” in recent times. Historians continue today to research to find “the actual facts” that lie behind various controversial questions. Was there a culpable genocide of Australian aborigines by white settlers throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries? Facts and evidence lie at the very heart of that debate. Focus on “the facts” is still of first importance. Hewing to facts is not committing the sin of positivism.

But there is another way of understanding “positivist history” and in this second sense Ranke is sometimes upheld as an exemplar. The idea that history can be an objective reconstruction of what “exactly” happened in the past — a fact-based, “objective and true” portrayal of events, especially political events — is another form of history that is no longer practised, generally speaking. Nobody can escape bias of some kind; everybody necessarily perceives events through a particular point of view. Nor are political and military events the totality of human experience: history has branched out into investigating economic, social, cultural, family and personal events.

As for being “completely objective”, the American Civil War is viewed by some historians as a conflict over states rights; by other historians as a conflict over slavery. That does not mean that there is no absolute truth to the question but it does remind us that all events are perceived through our preconceptions and biases. The historian ideally will be aware of their biases and make allowances for them in their research and presentation of their narrative. To support one point of view against another a historian will seek to present more factual evidence on which their point of view rests.

As for Ranke, he is perhaps best known for his famous phrase . . .

To history has been given the function of judging the past, of instructing men for the profit of future years. The present attempt does not aspire to such a lofty undertaking. It merely wants to show how it essentially was (wie es eigentlich gewesen).

From Preface to the First Edition of Histories of the Latin and Germanic Peoples (October 1824), in: Ranke, Leopold von. The Theory and Practice of History. New York, N.Y: Irvington Publishers, 1983. p. 86

Some critics translate the phrase as “how it actually was” and thus present a more “positivist” view of Ranke than others would necessarily warrant.

Today historians are more aware of the inevitable bias or subjectivity of a “point of view” when examining events, and of the impossibility of fully objectively recreating a wholly true account of a past event, but searching out and understanding “the facts” is still paramount in most cases.

Photos of my team teachers from an old school album

In high school I was introduced to history by a couple of teachers who were pioneering a new kind of history-teaching, J. H. Allsopp and H. R. Cowie, authors of the two-volume text Challenge and Response. Students were immersed in a questioning-and-research approach to each historical period, beginning with the French Revolution. The springboard question was derived from the famous historian Arnold Toynbee’s thesis that historical change follows a “law” of civilizations responding to specific challenges. As students we were challenged by a positivist thesis (not that we knew anything about the term ‘positivism’ in those high school years) and taught to question. That was anything but a dry fact-based study of history. When we came to studying Marxism we were introduced to another positivist form of history, a grossly simplified form of Hegel’s theory that a thesis produces an antithesis and out of the ensuing clash of these opposites emerges a synthesis . . . . which in turn becomes a new thesis, and so on. (Hence the theory that the owners of production produce a working class and the resulting clash leads to a classless society.) Especially since the later 1960s historical studies in universities have moved away from the idea that through history historians can discover laws of human behaviour. Historical positivism is “past history” now.

The point is this: Ranke’s fundamental principle is that the facts must first and foremost be determined by sources known to be from the actual time and place of the events being investigated:

But from what sources could this be newly investigated? The foundations of the present writing, the origins of its subject matter, are memoirs, diaries, letters, reports from embassies, and original narratives of eyewitnesses. Other writings were considered only when they seemed either to have been immediately deduced from the former or to equal them through some kind of original information.

Ranke, Leopold von. The Theory and Practice of History. New York, N.Y: Irvington Publishers, 1983. p. 86

That principle is still the foundation of most historical research today. (I am bypassing here discussions relating to postmodernist theories about knowledge and adhering to the same general principles as are applicable in common everyday discourse and courts of law with respect to the value we ascribe to testimonies of various kinds — hearsay, recorded, witnessed, etc.)

Back to the Question: Evidence for Pre-Constantinian Christianity

One proponent of the view that Christianity as we understand the term was a fourth century invention has proposed that historical evidence can be divided into two types:

  1. Primary evidence — which means archaeological evidence, or “real knowledge” from the time in question;
  2. Secondary evidence — which survives only in manuscripts physically dated long after Constantine’s time and is therefore “hypothetical” knowledge”.

Here is where I believe we are getting confused with terminology.

To begin with, notice that in the preceding section we saw that evidence is divided into two kinds:

  1. that which can be dated without problems to the time or event under investigatio
  2. that which is dated after that event.

It is not true that the ONLY kind of evidence that can be dated “without problems to the time or event under investigation” is archaeological evidence. As we saw above, some manuscripts dated long after the time of Alexander the Great or Plato contain information that can be dated “without problems” to the times of Alexander the Great and Plato. Our manuscript evidence is testimony to multiple efforts to copy those texts through the ages.

To contradict this point and argue that the texts were invented in late antiquity or the early middle ages is to meet the “conspiracy theory” fallacy.

Yes, it is theoretically possible that all witnesses, and all knowing associates of such witnesses, who were in any way involved in a cover-up or falsification of the historical record, such as (let’s say) the moon landing, conspired to maintain the public fiction. But life experience leads me to think that such a coherently successful accomplishment among diverse witnesses (or “non-witnesses”) is unlikely. Unless evidence can be produced that suggests that such a widespread agreement across time to falsify the historical record, or data/sources upon which the historical account is produced can be shown to have been fraudulently manipulated, then I think it is reasonable to believe in the existence of Plato as an author of dialogs and in the conquering actions of Alexander the Great.

So where does that leave the evidence for the existence of pre-fourth century Christianity?

Let’s take the Gospel of Mark. We first discover an explicit reference to this work in the writings of Irenaeus, a late second century “church father”. Those who propose a post Constantine origin for this gospel also propose a post Constantine date for the writings attributed to Irenaeus. If we were to accept such an argument we would need to be mindful of all the writings of Irenaeus and imagine a situation where they would be manufactured for nefarious purposes to belong to a time much earlier than that in which they were really written. When one looks at the totality of those writings one would surely conclude that an awful lot of effort was spent on producing such a fraud. But let’s keep it simple and confine ourselves to the Gospel of Mark.

A literary analysis of the Gospel of Mark indicates that it fits well with the first and second Jewish wars (66-70 and 135 CE). Its “little apocalypse” chapter has been dated to either war. Its theological outlook is inconsistent with the Christology of later periods. The same gospel denigrates Peter and the twelve disciples as faithless failures; it presents a Jesus who appears to have become a “son of God” at the moment of his baptism. It is unlikely in the extreme that a fourth century forger who believed in the exaltation of the Twelve Apostles and the pre-existence and inherent divinity of Christ would have written such a gospel. Other gospels followed that evidently sought to “correct” Mark’s flaws.

I think it is safe to conclude that the widely varying presentations of Jesus and the apostles (including Paul) would not have been produced by a single-minded program to make Christianity appear older (back into the second or first centuries) than it actually was. Is it really likely that such a program produced gospels that contradicted the later orthodox christology and the revered place of the apostles and then followed up by composing other gospels that found different ways to correct those evidently earlier efforts?

Dating ancient texts

Now it is certainly not valid to assume that a historical narrative that we read in a text is “true”. We all know the difference between historical fiction and real history and we look for signs that enable us to distinguish the two.

However, to continue with our Gospel of Mark example, we find in this gospel prominent allusions to false christs, crucifixion, destruction of the temple, and so forth — all of which can be found to match the events of the Jewish war from the late first century and right through the time of Trajan and Jewish messianic rebellions and on to the events of the final rebellion under Bar Kochba in the 130s CE. One may well imagine a later author fabricating a text to appear as if it were written in that period, but how could one imagine the same author presenting a view of both Jesus and the apostles that was contradicted by the established church of a much later time?

In this case we find the evidence strongest for a time and place that did not highly esteem the apostles and did not place a strong emphasis on the pre-existent “sonship” of Jesus or the importance of his resurrection appearances. (The latter are absent in the Gospel of Mark.)

The Gospel of Mark is evidently a product of pre-fourth century conditions when Jesus could be made a son of God at his baptism and when the disciples could be depicted as failures. It now belongs to the orthodox canon but it is made safe for orthodoxy by being placed alongside other gospels that “corrected” Mark’s apparent failings.

Real versus Theoretical Knowledge?

I have heard it said that archaeology is “real” evidence and later texts are “theoretical” evidence — implying that evidence derived from stones is superior to that derived from texts found on much later surviving manuscripts.

This is a false dichotomy.

Mesha stele (Wikimedia)

A stone inscription speaking of a person’s exploits tells me nothing unless I first interpret it. Is the person described really a historical person or are they a false image of someone else pretending to be greater than they in fact were? Are the inscribed exploits true or a lie or something in between? Is the inscription a fictional propaganda employing contemporary literary tropes? Note how even a stone inscription must be first “interpreted” before it can be understood:

As with the Hammurapi, Sargon and Idrimi monuments, it is more than style and form that establish the Active qualities of Mesha’s inscription. Literary metaphor also lies behind the use of the name Omri itself. Omri ‘dwelling in Moab’ is not a person doing anything in Transjordan, but an eponym, a literary personification of Israel’s political power and presence. It is clear that the reference to Omri in the Mesha stele is literary, not historical.

Thompson, Thomas L. The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. New York: Basic Books, 1999. p. 13

You may disagree with Thompson’s interpretation but whatever your view you will need to justify your alternative reading – as Thompson does his. Either way, it should be clear that a stone inscription does not automatically give us “pure historical fact”: stone inscriptions need to be interpreted as much as does the text of a manuscript. We cannot say that the former source gives us “real” knowledge while the latter gives us “theoretical” knowledge. Both kinds of data need to be tested for provenance and original meaning.

The information gleaned from a stone inscription is just as much a product of interpretation as is the information we glean from a late surviving manuscript.

Both must be subject to analysis and interpretation before we think we know what they have to tell us.

It is a fallacy to say that we have no “real” knowledge about Christianity prior to the fourth century because we have no pre-fourth century archaeological evidence for Christianity while all our text-based knowledge is “only theoretical”.

What we have, most fundamentally, is raw data. Raw data must be interpreted. It tells us nothing apart from our interpretation of it. Raw data can come from stone monuments and manuscripts alike, whatever their date. (I could cover all of this argument in many pages of text but am hoping for now that the above context makes my point clear.)

Conclusion

In fact I believe we do have archaeological evidence for Christianity before Constantine but in this post I am addressing the claim that manuscript evidence is somehow less “real” than archaeological evidence.

My argument is that all “historical knowledge” is at some level “theoretical” but that fact does not make it any less “real” or “valid” at the same time. I could argue on philosophical and epistemological grounds that newspaper reports and diaries from relevant persons in the last century do not “prove” that Australian aborigines were displaced wholesale, but that would not change the reality of the interpreted evidence from a layman’s — or courtroom juror’s — perspective.

The claim that all of our evidence for Christianity physically post dates the time of Constantine and was actually the creation of scribes from that era and later falls for the same reason other conspiracy theories fall. Yes, of course Christian scribes were “biased” and yes, we do have some evidence that they doctored manuscripts. At the same time, we also have evidence that they preserved and copied texts that were not doctrinally consistent with fourth century orthodoxy. They found ways to preserve “unorthodox” writings without denying their own faith.

Archaeological evidence, when tested, can be securely dated to a particular time in question but the “truth” or otherwise of its inscriptions is just as “real” as are the “truths or otherwise” of text written in ink on manuscripts. All data needs to be tested for authenticity, provenance, context and interpreted. The absence of archaeological evidence from the fifth century BCE testifying to the existence a dialog-writing Plato does not mean our knowledge of Plato is “theoretical” as distinct from “real”, and the same applies to the existence of gospels, epistles and other Christian literature prior to the time of Constantine.