Pausing here, as I don’t see an issue with Jesus saying that Moses wrote about him, even if he didn’t exactly write about the promises of the New Covenant. Yet it isn’t absolute conjecture to suppose Moses wrote stuff that makes up portions of the Pentateuch. It need not be an all or nothing conclusion.
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@Vinnie, it would be good if you could give some feedback on the thread that I linked to about determining the authorship of the Epistles. You’re clearly quite knowledgeable about Biblical scholarship, and some of what you have to say is quite helpful, but you’re mixing it up with a lot of rhetoric that is rather off-putting. In that thread, I and others raised some specific concerns about the methods used by modern critical Bible scholarship – in particular, it was pointed out that if you applied those same methods to modern texts whose authorship is beyond reasonable doubt (e.g. CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Roald Dahl) they would lead to demonstrably incorrect conclusions. These specific concerns require specific responses, and to attack them with insults about them being “theological fabric softener” or “questionable … methodology of conservative exegetes … through mental gymnastics” or “misrepresent[ing] critical scholarship and dismiss[ing] caricatures” while describing the whole Bible with sweeping statements about it being “religious propaganda,” just comes across as shouting. But if you can point out specific facts that they aren’t getting straight, or specific fallacies that are involved, on those specific questions, that would be much more constructive.
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I don’t see much to respond to. The genre of Paul’s letters is not fiction and they all fall in the same general category though a few may be addressed to individuals rather than communities. The communities are different and thus some language difference is naturally expected.
I think you have to show how the methodology used by the scholars studying the vocabulary of Paul is incorrect or useless. Remember, Paul wrote personal letters in Greek 2,000 years ago. A vocabulary study on modern works of a different language and of a different genre is absurd in and of itself to compare to this. If you write fiction you may vary your writing style to fit the world or universe you are building. I would not write a textbook on physics the same way I write a fantasy story. Nor would a personal letter match either of those. A fantasy epic would not have the same vocabulary as a futuristic science fiction novel. Nor would an email to a student or a response on Biologis be similar. I cannot respond to your “the methodology shows CS Lewis didn’t write this” claim because I don’t know that it is valid. Lay out the methodology and show how it actually compares to what scholars claim about the Pauline epistles. This requires you to actually read the many scholarly vocabulary studies done on Paul. It requires you to understand them and then show how applying that same methodology to works written by CS Lewis is applicable. What might be better is applying it to all of the chronicles of Narnia. They are the same genre and written half a decade or so apart (I think). So if some methodology could be applied to both Paul and them equally and fairly, and it showed CS Lewis didn’t write them all then we could question it. But as of my understanding, the vocabulary difference are significant and raise significant doubts about Pauline authorship.
Secondly, evangelical Christians eager to defend Pauline authorship of all 13 epistles frequently misunderstand Biblical scholarship its hard to dialogue with them. It is not approached from the perspective of inspiration. It is not approached from the perspective of just accepting church tradition that agrees with them. For example, @Christy wrote in that thread:
Early church tradition is just reasserting church tradition that agrees with us and claiming that we should take it at face value. But why? The church fathers got tons of things wrong about the books of the Bible. They thought Matthew was written in Hebrew and also that it was the first gospel written. Both are absolutely wrong. At best an early layer of Q (missionary discourse) may have been written by Matthew. But a much more extensive version of Q was used by Matthew in composing his gospel along with Mark. We know almost for certain Mark was written first. The church fathers got plenty of things about Christianity wrong in general. Didn’t Irenaeus think Jesus was close to 50? Not to mention, many of them were fiercely battling heresy (doctrine they disagreed with) and they are not just writing objective, encyclopedic pieces. They are engaged in polemic and trying to establish their Christianity as apostolic much in the same way many other groups did. The orthodox crew got the authorship of the Gospels wrong and Hebrews as well (didn’t it make it into the canon because they thought Paul wrote it?). Countless Christians used all sorts of books that today we know are spurious or did not make the canon in antiquity. We don’t blindly believe the communities who thought the their works went back to the apostles were correct. Just accepting some church tradition over other church tradition or the one that won is not impressing any critical scholar. Finally, how early is the actual church tradition claiming Paul wrote, say, the pastorals? Or the other three disputed works? Is it reliable? Are the pastorals in p46?
In that thread @Jay313 writes:
This is not engaging the evidence. That the original Paul may have used a scribe is not positive evidence he wrote any of the pastorals or any of the epistles in his name. This is fallacious reasoning. It is only positive evidence if we seek confirmation bias. What the evangelical scholar does is just try to establish plausible deniability so they can maintain their adherence to the church tradition that won. That is what Jay appears to be doing in that comment. If he can cast doubt on the arguments of scholars he feels the debate is won. This is not scholarship @jammycakes and it doesn’t warrant a critical response. Likewise Jay also wrote: “We really have no reason to doubt that traditional account.” From Eusebius hundreds of years later? This is just blindly accepting an account written 300 years after the fact. That is not at all how academic scholarship works.
So if you want to know why the vast majority of critical scholars, universities, and NT professors reject Pauline authorship of the pastorals, its because they interrogate the claims of ancient sources rather than parrot them. Its not okay to just claim all the ones that agree with us are true and naively reject the others.
When you engage in polemics against an idea without raising positive evidence for the claim you actually believe how can a discussion or learning happen? There are many dozens of falsely attributed works Christians used early on (gospels, infancy accounts, apocalypses, letters, etc) and dozens of incorrectly attributed Jewish writings that were extant when the New Testament was being written. Many of these works were popular for centuries and received wide dissemination. Not to mention spurious works outside of the Jewish-Christian realm were a thing as well. It was very much common at the time to write in someone else’s name. Paul even warns about it in a letter he may or may not have written (imagine the irony of someone writing in Paul’s name warning others to be wary of letters he didn’t write!). We know this happened in Pauls name and several other original apostles based on works outside the NT. Denying this very common process happened in the NT reeks of canonical bias in scholarly circles.
So when scholars read these letters claiming to be by Paul they start off neutral about their authorship. As it turns out there are seven that most think Paul wrote. As for the other six scholars put forward a cumulative argument:
- Vocabulary seems at odds with the 7 genuine epistles (all come within a decade and are generally similar in scope, 2) its hard (not impossible) to fit them into Paul’s life, 3) the theology seems quite different at times–and for some scholars its vastly different, 4) they seem to share an affinity with Christianity known to have come later than when Paul lived.
There are also some individual writings. For example, one letter looks like a later requiring of another and so on. But it is a common ploy of evangelicals to claim scholars are being circular by claiming the pastorals look like later Christianity but the argument is more nuanced. It would go like this:
The situation reflected in known late first century/early second century works appears dissimilar from the situation in the known Pauline seven. The disputed works match the later situation better. I for one don’t think women are treated the same in the undisputed Pauline epistles and the pastorals. I think their treatment is very very different.
Most scholars do not think we have proof ether. I saw Bart Ehrman say on the blog recently something along the lines of “scholars have shown Paul did not write 6 of the letters using his name” and he used very poor terminology here misrepresenting the case. Most scholars are strongly convinced the pastorals were not by Paul. The other three are more divided in scholarship today. But the balanced and sober critical scholars understand they are working with degrees of probability and it will vary from work to work. Even within the pastorals their certitude will change based on the book under question.
If all we want to do is cast doubt on a proposition by claiming “what ifs” we are not engaging in critical scholarship, we are doing defensive apologetics. If the goal is to render all history that disagrees with our faith “non liquet,” congratulations, this methodology works. But I wouldn’t expect any serious researchers in universities to worry about these concerns.
If you want to have a serious discussion on Pauline authorship I am game but you need to start by providing positive evidence Paul actually wrote the pastorals. Because you are talking about 2,000 year old works where pseudepigraphic composition was extremely common and Christian communities disagreed with one another on a lot of issues. That one or two Christians a hundreds years later thought Paul wrote this work or that is not a valid critical argument. That the Bible was inspired by God and the self-attestation must be true is not a valid critical argument. Critical scholars just don’t approach the issue from the same direction as many evangelical Christians who try to cast doubt on any claims they disagree with while offering “what if” harmonizing for beliefs they want to keep.
There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty in questions of dating and authorship for ancient works, 2,000 years ago, because the record is so incomplete. But in my experience, the evidence against Pauline authorship of the pastorals is definitely stronger than the evidence for it. None of the four mentioned offer proof or certitude but cumulatively they all suggest Paul did not write them. When you have to offer a bunch of explanations and conjectures for four different lines of evidence all suggesting Paul did not write these letters, it should make you stop and think which view is more plausible on the surface of it.Can you approach the question from this perspective?
Vinnie
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Hi Vinnie, great response! Can you recommend any critical scholars that see what you see and yet still believe the Gospel?
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I got lucky with my readings as I came across Raymond Brown early. His intro to NT is sober and he was absolutely sympathetic to Christian faith. I branched out from there. Joseph Fitzmyer, John Meier (he just passed away last month), Pheme Perkins, Luke Timothy Johnson, Jerome Murphy O Connor, Donald Senior, Adela Yarbro Collins and a number of faithful Catholics are pre-eminent Biblical scholars. You could add Ken Sparks and Pete Enns I suppose but I think they are OT scholars. I haven’t polled all the Catholics I mentioned on the pastorals but they are all genuine critical scholars who assess the evidence very well in my experience.
Honestly, Bart Ehrman’s Intro to the NT is very good. There is less polemic than some of his other works but the NT Intro I would recommend most to Christians is Raymond Brown’s. I would recommend the New Jerome Biblical commentary first and foremost to any Christian interested in Biblical studies. It’s the single greatest Biblical resource there is. I have physical copies of both the first and second edition. It is phenomenal in every way.
Vinnie
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Bart Ehrman is an agnostic, and I suspect a number of the Catholics on your list would have similar theological issues. You don’t have to be an “evangelical Christian” to believe God and to be convicted of your sin.
Confirmation bias goes both ways.
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Bart is a functional atheist to me regardless of how he self-identies. You can be agnostic about God in general but atheistic in regards to certain formulations of God.
I find the theological issues plaguing Catholicism to be serious for sure but less challenging than those faced by Protestantism, a new offshoot of Catholicism plagued by a much more alarming diversity of beliefs. Any warrior with a keyboard or exegete with a Bible can offer their own version of Christianity using sola scripture—let alone the ones who reject it. And let us not talk about the debacle that is reformed theology.
At any rate, I appreciate critical scholars (Protestant and Catholic) because I feel their approach to the Bible allows us to see it as it is. Most evangelicals are usually disconnected from historical reality to me. There is a new wave of them more open to Biblical criticism though. I encounter the American literalists most frequently, however.
And yes, confirmation bias can plague anyone. But when every one of your judgments on an issue are always one-sided, it’s quite clear you have it. I mean if you think the traditional attribution of every NT work is accurate and find every early date convincing and every tradition to be historical after evaluating the evidence, especially when critical scholars disagree on all of these, it’s your methodology that is the problem. AJ Levine said as much to Bock in a scholarly journal once.
Vinnie
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“It would be nice to see a theologian who appreciates the most basic and established findings of biblical criticism come up with a hermeneutic and methodology for justifying a view like “eternal subordination.””
The BioLogos Forum - A Conversation on Faith and Science
Just as I’d like to listen to a critical scholar who has had an Isaiah 6 experience and can say that they deserve to go to hell. Ironically not too many “evangelical Christians” really believe it either.
No kidding, I’d like to see that. Once, I got Bock to admit that Peter and Paul are both referring to the same time frame in their use of the last days.
Ken Gentry’s dating Revelation before Jerusalem fell?
It would be great to see an example of modern critical Biblical scholarship applied to Lewis’ non-fiction in particular. As a scientific control.
Thanks for the book list, Vinnie.
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That was more than 3 years ago, so I’m not going to go back and read the thread, and I reserve the right to have changed my opinion over the years. With those caveats …
Well, at least you said “appears to be doing” this time around. That’s progress. Haha.
The “positive evidence” is that the author identified himself as Paul in the letters, and no one from the earliest church tradition ever challenged that ID. So the onus is on those who disagree to provide a preponderance of “negative evidence” to the contrary. That’s not confirmation bias. It’s just how things work. Overcoming a long-standing consensus requires a good bit of evidence. It’s also totally normal to present counter-evidence. That’s not establishing plausible deniability. The truth is found in the back-and-forth, which is how a new scholastic consensus, if warranted, is formed.
The fact that Paul used a scribe is pertinent for a couple of reasons. First, we don’t really know how much freedom an amanuensis had. Were they recording dictation or flow of thought? Second, much of the non-Pauline diction most closely resembles Luke. Not enough to settle the question, but certainly worth taking into consideration.
You treat everything as polemics. I was simply having a discussion three years ago that I don’t care to revisit at the moment. As a matter of fact, I’m agnostic on the matter of the pastorals and several other NT letters, and I’m pretty certain Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch. haha. But seriously, I’m not interested enough in the subject to research it right now. Maybe one day I’ll get around to it.
The early church got a lot wrong about our gospels and NT works. While this can start an argument for authorship it’s not convincing in itself nor strong enough to overturn the arguments raised against Pauline authorship. Christian’s accepting a work in the middle or later second century as written by Paul ca 55CE still leaves 100 years unaccounted for. I’d be interested in seeing all the 2d century atteststion personally.
This is incorrect. Forgeries are a dime a dozen in antiquity. We don’t get to presume a text is accurate. Critical scholars interrogate texts and any positive claim requires justification. Forging letters in someone’s name was so popular it would be extremely naive to just trust any work. Historians and critical scholars don’t just assume texts are accurate or even well preserved. They embrace agnosticism until moved in some direction by the evidence.
Fair enough, but blame @jammycakes , he resurrected the issue 
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Some letters by Paul are unquestionably authentic. Somehow I doubt the justification between those and the more questionable ones is that drastic as it goes back 2000 years.
No, I’m not incorrect. Just coming from a different direction. I was thinking of how scholarly consensus in any field, including long-standing scientific consensus, is overturned. A paradigm shift doesn’t come easily. The same is true in biblical scholarship. When “critical scholars” first started writing, the onus was upon them to demonstrate their ideas were correct. That’s a long, slow process. Even the knowledge that forgeries are common in antiquity is a recent discovery.
For myself, I’m familiar with the scholarly conversation (conservative and critical) in the area of my particular interest (Genesis), and I’m aware of the consensus on authorship of various NT books, but I just don’t have the time or interest to investigate and come to my own conclusion. So, for now, I’m agnostic about authorship, but honestly it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not going to pull a Thomas Jefferson and cut out the parts I don’t like or the letters that aren’t authentically Pauline. I take a more canonical approach to the authority and interpretation of scripture, for the most part.
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And as Bonhoeffer said, the Bible is not just any other book.
Pauline forgeries or pseudepigraphic texts in the NT is the consensus now. So one might say the onus is on conservatives if we want to play burden of proof games. Personally, I would rather avoid them.
Agreed on the canonical approach but a “forgery” in the Bible is troubling for most views of inspiration and probably most Christians. I’m not going to lose faith over it but it certainly is going to warrant theological fabric softener. It may even raise questions of canonization for some. I think the best approach is Ken Sparks in viewing the Bible as part of the sinful process of humans.
This issue also raises major hermeneutical questions because the case for authorship is built on some of the pseudepigraphic Pauline literature being at odds with the authentic Pauline literature. I mean I find “real Paul” more women-friendly than “not Paul.” This is an issue warranting careful theological treatment.
And this is my biggest gripe against those arguing for full Pauline authorship of all 13 epistles. So much energy and effort wasted defending an incorrect view when such minds could be devoting themselves to the much more important hermeneutical issues raised by something so very basic and accepted in critical scholarship today.
Vinnie
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I would say God speaks to us through the Bible. I’m becoming more fond of a top-down causality here. We certainly have a role to play in the process but when God is not speaking to us through scripture it’s hard not to think the Bible is just another human work.
Vinnie
Theological fabric softener. haha. Yes to all of that. I tend to agree more with Enns’ approach to inspiration and incarnation, but now we’re getting into the weeds.
Just as an aside, James Edwards (Markan sandwiches) also wrote a Pillar commentary on Luke where he defends the idea of a previous “Hebrew gospel.” I don’t find it persuasive, but it’s interesting.