What scholar denies that vocabulary can be different? I already went through this. Many think the vocabulary is not just different, but strikingly different to the point that, it speaks against Pauline authorship. They think that a different author explains the evidence better. Not that it is a smoking gun or proven. Since you and conservatives seem to enjoy jumping on Bart Ehrman, I’lll use him [emphasis mine]:
“Of course the argument from vocabulary can never be decisive in itself. Everybody uses different words on different occasions, and the Christian vocabulary of himself must have developed over time. The magnitude of these differences must give us pause, however, particularly since they coincide with other features of the letters that suggest they were written after Paul passed off the scene.”
Once again, I reiterate a point you have yet to respond to (among many), a divide and conquer technique won’t work here. There is a significant number of things all lining up in favor of pseudonymous composition. I quoted Campenhausen to this effect. It’s the convergence of multiple lines of evidence that create stronger scholarly belief against Pauline authorship.
Key point to remember: You have not discovered something new and blatant that you think all the competent and sober exegetes, who have spent their lives reading new languages, reading, and in some cases translating, countless texts from antiquity have missed. They spend their careers reading and discussing issues in peer-reviewed Journals. You have not suddenly found out, much to the oversight of ~80% of critical scholars who deny Pauline authorship, that writing style can vary from work to work. You need to put that to rest.
Scholars do not just think that because the writing style is different, Paul could not have written it. They think the actual differences are so numerous and significant that it warrants a great deal of skepticism.
As for your scholars who uses Paul’s lack of reference to the cross, instead of poisoning the well, you could state the scholar’s name, present the scholar’s arguments and we could evaluate that scholar’s reasoning on why they think that is a significant omissions, of it is just part of a larger package. What these scholars would presumably argue is that the words are absent where they tend to expect them. The NJBC writes:
"Numerous key theological terms used in the Pastoral do not appear in Paul (e.g. “piety,” “good conscience,” “epiphany,” “sound teaching,” “trustrworthy word”), and many words important in Paul’s writings are not found in the Pastoral even when they would be expected (e.g., “body” [of Christ, etc.], “cross,” “freedom,” “covenant”). The collective absence of these latter terms is striking." p. 892
For me, I would how many times are they used in each case in each Pauline work? And how many examples are there like this besides the few often referenced? Scholarship is about establishing trends and leading to judgments of what is more probable, not concocting logical proofs and indubitable certainty. That has no place here.
Does the fact that Phil 4:8 seems to outline “a set of distinctively Gr (stoic) virtues” [NJBC] lead scholars to think that doesn’t counter the idea that Paul seems to use the words differently in the Pastorals? For 1 These 2:10 it seems we have three virtual synonyms that signify an oratorical style. I haven’t looked at all the examples to be honest I don’t care too as this is sushi a minor point. But either way you have not shown how your two examples are analogous or suggest what you want them to do. To do that you need to dig deeper and actually dialogue with scholarship on the issue, as opposed to summary statements.
I have read countless competent and sober exegetes who suggest vocabulary seems to carry a different meaning in the pastorals. Do you think they aren’t aware of the two genuine Pauline passages you quoted? It is possible they all get it wrong. It is also possible you are misrepresenting things for the umpteenth time.
Again, the key point: You, in your great wisdom and scholarly erudition, with your clearly advanced ability to search the New Testament digitally, have not discovered some new and extremely simple and obvious fact that 80% of critical scholars the world over have missed.
Mark Powell lays out the most common arguments:
*Paul uses the word righteousness to mean“being in a right relationship with God” (Rom. 5:17; 10:3–4; Gal. 3:21); in the Pastoral Letters it means “being a morally upright person” (1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 2:22; 3:16; Titus 1:8).
- – Paul uses the word faith to mean “trust in Jesus Christ” (Rom.1:16; 2Cor. 5:7; Gal. 2:20); in the Pastoral Letters it means “Christian doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:19; 3:9; 4:1; 2 Tim. 3:8; 4:7; Titus 1:13).
– Paul uses the word common to mean “unclean” (Rom.14:14); in the Pastoral Letters it means“shared”(Titus 1:4)."
I don’t think your proof-text hunting is good enough to dismiss this, even though they are not conclusive of anything in and of themselves.
Maybe this quote will help explain the issue to you better than Perrin’s: The NJBC writes:
"Overall, whereas Paul ordinarily favored a passionate and explosive style sprinkled with interjected thoughts and unfinished sentences, the Pastoral are much more formal and subdued. They depict Paul explaining basic matters in rather sharp language to longtime colleagues whom he has just left (1 Tim 1:3; Titus 1:5) and whom he shortly will see again (1 Tim 3:14; Titus 3:12), a phenomenon that can be only called odd if in fat Paul himself were the author."
Like I mentioned before, I have no issue using Ehrman (NT Intro pg 390):
“Paul’s churches were “charismatic” communities, that is, congregations of people who believed that they had been endowed with God’s Spirit and so been given “gifts” . . . to enable them to minister to one another as teachers, prophets, evangelists, healers, almsgivers, tongues-speakers, tongue-interpreters, and so on. There was nobody ultimately in charge, except the apostle (who wasn’t on the scene), because everyone had received an equal endowment o the Spirit, and so no one could lord it over anyone else. At least that is how Paul thought the church ought to be (1 Corinthians 12-14).”
Bart goes on to ask, what happens when disagreements happen? It may not have been a big concern to Paul initially since the end was nigh, but the end result is a bit of chaos.
"The developments within the Pauline communities appear to have been taken place in response to this chaos. With the passing of time, Paul’s churches developed a kind of hierarchy of authority in which church leaders emerged and began to take control of the congregations. To a limited extent, this development began in the later years of Paul’s ministry: in the letter to the Philippians, for example, he mentions “overseers and deacons” as among his recipients (1:1). But Paul assigns no special role to those persons nor does he assume that they can deal directly with the issues that he addresses."
Oh EM GEE, you keep ranting about scholars either being deceptive about this passage or unaware of it but they know of it and treat it appropriately. Sparks is 100% correct. Conservatives cannot fairly assess critical scholarship. You yourself are unequivocal proof of this but I digress. Bart continues:
“Some fifty years or so after Paul had died, however, these offices had developed considerably tin port-orthodox circles. Each Christian locality had a clear cut leader called a “bishop” (the Greek works is episkopos, literally meaning “overseer,” as in Phil 1:1), under whom served “presbyters” (Greek for “elders”), who appear to have tended to the spiritual needs of the communities, and “deacons” (Greek for “ministers”), who may have focused on their material needs. In the early second-century writings of Ignatius, for example, we find churches i nAsia Minor with a solitary bishop in charge and a board of presbyters and deacons under him . . .” pg 390 NT INTRO
Maybe now that you actually understand what he argues, maybe you can retract your character assaulting statement that Bart is either really stupid or being deceptive on this issue. WWJD?
Finally, how do the pastorals fit into this:
“With the passing of time, then, a church hierarchy developed out of the loosely organized, charismatic churches established by Paul and presumably by other missionaries like him. Where di the Pastoral epistles stand in this line of development? In these letters “Paul” writes to his officially designated representatives, ordained by the laying on of hands, instructing them to appoint bishops and deacons who are suitable for the governance of the church and to pass along to them the true teaching that the apostles himself has provided. The clerical structure of these letters appears far removed from what we find in Paul, but it is closely aligned with what we find in port-orthodoc authors of the second century.” pg 391.
No many scholars disagree with human on the 2nd century part here. Many think the pastorals were written by Pauline disciples, in Pauline communities facing struggles and bridge the gap between the charismatic church of Paul and the structured the more structured one ca. 1110CE. Of course, linear development in all churches cannot be assumed.
According to competent scholars it doesn’t. You need to show how your crude analogies to your own writings actually apply to scholarly arguments. For example, the NJBC writes:
“Most important to note is the divergence between Paul and the Pastorals in the usage of various commonplace and recurrent Gk adverbs, conjunctions, and particles, for such linguistic features are less subject to conscious control. For example, the manner in which the Pastorals use kai, “and,” differs considerably from Paul’s typical usage.”
You seem to think scholars are stupid or the vast majority of them have been convicted by simple nonsense that you could punch holes in with five minutes of thought. Get off your pedestal. Come back down to earth with the rest of us mortals.
Now it gets interesting. You want to argue that the Pastorals are so wildly different from Paul’s genuine corpus because these were private correspondences to friends. Now you want to assert that these three private correspondences were circulated widely enough to influence early second century Christian though. Sorry, you will have to offer another conjecture for this one. There is no doubt that Christians in the second century were influenced by apostolic thought, but you are missing the point. The outlook of the Pastorals is similar to those in the second century on many points and dissimilar to Paul in others. In fact, many scholars date it to ca. 80s and think it bridges a gap. Others think some of them many have come late enough to be responses to Gnosticism. Its hard to tell when you only have access to one side of a phone call.
Vinnie