(One additional little peeve of mine that is related to this discussion, if you will indulge me, is how often “errors” are attributed to Biblical authors because they aren’t following modern standards of precision, or of attribution of quotes, or the slang/figures of speech they use. It may be my own prejudice, and anecdotal on my part, but my perception is that this consideration we’re discussing - that we should recognize the different cultural standards of the time for what constitutes a falsehood - typically works only in one direction… in favor of the critical narrative.
But Biblical authors are chided for committing “falsehoods” or “errors” for speaking of the sun moving in the sky, inaccurate estimations of the value of pi, of attributing quotes of two different prophets only to the more significant of the two, lack of complete uniformity of details in resurrection narratives, discrepancies about geographical locations, etc. and in these contexts i don’t recall ever hearing pleas for patience and humility coming from the critical side, suggesting that we withhold judgment based on our limited knowledge of their cultural norms, the unknown details, standards of precision/error, etc.
And i mention this not related to inerrancy, but simply as basic courtesy, even to those long dead… I submit that it is simply annoying and pedantic to accuse someone of an error for not achieving a modern standard of precision that was foreign to their entire culture.
But it seems that the only time i hear pleas for humility and deference before we judge the standards in antiquity is when doing so would further the critical narrative regarding false authorship.)
I completely agree with this, and it’s been challenging to reread the Bible in light of what modern evangelical scholarship does acknowledge about the how the OT was edited and composed. Sometimes, it really feels as if a commentator like Longman has to bend over backgrounds to read Daniel. Or how “Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron” is not an error.
Unless you take a YEC view that preflood civilization was highly advanced contrary to any archeological evidence, the iron age doesn’t register for several thousand years. Walton touched on this with Longman in The Lost World of the Flood. I couldn’t say anything more to it as it was a lot to take in at the time.
Or it might have been from Longman’s commentary on Genesis.
Critical scholars are not grinding a theological axe so when they see two accounts like the death of Judas in Matthew and Acts, or the Birth stories of Jesus (Matthew and Luke) or the four accounts of the death and resurrection of Jesus (Gospels) with many conflicting and hard to reconcile details that require tortured mental gymnastics, they just call a spade a spade.
Likewise, the 30+ doublets in the Pentatuech-- many with contradictory details – are very much errors as any person would use them in the common sense today. You moving goalposts and claiming ancient authors were okay writing falsehoods from today’s perspective does not negate the fact that these errors are in the Bible. I find it curious you won’t move the goalposts for pseudonymous composition but you will move them in 100 other places to escape the charge or errors.
There are so many errors in the Bible a famous apologists had to create an entire “encyclopedia” devoted to trying to resolve them all based on the a priori assumption that they can’t actually exist in scripture. The same presumption guides how conservatives scholars approach the question of Pauline authorship of the pastorals. There is a reason the issue is very much settled in most mainline universities but a small subset of evangelicals are holding out.
Historians and critical scholars don’t care about your religious beliefs about the Bible. They evaluate the texts the same way they do any other work. You are asking for bias, for them to treat the Bible with less skepticism than they do any other work. A good historian will vet any and every source they use and take very little for granted–and if they do they will admit that and attempt to justify their thinking.
You are just poisoning the well and obfuscating the issue. You are doing little more than complaining critical scholars don’t assume the Bible is inerrant like you. Your terminology testifies to this. They are – in your words-- “accusing” the Bible of errors. Or are they just sayin the text, like any other text of comparable size, has errors. In your mind its an accusation. To a critical scholar, it is just a statement of fact. But you want to make everything an assault on your faith or an attack on the Bible. Its all polemic to you.
That is why I have repeatedly pointed out this discussion is fruitless because evangelicals are mostly incapable of approaching critical issues from a fair and balanced position.
Agreed, with the caveat that a common way to tacitly have someone’s endorsement in Paul’s day was to be trained/discipled by them. When a teacher chose a pupil, it reflected their hope that their distinct voice would be passed on. As Paul put it, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”
Enough writings survive to show that many early Christians took Paul to heart, not just in their lives but in their words. Further, just as there’s no universal description of “what Jews believed” in the first century, there’s also variety in what was acceptable practice in writing. In this period writing was exploding into new segments of the populace as materials became cheaper and literacy commoner. This made sifting originals from echoes such a headache for the early church.
The trouble is that the fraud (or mistake) may be introduced later, once the writing has left its original context and changed in some ways. Texts get copied, their origins become foggy, the outside pages get torn or smeared, they take on new titles and endings, etc.
Is Hebrews a fraud because later scribes passed it off as Paul’s work by including it with his writings? What if they honestly thought it was Paul’s? I think we need a word less charged than “fraud” that allows some grace for the many people who were doing the best they could. At this distance I doubt we can often distinguish the true frauds from the mistaken attributions and the correct attributions.
Ah, Ok, tracking… but even so, this “error” only exists if one conflates the argument. If it doesn’t sound like I’m being hyper-critical, perhaps I might explain:
In order to ask whether a genuine, antedeluvian individual such as the named Tubel-cain had access to such tech, we have to kind of assume for the sake of the argument the YEC/inerrantist position, right? That is, that there was a man named tubel-cain who lived in the antedeluvian period…
But that is essnetially only a YEC/inerrantist position… e.g., if we take the overall position that Tubel-Cain is a mythical figure or a legend, then there simply isn’t any “error”; he was a mythical figure with legendary skills. it is as much an “error” as saying that Paul Bunyon story is erroneous because oxen don’t have blue fur. Myths or legends we don’t normally call “errrors.”
So to try to claim it as “erroneous” historically, we have to assume, for the sake of the argument, the historical reality of Tubel-Cain, based on the Bible’s account… but the one thing that we can’t do in such reasoned/logical discussions is assume part of an opponent’s position for the sake of the argument, and then claim it conflicts with some position that he doesn’t hold.
So, it is like talking to someone who believed in a literal, historical Paul Bunyon, and granting part of their beliefs for the sake of argument (There was a Paul Bunyon and Giant Ox)… but claiming their position was erroneous because Giant 100-foot tall Oxen don’t have the genetics to grow blue skin/fur… It is perfectly appropriate to assume an opponent’s position for the sake of argument, and then analyze it for the sake of internal consistency… It is fallacious to grant half of an opponent’s argument for the sake of the discussion, and then claim that the half you’ve granted conflicts with something external to his position - with something he doesn’t believe.
The worst real-life example I regularly run into is the utterly ridiculous critique of Joshua 10 on the basis that, if God really had instantaneously stopped the rotation of the earth in order to stop the sun in the sky, inertia would have caused planet-sized tsunami and all the people and things on the earth would have gone flying or been squashed.
I’m not making this up…
Imagine that there was some FORCE that stopped the Earth from spinning. Think of a the inertia involved there. Think of the momentum that exists with the Earth’s spin. Think of the inertia that is involved in stopping a MOUNTAIN from moving. This is an extremely big deal. Think of the effect on the OCEANS that would happen if the motion of the Earth stopped. What kind of waves would that create? … But let’s pretend that there is some magic “glue” that holds every water molecule and spec of dust in place when the Earth stops spinning. This wouldn’t solve the all the problems…
You see, when you change the speed of things that are moving, things happen to the things THAT WERE MOVING. This is especially true for LIVING THINGS…If you stop the Earth from spinning, you also run into a different problem, which is the change in G-Force. This happens both in acceleration and deceleration. If the Earth stopped spinning, this would be MASSIVE deceleration. …Do we see anything like that in Joshua 10? Nope.
Right. Because a God who is supreme, omniscient, and omnipotent enough to instantaneously and miraculously stop the inertia of the entire globe, would have simultaneously been incapable (or have forgotten?) to also do the same with everything and everyone on it?
There aren’t enough terms of derision in English to describe the base, vacuous, risible nature of this argument. Ludicrious times ridiculous raised to the power of absurd.
But more analytically, what this, person, has done is to grant half of the believer’s position for the sake of the discussion (a God exists who actually had the supreme knowledge and power capable of stopping the rotation of the earth), and then claiming this conflicted with things that we believers would never affirm (i.e., that this same God would be unable to, or have lacked the foresight to, simultaneously stop the inertia of everything on the earth).
In deepest respect to you, however, I fear you’ve essentially done the same thing in regard to Tubel-Cain, though this is far more subtle and easy to miss. I fear you’ve granted half the YEC position for the sake of argument (There was an historical, literal, real antedeluvian individual named Tubel Cain, since Scripture affirms that), but suggested it conflicted with something that the YEC position would not affirm (A literal, historical person that lived some ~1000 years after the very recent creation of the earth wouldnt have, contrary to Scripture been unable to access said technology).
Not to harp on you for that particular item, I hope this didnt come across as antagonisitc - and I could personally care less in this discussion about Tubel-Cain’s claimed bronze working or ironmongery. But it is just a plea for clear reasoning in general, as this particular misstep in such logical or reasoned discussion is often missed.
For what it is worth, this is appreciated and readily acknowledged, but I can’t help but think it a bit of a red herring, since we were discussing 2timothy in this context; I’m not quite sure the relevance of bringing up an anonymous letter as if there is a valid comparison there.
Now I can’t speak for James @jammycakes, but I’m guessing he would similarly have as little concern or objection to the issue with Hebrews as I do. I happily grant that I wouldn’t use the word “fraud” (or forgery, since how could an anonymous letter be accused of being a forgery?) for such a case as you describe could have hypothetically been the case IRT Hebrews.
But again, that is not our objection, so far as I understand James’s concerns as well - For myself, I can say I am concerned about those texts wherein the author has explicitly, firmly claimed that this was Paul’s own hand, and/or included incidental historical details and references for the sole purpose of (falsely and deceptively) making the letter really sound like it was a historical letter from Paul. The end of 2Thesalonnians is perhaps the best example, but plenty of similar examples in the pastorals, like what Ehrman pointed out: Paul asking Timothy to bring his jacket, and the books and especially certain scrolls that he left at so-and-so’s house.
This is either something that Paul wrote because Paul actually wanted that jacket and those books, or someone wrote this utterly fake and bogus request intentionally to deceive the hearers by making the letter look like it was really from Paul when it wasn’t… I’m still not aware of these other options you mention as regards these kinds of details.
But to focus the discussion… rather than discussing non-controversial examples like anonymous letters wherein I have little if any disagreement… may I suggest we take one of the most explicit statements that raises the main dilemma that I (and I believe James?) have raised:
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine; it is the way I write."
I would like to understand what these additional “options” are, beyond the only two I’m seeing, that A) this was written by Paul, or B) this was written by someone else intending to fraudulently deceive the readers into believing this was from Paul.
And seriously, I’m open to understanding other options… I even looked up to see if perhaps there was textual evidence that this entire claim had perhaps innocently or erroneously been copied onto an early manuscript of 2Thes or something like that; no evidence of such I could find.
So I am honestly open to learning - what are these other options you are mentioning, that don’t entail intentional deception, that could explain such a firm, absolute claim that this came from Paul’s own hand, if it actually didn’t come from Paul’s own hand?
It is hard to keep track of how many ad hominem attacks you were able to squeeze into this response, and how many separate false strawmen.
Repeatedly throughout this conversation, I have attempted to carefully limit my discussions to the data, and when I have made accusations about critical scholars’ adherence to a narrative, I have endeavored to demonstrate this, rather than asserting it. If I have failed to do so fairly, I am open to correction on a case-by-case basis. but lobbing so many ad hominems is indeed fruitless.
And you have consistently and completely misrepresented my position, despite numerous attempts at clarification. I began the original post in this thread by quite carefully and explicitly stating that I do not take issue with the pseudopigrapha hypotheis in general, or in many, many particular instances throughout the Bible. I have clarified that repeatedly. yet you conitnue to falsely represent my postion. Once again, I do not take issue with pseudopigraphal texts at core, and as I have explained repeatedly I have no core objection to that hypothesis as regards Pentateuch, Proverbs of Solomon, Psalms of David, various of the Prophets, and various other NT letters. Yet you have continued to misrepresent my position - you, who are so quick to claim others are committing a straw man fallacy.
I feel I have been exemplary in my patience, but I have come to a limit. I generally love such discussions on such topics even with those who disagree, as it often teaches me and shows my blind spots and sharpens my own understand, as I hope I can do to others as well.
But I will simply no longer bother reading these torrents of baseless ad hominem attacks based on culpable and radical misrepresentations of my own repeatedly and clearly stated positions.
If you wish to discuss the specific merits for or against any particular claims of pseudopigraphy, I am happy to do so and will happily continue to discuss the objective claims of the various cases. But if I am subjected to any further ad hominem attacks or complete misrepresentations of my own positions, the conversation will cease.
If you’d like to continue the conversation, I suggest we return to the beginning. You offered an engaging and instructive defense of my first of 5 critiques of Ehrman - i.e., his (apparent) gloss over the Elders and Deacons in Philippians. His fuller argument I found terribly unconvincing (and appeared to me to be grasping at straws), but I sincerely appreciated the discussion of the actual data and was educated in the process regarding his fuller treatment.
So if you’d like to continue the engaging conversation without the ad hominems or straw men, I suggest you may respond/defend Ehrman’s position on one of the other items wherein I suggested he was extremely and irresponsibly erroneous in his analysis…
2. The real Paul understood a person to be saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus, in contrast to Pastorals (saved by childbirth).
Think about the basic issue of how a person is “saved.” For [undisputed] Paul himself, only through the death and resurrection of Jesus can a person be saved. And for the Pastorals? For women, at least, we’re told in 1 Timothy 2 that they will “be saved” by bearing children. It is hard to know what that means, exactly, but it certainly doesn’t mean what Paul meant."
Again, I find this atrocious… he is either inexcusably ignorant or culpably ignoring clear and obvious counterexamples that should be obvious to any New Testament Scholar. Has he never read I Timothy carefully enough to notice that the author thereof affirms “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all”; or read in Titus about the “…Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to redeem us…”?
edit: I could also add the following:
“God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our woks but because of his own purpose and grace…”
“He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the holy Spirit… so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
These quotes from the Pastorals sound very much like undisputed Paul in terms of explaining how someone is “saved.” Again, for Ehrman to take one single obscure and rather unclear use of the verb “saved”, and use that for his argument for how different it sounds from undisputed Paul, while ignoring numerous other examples that do sound very much like undisputed Paul, is such an egregious misrepresentation. This comes across to me as either intentional craftiness or blind ignorance. Either I find inexcusible.
3. Ehrman claims there is a hard distinction between uses of the word “faith”, meaning trust or relationship in the “authentic” epsitles but meaning a body of doctrine in the pastorals:
In books such as Romans and Galatians faith refers to the trust a person has in Christ to bring about salvation through his death. In other words, the term describes a relationship with another; faith is trust “in” Christ. The author of the Pastorals also uses the term “faith.” But here it is not about a relationship with Christ; faith now means the body of teaching that makes up the Christian religion. That is “the faith” (see Titus 1:13). Same word, different meaning."
This is simply false and should have been easy for a New Testament scholar to notice: Ehrman doesn’t seem to have read Galatians carefully enough to notice where Paul was “preaching the faith” he once tried to destroy", or similar examples in authentic letters (“Stand firm in the faith,” “striving side by side for the faith of the gospel”, etc). Nor, apparently, has he read the Pastorals carefully enough to notice discussion of Timothy’s “sincere faith”, “faith and love that are in Christ Jesus”, being wise “for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus”, etc.
4. Extremely oddly, Ehrman claims that the real Paul viewed himself as blameless, but unathentic Paul as acknowledging his sinfulness??
The main reason for thinking that Paul didn’t write Ephesians is that what the author says in places does not jibe with what Paul himself says in his own letters. Ephesians 2:1-10, for example, certainly looks like Paul’s writing, but just on the surface… But here, oddly, Paul include himself as someone who, before coming to Christ, was carried away by the “passions of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and senses.” this doesn’t sound like the Paul of the undisputed letters who says that he had been “blameless” with respect to the “righteousness of the law” (Phil 3:4)
Yes, that does sound like Paul of the undisputed letters who wrote in Romans that “While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” Again, Ehrman’s ignornace of such counter-examples I find inexcusable for someone claiming to be an expert on this topic.
5. He falsely claims that the verb “saved” in authentic Paul always references the future.
As it turns out, the verb ‘saved’ in Paul’s authentic letters is always used to refer to the future. Salvation is not something people already have, it’s what they will have when Jesus returns on the clouds of heaven and delivers his followers from the wrath of God.
Again, this is absurdly and demonstrably false and I think an inexcusable error. It isn’t difficult for a New Testament scholar to verify his own absolute claims to make sure they are true, especially given such numerous counterexamples; this is utter sloppiness or laziness or the like. Obvious counterexamples include
Rom8.24 “In this hope we were saved” (past/aorist)
1Cor1.18 “to us who are being saved” (present)
1Cor1.21 “to save those who believe” (past/aorist infinitive)
1Cor9.22 “I might save some” (past/aorist subjunctive)
1Cor15.2 “By this gospel you are saved” (present)
2Cor2.15 “those who are being saved” (present)
1Thes2.16 “they may be saved” (past/aorist subjunctive)
Many of Ehrman’s arguments will remain convincing only if his claims aren’t fact-checked. But perhaps the most egregious issue I take with claims about authorship (Ehrman’s and others’) is this: For all the erudite sounding arguments about differences in style between Authentic Paul and the Pastorals, it is also painfully obvious to even the most casual observer that anyone and everyone will write differently when writing to a broad, lay audience and when writing an personal individual letter to a professional colleague. Now, it would be one thing if this observation (regularly raised by conservative and evangelical scholars) was engaged, addressed, and systematically refuted by those disputing Pauline authorship. But in all my study, this observation has never even been noticed by critical scholars. Never raised, never addressed. When this most obvious of factors is so regularly or systematically ignored, this begins to look not like a pursuit of objective reality but adherence to a favored narrative and pusuit of a foregone conclusion.
Your entire approach, language and dismissive and mocking tone towards critical scholars is entirely steeped in this direction. You have inferred or directly stated they make idiotic claims over and over again. Then you have the nerve/audacity to, with what must be sheer pretense–humbly ask that they show humility and extend some benefit of the doubt to the Bible which you deem inerrant, instead of treating it like every other text. The irony is off the charts here. Where is your humility or graciousness, or benefit of the doubt when discussing the views of critical scholars which you caricature in your dissections of short summary paragraph of their views as opposed to dialoguing with their actual arguments? These people in universities that have pads, post in peer reviewed journals and spend their lives studying the NT and its world for a living.
I have shown several times how your views misrepresent some of their arguments and how you are not dialoguing with them fairly (Ehrman, Perrin, etc). You are getting fire because that is what you are offering, whether you know it or not. The measure you give is the measure you receive.
We all make mistakes. Virtually any compendium of works like the Bible will have mistake in it unless a supernatural entity saw fit to see otherwise. When a historian or critical scholar analyzes individual books of the Bible and finds there to be errors they are not “accusing” or attacking the Bible. They are just pointing out a statement of fact. They are just doing good history.
Your tone is entirely mocking and derisive towards critical scholars. Once you show them the graciousness and humility you would like them to engender towards Scripture, you will get the same back in return.
And I already said I will not defend all of Ehrman’s views, especially not one or two sentence quotes of arguments without full context. That is just me doing your job. If you want to critique his arguments you should know what they actually are. I tried to provide you context for several. Check his scholarly book out of the library. Then pick an actual argument to discuss.
I have no interest if Ehrman or Gordon Fee made a poor argument. I am interested in the good arguments each makes.
James, thanks for the answers. I appreciate how you limit the term “fraud” to deception by the original author and don’t judge a text for what may have happened to it since its original composition.
@Daniel_Fisher, thanks for also answering those questions in a similar – if lengthier – way a bit farther up. With that established, I’m happy to move back to more complicated cases, such as 2 Timothy.
When we allow a text to have a history after its initial writing, more options exist. Even if someone was deceptive, it may not have been the first author.
First, the main body of 2 Timothy 1:1–4:8 closely matches a known genre of ancient writing. Here’s how Luke Timothy Johnson (who doesn’t hold this view) describes it:
The image of an aging—indeed, dying—religious leader who before his death instructs his follower on the struggles that lie ahead and warns of the necessity for perseverance in the face of opposition reminds many scholars of the literary genre known as the testament or farewell discourse.
In the time shortly after Paul’s death, given the explosion of literary output from Christian communities, it isn’t hard to imagine a minister writing a piece for their church that uses the trope of elderly Paul writing to his dear child Timothy. The intent is for all Paul’s beloved children, not just Timothy, to embrace this encapsulation of his teaching. In such a piece, an imaginative (yet plausible) description of Paul’s situation at the end of his life is part of the genre and no more an attempt to deceive than – dare I mention it – Tolkien writing as Bilbo.
But the piece is so good that it’s quickly passed on to other churches. In short order all clues to its origin dissipate. And since it arose within decades of Paul’s death with such a compelling portrayal of Paul and Timothy, many begin to suspect it was written by Paul. Perhaps it took longer to come to light due to being a more private correspondence.
These suspicions supercharge the letter’s reach and ensure it’s copied widely. In the process certain other bits of text like 4:9–18 and 4:19–22 get tacked on the end. These accretions could be by someone trying to deceive. They could also come about innocently. Either way, Mark’s several endings (and perhaps the double ending in John, as well as passages that float between books like the story of the woman caught in adultery) show that such things did happen.
Now of course this is all imagination – I’m not suggesting this is actually what happened. I’m attempting to show there are plausible pathways that fit with what is known to have happened to other biblical texts, not that we can know which path was taken. I have trouble attributing the New Testament’s most beautiful plea for Christians to be people of character to a forger. Yes, it could be Paul’s. But there are also other options short of calling it a deceptive fabrication.
I have always liked this example, but realized recently that maybe I was wrong. Maybe you can help me here. Could Lewis be confounding, unintentionally, modern philosophers with ancient critics? We don’t know, of course, but I doubt biblical or ANE scholars weighed in on Lewis’ modern musings. The genre is very different, isn’t it? I would think that his coworkers in Oxford and Cambridge may have assumed, “Oh, Jack meant such and such, based on what I know of him.” Quite likely, they made mistakes. However, that’s quite different from what ANE scholars would use–and that’s also possibly why I could scrabble a bit, inferring mistakenly from what I read and sometimes, perhaps unintentionally, ascribing ill will to scholars who really know more about what they’re saying than I do.
I do appreciate this discussion, particularly the portion of not attributing ill will to the NT writers. The concept that they lied (mostly in the NT, by using prophecies inappropriatelyl although I know it was a common practice to ascribe double meaning to past prophecies), as well as the NT authorships, have actually probably (mostly in the past; there have been other passages, especially by @Marshall that really helped reassure) threatened my faith in the Bible’s reliability more than scientific questions about origins.
I honestly don’t know. I do appreciate this discussion, though, and have learned from each here.
That’s an interesting perspective there – thanks for raising it. It suggests that even if Paul didn’t write all the epistles attributed to him in the New Testament, there are ways that they could have been written in good faith with no deceit intended nonetheless.
There is a whole spectrum of different scenarios as to how the Pastoral epistles were written and by whom. At the one end of the scale, we have the fundamentalist view that states that they were all composed single-handedly by Paul, and where other people are mentioned, this was primarily just to acknowledge their existence, or at most that their contributions were limited to writing down what he dictated to them, word for word, if that. At the other end, we have the radical view of people such as Bart Ehrman, which insists that not only did Paul play no part whatsoever in writing them, but that the people who did write them did so with intent to deceive the early Church into falsely believing otherwise. (And no, @Vinnie, I don’t think I’m misrepresenting Ehrman here. Either he really does hold that view, or else he is misusing the word “forgery,” because conscious and deliberate deception of that nature is precisely what the word “forgery” actually means.)
In between these two extremes, there is a whole spectrum of plausible scenarios. There are plausible scenarios in which Paul wrote the Pastorals with assistance and input from those with him; there are plausible scenarios in which Paul wrote the Pastorals and they were subsequently redacted to some extent; and there are plausible scenarios in which Paul played no part in writing them, but they were written in his name in good faith without any deceptive intentions nonetheless.
The fact of the matter is that we do not have enough evidence to distinguish between which view is correct and which ones are not. This isn’t an exact empirical subject like radiometric dating, which pins down ages of rock formations and details of who or what did or didn’t evolve from what with tight numerical precision. The whole argument is a very subjective one, the conclusions that different people reach will be very much a matter of opinion rather than a matter of fact, and ultimately we may just need to admit that we don’t know what we don’t know. Those of us who accept a greater degree of Pauline authorship must inevitably do so by faith, but it is not the kind of unreasonable faith that we see, for example, in young-earth creationism, by a long shot.
this far we agree…and it seems to this humble observer, we are talking about imagination without any shred whatsoever of empirical evidence? at least i grant that Ehrman’s theories, extremely problematic and riddled with errors as they are, at least are attempts to engage empirically with the data in front of them?
if we’re going to be including theories that rely entirely on our imagination, then i can also imagine all sorts of scenarios… but i would humbly observe that when some evangelicals reject the conclusions of modern scholarship by inventing alternate scenarios that are based on naught more than one’s imagination, they are generally criticized as reaching desperately for any imaginative theory because of a desire to maintain their narrative.
Any scenario of how 2 Timothy came to be as we have it today is going to be imaginative. Whether one thinks Paul wrote it, it was forged, or it was written by someone else without deception, to go beyond the claim to a plausible scenario requires some creativity.
If Paul wrote the pastorals, one needs be more imaginative about his missionary journeys, finding room in the gaps of what the rest of the New Testament tells us rather than limiting ourselves to that evidence. Much of the resurgence in claiming they are truly Paul’s comes from not restricting him to simply penning the whole letter himself in a single sitting. By being more imaginative in how Paul could have worked with others to compose them and refine them over a longer period, many of the arguments about vocabulary and style and themes lose their force.
But all this imagination is still grounded by what is written and what we know of the historical situation. Even though 2 Timothy doesn’t list other authors besides Paul, many of his other letters do. Even though 2 Timothy doesn’t have major textual diversity in its ending, other New Testament books do. We also know physical factors that made the ends of documents most susceptible to change: the outside pages were more easily damaged, and they were more likely to contain valuable blank space (that may not stay blank!). And whether or not 2 Timothy is written as a farewell discourse, that is a known genre with other ancient examples that allow us to draw the comparison.
Also, Daniel, keep in mind that I was responding to your repeated request to show the other options besides a letter being Paul’s or a forger’s. You’d made comments such as “If Paul didn’t actually write it [referring to 2 Thes. 3:17], I still can’t see anything but deceit.” I was trying to show how we could see something else. I had thought we were all in agreement that we need humility in our reconstructions, since no matter how plausible they may be, we simply don’t have enough information to know for sure.
You’re suggesting it is illegitamate for me, or any one else, to critique arguments that Ehrman (or any other author) has published in writing, because we’re not also interacting with additional arguments he makes elsewhere? I demur. However, if you’re not interested in defending his published arguments from the obvious critiques and major fallacies I pointed out, then we can conclude that discussion.
Well, Bulverism is when you explain why a person is wrong before explaining that he is wrong… I have attepted to demonstrate the (obvious) fallacies in these approaches. From this, acknowledged, I do have harsh critiques for the individuals themselves and their (lack of) scholarship - but I do so having demonstrated some rather egregious and indefensible errors.
If you’re not interested in defending the other clear and obvious examples of erroneous arguments that Ehrman outlined in his book “Forged”, no worries - although it makes me suspect that you may perhaps recognize that these kind of errors really are at core indefensible.
And as a last word, it isn’t like I’m in some pedantic fashion pointing out some various typos or minor errors; I’m pointing out errors that are so core and egregious that the kind of person that makes them has no business teaching New Testament.
In my own world, if someone claimed a certain submarine was 425 feet instead of the correct 452 feet, this is a minor error that doesn’t have much impact on substance, and could simply be a typo or accidental error that I would be pedantic for making a big deal about. If someone claimed, “Modern nuclear submarines don’t carry diesel fuel”… this is different. This is the kind of mistake that is easily understandable how an outsider or a lay person could make - but would be a completely indefensible mistake for anyone who calls tried to call himself a submariner. It would betray that whatever they said, whatever knowledge they did claim, they betrayed they really knew nothing about submarines.
Claiming that (undisputed) Paul never referred to salvation in the past, that the pastorals don’t describe salvation as being through the death of Christ, or describe “faith in” Christ, or claiming that undisputed Paul viewed himself as blameless…
The last one is so especially indefensible to me… there are massive debates about the interpretation of Romans 7, because Paul is so intense about describing his own sinfulness. I regularly hear preachers talking about "getting out of Romans 7 and into Romans 8’ (i.e., getting out of the struggle with sin in Rom7 and into the “victory” in Rom8)… Paul’s acknowledgement of his (past) sinfulness is so far beyond explicit that some interpreter’s think he must have been limiting his self-description to his pre-conversion/pre-Christian days. I don’t share that view, but it goes to show how obvious and explicit and well-known Paul’s recognition of his pre-conversion sinfulness was. The language is beyond explicit:
"our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”
“when we were controlled by the sinful nature.”
“the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies”
“sin, siezing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.”
“sin sprang to life and I died.”
“sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the comandment, deceived me.”
“What a wretched man I am.”
Paul’s recognition of his own sinfulness is as obvious to anyone who has studied the book of Romans as the Diesel is to anyone who has toured a modern nuclear submarine. Someone who claims that Paul didn’t view himself as sinful is betraying a shocking lack of awareness, the same kind I would see in someone claiming to be an expert on modern submarines but who claimed that modern nuclear submarines had no need to carry diesel fuel. In both cases it would betray the person as being utterly inept in their claimed field.
I don’t lob ad hominems at Ehrman willy-nilly, or simply to be pejorative. I am demonstrating that he is making pervasive, regular, ubiquitous, and very egregious mistakes, the kind that is indefensible.
In a similar way, if someone claiming to be a submarine expert asserted that modern nuclear submarines did not carry diesel fuel, I can quite justifiably claim, without making a baseless ad-hominem attack, that this kind of error betrays a shocking ignorance of the workings of said submarines, and that the individual making that claim is demonstrating a radical ineptitude, especially given their claim to be an expert.
Missing (or dismissing) Paul’s self-depreciation and self-acknowledgement of his sinfulness (in order to maintain his chosen narrative?) betrays a similar ineptitude… it could be a novice mistake from a first-year undergrad student that hadn’t read the NT yet; for a NT scholar to make such egregious errors? I find it indefensible.
Very well, i appreciate the consistency, but I will have to say the way you’re using the language is so far from what I am used to that I’m just not following what you’re saying…
I know of NO ONE, critical, evangelical, or any background whatsoever that would say that “attribution of the book of Romans to Paul requires us to use our imagination” or anything like.
