There are no criteria that could determine the authenticity of the letters and Paul himself (as the author) based on textual analyses.
Regardless of the consensus, both conflicting solutions are equally possible. I don't have to convince anyone of this. It's just the way it is. The result of the biblical scholars' vote does not change this. It's just a vote based on intuition and experience. Nothing else.
So we must leave the text alone and address other complementary problems in the hope that these results will provide one answer.
There isn't much to explore. Actually, there is only one.
How was Pauline Corpus created?
Let's assume that the epistles were found individually in different places as part of a heritage rescue mission. This in itself seems unrealistic due to the vast expanse of the Empire, but this is not the main problem. It turns out that the Christian community started by Paul is dominated by redacted copies, amalgams and fakes. As if the main goal of all these copyists was to endlessly correct the Apostle from various theological perspectives. Our brave seeker finds nothing authentic almost everywhere. Complete absurdity.
Let's take another scenario. Our searcher found some set of Paul's original letters. Then he has to make all the editing changes and gluing various texts together and creating new ones. Otherwise, they will not be included in one collection. Therefore, all these changes in all the original letters written from different theological perspectives are the work of one center. Equally pointless.
Pauline Corpus is a contentt product. As well as fake letters added to the supposedly real ones. It is obvious.
Unfortunately, real letters are also a product. There were no homogeneous original texts, because their original circulation is theoretically possible but very unlikely.
So. Story of Apostle was created for greater good and later developed. Nothing more
Regardless of the consensus, both conflicting solutions are equally possible. I don't have to convince anyone of this. It's just the way it is. The result of the biblical scholars' vote does not change this. It's just a vote based on intuition and experience. Nothing else.
So we must leave the text alone and address other complementary problems in the hope that these results will provide one answer.
There isn't much to explore. Actually, there is only one.
How was Pauline Corpus created?
Let's assume that the epistles were found individually in different places as part of a heritage rescue mission. This in itself seems unrealistic due to the vast expanse of the Empire, but this is not the main problem. It turns out that the Christian community started by Paul is dominated by redacted copies, amalgams and fakes. As if the main goal of all these copyists was to endlessly correct the Apostle from various theological perspectives. Our brave seeker finds nothing authentic almost everywhere. Complete absurdity.
Let's take another scenario. Our searcher found some set of Paul's original letters. Then he has to make all the editing changes and gluing various texts together and creating new ones. Otherwise, they will not be included in one collection. Therefore, all these changes in all the original letters written from different theological perspectives are the work of one center. Equally pointless.
Pauline Corpus is a contentt product. As well as fake letters added to the supposedly real ones. It is obvious.
Unfortunately, real letters are also a product. There were no homogeneous original texts, because their original circulation is theoretically possible but very unlikely.
So. Story of Apostle was created for greater good and later developed. Nothing more
Statistics: Posted by JarekS — Thu Jun 13, 2024 8:21 pm