Hello, everybody,
Well - I seem to have poked the bear here
. Which is not to say that it is not a well-mannered bear (as usual).
steve7150 wrote: On the one hand you said that "Paul and his cohort" prefer to paint as rosy a picture as possible re Paul's relations with the other apostles yet on the other hand you acknowledge that his letters circulated throughout the early churches. It would seem inconsistent to think that the apostles would have disapproved of him and yet his letters would have been able to circulate as widely as they did. Also, Steve wrote: Actually, Paul's reports of his relations with the twelve do not seem to be at all embellished with a mind to paint a rosy picture. His treatment of these
relations in Galatians 2 is the most complete that we have from his pen, and he seems to describe a rather tenuous unity.
For what it is worth, I wrote that
it is understandable that Paul and his cohort might prefer to paint relations with the twelve in as rosy of terms as possible. (emphasis added)
It is correct to note that Paul does not completely gloss over his challenges in dealing with the Jerusalem church. However, it would not be surprising if he should have highlighted more favorable aspects of their relations in a way that yielded a nuanced portrayal; this may have been somewhat distorted without being utterly fabricated. It is clear from the New Testament that Paul (like many people in ministry) is a practicing politician. He seeks to sway people by means of rhetoric and relationship, and quite likely with best intentions. But rhetoric often involves distortion, and it frequently triages objectivity in favor of pragmatic advantage.
steve7150 wrote:It's true there were great distances but still the apostles knew many people and these people knew other people etc and word would have spread that Paul's teachings were not apostolic, yet that did'nt happen. And Steve wrote: The important thing for us to consider in determining how the other apostles felt about Paul is the fact that he plainly called himself an apostle—placing himself on their level—which is a claim that they would have been loathe to acknowledge, had he no convincing credentials, and one that they would be obliged to refute for the safety of the movement. This they apparently never did.
On the one hand: we have little basis for gauging the relative impact of the Jerusalem church and the twelve apostles (with the relative exception of Peter). What we can note is that it appears to have left very little footprint upon the subsequent development of the catholic church. It is probable that the Jerusalem church did not put up a major fight against Paul's efforts in Asia Minor and Greece. What is less clear is whether the Jerusalem church made concerning itself with Paul's activities a matter of priority. Their Jewish piety may have been relatively unconcerned with the condition of Gentiles (who were probably seen as having a highly reduced threshold of religious obligation to God), and their sense of Jesus' imminent return may have pre-empted serious worries about the long-term development of a Gentile religious movement. When Paul gets a reputation for teaching
Jews to forsake the Torah, however, the leadership does bother to take action (q.v., Acts 21).
On the main point of Paul's apostolicity: it is debatable whether the role of "apostle" in the earliest church was quite so elevated as it came to be in the church's retrospection. The term's basic meaning is that of "emissary," and for what it is worth, review of the
Didache suggests that the role may have been neither limited to a few well-known people nor completely august (q.v., chapter 11). If Paul were recognized as an appointed and blessed missionary from Antioch, this may have been sufficient in the earliest church to justify his claim to the title "apostle." This would give him a measure of standing, but we
should be careful about importing later ideas of apostolicity into the picture. We should also be careful about equating Paul's understanding of his apostleship with the understanding of apostleship in the Jerusalem church, and amongst the twelve.
Steve wrote: To doubt the essential trustworthiness of Luke's records is, to my mind, in light of the historical studies that have surrounded this very topic, gratuitous.
We may have different appraisals of essential historical trustworthiness in general. It is not gratuitous, however, to posit that Luke's account has passed through the filter of his own perspective. Like most historians, Luke chose to highlight certain data and to omit certain others. By way of structure and diction, he painted a portrait of historical events - which like all portraits is, to some greater or lesser margin, an inaccurate reflection of actual circumstances. We must remember that Luke had a story to tell, and more than one moral to his story. Accuracy in some matters of physical and cultural detail does not demonstrate that an author's story is a fully reliable entity. Now, does Luke indulge in wholescale mythmaking? Most probably not. But like virtually all historians, of his era or any other, Luke may be expected to have written his story as history.
steve7150 wrote: In Hebrews we find not only Pauline expressions but several references to the OT that Paul used himself which suggests to me he may have had actual imput into the letter. And Paidion wrote: Another observation which may have some weight, is that the writer to the Hebrews ends his letter with "Grace be with you." All of Paul's letters end with some form of "Grace be with you." The other apostles did not end their letters that way, although John ended Revelation with similar words. It is interesting to note that Clement of Rome, born in 30 A.D, died in 100 A.D., an overseer in the church at Rome, ended his letter to the Corinthians with the words, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you..."
Minor points of similarity can be accounted for in that Paul's letters had an early circulation, and their form and example may be expected to have had some influence on other writers in the early church. We might find some such example in that which Paidion cited from
I Clement (which, like Hebrews, does not explicitly claim an author). Beyond this, just as we have no basis for assuming that all of Paul's arguments and liturgical expressions were original to him, neither should we assume that he was the only person to use them in writing. Similarities alone do not demonstrate a close working relationship with Paul, or even a direct relationship at all.
Steve wrote: The connection of the writer to Hebrews to Paul is best established, in my opinion, not so much from the similarity of the two authors' ideas, but by the fact that they both traveled with Timothy (Heb.13:23)—from whom Paul was somewhat inseparable.
I would like to have an accounting of these similar ideas. A standard article on Hebrews, written by a Seattle Pacific professor, claims that
"The author clearly was not Paul.... He classed himself as one who had not heard the Lord deliver the message of salvation (Heb. 2:3-4). ... He also employs a distinctive range of images that are not found in Paul (Heb. 2:1; 4:12, 13; 6:7-8, 19) and moves easily within the conceptual world of priesthood and sacrifice, emphases that are foreign to Paul's letters." Now, for my part I would not state that different imagery necessarily disqualifies Paul from authorship, but neither does it recommend Paul's candidacy. And in any case, as I touched on above, points of similarity would not suffice to demonstrate any close relationship between the document and Paul himself.
As for the connection to Timothy, the tangential reference in this regard does not prove any particular thing, inasmuch as we cannot know if this was the same Timothy who was a companion of Paul. And of course, if we wished to be fully cautious, we would have little way of verifying whether this was an authentic name-check, or merely one fabricated or trumped up to lend authority to the letter. A slender reed at best.
Thomas wrote: Probably the best answer as to the author of Hebrews can be found in the eastern tradition. There is a difference between the Author and the Writer of the epistle. That is , that Paul originally wrote it in hebrew to be sent to the church in Jerusalem but that the it was translated into greek by someone else , and it is the greek version which we have.
The eastern tradition as cited depends upon transmission through Clement and Origen - less than impeccable sources. Clement (as found later in the same passage from Eusebius) also preserves a tradition that Matthew and Luke were written before Mark - which hardly seems likely in light of critical analysis. Elsewhere, Clement calls non-canonical material "scripture," and even regards Plato and the Epicurean philosopher Metrodorus as divinely inspired; his voice may be recognized as less than fully discriminating by Protestant standards. For his part, Origen felt the
Shepherd of Hermas was divinely inspired.
The western tradition took a less credulous approach toward Hebrews. Even as late as 405 CE, the bishop of Rome appears to have omitted it from his listing of New Testament books.
Shalom,
Emmet