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I think Wright allows for Pauline authorship of some of the disputed books.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 2:20 pm I think Wright allows for Pauline authorship of some of the disputed books.

The arguments against Pauline authorship are incredibly weak and unpersuasive; their acceptance is a sign that much of contemporary Biblical scholarship in much is of generally poor quality. I am increasingly of the opinion that to get a PhD in New Testament studies, it should be a requirement to take a course in logic, because so many of the arguments I encounter are formal fallacies, and not obscure fallacies either, they are usually the kind of fallacy that a freshman philosophy major could detect.

The number 1 argument that is given against authenticity is "it's the consensus view", which recent evidence suggests isn't even true. At a meeting of the British Biblical Society in 2023, the scholars present held a vote on the question of Pauline authorship of the epistles attributed to him. While a genuinely overwhelming consensus of over 99% of those present said that Romans and I Corinthians were authentic, on the disputed epistles, the results were mixed, usually only a bare majority of around 50-55% came down against authenticity, while the rest said either they were authentic or that they were not sure (not being sure would seem to indicate agreement that the arguments against authenticity are unpersuasive). Sure, 53-47 is a "consensus," I guess, but it is nothing like the "overwhelming consensus" that we are often told exists against authenticity, And, argument from "consensus" is just an arugment from authority by another name, and as St Thomas observed, the argument from authoirt is the weakest.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 2:20 pm I think Wright allows for Pauline authorship of some of the disputed books.

Which books apart from Hebrews are disputed?

peregrinator wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 8:47 am

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Tue Jun 24, 2025 2:20 pm I think Wright allows for Pauline authorship of some of the disputed books.

Which books, apart from Hebrews, are disputed?

Ephesians
Colossions
2 Thessalonians
1,11 Timothy
Titus

That sounds risible ... who is doing the disputing?

peregrinator wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 7:02 pm That sounds risible ... who is doing the disputing?

The majority of historical critical scholars for over 150 years, including the notes in nearly every English Bible, Study Bible, and Bible Commentary currently in print, including the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible, and the NAB.

I am genuinely surprised that you have never heard that the majority of scholars, including Catholic scholars, believe that nearly half of Paul's epistles are forgeries.

I think the arguments in favor of their being pseudonymous are poor. The new (old) school scholars of the historical-critical era were in favor of that sort of thing.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 4:25 pm I think the arguments in favor of their being pseudonymous are poor.

I made a post earlier in this thread about how there is no compelling argument against authenticy except the argument from "scholarly consensus", which, not only isn't true based on the most recent evidence (56-44 is not an overwhelming consensus by any measure) also amounts to little more than an argument from authority, which as St Thomas noted, is the weakest possible argument.

Nevertheless, this position has been around for a very long time; it was already "old hat" in 1930. So I am genuinely surprised that Periginator has never heard of it. All one has to do is pick up a copy of the 1966 Jerusalem Bible (the original two-volume hardcover edition, not the Reader's Edition that strips out 99.9% of the notes) and see that it is taken for granted that nearly half of the epistles attributed to Paul were not writen until 50 years or more after his death. It's a theory even older than Markan Priority, which I know he has heard of.

The NAB is much the same, though I don't blame him if he's never looked at its ridiculously bad footnotes.

peregrinator wrote: ↑Wed Jun 18, 2025 5:54 pm

Tired wrote: ↑Wed Sep 11, 2024 10:03 pm Guilty pleasure... I'm reading Jurassic Park and Ender's Game again (it's fun to read them a chapter at a time and then switch to the other book).

Have you read Speaker for the Dead? Very powerful.

I need to. still haven't. I did enjoy Ender's Shadow.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Fri Jun 27, 2025 9:42 pm The NAB is much the same, though I don't blame him if he's never looked at its ridiculously bad footnotes.

Not just the NAB, but any Bible, Bible commentary, or Study Bible, written by anyone attempting to engage with modern scholarship, other than a fundamentalist, in the last century, takes it for granted.

John Bergesma, when he was in seminary, asked in his New Testament class what the basis for assuming that Paul didn't write the Pastoral epistles was and what the arguments were. The professor never even attempted to answer his question but simply dismissed it.

Most Bible scholars don't really think about the basis for their pet theories; they just regurgitate what they learned as graduate students, without really learning why.

When he researched to find out, he learned that the original impetus for rejecting them was, of all things, Hegelian philosophy. Around 200 years ago, the standard interpretation of the early Church was that there were three phases, the thesis (Petrine theology), the antithesis (Pauline theology) and the synthesis (early Catholicism) and that the process took around 200 years, so the epistles of Paul, the antithesis, were written in the middle of the second century, after the gospel and the epistles of Peter, with the synthesis, Early Catholicism, arriving in the 3rd century.

This is where most "historical critical" theories of how the New Testament was written have their origin.

With Hegelian philosophy no longer being trendy at the end of the 19th century, the theories were stripped of the Hegalian language, but the conclusions have remained the same even since because "scholars" are lazy and don't want to learn new theories.

Bergsma cowrote a good book taking down the JEPD theory too. Much of what passes for modern Biblical scholarship is nothing but theorizing in the absence of any evidence and then presenting the theories as certain.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Sat Jun 28, 2025 9:24 pm Bergsma cowrote a good book taking down the JEPD theory too. Much of what passes for modern Biblical scholarship is nothing but theorizing in the absence of any evidence and then presenting the theories as certain.

Literary analysis in general is like this, it is why people get PhDs for theses on things like the homosexual subtext of Pride and Prejudice.

Although CS Lewis famously noted that it was common, within his lifetime, for scholars to cut up ancient documents into half a dozen parts and assign each part to a different author. This was once done with the works of Homer.

Still, with a deeper analysis, it was generally accepted that The Iliad and The Odyssey have such a strong thematic and narrative unity, so that even if there were minor redactions by later authors over the centuries, the poems were most likely the result of a single author. Now, these questionable arguments are employed only to the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch.