Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Did Paul write that letter? Getting into the Weeds by Bart D. Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth A few days ago I published a post trying to show why many critical scholars do not think Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians, even though its author claims to be Paul.
[00:00:19] It's pretty easy to put the matter in simple, easy to understand terms for non experts. All you have to say is that the writing style, theology, and presupposed historical circumstances don't match up up with what we know about Paul otherwise.
[00:00:34] But, well, that's not really very convincing. It's just informative.
[00:00:39] So I provided a few of the details connected with writing style and theology, but I tried to do so in fairly simple terms, as I've done sometimes before. I thought it might be useful to some of you to see how I would argue that for scholars without having to mince words, just so you see how it might be done.
[00:00:57] To do it fully would take many pages. But here is the discussion I devoted to the matter in my academic book Forgery and the Use of Literary Deception in Early Christian Polemics, Oxford University Press, 2012.
[00:01:12] As with every instance of forgery, the case of Colossians is cumulative, involving multiple factors. None has proved more decisive over the past 30 years than the question of writing style. The case was made most effectively in 1973 by Walter Boullard. In a study both exhaustive and exhausting, widely thought to be unanswerable.
[00:01:34] Bouillard compares the writing style of Colossians to the other Pauline letters, focusing especially on those of comparable length Galatians, Philippians, and First Thessalonians and looking at an inordinately wide range of stylistic features, the use of conjunctions of all kinds infinitives, participles, relative clauses, repetitions of words and word groups, use of antithetical statements, parallel constructions, the use of prepositions, the piling up of genitives, and on and on in case after case. Colossians stands apart from Paul's letters.
[00:02:10] Here I can mention a slim section of his findings. How often does a book of Paul's use adversative conjunctions? Galatians 84 times Philippians 521 Thessalonians 29 but Colossians only 9 causal conjunctions Galatians 45 times Philippians 21 Thessalonians 31 but Colossians only 9 consecutive conjunctions Galatians 16 times Philippians 101 Thessalonians 12 but Colossians only 6 how often does a letter use a conjunction to introduce a statement?
[00:02:49] Galatians 20 times Philippians 191 Thessalonians 11 but Colossians only 3.
[00:02:57] As a facet to part one, Bouillard adds up conjunctions of all kinds and indicates the percentage of their occurrence in relation to all words Galatians239 that's 10.7% Philippians138 8.5% first Thessalonians1:26 which is 8.5% Philemon28 8.4% but Colossians only 63 only 4%.
[00:03:26] The average in all the undisputed letters is 10.4% in Colossians it is 4%.
[00:03:33] Bouillard then uses a different metric, adding up all the different conjunctions used in the Pauline Letters Galatians 33 Philippians 31 First Thessalonians 31 But Colossians only 21. But he goes further subtracting from these totals the conjunctions that occur in all the letters in question, the shorter epistles, Galatians, Philippians 1, Thessalonians 2, Thessalonians, Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians.
[00:04:02] Since these are simply common words, not words necessarily distinctive of Paul, one is then left with the following Galatians 24 Philippians 221 Thessalonians 22 but Colossians only 12.
[00:04:18] He then goes a step farther, subtracting those that occur in all but one of the letters in question.
[00:04:23] These are distinctive of Paul, not just common words, and the results remain consistent if not more graphic. Galatians 20 Philippians 181 Thessalonians 18 but Colossians only 8.
[00:04:39] The findings involving conjunctions match those using other parts of speech. Bouillard looks, for example, at the use of the infinitive in Galatians. The infinitive occurs 32 times 1.4% of all the words Philippians 39 times 2.4% 1 Thessalonians 48 times 3.3% but in Colossians only 11.7%.
[00:05:05] The articular infinitive is used in Galatians 5 times Philippians 161 Thessalonians 13 but in Colossians never the same or rather the inverse. Results obtain with references to the use of relative clauses in Romans they make up 1.4% of all the words of the book 1 Corinthians 0.9% 2nd Corinthians 1% Galatians 1.5% Philippians 1.5% 1 Thessalonians 0.3% the layman 1.4% but Colossians 2.6% Bouillard goes on like this for a very long time, page after page, statistic after statistic.
[00:05:48] What is striking is that all these features point the same way. When one adds to these the other commonly noted, though related features of the style of Colossians the long, complex sentences, the piling up of genitives, the sequences of similar sounding words, and so on, the conclusion can scarcely be denied. The book is not written in Paul's style.
[00:06:12] Arguments based on style are strongly supported by considerations of content.
[00:06:17] In several striking and significant ways. The teaching of Colossians deep differs from the undisputed letters. Most commonly noted is the eschatological view to which we will return in our discussion. In chapter one, verse 13, the author insists that God already has delivered us from the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
[00:06:42] Already, in an aorist sense, is this Paul.
[00:06:47] More striking still is 2 12, 13, and 3 1, which insist that believers have already experienced a kind of spiritual resurrection. After having died with Christ, you were also raised in him through faith God made you alive with him.
[00:07:09] If then you have been raised up with Christ statements in clear tension with Paul's emphatic statements elsewhere, such as Romans 6:1,6, where it is quite clear that whereas those who have been baptized have died with Christ, they decidedly have not been raised up with him. Yet.
[00:07:30] This is an important point in Paul's theology, not a subsidiary matter. The resurrection is something future, something that is yet to happen.
[00:07:40] So too Philippians 3:11 if somehow I might obtain to the resurrection from the dead, and yet more emphatically in 1 Corinthians 15, in Christ all shall be made alive we shall all be changed the dead will be raised.
[00:08:01] One can easily argue that this is one of the, if not the single key to understanding Paul's opposition to the Corinthian enthusiasts.
[00:08:10] They believed they were leading some kind of spiritual, resurrected existence, and Paul insisted that it had not yet happened. They may have died with Christ, but they had not yet been raised with him. That will come only at the end.
[00:08:24] And what does the author of Colossians think? Believers have not only died with Christ, but they have also been raised with him. They are already leading a kind of glorious existence in the present.
[00:08:36] This is the view Paul argues against in Corinth. Maybe he changed his mind. But given the stylistic differences and the other matters of content to be discussed, it seems unlikely.
[00:08:47] Colossians is written by someone who has taken a twist on a Pauline theme, moving it precisely in the direction Paul refused to go.
[00:08:56] There are other theological differences from Paul frequently noted, all of them pointing in the same direction.
[00:09:03] A later author has taken up Pauline themes and shifted them in decidedly non Pauline ways.
[00:09:09] Unlike Paul, this author understands redemption as the forgiveness of sins, 1:14 as does Ephesians 1:7.
[00:09:18] The phrase occurs nowhere else in the Pauline corpus. Indeed, the Greek term itself, in the sense of forgive sins, is absent from Paul except in the quotation of Psalm chapter 32:1 in Romans 4, 7 Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven.
[00:09:39] So too, analogously with a different term, 2:13 speaks of trespasses being forgiven. Charizomenos haemen pantata para tomata charizomai is never used this way in the undisputed Paul leans so too. 3:13 speaks of forgiving one another, just as the Lord has forgiven you. Using Kari's omai again, this author speaks famously of filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of the Church.
[00:10:11] A shocking image for Paul. Were Christ's sufferings in some way inadequate and needed to be completed?
[00:10:18] At the same time, the author offers an exalted Christology 1:15 20 far beyond anything in the undisputed letters, even the Philippians hymn. Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation. In him all things were created, and in him all things hold together.
[00:10:39] In him all the fulness was well pleased to dwell.
[00:10:44] This is far closer to the Johannine prologue than Paul.
[00:10:48] As a result, in comparison with Paul, the author of Colossians seems to have a much higher view of Christ 1:15, 20 and a much lower view of the efficacy of his death.
[00:11:02] Other differences from Paul may not be as striking but bear noting as contributing to the overall sense of the letter. It seems very odd indeed to have Paul attack issues of Jewish legalism, sabbaths, and festivals in 216 regulations involving purity and kosher in 220 and 21 without using Pauline vocabulary either to describe or attack it. Words like law, commandment, justification.
[00:11:29] This is not simply a case of expecting Paul to speak the language of dikaio and its equivalents in all of his letters.
[00:11:36] In this case the author is dealing precisely with the issues of relevance to the terminology, but he does not use it.
[00:11:44] When the law does make an appearance without being named, it is said to be a shadow of things to come, 2:17 a teaching that resonates with the views of Hebrews but not with Paul.
[00:11:58] Given Paul's ability to mix metaphor otherwise, possibly not too much weight should be placed on the fact that Christ here is described as the head of the body rather than the body itself.
[00:12:11] Though the usage does give one pause when one considers, however, how Paul imagines the life of the body, the differences are even more striking.
[00:12:20] The Haus tafel of chapter 318 through 41 has long been thought of as non Pauline, and for reasons related to the realized eschatology already noted.
[00:12:32] In particular, this domestication of Paul in his embrace of family ideals stands at odds with Paul's firmly stated preference for himself and others for celibacy.
[00:12:44] Nowhere in Paul's letters do we find such a celebration of standard Greco Roman ethics.
[00:12:50] On the contrary, Paul insisted on the superiority of the ascetic life free from marriage.
[00:12:58] This indeed was the appropriate response to a world that was in the process of passing away.
[00:13:04] Here in Colossians, on the other hand, the world is not passing away. There is no imminent crisis.
[00:13:11] It is here for the long haul, and so are the Christians who make up Christ's body in it. As a result, they need to adopt behavior appropriate for the long term.
[00:13:21] Relations to those living outside the community are especially important, not to inform them of the impending crisis but to maintain a proper, upstanding relationship.
[00:13:32] In short, this is written by someone who knows the church, has been here and will be here for the long term.
[00:13:38] There is no imminent expectation of the coming end.
[00:13:42] On the basis of all these considerations, it is clear that with Colossians we are not dealing with a letter of Paul but a letter of someone wanting his readers to think that he is Paul.
