RE: Pauline Letters to the church.
November 12, 2013 at 6:48 pm
(This post was last modified: November 12, 2013 at 6:50 pm by Vicki Q.)
(November 11, 2013 at 5:28 pm)Vicki Q Wrote: I don't recognise the historical situation described. Paul's churches weren't looking to him to generate God-breathed scripture in the way described in the OP.
Paul was the lead member of a team of people charged with spreading Xianity outside Israel. Given the limited communications of the day, writing letters to deal with issues that came up was a sensible means of operating...<snip>...
Which, BTW, seems an odd comment to make if these things hadn't happened.
Actually, I'm not sure you're correct there. The idea that the NT writers didn't think they were in some sense writing scripture isn't really sustainable today.
I would certainly agree that there is no way they would have expected to end up in a canon as part 2 to the OT. And questions of inerrancy would never have been considered.
But they were conscious that they were given authority from God, and official writing was one of the ways in which this authority was exercised. The Epistles were part of the means of bringing God's kingdom into the world, and Paul etc. would have been aware of this. He would have seen himself as authorised by his apostolic call to bring life, order and truth into the churches by his words.
(November 11, 2013 at 7:59 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Or, saul/paul was a fictional creation designed to fill that role.
What a fascinating theory! Could you point me in the direction of academic writing I could follow this up from?
No problem if you can't. Those people are overrated, and the Internet’s much better at this sort of thing.
(November 11, 2013 at 8:18 pm)Brakeman Wrote: It makes no difference whether Paul was a part of a team, or whether he was truthful or not, that was not the point of the question.
The question was: "Why would any church at that time have any need to turn to a stranger outside of their own congregation when they have access to the perfect leader, jesus, in their prayers?"
For pretty much the same reason we have church leaders these days. Not even the Quakers seem to be quite able to do without some sort of leadership.
The early church foundings would likely have started with a structural model similar to the Jewish synagogue, or the chaburah (dining society). Remember that Xianity is really modified Judaism. As such, there would be an authority structure in place. Also, the model for prayer you propose is very different to the normal one, and certainly different to the one the earliest churches would have employed.
A number of the churches would know Paul, as he had been instrumental in founding the first churches. Bart Ehrman believes he would have operated a leather goods shop in the towns for a time, and that's how he got things going.
