Jesus' Wife

[Mudhammam]

I don't know what "authentic" means in this case. All written by "Paul?" All written by the same person? How about edited by the same person - Marcion? The fraudulent epistles are obviously later constructions but even the "authentic" ones seem to have been re-written.

Written by a Jewish Christian missionary to the Gentiles who formerly led a devout life as a Pharisee even to the point of persecuting those he thought were guilty of blasphemy. What evidence is there that every copy of Paul's "authentic" epistles we possess were fabricated or at least tampered with by Marcion? That's just one person and my guess is that we have a lot of Paul quoted in other writers who were not so closely aligned with Marcion's theology (I say "guess" because I can't cite a direct reference for this claim but I'm fairly confident we could find many Pauline references in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centures--perhaps you'll disagree, in which I'm open to hear your case).

I'll argue that. There is one historical marker which indicates that the author was recounting a situation which happened between 84 and 64 BC. Granted, this was a time of turmoil in Judaea as the Hasmonean Dynasty was tearing itself to pieces and rival claimants to the throne secured the help of external powers but none of that does the jesus story any good. This reference to Damascus being under the rule of Aretas of Nabatea occurs in 2 Corinthians which is always cited as one of the "authentic" epistles. So, yeah, who the fuck knows what authentic means.

I haven't come across this objection before so I'll look more into it. I must ask though, if this is the case as you describe, would this make correct historical references to persons or events in other New Testament writings, such as Paul's other epistles, serve to strengthen the common first-century dating for many of them?

Its like when they say the "historical" jesus. The term is almost meaningless.

I'm not so sure about that. Granted, the historical Jesus leaves little trace in the New Testament although I think some facts can be reliably gleaned: He was a Jew from Galilee, probably born in Nazareth, was very devout and charismatic in his faith but placed a very liberal and perhaps Hellenistic spin on it, perhaps had powerful religious delusions and thought he was a god or at the very least had prophetic status, started a movement that caused some controversy with the religious leaders in his region; in turn, perhaps this led to a situation that made him a political liability and false accusations (or perhaps some disorderly conduct that called for him to be put down as a common criminal--maybe escalating during the week of Passover) led to his crucifixion. I don't see why a strong case can't be made for some vague historical Jesus, even if all we have to go on are what his earliest followers thought of him. It's probably a very similar situation, if not better, than the overwhelming majority of figures from the ancient world (including many kings and rulers).