Colophon
First published in Dutch in Theologisch Tijdschrift 16 in 1882.
I
The need to revise the foundations of our knowledge about the original Paulinism.
For a long time now I have been intensely occupied by one particular question. It is this one: what is the reason that the first four of our canonical Pauline epistles have escaped the skeptical eye of criticism? Or: when in a few exceptional cases they had been brought under suspicion, why did the objections that were made against their authenticity have so little impact, or why at least were they not taken into consideration? After a long investigation I have arrived at a somewhat satisfactory answer for myself, but until I could receive the opinion of qualified reviewers I have remained in a state of continuous tension which has progressively become more difficult for me to bear. The only way for me to resolve it is by public discussion.
When I proceed to do this now it is not without some hesitation, although I am fully conscious that only scholarly motives have driven me to take this step. There was no impulse for me to discuss this topic in public as long as my answer to the stated question was derived from or at least completely matched the opinion which has broadly been embraced by modern critics. But that answer doesn’t satisfy me any longer. I can’t accept the prevailing opinion anymore. I cannot continue to tell myself that the authenticity of the four Pauline Hauptbriefe has not yet been investigated deliberately, has not yet been subjected to a serious and versatile criticism, because they carry the unmistakable hallmarks of authenticity on them and within themselves. Continued research has drawn my attention to facts and phenomena that make their presumed authenticity appear most improbable. The first feeling that came to me was one of astonishment, and this astonishment was more prone to make me speechless rather than voluble, at least for the wider public.
Tune solus sapiens? I thought with Luther, and this thought made me cautious, drove me to renewed and increasingly extensive investigations. I considered it to be my duty to reexamine completely the foundations on which my belief in the authenticity of the epistles was built. I reviewed the course that the scholarly investigation into the Pauline epistles had taken since Semler and especially since Baur, until in the end, as I have said, I arrived at a somewhat satisfactory solution. I started to see, at least to a certain extent, why the authenticity hypothesis concerning the four Hauptbriefe could have retained the character of an axiom for so long.
My confidence was increased by the insight I had gained in the history of this part of Biblical criticism, and further considerations then strengthened my resolve to publish the results I had obtained. Firstly, my results had slowly grown in size and significance — so I believed — and thus my reasoning had increased in power and clarity. Secondly, around my negative conclusion eventually emerged a background of positive historical data which, it appeared to me, could become a stimulus towards a renewed and promising investigation.
But first specialists would have to become convinced that such an investigation undertaken on a new and broader scale can now truly be considered worthwhile. There indeed appears to be no interest in this. On the contrary, even in modern circles it appears everyone agrees that the question of the authenticity of the four Pauline Hauptbriefe is not a topic worthy of consideration: maybe not ever, and definitely not in the near future. I can hear them say it now: What is the purpose of this investigation? Are we so lacking in important questions that we have to go look for superfluous work? You don’t have to investigate what we already know. Did not Baur in his criticism of the New Testament and more particularly in the field of the Pauline epistles reach the outer boundaries of what could be put into question?
Yes, a sole renegade like Bruno Bauer did dare to cross that boundary; but he has been paid so little attention in the thirty years that have passed since his attack against the authenticity of the Hauptbriefe that he would almost be happy to discover that in the introduction of the newest publication of Meyer’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians [1] men of the trade still consider it worthwhile to highlight his undertaking with the qualification "'sacrilegious'" . Even our compatriot Dr. A. Pierson, the only one who as far as I know has at least incidentally raised his voice against the authenticity of the Epistle to the Galatians, decided to ignore the work of this predecessor from Berlin. Dr. Pierson himself appears to await such a fate, if indeed one can go by the categorical way in which almost immediately after the publication of his critical study a negative verdict has been delivered about his attack against what has until this present day remained indisputable. When one of his reviewers, Dr Prins, deliberately picked this one part of Pierson’s treatise, i.e. his attack against the Epistle to the Galatians, it was evidently not difficult for the professor from Leiden to defend the old stronghold. His apologia: “de Brief van Paulus aan de Galatiërs gehandhaafd,” Leiden 1879, was completely unlike an anxious struggle. Here was no question of a seriously battered fortress where to break the siege an army and campaign was needed; a surgical strike, which might also turn out to be a final blow, would be sufficient to drive back an enemy unsupported by troops or materiel.
Although in my review of Dr. Pierson’s book in the Theologisch Tijdschrift of 1879 I had to admit that this scholar had pointed out various gaps in our understanding of Paul and the original Christianity, I also had to conclude (on page 185 and following): "As long as Dr. Pierson supplies no better grounds for his opinion we are obligated to maintain the authenticity (of the Epistle to the Galatians)." In the same issue Dr. A. H. Blom considered Prins' assertion of the authenticity of the Epistle to the Galatians against the concerns of Dr. Pierson. Again the same conclusion — the Paul of dr. Pierson is a caricature: "if the matter wasn’t so serious, one could easily have thought that Pierson’s goal was to demonstrate his skill at defending a hopeless position" (page 285).
So this little cloud has drifted by us. We again rejoice at the sight of a clear blue sky in which the sun shines delightfully so that no one feels the thought arise: where does the light in which I walk come from, where does the warmth that refreshes me originate? With all our heart we agree with Baur’s statement (der Apostel Paulus, 2ste Ausg. page 276 and 1st Ausg. page 248): "Against the authenticity of these four epistles (Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians and Galatians) not even the slightest suspicion has been raised as they bear the character of Pauline originality so incontrovertibly that it is unthinkable that any critical doubt could be asserted against them." We agree with the judgment of Renan, when in his introduction in his St. Paul he summarizes the four Hauptbriefe as in being the class of "incontestable and uncontested" and does not consider it necessary to justify this classification with even a single word.
It would not be difficult to multiply these two testimonials with a great deal of others that sound no less certain and decided as evidence of the unanimity that at present holds sway among scholars concerning the authenticity of the four Hauptbriefe.[2] One must therefore ask: what happened to make us consider a question which has so clearly proved not to be in question? I owe my readers an explanation especially since not long ago I have made reassurances concerning this matter of authenticity. I have to supply the reasons that moved me to urge a revision of this judgment even though I appeared to declare only recently that it had been concluded to the satisfaction of all dispassionate and thinking people. Again: what happened? The few pages that my colleague A. Pierson dedicated to his attack on the authenticity of the Epistle to the Galatians [3] did not convince me. I am completely aware of this. But I want to admit openly that I received the first impulse to my current investigation from him. Although I could not fully accept his fresh and original considerations, they awoke in me concerns that slowly grew in number and weight and eventually took on a form that was clear and determined enough to be shared with others.
Should someone want to decide from my admission above that my present opinion is unsound or that the results of historical criticism are insecure in general, I would like to remind them that the value of any results obtained can only be measured by the value of the method that was applied, as well as the applicability of said method to a given problem. Against the appearance of rashness I would also urge not to neglect the probability or at least the possibility that I would not have changed my views so drastically before I demonstrated to myself after thorough investigation that what I had assumed in the past could not be sustained.
This is the situation in which I find myself. I’m convinced it’s not more than an illusion to imagine we’re on solid historical ground with the Paul of the Hauptbriefe. This supposedly settled fact is in reality unknown. This Paul is a psychological riddle if we place him so close in time to Jesus. The final outcomes of critical investigation cannot be integrated into a proper whole with the results we have obtained about the original Paulinism. And once again one searches in vain for a way to put the apostolic Christianity that emerges from the haze in a correct historical relation to the earliest Gnosticism. Add to this that the picture of the historical Jesus, the circle of early Apostles and the genesis of the so-called gospel of Peter have become increasingly hazy, and therefore that the origin of Paulinism has become increasingly insecure to us, and it will be acknowledged that it need not be ingratitude that makes us long for more light when we consider the oldest gospel and its evangelists.
No, let’s admit to it honestly: our situation is not healthy. We indeed do not want back that which Tübingen criticism discarded as untenable. Its negations are our own negations as well. But it also affirmed. It started to build on the ground that it cleared of debris and ruins, and it continues to do so assiduously. But whoever claims that this work is progressing well is certainly not a very demanding person. On me at least these modern construction workers give the impression that they have a brick of masonry in one hand but don’t have trowel and lime in the other but instead still carry a crowbar.
Yes, shall I say it: from the days of Strauss to the present we moderns have obtained nothing but negative results in the field of historical investigation into Christian origins. The founder of the school itself, Ferdinand Christian Baur, never attempted to establish a biography of Jesus. His classic work about Paul, although excellent in every other way, lacks the key capacity to let us understand the hero in the context of his own time. Baur did not attempt to lift the veil behind which the writers of the New Testament tried to keep hidden the original Christianity. Did he, lacking reliable sources, despair of penetrating to the true facts of what caused the pre-Pauline faith in the resurrection of the Lord? Or did he consider it unwise to share his opinion about this in a straightforward manner at this risky juncture? Enough: as long as the community in which Paul was cured from his Judaism so that he could zealously work as a Christian remained completely covered by the mysterious mantle of its faith in the resurrection; as long as the environment in which the great apostle to the gentiles acted kept itself hidden in the haze of mythology, it could not be said that historical criticism had accomplished its task concerning the founders of Christianity.
Theodorus Keim has departed from us as well without having explained to us the essence of origin of Christianity. I can’t say whether others have been happier than I in retrieving much of historical value from the long and tiresome deliberations of this author about the resurrection of Jesus. But I consider it decided that the silence of the master, Baur, was better than the speech of the student, Keim.
Shall we then follow the example of the Tübingen scholar and keep our silence as well, and avoid making a choice between the two options that are proposed: the physical or the psychological miracle at the birth of the Christian community? What shall I say? I think we moderns cannot continue to stay silent as Baur was, as in this case it would be equivalent to dithering. I think the time to speak has arrived. I myself am certain of it: as long as the Paul of the Hauptbriefe stands before us like a man of flesh and blood, we cannot ever construct a picture of the Christian community that existed before him, nor of the teacher that had brought it together that answers the demands of our historical conscience.
Did Ernest Renan then write his seven parts of "l’histoire des origines du christianisme" for nothing? I will be the last to diminish the extraordinary talents and accomplishments of this author, but I won’t follow him when he declares about himself that he and he alone was the suitable person to give us a correct picture of primitive Christianity and its founder. Looking back on the long series of studies spent investigating this important topic, as well as a consideration of the many contradictions that exist within them, should have raised in Renan the desire to revise his work from the beginning so that he could create a more coherent whole. Now that he has instead started a completely different work [4] there is little chance that this scholar will give us a more satisfactory answer in the near future to the main question that keeps us occupied here. I mean this one: how do we explain the transition from the pre-Pauline to the Pauline phase in Christian theology when we hold the Hauptbriefe to be authentic? It would not be difficult for me to show that Renan’s view of Paul’s personality does not contain the desired answer, and that he has not been successful in giving us a clear and self-consistent picture of the Christian environment in which the apostle to the gentiles acted. For the moment it is enough to note two particulars. Firstly, Renan is forced to declare that the peculiarity of Paul’s person consisted of the combination of mutually contradictory qualities.[5] Secondly, the conclusion to his investigation concerning the Epistle to the Galatians is that the dispatch of this epistle to its destination can only be explained when we imagine the writer to be in a state of acute excitement which prevented him from calculating the consequences of this odd, indeed, incomprehensible, act.[6]
If one summarizes all which Renan has said about the two heroes of primitive Christianity, about "le doux Jésus" and "l’incomparable Apôtre", one feels involuntarily inclined to ask: does the author himself believe the reality, the historical reality, of the figures that he portrays in such a way for us? Art, undeniable art was required to model these figures, but the question is allowed, is urged upon us: is the material homogeneous? As far as I am concerned I do not doubt to answer this question in the negative and I dare to predict: let weather and wind, let rain and sunshine work on them for a while longer and these cleanly polished and elegantly formed sculptures will fall apart.
Endlessly more benefit I expect from the tough patience and iron diligence of those scholars who try to create an accurate picture of the time of Jesus and Paul from more reliable sources, even though for the time being they have barely dared to sketch the primary figures themselves. Yes, I consider it entirely typical for this phase of our historical inquiry that New Testament History has started to take its place as a dedicated field of study alongside Life of Jesus and History of the Apostolic Age, alongside New Testament Theology and Christian Archaeology.
I am deeply convinced that this field of historical labour will only be right and healthy when we shall be able to account entirely for the grounds of our faith in the historicity of both persons on which, as if on foundation piles, the whole building of ancient Christianity appears to be resting — Jesus and Paul. They still represent to us names with historical reality; we can imagine that they who we refer to with these names are still the same as they who in our childhood we gave the tribute of our solemn, almost idolizing worship. But with some reflection we have to acknowledge that along with the holy nimbus that enveloped those honorable figures in the past also many another peculiarity that distinguished them has fallen away for us, so that both those names in truth now call up entirely different images in our mind than in the past.
Criticism, continuing its work of sifting and separating assiduously, has wiped out one by one the Johannine features in the Jesus of our imagination, and likewise in the Paul of our imagination removed many a feature obtained from Luke. We didn’t stop there. We also had to remove the majority of the synoptic Jesus as ornaments added afterwards to the founder of Christianity. Likewise we had to bring the original theology of Paul down to rather more simple proportions and within more modest boundaries. Will we continue along this road of simplification or will we pause for a moment and looking around ask ourselves the question with greater seriousness than before: what of Jesus and Paul themselves remains for us in this history of the New Testament? Is it not as if the frame is becoming ever wider, increasingly rich in decorations, while the images that it encloses gradually lose their luster and expression?
In our investigation of the origin of Christianity the power of scientific consequence has been spreading for a long time now from the gospels to the Pauline Hauptbriefe. Will we be able to disguise for much longer that the Jesus who we at long last encounter in these Hauptbriefe does not in any way match the expectation that the extended critical investigation of the synoptic gospels has given us to understand about his person? Won’t the truth finally jump out at us that with these Hauptbriefe we find ourselves chronologically at a greater distance from the birth of Christianity than with the oldest components of our synoptics? Or should we say: "it is not allowed to make a determination about the chronological order of such disparate documents unless it is shown that the documents under comparison have emerged in the same environment"? But can’t we see that the Paul of the Hauptbriefe is even more difficult to explain in the context of Jesus' contemporaries and friends in which he is placed than the Jesus of the synoptics where he acts as teacher among the Jewish people? Don’t we see that this synoptic Jesus still wears more of the local color of the land in which he is placed than the Jesus who lives in the awareness of the the author of the Hauptbriefe?
Do I fool myself or have we been deaf until now to the great lesson that the dedicated practice of the history of the New Testament has preached to us: the fact that the Jewish documents do not contain anything which makes us suspect that between the year 30 and 70 events took place in Palestine which according to the witness of the New Testament should have caused a great excitement in all hearts there? When we take a careful look at the course which the critical investigation of the synoptic gospels has taken; when we in particular pay attention to the increasingly widely accepted notion that these gospels only took the form in which we posses them now around halfway through the second century; when we further consider that this canonical form must have been preceded by a series of earlier forms of which the oldest is not much earlier than the end of the first century: then it becomes clear to us that the synoptic tradition could take shape and develop in such a way without much firm and precise data from the time before 70 at its root. It becomes comprehensible that we hear the synoptic Jesus speak at times with the perspective of those who had experienced the great catastrophe in the year 70.
But in this way it’s shown to us as well how careful we have to be when we make use of these gospels to try to determine the events in Palestine that took place forty years earlier. If we have in the Jewish writings of the first century a fairly complete picture of the political and religious situation in Palestine during that time, then we are forced to declare that the impression of the situation that the New Testament and in particular the synoptic and Pauline literature give us cannot have been taken from reality. More carefully than before we have to take into account the background that is implied by the Hauptbriefe. When in them we find ourselves placed in a world of specifically Christian communal life with clearly expressed forms of richly developed theological thought, we should not forcefully push back the thought of a possible later origin of the epistles. Of course we are still obligated to provide the evidence that a later dating of these epistles is not blocked by substantial objections. In other words, we need to show that we can give these epistles a place in a later period: the post-Apostolic age.
Bruno Bauer has already tried, as is known, to provide this evidence in 1850-1852. His criticism of the Pauline Hauptbriefe reminds us of what happened with the Probabilia of Bretschneider about the gospel of John in the year 1820. If we take into account the quality of the latter work we have to declare without hesitation: these Probabilia deserved a better reception than they received in the first 25 years, even from impartial scholars. But who can blame Bretschneider’s contemporaries that they did not let themselves be immediately convinced of the unsustainability of the generally shared opinion on the gospel of John? Did not the author of this modest polemic submit his booklet to the critical judgment of his colleagues with a certain anxious reservation and without an appearance of self-confidence? Moreover, did he not soon after publication retract his Probabilia as guesses that were too bold and entirely unsatisfactorily motivated?
As far as Bruno Bauer is concerned: he has certainly not retracted any of his suggested objections, more so, he has rather given the evidence of his unchanged view in this, although only through sparse communications. On the other hand he has done little or nothing to supply further explanation that would give his schematic and cursory treatise more substance and significance. This way, in our view, his criticism gradually received the same character of prematurity as did the criticism of the gospel of John before the time of F.C. Baur. One can think of three reasons to explain the smaller influence of Bruno Bauer’s work. Firstly the attack on the authenticity of these epistles of Paul had not been prepared by previous criticism, while even at the end of the last century concerns had already been expressed about the fourth gospel.[7] Secondly Bruno Bauer’s criticism severely lacked the recommendation of a nice manner that so pleasantly distinguished Bretschneider’s booklet.[8] Finally the method applied appeared to be of a kind that did not promise a profitable discussion to any scholarly opponents.
Let’s consider this last and most important point for a moment. In which way is Bruno Bauer’s method peculiar? Indeed this author does proceed in an unabashed manner that’s as astonishing as it is entertaining. He simply assumes, or should I say decrees, the spuriousness of all New Testament documents and in particular all of the Pauline epistles. Armed with this hypothesis as if it’s the clearest magnifying glass, he goes through the documents he discusses so he can specifically occupy you with thoughts and expressions which appear to be useful in the interest of proving them spurious. Without question this new light in which he shows you these old documents is highly surprising. Continuously you exclaim: but I had never read that in my Paul! Often however this criticism gives you the impression of gruff contrarianism; too often the style of argument appears partial. The irregularities in the style and argumentation of Paul take on the appearance of insurmountable obstacles; the contradictions and inconsistencies expand to nonsensical non sequiturs; the apostle becomes in turn a thoughtless declaimer and an insufferable hierarch.
On the other hand in this merciless critic you miss what you would look for in the first place: for example the evidence that the epistles are not consistent with their presumed circumstances; that such a Paul cannot be understood at such a short distance to the life of Jesus, and so on. You also look in vain for the explanation of the course of the old Christian life and thought as a whole, with an indication of how these pseudepigraphs fit in the writings of the early Christian era. In short this criticism is too dialectical and polemical, too negatively skeptical, too subjectively arbitrary. And no wonder! The author did not consider it useful to explain to you how this Paulinism relates to the original Christianity, how it arose from it, and how it connects to the later old-Catholic literary-ecclesiastical movement. Just as little did he discuss the contemporaneous development of thought and ideals in the Jewish world so that he did not even investigate how the theology of the Hauptbriefe relates to that of Alexandrian and Palestinian Judaism.
If you let yourself be lead by him, then it is as if you are transported from a well-known and hospitable place into savage wilds under an open sky, where it’s impossible to orient yourself. It’s not a tempting prospect. You would fear that what awaits you there will hardly outweigh that which your haughty guide forces you to give up. This is why you’re unwilling to listen to his discourses, which after all only betray their intent to raise in you a certain spirit of general skepticism, and to spoil your enjoyment of many a document from antiquity which has thus far been highly treasured. With a "Begone, Satan!" you say goodbye to this unsympathetic critic, determined to pay attention to him no more.
But have we thereby done full justice to this opponent of the canonical Paul? I don’t believe so. I myself don’t regret having taken up and thoroughly examined this seemingly settled case again, this so-called stillborn product of hypercriticism. Along with Pierson’s remarks about the first two chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians that we have repeatedly mentioned before, Bruno Bauer’s concerns have alerted me to a thus far much neglected side of the historical problem that is presented to us in the Pauline epistles. I paid special attention to what I would like to call the actuality, or also the real situation, or background reality of these epistles. I tried to understand the epistles as letters — that is as a means of practicing community between a certain writer and his particular readers. Above all I attempted to characterize the personal affairs and relations that were implied and described here. When I had in this way designed a vivid image of the reality in which these documents place us, I then compared this reality with the data supplied to me by other sources about the moral-religious life in the Jewish world during the time in which the historical Paul lived and worked. And each time the conclusion of my consideration was that our canonical Pauline epistles do not belong in this period.
I continuously had to ask myself this question: why had my predecessors, with the exception of Bruno Bauer and A. Pierson, arrived at a completely different result and had stuck to it? I obtained mainly this answer: they had assumed the extraordinary as rule and the remarkable as touchstone, because they moved in a vicious circle. They sought to simultaneously explain what was extraordinary in the person of Paul by what was extraordinary about his time and environment, and conversely what was extraordinary about the time of Paul by the extraordinary genius of the personality of Paul. I express perhaps myself more clearly when I say: they did not look seriously for an explanation as they were used to taking the extraordinary as self-evident and natural — indeed as the only thing thinkable and possible.
In the field of historical investigation as well as in the physical sciences we are always exposed to the danger of searching for leverage on the uncertain ground of an axiom that is nothing more than an insufficiently examined tradition or hypothesis. And twice greater is this danger when we deal with so-called sacred history and we come into contact with persons or events that in our circle are always to be approached with special reverence. This reverence of many is to us an imposing power and we do not call into question its legitimacy without special reason. And yet, our respect for this power should stay within boundaries. After all it is a great error to think that the discovery of a literary fiction in the area of so-called sacred history would be harmful to the religious faith which should be dear to us above all as one of the most precious parts of life.
Small and narrow-minded souls have shaken at the thought of the loss that they would suffer if their faith in the historical reality of the Jesus of the gospel of John were taken away. Small and narrow-minded souls shiver and shudder when they eventually come to learn that it is not much better with faith in the reality of the synoptic Jesus. For a long time Tübingen criticism was condemned as a contamination dangerous to piety for its rejection of the great majority of the Pauline epistles, and was avoided by most Christian theologians. What will happen if they hear that not only the fatherly friend and pleasant counselor of the Pastoral epistles, not only the gallant and smug dogmatic of the other Deutero-Pauline epistles, but also the eminently important and vibrant figure who speaks to us from the Pauline Hauptbriefe cannot be something other than the product of ecclesiastical forgery? Certainly then we will, at least in the beginning, hear nothing but "boundless skepticism and criminal hypercriticism!" Even among liberal scholars we won’t lack for those who will observe this iconoclasm with concern and speak, shaking their heads, about the lack of piety for the heroes of Christian antiquity.
But the cloud of dismay will pass. Careful judgment will gain the upper hand. The hero cult will be cleansed of that which was exaggerated and one-sided. Our religious faith will gain from knowledge of antiquity. The historical reality cleared from fiction and appearances will serve us better in our striving for the highest ideals than the sweetest illusions and the prejudices that are most appealing to our imagination. Finally it will be clear to us that Christianity was not created by the few persons glorified into half-gods who are described as its founders by the scripture of our Christian church, but by the united forces of many pious and noble people whose true history was never described and after all, has remained until now almost entirely unknown to us.
Substantial progress in our knowledge of the origin of Christianity can only take place when in our investigation of the sources we follow the example of painters who, to get a proper impression of the effect of their artwork, regularly break off their work and take a few steps away from their canvas so that they can see the piece they are creating from a greater distance. When we stand too close to the figures that are portrayed in the New Testament and when we immerse ourselves too much in their individual and personal aspects, we will pass by a lot of what distinguishes them as types embedded in that time, and in that people, and in that cultural and religious context — that which is is the most important for our knowledge of history. When we regularly shift our perspective when we reconstruct a scene in our mind, we will be better able to understand these heroes. Only this way we can develop critical adroitness. Without it, we cannot make judgments with any certainty about the historical veracity of our New Testament documents. Without it, we cannot decrease the power of tradition over us to its proper proportions. So often have we thought that New Testament criticism had reached the outer borders of negation and that what was left as undisputed could be considered safe as a solid ground to construct the building of our historical knowledge of Christian origins, until continued investigation convinced us that this negation should be pushed further.
This is how it went with the investigation of the Pauline Hauptbriefe. The information about Paul collected in the New Testament made it necessary to separate and distinguish more reliable documents from less reliable ones. But once the choice between derived and direct, between forged and authentic document had been made, the value of that which was found to be genuine and proven was felt more strongly and was more difficult to call into question. Where voices like that of Straatman at home and of Weisse abroad spoke of extensive interpolation and thus hinted of forgery in these genuine Pauline epistles, most of us felt more shock and dismay than actual interest in truly getting acquainted with the concerns that what were advanced. The idea that it was allowed to slash around with pruning knife in these sacred woods and groves as freely as in the lush jungle of secular writers was certainly annoying. It seemed to us that these presumed emendations only arose from misestimation of the completely extraordinary in form and content which distinguished the products of this entirely unique and original mind. Did it make sense to apply the touchstone of normal style and conventional logic where everything gave evidence of great and elevated conceptions? Was it not evidence of a petty argumentativeness to want to remove irregularities when they were unbreakably connected to the genius of this deep thinker, of this driven hero of faith?
But what does this whole argument come down to, looking at it properly? This Paul, we used to think, was an entirely extraordinary man and that’s why he is not bound, in his thought and acts or in his letter-writing, by the laws that apply to ordinary humans. If here and there the jumps in his reasoning seem noticeably sudden and precarious, the transitions in mood and emotions abrupt and peculiar: no wonder! That’s typically Paul, after all. But when we see unusual motives in other writers we do not reject a priori the possibility of interpolation.
Equipped with such tools, it’s incredible how far one can get in the explanation of the epistles of Paul. If the exegete has specialized in the dissection and combination of theological concepts, he can point to cohesion where the ordinary reader thought he saw the opposite. If on the other hand interpreter has made a special study of psychology then he can see in exactly those strange jumps and transitions the evidence that you have caught nature red handed. Of course it is the nature of a very extraordinary man; extraordinary especially because of his lively, mobile, erratic and humorous personality which he, in his naive and guileless way, instantly and unmistakably reveals in his artless pieces of art.[9]
In truth: once the person of Paul has emerged from these epistles with all his imposing peculiarity — that living ensemble of religious notions, emotions and motives to which we are used to ascribe historical reality — then it is relatively easy to resign ourselves to accept many an inexplicable detail that seems to disrupt unity and cohesion. And we can resign ourselves more quickly to these inconcinnities when we consider firstly that these epistles are the only documents that are witnesses to the events discussed in them, and secondly that besides his many eminent gifts the writer had little to no literary talent. These two features lead us to demand rather little in the way of unity and cohesion from this writer.
Who can say whether very extraordinary events and very peculiar circumstances did not force him to deviate from the normal path in places, to suddenly cut short his train of thought, and in that way have the appearance of inconsistency and internal contradiction to us, the uninformed? What do we really know about the situation in Galatia, in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Corinth, in Rome, where the first readers of these epistles lived? Who can tell us what disruptive influences were at work when these epistles were created, and who ensures us that the Apostle was not just easily distracted when he was writing correspondence? Enough: when we start with the assumption that the person who wrote these Epistles was none other than the eventually to be world-famous man of Tarsus whose life was a sequence of the most striking transitions, the most touching meetings, the most painful trials, the most memorable acts of heroism, then we are not merely prepared to encounter odd phenomena that deviate from the normal course of events but we will in fact consider the peculiar and unusual to be only fitting and natural.
It does not appear to be superfluous to take this moment to point out a few facts that were taken from the history of criticism of Paul. The things the practitioners of this scholarship described as natural and plausible! How was it possible that for centuries they managed to build up a biography of Paul and a system of Pauline theology from the most heterogeneous components of the New Testament? What self-confidence was on display when harmonizers obtained the same Paul from the story of Acts as from the 13 or 14 Pauline epistles! For how long did they believe in the Paulinism of the 13 epistles as the product of a single religious thinker! We who have the advantage of the lessons of Semler, Baur and Zeller consider it impossible that scholarship would ever return to the thankless task of constructing the historical Paul and his theology from the 13 canonical Pauline epistles and Acts as if these were all equally authentic documents.
But meanwhile as long as men such as Pfleiderer and Hilgenfeld, to name no further names, cannot be satisfied with just the four epistles that were rescued from the Tübingen fire, it won’t surprise us much that a critic like Bruno Bauer found no one who would listen to his concerns about the authenticity of these four. Doesn’t it seem eminently wise to avoid bringing forth new questions as long as we have not yet dealt with the old ones? What, one can ask, is the true power of the criticism of Baur? What is the only fixed positive starting point in this destructive movement? What else than the very impressive image and the clearly marked aspect of the Paul of the four Hauptbriefe? If we reject this salt as tasteless, what shall we use as salt? If we doubt the purity of the gold that has appeared from the Tübingen crucible, where then can we go to discover the real Paul?
When we carefully consider the present state of the Pauline question we have to note a few facts from which it can be shown that the authenticity and integrity of the supposedly authentic epistles is indeed not an axiom, even for scholars who do not want to go along with Bruno Bauer. I am thinking of the last chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, about the question of the 3rd Epistle to the Corinthians in connection to the Four Chapter Hypothesis of Hausrath. But I also think about the still unresolved matter of the origin of the Christian community in Rome and how we should characterize the readers to whom our canonical Epistle to the Romans was addressed. Finally I am also thinking of the newest debates among the exegetes and their mounting disagreement about the meaning of Galatians 2.[10]
This all points at a haze that prevents us from penetrating into Apostolic antiquity. With some consideration other important questions appear which are directed connected to the interpretation of the four Hauptbriefe if indeed we take them as utterances by the same Paul. Seen from a great distance, a group of mountains can appear as a single mountainous mass. What will be the result of our investigation if we look at the four epistles from close up and properly take into account the spirit that emanates from each one, the historical background that they presuppose, the relationship of the writers to Judaism and paganism and so on? Everyone knows that the writer of Romans is rather more friendly towards Jews and Jewish Christians than the writer of Galatians. It is also well-known that the tone towards the Pillars, or put otherwise, the "excessively great" apostles that is struck in the Epistle to the Galatians as well as in 2nd Corinthians sounds hard and sharp whereas 1st Corinthians has an atmosphere of reconciliation and tolerance towards the men after which those in Corinth named themselves as not "of Paul". It would not do to call into question the identity of these writers on the ground of this one difference. But if we take into consideration what value is attached in these documents to apostleship as a mandate of Christ then as soon as we seriously start to ask ourselves who or what Paul was according to these ancient documents, we would have to recognize that this difference is important enough to deserve our attention.
End of part I of the Prolegomena; translation of part II is in preparation