From: ricko@ee.uts.edu.au (Rick Jelliffe)
Subject: Re: CHRIST WAS JUST A MAN !!!!
Organization: University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 11:17:55 GMT
Keywords: CHRIST

markc@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU () writes:

>markc@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU () writes:

>>The book presnts what is essentially mainstream New Testament scholarship.

>>A few of the conclusions are
>>5) The two epistles of Peter could not have been written by the apostle Peter
>>and whoever wrote the letters to Timothy and Titus was not the person who
>>wrote the letters to the Romans, Galatians and Corinthians (indisputably
>>St Paul)
>Ricko replies:

>>>Did you see the interesting article in comp.religion.christian
>>>about the discovery of fragments of (I?) Timothy from the first
>>>century. According to the article, it turns mainstream
>>>New Testament scholarship on its head.

>I would be interested to see how the discovery could turn mainstream NT
>scholarship on its head. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about
>what NT scholarship actually does. Not all of it is hostile to traditional
>christianity. Some of it is actually supportive. 

I should have put that in quote marks, the article I was roughly quoting 
didn't mean ALL scholarship is tossed out.  Here's a quote from 
the Catholic "30 days" magazine article (I can't print more, its copyright).
From "The Words Crushed by a Fragment", from the 30DAYS #4 issue of
1991.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 quotation from Dr. Thiede that 30DAYS highlighted in the article:

    It is no longer just a working hypothesis that fragment 7Q4 comes
    from Paul's first letter to Timothy, but a certainty.  Even those
    who doubt that the Qumran caves may contain a fragment of Mark's
    gospel are admitting that this latest could be a definitive find.

...

It all started in 1807 when the philosopher Friedrich Schieiermacher
denied the authenticity of the first letter to Timothy, thus clearing
the way for many rationalist and Protestant scholars (including
Holtzmann, Bultmann and Barret in this century) who negated Pauline
authorship for the other two letters as well, on the basis of what was
called "internal criticism".

...

THIEDE: There are experts who have always refused to accept the
identification of 7Q5 with a fragment of Mark's gospel because they
can't believe that there can have been a Gospel text at Qumran.  Now
there is one of them, extremely famous, with a world-wide reputation,
who has recently stated that for papyrological reasons 7Q4 may really
be First Timothy.  I am referring to Professor Emil Puech, one of the
five people in charge of the team supervising all the work at Qumran
This is an enormous step forward, since of course Puech is aware that
this discovery will cause a tremendous upheaval in the exegesis of the
pastoral epistles.  And he also knows that such an identification is
in strident conflict with the prevalent view of the date and
authenticity of this letter. 

... blah blah blah ...

That means that it was written while St. Paul was still alive, since
we know he was killed between 64 and 67 AD.  Naturally that doesn't
prove that Paul wrote it, there are serious exegetical problems
involved.  Nevertheless, it was written either by him or by his
secretary, Silvanus, or by someone else named in the New Testament.
St. Paul may well have said: 'Silvanus, write to Timothy'.  But that
is just a hypothesis, plausible as it is.  What is important is that
the fragment proves that the epistle was written while Paul was still
alive.

... blah blah blah ...

 The people
who wrote them were there when things happened, what they write is
based on what they saw, lived, heard, experienced.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

>The real problem that 
>NT scholarship has raised is the question " Just how much christian doctrine
>is actually supported by the texts and the historical evidence"? 

But it is one thing to say, "this look different, I wonder why?", and another
thing to say "this looks different, I deem it to be not what it pupports to be",
don't you think? One is legitimate scientific enquiry, the other is 
pride, IMHO.

> An example: Sacred tradition asserts that Mathew was the first
>gospel written, hence its position in most bibles. Yet the great majority of
>NT scholars have accepted for a century that, at least in the form we have
>them, Mark's gospel must have been written first. A fact which has profound 
>implications for questions of authorship and authenticity.

I would say that a methodology that asserts speculations as facts has 
non-profound flaws. For instance, is there any evidence that could positively
rule out traditional views on Matthew? Intermediate or variant forms can't
(they would just show that they exist, not that Matthew didn't at that time),
and absense of archaeological evidence doesn't either. If you all one is 
really left with is weight of opinion rather than anything tangible,
and it then becomes a question of trusting Saints or career academics,
to be brutal.

Perhaps to experts in the field it is clear that it involves
well-educated guesswork, and of a different level of credibility to 
the falsifiable and testable theories in the hard sciences, but 
since it actually announces positive statements that do have a 
real effect on peoples' perception of the Scriptures perhaps 
statements about "mainstream New Testament scholarship" in a popular forum 
like aus.religion should have a disclaimer like:

-Note: if you are not qualified to weigh the evidence for these assertions,
-do not trust them or let them deter you. 

Please don't flame me, I'm not
saying there is anything necessarily anti-Christian in or to be
feared from historical and scientific study of the Scriptures.

-ricko
Newsgroups: aus.religion