is a matter of its style and content. Both argue for its belonging to the latter part of the first century. It has been said that in the letters of Paul the arguments move like a mountain brook, jumping and bubbling in a rapid flow. By contrast, in Ephesians the presentation moves ponderously and slowly like a river in a plain. The sentences are extremely long with numerous dependent clauses and repetitive grandeur. It represents the beginnings of liturgical pomposity.
The content of To the Ephesians also differs significantly with that of Paul’s writings. Rather than to have the future Parousia (the public appearance of an enthroned Christ) as its focus, it is satisfied with life within the church built on the foundation of the apostles. Paul would never agree to a foundation other than Christ. For him, the apostles are only slaves of Christ. The purpose of the letter is to promote church unity. Thus, it evinces the transition of Christianity from a movement to an ecclesiastical phenomenon.
The Pastoral Epistles, To Timothy I, To Timothy II and To Titus, also belong to the same period and represent the beginnings of an ecclesiastical institution with hierarchical officials. Even if their style is more like that of Paul, the content deals with situations quite unknown at the time of Paul. In Paul’s time, Christianity was not yet firmly distinguished from Judaism, and women were quite prominent in the leadership of the house churches.
To the Thessalonians II is considered by many to have been written by someone other than Paul primarily because of its view of the Parousia. While in To the Thessalonians I the Parousia is expected to take place momentarily, certainly when both Paul and the addressees are still alive, in To the Thessalonians II the emphasis is a warning against expecting that the Parousia will take place any time soon. Also the tone of these letters is quite different. While in the first Paul addresses the Thessalonians in the most tender and familiar terms, picturing himself as both their mother and their father, in the second the author uses rather stern imposing language.
The letter on which the scholarly opinion is most balanced between those in favor and those opposed to its having been written by Paul is To the Colossians. I agree with those who conclude that it was not written by Paul. My reasons are quite simple. In the first place, the letter is an argument against those teachers who make Christianity a kind of mystery cult in which, by means of ascetic practices that follow prescribed rules and regulations, individuals ascend to the heavenly spheres ruled by the “elemental spirits of the world” and participate in worship with angels. In other words, it has to do with the need to attain to perfection by self-denial in order to travel through the spheres. As most students recognize, the subject matter is somewhat similar to that which Paul deals with in To the Galatians, which also refers to the “elemental spirits of the world” in reference to “works of law” (Gal. 3:14; 4:3). Dealing with this question in To the Galatians Paul enters into a full discussion of the nature and the function of Torah, the law, in order to show the error of those teaching that such endeavors are necessary. In the letter To the Colossians there is not one single allusion, much less a reference to Torah. The argument is based on the wording of an early Christian hymn instead. Besides, circumcision, the identity mark of Judaism which is repeatedly relativized by Paul in To the Galatians, To the Romans, and To the Corinthians I, plays a central role as a metaphor for the crucifixion in To the Colossians. The death of Christ on the cross, rather than being the death of the humanity descended from Adam, is the circumcision that perfects the body of the universe, which is, in fact, the body of Christ. In turn the baptism of Christians is the circumcision that perfects them. In Paul’s letters the body of Christ is not the Pleroma, the fullness of all things in the universe, but the community of those baptized into his death and resurrection. Paul’s vision is sociological and historical, while the universe of To the Colossians is esoteric and cosmic.
It must be recognized, of course, that the judgment that a particular book of the New Testament was not written by Paul does not in any way reflect on its canonical authority or its inspiration. Not all the books of the New Testament were written by Paul, of course, and we do not know the identity of the writers of many of the biblical books, most significantly of the authors of the four gospels. The issue here is determining which books may be used to paint a picture of the thought of Paul.
Those who use all of the fourteen books ascribed to Paul as evidence for a presentation of Paul’s thought, defend their position by arguing that with the passage of time Paul grew in understanding and thus his thought evolved with experience and maturation. It is absolutely true that we all grow and mature in our thinking and that we do not necessarily see things in the same way when we are twenty and when we are sixty years old. In the case of Paul, however, two things militate against the view that his writings reflect maturation and growth with experience. One is that the ministry of Paul did not last forty years. His first letter is usually dated around the year 50 CE, and he died around the year 62 CE, thus his writings come from a twelve year period of his life. The other is that the evidence I have outlined above does not show development, but at best significant differences and at worst contradictions.
On the basis of the above considerations, my meditations will draw from the seven letters I am confident came from him. Of course, most probably Paul did not actually write any of them. His practice was to dictate them to one of his associates. At the end of To the Romans, Tertius, “the writer of this letter” (Rom. 16:22), sends greetings to the addressees. At the conclusion of To the Corinthians I, we read: “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand” (1 Cor. 16:21). Apparently, this endorsement came to be used by those who wrote pseudonymously. The sentence appears at the end of To the Colossians and of To the Thessalonians II. In the latter case, it adds: “This is the mark in every letter of mine; It is the way I write” (Col. 4:18; 2 Th. 3:17). If that were true, with the exception of To the Corinthians I, none of his actual letters were written by him. To the Galatians is without a doubt the letter which Paul wrote in a state of extreme agitation. Apparently, after having dictated the body of the letter, he took the stylus and the papyrus from the scribe and wrote himself 6:11 – 18, giving a concise summary of his gospel as the proclamation of a new creation and ending with a rather abrupt dismissal of his opponents. This section begins with the words, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.” Apparently Paul’s calligraphy was not up to par.
Another important factor to be taken into account is that we do not possess any of the original letters. The earliest manuscripts in our possession come from the latter part of the second century, and they are only fragments of letters. We have full texts from the middle of the third century on. Besides, the letters were sent to different churches. After having been read at their meeting, they were stored we know not where or how. At the time Paul was not considered a prominent Christian personality, and it is clear that some of the letters evoked strong negative reactions. Certainly Paul wrote letters that were lost in antiquity. In To the Corinthians I, he refers to a letter written to the Corinthians sometime before (1 Cor. 5:9).
Most likely, what brought Paul to the attention of Early Christianity was the publication of Acts of the Apostles, where Paul is presented as the thirteenth disciple and the pioneer of the mission to the Gentiles. Whoever took it upon himself to collect and publish his letters sometime after that, remains unknown. The collector and publisher missed some letters and edited fragments of letter as a single letter. Thus, To the Corinthians II consists of several fragments that have been pieced together. The same may be the case of To the Philippians, which seems to consist of two fragments. Scholars also consider possible that whoever collected and published the letters, or another hand, may have added a phrase or two here and there. While I recognize that we have letters that went through a process of collecting and editing some thirty years after they were written, my purpose is not to reconstruct their history but to understand the thought of Paul through them. Still, in my meditations I will take into account the possibility of additions to the authentic letters by a later hand. These factors do not in the least diminish my admiration and respect for Paul as I endeavor to put the results of my struggles with them into clear, comprehensible, simple, language.
In my meditations I had to bridge three gaps: the language gap, the culture gap, and the time gap. In the first place there is a language gap. It
