Let's help biblical scholars - Paul's letters

[JarekS]

You are right - the conclusion is incorrect because it is poorly formulated. I have shown that Paul's letters could not have been transmitted in the original original Corpus of 7 epistles. Because there is no transition from such a Corpus to the Corpus from the year 100CE.
It's time to move on to the script Zuntz drew.
According to Zuntz, Paul's letters travel independently. Each of them is copied and edited separately.
Only 40 years after Paul's death, someone, as a result of research, collects 10 letters from different places for the first time and uses them to create the first Pauline Corpus.

It's hard for me to imagine such a process. Here is a team in distant, unknown places looking for traces of someone whom no one remembers. In addition, it is incredibly effective - no one has ever managed to find any other original letter from Paul. It is one thing to find the entire Corpus in one place and another thing to search for its components over a large area. Again, we have the problem of contradictory interpolations. How did they get to the the same letter?
This is all too complicated to be true.
In the narrative layer, the letters represent an invented tradition. Their task is to create the central figure of Christianity - the Great Apostle. Paul failed to achieve the position in Christianity that Muhammad achieved in Islam. The creation of the evangelical Jesus did not allow this.

[StephenGoranson]

If I may suggest, the one-source (imposed? modern?) product drop model in early Christianity does not persuasively take into account the long negotiations about the various-located accretions of text toward a canon, more or less, but not entirely, shared by Christians.

[JarekS]

We have three theoretically possible scenarios:
1. there was some original 7-letter Corpus that was transmitted and changed towards the first historical 10-letter Corpus
2. specific epistles were transmitted separately and were subject to subsequent editions, supplements and interpolations. They were first collected in 100 CE
3. there was no original circulation of epistles. The 100CE Corpus is a work of literature for transmitting teaching and creating historical policy. It was created immediately before its publication
The first 2 scenarios are simply improbable. If there had been any continuity of tradition associated with Paul, there would have been a chance to take it into account. The letters from 100 CE appear from a black hole 40-60 years after their supposed creation.
Let's take Goethe's epistolary novel - Werther's letters are as convincing as Paul's. If we didn't know their real author and their history, we wouldn't know whether they are authentic or a work of literature.
Biblical studies have no competence in distinguishing between a true tradition and an invented one based solely on the text, without additional information. And these are not there. BTW. The Lord of the Rings is full of them.
A similar situation is with the letters of Ignatius of Antioch. Biblical scholars talk about authentic and false letters. They have no basis. The fact that some letters were written by one author and the rest by different authors does not provide grounds for claiming that they are authentic or inauthentic. All of them may be inauthentic.
Literature written by ghostwriters is developed by others not because it was authentic, but because it was popular and successful.

[StephenGoranson]

I suggest that it is a false dichotomy to claim that literature is either "authentic" or "popular and successful."
There are other collections of letters--and history books--that are both.
If I understand your writing correctly, you posit--in order to "help biblical scholars," as if they are a different species--one bible-product factory.
Who? When?
In what one place?
Again, your proposal does not seem to address the debates on the--gradual--formation of a largely-accepted, though not universally-accepted and defined, canon.

[JarekS]

"Help biblical scholars" means convincing them to create a multidisciplinary team that will cover additional criteria in areas such as organizational management, content management, mass market requirements, publishers-editors-ghostwriters. Teach techniques such as benchmarking.
The way they look at Marcion results from the lack of their own experience - no biblical scholar has managed a network of branches scattered over a large area or fought for the leadership of the movement. They deal with Marcion the theologian as if it mattered.
In many cases they try to give answers that are beyond their competences. Because they are not taught this at the faculties of theology, history, philology or biblical studies. I am not competing with biblical scholars because I am committed to them - I only use different criteria to evaluate their work

[StephenGoranson]

Again, JarekS, you posit two groups, you/us versus "biblical scholars."
And you did not answer any of my questions, above-- who, when, where, single source?
I think it is fair to say that, in some sense, many here are, in some broad definition, "biblical scholars."
Maybe some here identify with one or more of these: minimalist, atheist, agnostic, materialist, behaviorist, reductionist (in the philosophical sense), heretic, infidel, etc.
If so, your offer to "help" the "other" side might be a rookie move.

[JarekS]

I am not a biblical scholar, just a reader. And I guess all of us. I don't add anything to biblical scholarship. I only find illegitimate questions and unjustified answers there. I used to be only a fan of Ehrman, Price, Detering, Ludemann, Crossan,... and I still am, but eventually I found it more fun to ask questions in the areas I know about - content management and project management. Supplement the knowledge of biblical scholars with complementary elements.
And don't let your opinion be imposed on issues where biblical scholars are not specialists. I am not attacking the knowledge of biblical scholars and their professionalism. I attack their ignorance in areas they don't know anything about and yet they deign to comment on them.
I'm having fun - it's a form of entertainment and it's nothing more to me. I simply like it

[StephenGoranson]

JarekS, you have proposed that the NT, or most of it, was "content" produced by one source.

Could you further specify that proposed source?
When?
Where?
Why does it appear to many people, of various backgrounds, that there were differing views, not a unified one?

[JarekS]

Josephus wrote his works between 75 CE and 100 CE during the collapse of the Herodian order, which involved the gradual Hellenization and Romanization of Palestine. The takeover of the Temple and Jerusalem by the insurgents and the intervention of the Flavians were the beginning of the transition from a local conflict to a conflict throughout the Eastern Empire. A time of decline is always a time of flourishing of sectarianism, especially among the poorest classes, which are subjected to a severe test of survival in such times. The elites failed, the system collapsed, and the authorities were blamed for all misfortunes. Various critics of the current state of affairs - prophets, rebels - gained popularity. Frightened communities are susceptible to apocalyptic messages and at the same time expect some hope. The Hellenistic followers of Judaism were particularly frightened because they sat astride the barricade between the Greek pagans and the Jews, hated by both groups.
One reader of the works of a Jewish historian was inspired by all these fallen rebels and sign prophets and by Josephus' prefigurative techniques connecting these people with the heroes of the Bible. He thought it was a great idea to use such a hero from the past and present it to the public after renovation. And since the Hero lost in life, our creative made sure that he won after death through Resurrection.
The idea caught on, people responded well to the story, but it was just a short recruiting story. It became necessary to develop a whole lot of maintenance content that would maintain the recipient's interest in the long term. In addition, a manual was needed that would turn every ardent but average neophyte into an efficient missionary using well-thought-out, well-developed material prepared for him.
This is how the Paul project was created - the first legendary apostle to whom the resurrected Jesus appeared in a revelation. Paul as a Model for an Army of Average Missionaries Paul was placed in the past, his teaching confined to the letters. All this in the formula of religious revelation known since time immemorial, i.e. an experience so personal that it cannot be verified. The letters were written around 100 CE as a kind of epistolary novel. Where? In Rome.
When offering Paul, the missionaries realized that people expected information from Jesus himself, which no one had prepared so far.
And so the commission was created to develop the earthly Jesus from the rudimentary version in Josephus to the 4th gospel. They were created in parallel, in a short time in Rome, immediately after Pauline Corpus.
Both Pauline Corpus and the Gospels are the works of editorial teams working on behalf of the publisher. We will never know his identity.
The first testimony for both the Pauline Corpus and the Gospel of Acts is 1 Clem. Dated by most biblical scholars to 97 CE but first confirmed around 170 CE.
I can imagine that these few years between Ant and 1 Clem may seem short to readers accustomed to biblical scholars' reflections on the alleged 10 years separating the gospels and epistles.
It's absolutely enough.