Saul ⟶ Paul in 1 Samuel 9:21

[Giuseppe]

I have the Brodie book not a pdf version so I'm not going to spend my day typing.......

I also, and I am sure that in it Brodie never writes about the 'small' references in 1 Samuel. This doesn't mean that he was unaware about them, since a banal apologetical fundamentalist site in internet knows them.

[maryhelena]

It seems therefore that Neil is correct: the idea of 'smallness' has ruled the author of Acts from the beginning, and accordingly he found, by coincidence, a 'least' in the OT Saul. It is a FACT.

What is a POSSIBILITY: that the same idea of 'smallness' had ruled Marcion from the beginning, by moving him to call 'Paul' the author of the epistles collected by him (corollary: Paul never existed).

In both the cases, a Paul existed already before Acts introduced Saul.

Yep, the literary figure of Paul would have 'existed' before Acts. Acts simply added more grist to the mill...

[Giuseppe]

Small Change: Saul to Paul, Again
Sean M. McDonough

note 2 reads:

In 1 Sam 15:17 Samuel chastises Saul, telling him that prior to his ascension to the throne Saul had considered himself "small in his own eyes"

(cursive original)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27638366?r ... b_contents

[Giuseppe]

“Given that there is a change from Saul, a new question arises: What is the significance of the new name ‘Paul’?” This interpretive tendency has deep historical roots. For example, Schaff summarizes the state of Lukan scholarship in the midnineteenth century: “The motive for adopting [Paul] in place of Saul is still a subject of dispute.” Craig Keener echoes this line of inquiry in the second decade of the twenty-first century with a subheading in his Acts commentary, “Why the Name ‘Paul’?,” as if this were Luke’s decision rather than historical reality.

quoted from:
Better Call Paul “Saul”: Literary Models and a Lukan Innovation
michael kochenash

in a note, the author felt (apologetically?) the need of pointing out:

Keener, Acts, 2:2019. There is no doubt, of course, that Keener accepts the name Paul as historical.

(my bold)

[Giuseppe]

It is incredible how the so-called "scholars" of Acts assume a priori that the historical Paul was named truly Saul.
For example, a proposition as this is surprising on the mouth of a scholar:

Even Murphy-O’Connor ultimately concludes, “Attractive as is this hypothesis, it is not likely that Luke invented the name of Saul.”

Really???!

[Giuseppe]

At any case, Neil, you are the first (in the entire history of the world) who claims that the author of Acts had chosen Saul not because the latter persecuted/preceded David, but because he found 'least' in 1 Samuel 15:17 referred to Saul.

[neilgodfrey]

What movent is more probable in the mind of the author of Acts:

• 1: "I see that the marcionites adore a guy named Paul. To judaize him, I go to search in the OT uniquely for a guy named "least" and so I find Saul, who coincidentially is both a figure of persecutor and precursor of David. Hence, I equate Paul and Saul".

• 2: "I want to introduce an example of ideal Christian apostle among the gentiles, one who is a moderate gentilizer and not a radical gentilizer, in order to appeal to him against marcionites. I go to search for a figure of persecutor and precursor in the OT and so I find a Saul; then I find, as a marginal detail, that Saul is called "the least", hence I invent Saul/Paul."

It seems to me that 2 is more probable than 1.

I have no reason to think that Paul was a historical figure -- that's not part of what I am suggesting. But the Paul character/figure was known to the author of Acts before he wrenched him away from "the heretics" and planted him in the genealogy of "proto-orthodoxy", including his Judaizing 'midrashic' flourish of giving him the Saul background. Dubourg builds way too much on the Saul identity and undermines his own argument in so doing -- he finds analogies with Saul that can only have relevance to "Paul" and not "Saul". He overshoots and fails by trying too hard to make too much of his point.

[Giuseppe]

But the Paul character/figure was known to the author of Acts before he wrenched him away from "the heretics" and planted him in the genealogy of "proto-orthodoxy", including his Judaizing 'midrashic' flourish of giving him the Saul background.

that your recognition alone amounts to a real confutation of Dubourg's claim that Paul was derived from Saul, and not Saul from Paul.

Only, I am a bit perplexed. The author of Acts was really fortunate to find "least one" in 1 Samuel, finding so an entire arsenal ready to be used against Marcion: the king Saul persecutor and precursor of the messiah David.

[Giuseppe]

After this realization of the Dubourg's failure to prove that Paul is in nuce inside Saul , I think that the best mythicist case (left out) is really entirely in the hands of Carrier/Doherty/RGPrice model.

[Giuseppe]

Richard Carrier has answered kindly to my question, here:

Paulus is a standard and common Roman name. Saul was a standard and common Jewish name. Joshua even more so. Tons of Jews claimed Benjaminite heritage at the time (in fact all extant Jews under Roman Rule affiliated either with Benjamin or Judah, thus substantially increasing the frequency of such a claim). And rhetorical humility was a commonplace.

Indeed, it’s maybe 50% Paul would be a Benjaminite by chance alone, and may even have been a Saul as Acts claims, and thus Paul may have seen himself as such a parallel and played on it in his rhetoric. Because it is already likely a Saul who became (or was born to) a Roman citizen would assume the Roman name of Paul. Because a citizen must adopt a Roman trinomen, and these are near homonyms, and might even indeed have been thought scripturally to be conceptual cognates, for exactly the reason you note. And one need not have even been a citizen to have received the common name of one, or to have chosen one for the diplomatic purpose of communing with them.

So you need more than this to establish anything more than a coincidence between any random Paul and any random Saul. If you get to skip over the millions of others and “cherry pick” the ones that have vague coincidences between them, you are tea leaf reading, not engaging in a sound methodology. Especially when the links are largely contrived (e.g. the “era of the judges” does not mean what you are making it mean here, nor did the Biblical Saul do anything comparable to the Epistolary Paul, nor was Paul a king or “anointed,” nor did he claim sovereignty over the tribes but in fact the opposite, focusing instead on the Gentiles; etc.), because stretching “what counts” like this nullifies any claim to chance links being improbable. This is a fallacy called retrofitting. It’s most commonly used by psychics and Christian apologists attempting to prove prophecies were fulfilled. And by cranks like Joseph Atwill.

I discuss the correct methodology (as developed by several scholars in the peer reviewed literature) in Proving History, pp. 192-204.

What you need are conjunctions that have an expected base rate lower than 1 in the available population. For example, if we can calculate there would have been 10 Paul’s in the early first century with several coincidences with the Biblical Saul on chance accident alone, then finding such a Paul offers no probability the coincidence is meaningful; you need a chance accident of less than 1 person, to start increasing the probability above marginal that something more substantive is causally explaining the observation.

Certain characteristics are needed to get that improbability: much more specific connections than these; much more interpretable ones; uncommon sequences of order; etc. And even then that might only get you to plausibility, not probability. There is a difference between “it could be x” and “it is probably x,” and a large chasm between them that can only be crossed with yet more evidence. Or in other words, speculation is idle. Extremely common features coinciding in no significant order across two massive bodies of literature simply isn’t uncommon enough to signify. (Just think of the infamous Lincoln-Kenney coincidences, which I discuss as an example of why we need a more careful methodology in OHJ.)

Was that the answer I waited? I don't know.

Dubourg's error would be to think that the early Christians invented Paul because they read 'the least one' in 1 Samuel referred to Saul.
That is, the interest on Saul caused the invention of Paul.

But the evidence of the anti-marcionite use of Saul applied on a previous Paul is too much strong, pace Dubourg.