I think that folks like Cicero were motivated by a desire to be remembered for a long time, but in their own terms. So, Cicero starts with letters where he saved a copy for whatever reason (70 letters, he says), and with more he got from a friend who liked to save letters he received, we actually have that collection. It is honed razor sharp with charm, style and wit. However, like many collections, it disappeared without a trace in medieval times, only to pop up near the beginning of the Renaissance but expanded by other book-collections, to a total of 1,300 or so letters. Cicero probably did not have a hand in editing many of them for publication, as the discoverer was appalled by the poor style and base motivations of the man that many of them exhibited. I can see one of his former political allies/opponents, though, saying in reaction to hearing the Cicero edited letter collection: "Hell! That ain't the Cicero I knew! Summon my librarian, slave, and bid him to collect his letters to me, that som'fo'bitch, and we shall put them out to set the record straight! Ha!" Apparently lot of folks did the same.Stefan Kristensen wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2018 3:22 am Thanks for this Ben, and DCHindley for the Trobisch bits. It is very enlightening. One can definately imagine Paul also creating a letter collection in an effort to 'catholizise' his message and preaching. I can't help but wonder how he would fit it into his theological understanding of himself and his mission. What would have been his deliberations and considerations in such an undertaking? He definately regarded himself as a very special and even important servant of God and Christ in the whole divine salvation plan of the last days, and if he actually chose to create a 'catholic' letter collection from his private letters that would mean he believed it was part of God's greater plan.
What were the motivations for people like Cicero or Pliny to create letter collections of their own private letters? They obviously enjoyed publishing literary works, but did they regard themselves as serving the greater good of human society through their authorships or something like that? Did they think of themselves as kind of teachers for human society, and in that capacity they deemed it good to create letter collections? Or was it merely popular demand? Do we have any suggestions as regards to this, from Trobisch for example? And how should we compare the motivations of Cicero and of Paul in creating their letter collections?
Similar to Cicero's letters, the NT collection was an edition consisting of previous collections (two addressed to congregations, the third to individuals), only the first of which Trobisch thinks was edited by Paul himself, IIRC. You gotta admit, though, that the first four books, right at the head of the Pauline corpus in most manuscripts, the collection he thinks has the highest probability of being edited directly by Paul, do seem larger, more complex, and contain the proportionally greater portion of doctrinal statements. I don't know, though. To me, size and complexity like that would suggest a *long and involved manuscript development history*, not just a nip and a tuck for presentation and image purposes as Trobisch suggests.Anyway, I can see it is not a bad explanation for many of the problems in the letters of Paul to suggest that he himself edited them, perhaps into a collection, perhaps for the sake of 'catholizising'. But as for 2 Cor. particularly, I think the theory is not really that good, if we look for an explanation as to why for example 2:14-7:4 might be an interpolation. It just seems a strange way to edit letters together?
As for interpolations (oh god, here it comes!), I think interpolations of the kind I have been suggesting are pretty consistent throughout the whole corpus (chunks of commentary about dogma, often weaved into an original text, not just added to it), so I'd have to place this stage late in the collection's history that looks something like this:
LC1(Edition consisting of numerous letters addressed to congregations distilled into 4 artificial letters to three congregations: Rom, 1&2 Cor, Gal)
LC2(Edition consisting of 5 letters addressed to congregations, Eph, Phil, Col, 1&2 Thes)
[LC1+LC2] "Unified Letters to Congregations" Edition. This is a later stage of development where LC2 is appended to LC1 at the rear end.
LP1(Edition of 4 letters addressed to individuals, 1&2 Tim, Titus, Phlm)
[[LC1+LC2]+LP1] Final Edition. The already published "Unified Letters to Congregations" edition had the Letters to Individuals" edition appended to it at the end.
[[LC1+LC2]+LP1]int is the Edition we have in the NT, which was the edition of the corpus above that had been interpolated with Christ dogma (IMHO).
That would mean a pretty convoluted development history, but don't we already have that with the gospels? That's 5 distinct published editions (aside from counting the publication of the initial letters by placing them in the "mail") even before a Christian got ahold of it (in my POV) to add his (or her, I'm an equal opportunity interpolator hypothesizer) Redeemer Christ dogma.
So if, as I theorize, the Redeemer Christ dogma did not develop until a period no earlier than after the rebellion of 66-73 CE, lets just guess 10-20 years (or 83-93 CE), any real Paul, the "gentile accommodator" as I see he saw his role as being, must have existed before the war, maybe several decades before the war. Internal indicators I see in them suggest the Caligula affair about 39 CE, and Queen Helena of Adiabene's attempt to fulfill her Nazirite vow in the Jerusalem temple about 50 CE. When and how he may have died are not known, other than for part of the time he was under guard and was heading to Rome, presumably for trial before the emperor.
If the procurator of Jamnia has succeeded in securing Herod Agrippa, the story that can be teased out of these letters of Paul could just as easily have been Agrippa's own story, traveling to Rome to have the emperor Tiberius deal with him. It all ended up the same - he was able to secure his audience, and present his case for forgiveness and reconciliation. It would have been easier - and cheaper - to allow himself to be arrested and sent to Rome at government expense, rather than making a run for it as he did. However, Agrippa could not endure the humiliation of being dragged as a prisoner and made the dash out of the harbor and borrowed again in Alexandria in order to be able to make the case before Tiberius as a free man (the debt to the emperor himself was not forgotten, though, and he borrowed even more to pay that back). Paul seems just as bull-headed and determined as Agrippa was to achieve his goals on his own terms. Unfortunately for Paul, Agrippa had better connections than he did. Agrippa ends up king, Paul ends up, well, dead or exiled.
Them guys ...
DCH