Vridar

Here I am making a few responses to Professor Gabriele Boccaccini’s discussion that I translated — see the previouso post. (Note: I did not make the transcription — that was supplied by the homesite of the video, and it was machine generated. I used AI to assist in translating it.)

The first point of note was the following:

7:15
Nina Livesey is a colleague from Rome. Her book, however, needs to be clarified somewhat, because it does not actually claim outright that Paul did not exist. She presents a fairly nuanced version of this issue.

Yes indeed.

Boccaccini, as did Livesey herself, explained to audiences what has gone before in the scholarship. It’s a bit like knowing one’s history. To be ignorant of history is to remain forever a child, someone said. To contribute meaningfully to a discussion it is important to take a little time to listen to what has been said before one chimes in with new ideas. . . .

8:46
When one wants to assess the seriousness of certain arguments, one must place them within a line of discussion. Scholarly hypotheses do not arise because one of us wakes up one morning and suddenly produces some radical novelty.

Another point worth keeping in mind . . .

28:04
What I would also like to clarify is that there was never a single, unified Christianity that later fractured. Such a monolithic religion never existed

Yet it seems to me that many scholars have written forgetting this point. This arises from the assumption that the gospels are the product of an oral tradition that began with historical events, and that passed on those historical events, and that gospel authors were keen to pick up those traditions and with pious intent (and exaggerations) record them for posterity. Paul’s letters, it is assumed, were related in some way to the group behind that oral tradition. That is all assumption. It is based on another assumption — that the gospels represent sincere attempts to portray a historical figure.

Readers impatient to get to the nitty gritty of Boccaccini’s discussion of Livesey’s thesis, begin here . . . .

34:01
This brings us, at least in part, to the substance of Nina Livesey’s book.

Boccaccini’s difficulties with dating Paul’s letters to the second century are set out in this slide:

Here I think Boccaccini has missed a key point. Livesey is asking us to consider the scenario where the letters did not exist singly prior to their inclusion in a corpus. No. The letters were written from the beginning to be part of a corpus. That answers B’s first criticism above.

On the second point, I wonder if B is assuming that the present state of the letters is the same as their original state. I think there is much evidence for rival theological groups tampering and altering the letters after they were presented by Marcion. So I think that answers B’s second difficulty.

The third point (Hellenistic origin should be better understood as “Greek/gentile origin” to avoid confusion with “the Hellenistic period”) is pointing to what is known as the “new perspective” on Paul. Further on in the discussion B explains his point when he introduces the last slide (1:41:54) in his presentation: he argues that some “recent” scholarship argues for the “Jewishness” of Paul and that such a view of Paul is best explained as a first century phenomenon. B argues that the NP on Paul is a good explanation for how the “Jesus movement” developed, how it shifted from Jewishness to something more open. My response is that the singular “Jesus movement” is an assumption: see 28:04 above, the same point B himself made.

Two responses: 1. the New Perspective on Paul (that he was more Jewish in his thinking than generally realized) is a hypothesis, and interpretation, and not a fact. It is open to revision or even being discarded; 2. If the NP proves to be valid, it may mean little more in the end than that Marcionism needs to be understood with more nuance. NP is a hypothesis and not a fact that must be weighed in assessing a date for the letters.

B in the following is continuing with his assumption that the letters existed singly prior to being found in a corpus:

38:13
Why is Paul transmitted as a corpus? Obviously, transmitting an author as a corpus has the function of homogenizing the author’s thought.

and again,

1:12:59
Paul cannot be transmitted as a single, isolated letter; Paul must always be seen as a corpus. The function of the corpus is always to homogenize. .

Letters were known to be published as a corpus. Pliny the Younger’s letters were published as such. So were Seneca’s as Livesey, I think, points out. I am not sure that there is any reason to think that the original corpus contained contradictions that needing “homogenizing”.

39:51
Thus, if Marcion and later the Church Fathers attribute a corpus of writings to a particular author, this means that the author was already famous.

40:06
. . . knowledge of Paul must predate the moment when the corpus itself is formed—pushing us back to the beginning of the second century or even earlier.

Literature has had a history of being attributed to hitherto unknown or at least relatively unknown persons who thereby take on a new persona and become famous. See my comment at https://vridar.org/2026/01/12/nina-livesey-and-the-authenticity-of-pauls-letters-a-critical-response/#comment-358607. Robert Vipper wrote in his work on the origin of the Christian literature:

How this book came into the hands of Marcion, whence the legend of the apostle Paul and the very name Paul arose—these questions will hardly ever be resolved. Even for the contemporaries of the publication of the “Epistles” this was a difficult riddle; 25-30 years after their appearance the author of the “Acts of the Apostles” could advance on the question of the personality and activity of the apostle Paul only hypotheses, conjectures, combinations. Judging by how highly Marcion valued the collection of letters of the apostle Paul, one may suppose that he believed both in the real existence of the apostle himself and in the work accomplished by him. But another supposition is also possible: Marcion, a native of Pontic Sinope, may have had memories of a remarkable Asia Minor organizer and preacher named Paul, into whose mouth the compiler of the “Epistles” (whether Marcion himself or someone else from his school) placed his own thoughts, his own system of doctrine, in the same way that Plato set forth the entire rich content of his philosophy—the proof of the immortality of the soul, the hymn to universal Eros, the teaching of the best state—through the person of a single, in his eyes incomparable, holy, divine teacher, Socrates. (p. 186 translation)

Back to B:

57:50
. . . What seems most paradoxical to me is that some of these texts, which do not fit naturally into the second century, reproduce concepts and ideas that run counter to the very purpose of forming the corpus—ideas that go against Marcionite theology . . .

. . .

1:24:01
At least some of the material in these letters gives good, well-founded reasons for thinking it comes from the first century,

1:24:07
because it reflects that kind of debate and discussion.

I think this is somewhat circular. Is it on the basis of other NT documents whose dates are also questionable that it is believed particular topics were of interest in the first century? We know from Justin Martyr, for example, that the question of circumcision was indeed a hot topic in the middle of the second century. Paul’s letters are topical for this time. See also Hermann Detering’s works for more examples.

2:08:09
Finally, regarding Acts: it is unlikely to be a simple anti-Marcionite reaction.

2:12:00
Acts presents a very Jewish Paul—something difficult for a second-century author aligned with later church positions.

2:13:09
No one invents something that causes embarrassment.

On the contrary, if I recollect correctly, a good number of scholars have pointed to Acts being a catholiczing work, a narrative that aimed to “homogenize” different Christian sects or groupings, into one faith. That’s not a “simple anti-Marcionite reaction”; it is a constructive and judicious reaction. A Marcionite figure was embraced, but he had some changes in his clothes. No-one invents embarrassments for oneself, but readers can often misjudge what was written and prematurely dismiss it as if the writer was him/herself in knots.