2. The Epistle has been transmitted in the Peshitta, Old Lat., Copt., and other oldest versions of NT as well as in the principal Gr. MSS.
Of the latter, the Epistle is contained entire in kBADp»"1 (1413-22 'manu alia antiqua'), E (copy of D), L. FG contain all but 3»-l« 67 i< C all except 718-96 13»-15J0, P all excejit 7i» '" 1223-1.35 1423-39. Fragments are contained in F», H (cf. Robinson, ExUhaUana, 60f.), 12, K (considerable). M. Q, S, 2. Of thecursives, it may suffice to refer to 67", 6, 47, 37 as of special interest.
The Old Lat. of our Epistle is transmitltcl in the Lat. VS of the Gr.-I^tin MSS DE (d e ; on f and g see Grej^ory. I'mteijomeiui, p. 9C9, and Sanday-Headlam, Romans, pp. Ixvi ff.), and in x,, a 9th cent. MS at Oxford ; fragments only in m and r.
The Epistle then comes down to us with every possible external attestation of genuineness, and its integrity (see on 2 Co, § 8) is equally free from suspicion.
3. But external attestation is hardly enough to determine the authorship of a book in the face of internal evidence. What then does the Epistle tell us of its authorship? We may remark generally that no NT writing bears a more con- vincing stamp of ori'dnality than tliis letter ; it is clearly the reflex of a great and markedly indi- vidual personality. Manifold as are its contents, its several parts hang naturally together, and are strongly homogeneous in treatment and style. Moreover, as we shall see presently, the Ep., read in conjunction with our other .sources of know- ledge, yielils a detinitely realizable historical situation, without a particle of evidence to sug- gest that it stands to those sources in a secondary relation Until quite modem times, and except
• Zahn, Oesch. d. NT Knnimt, 1. 263, n. 8. t Zahn, II. ii. 996. I. 82. 80 nn.
J The question will be found discussed under OABOir, Paul: cf. Sandav, BL p. 363 fl. % I. 835'ff. But see Clemen, BinheitlichkeU «ar PB, 11, 178.
within a limited area, this has not been questioned. Our Ep., with 2 Co, Ro, and Gal, have, as is well known, formed the unimpeached and unassailable nucleus of admitted Pauline \\Titings, and have furnished to criticism the standard by which the claims of all other sujipo.sed Pauline literature have been estimated. Tliis was conspicuously the case in the period of the Tubingen school. With the exception of the free - lance Bruno Bauer, whose isolated attack is recorded rather as a literary curiosity than as a contribution to histori- cal criticism, the four Epp. were allowed on all sides, even by the most radical criticism, to be the genuine work of St. Paul. This was characteristic of the genuine psychological insight which, in spite of admitted extravagances of subjective criticism, marks the work of F. C. Baur and his ablest followers.
4. Of late years, however, the genuineness o! the four ' Pavuine homologumena ' has been called in question by a somewliat more imposing body of opinion.* On the one hand, a somewhat numerous band of Dutch writers (Loma.n,Quaestiones Paulinae in Th. T. 1882-1886 ; Pierson and Naber, Veri- similia, 1886 ; Van Manen in Jahrbb. f. Prot. Thcol. 1883-1887, and others) have, by subjective criticism of the wildest kind, endeavoured to dis- solve the personality of St. Paul and of Jesus Christ, and resolve the teaching of the Epp. into the i>roduct of vague and arbitrarily-assumed movements of Jewish religious thought. Kuenen, Scholten, and others have thought the arguments by which these views are supported worthy of refutation, but any detailed notice of extrava- gances, tending only to bring rational historical criticism into discredit, would be out of place in an article like the present. The same must be said of a somewhat less fanciful critic, Rudolf Steck, professor at Bern, who published (Berlin, 1888) Der Galaterbricf nach seiner Echtheit untersTicht. His arguments reach our Ep. through that to the Galatians. The latter is condemned, partly on the ground of its discrepancies with Ac (exactly reversing the argument of Baur and his followers, .Steck allows Ac a relative superiority as a source), lartly on that of its literary dependence upon tlo, and 1 and 2 Co. Extending the method to the latter, Steck t finds in our Epistles signs of de- pendence on Ro (e.g. the 4 yiypairrai of 1 Co 4' refers to Ro 12^ !), while the latter in turn pre- supposes the Gospels, and such post-Christian Apocr. as 2 Es and the Assumption of Moses. Accordingly, all the ' Pauline homologumena ' fall to the r^round. Our Ep. in particular is dependent upon tlie synoptic Gospels, especially ou Lk, as appears from the accounts of the Last Supper (1 Co 1 1 ) and of the post-Resurrection appearances of Christ ( 1 Co 15). Steck appears to have gained a con vert in J. Friedrich {Die UneclUlieit des Galater- Brief es, 1891).
Those who wish to follow the questions raised by Loman, Steck, and iheir adherents into further detail, may be referred *fi the works quoted in the previous notes. A general weakness of all the writers in question appears to be a defective ap]ireciation of personality, carrying with it an inabihty to distinguish the spontaneous from the artificiiu. In common with tlie representatives of