RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Paul the Apostle
community to which he belonged. Their text was preserved by the community, in the hands of which it was in some degree plastic. Pentateuchal criticism, Isaianic criticism, Homeric criticism, the study of Jewish and Christian apocalypses, the synoptic problem, the Johannine problem, contribute an irresistible volume of testimony to the fundamental difference between ancient authorship and modern authorship. When the external testimony to the Pauline epistles, dating from the second half of the second century and the period following, is confronted by the results of this discovery, it becomes silent. When something has been learned about the literary methods of the apostolic age, surprise does not follow when a New-Testament scholar affirms or suggests that one or another Pauline epistle has been worked over or, to use the modern term, edited by a member of the Pauline gild or school, a group of men deeply infused with the apostle's spirit, who had caught, consciously or unconsciously, the secret of his style. Nor is one surprised when scholars assert that this or that epistle was written outright by one of Paul's disciples. When such questions arise, resort is not had to the external evidence to settle them. Internal evidence alone can help. Students are in the same case as the student of Plato or Aristotle when the genuineness of a given dialogue or treatise is questioned, and have to meet the question as students of Philo meet the long- vexed question regarding the genuineness of the essay on the Therapeutae. Or, once more, investigators are on the same ground as the art-critic who has to deal with questions touching the genuineness of certain paintings issuing from the artistic school or family of Rubens. The internal testimony alone can help. They must study the letters as a whole, find out the deeper, the incommunicable qualities of mind and spirit, and by them test the matter in hand.
The first impression made on the reader by this body of letters is that their presence within the Holy Scriptures is an extraordinary fact without a close parallel. The Catholic Epistles ' _,aTa°1 are not in the strictest sense letters, as a Collec *nev are more like homilies; they lack tion. *^e twofold personal element, the personal outgivings of an individual writer, and the personal presence before the writer's mental vision of definite individuals and specific localities. But the Pauline epistles for the most part are real letters, rich in personal feeling and color, and aimed at concrete and specific human groups. A recent group of scholars, the so-called Dutch school, has assailed the opinion common to both tradition and criticism regarding the Pauline authorship of the Corinthian and Galatian and Roman letters. Even though the matter in question were for the moment conceded, wonder at the part played by the Pauline letters in the canon of Holy Scriptures would not be lessened. They would still remain, both in form and in spirit, true letters. The only possible parallel in the contents and structure of sacred books is the pronouncements of Mohammed in the Koran, and even this is remote. Mohammed's outgivings are consciously delivered as divine oracles; they are oracular both in form
and content. The Pauline letters, on the contrary, are true letters, drawn out by special occasions, colored by definite situations. They are a unique element in the Christian Bible. The evidential value of this impression is heightened by the way in which the letters were preserved and afterward passed into a systematic collection. No matter who wrote them, the reason why the people to whom they were addressed kept them with such care was the belief that they had been written by the Apostle Paul. His name gave them their standing. They came into the collection from widely separated congregations. In one case (Philemon) a family treasured a private letter and afterward contributed it to the Church. As the Pauline congregations were drawn into close relations with each other, the letters were copied and exchanged. Finally they were assembled, possibly in the first instance at Rome. Whoever wrote them, Paul's name preserved them. Therefore the very existence of such a body of letters, no matter how judgments regarding individual letters may fall out, is irresistible testimony to an immense and constructive personality, whose work and word were inseparable from the existence and well-being of the Catholic Church.
The questions of introduction pertaining to the Pauline letters can not be separated from the apostle's life. He did not write easily. Possibly his habit of using a scribe or secretary (Gal. vi. 11; Rom. xvi. 22) was due to the fact that, shrinking from writing, he sought to ease the burden. While it would be an over-statement to say that his letters were wrung from him, there is a truth in it. He had not the writer's initiative, but was driven into literary expression by imperious need. His letters were instruments of government whereby he kept in his hand the reins of control and direction over the churches he had founded. The way in which they dovetail into his work is an essential part of the evidence in their favor.
It may appear that this is argument in a circle, making use of the letters to know the man, and then using the man, his work, and his mind, to authenticate one or another letter. The Book of Acts can not give material help. Even 4. Not an though it be assumed that the Paul Argument of Acts and the Paul of the epistles are in a Circle, not two Pauls, but one and the selfsame Paul, with such differences as the time and place of writing and the mood of the writer rendered necessary, yet Acts, it is certain, knew nothing or little of the apostle's inner life, and its author seems to have made small use of the apostle's letters. Indeed, there are points where he writes as if he had not known or, knowing, had forgotten the letters. His story is intensely dramatic, and has both the virtue and the limitation of that kind of history. The Book of Acts gives the framework of Paul's life, but it does not help when one is confronted by the introductional problems of our time, which can be solved only by the letters themselves. Consequently we seem to be moving in a circle. But the case is not so bad as it seems. In the first place, the problem here is not that of the genuineness of all the letters; the
Paul the Apostle