First Thoughts

The Apostle Paul is a controversial figure.  More than half of the New Testament is written by him, about him, or in his name.  There is a general consensus among contemporary scholars that the Apostle Paul did not write all 13 New Testament letters attributed to him.

Modern scholarship attributes seven of Paul’s 13 canonical letters as unquestionably authentic:

1. Romans,
2. Galatians,
3. I Corinthians,
4. II Corinthians,
5. I Thessalonians,
6. Philippians, and
7. Philemon

Three others are generally considered deutero or (pseudo) – Pauline and are Pauline in theology, with a couple of notable exceptions, but are different in style and much more mainline and conservative in tone than the undisputed letters.  They were probably written in the generation after Paul’s death by people very familiar with his teaching.  The deutero (or pseudo)-Pauline letters are:

1. Colossians,
2. Ephesians, and
3. II Thessalonians

The last three, the “Pastoral Letters”, are largely considered pseudepigrapha (a bible scholar’s politically-correct term for “forgery”) and were probably written around the beginning of the 2^nd century and exhibit patriarchal, sexist, and reactionary social attitudes one would expect of an entrenched Greco-Roman cultural institution (exactly what the early Church was becoming by that time).^1,2  The pseudepigraphical letters are:

1. I Timothy,
2. II Timothy, and
3. Titus

What follows are estimates of the percentages of biblical scholars who reject Paul’s authorship of the six books in question:

• 2 Thessalonians = 50 percent;
• Colossians = 60 percent;
• Ephesians = 70 percent;
• 2 Timothy = 80 percent;
• 1 Timothy and Titus = 90 percent.²

In addition to judgments about entire letters, scholars also question the authorship of certain passages in the undisputed letters.  Post-Pauline texts are those alleged to have been inserted into a letter after its composition and are generally called scribal “interpolations”. 

Among the passages that some scholars label as interpolations are:

• Romans 5:5-7, 13:1-7, 16:17-20, 16:25-27;
• 1 Corinthians 4:6b, 11:2-16, 14:33b-35 or 36;
• 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1; and
• 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16.^2,3

Given the above, one could argue that there are really three “Pauls” in the New Testament:

• The Radical Paul of the seven undisputed authentic letters
• The Conservative Paul of the three deutero-Pauline letters
• The Reactionary Paul of the three pseudepigraphical Pastoral Letters

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1. The First Paul, Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon, By Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan , 2009 HarperCollins, NY, NY
2. Apostle of the Crucified Lord, A Theological Introduction to Paul & His Letters, by Michael J. Gorman, 2004 Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI / Cambridge, UK
3. The Authentic Letters of Paul, A New Reading of Paul’s Rhetoric and Meaning, by Arthur J. Dewey, Roy W. Hoover, Lane C. Mc Gaughy, and Daryl D. Schmidt, 2010 Polebridge Press, Salem, OR