Did Paul Really Write These Two Texts?

In this video I examine two texts from Paul's early letters (1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians), that many scholars think are interpolations. Paul says harsh things about Jews experiencing soon the Wrath of God, , and demands that women be SILENT in the assembly and if they have a question, ask it of their husband AT HOME. Sounds like shades of the Handmaiden's Tale...

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The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley
מהמלים בקשר את המלים ועל סמך המלים
Retired Prof. of Religious Studies/Christian Origins
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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[sparrowthesissy]

I appreciate your videos, even when I have some different conclusions. You always have something worth thinking about.

[kyliethompson]

I love all your videos Dr Tabor and look forward to new content.

[EDav]

Good clarification Dr. Tabor. Checking out Morton Smith. Another thought provoking study James thanks for sharing.

[chrimony]

I think the versus on women remaining silent is an interpolation. If you take out the verses on women, the letter flows perfectly. The entire thrust of the letter is about speaking in tongues (discouraged) versus prophesying (encouraged) in an orderly manner.

What does "Or are you the only ones it has reached" have to do with women speaking? You could ask the same of men. He's talking about speaking orderly: "If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. "

You also don't mention that in some manuscripts, those verses are added at the end.

[jasonnelson]

Just note that Semites are several different people groups not just Hebrews

[TheDanEdwards]

If 1Thess was written around 50CE, then *to what is the "But God's wrath has come upon them at last" referring?* The conflict with Rome that destroyed the temple is still several years away.

[nubtube]

While I think a strong argument could be made regarding a possible partial corruption of the Corinthian text, I agree and believe Dr. Tabor that the Thessalonian text was written by Paul.

But Dr. Tabor appears to be missing the more salient features of this text. His reasoning is largely based on the context of an apocalyptic Paul, but that is not the context the Thessalonian texts were written in. If I wanted to make the argument that Paul thought he would see the end of days, I wouldn’t use the Thessalonian texts to do it.

The context has Paul praising his followers for keeping the faith in DIFFICULT TIMES. He is addressing converts to the Jesus movement, and their imitation isn’t the suffering they endured, it is believing and keeping the faith while suffering. Read 1 Thess 1:7, “And so you became a model to all the believers…”

In 1T-1:5, Paul is referring to himself and the strong convictions that followed his conversion experience, but you have to first correctly understand Paul in order to correctly follow the context.

Paul isn’t referring to the end of times in verse 16. He is explaining that the same people trying to prevent him from speaking to the Gentile masses so that they may be saved, which is the context he wrote his letters in, are the same people that crucified Jesus.

Unless Dr. Tabor is trying to claim Paul thought he was actually living the apocalypse as he wrote to the Thessalonian’s, “the wrath of God is upon them” is a reference to the Gentile masses that believe in spite of all the persecution. Paul makes it clear in 1T-5:1 that he does not know the time and date of the end.

IMO it is one thing to read, or even try to interpret history, but it is quite another to invent history just to sell your own dogmatic point of view. And it leaves me wondering which is more nasty, the finger that points out a blaspheme, or the lips of the blasphemer?

[DerekValentine-yy]

Hi I’m curious what you personally believe and how you follow your beliefs.

[MinionofNobody]

The title of the video left me wondering if Paul hated all Jews and all women or whether he just hated Jewish women.

[longcastle]

12:05.. Am I correct in thinking the Jewish enemies being referred to here are Christian Jewish enemies?

[dbaargosy]

Agreeing or Attempting To Rebuke, Take It To The Wisest Fellow To Help You.

[alexmccaffrey]

I'm still in favor of the 1Cor 14:34 being added; it doesn't fit very well in context. After a brief tangent on silencing women in the church, and an assertion of authority; versus 39 then picks up saying "There, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid the speaking in tongues." It is odd for Paul to say that women should not speak in church, and then seem to encourage them to prophesy in church. In any case, the main thesis of this section, which begins in earnest in verse 27 ("If anyone speaks in a tongue, two - or at most three - should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret."), seems to be saying that, basically, people should speak in an orderly way, in turn. Verse 40 concludes the section by saying "But everything should be done in a fitting an orderly way." The part of women not speaking seems to be shoed in, and then is contradicted by something five versus later. Not to mention Cor 11:5, where Paul also talks about women praying and prophesying in church. If I learned anything from great scholars like Dr. Tabor is that one cannot be certain of much when it comes to ancient texts, but I still lean towards interpolation on 1Cor 14:34.

[PC-vgvn]

re 1 Corinthians 14, I would suggest you read Andrew Bartlett's book 'Men and Women in Christ'.

As he has written elsewhere - In my book I conclude in favour of the other solution in the second group, the interpolation view:

An early scribe added a comment into the margin, expressing his opinion that women should not speak at all in the assembly but should remain silent, and later scribes mistakenly inserted this comment into the text, in two different places (some after what we call v33, and some after what we call v40).
The reason why I conclude in favour of this view is because it best fits the totality of the evidence.

[johnmann]

Paul was beloved (2 Peter 3:15-16) and a chosen instrument (Acts 9:15-16).
Paul led much of Asia out of idolatry (Acts 19:26) making him one of the greatest Jews of all time (Daniel 12:2-3).

[digitaurus]

It seems likely that interpolations will be very short when they are being inserted into the genuine letters from Paul. Scribal modifications of genuine letters would have sought to clarify or modify the meaning of views being expressed by Paul, either because the scribes didn't understand them or understood them all too well and didn't approve. For the Thessalonians passage, the modern view is that Paul was by this point in serious conflict with James and his followers over his right to preach. With this in mind perhaps we could go with the following:

"... for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who drove us out and displease God and oppose all men by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved - so as always to fill up the measure of their sins ..."

With this version, we restore the passage to the situation that Paul faced and his likely emotional state, with only two short proposed interpolations: "killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and" and "But God's wrath has come upon them at last!"

[jornandersen]

The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection Rev 20:5 ?

[HashemHashem-zn]

Paul had an extreme ideas after all, sometimes he shifted away from Jesus teachings. I would like to ask you about dead sea scrolls, were they in harmony with current teachings of priests of jews at that time. May be they were in the cave before the existence of Jesus the Christ

[blain_]

Women submit to their gabor (father, brother, or husband) and become private (away from society). Their understanding of the Torah and later the teachings of Yeshua are subject to the approval of their gabor. They hear the truth and the interpretation in presence in the gathering house, but they ask questions of their gabor in the privacy of their home. This was already the way it was in Judah, but Paul was teaching it to the loosed tribes of the Huse of Israel who hadn't had the Torah in 7 centuries. You can see this privacy when Paul wrote that every man should have his own woman, and every woman her idios, privacy, separation from public society.

[sparrowthesissy]

It doesn't make sense to me that Paul would accuse "the Jews" broadly of stopping him from preaching to the Gentiles when, according to Galatians he was specifically granted approval for preaching to Gentiles by his fellow Jews in Jerusalem. And your evidence that it's not interpolation is from the book of Acts?? Why is that book suddenly reliable? That seems like more evidence for it being interpolation, in an attempt to harmonize it with Acts (and Matthew). It seems likely such gospel-reading scribes felt the need to separate Paul from his Judaism within the increasingly anti-Jewish Christianity surviving in the increasingly anti-Jewish Roman Empire after 70 and 134 CE. They couldn't believe in a Paul who said that salvation was coming to the Jews first, and also believe Jesus saw those Jews as wicked tenants who deserved to be thrown out of the land so that the wedding banquet could be filled with random Gentiles and Legionaries. Because of that, scribes threw in the "they killed the son of the Lord" nonsense even though the guy was very famously crucified by Roman authorities instead of stoned to death by Jewish ones.

[iwilldi]

1Thes is special in that's the only letter with no cross and it's the only letter where Timothy and Silvanus may be authentic to the letter.
Yet i think there is an interpolation in 1chapter 4 when the letter starts to speak about sons of light and uses the _like a thief in the night_ metaphore. Given there is allways ware somewehere some time, one has to have a specific location in mind to use the this peacetime metaphore: Jerusalem. And thus the author of this addition already lives in the late 60s or later.
Here the _But god's wrath has come upon them_ equally is best explained as later addition, shifting the date now past 70, when there is peace again. Thus the editor is allready trying to extend the date of the parousia.
However the authentic part of the letter looks in many ways so different from Galatians, 1Cor etc, that i think that we read the earliest extant letter even before the fallout between Paul and James.

But what did Mark read when he exploited Paul? Mark clearly judges the eschatological messiah and agrees with this judgement, while the sanhedrin cannot even agree on beiographical details, all framed by Peter and the cock crow. Remember that Jesus does not know the season of figs. Mark does not know the rhetoric of the editor to 1Thes. and has no idea that the day of the Lord would come suddenly in peace time.