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Автор: Gregory S. MaGee
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      Portrait of an Apostle

      A Case for Paul’s Authorship of Colossians and Ephesians

      Gregory S. MaGee

      Portrait of an Apostle

      A Case for Paul’s Authorship of Colossians and Ephesians

      Copyright © 2013 Gregory S. MaGee. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Pickwick Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      isbn 13: 978-1-62032-748-7

      eisbn 13: 978-1-62189-922-8

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      MaGee, Gregory S.

      Portrait of an Apostle : a case for Paul’s authorship of Colossians and Ephesians / Gregory S. MaGee.

      viii + 204 pp. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

      isbn 13: 978-1-62032-748-7

      1. Bible. Ephesians—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Bible. Colossians—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Paul, the Apostle, Saint. I. Title.

      BS2715.3 M35 2013

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      To my wife and children:

      Emily, John, Bethany, Mark

      1

      The Emergence of the Exalted Apostle Theory

      An Untested Theory

      This book challenges the popular theory that in Colossians and Ephesians a well-meaning imitator, perhaps as part of an informal “school of Paul,” attempts to speak using Paul’s authoritative voice. This is a hypothesis that is so often restated in recent scholarship that it is arguably the default position in the field, even though the theory is relatively untested. The widely held judgment is that Paul is portrayed as an exalted, idealized apostle and prisoner in Colossians and Ephesians. Intrinsic to this position is that Paul himself did not write Colossians and Ephesians, at least not in their canonical forms. Rather, according to this view, admirers of Paul adopted a stereotyped picture of Paul in order to speak with his perceived authority in current settings. This theory, which in this book will be referred to as the “Exalted Apostle Theory,” has been propagated in a variety of studies in recent decades.

      This book seeks to answer the claim that Colossians and Ephesians present an elevated image of Paul and employ this image to buttress the letters’ authority. It will be proposed that such a view does not stand up to close scrutiny. Instead, Colossians and Ephesians reflect Paul’s own understanding of his apostolic identity and ministry in a way that is consistent with the earlier letters that bear his name.

      The test of any viable theory of authorship for these letters lies in the credibility of the interpretations it yields for the letters. This monograph seeks to show that interpretations based on the assumption of Paul’s authorship of Colossians and Ephesians are consistently superior to interpretations positing that an admirer of Paul wrote the letters. The book thus reflects the method of historical interpretation, accompanied by an analysis of the literary relationship between works (specifically, identifying or ruling out literary dependence).

      The focal point of investigation lies in the sections of discourse in which Paul’s self-understanding as a minister is put forward. A successful pseudepigrapher would need to speak convincingly as Paul in those sections in order to gain a hearing in the rest of the letter. As a result, unsuccessful attempts to imitate Paul usually flounder here, as in the case of the pseudepigraphal Epistle to the Laodiceans and 3 Corinthians. Passages describing Paul’s ministry and calling in Colossians and Ephesians, on the other hand, stand up to rigorous scrutiny and reflect the creative and authoritative mind of Paul himself.

      Comparisons among letters in the three different categories will involve attention to connections in themes, language, and context. Thematically, the complex interplay between Paul’s authority and suffering in the undisputed letters will be analyzed, along with the formative influence of the Old Testament and Paul’s Damascus experience on his sense of calling. Then, letters from the second and third categories will be examined to see whether they conform to the complex overall picture of Paul’s apostleship as found in the undisputed letters. For language, wording from letters in the second and third groups will be measured against possible parallels from the undisputed letters. Contextually, determination will be made as to whether borrowed wording from older contexts fits naturally in new contexts.

      It will be demonstrated in these comparisons that works from the second category betray their post-Pauline character in a number of ways, including incorporating only overt