[Music] well hello everyone welcome to another video history of podcast and today I'm joined by Dr Nina liy and we're going to be discussing a bit about um her upcoming book reassessing Apostolic authorship although by the time I release this video her book would already have came out I'll have the link to the affiliate Link in the in the description below to purchase Professor n Li's book so so thank you for join me today Professor lipy thank you so much for having me thank you for join second time I really appreciate it yeah and it's in person yeah this is not in person yeah it's great to see you too yeah so I like to start us off with um what led you to postulate the authenticity of these seven Epistles really I should also ask really in context of that um what led you to believe they are inauthentic um so what could that they were authentic initially and then start on the Journey of what led you to sinking the opposite well um just my training and it's the same training that goes on today in um undergraduate courses on the Bible these seven letters are the only letters that are authentic of Paul I learned all of that in graduate school that's just been the common lore for I don't know 50 years maybe longer um so I totally Embrace that I've written papers on that uh there's a paper that is seen very often now women in the authentic letters of Paul and I've totally embraced the seven authentic letters of Paul so I've had a um I've transformed and I do not think those are authentic letters I should just say that right out um I don't think any of the Pauline letters are authentic of Paul uh and I date them later but we'll probably get to that in a minute or two so but what led me to it and um there was a trajectory kind of History um my scholarship my experiences it all led to a new look and the first thing I'd like to say is this work on rhetoric and you and I are already talked a little bit about that I have a a second book out on Galatians and the rhetoric of Crisis I wrote that um and I say this because I think it it also plays a role in my ability to rethink I wrote that letter out of the country or the book out of the when I was out of the country and I was able to um sit in a place away from home and really think about um in detail uh the rhetorical moves that um at that time in my book Paul was making um so I looked at it very uh closely and I compared Paul to both uh Cicero and deanes um professional orators and rators um very and more sophisticated really than what you see in the Pauline letters but um with those other two authors in hand and then as as I said kind of relooking at uh Galatians just through that rhetorical lens I could see uh the depth of the construction the construction of the so-called autobiographical sections the emotion aspect of it again I'm comparing and then I'm also getting pretty heavy into rhetorical Theory because I had to back up everything I was saying so um I I was still in France and looked at rhetorical Theory there and one thing in that rhetorical Theory really um influenced me very heavily is um rhetoric was used to actually do construction of texts it's not rhetoric that kind of stands on top of literature and just goes along for the ride and enhances what you want to say but rhetoric can actually be part and parcel of developing what you want to say whole the whole cloth of it so um rhetoric constructs the truth you might say that made a big impression on me the idea of um what how rhetoric works and it does play out because in the rhetorical Theory uh rhetorical techniques it is construction even polemics um you can accuse your opponent of whatever you want uh that is it's conru constructing them as an an other that is not morally upright okay maybe the person was morally upright but with your polemics you're creating that situation so you can see um in rhetorical Theory they're learning about polemics they're also uh learning how to speak in the voice of somebody else so all of these are constructive techniques and all of that played a role in my thinking uh so then um gradually that led me to really believe um that these letters were something other I could then go from the internal look to what about the letters themselves maybe these letters then are not what they purport to be genuine letters so I I made that jump tentatively but then at the same time and this is after I got back to the US I was in uh communication with with a close classicist friend and colleague and um she kind of pulled me aside at a meeting and said you know um it's likely that Paul line Scholars or even biblical Scholars are in the way they assess those seven letters as authentic they're likely overconfident in that because authorship is very difficult to assess and yet um and it's true of all the scholarship those letters are definitely authentic they're just taken as authentic so once she said that I thought aha I am going to research how did that authentication process come about so I talk about that in the book um and it's flimsy I'll give you heads heads up so that is also confirming my suspicions about the letters uh so now the letters I'm already skeptical they're not they could be something other than genuine letters so then I think I just fell into CU I don't remember anybody handing me the book but um I used Patricia Rosen Meyers ancient epistolary fiction her 2001 book um and that was just fascinating and eye openening to me and her book and other Scholars of that elk um especially her book um became my constant companion as I was writing this book that's about to be published um she opened my world to uh fictional letters and how uh they can be used and I was then and I remain completely fascinated by um what you can do with a fictional letter um the rhetorical use of a letter the letter itself and that's Rosen Meer that book um she talks a lot about how fictional letters can be used for all kinds of things uh so then I had my all my pieces in place um to put my thesis out there when do you date the Pauling Epistles before or after the composition of the gospels um well once I realized or I I was getting quite convinced uh that the letters uh were not genuine uh something important happened there because those authentic letters are in the mid first century they're they're dated there they're place there right so once I um decided they're not genuine I could let go of that Mid First Century and it was an easy move to make I'll tell you because um I in fact there was a line in the book and I think I removed it there was nothing that held me to saying these letters absolutely need to be in the mid1 century nothing held me there um the way that the dating of mid first century comes about is internal the internal references of the letter so it's insular and we all know that authors um can write about Babylonia and and be in the 20th century so you're not going to say those uh the composition of that piece took place in the Babylonian Empire so we we know that that internal dating it cannot be the final determiner of uh a text a text of literature and that same is true for letters so once I got freed up of that midir Century then I could look at some of the references in the letter and of course the Paul of the letter knows about um the passion you know Jesus Christ on the cross crucified um and then for me uh the knowledge of that would have come from the gospels so it um that made me say or think and I still do think the letters come after after the gospels and uh more importantly um acts acts plays a role in my whole thesis as well so post gospels the letters come after the gospels so you would therefore or at least one gospel at least one gospel maybe not all the gospels but at least one gospel well either way that's how you would explain why Paul or the person claiming to be Paul or persons in these letters um how they seem to know a passion account how they make imply to it so ever been hypothesizing a pre pooline Source One of the gospels or all of them are the are the source or sources for the for this uh Pretender or so-called Paul um so acts um what do you make of Acts in relation to Paul Epistles it is often said that acts is independent of Paul's Epistles one of the reasons being because it never mentions Paul's letters or is it because the letters hadn't been written yet when axe was composed um well the the short answer I think that um the letters Absol I'm really feeling stronger and stronger daily most on this that um the letters need to follow acts they're derivative of acts so I think what we have is there's at least one gospel it may be Marian's gospel and then um we have acts and then we have the letters I think that's how these it needs to go that way so why it we've known for a long time at least in some circles that um acts and the letters seem to know each other but of course the scholarship because of this authentic letter Paradigm and the letters being early it had to be that acts in that scholarship that shows that acts and the letters know each other it always had to be that acts knew of the letters but it never fessed up that it knew of the letters and um there's been some very good scholarship um by Bill Walker for instance uh his exod Jesus almost scientific detailed work uh to show that there's even linguistic um parallels between acts and the letters and certain incidents uh that really show uh that acts and in Walker's view acts must have known the letters um in order to talk about various um things like uh the Jerusalem incident and things like that so but one of the things um once you let go of that Paradigm then you start asking yourself well who's Paul how do we get Paul if there if they're not real letters and there's no first century Paul who wrote those letters then I I had to ask myself well how do we get Paul and that's where I turn to acts um and acts is very strategic with Paul um you know the first part of it is Saul and then he has this transformation well he has the transformation in Acts 9 where he still remains Saul but then in Acts 13 um when you see the conversion of this fellow sergius paulus uh Saul also is called Paul so I feel that we get Paul from acts um and that's how we know of Paul uh there's there's one other thing um that I think works in along side that notion of Paul coming from acts is Paul in the letters is very much Apostle Paul how do we get Apostle Paul or why you might ask why would Paul call himself an apostle and it's in very intentional in Galatians and as you know I've worked a lot on Galatians so why call yourself Apostle Paul if the whole idea of an apostle apostleship is not known and in the older Paradigm the seven authentic letters early preceding acts preceding even gospels because now we're putting the gospels a little bit later too so acts is I mean the letters are supposedly the very first um instances of New Testament texts well why would someone call themselves an apostle if that and it's and I think that Apostle has a theological overtones it's not just a messenger because there is a word apostle that just means a messenger and it had association with ship building but the these letters aren't about ship building uh there it's very theological on the opening um so why call yourself an apostle if there's no Apostle even known why would I want to say I'm an apostle you see what I mean so that's another reason why I think um you need a gospel with 12 Apostles but it's in Acts where the apostles really come alive and they carry things forward right so and I think the letters are in um friction or you might say contention with AXS because in AXS AXS is careful to not really um dub Paul an apostle there's one verse in there that maybe suggests that he was an apostle but I I think it's a little dubious whether Paul and Barnabas are Apostles so well it would seem like one way or another that I think you make an interesting point there because regardless of acts like okay in that one little instance it does but doesn't it doesn't accentuate the point too much but then you get the Epistles which do either way is building over acts um is is your point and I think it's very interesting because I've wondered I have wondered in the past it's always creeped me out that axe never mentions Paul's letters m mhm and if Paul's letters written before acts but the logic is acts is independent of Paul's letters then uh how do you know they existed before acts and even and and even if they somehow did what did a get its information from them it's it's they so they hypothesize as those that believe that will hypothesize different sources or oral tradition a convenient oral tradition exactly I'm like well can you be sure about that tradition I know I've seen that so much it's the fall back um the other thing is um a pistol scholarship again and I go back to Rosen Meer because in my own mind I played around with this notion which is first Acts or the or the letters but in epistolary scholarship you need to have the character developed first before you have the letters attributed to the character and that's repeated in um um pseudonymous letter collections which is what I think this is you and you wouldn't no one would bother reading letters of Paul unless Paul already existed and that goes for fictive or factual characters so Paul's got to be out there do you see what I mean for these letters to have any agent or any Effectiveness uh there's one other thing uh that's occurred to me more recently uh that I've played with which I think um has some Credence it looks like um even in Galatians that autobiographical section which I've worked on a lot which um Galatians 1 where uh you see Paul say you've no doubt heard of my um persecution of Jesus groups and I tried to kill them or whatever um I think it's Galatians 1:13 and you just kind of read over that and you just with the old Paradigm but how would we have heard of that you know but if you say if you say well yeah I would have heard about it if I knew acts so what I'm thinking is because pseudonymous letters are really the target of those are not the address e the internal address C they're external readers so it looks like that statement is a nod to external readers the the buddies out there who might be hearing this letter reading that letter they're in the they're the creators they're the gospel creators they're the AXS creators they're in this group of literary uh producers so they have Paul say you've no doubt heard it's like a nod to the guy in the audience who you know read that in Acts that's how I'm reading that now prob needs more development but so I just think AXS has the priority do you do you believe the paulan Epistles tell us anything reliable about the historical Paul even if none of them are by Paul himself well I've kind of indirectly answered that yeah that's true um and the thing about acts uh and there's been some work done on this where um axe plays around with names um there's many characters who end up with multiple names and it's a literary technique to show a transformation of some kind um you know Paul becomes missionary uh to the Gentiles and so his name kind of takes on well he gets this Roman name so there's this playing around with on names so in the scholarship it's funny when you read acts um we hear about the author playing around with names but somehow when it talks about the name Paul that author doesn't play around with that name it there is such um so much wrapped around Paul the the historicity of Paul the and the letters being genuine uh that even though good Scholars know about acts and how it uses names how it creates narratives it doesn't want to touch Paul so um I think that's a little strange too and I I think we need to see Paul as part of the character mix in Acts It's a Long Way Around of getting out getting away from that exact answer of historical why do you think the letters were composed well it it's here that um I think that if there was some genius involved in this early Christian literature it was uh the composition of letters and that's another thing that one can think about why does the new test have all these letters where you think about the Hebrew Bible there aren't any Standalone letters there's one in what we call um intertestamental works this letter of Jeremiah um so it it's very interesting that you would have um Paul take on agency with letters and why I think it's genius is because of the power of the letter genre itself maybe one of the most important points here is a letter seems real it just a letter if you get a letter somehow it it has importance in and of itself um it seems personal you can put anything into a letter you can you know make moral advice it it's infinitely uh flexible on what you can put into a letter um it I it's it's very interesting um the rhetorical value of letters and so if you're going to say something um you Corinthians ought to do X Y or Z you could write A Treatise about it and it would be rather dry but if you send a letter that some and an external reader secondary reader is looking at that it automatically creates interest because that reader sees it looks over the shoulder and it seeing Oh Paul this authoritative figure who becomes authoritative because he's a letter writer because that's another thing that letters do you see over the shoulder advice given to some somebody else and that's also attractive to readers it's it's much more lively than reading a tretis so that's where I think some of the genius takes place is to adopt the letter genre um and this was already being done so I'm I'm not making this up um what you we already have with senica and his moral Epistles there's 140 of these things they're all fictitious letters to somebody that he creates this character lucilius and all of the advice that he wants to give to lucilius is in the medium of a friendly letter they're very attractive to read that as an external person so the the entirety of stoic philosophy is is in letters and it keeps the conversation going it's um as I said Lively and interesting do you think the historical Paul wrote anything at all that might have been lost and and could have been replaced by all these forgeries instead um I wouldn't call the letters forgeries I would kind of flip the script on that and say um the letters become important because they're ascribed to Paul and Paul is important Paul is very important for the Christian tradition I mean we all know that and how does he become important through acts so the fact that you have letters even if they're fictitious I I I think that um they're important they're not forgeries I wouldn't use the word forgeries and in so and I I don't know if there would be I it seems unlikely to me but I don't know and there so much more to learn myself and who knows what's going to be discovered but I I think from what we have um um this Apostle Paul and then he um he takes on a new persona with the letters intentionally somebody really wanted to take him in New Directions in my closing question do you think anything let me phrase so do you think that the book of Acts is the most reliable text we have about the historical Paul despite whatever goals it might be having to try to perhaps embellish or change details I um I don't find acts to be um historically reliable I find acts to be um literarily reliable um AXS puts out the narrative so it's valuable in The Narrative world but um and now I'm not saying anything new we many scholars would um uh contest the historical reliability of Acts and um I I guess I go far with that I would I think it's um it's a constructed narrative so I'm sorry about the historical ball you've asked me about the historical Paul a couple times and I don't know um Paul is an important person right so I don't I don't know if the historical value is is what's the most important thing in fact if you say Paul is his historical then you I think you've got a problem because then what happens to this person because everything else that that succeeds acts as we think of it as apocryphal literature and and Paul shows up in some of that literature so what what would have happened to that person we have no history the the whole history of anything that might have been historical nobody has any history of it it doesn't exist so it stops and and I don't know that there was a history there so there's a conceptual problem with that so you're not sure Paul existed right well thank you for joining me today Nina liy thank you so much for having me hello viewers thanks for watching this video from the history Valley YouTube Channel please don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification Bell and if any of you wish to further support this Channel please consider checking out this Channel's patreon page and becoming a patron and or donate through PayPal or through super chat during your live stream thank you