04 — The Epistles
The letters are Paul’s enduring legacy and the largest single body of writing in the New Testament — thirteen letters bearing his name, of which seven are accepted as authentic by virtually all scholars and six are contested in varying degrees. This section treats the seven undisputed letters as the bedrock of the corpus and the contested six together with the questions of pseudepigraphy and the formation and reception of the Pauline collection.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)
Of the fourteen letters traditionally associated with Paul, Hebrews stands apart (its Pauline authorship doubted already in antiquity), leaving thirteen that bear his name. Modern scholarship distinguishes the seven undisputed letters — Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon — whose authenticity is accepted across the spectrum, from the disputed six: Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians (debated), and the three Pastorals — 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus (most contested). The Orthodox Church receives all thirteen as canonical Scripture and reads them as the apostle’s, while the scholarly questions of authorship are real and are treated here honestly. This section lays out the seven as the secure foundation and then takes up the disputed letters, the phenomenon of ancient pseudepigraphy, and how the corpus was gathered and received in the early Church.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Undisputed Letters | The seven authentic letters — Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon — their occasions, contents, dates, and place as the bedrock of any account of Paul’s thought and the criterion against which the rest is measured. |
| The Disputed Letters and the Corpus | The contested six (Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, the Pastorals), the arguments for and against authenticity, the question of ancient pseudepigraphy, and the formation, collection, and canonical reception of the thirteen-letter Pauline corpus. |
See Also
- The Journeys — the missions out of which the letters arose
- Grace and Righteousness — the theology drawn from the letters
- Holy Scripture — the Pauline corpus within the New Testament canon
- Critical Questions — the wider scholarly debates
References
- The Holy Bible, King James Version. The Pauline Epistles.
- Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1997.
- Ehrman, Bart D. Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.