Feb 26, 2010 -- 7:52AM, Dennis wrote:

There is very little narrative found in the Paulines.

Narratives are irrelevant to my point.  Rather, the discrepancies found between a number of references in the authentic Paulines versus those in Acts are.  What you wrote two or three posts ago implied that what we see in Acts can sometimes be judged as on a par with the authentic Paulines.  This is patently absurd.  The authentic Paulines have priority.  Acts is spin -- as is much of Luke (although some would make an exception for the double-tradition sayings material).  It may well be plausible that in the authentic Paulines, Paul sometimes arrogates to himself more status than he really had, but he clearly figures he can get away with it.  Otherwise, there are, in fact, certain basic discrepancies relating to basic timelines and voyages that cannot be put down to Paul's divertingly oversized ego and point to "carelessness" in Acts.

Feb 26, 2010 -- 7:52AM, Dennis wrote:

The largest block of narrative is found in Galatians, which is unattested before the last half of the second century, when it was seen as being discovered by Marcion (See Tertullian and Irenaeus) and had to be explained ("defended") on the terms of Marcion.

The same basic group (the Tubingens) responsible for the notion of 'seven authentic Paulines' had whittled that to four by the mid-19th century.

Ironically, the latest statistical analysis of the Greek in the authentic Paulines, vintage the 1960s, did bring the authentics down to four, and Galatians (along with Romans and Corinthians 1 & 2) actually survived the cut.  What do you mean by "basic" group?  Who was the scholar who first whittled it down to seven and who first whittled it down to four, and were they really one and the same?

Feb 26, 2010 -- 7:52AM, Dennis wrote:

This was pared to none authentic by the end of the nineteenth century... The only rational reason they are still considered "authentic" has nothing to do with their authenticity and everything to do with the fact that the theology of Christianity can not withstand this knowledge.

Please spare me your conspiratorial soapbox.  All of today's peer-reviewed scholarship uniformly sets the fundamentalists' teeth on edge.  The notion that today's scholars, many of them skeptics, give a damn about "the theology of Christianity" that "can not withstand this knowledge" is laughable.

Walther