"Can I Have Your Autograph?"
On Thinking about Pauline Authorship and Pseudepigraphy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v43i3.30Keywords:
Paul, authorship, pseudepigraphy, Derrida, signature, body, spiritual giftsAbstract
Historicist authorship paradigms have reached a crisis in terms of their ability to successfully designate the authenticity or inauthenticity of Paul's letters. A thematic analysis of the body metaphor in the Pauline letters bears this out. This article proposes alternative ways of thinking about authorship by developing Derrida's author signature. The author is not a historical figure to be discovered by objective historical methods. Instead, the author is an emerging discursive figure caught in the contested space of historical imagination.
References
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Badiou, Alain. 1997. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Translated by Ray Brassier. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Beker, J. Christiaan. 1991. Heirs of Paul: Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Berensten, Jack. Emerging Leadership in the Pauline Mission: A Social Identity Perspective on Local Leadership Development in Corinth and Ephesus. PTMS 168. Eugene, OR: Pickwick.
Bennett, Andrew. 2005. The Author. The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge.
Best, Ernest. 1955. One Body in Christ: A Study in the Relationship of the Church to Christ in the Epistles of Saint Paul. London: SPCK.
———. 1968. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians. ICC. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Branick, Vincent P. 2009. Understanding Paul and his Letters. New York: Paulist.
Bruce, F. F. 1984. The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Burke, Seán. 1995a. “The Ethics of Signature.” In Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, A Reader, edited by Seán Burke, 285–91. Edinburgh: University of Edinburg Press.
———. 1998. The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
———. Burke, Seán, ed. 1995b. Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, A Reader. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Carter, Timothy L. 2008. “Looking at the Metaphor of Christ’s Body in 1 Corinthians 12.” In Paul: Jew, Greek, and Roman, edited by Stanley E. Porter, 93–116. PAST 5. Leiden: Brill.
Collins, Raymond F. Letters that Paul Did Not Write: The Epistle to the Hebrews and The Pauline Pseudepigrapha. Good News Studies 28. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier.
Conzelmann, Hans. 1966. “Paulus und die Weisheit,” New Testament Studies 12 (3): 231–44.
———. 1979. “Die Schule des Paulus.” In Theologia Crucis – Signum Crucis: Festschrift für Erich Dinkler, edited by Carl Anderesen and Günter Klein, 85–96. Tübingen: Mohr.
Dahl, Nils A. 2000. “The Concept of Baptism in Ephesians.” In Studies in Ephesians: Introductory Questions, Text- & Edition-Critical Issues, Interpretation of Texts and Themes, edited by David Hellholm et al. WUNT 131. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Daines, Brian. 1978. “Paul’s Use of the Analogy of the Body of Christ: With Special Reference to 1 Corinthians 12.” Evangelical Quarterly 50: 71–78.
Derrida, Jacques. 1977. “Signature Event Context.” In Limited Inc., edited by Gerald Graff, 1–25. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
———. 2002. “Declarations of Independence.” In Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971–2001, edited and translated by Elizabeth Rottenberg, 46–54. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Donaldson, Terence L. 1997. Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Dunn, James D. G. 1992. “The ‘Body of Christ’ in Paul.” In Worship, Theology, and Ministry in Paul: Essays in Honour of Ralph P. Martin, edited by Michael J. Wilkins and Terence Paige, 146–62. JSNTSup87. Sheffield: JSOT.
———. 1996. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Ehrman, Bart D. 2013. Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fewster, Gregory P. 2013. “Hermeneutical Issues in Canonical Pseudepigrapha: The Head/Body Motif in the Pauline Corpus as a Test Case.” In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 89–112. PAST 8. Leiden: Brill.
Finlan, Stephen. 2008. The Apostle Paul and the Pauline Tradition. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical.
Grindheim, Sigurd. 2013. “A Deutero-Pauline Mystery? Ecclesiology in Colossians and Ephesians.” In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 173–96. PAST 8. Leiden: Brill.
Gupta, Nijay K. 2013. “What Is in a Name? The Hermeneutics of Authorship Analysis Concerning Colossians.” Currents in Biblical Research 11 (2): 196–217.
Guthrie, Donald. 1962. “The Development of the Idea of Canonical Pseudepigrapha in New Testament Criticism.” Vox Evangelica 1: 43–59.
Harding, Mark. 2004. “Disputed and Undisputed Letters of Paul.” In The Pauline Canon, edited by Stanley E. Porter, 197–220. PAST 1. Leiden: Brill.
Hays, Richard B. 1996. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. New York: HarperCollins.
Horrell, David G. 1996. The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement. STNW. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Kamuf, Peggy. 1988. Signature Pieces: On the Institution of Authorship. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kreinecker, Christina, M. 2013. “The Imitation Hypothesis: Pseudepigraphic Remarks on 2 Thessalonians with Help from Documentary Papyri.” In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 197–220. PAST 8. Leiden: Brill.
Longenecker, Richard N. 2006. “Paul’s Vision of the Church and Community Formation in his Major Missionary Letters.” In Studies in Paul, Exegetical and Theological. 122–43. NTM 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix.
MacDonald, Margaret Y. 1988. The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline Churches. SNTSMS 60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marshall, John W. “‘I Left You in Crete’: Narrative Deception and Social Hierarchy in the Letter to Titus.” Journal of Biblical Literature 127 (4): 781–803.
Merz, Annette. 2004. Die fictive Selbstauslegung des Paulus: Intertexuelle Studien zur Intention und Rezeption der Pastoralbreif. NTOA/StUNT 52. Götingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
———. 2006. “The Fictitious Self-Exposition of Paul: How Might Intertextual Theory Suggest a Reformulation of the Hermeneutics of Pseudepigraphy.” In The Intertextuality of the Epistles: Explorations of Theory and Practice, edited by Thomas L. Brodie, Dennis MacDonald, and Stanley Porter, 113–32. NTM 16. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix.
McLean, B. H. 2012a. Biblical Interpretation & Philosophical Hermeneutics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2012b. “The Crisis of Historicism: And the Problem of Historical Meaning in New Testament Studies.” Heythrop Journal 53: 217–40.
Moule, C. F. D. 1977. The Origin of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Milbank, John, Slavoj Žižek, and Creston Davis, eds. 2010. Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology. Grand Rapids: Brazos.
Nardoni, Enrique. 1993. “The Concept of Charism in Paul.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 55: 68–80.
Pervo, Richard I. 2010. The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress
Richards, E. Randolph. 1991. The Secretary in the Letters of Paul. WUNT 2.42. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Roetzel, Calvin. J. 1999. Paul: The Man and the Myth. Studies on Personalities of the New Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Roose, Hannah. 2006. “2 Thessalonians as Pseudepigraphic ‘Reading Instruction’ for 1 Thessalonians: Methodological Implications and Exemplary Illustrations of an Intertextual Concept.” In The Intertextuality of the Epistles: Explorations of Theory and Practice, edited by Thomas L. Brodie, Dennis MacDonald, and Stanley Porter 133–51. NTM 16. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix.
Rothschild, Clare K. 2009. “Hebrews as a Guide to Reading Romans.” In Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion in fruhchristlichen Briefen: Pseudepigraphy and Author Fiction in Early Christian Letters, edited by Jörg Frey et al., 537–73. WUNT 246. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
———. 2013. “Hebrews as an Instructional Appendix to Romans.” In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 245–68. PAST 8. Leiden: Brill.
Standhartinger, Angela. 2004. “Colossians and the Pauline School.” New Testament Studies 50: 572–93.
Schweizer, Eduard. 1964. The Church as the Body of Christ. Richmond, VA: John Knox.
Thielman, Frank. 2010. Ephesians. BECNT. Grand Rapids: Baker.
Tucker, J. Brian. “Remain in Your Calling”: Paul and the Continuation of Social Identities in 1 Corinthians. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
Weima, Jeffrey A .D. 1994. Neglected Endings: The Significance of the Pauline Letter Closings. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, JSNTSup 101. Sheffield: JSOT.
Wirtén, Eva Hemmungs. 2004. No Trespassing: Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Boundaries of Globalization. Studies in Book and Print Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Worthington, Bruce. 2013. “Alternative Perspectives beyond the Perspectives: A Summary of Pauline Studies that has Nothing to Do with Piper or Wright.” Currents in Biblical Research 11 (3): 366–87.
Wyrick, Jed. 2004. The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions. HSCL 49. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Badiou, Alain. 1997. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Translated by Ray Brassier. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Beker, J. Christiaan. 1991. Heirs of Paul: Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Berensten, Jack. Emerging Leadership in the Pauline Mission: A Social Identity Perspective on Local Leadership Development in Corinth and Ephesus. PTMS 168. Eugene, OR: Pickwick.
Bennett, Andrew. 2005. The Author. The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge.
Best, Ernest. 1955. One Body in Christ: A Study in the Relationship of the Church to Christ in the Epistles of Saint Paul. London: SPCK.
———. 1968. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians. ICC. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Branick, Vincent P. 2009. Understanding Paul and his Letters. New York: Paulist.
Bruce, F. F. 1984. The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Burke, Seán. 1995a. “The Ethics of Signature.” In Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, A Reader, edited by Seán Burke, 285–91. Edinburgh: University of Edinburg Press.
———. 1998. The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
———. Burke, Seán, ed. 1995b. Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, A Reader. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Carter, Timothy L. 2008. “Looking at the Metaphor of Christ’s Body in 1 Corinthians 12.” In Paul: Jew, Greek, and Roman, edited by Stanley E. Porter, 93–116. PAST 5. Leiden: Brill.
Collins, Raymond F. Letters that Paul Did Not Write: The Epistle to the Hebrews and The Pauline Pseudepigrapha. Good News Studies 28. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier.
Conzelmann, Hans. 1966. “Paulus und die Weisheit,” New Testament Studies 12 (3): 231–44.
———. 1979. “Die Schule des Paulus.” In Theologia Crucis – Signum Crucis: Festschrift für Erich Dinkler, edited by Carl Anderesen and Günter Klein, 85–96. Tübingen: Mohr.
Dahl, Nils A. 2000. “The Concept of Baptism in Ephesians.” In Studies in Ephesians: Introductory Questions, Text- & Edition-Critical Issues, Interpretation of Texts and Themes, edited by David Hellholm et al. WUNT 131. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Daines, Brian. 1978. “Paul’s Use of the Analogy of the Body of Christ: With Special Reference to 1 Corinthians 12.” Evangelical Quarterly 50: 71–78.
Derrida, Jacques. 1977. “Signature Event Context.” In Limited Inc., edited by Gerald Graff, 1–25. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
———. 2002. “Declarations of Independence.” In Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971–2001, edited and translated by Elizabeth Rottenberg, 46–54. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Donaldson, Terence L. 1997. Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Dunn, James D. G. 1992. “The ‘Body of Christ’ in Paul.” In Worship, Theology, and Ministry in Paul: Essays in Honour of Ralph P. Martin, edited by Michael J. Wilkins and Terence Paige, 146–62. JSNTSup87. Sheffield: JSOT.
———. 1996. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Ehrman, Bart D. 2013. Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fewster, Gregory P. 2013. “Hermeneutical Issues in Canonical Pseudepigrapha: The Head/Body Motif in the Pauline Corpus as a Test Case.” In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 89–112. PAST 8. Leiden: Brill.
Finlan, Stephen. 2008. The Apostle Paul and the Pauline Tradition. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical.
Grindheim, Sigurd. 2013. “A Deutero-Pauline Mystery? Ecclesiology in Colossians and Ephesians.” In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 173–96. PAST 8. Leiden: Brill.
Gupta, Nijay K. 2013. “What Is in a Name? The Hermeneutics of Authorship Analysis Concerning Colossians.” Currents in Biblical Research 11 (2): 196–217.
Guthrie, Donald. 1962. “The Development of the Idea of Canonical Pseudepigrapha in New Testament Criticism.” Vox Evangelica 1: 43–59.
Harding, Mark. 2004. “Disputed and Undisputed Letters of Paul.” In The Pauline Canon, edited by Stanley E. Porter, 197–220. PAST 1. Leiden: Brill.
Hays, Richard B. 1996. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. New York: HarperCollins.
Horrell, David G. 1996. The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement. STNW. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Kamuf, Peggy. 1988. Signature Pieces: On the Institution of Authorship. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kreinecker, Christina, M. 2013. “The Imitation Hypothesis: Pseudepigraphic Remarks on 2 Thessalonians with Help from Documentary Papyri.” In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 197–220. PAST 8. Leiden: Brill.
Longenecker, Richard N. 2006. “Paul’s Vision of the Church and Community Formation in his Major Missionary Letters.” In Studies in Paul, Exegetical and Theological. 122–43. NTM 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix.
MacDonald, Margaret Y. 1988. The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline Churches. SNTSMS 60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marshall, John W. “‘I Left You in Crete’: Narrative Deception and Social Hierarchy in the Letter to Titus.” Journal of Biblical Literature 127 (4): 781–803.
Merz, Annette. 2004. Die fictive Selbstauslegung des Paulus: Intertexuelle Studien zur Intention und Rezeption der Pastoralbreif. NTOA/StUNT 52. Götingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
———. 2006. “The Fictitious Self-Exposition of Paul: How Might Intertextual Theory Suggest a Reformulation of the Hermeneutics of Pseudepigraphy.” In The Intertextuality of the Epistles: Explorations of Theory and Practice, edited by Thomas L. Brodie, Dennis MacDonald, and Stanley Porter, 113–32. NTM 16. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix.
McLean, B. H. 2012a. Biblical Interpretation & Philosophical Hermeneutics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2012b. “The Crisis of Historicism: And the Problem of Historical Meaning in New Testament Studies.” Heythrop Journal 53: 217–40.
Moule, C. F. D. 1977. The Origin of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Milbank, John, Slavoj Žižek, and Creston Davis, eds. 2010. Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology. Grand Rapids: Brazos.
Nardoni, Enrique. 1993. “The Concept of Charism in Paul.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 55: 68–80.
Pervo, Richard I. 2010. The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress
Richards, E. Randolph. 1991. The Secretary in the Letters of Paul. WUNT 2.42. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Roetzel, Calvin. J. 1999. Paul: The Man and the Myth. Studies on Personalities of the New Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Roose, Hannah. 2006. “2 Thessalonians as Pseudepigraphic ‘Reading Instruction’ for 1 Thessalonians: Methodological Implications and Exemplary Illustrations of an Intertextual Concept.” In The Intertextuality of the Epistles: Explorations of Theory and Practice, edited by Thomas L. Brodie, Dennis MacDonald, and Stanley Porter 133–51. NTM 16. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix.
Rothschild, Clare K. 2009. “Hebrews as a Guide to Reading Romans.” In Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion in fruhchristlichen Briefen: Pseudepigraphy and Author Fiction in Early Christian Letters, edited by Jörg Frey et al., 537–73. WUNT 246. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
———. 2013. “Hebrews as an Instructional Appendix to Romans.” In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 245–68. PAST 8. Leiden: Brill.
Standhartinger, Angela. 2004. “Colossians and the Pauline School.” New Testament Studies 50: 572–93.
Schweizer, Eduard. 1964. The Church as the Body of Christ. Richmond, VA: John Knox.
Thielman, Frank. 2010. Ephesians. BECNT. Grand Rapids: Baker.
Tucker, J. Brian. “Remain in Your Calling”: Paul and the Continuation of Social Identities in 1 Corinthians. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
Weima, Jeffrey A .D. 1994. Neglected Endings: The Significance of the Pauline Letter Closings. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, JSNTSup 101. Sheffield: JSOT.
Wirtén, Eva Hemmungs. 2004. No Trespassing: Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Boundaries of Globalization. Studies in Book and Print Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Worthington, Bruce. 2013. “Alternative Perspectives beyond the Perspectives: A Summary of Pauline Studies that has Nothing to Do with Piper or Wright.” Currents in Biblical Research 11 (3): 366–87.
Wyrick, Jed. 2004. The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions. HSCL 49. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Published
2014-09-19
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Fewster, G. (2014). "Can I Have Your Autograph?" : On Thinking about Pauline Authorship and Pseudepigraphy. Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 43(3), 30-39. https://doi.org/10.1558/bsor.v43i3.30
