The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon

by Dennis Ronald MacDonald

The apostle Paul--antifeminist conformist, or social radical? Combining New Testament studies with folkloristic methods to search for the true identity of Paul, the author sheds new light on the apocryphal Acts of Paul and the Pastoral Epistles of the canonical New Testament. With this book, the legends surrounding the apostle have been rescued from near oblivion and properly placed in the Pauline tradition. Formulated in the days of early Christianity and handed down through the centuries, they cast new light on Paul's views about the ordination of women, the forms of Christian community, and the meaning of the gospel for politics, society, and sexuality.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity

148 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1983

Reviews

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In no way do I intend to say that the primary motivation for the creation of our archetypal text of the Pauline letters was to silence women. Obviously, the primary motivation was the desire to preserve and distribute the apostle's letters for the nurture of the church. In fact, I would claim that the interpolator probably thought that by harmonizing 1 Corinthians with the Pastoral Epistles he was only explaining an obscure Pauline text by a clearer one. Furthermore, the scribe did not expunge from his text passages potentially embarrassing to socially conservative Christians in the second century. His tendency seems to have been to gloss - not to delete - and all all in the service of the gospel.

But it is clear that the Pauline corpus as we now know it represents the work of only one line of the Pauline legacy, a line characterized by literate men, ecumenically aware, aligned with the developing episcopacy, and in some cases opposed to prophetesses and to storytelling women who remembered Paul as a fanatical, marginal social type.

In other words, the Pauline corpus has not come down to us with the accuracy and dispassion of a genderless Xerox machine. It has come down to us from the hands of pious, dedicated, and skilled men - males of a particular social position and world view, who, in spite of their respect for the Pauline text, put their own signatures to his letters, and thereby to some extent helped him write them. The Pauline corpus is mostly his, but also unmistakably theirs.

It therefore would appear that by the end of the second century the Pastoral Epistles had won the literary battle for Paul's memory: not only had they made their way into the Pauline corpus, they had influenced the transmission of Paul's authentic writings. Now Paul was sufficiently domesticated to serve the needs of a church increasingly eager to gain social acceptability."

[Monica Mitri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-written, situates the Pastorals within the Acts of Paul traditions. Finished it in one day.

[Trey Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book makes some interesting points but has some holes in its arguments as well. There are probably better books on the Pastoral Letters out there.