Posted by Ray Kidder on 6/23/2009, 6:20 pm, in reply to "Re: What is the manuscript evidence?"
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Jim,
It seems to me that the manuscript evidence points to the traditional belief that what the Bible says are the authors of each epistle, were the authors of each epistle. The other manuscript evidence points to church traditions, which come from early Christian writings.
Without early manuscript evidence to the contrary, belief that the Bible and church tradition being wrong about the authorship of certain epistles is still speculative. Studies of vocabulary, writing style, and subjects within each epistle can shed some light as to the authorship, but unless these methods point to something problematic, then they are not convincing to me. For example, what if someone claimed that he had a handwritten copy of a handwritten letter from President Ronald Reagan, dated 1 November 1982, that said he hoped the Democrats pick up a lot of seats in the House of Representatives in the election, this would make the letter suspect. If the letter simply spelled out "Grand Old Party" where he normally wrote "GOP", then this would not be enough to convince me it was not an authentic handwritten copy.
It is my imprssion that just about everything known about the authorship of NT books, and biographies of those people mentioned in the NT comes from writings that are supposedly from the first 3 centuries AD. What other seriously accepted claims come from other than such early writings?
It is also interesting that even today, there is no generally accepted author of the book called "Hebrews". Many studies of early church writings have been undertaken to determine the authorship of this Epistle, but no theory is thoroughly convincing. If an early church document is discovered such that it says that someone wrote a passage from this epistle, this would clear up a lot of speculations and doubts; don't you think?
With early church writings that actually attest to the authorships of some epistles, why are there still a lot of serious doubts?
Ray Kidder
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