Did the Crucifixion Take Place at the Time of Passover?

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 28 March 2013 3 Comments
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Question

At church today, the pastor read a section from the Ephesians. That got me thinking. I presume each of Paul's letters addressed as they were to individual faith groups in different cities, were saved by each group and shared occasionally within that group. Who pulled all of Paul's letters together from the individual groups and when did he do that?

Answer

Dear Connie & Dave,

Yours is a very good question. I need to address it in two parts.

First, there are 14 epistles in the New Testament that, at some point in Christian history, have had Pauline authorship claimed for them. Only seven of them are now generally recognized as having come from the hand of Paul, who wrote approximately between the years of 51-64 CE. Those seven authentic works of Paul are:

1. I Thessalonians          5. Romans

2. Galatians                    6. Philemon

3. I Corinthians              7. Philippians

4. II Corinthians

This means that the following epistles are not the authentic works of Paul:

1. Colossians                   5. II Timothy

2. Ephesians                   6. Titus

3. II Thessalonians       7. Hebrews

4. I Timothy

Of these, Colossians, Ephesians and II Thessalonians appear to have been written ten or more years after Paul’s death and perhaps by those who would have thought of themselves as Paul’s disciples and they may well reflect some Pauline insights.

I and II Timothy and Titus were written more than a generation after the life of Paul had come to an end and reveal a kind of developed ecclesiastical structure that Paul never knew and they regard Paul as a revered elder statesman and not the controversial person that he most surely was.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is not an epistle, but a sermon, and it could never have come from the pen of Paul in its style, its vocabulary and in its point of view.

There are other things that need to be observed like the two letters to the Corinthians appear to be composites of at least four letters, certainly not two. The last chapter of Romans appears to be a new ending added to that epistle after the life of Paul and nowhere in the epistle to the Ephesians does it suggest that this letter was addressed to the church in Ephesus.

Conjecture, informed but still conjecture, is that when the idea developed in the decade after Paul’s death to bind Paul’s letters into a single volume to be distributed to all the churches a cover letter was written to commend them. This cover letter was the essence of Ephesians. The first stop of this volume of letters was in Ephesus and so the cover epistle received that name.

Second, basic biblical scholarship would challenge the way we talk about these epistles in church services. In my parish church, the lay readers continue to say, “A Reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians” or, “A Reading from Paul’s Letter to Timothy.“ I mutter under my breath, “He did not write it.” Maybe someday churches will bring contemporary scholarship into liturgy.

Perhaps these answers to your question will help.

~John Shelby Spong

 

 

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