[3] “To create authors who have never written a letter, to forge whole series of books, to date the most recent production back into grey antiquity, to cause the well-known philosophers to utter opinions diametrically opposed to their real views, these and similar things were quite common during the last century before and the first after Christ. People cared little at that time about the author of a work, if only its contents were in harmony with the taste and needs of the age” (E. Zeller, “Vorträge u. Abhdlg.,” 1865, 298 sq.). “It was at that time a favourite practice to write letters for famous men. A collection of not less than 148 letters was attributed to the tyrant Phalaris, who ruled Agrigentum in the sixth century B.C. Beyschlag has proved that they were ascribed to him in the time of Antoninus. Similarly the letters attributed to Plato, to Euripides and others, are spurious. It would have been indeed strange if this custom of the age had not gained an influence over the growing Christian literature, for such forgery would be produced most easily in the religious sphere, since it was here not a question of producing particular thoughts, but of being an organ of the common religious spirit working in the individual” (Steck, op. cit., 384 sq.; cf. also Holtzmann, “Einl. in das N.T.,” 2 Aufl., 223 sqq.). [↑]
[4] E. Vischer, “Die Paulusbriefe, Rel. Volksb.,” 1904, 69 sq. [↑]
[6] [1 Cor. xv. 5] sqq. [↑]
[7] Cf. W. Seufert, “Der Ursprung und die Bedeutung des Apostolates in der christlichen Kirche der ersten Jahrhunderte,” 1887, 46, 157. [↑]
[8] An attempt is now being made to prove the contrary, citing [2 Cor. v. 16], which runs: “Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.” The passage has been most differently explained. According to Baur the “Christ after the flesh” refers to the Jewish Messiah, the expected king and earthly Saviour of the Jews from political and social distress, in whom even Paul believed at an earlier date; and the meaning of the passage quoted is that this sensuous and earthly conception of the Messiah had given place in him to the spiritual conception (“Die Christuspartei in der kor. Gemeinde Tüb. Ztschr.,” 1831, 4 Heft, 90). According to Heinrici the “even though we have known” is not a positive assertion of a point of view which had once determined his judgment of Christ, but a hypothetical instance, which excludes a false point of view without asserting anything as to its actuality (“Komment,” 289). According to Beyschlag the passage is to be understood as asserting that Paul had seen Jesus at Jerusalem during his life on earth. But with Paul there is no talk of a mere seeing, but rather of a knowing. Lütgert disproves all these different hypotheses with the argument that the words “after the flesh” refer not to Christ but to the verb. “The apostle no longer knows any one ‘after the flesh,’ and so he no longer knows Jesus thus. At an earlier stage his knowledge of Christ was ‘after the flesh.’ At that time he did not have the spirit of God which made him able to see in Jesus the Son of God. Paul then is not protecting himself from the Jews, who denied him a personal knowledge of Jesus, but from the Pneumatics, who denied him a pneumatic knowledge of Jesus” (“Freiheitspredigt und Schwarmgeister in Korinth,” 1908, 55–58). [↑]
[9] [Gal. i. 11, 12]; [1 Cor. ii. 10]; [2 Cor. iv. 6]. [↑]
[11] [Gal. ii. 1] sqq. [↑]