Radical criticism

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Radical criticism
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 163.jpg
Rembrandt's depiction of the Apostle Paul
TypeAcademic movement in biblical studies
TheologyReassessment of the Pauline corpus and Acts as second century literature
RegionNetherlands and Germany
FounderAllard Pierson, Abraham Dirk Loman, Willem Christiaan van Manen
Originc. 1878
Branched from Bruno Bauer, Tübingen school
Defunct1957
PublicationsTheologisch Tijdschrift; W. C. van Manen, Paulus (1890–1896); later revival in the Journal of Higher Criticism (from 1994)

Radical criticism names a late nineteenth century movement that treated the Pauline letter collection and the Acts as second century literary products and typically denied authentic authorship of any Pauline epistles. It developed in Dutch and German scholarship after Allard Pierson's 1878 study of the Sermon on the Mount, reached programmatic form in Abraham Dirk Loman's Quaestiones Paulinae of 1882–1886, and was elaborated in Willem Christiaan van Manen's three volume Paulus published 1890–1896. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Building on Bruno Bauer's earlier critique of the Pauline corpus and of Acts, [4] [5] radical critics argued that the earliest dateable collection of Pauline letters is Marcion's Apostolikon, described by recent scholarship as the "earliest witness of Pauline letters." [6] In the Netherlands the movement continued into the early twentieth century under Gustaaf Adolf van den Bergh van Eysinga, but with his death in 1957 the line of university appointments associated with the school ended. [7] [8] Outside of a small circle, the thesis remained a minority view and faced sustained criticism from mainstream New Testament scholars. [9] [10] [11]

Historical background

Radical criticism took shape in a learned milieu shaped by philology, the rise of historical method, and critical editions of classical and Christian texts. In the Dutch context these debates intersected with wider theological realignments of the nineteenth century. [12]

Nineteenth century writers used radikale Kritik for positions that went beyond the Tübingen school's acceptance of four authentic Hauptbriefe and instead questioned the entire Pauline corpus. [13] [6] Writers in the Dutch school applied the term to a focused critique of Paul and Acts, while still engaging broader questions of Gospel tradition and early Christian history. [7]

Precursors included Bruno Bauer's 1850 analyses of Acts as a literary work that harmonizes competing traditions, and of the Pauline letters as pseudonymous compositions. [4] [5] In 1878 Allard Pierson published De Bergrede en andere synoptische fragmenten, a study often cited as the movement's starting point in the Netherlands. [1] Abraham Dirk Loman followed with Quaestiones Paulinae in Theologisch Tijdschrift between 1882 and 1886, arguing from argumenta externa that the epistles lack secure attestation before the mid second century. [2] [14] Willem Christiaan van Manen completed the school's classic statement with Paulus in three volumes between 1890 and 1896. [3]

Dutch Radical School

The end of Ephesians, continuing on to Galatians 1:1-8 on Papyrus 46 (fol. 158 recto; c. AD 200) Ann Arbor, University of Michigan P.Mich.inv. 6238 (Papyrus 46) fol. 158r Eph 6, 20-Gal 1, 8.jpg
The end of Ephesians, continuing on to Galatians 1:1–8 on Papyrus 46 (fol. 158 recto; c. AD 200)

The Dutch school comprised overlapping circles of theologians and classicists who concentrated on the Pauline letter collection, Acts, and second century witnesses such as Marcion's Apostolikon. The school worked from nineteenth century critical editions and repertories and made extensive use of Dutch and German periodical literature. [7] [16]

Radical critics advanced an interlocking theory of three claims. First, they held that the Pauline collection is largely or entirely pseudonymous and that its final form is second century. [6] Second, they described Acts as a literary construct that reconciles Petrine and Pauline streams within emerging catholic Christianity. [4] Third, they appealed to Marcion's Apostolikon as the "earliest witness of Pauline letters" and used this datum to frame hypotheses about the origin and circulation of the corpus. [6] Some extended these arguments by analyzing dependence on Jewish scripture and Greco-Roman literary commonplaces. [3]

StatusCategorization [3] [6] Work
Pseudonymous, second centuryAttested in Marcion's Apostolikon, the earliest witness of Pauline letters. [17] [18] [6]
Pseudonymous, second centuryAbsent from Marcion's Apostolikon. Catholicizing compositions later than the Marcionite set. [2] [3]
Not PaulineAnonymous sermon. Not part of the Pauline collection in any reconstruction. [3]
Second century literary constructHarmonizes Petrine and Pauline streams within emerging catholic Christianity. Dated to the second quarter of the second century. [4] [3]
The first page of the epistle in Minuscule 699 gives its title as pros thessalonikeis, "To the Thessalonians." Minuscule 699 (GA) folio 18.jpg
The first page of the epistle in Minuscule 699 gives its title as προς θεσσαλονικεις, "To the Thessalonians."

Allard Pierson opened the discussion with philological criticism of the Sermon on the Mount and skepticism toward the Galatians. [1] Abraham Dirk Loman pressed a comprehensive case for second century origins of the Pauline collection, disputing the value of early patristic testimony for the epistles. Loman explicitly began with argumenta externa, surveying citation chains and patristic testimony, then moved to internal features of style and rhetoric. [2] Similarly, Willem Christiaan van Manen, who had written a doctoral thesis defending the authenticity of 1 Thessalonians, wrote in 1889 that he had come to the same conclusions as Loman. Willem Christiaan van Manen argued in Paulus that Acts should be dated in the second quarter of the second century and that none of the Pauline letters is authentically Pauline. Van Manen integrated literary criticism of Acts with close analysis of the epistles and their editorial seams. [3] [19] Gustaaf Adolf van den Bergh van Eysinga summarized the school's history and defended its conclusions in 1912, then continued to publish on Pauline authorship until mid century. [7] [8]

Beyond the Netherlands, the school influenced the Swiss theologian Rudolf Steck, whose 1888 monograph on the Galatians contested the authenticity of the major letters. [16] The German philosopher Arthur Drews also drew on Dutch discussions in his surveys of radical views. [20]

The movement combined philological and stylistic analysis with source and redaction criticism. Later summaries continue to describe the letters as "second-century school-setting compositions," a formulation that captures the movement's focus on literary fabrication within specific social locations. [21]

Key proponents

Reception

Members of the Radical Dutch School argued against the existence of Jesus, which caused controversy. New Testament scholar Robert Van Voorst wrote that "their arguments were stoutly attacked in the Netherlands, especially by other scholars, but largely ignored outside it." [9] Surveys of Pauline scholarship continue to report the Dutch radical theses as a significant, if minority, strand in the history of interpretation. [23] [6] Although the school lost institutional footing after 1957, [8] its questions about authorship, editorial growth, and the second century reception of Paul have remained part of modern Pauline analysis.

In later twentieth century scholarship the theses were frequently dismissed, replaced by targeted criticisms addressing chronology, intertextual method, and the handling of patristic sources. Bart D. Ehrman in Forgery and Counterforgery analyzed the Dutch radical position within his broader study of pseudonymous Christian literature, evaluating their claims about Pauline authorship alongside criteria for detecting ancient forgery. Ehrman argued that the Dutch radicals' "wholesale rejection" of early patristic testimony failed to adequately account for the widespread attestation of Pauline letters in the second century, and that their chronological framework cannot explain the rapid acceptance and circulation of the epistles across diverse Christian communities. He distinguished their approach from his own analysis of pseudonymous attribution as authorial deceit rather than benign convention. [10] [11]

A limited revival associated with the Journal of Higher Criticism began in 1994 under Darrell J. Doughty, Robert M. Price, and Hermann Detering. [24] Recent reassessment from Nina Livesey has reopened the question of Pauline authorship, challenging mainstream consensus. Livesey argues that the seven letters commonly labeled authentic should be treated as pseudonymous compositions and studied within Roman epistolary and moral discourses, dating their appearance to the "mid-second century" and locating their formation in the "Roman school of Marcion." She presents this project as "challenging a prevailing paradigm." [6] [25]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Pierson, Allard (1878), De Bergrede en andere synoptische fragmenten (in Dutch), Amsterdam: P. N. van Kampen & Zoon
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Loman, Abraham Dirk (1882–1886), "Quaestiones Paulinae", Theologisch Tijdschrift (in Dutch)
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 van Manen, Willem Christiaan (1890–1896), Paulus. I: De Handelingen der Apostelen; II: De brief aan de Romeinen; III: De brieven aan de Korinthiërs (in Dutch), Leiden: E. J. Brill
  4. 1 2 3 4 Bauer, Bruno (1850), Die Apostelgeschichte: eine Ausgleichung des Paulinismus und des Judenthums innerhalb der christlichen Kirche (in German), Berlin: G. Hempel
  5. 1 2 3 Bauer, Bruno (1850–1852), Kritik der paulinischen Briefe (in German), Berlin: Gustav Hempel
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Livesey, Nina E. (2024), The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context, Cambridge University Press
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 van den Bergh van Eysinga, Gustaaf Adolf (1912), Die holländische radikale Kritik des Neuen Testaments: ihre Geschichte und Bedeutung für die Erkenntnis der Entstehung des Christentums (in German), Jena: E. Diederichs
  8. 1 2 3 4 Bergh van Eysinga, Gustaaf Adolf van den (1874–1957) (in Dutch), Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands
  9. 1 2 Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000), Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p. 10, ISBN   9780802843685
  10. 1 2 Ehrman, Bart D. (2012), Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, New York: HarperOne, ISBN   9780062089946
  11. 1 2 Casey, Maurice (2014), Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?, London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, ISBN   9780567592248
  12. ↑ Protestant Theology and Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands, Oxford University Press, 2021
  13. ↑ Lang, T. J. (2015), "Spectres of the Real Paul and the Prospect of Pauline Scholarship", The Marginalia Review of Books
  14. ↑ TO Periodical Literature on the Apostle Paul (PDF), Brill
  15. ↑ Aland, Kurt; Aland, Barbara (1995). The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism. Translated by Rhodes, Erroll F. (2nd ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. p. 159. ISBN   978-0-8028-4098-1. Archived from the original on October 5, 2023.
  16. 1 2 3 Steck, Rudolf (1888), Der Galaterbrief nach seiner Echtheit untersucht nebst kritischen Bemerkungen zu den paulinischen Hauptbriefen (PDF) (in German), Berlin: G. Reimer
  17. ↑ Lieu, Judith M. (2015), "Marcion as editor and interpreter II: Marcion's Apostolikon", Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  18. 1 2 BeDuhn, Jason D. (2013), The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon, Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, ISBN   9781598151312
  19. 1 2 Verhoef, E. (1999), "Willem Christiaan van Manen: A Dutch Radical New Testament scholar" (PDF), HTS Teologiese Studies
  20. ↑ Drews, Arthur (1926), Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (in German), Karlsruhe: G. Braun
  21. ↑ Livesey, Nina E. (2025), "Pauline Letters as Second-Century School-Setting Compositions", The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context, Cambridge University Press
  22. ↑ Drews, Arthur (1926), Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Karlsruhe: G. Braun
  23. ↑ Schweitzer, Albert (1912), Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History (PDF), London: Adam & Charles Black
  24. ↑ Journal of Higher Criticism, Drew University, 1994
  25. ↑ BeDuhn, Jason D. (2013), The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon (PDF), Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, ISBN   9781598151312

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