I'm Back Home

Yes, I made it driving up Interstate 5 for three hours to see that some books that I ordered have arrived from Amazon.  I was reading Trobisch's book on the Letters of Paul on my vacation.  I just wanted to make sure that I had good reason for not liking it as much as the Final Edition of the New Testament.

I had good reason.

You see, you can avoid the question of Marcionite primacy when writing a book about the New Testament.  The reader can feel free to interpret the work as a discussion of the development of the Roman New Testament canon and still walk away enriched.  How on earth can you speak about Paul 'editing' his own canon without mentioning that the Marcionites thought that this canon was adulterated?   In other words, at least throw the idea out there that one could argue that a figure AFTER the apostle was responsible for making the collection look the way it does.

I will talk about the book later this week.  I have a radio interview to do Wednesday.  But needless to say I don't think Trobisch's book on the Pauline collection is as good as his other work.  It is very well written and he has lots of interesting observations.  However he avoids a lot of information which is contradictory to his main premise.  This can at times inflict a lot of pain on an informed reader.