I started learning Koine Greek when I was fifteen. I am now fifty-one. I've spent the better part of the last thirty six years pouring over, translating and retranslating the books of the New Testament in the original Greek, so much so that I have trouble when I open an English translation because frequently I know the translation isn't quite right. Most of that study and translation has been focused on Paul's letters.
I've read through and translated all of them so many times I've lost count. I've also studied Paul's timeline, travel, and just about everything available about him and about the time period within the near eastern Roman Empire and the surrounding culture and history. Maybe I don't have a doctorate, but I do think I have at least something to add here based on all of this.
First, the ancient Roman Empire around the Mediterranean was far more connected than she's giving them credit for. These communities of disciples knew of each other better than she suggests. There was a kind of network if you will after the diaspora from Jerusalem, though Ephesus was kind of the central hub for a long time, and many of these communities if not most of them were originally started by Paul wandering into town. Many, many churches in Greece and Asia Minor can and still do trace their lineages back to Paul's work. That might not be proof of his existence, but it's a start. It's not inconceivable that they made copies of these letters from him not long after they received them. These churches were founded at the same time the canonical Gospels were still being written. These letters might have been all they had besides oral tradition. It's also not inconceivable that someone went through and collected copies of these letters by the end of the first century. Second, Clement of Rome, the author of 1 Clement, was actually the Episkopos or "Bishop" of Rome at the time the letter was written. To suggest that he did not exist without actual proof that he did not exist isn't scholarship. And this brings me to my overall thought regarding this particular professor's theory.
She's basing her theory on a number of assumptions about what those communities would or would not do, or what they could or could not do, or what they knew or did not know. She has no proof of whether the community in say Galatia couldn't have known of the Apostles in or from Jerusalem. She has no proof that they wouldn't have used terms like Episkopos, Presbuteros, or Diakonos to describe a community's leadership, and all of which were well in use by the end of the first century as evidenced by the letters of the Apostolic Fathers. This world at the time was far more connected than she appears to assume. It only took two weeks to get from Rome to Caesarea in Judea during the spring. Her claims are built on her own assumptions about that world two thousand years ago which, quite frankly, just don't stand up to real scrutiny.
Finally, there are the letters themselves. As I said, I've spent more than three decades reading, translating, and rereading them in Greek. Compare them with the Gnostic writings. Compare them with other spiritual texts. They're too personal. They read more like Seneca's letters or Marcus Aurelius' personal reflections than they do any of the others. Paul's intent was to teach, yes, but that teaching was directed and personal. He addresses people by name. He knows people who will receive or see the letters. He knows their personal circumstances. And it's also clear that all of the letters were written by the same man just from an analysis of the language and writing style used. You might as well question whether Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius or any of the first or second century authors and writers that we know of existed because we have almost less evidence of their existence than we do of Paul's. No, this particular professor, as sincere as she may be, became too enamored with her own study of Marcion and took an easily refuted idea and ran with it. The real problem is that there are too many people who don't actually understand why she's wrong and so believe what she's selling without question.
One other thought to add to my previous comment. Marcion or someone else attempting to forge the letters of Paul or forge the books of Luke and Acts is like me attempting to forge the letters of Abraham Lincoln or write a false biography of a secret son of his without the benefit of the internet. Marcion was a hundred years removed from Paul's time and the time recorded in the Books of Luke and Acts. Under those circumstances, there is no way a pseudo-author could have gotten every detail correct from that time period.
In the book of Acts, Luke names real Roman governors that were serving at that time such as Gallio (Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, brother of Seneca) and Sergius Paulus, a proconsul whom we know oversaw Cyprus during that time from inscriptions which were found. Furthermore, the description of the scales falling from Paul's eyes is a perfect description of what is called photokeratitis. It's a condition that today is usually found among welders who don't get their welding masks in place fast enough. The bright flash burns their eyes like a sunburn, are temporarily blinded and it takes two to three days for them to heal. When they do, there's a build up over the cornea that falls off like scales. People who get this often have eye problems for the rest of their life, which many Biblical scholars suspect Paul had. Acts records that he was exposed to a bright light before falling on the road to Damascus. Furthermore, everything about what Paul experienced on the road to Damascus and the after effects screams a perfect, textbook description of a Near Death Experience, the likes of which have only been studied and documented within the last fifty years or so. There are more things like this. How would the pseudo-author have known about any of this a hundred years after the fact? How would he have known about the effects of photokeratitis, a condition which couldn't have been common in the first century? He would have had to travel extensively and make the same painstaking notes a novelist would today in order to pull this off, and even then there would have been mistakes made.
Finally, the same Church leadership which rejected Marcion's teachings and his butchering of Luke wouldn't then have turned around and just thrown their entire support for the fictional writings of an Apostle they'd never heard of. Out of all the writings in the New Testament, Paul's letters were never contested in the ancient church as being authentic. Ironically, Peter's were. The letter to the Hebrews was. But Paul's were never contested as being authentic. There is too much internal evidence that they were written by who they say they were written by and when they say they were written.
Dr. Livesey has no real evidence that Paul never existed except her own speculations and assumptions. The internal evidence of the records of Paul's life are more than enough to put these accusations and speculations to rest. Whatever you believe about Paul, whatever beef you made have with what you think he said or taught, the man existed and did exactly what these records say he did.
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