Biblical historian Nina Livesey has produced one of several recent mainstream studies questioning the authenticity of all the letters of Paul: The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The others are by David Trobisch (for Fortress) and Markus Vinzent (also for Cambridge University Press), neither of whom have convinced me (see Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century?), but they have a lot of value to say on the checkered history of the development of the New Testament, which establishes the plausibility (just not the probability) of such theories. Here I will analyze Livesey’s case. But with three peer-reviewed studies, and no significant rebuttals, this is a mainstream theory now, even if it never gets beyond a minority view.

Introduction

Livesey is a Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She’s a specialist in Pauline and epistolary studies. Her thesis in Letters of Paul is that Marcion invented the “seven authentic” Epistles of Paul (pp. 236–52) in the early 2nd century (explaining their common authorial style and content). She does not explicitly say, but implies (p. 118), that 1 Clement and Hebrews are also 2nd century concoctions (albeit not from Marcion). And she believes the Gospels post-date even the Epistles. Which essentially removes all first century evidence for Christianity. The entire New Testament would appear to be a forgery a hundred years after the events it purports to relate. This would essentially eliminate the historicity of Jesus as a viable assumption. Since with no evidence pertaining, and all of it fake and late, the probability of historicity reduces to the prior probability that mythic superheroes like Jesus existed generally, which is less than 33%: see On the Historicity of Jesus. And one could argue that the historicity of persons who appear only in fake literature is much less than 33%, but that would depend on a survey of ancient fiction and the resulting base rate of characters found only there being real (or at least characters depicted as founders or sages).

Livesey does not go there. Though she considers it plausible. But I am not convinced of her position on these documents, so I do not see this as a viable argument for mythicism. Such would rely on a premise less reliably known than mythicism itself, and that uncertainty would only transfer to the conclusion. You need secure premises to reach a secure conclusion. Below I will examine only her case for the “seven authentics” (or rather six, as I am already convinced Philemon is forged, leaving only 1 & 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, and Romans), especially because that’s the only case she presents. She does not actually present a case against 1 Clement and Hebrews (or even 1 Peter) being from the 2nd century. Though she does a good job of proving we should never have believed the tradition that either was late 1st century, she doesn’t seem to know that this puts an early first century date back in play. And that’s important because the evidence is, to my mind, quite conclusive that Hebrews and 1 Clement predate even the Jewish War and thus were written no later (or earlier) than the 60s AD, as I explain in How We Can Know 1 Clement Was Actually Written in the 60s AD (1 Peter is less certain, but on its possibly being authentic see my article on Controversial Ideas).

I agree with Livesey, though, that the Gospels all post-date the Epistles. Mark clearly used them as a source text (as did Luke). And since the overall evidence indicates Matthew used Mark as a source text (and Luke used Matthew and Mark), and our redaction of John was written in full knowledge of those (see OHJ, Ch. 10.7 and, now, The Fourth Synoptic Gospel: John’s Knowledge of Matthew, Mark, and Luke by Mark Goodacre; likewise the Gospel of Thomas and Q), if the Epistles can be shown to have been forged in the 130s, all known Gospels must date no earlier (and likely later; Livesey places them all in the “mid-second century”).

I doubt Mark can be so late. Across his text he shows immediate worry about the existential consequences of the Jewish temple being destroyed (implying that was a new and recent problem and not one a century old by then), but no knowledge of the events surrounding Bar Kochba, unlike the Epistle of Barnabas, which does (I am aware of scholars arguing the contrary on both, but they are simply wrong: see my comments here, here, and here; and here); and likewise every other Gospel (except John, which alone avoids that subject matter enough to plausibly yet be of that late era). Livesey also assumes Proto-Lukan priority (following Vinzent, p. 245), the least plausible solution to the Synoptic Problem (see Mark Goodacre’s survey in The Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze and subsequent studies by him and others, a selection of which you’ll find in my forthcoming Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus). So her thesis relies on a lot of shaky suppositions that she does not even argue for, much less convincingly.

But the matter really comes down to her case regarding the Epistles.

To that end, I won’t vet Livesey’s lengthy and excellent survey of the history of the question (Chapter 1), because it looks sterling to me, and it isn’t relevant to the question I want to answer here (which is simply whether there is evidence enough to make her case). Livesey is not the first bona fide expert to pursue a thesis like this, and there have been a lot of theories that “gained credence” in the field for a while, many of which bizarre or naive or dubious, which illustrates that one can’t balk at a theory on this just because it sounds strange or implausible. In many ways this serves the same function as the historiography section in Robyn Walsh’s study, which exposes the dubious accumulation of assumptions (about oral lore theory) for the Gospels (see Robyn Faith Walsh and the Gospels as Literature); here Livesey does the same for the Epistles. So anyone who wants to get a good history and bibliography of the “Pauline question” will find Livesey’s book invaluable just for that function alone. It also has an excellent appendix on ancient education, writing, and literary and rhetorical practices, that is the best short primer on that that I’ve yet seen.

As for Livesey’s actual argument (which begins in earnest on page 73), I have already explained why I don’t buy its conclusion before in How Do We Know the Apostle Paul Wrote His Epistles in the 50s A.D.? and The Historicity of Paul the Apostle (as well as Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century?). But that was before I read her case for it. So here I will evaluate her case. Because it could in principle do better than prior ones I’ve read or heard. This article will also only be a summary of my conclusions. I will go into more detail in later articles (which will be linked at the bottom).

The Problems with the Livesey Argument

Livesey makes her case in three chapters covering three arguments, which are meant to work together as a cumulative case. So I don’t assume her case has to stand on any one alone. It depends on their accumulation. But even that requires each argument to carry some weight toward the conclusion. I will summarize the matter here, but then go into each argument in more detail in later articles.

• First (in Chapter 2), Livesey challenges the historicity of Paul. This mostly consists of arguments from silence, and involves a lot of questionable ancillary hypotheses, so it isn’t successful by itself, though it could work to corroborate or bolster a more direct case made on other evidence. I think it should be granted that the evidence for Paul is not good. It’s enough (see my linked articles above and my next). We have the letters themselves (which not only claim Paul is real but contain a lot of detail supporting his reality, though that gets to her second and third arguments), and attestation in 1 Clement, which I believe on internal evidence cannot be anything but a contemporary document (Acts, by contrast, is wholly useless here). But it’s fair to say that if we had good evidence the Epistles were second century texts, we could not rebut that by appealing to some slam dunk case that Paul existed as the letters and 1 Clement aver. No slam dunk case for that exists. So denying his historicity is plausible. I just don’t think it holds up as probable.
• Second (in Chapter 3), Livesey argues that the Epistles in question look more like the literary exercises of Seneca the Younger’s Moral Epistles, and therefore should be classified as in some similar sense fake. The overall problem there is that Seneca actually did write those letters, and we have no actual reason to believe he made up any of the historical or personal data in them, so the analogy does not really work for her argument. She also assumes (as others have) that Seneca’s letters were never actually mailed to anyone, but that hasn’t been proved either—I’ve written essay-letters to people for their entertainment, and ancient authors often refer to mailing each other pieces of literature for critique and enjoyment, so these being in that form does not entail they were not actually mailed. But more problematically, Paul’s letters repeatedly do not look like Seneca’s and indeed deviate in precisely the ways that contradict her thesis (more on that later).
• And third (in Chapter 4), Livesey argues that Paul’s letters “look like” the kind of literary and school exercises we have a lot of from the second century, “therefore” they belong to the second century. This argument falls on the fact that this is an accident of document survival, not a known change in literary zeitgeist. For a similar error see The Sociology of Ancient Scientists Cannot Be Based on Medieval Source Selection. There is actually no evidence that the same activity, styles, and practices weren’t just as popular in the first century (the Second Sophistic is indeed credited with beginning precisely in Paul’s generation) or indeed even before, since we don’t have the kind of comparanda we would need to argue Paul’s Epistles are anachronistic. School exercises were meant to train writers for the real thing, so real letters will share features with their training samples. And I don’t see any evidence Paul’s letters are trainers (unlike, conspicuously, Philemon).

That last point I believe is the most important, and the most crucial point at which Livesey fails to make her case. For example, we do not have inter-organizational doctrinal correspondence (much less mailed instructional homilies) for any other religion, or indeed any other Apostle or Christian church of that era—unless we grant 1 Clement, Hebrews, and 1 Peter as examples, which would refute her thesis. Yet such correspondence must have existed then (it’s not like Osiris cult or the Pharisees never wrote letters to each other across the Mediterranean to resolve disputes, manage conduct, and normalize doctrine). But we cannot argue from the content of documents we do not have. It is thus not possible to say that Paul’s Epistles “don’t look like” other Epistles of his time that performed the same functions, since we don’t have any such Epistles. And that is not because they didn’t exist.

We have many references to lost real letter collections (e.g. the letters of Augustus, Epicurus, etc., see Gibson, Müller, Salzman, Jones, etc.). While Cicero’s correspondence, for example, or Pliny the Younger’s, or even Jerome’s, are not anywhere in the same genre of function. Closer analogs would be the speech collections of Lysias and Demosthenes, both Classical authors, and standard exempla used as teaching examples in the very schools Paul would have attended (see Weima, Richards, etc.). It is crucial to recognize that the Epistles we have (and we would exempt from this Philemon, except that that is probably fake) are actually homilies intended to be read out to their congregations (just like 1 Clement). They are thus more like speeches prepared for clients (hence Lysias and Demosthenes are closer models), who would perform them on Paul’s behalf (because he could not be there to do it himself; the entire point of writing them). This makes them a hybrid genre (Epistle and Oration), which makes the kind of comparisons Livesey is attempting moot or inapt. Livesey thinks their similarity to orations indicates they are forgeries, which is a non sequitur. There was such a thing as an authentic oration written for the purpose of an absentee orator. That describes literally the entire opus of Lysias. Paul’s so-called “co-authors” may well have been so introduced because they delivered and were meant to orate these persuasive speeches to their intended congregants. This does not make them at all like any other letter collection we have—it makes them like the speech collections we have, particularly those intended to be orated by a third party (unlike Cicero’s speeches, Lysias’s speeches were written for clients, and that’s more like what the Paulines are).

These letters also served the specific function of resolving religious disputes and securing doctrinal persuasion, and we have no other examples of that genre, either (yet such must have existed), until we get to (maybe) the letters of Augustine or Jerome. But unlike even them, the Paulines were omnibus briefs, i.e., because many issues came up during his absences, Paul could more efficiently address them all in a single delivery, rather than composing a bunch of individual rescripta the way Roman Emperors and other officials would (as evinced in the Epistles of Pliny the Younger). Which we also have no other examples of to compare (yet such must have existed). So Livesey is simply comparing these letters to the wrong things. The mistake here is in assuming, “Well, we don’t have the actual things I would need to compare, due to the accidents of document preservation, so I will just use whatever there is to compare” is a sound procedure. It generally is not.

And this is all on top of the problem that the letters we have have been edited.

This creates two problems for Livesey’s thesis. First, the length of these letters appears to be a product not just of being omnibus orations (and thus not comparable to other surviving epistolary collections), but of mashing several letters together, leaving sections out, and smoothing them over as if they were singular letters to the same congregation. A prominent example is the break in subject (with missing explanation of what Paul is responding to) between 1 Cor. 8 and 1 Cor. 9, which indicates these were not originally part of the same letter. Other examples include the duplicated endings (e.g. Romans 15 vs. 16, and then 16:17ff.) and references to missing letters (1 Corinthians 5.9, 11) and interpolations (1 Cor. 14:34–35 contradicts 1 Cor. 11:1–16, Romans 16:7, Galatians 3:28, and so on) among other indicia (for studies, see n. 4, p. 511, of OHJ; cf. n. 50, p. 280). Galatians might be a complete letter (though Galatians 1–3 and 4–6 are disconnected enough to have originally been separate letters), and maybe 1 Thessalonians (though the problems addressed in chs. 1–3 seem to belong to a different letter than 4–5). But Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians have clear-cut indicia of having been several letters mashed together (see Kinoshita, De Boer, etc.), and Philippians has some (per Selew).

It seems more likely that the titles of all these letters were the ones Paul assigned to the scrolls wherein he collected and kept copies of all his correspondence to the same congregations (this was common, e.g. my study of tax receipts where the same roll or section of papyrus was used for every receipt, year after year; or Pliny the Elder’s famed Notebooks which collected citations and quotations he needed for his other books; or recovered archives that show authors kept collected copies of their correspondence, as the publications of Cicero, Pliny, Jerome, etc. likewise prove was the case).

It is possible Paul himself only kept the pieces (and thus he is the editor producing the bulk of our version now), so he could reference them as needed in future correspondence with the same and other congregations (they are thus in effect his own florilegia). For example, Paul would not need to keep the missing section of 1 Cor. 9 explaining the dispute he was responding to there, as he would remember that; he only needed to keep his reply to ensure consistency or borrow from when addressing that issue again, there or anywhere else.

But it is also possible Paul’s original rolls had the complete letters, including dates and introductions (like most published letter collections did), and someone later edited out all the material they deemed superfluous or inconvenient. But this would produce rolls like “first collection of letters to the Corinthians” and “second collection of letters to the Corinthians” which then simply became 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians—as indeed those were likely the labels hanging off the scrolls themselves, by which Paul could tell where to find something he was looking for, but now transformed by the later editor into being taken as “First Letter” and “Second Letter.”

So, Livesey’s thesis operates on the assumption that these were whole letters, but that is dashed by the evidence that they are not. She is thus not accounting for the actual content and structure and editorial history of these letters. This problematizes all her comparative arguments. Just as does her overlooking their difference in genre and function from other letter collections we perchance have.

But the second problem the pastiche-structure of these letters create for Livesey’s thesis is that: this is not how a forger would compose letters. That (let’s say) Marcion had to edit together disconnected pieces of letters to “produce” the Roman and Corinthian correspondence (and possibly the Galatian and Thessalonian and Philippian as well) indicates he did not write them (he probably didn’t even do this initial editing: that was likely done, and published, before him). He is editing or republishing something he acquired from somewhere else. And since they are all stylistically from the same author, that entails a single author wrote the original editions of these letters (which we do not have) who predates Marcion. Who is that most likely to be other than Paul himself?

That is then corroborated by all the contents of those letters matching Paul’s historical context and no other; and by their disjointed reactionary construction (they are letters reacting to random unexpected disputes, they are not deliberate coherent theological treatises); and by their realism in dealing with those issues across them (e.g. why would a forger fret repeatedly in them over accusations of graft, while eliding that accusation as much as possible so as to downplay it); and by their disconnect from post-War political realities. For example, their author has no idea the entire Jewish temple cult (and Jerusalem and even Judea itself) would be destroyed (and the temple tax on Jews diverted to fund a pagan Roman temple alongside a growing distrust of Jews by Gentile authorities), much less that the Empire would go on unimpeded for generations (the author of these letters thinks it’s going to end in their lifetime). Accordingly, their advice and argumentation already appears naive and out of touch. This point perhaps one could rescue for arguing 1 Thessalonians is fake, based on 2:14–16, but there is a lot of evidence for that passage being interpolated, and not just that it can’t have been written by someone who died before the war (see There Is No Logically Sound Case Against Interpolation in 1 Thessalonians 2). And that argument isn’t available for the other letters.

This is also corroborated by 1 Clement attesting to knowledge of Paul’s letters (particularly to the Corinthians). And by Mark using them yet seeming to be reacting to a new and shocking problem of the temple cult’s destruction, while not knowing about the associated politics two generations later. Likewise 2 Thessalonians was written to emulate 1 Thessalonians yet shows no knowledge of the interpolation at 1 Thess. 2:14–16 (which in turn assumes the Jewish War is past), yet that is in Marcion’s edition of 1 Thessalonians. So that interpolation entered the first letter before Marcion, which means neither 1 nor 2 Thessalonians can have been composed by Marcion. Which eliminates the entire thesis that he wrote the others, because stylistically the author of 1 Thessalonians wrote the others.

And so on. I say more about all this in my followup. But in short, altogether, the evidence points to the Epistles being edited originals from the pre-War period and by an actual person who was really dealing with the accusations and difficulties the letters entertain.

And Livesey does not present any valid evidence to the contrary. Paul’s historicity cannot be disproved (and indeed the balance of evidence favors it). The Senecan letters are disanalogous and thus cannot produce the conclusion Livesey wants (it couldn’t even produce that conclusion for Seneca not being the author of his letters, much less for Paul of his). Livesey has no relevant comparanda from the first century to argue from that the Epistles don’t belong there (so her comparing it to second century texts cannot produce her conclusion). And Livesey is operating from an incorrect understanding of these Epistles’ peculiar genre and editorial history, not realizing these are speeches (not incidental personal or moral letters) and were not forged as we have them, but written in smaller units with more material than we have, such that Marcion (and his opponents) had to have edited some prior (indeed published) collection.

And on top of all that, I find that Livesey all too often explains away (rather than grants the weight of) evidence of authenticity—like the evident realism and contextual appositeness of the problems Paul faces and how he tries to deal with them—by using doubtable ancillary hypotheses, which resembles the same methodology Christian apologists use to get the Bible to say anything they want, rather than a methodology objectively capable of avoiding the pitfalls of that circular approach. For an example of this phenomenon see A Thorough Fisk of the Arguments of Fernando Bermejo-Rubio and Franco Tommasi. This is a problem with biblical studies generally: unlike in other historical fields, all its professors were trained in the methodology of apologetics, and told that that was how history was done everywhere else. It’s not.

Conclusion

Consequently, I’m just not persuaded. It’s a respectable effort. And Livesey presents a lot of useful data and discussion for anyone who wants to explore these ideas or learn more about the background knowledge she builds on—including a lot of great stuff on ancient literary technique, ancient literacy and education, ancient principles and practices of rhetoric, as well as the history of Pauline epistolary scholarship. It’s expertly cited and constructed. And it is the best case you’re going to find for this kind of theory. It just doesn’t produce a fully valid and sound case for it. As such Letters of Paul is a good example of skilled scholarship that is merely wrong, not specious or crank.

Many readers might find that to be all they need to know. But for those who want more detail and explanation, I walk through her arguments in more detail in my followup articles Can We Doubt Paul Existed? and Do Paul’s Letters Look Fake? (which links will go live in the next couple of days).