Counting Paul

Abstract This book argues that there is no mathematical solution to the question of the authorship of the Pauline Epistles in the New Testament. For more than two hundred years, linguistic features of the Pauline Epistles have been counted, averaged, and compared. The book shows that, by measuring one text against another, scholars have thought that the authentic Pauline stylome would emerge as the incontrovertible standard for uncovering canonical forgeries in the Apostle’s name. It describes how the analysis of authorial style took on increasing argumentative weight as a way out of the many subjective and circular decisions that normally attended arguments over the authenticity of the Pauline Epistles as they began to develop in the nineteenth century. Tracing the long history of the computational approach to the Pauline authorship problem, this book exposes the ideological foundations and sloppy science of much of the work, even in its more sophisticated forms in the computer age, and ultimately argues that Pauline biography ought not be written from fewer sources than what the New Testament has given us, but rather more. It advocates for a more expansive vision of what might count as Pauline by reorienting our focus away from internal criteria, like appeals to style, and toward external criteria, like the reception of Paul in the generations after his death.