By Alex Mellen | Echo
Biblical Studies professor Greg MaGee recently released his first book. "Portrait of an Apostle" argues for Paul's authorship of the epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians and is a reworking of MaGee's doctoral dissertation, a project spanning many years of study.
"In the course of my research, I would see people refer to their belief that Paul did not write these two letters-Ephesians and Colossians-as if it were just a given," MaGee said. "But I never really saw any good substantive explanation for why they believe that. It seemed more speculative, not supported."
MaGee explained that many scholars believe in a "school of Paul" that was established after Paul died. Though no historical evidence of it exists, this school allegedly wrote letters in the style of Paul to continue his practice.
During his research, MaGee studied two letters that are known to be imitations of Paul written after his death. The Epistle to the Laodiceans and 3 Corinthians were written in the second century, and MaGee compared them to the canonical epistles.
MaGee also unearthed the original sources of the argument against Paul's authorship. He found that these arguments were often forgotten after their circulation.
"So (people) either just accepted them wholesale or, even if they believed in Pauline authorship of the letters, they did not interact (with) and specifically respond to some of those arguments," MaGee explained.
The belief that Paul did not write Ephesians and Colossians can impact how Christians treat the letters, according to MaGee.
"When people are talking about Paul's theology . . . because they bought into this idea that Ephesians and Colossians are not from Paul, those letters don't really get reflected in their views of Paul's theology, and so they become rather overlooked in scholarship," he said.Since sales of MaGee's book have only begun, scholarly reviews have not come in yet. MaGee expects those over the next few years. His main audience is biblical studies students and scholars, but much of his editing process helped make the book easier to read and understand.
Despite the enormous breadth of biblical scholarship, MaGee is tackling a rather under researched topic from a unique angle.
"It's hard to find new ground in biblical studies, but this had never been done in a real extended fashion," MaGee said. "And some (books) that were most similar to mine were coming to opposite conclusions. It was fun to offer a response on the other side."
"Portrait of an Apostle" was released on Sept. 24 and is available on Amazon in print and e-book form.
