At this point in the critique of Britt’s and Wingo’s argument in “Christ Before Jesus,” I think it should be clear that we can generally ignore their stylometric analysis for a host of reasons, starting with the methodology being inherently flawed, to the actual results lacking the necessary data we need to fully analyze them. Added to that, we can also argue that there is a misreading of the data that is presented.
Looking at the dendrogram, to conclude that the same author wrote all of Paul’s prison letters, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon, simply isn’t justified. What could be suggested is that Ephesians 4-6 and Colossians were written by the same author, and Philippians 1-2 and Philemon were written by the same author.
The problem with Britt’s and Wingo’s analysis is that they are arbitrarily picking a cluster, and then assuming that everything in that cluster is similar. They aren’t factoring in the distance between the branches within that cluster.
When looking at a dendrogram like this one, that’s laid out horizontally, what’s important are the horizontal lines. The vertical lines matter much less. For instance, if one wanted to rearrange the graph, you could rotate the cluster that contains the works of Jude, Titus, 1 and 2 Timothy, etc, and place it alongside the prison letters. Doing such wouldn’t impact how we read the dendrogram.
It’s the horizontal lines, in this case, that matter. This is also where having a scale matters, as it quantifies the distance between two data points, as well as the distance between two branches. Even without that, we can make some base observations, while also realizing that we have to speak more in generalized terms.
Looking at just the cluster that contains the prison letters, we can say that Philippians 1-2 and Philemon are similar. But they are less similar than Ephesians 4-6 and Colossians are to each other. We can say this because the latter would be closer to 0 on the scale (with 0 being all the way to the right of the graph). The further you move to the left, the more dissimilarity you have.
Taking this a step further, we can break up the prison letters into two main branches. On one hand, you have Philippians 1-2 and Philemon, and on the other, the rest of the texts. The distance between these two branches is rather significant. If we were doing a proper analysis, we would most likely cut these into two separate clusters.
The standard process would generally have us slice the dendrogram vertically. This just means that we’d draw a vertical line through the graph. This then creates child branches, which form individual clusters. Now, where we draw this line is up for interpretation, but it would be virtually guaranteed that any slicing would separate Philippians 1-2 and Philemon into their own individual cluster.
We can break this down a bit more. Looking at the remaining prison letters, we can make the case that Ephesians 1-3 is more similar to Philippians 3-4, than either is to Ephesians 4-6 and Colossians.
What this all means is that the conclusion that Britt and Wingo are making, that all of these letters are written by the same person, and thus are forgeries, is not supported by their own data. To get to that conclusion, you have to misinterpret what the data actually says here.
It’s not based solely on the stylometric results that they conclude that Philemon is a forgery. First, they state that personal letters are the most likely to be faked. However, that does not equate to all personal letters being faked, or that the majority of personal letters are faked.
They try to bolster this claim by stating that the Pastoral Letters (First and Second Timothy, and Titus), which are the only other personal letters written by Paul, are considered to be forgeries. This is irrelevant though. Just because one forgery was written, doesn’t mean that other letters are therefore forgeries.
We know that Paul wrote letters, or had them dictated. It is likely he wrote some personal letters, and at the very least, people early on thought that was characteristic of him. That we would then have a personal letter from Paul is not surprising.
They go further by saying that the reason no one questions it is because it is so short. Yet, it was actually for that basic reason that Ferdinand Christian Bauer, in this 1875 book, “Paul: His Life and Works,” questioned the authenticity of Philemon. It was because the letter was short and “so very singular as to arouse our suspicions.”
As James D.G. Dunn points out in his book, “The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon,” “the style and vocabulary, as judged particularly by the opening and closing, … are characteristically Pauline, and overall the degree of variation lies well within the diversity of Paul’s epistolary practice as attested by the undisputed letters.”
Dunn states that there is nothing in the letter that sets off alarm bells “in the minds of those most familiar with Paul’s manner of handling tricky situations elsewhere.” He continues by saying,
“Moreover, reasons for a later pseudepigrapher to bother to invent a letter of this sort and pass it off as Paul’s are hard to imagine. In contrast, the only reason why a letter of such limited application should be retained as Paul’s was that it was by Paul.”
The reason it’s accepted as authentic is not because it’s short. It’s accepted as authentic for a whole host of reasons, one of which is that it matches in style. To claim that Philemon is simply accepted because it’s short only shows ignorance when it comes to such topics. This ignorance could generally be forgiven, but they build upon it in a way that screams that they should know better.
This is done with their claim on page 241, “we know Colossians was not written by Paul – even mainstream scholars generally agree on this.” This is one of the few places where they cite a source, the book, “The Empty Prison Cell,” by Chris M. Hansen.
Hansen doesn’t state this though. Instead, she states that, “this modified Hauptbriefe (the undisputed Pauline texts) is still widely accepted to this very day, though some lively debate exists on whether to consider Ephesians and Colossians authentic…” Hansen does consider Colossians to be inauthentic, while also maintaining that there is debate about its authenticity.
The bigger problem here is that Britt and Wingo praise this book, yet they then misrepresent what it states, and even more so, they ignore chapter 1 of the work, where Hansen lays out, as the title states, “The Case for Authenticity.” If they had read this chapter, it’s hard to imagine that they would come to the conclusion that the authenticity of Philemon simply rests on it being so short.
Now granted, Hansen points out that the authenticity of Philemon probably should be questioned, as the case for authenticity is not well spelled out. That most scholars seem to just take it for granted, as it’s a near-universal acceptance. And it’s true that at times, these consensuses need to be reviewed. Because of this, I will be dealing with Hansen’s work much more in-depth later on.
Besides misrepresenting what Hansen said though, they also misrepresent what Colossians and Philemon say. Right after falsely claiming that mainstream scholars generally agree that Colossians is a forgery, they state there are overlapping themes in Colossians 3-4 (which they say is a later addition, yet never show this to be the case) and Philemon.
The fact that there are some overlapping themes is not surprising. This is what we expect in such discourse. If one is primarily writing theological letters, there will overlap. That’s just expected. For instance, we can look at Bart Ehrman. Looking through all of his books, he has a number that deal with the theme of forgery. Does that suggest that his works are forgeries? Not at all.
Yet the theme that Britt and Wingo claim is being shared is simply being misrepresented. They state that in both Colossians and Philemon that the social hierarchy of slavery is being reinforced.
Colossians 3:11 famously reads, “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all.” Social hierarchy isn’t completely dismantled here, but it is largely flipped on its head. You still have some semblance of it, starting with Colossians 3:18, where it states, “wives, be subject to your husbands.” But in turn, it responds with “Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.” In many regards, a new hierarchy is being created here.
In Philmon, this is dismantled even more when it comes to slavery. While Colossians 4:1 states, “Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven,” in Philemon, Paul places Onesimus on the same level as himself.
In sending Onesimus back to Philemon, Paul states that it’s not as a slave, but as a beloved brother, just as Paul is his brother. Sure, Paul doesn’t specifically say, give Onesimus his freedom, but in a passive-aggressive manner, that’s what he does.
The misrepresentation goes beyond this. Right after, Britt and Wingo focus on verse 19 of Philemon, “I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.”
Prior to this, Paul states in verse 17-18, “So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to me.”
Paul is taking Onesimus’ debt onto himself. Britt and Wingo claim that the reason why verse 19 is there, why it states that Paul is writing this, is because it’s an attempt to fool the readers. “The forger knew that the reader would be reading what they would assume is a copy and thus believe the original letter actually had different handwriting.”
They bill this all as a purposeful illusion, based on the idea that there is only one original, and that these letters were meant to be shared in various churches, and thus what readers would have seen were copies.
There are massive issues here. First, we are talking about a personal letter here. Personal letters were not expected to be shared among various churches. So the situation they are talking about has no real bearing on this specific letter.
Second, this isn’t a traditional signature. Instead, as we see in verses 17-18, Paul is taking on the debt of Onesimus. In order to reassure Philemon that he really means this, he states very directly, you have this agreement in my own writing. I will pay the debt.
In order to get to Britt’s and Wingo’s conclusion, you have to already start with the view that Philemon is a forgery, that it was meant to be circulated among various churches and thus copied, which in turn would hide a signature being faked, and then ignore the context in which the letter moves to Paul’s own handwriting.
They never build a real case that Philemon is a forgery, but instead simply conclude that it is, and then build an argument around that assumption. In many ways, this becomes circular logic.
Britt and Wingo finish off their argument by once again conflating names. They state that Onesimus is an important figure in the second century, and a reason for faking the letter could have been to trace his religious lineage back to Paul himself, thus boosting his credibility. That it was a power grab.
Except there is 0 evidence for that besides a shared name. Onesimus is mentioned in only two books of the New Testament: Colossians and Philemon. We don’t even know if these two individuals are meant to be the same person though. It is often assumed that they are, yet we have no evidence for that.
We do have a mention of someone by the name of Onesimus, who was the Bishop of Ephesus, mentioned in Ignatius of Antioch’s letter, “Epistle to the Ephesians,” but no connection is made here between this Onesimus and the one in Philemon. Instead, we know that Onesimus was a common name in the first century, so we can’t assume that every mention of a Onesimus referred to the same person.
None of this though even suggests that Onesimus was an important figure in the second century. We have Orthodox tradition that actually states that Paul’s Onesimus was martyred in the mid-60s, making it impossible for him to be the same Onesimus mentioned by Ignatius. Other traditions place his death in 68, or even 95. While we have differing traditions here, they all place Onesimus firmly within the first century.
If we look at the Onesimus Ignatius says was a bishop in Ephesus, we see him having served as such from 54-68 A.D. Again, placing his importance in the first century. Now, according to this line of tradition, Onesimus was said to have died, at the latest, around 107 A.D., his importance was still within the first century.
To conclude, as Britt and Wingo do, that “once it’s (Philemon) put under the microscope, it becomes clear that it’s just a second-century forgery and attempted power grab,” is just detached from history. It’s detached from all of the data. It invalidates itself.
Putting all of this together, if we assume it was a power grab, it only makes sense that it was written in the first century, prior to Onesimus ever becoming a bishop in the 50s. To say it’s a power grab, and then to place it in the second century makes no logical sense, as Onesimus, at best, died within the first decade of the second century, after having already risen in importance long before.