I've recently devoured George K. Barr's Scalometry and the Pauline Epistles (JSNTSup 261), and found it interesting and thought-provoking.

If you've read it or if you've read/are familiar with is articles on the same topic, I'd like to pick your brain. I'm wondering what you think of it and if you're aware of any critical reviews. I checked RBL but didn't find any.

What do you think of his work? His conclusions? His methodology? Feel free to contact me via email if you have thoughts or pointers to interaction with his work.

Update: ricoblog reader Jan Krans (the author of the NA27 review cited in the previous blog post) responds with a pointer to a review article in the Journal of Greco Roman Christianity and Judaism. Jan also notes:

FWIW: the book lost much of its potential to me when I noticed that Barr regards for instance 1 Tim 3:1-16 as a later insertion (pp. 89.91), in order to detect the same 'scalometric' pattern as in the other Pauline epistles.

I can understand that to a degree (ditto for throwing out portions of Titus 1 for the same reason). But is this a reason to throw out Barr's work? He detected an anomaly and posited a solution. He could've also posited a solution like "Therefore 1 Timothy and Titus are not Pauline since they don't fit typical Pauline scale patterns" -- aligning with much of current scholarship that, properly or not, considers the Pastoral Epistles pseudepigraphs. If he'd have done that would his results be more palatable?

In other words, is it proper to throw out the whole of his work if one disagrees with one aspect of the conclusion? What about his argument applied to the other 10 Paulines?

Also, FWIW, I find Barr's proposal to consider 1Ti 3.1-16, Titus 1.7-9 and perhaps Titus 1.12-16 as non-Pauline somewhat intriguing. It removes the major ecclesiological portions from the letters and in so doing removes the "chronologically inapproriate eccelsiology" argument (aka the "Ignatian ecclesiology" argument) from those who would discredit Paul as author. We of course don't have good text-critical evidence for such a position, but it is an interesting thought nonetheless. At least to me.

Lastly, Barr's interaction with Anthony Kenny's work (Appendix C, "Scale Sensitivity", pp. 148-154) shows some promise and direction for future work in the realm of stylometry that takes Barr's scalometry into account.