Hermann Detering

Hermann Detering (born 1953) is a Berlin pastor, and critic of Paul's authorship of the Pauline epistles in the line of radical criticism. He also identifies Paul with Simon Magus, the Samaritan sorcerer who opposed Peter.

Simon Magus as Paul

Many scholars, since Ferdinand Christian Baur in the 19th Century, have concluded that the attacks on "Simon Magus" in the 4th Century Pseudo-Clementines may be attacks on Paul. Detering takes the attacks of the Pseudo-Clementines as literal and historical, and suggests that the attacks of the Pseudo-Clementines are correct in making "Simon Magus" a proxy for Paul of Tarsus, with Paul originally been detested by the church, and the name changed when Paul was rehabilitated by virtue of forged Epistles correcting the genuine ones.

Detering's argument expands beyond the Pseudo-Clementines to include other apocrypha, arguing that Simon Magus is sometimes described in apocryphal legends in terms that would fit Paul, though most significantly in Clementine Recognitions and Homilies. Detering contends that the common source of these documents may be as early as the 1st century, and must have consisted in a polemic against Paul, emanating from the Jewish side of Christianity. Paul being thus identified with Simon, Detering argues that Simon's visit to Rome (in the Pseudo-Clementines) had no other basis than Paul's presence there, and, further, that the tradition of Peter's residence in Rome rests on the assumed necessity of his resisting the arch-enemy of Judaism there as elsewhere. Thus, according to Detering, the idea of Peter at Rome really originated with the Ebionites, but it was afterwards taken up by the Catholic Church, and then Paul was associated with Peter in opposition to Simon, who had originally been himself.

Works

• Der gefälschte Paulus – Das Urchristentum im Zwielicht
• Paulusbriefe ohne Paulus? Die Paulusbriefe in der hollandischen Radikalkritik (Kontexte) (German Edition) (9783631447871):
• “The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles,” in Journal of Higher Criticism 3/2 (Fall, 1996)

Reviews and reception

Gerd Lüdemann Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity (1996) comments, while mentioning Jürgen Becker (Der Apostel der Völker, 1989), in footnote 232 that Detering's thesis (Urchristentum im Zwielicht, 1995) about the letters of Paul coming from the second century "is mistaken and is refuted by the existing sources."

Harald Specht comments in Jesus - Tatsachen und Erfindungen (2010): "Detering convincingly pointed out that all the St. Paul's Letters as well as the Acts of the Apostles are clever forgeries." (p. 52 ff)