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  • From: rfellows AT intergate.ca
  • To: <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Silvanus and Timothy in 2 Cor 1:19
  • Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 21:29:34 -0700


Steve Black wrote:
>> My thought was in defense of the theory that these people may have
>>represented the original missionary team.

>>I think that perhaps you might have set it aside without warrant.

Steve, some listers may misinterpret what you have written, so I will
clarify: I DO think that Silvanus, Timothy and Paul were the missionary team
during most of Paul's first visit to Corinth.

However, I do not believe that in 2 Cor 1:19 Paul is specifically recalling
the initial preaching by which the Corinthians came to believe. Whenever Paul
does recall such initial preaching in Corinth, he does so using the first
person singular. Furthermore, Paul arrived in Corinth before S & T.

Paul has been talking about his travel plans and his communications with the
Corinthians. There is nothing in the passage about Paul's first visit to
Corinth. I think he mentions S and T because they had co-sent the earlier
letter. I take your point that the passage does not DEMAND this explanation,
but it surely does make good sense.

P, S, and T wrote 1 Thess shortly after Paul's second visit to Achaia (see 1
Thess 3:1). During that visit he discovered sexual immorality in the province
(see 2 Cor 12:21-13:2) and it is this that probably provoked the 'former
letter' (1 Cor 5:9). Therefore 1 Thess and the 'former letter' were probably
written at about the same time. We should therefore expect that S and T were
co-senders of the former letter.

Dave Hindley wrote:
>That means an existing list of names
>may have been edited to eliminate names of those "out of favor" in his/her
>time, or even material lacking a list of coworkers was amended to add names
>thought to be likely, as part of the process of "dressing up" the letter to
>appeal to its intended audience.

Extensive editing of the names in the letters seems unlikely to me. If there
was an editor who freely amended the names, why did he leave us with both
Cephas and Peter in Galatians? Any why did he not change all the mentions of
'Titus' to 'Timothy' (it would have avoided lots of confusion). And Crispus
to Sosthenes? Translators of Galatians (and a few copyists) feel the need to
harmonize the references to Cephas-Petros, so why didn't your hypothetical
creative editor do the same? And why did he not disambiguate the Mark of
Philemon, as the author of Colossians attempted to do?

Richard Fellows.







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