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  • From: "Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>
  • To: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul's churches copy his letters?
  • Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 21:43:45 -0500

At 09:31 AM 2/20/03 -0800, David ATTBI wrote:
>Please could I ask listers whether they think the evidence points to the
>recipients keeping copies or not.

I would think so to a certain extent if Trobisch's idea is right
that the letter collection expanded in three or four stages--the
new letters had to come from somewhere. On the other hand, I can
well imagine that one a letter collection was circulating, it
would have pushed out and suppressed the demand for individual
letters rather quickly and effectively.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
>From rfellows AT shaw.ca Fri Feb 21 21:14:07 2003
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Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 18:15:23 -0800
From: Richard Fellows <rfellows AT shaw.ca>
Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul's churches copy his letters?
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When Clement of Rome wrote to the Corinthians he made good use of 1
Corinthians but does not seem to use 2 Corinthians, which is strange because
2 Cor 10-13 would have been very relevant to his purposes. I see two
possible explanations.

1. Clement had 2 Cor 10-13, but did not use it because he new that the
target audience of these chapters had been Athens, not Corinth.

2. Clement had 1 Cor, but not 2 Cor 10-13. In this case letters certainly
circulated independently. Why would Clement have 1 Cor but not 2 Cor 10-13?
Perhaps because 2 Cor (10-13 at least) had ended up not in Corinth, but in
Athens, which was one step removed from Clement who's contacts were in
Corinth.

Both possibilities support the Athens hypothesis. The Athens hypothesis
distances 10-13 somewhat from Corinth and this makes Clement's silence more
explicable.

The silence of Clement on 2 Cor makes it difficult to simultaneously believe
that letters did not circulate independently AND that 2 Cor 10-13 was aimed
at Corinth.

David Inglis wrote:
> For example
> if 2 Cor is a composite of two original letters, wouldn't we expect to see
> evidence of those individual letters in church collections? The fact that
> we don't either suggests that 2 Cor is not a composite (which appears
> unlikely) or that the recipients never created copies.

If there had been originally two letters, we would expect to see them
presented as two letters in ALL our manuscripts! It is better to see 2 Cor
as directed at two audiences, not written at two times. This dispenses with
the need to postulate a bazaar editorial cut and paste job.

Richard Fellows.







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