Corpus-Paul

["Brian Peterson" <BPeterson AT ltss.edu>]

On 05/13/99, David Garland  wrote:
> 
> But the letters were not simply attached to one another.  The missing =
> conclusion to chapters 1-9, and the missing salutation and thanksgiving =
> section of chapters 10-13 requires a deliberate editing by someone who =
> cropped off the original opening formulas and closing benedictions.  The =
> greetings and thanksgiving section in Paul's letters, however, were never =
> perfunctory but an essential lead-in to the themes discussed in the body =
> of the letter, and a redactor must have ignored that  function to make a =
> composite letter.  The questions who did this and why are frequently =
> ignored or given only perfunctory explanations that, in my opinion, strain =
> credulity more than trying to makes sense of the twists and turns in Paul'=
> s thought.
> 
> David.E. Garland

If 2 Corinthians has been assembled from originally separate letters (and I 
am inclined to think that 1-9 and 10-13 are such separate letters), then we 
might wish that whoever edited and joined these letters would have shown 
enough "appreciation" or "respect" for Paul's introductions & closings to 
prevent their excision.  Nevertheless, there was a range of practice when 
it came to preserving letters.  P. Vielhauer ("Geschichte der 
urchristlichen Literatur, 1975) notes that while the letters of Plato and 
Demosthenes were preserved with both their beginnings and endings 
preserved, the letters of Isocrates had most of their beginnings and 
endings omitted, and those of Pliny the Younger and Apollonius of Tyana 
retain neither their beginnings nor their endings. If this was a practice 
for preserving the letters of revered people, should we be surprised that 
someone in the early church thought it acceptable to do the same to Paul's 
letters?

Brian K. Peterson
Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary
Columbia,  South Carolina


> George W. Truett Theological Seminary
> Baylor University