Corpus-Paul

["Stephen C. Carlson" <scarlson AT mindspring.com>]

At 11:05 AM 5/15/99 +0000, Michael Thompson wrote:
>--On Fri, May 14, 1999 10:45 pm -0400 "Stephen C. Carlson"
><scarlson AT mindspring.com> wrote: 
>> What about the possibility that Paul himself edited and joined
>> separate letters to create 2 Cor. when when creating a core
>> collection of his letters?  If I can recall correctly, I believe
>> Trobisch suggested this possibility (at least of Paul's being
>> the first to collect his letters).
>
>That's possible, but is it really likely? I see at least two problems: 
>1. Why put the bits in such a confusing order? If we say Paul did so in
>order to make a more orderly and coherent rhetorical flow, that immediately
>undercuts the main reason for disassembling 2Cor in the first place.

I guess it depends on how many bits 2 Cor. used to comprise and on the
arguments used to identify those parts.  At any rate, I doubt that
the suggestion that Paul compiled 2 Cor. would seriously undercut
the reasons for separating at least 1-9 and 10-13, which has a marked
shift in tone.  Thus, if there were only two parts, 1-9 and 10-13,
then the question becomes why would Paul place the second section
last if it came first chronologically.  The answer would appear to
be that the core collection was arranged in decreasing order of
length: Rom. - 1 Cor. - 2 Cor. - Gal.  Keeping 10-13 separate would
mean that it would have come last and away from the other Corinthian
correspondence, but joining 10-13 to 1-9 would keep the related
letters together and not violate the organizational principle.
 
>2. From what Paul says about the painful letter in 2Cor, I'm not sure he
>would really want others to know exactly what he said anyway. He came close
>to regretting sending it, and I'm sure they didn't enjoy receiving it!

On the theory of that Paul compiled 2 Cor. when producing a letter
collection of his own, consisting of Rom., 1 Cor., 2 Cor., and Gal.,
there would have been the passage of some years between the writing
of 2 Cor. 2 and its incorporation into 2 Cor. with 10-13 (i.e, after
Rom. was composed).  Thus, Paul's feelings about the painful letter
probably evolved over the course of time when he made his collection.

>If Paul did not send the letter as it stands, it seems far more likely that
>whoever compiled 2Cor in its current form was not very familiar with the
>Corinthian situation and correspondence. The Corinthian leadership certainly
>would have known and remembered the order in which the letters came to them.

Since the operative organizational principle behind Paul's letter
collection is to order the letters by decreasing length, I'm not
sure that any knowledge of the chronological order of those letters
is an important consideration.  After all, Gal. appears after Rom.
and the Corinthian correspondence.

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