Corpus-Paul

[Richard Fellows <rfellows AT intergate.ca>]

Loren wrote:
>My assumption is that during the painful visit (55),
>Paul left Corinth in a hurry, and upon return from
>Ephesus, wrote the tearful letter (II Cor. 10-13) in
>which he expressed his intent to visit again (II Cor.
>12:14, 13:1) -- and soon! -- to set everything to
>rights.

I disagree, and will argue that a considerable gap must be placed between
the sorrowful visit and the tearful letter.

It is noteworthy that there is very little mention in 2 Cor 10-13 of Paul's
'sorrowful' visit to Corinth.  The only references to the visit are rather
oblique, and we hear nothing of any clashes between Paul and the rival
missionaries. Therefore, 2 Cor 10-13 was not Paul's response to a painful
visit to Corinth. In fact there is reason to believe that Paul had only
second-hand information when he wrote these chapters, for they contain no
real discussion of any doctrinal differences that there may have been
between Paul and the rival missionaries.

There is a further reason to dissociate 2 Cor 10-13 from the sorrowful
visit. It is clear from 2 Cor 2.5-11; 7.8-12 that (at least by the time
that the tearful letter arrived) the guilt lay largely with a single
individual and the majority of the Corinthians were innocent. Yet 2 Cor
10-13 shows few signs that Paul was singling out an individual: he seems to
be concerned about the whole community. How do we explain this apparent
discrepancy? The problem is acute if we have 2 Cor 10-13 as Paul response
to a visit to Corinth. If Paul had first-hand knowledge of the situation,
he would not have made a mistake in assuming widespread involvement of the
entire community in the matter. The problem is solved if we suppose that 2
Cor 10-13 was based on second-hand information, and if we place an interval
between the origin of said second-hand information and the arrival of the
letter. If, as I believe, Titus took the land route to Corinth (and was
delayed), then the information upon which 2 Cor 10-13 was based was quite
old by the time the letter arrived. It is therefore not hard to imagine an
improvement of the situation (from Paul's point of view) in the time
leading up to the arrival of the letter. An improvement in Corinth prior to
the ARRIVAL of the tearful letter is indicated by way that Titus was
RECEIVED with fear and trembling (2 Cor 7.15). This verse is awkward for
the two-person theorists, but makes perfect sense with the Titus-Timothy
hypothesis, as I have explained before.

>(This letter is sent by Titus.) But after
>"cooling off" he reasoned that a follow-up visit would
>result in only more pain and sorrow (II Cor. 1:23,
>2:1-2).

This is yet another change of mind which you have to assume in order to
make the pieces of your jigsaw fit together. It is a weighty and
unnecessary assumption. Paul wrote the tearful letter with confidence, so
to suggest that he became anxious after sending the letter is uneconomical.
Also, such a loss of confidence does not fit well with the confidence about
the Corinthians which he expressed to the Macedonians (see my post in the
archives on Paul's boasting). Actually, we only need one change of plan,
and we have a very reasonable explanation for it: Titus-Timothy was delayed
on his way to Corinth, and Paul was reluctant to arrive in Corinth before
the tearful letter, which T-T was carrying (see 2 Cor 13.10).

>[Richard]
>
>> Evangelistic visit (51-52)
>> Sorrowful visit (54)
>> Former letter (54 or 55)
>> Tearful letter written (Autumn 55)
>> 1 Corinthians (Passover 56)
>> Tearful letter arrives (Spring 56)
>> 2 Cor 1-9 (Autumn 56)
>
>[Loren]
>
>Richard, you place the former letter between the
>tearful visit and the tearful letter, just as you
>place I Corinthians between II Cor. 10-13 and II Cor.
>1-9. This may remove some obstacles and
>"complications" (on which see below), but it
>introduces new ones. The former letter (following John
>Hurd) directed the Corinthians to be obedient to the
>Apostolic Decree (and other moral regulations), and I
>Corinthians contained more nuanced and lenient
>directives, apropos the responses of Chloe’s people
>and Fortunatus & co. The activity of the rival
>influencers in II Cor. 10-13 -- and the crisis
>engendered thereby -- seems to have been the direct
>result of the leniency promoted in I Corinthians. I
>Corinthians thus precedes II Cor. 10-13.

I am not sure how many of the issues addressed in 1 Corinthians were first
raised by Paul in his 'former' letter, how many were raised by visiting
missionaries, and how many were home-grown in Corinth. I'm not sure that we
have enough information to decide this question, but I'll give it some
thought.

>[Richard, speaking of the T-T hypothesis]
>
>> Remember that
>> complicated stories are unlikely in the extreme when
>> a simple explanation
>> is available. Imagine waking up in the morning and
>> going into the garden.
>> You find the trash overturned and deduce that you
>> have been visited by
>> animals. Then you then see a smashed window pane,
>> and think that you have
>> been burgled. Then you see a broken tree and your
>> first thought is that you
>> have become a victim of vandals. Then it dawns on
>> you that there has simply
>> been a storm overnight. You abandon your previously
>> held multiple
>> explanations in favour of the single assumption of
>> the storm. 

[Loren]
>This analogy is clever but not appropriate. Whether we
>like it or not, "complicated stories" are the
>ingredients of reality. Simple explanations are
>preferable in some cases, but not all.

No. And this is of fundamental importance. An hypothesis should be judged
according to the combined weight of the assumptions that it requires. When
we are offered two rival hypotheses which both fit the facts, the one with
the lighter weight of assumptions is ALWAYS the more probable. It's a
simple matter of probability theory. It matters not at all that
'complicated stories are the ingredients of reality'. When the reality
behind a body of data was complicated, it is highly unlikely that the data
will lend itself to rearrangement into a compact simple scheme without
contradictions.

There would be nothing wrong with complicated reconstructions of the
Corinthian correspondence if there was not a simpler alternative. There are
numerous problems that arise in 2 Corinthians and scholars have attempted
to tackle them individually. They are forced to make a different additional
assumption to explain each piece of data. Every piece of data seems to
require a different change of plan, or a new journey, or new turn in a
relationship, or some other such assumption. But if all the problems can be
explained by a single assumption, then we should abandon the multiple
causes because of their combined weight. That single assumption is that
Timothy had another name, and it was Titus. It allows us to eliminate about
twenty major assumptions from our reconstruction of the Corinthian letters.
I think the analogy about the storm being the simple explanation for a
variety of data is entirely appropriate.

Richard Fellows
rfellows AT intergate.ca
Vancouver