Corpus-Paul

[rfellows AT intergate.ca]

I had written:
>>I do not like the idea of a short visit to Corinth after 1 Corinthians. 
>>Such a visit was precisely what Paul said he did NOT want to do. Bad news 
>>might conceivably have tempted him to change his mind, but would he really 
>>have changed his mind and made the journey unless he was sure that it would 
>>work? And if he was sure it would work, how come it didn't? This is all 
>>very awkward.

Vince replied:
>Though Paul said he did not want to go to Corinth, he may not have thought 
>that the situation was a bad as it was at the time.  Once he found out, he 
>had to change his plans.  Paul might have felt that making a short visit 
>could solve the problem.  It does not seem out of Paul's character to 
>over-estimate himself and so the fact that the visit was unsuccessful does 
>not seem to give evidence for it not occurring.  This may be another reason 
>why he had to change his plans again and, instead of making another visit he 
>wrote the tearful letter.

Fine, but your reconstruction is a complicated story for which there is not a 
shred of evidence in the text. It all seems a bit forced. I would be very 
comfortable with what you propose if there were no alternative. However, 
there is a much simpler alternative, now that we have the Titus-Timothy 
hypothesis in our tool box.

Here is one more of the many problems involved in placing the sorrowful visit 
after 1 Corinthians. If Paul had gone to Corinth at that time, he would have 
had reliable first-hand information about the church there. But the tearful 
letter does not reflect accurate first-hand information. In the tearful 
letter he misjudged the situation in Corinth. He over-estimated the 
complicity of the majority of the believers. And he ended up regretting the 
letter. The letter had been very severe, but the church was not at all in 
revolt, for they welcomed Titus with fear and trembling, even at the moment 
of his arrival. All this suggests that the tearful letter was written in 
response to unreliable oral information, rather than in response to a visit.

One reason for placing the tearful letter BEFORE 1 Corinthians is because it 
is before 1 Corinthians that we have a period in which Paul was dependent on 
unreliable oral information. Chloe's people were not Corinthians. It would 
have been tactless to mention them if they had been Corinthians. They are 
mentioned to shame the Corinthians, as if to say, 'Your divisions have become 
apparent even to outsiders'. So the information from Chloe's people would not 
have been reliable. The unreliability of the information is confirmed by 1 
Cor 11:18 "I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I 
believe it".

>Also, The tearful letter had to have followed a painful visit (2 Cor. 2:1) 
>and I am not quite sure that I see one before where you propose to place the 
>letter.  If I am reading you right, then you would propose that this painful 
>visit was the initial visit to Corinth.  Is that right?  When would you 
>place this painful visit?

For my chronological table see my other e-mail. I am proposing that Paul made 
a sorrowful visit to Athens only. This was followed by the 'former' letter, 
and then the 'tearful' letter, and then 1 Corinthians. Paul had made no 
sorrowful visit to Corinth, and that is precisely why he did not want to make 
one. He had soured his relationship with Athens and he did not want the same 
to happen with Corinth.

The conventional reading of 2 Cor 2:1-2 is that Paul had wanted to avoid a 
SECOND sorrowful visit to CORINTH. But this does not make much sense. If they 
were already grieved, then it would not he a hugly big deal to grieve them 
again? If there was an earlier sorrowful visit, then the contemplated visit 
would not make things so very much worse. No, Paul's point has more force if 
his relationship to the Corinthians till that point was untarnished (at least 
as far as visits were concerned).

Richard Fellows.