Corpus-Paul

[Perry L Stepp <plstepp AT juno.com>]

Richard Fellows writes:

 

> 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.

 

There are other possibilities, of course.  It could be that Clement had 2 Corinthians in its canonical form (whether that form is original or not is a separate issue from whether Clement possessed the letter in that form) and didn't make use of it because he:

 

a. forgot that he had it or misplaced it,

b. didn't see the connection between it and what he was writing,

c. saw the connections but figured that his letter was already too long.

 

I imagine most of us have experienced the following: we finish writing a paper/article/whatever, and AFTER we've sent off the final draft we find that ONE note, tucked away, that would have significantly improved the piece. 

 

The upshot: I don't think Clement's use/non-use of 2 Corinthians strengthens the argument.

 

Perry L. Stepp, Ph.D.

Lecturer, Biblical Studies, Baylor University

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make
a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
                            --Mark Twain