Corpus-Paul

[Richard Fellows <rfellows AT shaw.ca>]

I wrote:
<<It is better to see 2 Cor as directed at two audiences, not written at two
times. This dispenses with the need to postulate a bazaar editorial cut and
paste job.>>

David Inglis responded:
> Not necessarily.  If the recipients never kept or created copies (ie. they
> relied on Paul's 'postman' just reading the letters to them) then there
> would never have been copies at wherever the recipients were located.  In
> this scenario, the form of 2 Cor then depends on what the 'postman' kept,
> what Paul kept, or what the postman drought back to Paul.  For example, if
> the two letters were written on parchment then they could have become
> 'shuffled' by the postman, by Paul, or later by one of Paul's companions.
> There would then be no 'bizarre' cut and paste job, just a mistaken
> re-shuffle when they came to be copied.

Of course it is theoretically possible that a mistake or accident could have
resulted in the loss of the end of one letter and/or the beginning of the
other and that this could lead to the creation of a composite letter. But
why resort to such hypotheses? The only reason why commentators proposed
partitioning 2 Cor 10-13 from 1-9 was because of the change in tone, but
this is easily explained by a change in audience, which is unsurprising in a
letter which is addressed to a region. The suggestion that an error could
have resulted in the joining of two letters is purely diffensive and needs
to be preceded by strong arguments for partitioning 2 Cor in the first
place.

I think it would create some useful dialogue if listers who partition 2 Cor
could offer some positive reasons for believing that Corinth was the
intended primary audience of 2 Cor 10-13.

> As I have previously stated to you, your comments to me about papyrus
being
> too expensive to allow Paul's churches to create papyrus copies apply
> equally (perhaps more so) to Paul, so make it more likely that Paul would
> write on parchment, not on a papyrus scroll.

You have misrepresented my off-list comments. No big deal.

Perry wrote:
<<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.>>

Fine, but we do not need such theories when we accept that 10-13 was not
directed at Corinth, as I have explained. Perry, how do you explain 10-13?
To whom was it writen? When? Why?

Richard Fellows.