If you are interested in studying the chronology of Paul’s life and letters in more detail, see Mark Allan Powell’s “Bibliography: Paul” and check out the works under the subtitle “Life and Career of Paul: Selected Topics.” Any scholar who attempts to reconstruct Paul’s biography will have to make decisions about whether to rely almost exclusively on Paul’s (undisputed?) epistles or factor in other secondary sources and about how they evaluate the historicity of the contents of the book of Acts, including answering the questions about the authorship (e.g., an eyewitness co-worker of Paul?), date (on the spectrum from 60 to 130 CE?), genre (e.g., historiography?), and sources (e.g., non-extant oral or written sources, Paul’s letters, or both) of Acts. If this bibliography were to be updated, it should include the most recent monographs on chronology: Douglas A. Campbell’s Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014) and Paul: An Apostle’s Journey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018) and N. T. Wright’s Paul: A Biography (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018). See also the recent interaction with Campbell in Jonathan Bernier’s “When Paul Met Sergius: An Assessment of Douglas Campbell’s Pauline Chronology for the Years 36 to 37” JBL 138.4 (2019): 829-853.

In the previous posts, we saw how scholars rely on the data from the Corinthian epistles and the book of Acts to establish a rough timeline for Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthians. Of course, Paul’s own firsthand accounts (i.e. letters) should be given priority over a later secondary source (i.e. Acts), but I am not sure that scholars would have all that much data to go on in writing a chronological narrative of Paul’s ministry and letter-writing activity without taking Acts into account. When scholars try to date any ancient text, they investigate the external evidence (e.g., the date of our manuscript copies or the earliest quotations of or allusions to a text in subsequent sources) and the internal evidence from within the text. On this note, I came across some old blog posts from over a decade ago that discuss the relative dates of the Pauline Epistles.

First, check out the following posts from Mark Goodacre: “A Chronological Clue in Acts 9:25“, “The Jerusalem Council: Gal 2:1-10 = Acts 15“, “The Jerusalem Council: Gal 2:1-10 = Acts 15: Response to Critics“, “The Split between Paul and Barnabas“, “Split between Paul and Barnabas II“. “Does Galatians Post-date 1 Corinthians?“, “Does Galatians Post-date 1 Corinthians? II“, “Does Galatians Post-Date 1 Corinthians? III“, “Paul’s Lack of Travel Plans in Galatians“, “Paul’s Loss of Galatia I,” “Paul’s Loss of Galatia II,,” “The Galatians Already Circumcised I,” “The Galatians Already Circumcised II,” “The Galatians Already Circumcised III“, “The Galatians Already Circumcised IV,” “The Galatians Already Circumcised V,” “The Galatians Already Circumcised VI,” “The Galatians Already Circumcised VII,” and “The Dating Game II: Getting Paul’s Letters in Order“. April DeConick was also a respondent to Goodacre’s SBL paper on the dating of the early Christian documents and you can see her blog reflections at “SBL Memories 2: Dating Our Sources“.

Loren Rosson III responded with the posts “Those Foolish Galatians – Who Were They?“, “The Difficult Dating of Galatians“, “Gal 3:27-28: On Respecting Identity“, “The Chronology of Paul’s Letters“, “The Jerusalem Council: Gal 2:1-10 = Acts 15:1-29“, “Why Paul took up the Collection (Rom 15:25-32)“, “Were the Galatians Already Circumcised“, and “Goodacre’s Dating Game“.

Stephen C. Carlson responded with the posts “Options for Paul’s Visit in Gal 2“, “Richard Fellows on Dating Gal and 1 Cor“, “Acts 9:25 – His Disciples or The Disciples“, “Did Paul Lose Galatian?“, “A ‘Flash-Forward in Acts 1?“, and “Did Paul Win at Antioch?“.

Unfortunately, Michael Pahl closed his blog The Stuff of Earth, so the links to where he outlines a different chronology for Paul’s letters and equates the meeting in Galatians 2:1-10 with Acts 11:27-30 no longer work, but he has his own website at https://michaelpahl.com/. I have also tried to track the conversation about whether Galatians 2:1-10 should be equated with the meeting in Acts 11:27-30 or 15:1-29 in my post “When Did the Meeting in Galatians Happen in the Timeline of Acts?“.

Please let me know by email if there are other blog posts I missed and I will add the links.

In the previous post, we saw that Paul likely wrote 1 Corinthians from Ephesus around 53-55 CE to the Christ assemblies in Corinth. In this post, I want to turn to the reception of 1 Corinthians among its intended recipients, the subsequent interactions between Paul and the Corinthians, and the data from 2 Corinthians. What complicates matters is that most scholars judge 2 Corinthians to be a composite text that combines more than one letter of Paul. There are different partition theories and reconstructions of Paul’s travels and letter-writing activity (e.g., see Daniel Wallace’s introductory post for one possible reconstruction or Bart Ehrman’s blog posts for another), but I would favour the following reconstruction:

1. Paul’s co-worker Timothy had been dispatched to Corinth to re-enforce Paul’s doctrinal and ethical teachings (cf. 1 Corinthians 4:17; 16:10; Acts 19:22). It is doubtful that Paul’s intervention in the area was well received.
2. * Paul may have briefly visited Corinth a second time here or at any time before point #6.
3. Paul changed his plans about visiting the Corinthians on his way to Macedonia (cf. 1 Corinthians 16:5-6; 2 Corinthians 1:15-2:2) and wrote a “tearful letter” to them instead due to the grief that they had caused him (cf. 2 Corinthians 2:3-4; 7:8). Either this letter has been lost or the remnants of it are preserved in 2 Corinthians 10-13.
4. Paul initially hoped to meet his co-worker Titus in Troas before he arrived in Macedonia (2 Corinthians 2:12-13), but he actually met him in Macedonia. Titus arrived with a positive report about how the Corinthians repented in response to the “tearful letter” (cf. 2 Corinthians 7:5-16).
5. Paul sent another letter, which was perhaps delivered by Titus (8:17-18; 12:18), and this letter consisted of 2 Corinthians 1-9. There is debate about whether this letter continued with chapters 10-13, despite the abrupt shift to a more severe tone, or whether chapters 10-13 preserve parts of another letter (i.e. the earlier “tearful letter” or an even later and final letter to the Corinthians) that was appended to chapters 1-9.
6. Paul mentions his plans to visit Corinth a third time (2 Corinthians 12:14; 13:1), which is likely documented in Acts 20:1-3, and he wrote the epistle to the Romans from Corinth around 57 CE.

*Many commentators argue that Paul referenced this second visit in 2 Corinthians 2:1: he characterized this as a sorrowful experience as he had to confront the Christ believers in Corinth in general and a dissident member in one of their congregations in particular (2:5-11; 7:12) and, after leaving Corinth, he cancelled his plans to re-visit Corinth on route to Macedonia and wrote the “tearful letter” instead. In contrast, Stephen C. Carlson’s “On Paul’s Second Visit to Corinth: Πάλιν, Parsing, and Presupposition in 2 Corinthians 2:1″ JBL 135.3 (2016): 597-615 renders this verse as arguing that Paul did not wish to visit the Corinthians again as he did not want to cause them grief by reprimanding them and, thus, 2:1 has nothing to do with Paul’s second visit that may have occurred anytime before the writing of the letter preserved in 2 Corinthians 10-13.

1 and 2 Corinthians are included among the seven undisputed Pauline epistles, along with Romans, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. This means that, generally speaking, virtually all scholars acknowledge Paul’s authorship of these texts. The texts were written to various Christ assemblies located in Corinth and David G. Horrell offers an overview of what we know about the city during Paul’s lifetime at the Bible Odyssey website. According to Acts 18:2, Paul had stayed 18 months in Corinth during his second major missionary journey and he was put on trial before Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia around 51-52 CE (cf. Acts 18:12). On his third major missionary journey, Paul spent two to three years in Ephesus (Acts 19:10; 20:31) between 53-55 CE, where he both wrote a lost letter to the Corinthians (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:9-13) and also received some written and verbal correspondence from the Corinthians (cf. 1:11; 7:1; 16:18). Paul had heard some troublesome news about the domestic congregations in Corinth from Chloe, including their factionalism and their problematic doctrinal, ritual and ethical positions, and wrote the letter of 1 Corinthians from Ephesus (cf. 16:8) to address these matters.

Here are some select examples of the reception of Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians during the Patristic period. For more possible references or allusions to these texts, check out the following books:

• The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers
• The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus (3 volumes)
• The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers
• Nag Hammadi Texts and the Bible: A Synopsis and Index
• Biblia Patristica.

“Take up the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul. What did he write to you at the time when the Gospel first began to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit, he wrote to you concerning himself, and Cephas, and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed among you. But that inclination for one above another entailed less guilt upon you, inasmuch as your partialities were then shown towards apostles, already of high reputation, and towards a man whom they had approved.” (1 Clement 47:1-4)

“Let my spirit be counted as nothing for the sake of the cross, which is a stumbling-block to those that do not believe, but to us salvation and life eternal. “Where is the wise man? where the disputer?” Where is the boasting of those who are styled prudent?” (Ignatius of Antioch, To the Ephesians 18:1)

“Paul declared most plainly in the Epistle to the Corinthians… For the apostle does also say in the Second [Epistle] to the Corinthians… Thus he says in the second [Epistle] to the Corinthians” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.27.3; 4.28.3; 5.3.1)

“First of all, to the Corinthians, prohibiting their heretical schisms; next, to the Galatians, against circumcision; then to the Romans he wrote at length, explaining the order (or, plan) of the Scriptures, and also that Christ is their principle (or, main theme). It is necessary for us to discuss these one by one, since the blessed apostle Paul himself, following the example of his predecessor John, writes by name to only seven churches in the following sequence: To the Corinthians first, to the Ephesians second, to the Philippians third, to the Colossians fourth, to the Galatians fifth, to the Thessalonians sixth, to the Romans seventh. It is true that he writes once more to the Corinthians and to the Thessalonians for the sake of admonition, yet it is clearly recognizable that there is one Church spread throughout the whole extent of the earth.” (Muratorian Canon, Lines 42-57)

“Paul’s fourteen epistles are well known and undisputed” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.3.5)

“Here are what he [Marcion] calls Epistles: 1. Galatians. 2. Corinthians. 3. Second Corinthians. 4. Romans. 5. Thessalonians. 6. Second Thessalonians. 7. Ephesians. 8. Colossians. 9. Philemon. 10. Philippians. He also has parts of the so-called Epistle to the Laodiceans.” (Epiphanius, Panarion 42.9.4; cf. Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.2-21)

“He [Paul] wrote nine epistles to seven churches: To the Romans one, To the Corinthians two, To the Galatians one, To the Ephesians one, To the Philippians one, To the Colossians one, To the Thessalonians two; and besides these to his disciples, To Timothy two, To Titus one, To Philemon one.” (Jerome, On Illustrious Men 5)

My colleague Dr. Evelyn Ashley, who is on the adjunct faculty at Vose Seminary, is a specialist on the Corinthian epistles and I have greatly benefited from her class materials for the unit “Paul and Corinthian Christianity.” Her PhD dissertation entitled “Paul’s Paradigm for Ministry in 2 Corinthians: Christ’s Death and Resurrection” is available through Murdoch University’s Research Repository. This was published under the title Paul’s Defense of his Ministerial Style: A Study of his Second Letter to the Corinthians.

Here are some resources that are available online for studying 1 and 2 Corinthians:

• http://www.ntgateway.com/paul-the-apostle/1-and-2-corinthians/
• https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/1corinthians.php and https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/2corinthians.php
• http://www.textweek.com/1_corinthians.htm and http://www.textweek.com/2_corinthians.htm
• https://bible.org/seriespage/7-1-corinthians-introduction-argument-and-outline and https://bible.org/seriespage/8-2-corinthians-introduction-argument-and-outline
• http://www.bibleodyssey.org/places/related-articles/corinthian-letters, http://www.bibleodyssey.org/places/main-articles/corinth, http://www.bibleodyssey.org/places/related-articles/church-at-corinth, http://www.bibleodyssey.org/places/related-articles/corinth-in-acts-pauls-financial-support, http://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/ask-a-scholar/first-corinthians, http://www.bibleodyssey.org/passages/related-articles/1-corinthians-13-and-weddings, and http://www.bibleodyssey.org/tools/image-gallery/c/corinthian-letters
• https://www.ligonier.org/blog/top-5-commentaries-on-the-book-of-1-corinthians/ and https://www.ligonier.org/blog/top-5-commentaries-on-the-book-of-2-corinthians/
• http://www.bibledex.com/videos/1corinthians.html and http://www.bibledex.com/videos/2corinthians.html
• http://www.thepaulpage.com/
• Bibliography: 1 Corinthians and Bibliography: 2 Corinthians

During this semester, I will be teaching the unit “Paul and Corinthian Christianity.” Here is a description of the English and Greek versions of the unit for undergraduates at the Australian College of Theology. I have not yet had the opportunity to research 1 and 2 Corinthians, so I plan to blog some thoughts on these epistles as I prepare this unit. I hope that you enjoy the series.