I’ve mentioned several times in these posts on 2 Corinthians that scholars are reasonably confident that it is made up of two letters of Paul that have been cut and spliced together (chs. 10-13 was the first chronologically; chs. 1-9 later), and I’ve pointed out that some think it is made up of four or five letters.  It seems that since I’m on the topic, and will not be again for a long while, I should repost a blog that I’ve done within living memory (as opposed to twelve years ago) since it deals directly with the topic.

Before explaining the situation, I should say that when I first heard in graduate school that 2 Corinthians was made up of five different letters, all spliced together, it struck me as a bit crazy, but as I looked at the evidence I began to see that it made a good bit of sense.

I should also say that if what is now one letter is actually parts of five letters, written at different times and in different circumstances, and one naturally want to know what it would even mean to ask “What is the Original” of this epistle?  There are several plausible answers (e.g., there are “five” originals — but if so, we don’t have any of them; or the “original” is the first edition of the five cut and spliced together — but if so the “original” is actually based on earlier originals! etc…).  Some readers will think one of the plausible answer is “right” — but others will think another one is right!

(Incidentally: a reader has asked me whether any of the letters allegedly found in 2 Corinthians could have originally been written by someone other than Paul.  You’ll see here that this is widely believed by scholars for one small chunk of the letter.  On this particular question, there is a much larger critical agreement on the matter, though not complete consensus).

I have taken this discussion again from my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press).

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The Partitioning of 2 Corinthians - Bart Ehrman

A number of New Testament scholars believe that 2 Corinthians comprises not just two of Paul’s letters but four or five of them, all edited together into one larger composition for distribution among the Pauline churches. Most of the “partition theories,” as they are called (since they partition the one letter into a number of others), maintain that chapters 1–9 are not a unity but are made up of several letters spliced together. Read the chapters for yourself and answer the following questions:

  • Does the beginning of chapter 8 appear to shift abruptly to a new subject, away from the good news Titus has just brought Paul (about the reconciliatory attitude of the Corinthians) to Paul’s decision to send Titus to collect money for the needy among the Christians? There is no transition to this new subject, and 8:1 sounds like the beginning of the body of a letter. Could it have been taken from a different writing?
  • Do the words of 9:1 seem strange after what Paul has said in all of chapter 8? He has been talking for twenty-four verses about the collection for the saints, and then in 9:1 he begins to talk about it again as if it were a new subject that had not yet been broached. Could chapter 9 also, then, have come from a separate letter?
  • Does the paragraph found in 6:14–7:1 seem odd in its context? The verse immediately preceding it (6:13) urges the Corinthians to be open to Paul, as does the verse immediately following it (7:2). But the paragraph itself is on an entirely different and unannounced topic: Christians should not associate with nonbelievers. Moreover, there are aspects of this passage that appear unlike anything Paul himself says anywhere else in his writings. Nowhere else, for example, does he call the Devil “Beliar” (v. 15). Has this passage come from some other piece of correspondence (possibly one that Paul didn’t write) and been inserted in the midst of Paul’s warm admonition to the Corinthians to think kindly of him?

If you answered yes to all three of these questions, then you agree with those scholars who see fragments of at least five letters in 2 Corinthians: (a) 1:1–6:13; 7:2–16 (part of the conciliatory letter); (b) 6:14–7:1 (part of a non-Pauline letter?); (c) 8: 1–24 (a letter for the collection, to the Corinthians) (d) 9:1–15 (a letter for the collection, to some other church?); and (e) 10:1–13:13 (part of the painful letter).