- Dating
- In 55 or 56 AD, roughly a year after writing 1 Corinthians and a year before writing his letter to the Romans from Corinth, Paul wrote 2 Corinthians from Macedonia. (See: Acts 20:2-3)
One of Paul’s four Hauptbriefe letters, Second Corinthians, is generally acknowledged to contain genuine Pauline correspondence. Werner Georg Kummel wants to see the letter as a whole written by Paul once (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 287-293).
There aren’t really any difficulties that have suggested to several commentators that 2 Corinthians has been compiled from several pieces of correspondence. Since the “sorrowful letter” mentioned in 2:4 does not describe 1 Corinthians, we know that Paul had written at least three letters to the Corinthians. A quite reasonable suggestion is that the last four chapters contain the “sorrowful letter” that is mentioned in 2:4.
Other evidence bears out this view. Edgar J. Goodspeed notes a few considerations that suggest disunity in 2 Corinthians (An Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 58-59). On the one hand, “From the beginning through chapter 9 it is pervaded by a sense of harmony, reconciliation, and comfort.” On the other, “With the beginning of chapter 10 we are once more in the midst of personal misunderstanding and bitterness, and these continue to dominate the letter to the end . . . This undeniable incongruity between the two parts of II Corinthians naturally suggests that we have in it two letters instead of one – one conciliatory and gratified, the other injured and incensed. And as the early part of II Corinthians clearly looks back upon a painful, regretted letter, the possibility suggests itself that we actually have that letter in chapters 10-13.”
Norman Perrin offers the following solution with five Pauline fragments and one non-Pauline interpolation (The New Testament: An Introduction, pp. 104-105).
1.) Verses 2:14-6:13 and 7:2-4 are “part of a letter that Paul wrote to defend himself and his authority against opponents who came to Corinth bearing letters of recommendation from Christian communities in which they had previously worked and who rapidly assumed positions of authority in the Corinthian community.”
2.) Verses 10:1-13:14 contain the sorrowful letter. After his first unsuccessful attempt to assert his authority with the Corinthian community failed, Paul visited the church and was humiliated in public (2:5, 7:12). After this incident, from Ephesus Paul wrote against the “superlative apostles” who appealed to visions and miracle-working as proof of their authority. Paul himself “appeals to the original effectiveness of the gospel he preached in Corinth so as not to be a burden on his converts, and to his own Jewish heritage and his sufferings as a servant of Christ” in order to win back authority in Corinth.
3.) Verses 1:1-2:13 and 7:5-16 are a “letter of reconciliation.” After the success achieved through his painful letter, Paul “wrote a letter rejoicing in the resumption of good relations between him and the Corinthian Christian community.”
4.) Verse 8:1-24 are “part of a letter of recommendation for Titus as organizer of the collection of saints in Jerusalem.” It is impossible to know the relationship between this letter and the rest of Paul’s correspondence with Corinth.
5.) Verses 9:1-15 are “part of a letter concerning the collection for the saints.” It is again impossible to determine this letter’s relationship to the rest of Paul’s letters to Corinth.
6.) Finally, verses 6:14-7:1 contain a fragment that has next to no connection to Paul in ideas or wording, although it does have some affinities with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Kummel allows that 6:14-7:1 is interpolated yet still maintains that it is Pauline. However, Joseph Fitzmyer has argued that 6:14-7:1 is an interpolation from a document at Qumran in an essay reproduced in The Semitic Background of the New Testament, pp. 205-217. There are three reasons to posit that the passage is interpolated: “the paragraph radically interrupts the chain of thought between 6:13 and 7:2,” the passage is “a unit intelligible in itself,” and “six of the key-words in the passage are not found elsewhere in the New Testament.” Fitzmyer argues that references to triple dualism, the opposition to idols, the temple of God, separation from all impurity, and the concatenation of Old Testament texts point to a Qumranic origin for the interpolated fragment.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26426458
2 Corinthians 3:7-18 as a non-Pauline interpolation
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/study-of-paul/article-abstract/3/2/195/255693/2-Corinthians-3-7-18-As-a-Non-Pauline
This article argues that 2 Cor 3:7–18 was neither composed by Paul nor inserted by him at its present location in 2 Corinthians—that the passage is, in fact, a later, non-Pauline interpolation. More specifically, it proposes (a) that the relation of vv. 7–18 to their context, both immediate and larger, points to the secondary insertion of the passage between 2 Cor 3:6 and 2 Cor 4:1, (b) that distinctive vocabulary in the verses suggests composition by someone other than Paul, and (c) that apparent verbal and/or conceptual links between vv. 7–18 and their immediate context, however, suggest composition of the verses (by someone other than Paul) precisely for the purpose of insertion at their present location in 2 Corinthians. Finally, the article offers a possible scenario explaining why the interpolation appears where it does in 2 Corinthians. The abrupt transitions and incoherent passages in 2 Corinthians led some scholars to believe that the letter originated from a composition of a number of documents. There are also scholars who try to solve the problem by harmonising the obviously incoherent passages of the letter. In this article, a different solution is proposed, namely that 2 Corinthians was written by Paul not at one occasion but over a longer period of time with several intervals. Paul probably wrote the letter in different phases whilst travelling from Ephesus to Corinth on his third missionary journey. ‘n Hipotese vir die ontstaansgeskiedenis van Paulus se tweede brief aan die Korinthiërs. Die abrupte oorgange en onsamehangende gedeeltes in 2 Korintiërs het sommige biblioloë oortuig dat die brief uit ’n samestelling van verskeie korter briewe ontstaan het. Daar is ook biblioloë wat die gebrek aan samehang probeer omseil deur die onsamehangende briefgedeeltes in harmonie met mekaar te bring. In hierdie artikel word ’n ander oplossing vir die probleem aangebied, naamlik dat 2 Korintiërs nie by een geleentheid nie, maar oor ’n langer tydperk met verskeie tussenposes deur Paulus geskryf is. Die apostel het waarskynlik die brief in verskillende fases geskryf tydens sy derde sendingreis van Efesena Korinte.