Robert said
2 Corinthians is by far and away the most frequently seen as a composite letter, but depending on the partition theory one follows, some parts of it may be earlier than the bulk of 1 Corinthians, which a few exegetes have also seen as composite. Joseph Fitzmyer (AB, pp 43, 49) sees at least five letters to the Corinthians:
aCor, 1 Cor, a painful visit, bCor, 2 Cor, apocryphal correspondence
What he calls “aCor” is referred to 1 Cor 5,9: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.”
There are a variety of composite theories and I don’t personally follow any one in particular, just hedging my bets.
Got it.
I am aware of (some) composite 2 Cor arguments, but have not yet encountered a composite 1 Cor theory – I’ll go look for some, but if you have a rec, I’d be grateful. In the interim, I’ll try to run down Fitzmeyer.
To clarify to make sure I have the precision, you are referring, generally, to some relative of the concept of aCor as the first letter(s), not a partition of 1 Cor (at least not explicitly), correct?
Robert said
Yes, thanks, just incredibly busy at work. One of my clients has a thorny legal/regulatory issue to untangle, ‘though not as difficult as Paul’s correspondence.
Best of luck. And may the billing hours be ever in your favor…
Robert said
You really shouldn’t put yourself down so much. It is important to challenge everyone’s assumptions and explore the implications of various ideas and approaches. I enjoy our exchange. It has challenged me to think through some of my assumptions and perhaps overly tentative reluctance to take a position. But my main reason for not always adopting firmer conclusions is that I have not put in the years and years required to read through all the secondary literature. Sometimes it’s just me and Paul arguing over the implications of one of his word choices.
I appreciate the kind words – and the exchange. I find it edifying and gratifying. Thank you.
Given I am (a) not trained in the scholarship, and (b) quite accustomed to operating in an environment that economists like to call decision making under uncertainty, I’m probably a lot more prone to provisionally take positions and then work through the implications, testing and retesting. The guess and check method. That and I’m certain I’ll never get to the secondary literature (much the majority of the primary literature). Best fit explanations are as far as I know I’ll ever get to – there’s no risk of me ever breaking any scholarly ground.
I’ve appreciated it, here and elsewhere on the blog, when you’ve argued with (or for) Paul aloud. Both when it is amidst cited scholarly work or when you call out it being your opinions. It often unlocks doors in this material – sometimes doors I’m banging against, and sometimes doors I didn’t know existed.
Robert said
I’m just hedging my bets about any partition of 1 Corinthians, not having studied this issue in any detail. The Joseph Fitzmyer reference is to his 2008 Anchor Bible commentary on 1 Corinthians. While he generally accepts some probability that 2 Corinthians is composite, he does not endorse any of the diverse theories of the earlier exegetes who proposed various partitions of 1 Corinthians…
Not being yet familiar with the literature (but hoping to soon be acquainted with a summary of it), I’ll make the naive provisional assumption that the LS portion of 1 Cor dates post Galatians (as per the original GL-derived timeline). Is there an obvious reason or red flag in your mind why taking this provisional position at present would be unwise?
Robert said
…I suspect you’re thinking of the events narrated in Galatians, eg, the incident in Antioch and the agreement with the pillars. Lüdemann does indeed place the writing of 1 Corinthians 2-3 years after these events…
Yes, just distractedly typing on the iPhone. I meant to say the Peter/Pillars interactions in Galatians per GL, but that’s not what came out of my thumbs… As always, I appreciate the charitable read. The spirit of intellectual honesty and charity – the embodiment of this blog in microcosm.
Robert said
Thus I think that’s a fairly safe assumption, and perhaps the majority would agree with this based on the account in Acts, but as I’ve said above I’m not really certain of this. I would not wave a red flag; I’m just reluctant to commit to exact dates or even relative dates when we’re only talking about a differential of 2-3 years. There’s certainly some friction between Paul and Cephas evident in 1 Corinthians, but I’m not sure it’s so pronounced that we can be certain it postdates the Antioch incident.
Ok, entirely fair. And to be extra clear about something you didn’t even say: I was/am not trying to hold you to the position (in the spirit of charitable interpretation, I generally try to not do that), only to make sure there’s not some glaring error in me making the provisional timeline assumptions.
———
Curious – as illustrated in 1 Cor, what do you see as the key friction points with Peter?
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So, let’s stipulate:
1. 15 days w/ Cephas occurred before LS language as per 1 Cor
2. Antioch incident occurred before LS language as per 1 Cor (provisionally – likely but not certain)
3. Pillars meeting occurred before LS language as per 1 Cor (provisionally – likely but not certain)
Presently, I’m now going to attempt some modest steps of forward progress (or the self-delusion thereof). The (circuitous) path will begin by assuming 1-3 as above – and then I’ll try to relax 2 & 3, and see where we are. I’ll appreciate your guidance along the walk.
Thank you for drawing out these verses.
Robert said
There’s no clear evidence that Cephas or James had made incursions on his mission field to which Paul is angrily and jealously protesting. And Paul himself feels free to preach to Jews, as can be seen in 9,20:
To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law.
I had previously conceptualized this verse as in the past tense (he used to do this), but now that I reread the succeeding verses (in English), the verb tense is the same for those outside the law. So it should be read as connoting a continuing. Thanks for drawing this point out – it had the intended effect, plus a knock-on one.
If the (antecedent) pillars agreement was to split the field such that the two populations (Jew, gentile) had their sole respective gospel representatives who could only convert within their appointed sphere, this would be a breach on the part of Paul, which would lead to incursions.
At this point, either they had previously agreed to a hard line of demarcation or they had not. If they had, this is a clear breach. But, why would he feel empowered to boast to a community that knew Peter, if it were a breach? That would fall into the stupidity camp (a relative of your point on the foolishness of sharing a faulty LS tradition to the Corinthians).
If they had not:
– following your point that leads to the tentativeness of the timeline, one option is that the pillars meeting had yet to take place; or
– the other option is that an agreement had taken place, but there was no hard line of demarcation. In this scenario, Paul was not in breach, because the terms of the agreement were blurrier than a sharp division of the gospel territory.
Apart from the fact that we’re provisionally stipulating that a pillars agreement had taken place by 1 Cor, my suspicion is that it’s likely something akin to the second option. Peter and representatives of James appear to be visiting gentile churches – and neither their presence nor their sharing the gospel is what Paul is explicitly complaining about. He’s focusing his complaints on when their actions or words cross doctrinal trip wires. So, a blurry set of terms about carving the mission field seemingly makes the most sense. A caveat, though: this point is technically consistent with both options (it could be a blurry agreement, but could also have happened after 1 Cor was penned).
Robert said
I agree the initial pillars agreement may well have been rather blurry or informal, especially if it was primarily intended from the side of the pillars to relieve them from the entanglements of interaction and table fellowship with sinful gentiles. It was only when some were encouraging members of Paul’s communities in Galatia to be circumcised and Judaize that Paul would have seen this as clear violation. I also think the agreement had less to do with mission field of yet to be converted gentiles and yet to be persuaded nonmessianic Jews. I suspect it was more a matter of the already converted gentiles in the communities founded by Paul and who would be responsible for interacting with them directly.
Would your view on the agreement be something like the following?
An agreement between the counterparties that has the rough contours of:
– welcome to visit any Jesus-based community (symmetric)
– convert who you want (symmetric)
– the tending of the (predominantly) gentile communities falls to Paul
– the tending of the Jerusalem congregation and predominantly Jewish communities falls to Peter/pillars
This would seem to back-fit the data well. It would also be a bit of a departure from what I (and I would suppose many) would have thought coming into this conversation – where I would have supposed the focus of the attention would be on converting, with a secondary view towards tending. Very interesting.
Do you think the blurry agreement would have touched on:
– there is no hierarchy in the Kingdom (Jew vs. gentile)
– faith in Jesus is the Kingdom entrance criterion, and ultimately all Israel will eventually turn and the pleroma of the nations will also be enveloped
The first of these strikes me as no, given the way Paul narrates and the manner in which he says he argued with Peter. Had it been agreed, it would strike me he’d have referred to it in his argument to Peter (rather than “you’re acting differently now than you were before these guys showed up”). Similarly, it would seem he would have called it out explicitly for his audience in the narrative of the epistle.
The second seems like a very simple no, because the specifics of the incursions that Paul complains about is precisely at odds with this, Paul responds somewhat elliptically in his argumentation in the narrative, and it’s not until Romans that we have direct and decisive evidence Paul thinks this way (although there are clearly hints along the way).
I ask the (possibly rhetorical) question because they seem to be the foundational premises at issue in what Paul complains about – but without him calling a breach on these issues per se. Rather, he alleges more a breach of the agreed extent of his sphere of authority around quotidian pastoral and consequential doctrinal issues.
Do you see anything terribly objectionable in the above, before I keep trying to inch myself forward?
Robert said
No, nothing terribly or even less so objectionable.
Thanks much. I’m going to try to argue (likely elliptically) from this stance. That there was nothing glaring in it is heartening.
Robert said
I don’t think Paul saw the last supper tradition as doctrine per se, but more a matter of correcting abuses of behavior as it was reportedly being practiced in Corinth.
A fair distinction to draw – doctrinal vs. corrective. My thought here is: even if it were solely being called back in 1 Cor to remediate the missteps of the Corinthian community, it is nonetheless being levied by Paul as authoritative and factual.
In the light of the Petrine influences in Corinth, and in further light of the authority and correctional work he thinks the LS citation achieves, it would seem a little cavalier to cite an insider tradition if he was even a little unsure of its sourcing. It would be a little like me confidently holding forth on the specifics of some M-theoretic issue in a letter to someone who knew, or had solid access to the work of, say, Ed Witten. It too easily blows up in one’s face.
I don’t want to overplay the power of the “man, that would be a real bonehead move” aspect to do all the work in the argument. But, at the least, it results in either: (a) Paul was pretty sure the Petrine influence in Corinth wouldn’t contradict him (either because he knew it hadn’t to date, or that it couldn’t, due to some high threshold informational blockage, or it was already corroborated as true with a sufficiently insider source), or (b) Paul is very risk tolerant in terms of his assertions about insider traditions.
Perhaps I’m just just taking it for granted that it’s not (b) (which is a relative of, but not precisely, mendacity), but generally, the easier it is for an important statement of fact to be verified/falsified, the less likely someone of normal psychological makeup is to spout it if they aren’t sure of it.
Robert said
If he implicitly accepted the tradition/rite from his first days as a new believer in Damascus, I don’t think we can say for sure that he necessarily would have wanted to verify this with Cephas during his first trip there as a believer or subsequently in his later meeting with the pillars.
Totally agree that there is no necessity – neither logical nor historical. My intuition, though, is that we might just be able to say a little something about the probability.
I’m going to try to inch a bit in a forward direction from here when I next can.
Robert said
We’re really going pretty far down the road of speculation here so …
Yes, although without a little informed speculation there is not a way to get at what might have happened.
A speculative theory that fits the data well, coheres with (or doesn’t conflict with) what we know about the context, and provides some explanatory power is better than none – precisely because it can help unify the data at hand and unlock other related issues. We can never be fully confident in any of this (even the less speculative work of rigorously wrought and reviewed scholarship), because of the general limits of epistemic access. A theory that makes sense of a large and disparate dataset, even if it’s a bit speculative, seems to me worthwhile in its own right. It’s not clearly dispositive, but it’s still quite useful.
That, and it’s all a good deal of fun…
Robert said
…but, personally my best guess would probably be something like allowing Paul to pastor as he saw fit those communities that he had personally founded, and Antioch would not be one of those, ‘though Paul may have spent a fair amount of time there, but the gentile communities of Galatia seem to have been largely founded by Paul.
Super helpful, thank you.
Robert said
When Paul later writes to the gentile believers in Rome, he is also cognizant of Jewish believers there and it is to be expected that the churches there were founded by Jewish believers and perhaps largely led by Jewish believers even if they had subsequently become predominantly gentile. There are ways of reading Romans as also dealing, in part, with the issue of gentile proselytes to Judaism, but even if this reading is correct, Paul is certainly much more circumspect in dealing with this issue.
Ok – I was generally aware of the Jewish contingent within the Roman church at the time of Paul’s letter to the community. But I guess because of the ultimate gentile majority (and probably a Paul-centric bias), I hadn’t staked out that it was likely that the Rome Jesus community was originally founded by Jewish believers. Forgive the naïveté, but what are the primary arguments you see in favor of the community having started around a core of Jewish believers?
And I don’t mean to continually meander away from the LS topic of the thread, but you keep opening these portals in the material that I wasn’t aware of… Thank you for that.
Robert said
I doubt the agreement was so detailed so as to deal with the Jew vs gentile hierarchy in the Kingdom. Paul clearly had his own view of equality in his letter to the Galatians but he is careful to spell out Jew first, then gentile in his explication of salvation history when writing to the Romans.
In that case, the incursions are more aptly described as a threat to Paul’s authority (his sphere of influence as to flock and message) than a breach of settled doctrine. I know this may be an obvious statement, but saying it aloud helps point up the root of the complaint, which then bears on the contours of the potential theory around the agreement above.
Robert said
I also doubt Paul, Cephas, and James discussed any quantification of the pleroma or faith as an entrance criteria. This strikes me more as Pauline theological reflection. Even Paul’s emphasis on faithfulness, if we are to avoid Luther’s particular emphasis, is subject to Paul’s view of God’s ultimate judgment of all with respect to their deeds.
Fair on the quantification of the pleroma (and thank you again for touching on this term before with me elsewhere).
Just a quick question that occurred to me on the faith(fulness) in (or of) Jesus as an entrance criterion. Probably not as part of the agreement per se, but each side (Paul and pillars) would have believed it was a necessary condition to Kingdom entrance, but it was likely just Paul who thought it was a sufficient condition (assuming, to your point, God’s positive enough assessment of one’s deeds). Would you agree with this characterization?
Robert said
There’s no direct evidence that the churches in Rome were founded by Jews. I recently asked Bart if he agreed that the Roman churches were most likely founded by Jewish ‘Christians’ and he agreed this was most likely the case, ‘though he too was not aware of any actual evidence of this. We have early sources attesting to a large Jewish population in Rome and conflict around a Chrestus figure that resulted in some Jews being expelled from Rome, events which are most likely to be dated to the early 40s. I also mentioned above a way of reading part of Paul’s letter to the Romans as possibly rhetorically addressing some gentile Christians who may have been proselytes to Judaism (eg, 2,17 ‘if you call yourself a Jew …’). This is very much a minority reading but I am attracted to it. I am also intrigued by a reference in Epictetus/Arrian that may be speaking of Greeks converting to Jewish Christianity, perhaps being circumcised and baptized (ἀναλάβῃ τὸ πάθος τὸ τοῦ βεβαμμένου … παραβαπτισταί ** you do not have permission to see this link **. There’s also no certainty about this, but it might date to Epictetus’ experience in Rome in the latter part of the first century.
This is all just excellent. Thank you.
I had previously thought the Chrestus incident could have been a confusion of identity by perhaps a less than subtle commentator. I can now see it in the light you mean. The Romans passage had struck me as interesting (I’d fallen over it while reviewing Romans during my first reading of P Fredricksen’s Paul: The Pagan’s Apostle), but had not known what to do with it. And the Epictetus/Arrian passage – didn’t even know it/he existed. Fantastic, thanks.
Robert said
Paul saw ‘messianic faithfulness’ as a necessary condition for both Jews and gentiles. Eventually, the men from James would endorse Judaizing (circumcision for the men), but Paul certainly did not think this was part of the earlier situation (agreement?), and he appealed to Titus not being compelled to be circumcised and Cephas’ behavior in Antioch as points in his favor.
Completely agree that Paul saw it as a necessary condition (I know we’re both sidestepping the faith/faithfulness debate in this). It also seems to me that Paul saw it as sufficient (or co-sufficient with deeds, but not being under the law). But, I’m even more curious about your view of how the other counterparty (Pillars) thought of it. It strikes me they saw it, post Antioch and the narrative in Galatians at least, as necessary but not sufficient (or at least co-sufficient with being under the law). Sorry if I’m pressing, but the Judaizing incursions don’t (currently) make sense to me in the absence of this dichotomy. Appreciate the insights you’re willing to share.
Robert said
It’s hard to say even if there was one unified opinion among the pillars, let alone among all the various Jewish believers. Paul presents Cephas as being intimidated by the men from James.
Was James subsequently gaining power and influence among the people in Jerusalem, as even Josephus may have thought? ‘Luke’ would have us remember this time as James not being overly concerned about the mechanics of salvation for gentiles, but rather concerned about believers in Jerusalem and their Jewish identity (Acts 21,20-21)?
“You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law. They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs.”
Jesus, along with other Jewish teachers, seems to have believed righteous gentiles would be saved in the final judgment (Mt 25,31-46) presumably without working out any of the details for how they would be accommodated in the ever-to-be-increasing meantime. His brother James was left with the unenviable task of trying to flesh out this plan in these difficult circumstances. From James’ perspective, it was not just a matter of worrying about the soteriological mechanics of how gentiles are to be saved, whether the gentile men in the diaspora must be circumcised or if they had to observe kashrut, but his more immediate concern was how would the Jewish churches survive in Jerusalem? Was he under pressure to avoid criticism by the Judean authorities about the legitimacy of this movement? He seems to have developed or clung to the myopic view that gentiles clamoring to be part of this vision of eschatological Israel and the Kingdom of God should of course just follow the law of Moses as it was being interpreted by the Judean authorities. How widespread was this assumption among other Jewish believers? Hard to say, but once the glory of Jerusalem and the Judean authorities were pretty much wiped out by Rome, Mark would even be so bold as to interpret Jesus’ teachings as effectively ‘declaring all foods clean’. Matthew could not quite stomach this interpretation in his community and Luke probably preserved a somewhat more historical view of this evolution of church practice.
Not a complete answer, I know, but it may be the best we can do to try and reconstruct the views of Jesus’ brother and his fellow pillars, especially when some of the first disciples of Jesus left him behind in Jerusalem to try and figure things out on his own. I think we should all be somewhat sympathetic for Jesus’ little brother.
Thank you for drawing all this together – it’s a massive boon for me, and I’m certain equally for others.
Naive question: Why is there a concern by James about trying to hold together the churches in Jerusalem? Sorry if obtuse, but I’m just not familiar with this specific theme. The closest I guess I’ve come to this is P Fredriksen’s “When Christians Were Jews” (and the discussion of how/why they remained in Jerusalem, and yet weren’t also rounded up), but I don’t recall this particular strand.
Back to the James beliefs question:
James’s focus, yes, seems to be on Jewish believers and their relation to the law; with seemingly much less attention to the gentiles. My questioning around necessary and sufficient conditions in the Pillars minds for Kingdom entrance isn’t intended to be gentile-specific (though it probably is little more biased that direction, since we’re on a Pauline thread).
Implicit in James’s (supposed, from Acts) statements above about the Jewish churches is that they are Jesus-believing churches; else they would just be just another strain of apocalyptic Jewish assemblies. It’s the calling out of this Jesus belief, and the touting thereof, that makes me think that, for him (and likely Peter and probably John, too), Jesus belief of some form was a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for Kingdom entrance. If it weren’t, what’s point of even having Jerusalem churches or worrying about holding them together?
Perhaps this is simplistic, but it strikes me as a foundational issue that is squarely embedded in the stories.
And totally agree that it’s hard to say if the pillars had a unified understanding, given the gaps in the data. I just use them as a convenient grouping, as they are juxtaposed against Paul, both individually and collectively, in Paul’s writings. To hear Paul tell it, it seems that James was the hard-ass, Peter was the charismatic but at times spineless chameleon, and John, well, we don’t know much about his views other than what comes from the much later (and layered and embellished) gospel attributed to him.
My very simplistic reconstruction of their beliefs:
– James – you have to believe in Jesus, and you should (must?) live under the law, especially if you are Jewish but also if you are a converting gentile
– Peter – you have to believe in Jesus, and when James’s guys are about, you should (must?) live under the law, especially if you are Jewish but also if you are a converting gentile
– Paul – you have to believe in Jesus, and the law is a beautiful and important set of commandments that were historically bestowed by God and necessary for Jews to follow; but, now with Jesus, the law is more an ethnic tradition/identifier than a Kingdom entrance condition (for Jews), but it is NOT to be followed by gentiles (which would have the religious effect of muddling the Israel/Nations distinction of prophecy in Deutero-Isaiah, and it would have the practical effect of shrinking Paul’s flock and importance).
Please correct me if I’m misapprehending.
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