Introduction
A long-running problem in the early centuries of Christianity was the presence of pseudepigraphical literature: books which claimed to be written by famous apostles, but were forgeries, written by people trying to gain credibility for their theological ideas. Many such texts still survive, and the sheer pervasiveness of the dilemma makes it a statistical likelihood that at least some of the books in the New Testament are forgeries. In fact, scholarship has broadly agreed that half of its epistles are pseudepigraphical. This includes about half of the letters with Paul’s name on them.
Second Corinthians sits among the remaining letters. And while its authenticity is widely defended throughout academia, its current form is also often held under suspicion. The document as we have it appears to be a composite of multiple smaller letters written by Paul, and out of chronological order. Just how many pieces were used to create the whole is debated, but I have largely been convinced by studies which identify six fragments cut together. By the early or mid 50s CE, Paul had written at least two letters to the church in Corinth. One of these was 1 Corinthians, which also mentions another, earlier letter (1 Cor 5.9).
A thread which runs through the background of 1 Corinthians is that the church’s community was at risk of factionalizing, with Paul taking offense at their lack of unity. This was not a mere accident of internal debate. Paul acknowledges that there were other traveling preachers, not all of whom he agreed with theologically. One group taught, contrary to Paul, that gentiles must obey all the laws in the Torah to properly join the Jesus Movement, with the practice of circumcision being used by both sides as the quintessential example of such obedience. This rival group—Judean evangelists, like Paul—seem to have convinced many of his churches of their perspective. This led to Paul writing letters to Philippi and Galatia to criticize his opponents. His comments are scathing.
Galatians 5.6–8, 12
For in the Messiah, Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything. The only thing that counts is trust working through love. You were running well! Who prevented you from obeying the truth? Such persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. … I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!
Philippians 3.2
Beware of the dogs! Beware of the evil workers! Beware of those who mutilate the flesh!
It would appear the Torah-mandatory faction likewise made an impact on the church in Corinth. At some point in his travels, Paul learned that the Corinthians had begun doubting him. Something had happened which caused them to suspect he was manipulating them for personal gain, resulting in skepticism toward his theological perspective. This led to a series of letters sent between Paul and the Corinthian church, one of which shows that he had identified the source of Corinth’s doubts as his rivals. He raised up the same defense he used in his letter to the Philippians.
Philippians 3.4–6
2 Corinthians 12.21–22
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews. As to the law, a Pharisee. As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. As to justice under the law, blameless.
But whatever anyone dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.
By stressing that he had the same Judean ancestry as his rivals, Paul made the point useless as a legitimizing tactic for either of their messages. From there, Paul demonstrated the depths of his commitment to his evangelism, reminding the Corinthians of the many occasions he had suffered bodily harm without quitting. When Paul heard that the Corinthians were again convinced of his sincerity, he wrote to them one last (surviving) letter, somewhat apologizing for his harsh tone.
At the same time this was all going on, Paul had also written open letters to all the churches in the region of Achaia—including the one in Corinth—for the purpose of raising funds to donate to the church in Jerusalem, a poverty-relief charity as a gesture of goodwill from gentile Jesus-followers to the Judean ones. Perhaps Paul’s critics argued this fundraising effort was a scam? Whatever the case, 2 Corinthians appears to contain details from each stage of Paul’s ongoing conversation with the Corinthian church, taken from the series of letters he wrote to them.
- Defensive Letter — Paul, confused by the emergence of doubts about his sincerity, explains himself. (2.14–6.13; 7.2–4)
- Angry Letter — Paul unloads criticism on the ‘false apostles’, whose ‘boasts’ he sarcastically mocks. He bitterly threatens to visit the Corinthians in-person for a ‘third time’ to deal with the situation. (10.1-13.10)
- Conciliatory Letter — Paul, grateful the church has accepted his sincerity, calls off his planned visit in order to ‘spare’ them. (1.1–2.13; 7.5–16; 13.11–13)
- Fundraiser Letter 1 — Paul informs the churches in Achaia that the churches in Macedonia have raised a large donation, and wants to see if the Achaians can match or exceed them. (8.1–24)
- Fundraiser Letter 2 — Paul informs the churches in Achaia that the churches in Macedonia are ready for their donation to go to Jerusalem, prompting Paul to give notice to the Achaians ahead of time to make sure their promised funds are secure. (9.1–15)
Mismatched
In this reconstruction, one passage has been left out.
2 Corinthians 6.14–7.1
Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between justice and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does the Messiah have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said: ‘I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean. Then I will welcome you, and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’ Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God.
At first glance, there is nothing unusual. The vocabulary seems Pauline enough. But there are a few details just off enough worth looking into. First, this passage does not cleanly fit within any of the above five letter fragments. Based on its placement, it should be in the Defensive Letter fragment. Yet, it interrupts the flow of Paul’s thoughts in what precedes and follows.
We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians. Our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also. Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between justice and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does the Messiah have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said: ‘I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’ ‘Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean. Then I will welcome you, and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’ Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God. Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. I often boast about you. I have great pride in you. I am filled with consolation. I am overjoyed in all our affliction.
In the surrounding text ‘I’ and ‘we’ refers to the authors (Paul and his companions) while ‘you’ refers to the readers (the Corinthian church), but in the intervening text ‘we’ refers to all Jesus-followers with no distinction between authors or readers. The surrounding text is concerned with breaking down the separation of ‘we’ and ‘you’, being in one another’s ‘hearts’, but in the intervening text the focus is on the opposite situation, the need to enforce a separation between ‘we’, who are ‘believers’, and ‘unbelievers’. Though Paul does mention ‘unbelievers’ a few times, he never elsewhere has the adjective
Second Cor 6.14–7.1 abruptly changes topic and frame of reference, only to switch right back. It uses six words found nowhere else in Paul (
A final point may be made about the author’s scriptural quotation. The paragraph has evidently taken elements from five unrelated verses in the Hebrew Bible, but the way the author has blurred so many distinct passages and presented them as a single quote is dissimilar to Paul’s usual method of citation. Verse 6.16 contains four words found in Exo 29.45 (
In regards to context, style, and vocabulary, there is something very much ‘off’ about this paragraph. Many scholars have been disposed to excuse each of these incongruities separately, showing how they may be compatible with Pauline authorship. Where is the point when the pile of discrepancies builds up high enough that the scale tips too far in the other direction? I am inclined to suspect that the sheer density of non-Pauline characteristics within a single paragraph is best resolved by a simpler explanation: Paul likely did not write this passage. And if not him, then who?
Paul’s Rivals
There are some affinities with the Dead Sea Scrolls sect, with the reference to Beliar and the moral dualism of light and dark. These may not be Pauline details, but they are hardly unique to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Beliar is mentioned in the Sibylline Oracles, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Ascension of Isaiah, and other Jewish and Christian texts. Light and dark are used in some later Christian texts (e.g. John 3.19–21; Col 1.12–13; Eph 5.8–14). These details could have come from anyone fluent enough with Second Temple Judaism. Instead of searching for an author on the basis of these generalities, a stronger potential for identification should be found in the specifics. Namely, what is the passage about, and how might it have been connected to Paul’s tense relationship with the Corinthian church?
Second Cor 6.14–7.1 stresses the need for separation on moral grounds: separation of ‘justice’ from ‘lawlessness’, ‘light’ from ‘dark’, ‘Messiah’ from ‘Beliar’, ‘believer’ from ‘unbeliever’, ‘God’ from ‘idols’, ‘unclean’ from ‘clean’, and ‘defilement’ from ‘holiness’. Although Paul does elsewhere stress the need to maintain a separation from immoral behavior (e.g. 1 Cor 5.9), he makes sure to mention that this instruction should be applied internally to the church; they should not separate themselves from the world, ‘since you would then need to go out out of the world’ (1 Cor 5.10). If this was not Paul telling the Corinthian church what to do, who else was giving them instructions?
Paul’s rivals, the Torah-mandatory faction of the Jesus Movement. If the passage is read from their perspective, as a warning against trusting the theology taught to them by Paul, every detail fits into place.
Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. … what does a believer share with an unbeliever? — Paul generally uses the term ‘unbeliever’ (
For what partnership is there between justice and lawlessness? — Paul’s understanding of the gospel led him to believe that gentiles were not required to obey the laws of the Torah. Their trust in God would be ‘counted to [them] as justice’ (Gal 3.6; Rom 4.3). Paul’s insistence on this point led to the misconception that he was advocating for a ‘justice’ which allowed for all manner of sin, a misconception he eventually had to clarify (Rom 3.31; 6.15; 7.7). From the perspective of Paul, ‘justice’ was accomplished by faith, and the Torah-mandatory faction was making gentiles into ‘slaves’ under the Torah’s laws (Gal 5.1). But from their perspective, ‘justice’ required obedience to the Torah, even by gentiles, and Paul was advocating for ‘lawlessness’.
Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does the Messiah have with Beliar? — Just as Paul and his rivals called each other ‘unbelievers’ or ‘false’, they also threw down the reciprocal accusation that the other party was doing the work of the devil: Paul compared the Torah-mandatory faction to the satan (2 Cor 11.14), while they accused him of being in league with Beliar.
What agreement has the temple of God with idols? — One of the major points of contention in Paul’s theology extended to the dietary restrictions many Judeans obeyed. God’s worshipers were to have no part with idolatry, but food bought in public markets might have been dedicated to idols prior to being put up for sale. A Christian eating something purchased from the market risked participating in this system of idolatry. Paul informed his gentile churches they could safely eat such food with a clear conscience because they knew ‘no idol in the world really exists’ (1 Cor 8.1–6). Still, Paul pushed for nuance, warning that Christians should avoid eating idol-dedicated food, when possible, if they were aware someone watching them had a less secure conscience on the matter (1 Cor 8.7–13). Paul’s solution was not solely a blunt claim of ‘we can eat food dedicated to idols’, but his critics found even his careful guideline had gone too far. From their point of view, Paul had said that Christians functioned as a temple for God (1 Cor 3.16–17; 6.19), and also that Christians could commit idolatry. But ‘what agreement has the temple of God with idols’?
‘Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean. Then I will welcome you’ … let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit — With the above context in place, the scriptural quotation acts to demonstrate that God’s presence within the Christian community is contingent on their commitment to ‘separating’ from the ‘unclean’ world. The way to accomplish this was to reject the lawlessness and idolatry of the ‘unbeliever’ who had allied with Beliar. As they saw it, Paul may have taught his churches how to ‘cleanse’ their ‘spirit’, but his alleged compromises meant that gentile Jesus-followers still had a ‘defilement of body’. The way to correct this was for the churches to obey the Torah completely: a total ban on anything to do with idols, and the practicing of male circumcision.
Composition
Of course, the question is how a paragraph from a letter written by Paul’s theological opponents—if indeed it came from them—might have landed in the middle of a document attributed entirely to Paul himself. There is no clear answer, but I want to sketch a possible suggestion.
By the mid 50s CE, the Corinthian church had several letters from Paul, as well as from other teachers within the wider Jesus Movement, including those with whom Paul strongly disagreed. At the time the prevailing debate concerned whether gentiles should obey the Torah, and to what extent. Paul said no. Others said yes. The Corinthian church held onto these letters for future reference, storing them together. As time wore on, the people familiar with the debate died out, and the next generation rose up. They still had those letters, pulled from storage on occasion to be consulted, but they were ignorant of their historical context.
At some point, perhaps in the range of 80–100 CE, it was decided that copies of the letters needed to be made, to ensure their preservation. Perhaps the letters had been stored improperly and sections were damaged badly enough they couldn’t be read anymore. A letter from Paul’s rivals was mistaken to be from Paul himself. Or, maybe someone simply came up with idea to save on production costs by trimming some of the shorter letters and stitching them together as a single document, and whether by apathy or accident, a letter whose authors were opposed to Paul was mixed in with his actual correspondences. Whatever the case, the decision was made to combine fragments from select letters, arranged as well as the scribes could make them cohere with one another. The result was 2 Corinthians.