iloreovLT, if 37 was thu earliest possible dftte for St. Paul's fscape from Damascus (2 Co 11^-, Ac 9'-i*, see Aretas), and 14 years elapsed lietween this and the apostolic conference of Ao I.'*, identified with that of Gal 2, the latter must have occurred alioul 51. Subtracting;, then, from 57, the date of 1 Co, the Ibree .years (Ac 203*) of his Ephesian ministry, we had 64 a^ the date of St. Paul's arrival at Ephesus (Ac 191), and three years remained for all the event* of Ac 1(J-18, or hardly eighteen months for his movements before and after the year and a half claimed (Ao isn. IS) by his first sojourn at Corinth. And this residual space of time was certainly none too lartfe for the movements of the ai>oslle which had to be fitted into it. Now the arj,'unu*nt of Hanisay, from the days of the week which the data of Ac 2(K'f''* require, in relation to the calendar of the year 67 (Exvox. May IbOO, ' A Fixed Date in tlie Life of St. Paul '), if accepted, pushes back our Epistles by a year. He insists on the absolute loose- ness, amounting; to uselessness, of the pivot date referred to above (a question to be discussed under Fk,stcb), and, identi- fying the conference of Oal 2 with St. Paul's famine visit (dated by him in 46) to Jerus. (Ac U^o 1'2'-^), pushes pack St. Paul's conversion to the year 32 (.St. Paul the Traofllcr, ch. 14 and note). The latter dat« is too early to satisfy the reference to Arbtas in 2 Co 1P2; while the objec- tions to Ramsay's identification of the conference of Gal 2 seem overwhelming. But (Jalatians rather than our Ep. is the battle - proimd of this controversy, which after all affects the absolute rather than the relative chronoloj^y of the Epp. to the Corinthians. It may sullice for our purpose to remark that Ramsay's 'fixed date' depends on the twofold a-saumption that St. Paul and his party left Philippi (Ac 20^) on the very morning after the last day of unleavened bread, — a mere matter" of inference, — and that the night on which St. Paul preached at Troa:* was, as Meyer, etc., assume, a Sunday night, not (as Haekett, Conybeare and Howson, etc.) a Saturday night, — a very dubious point in view of the Jewish phraseology used to denote the day. We do not think, therefore, that the accepted chronology has been shattered by Ramsay's assault. Tltat of Clemen proceeds on far more nuiical lines. Hero again the battle-ground is ultimately the Ep. to the Oalatians. But wo may sketch the outlines of Clemen 8 construction as bearing on our Ejiistle. Accepting tiO aa the date for Festus, and coiiso- quentlv '»S as that of St. Paul's arrest, he yet brings St. Paul to Jerusalem (Ac 20-2121) jn 54, where the conference of Gal 2 is inserted ; between 64 and 68 the apostle is lost to our ken ; the rebuke of Cejihas at Antioch and the Ep. to the Gal belong to this nebulous interval. The winter of 63-54 was spent at Cor., the previous summer in the evangelization of Illyricum (Ro Ifi'**), the winter 62-63 at Nicopolis (Tit 312) ; in the summer of 62 the apostle left Ephesus, where he had been since the lieginning of
50. This is the period of our Epp. to the Corinthians, which may be conveniently rtnumberea as follows; a.h. 50, early spring, lit tftlrr (that of 1 Co 6») ; later s]iring, 2n<f letter { = 1 Co) ;
51, summer, Titus carries to Corinth the Srrf letter (2 Co 9) ; then, after a revolt in the Cor. Church, and a painful visit of the apostle to Corinth, comes a *th (painful) letter ( = 2 Co 10-131"); lastly, when St. Paul has already reached Macedonia, in the summer of 6'2, the 6(/l letter ( = 2 Co 1-S» 13ll-end). (On the above details compare art. 2CoR[NTI1Ianb, §84(.'(). 8) The vision referred to in 2 Co 122 is that at the conversion, which thus falls 14 veani before 61, i.e. in 37, two years after the crucifixion
(A.D. 35).
To discuss this scheme in detail Is out of place here. The present writer, holding that the Pauline chapters of the Acta give a tnistwnrthv consecutive outline of the apostle's life ; that Ac 15 is meant to describe the conference of Gal 2, and thai tho liiatus left between A.I>. 64 and 68, with the dislocation of the sequence of events in Ac 2in-40, amounts lo a failure of the entire scheme, is not predisposed in favour of the proposeil re- adjustment of the chronology of our Epistles. In particular, that 1 Co comes at the beginning rather than at the cnil of the Kpbesian ministry of St. Paul, is not only contrary to the indi cations of Ac 101.21 20*, a consideration which woulil weigh lightly with CIcmon, but Is contrary to the spirit of 1 Co 4if , <ii>il
486
I. CORINTHIANS
I. CORINTHIANS
especially 16. That 168-9 are anything but natural In the closing period of the 'Epbeaian sojourn^ is surely a desperate arg^ument.
The time has not arrived, then, to abandon the year 57, and the latter end of St. Paul's three years' ministry at Ephesus, as the date of 1 Co, unless, indeed, it be held (as Godet and others maintain, but without conclusive reasons) that it must have preceded 2 Co by at least a complete year (see 2 Corinthians, § 6V