8. We must now, accordingly, endeavour to reach a result with regard to the Integrity of the Epistle. We have seen that the canonical £pp. to the Cor- inthians are the remains of a correspondence which comprised other letters now lost (§ 4, g), and that liossibly not fewer than three lost letters were ad- dressed by St. Paul to the Corinthians. The tempta- tion to rediscover all or part of these in our extant letters, coupled with undeniable difficulties in their sequence of ideas (cf. § 4, e), has naturally been strong. Clemen (whose Einhcitlkhkeit der Paul. Brief e, 1894, contains the most searching and acute of recent essays in this direction) has redivided our Epistles into live (see 1 CORINTHIANS, § 6), thus providing wliolly or in part for each letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians of which we have any trace whatever. As aftecting 1 Co, his result consists merely in the relegation to the lost letter of 1 Co 5' of certain passages in chs. 3. 7. 9. 14, where the connexion is ditlicult, and of the whole of 15 (except the rejected v."). We venture to think that a little more patience, orexegetical penetration, niiglit have very greatly reduced the compass of these frag- ments. But with regard to 2 Co the difficulties are more serious. They fall into three main heads — (1) The interjected warning (see below, § 9, .(4 2, 6 ;S) 6"-7'. The direct continuity of 6" T is too obvious to be mistaken ; the interjected appeal simply
breaks the connexion. Accordingly Clemen, fol- lowing Hilgenfeld and others, refers it to the lost letter of 1 Co 5^, while many other critics (see Heinrici, Das zweite SS. u.a.w. pp. .329-334) agree that it is out of place here. It must be allowed that if this is the case, the insertion was made at a date prior to the first circulation of the Epistle, for textual tradition of any kind is totally silent as to it. Whether this objection is fatal in limine wUl be considered at the close of this section. Waiv- ing it for the present, the question becomes one (a) of exegesis, which on the whole has hitherto failed to find a clear line of connexion \\'ith the context before or after ; and (6) of the general analogy of St. Paul's style, and of this Epistle especially. True, 'there is no literary work in wliich the cross-currents are so violent and so frequent' ; but there is no other ' cross-current' in the Epistle which cuts with so clean an edge as this. On the whole, if we may assume an inter- polation at all witbout textual evidence, this is perhaps dignus vindice nodus. Whether, if out of place here, the section is part of the letter of 1 Co 5', is not so clear ; the injunction of 6" does not fit so exactly with 1 Co 5'° as to preclude all doubt. To reject the passage as un-Pauline (Holsten, etc.) is quite arbitrary. (See the discussions of Whitelaw, (Tliase, and Sanday in Class. Review, 1890, pp. 12, 150, 248, 317, 359; Schmiedel's Exc. in toe.; Clemen, Einh. 58 f.)
(2) Chapters 8 and 9. — All allow chapter 8 to remain part of otir (the ' Fifth ') Epistle, but chapter 9 is thrown back to the 'Third.' Tliis divorce, in which Clemen follows Semler and a long series of later critics, is mainly on grounds which are more suitable for discussion in a com- mentary (see Waite in loc). That chs. 8 and 9, especially in view of 9' (yip), are impossible in one and the same letter, is an assumption founded, surely, upon a somewhat narrow view of St. Paul's logic.
(Z) The great invective, or ' Vierkapitelbrief.' — The main grounds for relegating this to a difl'erenl Epistle are given above (§ 4, e). If tliey have any validity they make for its identification with the 'Fourth' or Painful Letter (§ 4, g). This is the view of Hausrath ( Vierkapitelbrief, 1870) and of Schmiedel (in Ersch and Gruber, and in Hand- Kmnmentar). The arguments are not easy to meet directly — they are not indeed conclusive ; we know less of the circumstances than did St. Paul's readers (cf. Jiilicher, Einleil. § 7 ; Weizsacker. Apost. Zeitalter, 314-316). The difficulty is that in 1-9 the Corinthi.ans are reconciled, whereas in 10-13 they are still in a state of hostility, or at best of aubious fidelity. That the apostle is addressing a section only of the Corintliians ia against all the eWdence. That after the good news brought by Titus, some worse news again arrived to change the apostle's tone, is unproved and improbable. The opening of chapter 10, auris a (yCi IIoCXos, is of importance as bearing on the question. Assuming that the words mark, not tlie beginning of an interpolated document, but the opening of a new section in the letter, they indicate some change of treatment. Possibly, St. Paul may have sent Timothy (1') away and begun to write, either by his own hand or by a confidential amanuensis, words that had been maturing in his mind (S 7) in the period of suspense before t).'e arriv.al of Titus, and which not even the good news brought by Titus could jiersuade liim to leave unwritten. If this view be correct, we can, with Weizsacker and others, regard these chapters as the final assault, prepared for in the whole previous course of the letter, which is decisively to secure for the apostle the allegiance of the Corinthians, and to dnve the interlopers (11*), who bad gained