Another scheme agreeing with this, in so far as it refuses to identify the Painful Letter with 1 Corinthians, has recently been expounded by Dr. Robertson.! This writer holds that after the despatch of 1 Corin- thians by the hands of Titus, St. Paul changed the plan of travel announced in that letter (1 Cor. xvi. 5) and decided to take the route Ephesus—Corinth—Macedonia—Corinth, which would give the Corinthians a δευτέρα χαρά; that painful news having been brought back by Titus from Corinth, the Apostle reverted to the plan announced in 1 Cor. xvi. 5, as he was unwilling to visit Corinth so soon under the circumstances; that he wrote a severe letter, now lost, of which Titus was again the bearer; and that it was on Titus’ report of the result of this second mission that 2 Corinthians was written and entrusted to the same capable messenger.
17. On both these theories the same observation may be made at the outset. They are highly complicated. Quite apart in the one case from the assumption (for which there is no evidence) that Timothy reached Corinth and that his mission there was a failure, and from the assumption in the other case? that the language of 2 Cor. i. 15 cannot be explained unless we suppose St. Paul to have changed his mind as to his route twice after the despatch of 1 Corin- thians, both theories presuppose events and documents of which no historical trace has survived. Doubtless we must not assume that all the facts have been recorded ; it may be necessary to introduce some hypotheses in order to co-ordinate the fragments of history at our disposal. Nevertheless, the theory which depends on the fewest hypo- theses has the best claim to acceptance, provided that it covers the facts. Now the writers whose theories have been indicated in § 16 agree in interpolating a letter between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corin- thians, which has utterly vanished out of knowledge. Such an interpolated letter was suggested by Bleek as long ago as 1830, and its actuality has been assumed by many critics since in Germany as well as in England. No doubt the phenomena may be accounted for by an artifice of this sort. We may put anything we please into a letter of which we know nothing; there is no way of proving our speculations to be wrong. But the necessity for so large an hypo- thesis must be glaringly evident before the hypothesis can be justified.
1 Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, vol. i., p. 495, 5.0. “2 Corinthians”. 2Dr. Sanday seems also to favour this idea of a double change of intention as to his route on the part of St, Paul (Encycl. Biblica, vol. i., p. 903). See § 16 above. VOL, IIL 2