as earlier in date than the Four.!. When internal evidence leads competent scholars to such entirely divergent conclusions, it is a natural inference that the arguments on which they rely do not amount to demonstration.
7. It is further to be borne in mind that the theory which regards chaps. i.-ix. and chaps. x.-xiii. as parts of distinct letters which have been joined together by mistake depends on the concurrence of several improbable hypotheses. We have to suppose not only that chaps. i.-ix. are a fragment of a longer letter which has lost its concluding pages, and that chaps. x.-xiii. are a fragment of a longer letter which has lost its opening pages, but that in each case the mutilation happened to come at a point where a new sentence began a new page. This is a most unlikely thing to happen. Take any book or manuscript at random and count the number of places where the tearing away of pages does not leave a clause incomplete. The number will be small indeed.2. But the measure of the improbability of this happening must be twice repeated before we reach the improbability of 2 Cor. i.-ix. and 2 Cor. x.-xiii. being both fragments. For neither 2 Cor. ix. 15 nor 2 Cor. x. 1 is an incomplete sentence. It has been argued indeed (see above, § 4) that 2 Cor. x. 1, αὐτὸς δὲ ἐγὼ. . . , points to some preceding argument which is not to be found in 2 Cor. ix, The argument is unconvincing ; but what is here dealt with is the improbability that a tearing of the MS. should have left no trace on the grammatical coherence of the sentence which followed the mutilation. In fact, it is not too much to say that the phenomena of the existing document cannot be explained as resulting from the mere juxtaposition of two fragments of other letters. We have to postulate, in addition, an editor who trimmed the ragged edges and brought the end of chap. ix. and the beginning of chap. x. into grammatical sequence by emendation of the texts which the two fragments presented. And beside all this we have yet to reckon with the improbability, be it great or small, that the two fragments belonging to distinct letters should have become joined together under the mistaken impression that they were parts of one whole.
1 Studien und Kritiken, Jan., 1897. Krenkel takes the same view, and holds that chaps. x.-xiii. form a letter later in date than chaps. i.-ix. This was also Semler’s view.
ΣΑ good illustration is afforded by the end of St. Mark’s Gospel. It is generally (though not universally) believed that a page has been lost at the end, and that the present conclusion is by another hand. But one of the strongest arguments for this view is that ver. 8 is incomplete, and that it ends ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ, {.ε., “for they were afraidto... ”. There is no such incompleteness apparent at 2 Cor. ix. 15.