εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ; and the language is sufficiently similar to suggest that x. 5 was written while the phrases of ix. 13 were still in his mind. (e) The concluding summary of the Epistle (xiii. 11) is important (see note im loc.). The exhortations yaipere... παρακαλεῖσθε are specially noteworthy, for they exactly reproduce the two leading thoughts of its earlier part, Rejoice . . . be com- forted. It is difficult to understand how the words are to be explained on the hypothesis that they sum up the message of the Painful Letter. They are entirely harmonious with chaps. i.-ix., but not harmonious at all with chaps. x.-xiii.. “Comfort in affliction” is (as Dr. Plummer points out!) the keynote of the first part of the Epistle, “boasting in weakness” being the keynote of the second part. παρακαλεῖσθε is an appropriate summing up of much that is contained in chaps. i.-ix., but is irrelevant as regards chaps. x.-xiii.2 And thus, as we find in xiii. 11 a summary of 2 Corinthians as a whole, we conclude that it is a single document, and is not made up of parts of two letters which have been joined together by mistake.
9. In the next place the linguistic parallels between chaps. i.-ix. and chaps. x.-xiii. are in many instances so close as to render it difficult to believe that the Epistle is not an ens integrum, (a) The phrase ἑαυτὸν συνιστάνειν only occurs once in the N.T. outside 2 Corinthians, viz., at Gal. ii. 18, and there the meaning is quite different (παραβάτην ἐμαυτὸν συνιστάνω = “1 prove myself a trans- gressor’’) from anything in 2 Corinthians. Not only does the phrase occur in both parts of this Epistle (iii. 1, v. 12, x. 12, 18), but it always implies a bad kind of self-commendation, as contrasted with
the similar phrase συνιστάνειν ἑαυτὸν (iv. 2, vi. 4, vii. 11), which is
used throughout in a favourable sense. (0) ὑπόστασις only occurs twice in St. Paul, and each time in the same phrase, ἐν τῇ ὑποστάσει ταύτῃ [5.ο., τῆς καυχήσεως), which is found once in the earlier (ix. 4) and once in the later (xi. 17) part of 2 Corinthians. (c) St. Paul uses ταπεινός Of himself in vii. 6 and x. 1; the word only occurs once again in the Pauline letters (Rom. xii. 16). (4) νόημα occurs five times in 2 Corinthians and in both parts of the Epistle (ii. 11, iii. 14, iv. 4, x. 5, xi. 3), and is always used in a bad sense. In the only other place of its occurrence in the N.T. (Phil. iv. 7) there is no suggestion that νοήματα must be bad. (ε) ἀγρυπνία
1Smith’s Bible Dictionary, νο]. i., p. 657. 2Semler seems to have had some suspicion of this, for he joins on chap. xiii. II-13 to the first part of the Epistle in his scheme of dissection.