Paul and the Corinthians: Reconstructing the Relationship and the Letters

A fascinating study of a turbulent partnership

For the apostle Paul and the Christian community in Corinth, what began as a warm partnership spiraled into suspicion and defensiveness. In Paul and the Corinthians: Reconstructing the Relationship and the Letters, distinguished scholar Paul B. Duff uses the biblical text to illuminate the dramatic arc of this fractured relationship―one marked by rival factions, questions of integrity, and emotional pleas written in “distress and anguish of heart.”

Engaging in detailed analysis of the Corinthian correspondence, Duff traces how divisions arose in the community Paul founded. As tensions escalated, Paul found himself walking a precarious line between competing factions―sometimes successfully, sometimes not. His attempts to address controversies and collect funds for Jerusalem believers only deepened the Corinthians’ doubts about his authority and motives. The result? Two letters of defense, followed by a carefully crafted offer of reconciliation.

This comprehensive study reconstructs the complete chronology of the relationship and also addresses a question scholars have long debated: why were Paul’s multiple letters to the Corinthian Christians assembled into the puzzling document we now call 2 Corinthians? Duff offers fresh answers that illuminate both the historical relationship and the editorial decisions that shaped the biblical canon.

Essential reading for New Testament scholars and anyone studying the Pauline corpus, Paul and the Corinthians provides a richly detailed account of Paul’s complicated relationship with the Corinthians―and in so doing, offers valuable insight into how early Christian communities navigated conflict.

Paul B. Duff is professor emeritus in the department of world religions at George Washington University, where he taught for more than three decades. He is the author of Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire, Moses in Corinth: The Apologetic Context of 2 Corinthians 3, Who Rides the Beast? Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse, and Paul and the Corinthians: Reconstructing the Relationship and the Letters.