- Chapters
- 13
- Verses
- 0
- Where it sits
- The Letters of Paul
What it is
Written from Macedonia around AD 55 to 56, after a painful visit and a letter written, he says, out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears — a letter that has not survived.
Rival missionaries had arrived at Corinth questioning whether Paul was a real apostle at all; he was unimpressive in person, they said, and no speaker. His answer is not to produce credentials. It is to list what the work has cost him: the beatings, the shipwrecks, the night and day in the deep, and the thing he calls a thorn in the flesh, which God would not take away.
Known for
5:17, a new creation. 12:7–10 — my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
Where it sits
Undisputed as Paul’s. Whether it is one letter is a separate and genuinely open question — the tone changes so sharply at chapter 10 that many scholars think two or more letters were joined. Others defend it as written at one go.
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