PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

Indeed, Jewett acknowledges Clement’s access to a canonically-recognisable version of 1
Corinthians at this time:
Since 1 Corinthians was cited by Clement in A.D. 96, with citations coming from
the various component parts in such a way as to make it clear that he had the
canonical letter, the most likely time for the redaction of 1 and 2 Corinthians is
the early 90s. 22
However, it would seem extraordinary for Clement to urge the Corinthians to shun
partisanship by citing a letter that had been significantly redacted, in a location removed
from its Corinthian origins, less than six years earlier, as an essentially fictive response to
partisanship. In Jewett’s reconstruction:
[The redactor’s location] must have been a location in the Aegean realm, in a
church founded by the Apostle Paul, where competitive groups were vying for
the proper interpretation of their mentor’s legacy. If the redactor and his circle
were not in Ephesus, they were at least in a similar city in the region where a
vigorous struggle was underway with substantial intellectual resources available
on both sides. 23
Would Clement really expect the Corinthians to accept as convincing an exhortation to
unity cited from a fictionally “first” letter, which had recently been taken out of their own
hands and substantially reworked? I find this improbable. Such a reconstruction requires
Clement to have expected that the Corinthians’ problems with ecclesial authority would be
reversed by barefaced appeal to the obviously deceptive work of that authority.
Gamble’s critique of Schmithals is also apt here:
22 Jewett, “Redaction,” 432.
23 Jewett, “Redaction,” 432.
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