Did Paul Write I Corinthians 13?

Abstract

the Lord's Prayer. The reasons for this are not at all obscure. For one thing, the passage thrusts itself out from the Corinthian letter as if to invite special attention. Secondly, the chapter forms a neat, self-contained literary unit, dealing concisely with the theme of love. Thirdly, the theme meets people on a level which they can understand (or think they can understand) while the more complicated theological constructs of Paul do not. And finally, the theme of love is expressed in noble literary form, making its retention in the memory easy. These factors, which make the passage so conspicuously different from the mass of Pauline material, suggest the possibility that the chapter is an interpolation. This paper is an examination of this possibility. Two points need to be made clear at the outset. First, Pauline authorship would not be disproved by a demonstration that the passage is out of context in its present position. In the second place, to deny the hymn on love to Paul is not to deny that he gave love an important place in his thought. In Galatians 5:14 he says that the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is reiterated in Romans 13:10. Again, in I Corinthians 8:1 he states that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. It is clear, without laboring the point, that an argument against the authenticity of the passage must be made on other grounds than a denial of the importance of love in Paul's thought. The fact that the genuineness of I Corinthians 13 has had almost universal support from critical scholarship must cause us to exercise caution in assertions to the contrary. The following argument, if it has any weight at all, must be in its cumulative effect, and not in a single point in isolation. 1. A general but nonetheless pertinent observation is that Paul's letters were at some