Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! We've been reading the Bible clear through this year. We are finishing the New Testament, so read along with me. But first, let us pray: 

Father,

When the fullness of time had come, you sent your Word in the One who said, “Whoever sees me, sees the Father.” No revelation can surpass this until Jesus comes again. By your gift, the Church continues to receive unfathomable riches from the inheritance handed on from the Apostles and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit.

Let the Spirit who inspired the writing of today's pages "guide me in the truth and teach me" to follow Jesus ever more closely, until he calls me to follow him to the Kingdom where he lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.

Today's chapters are 2 Corinthians 2-4.

St Paul is in the middle of a painful misunderstanding with the Corinthians. We have already seen how important the unity of the Church is for Paul (it was what Jesus himself prayed for just hours before he was arrested!). For the Corinthians to remain united among themselves and with the rest of the Body of Christ, they must also be reconciled with Paul. If he seems to overreact, this is not just personal. Sadly, Paul has enemies who would happily take advantage of any opportunity to undermine his apostolic credentials and his authority to preach the Gospel. (We'll see Paul revel in irony about this in Chapter 4 and again, going way over the top, in Chapter 11.) The Apostles follow a Crucified Master, and their credentials do not take the form of worldly approval, but suffering and rejection.

References to a letter written "with many tears" has led some scholars to conjecture that what we have in 2 Corinthians is a composite of that "missing" letter and/or other fragments of writings of Paul to the erstwhile Corinthians, but there is no documentary evidence to support that hypothesis. All we know for sure is that Paul's decisions (defended here) were misinterpreted in Corinth and led to a serious breakdown in the relationship between the community and its founding father. Paul reminds them that he (unlike some new arrivals) has no need of "letters of introduction" testifying to the validity of his Apostleship: they themselves are the proof that God is at work in Paul! 

Paul reinterprets the Old Testament in the light of the greater revelation given in Jesus. He includes the Corinthians in that greater revelation: they are greater even than Moses! His treatment also gives Paul the opportunity to bring in one of his favorite words: Freedom.

Start reading here:

For additional background

N.T. Wright's Paul: A Biography is the book I would recommend to someone who wanted to read one (only one) book that combined the life and letters of St Paul. Written by a noted Scripture, this is a flowing narrative that is scripturally enlightening and historically sound. Wright gives the reader a way of following Paul through the Acts of the Apostles and the writing of his letters, making Paul the person that much more approachable, and the letters themselves more readable as a result of having a social and historical context.

While we read Paul's letters to the Corinthians, you might also enjoy A Week in the Life of Corinth. This unique historical novel is set in first-century Corinth and outfitted with historical footnotes and archaeological sidebars. Ben Witherington III is a Scripture scholar in the Evangelical tradition, so there are some points in which his description of the worship in the Corinthian community mirrors that tradition rather than the Jewish roots of the liturgy we know so well, but his description of the social life and values of ancient Corinth may be extremely helpful in understanding things Paul takes for granted in his letters.