Theories of a gradual growth
Theories of a gradual growth
Any identification of an individual as responsible for the collection of Paul’s letters remains completely speculative; it may be, rather, that no one person had a large role in the process. In fact, if Paul’s letters began circulating shortly after they were written, it is perhaps more likely that the process was a gradual one. We simply do not have enough information to know. How soon this collection was complete is also impossible to know. Some scholars think that 1 Clement (c. A.D. 96) assumes a completed collection; others just as emphatically think it does not. But Zahn has made a solid case for dating the collection sometime between the death of Paul and the end of the first century. 73 Whatever the date, the process we envisage here leaves little room for the extensive editorial work that some think went on as the Pauline letters were gathered. Instead of an editor or editors piecing letters of Paul together and generally rearranging the corpus, we should think rather of a simple process of collection and, eventually, copying.