Adoption Into The Canon
ADOPTION INTO THE CANON
First Corinthians is already being cited in the last decade of the first century (by Clement of Rome: 1 Clement. 37:5; 47:1-3; 49:5) and in the first decade of the second (by Ignatius: Eph. 16:1; 18:1; Rom. 5:1; Phil. 3:3). There was never any dispute about its admission to the canon.
The situation with 2 Corinthians is very different. 69 Although it is just possible that 1 Timothy 2:13-15 alludes to 2 Corinthians 11:1-3, and barely possible that 2 Corinthians finds an echo in Ignatius (Eph. 15:3 [2 Cor. 6:16]; Trall. 9:2 [2 Cor. 4:14]; Phil. 6:3 [2 Cor. 1:12; 11:9-10]), there is only disputed evidence of 2 Corinthians in 1 Clement, 70 and no certain attestation of 2 Corinthians until Marcion’s canon (c. A.D. 140). From about the middle of the second century there is undisputed evidence that 2 Corinthians was viewed as part of the Pauline corpus. The majority of scholars are surely right to insist that this by itself does not cast doubt on the authenticity of 2 Corinthians and that
it should not be used to justify partition theories. (Kummel, p. 292, points out that even Galatians is unattested in Ignatius.) The puzzling question is why 2 Corinthians did not apparently circulate as widely and as rapidly as 1 Corinthians.