The discord and disagreements that made up Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian Christians take center stage throughout the apostle’s two (or three? or more?) letters to that community. It even seems that the contentious nature of their relationship has carried over into the scholarly examination of this correspondence two millennia later.

There is extensive disagreement about the seemingly fragmentary nature of Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. So much so that many scholars now assert that the document is actually a compilation of several letter fragments. The most common argument for a fragmented 2 Corinthians finds two separate “letters” — chapter 1-9 and chapters 10-13. Some scholars even claim that as many as six fragments have been woven together to create this “second” l…