A final issue, closely related to the third, apparently pertained to the ability to recount previous personal experiences of revelatory visions (12:1–13). Once again, though there is really nothing to be gained by an attempt to supplement the record of divine support that he has already presented, Paul consents, as before, to “go on boasting” in an attempt to win the wayward Corinthians back to his side (12:1). But once more he does so in a way that shows his reticence to cooperate fully in any contest of credentials proposed by his opponents, speaking modestly of his own experience as only that of a man in Christ.

Proceeding, Paul relates an experience that happened to him some fourteen years earlier (placing it in the period between his first visit to Jerusalem following his conversion an…