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COMMENTATORS HAVE OFTEN NOTED that the relation of 1 Corinthians 13 to its immediate context is problematic.' The observations of Wayne A. Meeks are typical: 1 Corinthians 13 "interrupts the train of thought; 14:lb would follow logically after 12:31 a, while 14: l a repeats 12:31a almost verbatim. . . . Moreover, chap. 13 is a self-contained unit, composed in the style of an encomium on a virtue so familiar in Greek literature."2 Many years ago, Johannes Weiss argued that the chapter originally stood somewhere else, perhaps after chap. 8.3 Jean Hering and others have agreed.4 Without committing himself regarding its original placement, Hans Conzelmann maintained that "the passage must be expounded in the first instance on its own."5 Anton Fridrichsen even argued that chap. 13 was a Christian-Stoic diatribe added to I Corinthians by a later hand,6 though he later rejected this view.7
In 1959, Eric L. Titus suggested-apparently independently of Fridrichsen's initial position-that I Corinthians 13 might be a non-Pauline interpolation.8 Perhaps in part because Titus's article is brief and because it appeared in one of the less well known journals, it has not, in my judgment, received the scholarly attention it deserves. Indeed, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, in his discussion of possible interpolations in I Corinthians, fails even to mention I Corinthians 13.9 To be sure, Titus's suggestion has occasionally been noted, but it has almost always been rejected, and Gordon D. Fee goes so far as to label it "criticism run amok."T0 As far as I am aware, however, no one has submitted Titus's work to a detailed critical examination or has undertaken an independent study of the possibility that I Corinthians 13 is non-Pauline. In this paper, therefore, it is my intention to argue that 1 Corinthians 13 is in fact a non-Pauline interpolation, that is, that it was composed by someone other than Paul and that it was inserted at its present location in the Corinthian letter by someone other than Paul.
I. Preliminary Considerations
Before adducing specific arguments against the authenticity of I Corinthians 13, certain preliminary considerations mentioned by Titus must be noted: (I) "Pauline authorship [of I Corinthians 13] would not be disproved by a demonstration that the passage is out of context in its present position"; (2)...