In the last issue of this article, I introduced that the idea of the “works” of Paul” were the first to make up what is now called the New Testament (NT). There are, however, a number of difficulties about the formation of a Pauline collection. The letters were written to handle particular problems in particular churches. Only Romans and Ephesians consciously reveal a larger scope. Why were such temporal documents preserved for later times? In Colossians 4:16 Paul recommends the exchange and circulation of his letters among neighboring churches. What prompted a wider circulation so that by the end of the 1st century Pauline letters were being read in churches far distant from the original destination? Perhaps their enduring value was quickly perceived! One wonders whether Paul himself ever expected that his correspondence would be read years after his death as a guide to universal Christian faith.

Some of the Pauline letters did not escape the doom that their temporal character might have brought to all. There was a letter to the Laodiceans and probably two lost letters to the Corinthians that never made it into the NT collection and were lost.

How then were the Pauline letters gathered together? Did a community take its letter from Paul and add to it the letters addressed to neighboring churches? Such a process would have produced several different collections. This is the theory of one biblical scholar and he uses it to account for the lack of agreement in the order of the Pauline writings that is evidenced in the Muratoruian Fragment and in Tertullian and Origen. Other scholars think that the attempt to collect Paul’s writings produced only one collection. One scholar proposes that at first there was a lack of interest in the Pauline letters and that only after 90 CE, with the publication of ACTS, was the importance of Paul’s contribution to Christianity realized. This realization led to a systematic attempt to collect his writings, some of which had already perished. According to other authors, a disciple of Paul, like Onesimus, began to collect the writings soon after Paul’s death.

When were the Pauline letters gathered into a collection? Obviously the questions of authorship and dating affect this problem. One scholar insists that the collection took place shortly after the writing of ACTS, for if the author of ACTS had known the Pauline writings, he would have cited them. Scholars agree that ACTS was written around 125 CE. There were references to some of Paul’s letters by early writers like Clement of Rome (96 CE) and Ignatius (110 CE).