Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
2 Corinthians 12:19-13:14, Two or three witnesses
Paul warns that on his third visit every charge will be established by two or three witnesses and that he will not spare the unrepentant, then closes with a call to restoration, the holy kiss and a threefold blessing.
2 Corinthians 12:19-13:14, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul says all this has been for their strengthening, not his own defense, and fears he will find quarreling and immorality when he visits. On this third visit charges will be settled on the word of two or three witnesses, and he warns that he will not go easy on the unrepentant, for Christ, though crucified in weakness, now lives by God's power. He urges them to examine themselves, to mend their ways and live in peace, and closes with greetings and a threefold blessing that names Christ's grace, God's love and the Spirit's fellowship.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/orators-and-sophists\/","n":"Orators, rhetoric and boasting","s":"Public speaking was the great skill of the Greek city. Traveling orators performed for crowds and gathered paying students, audiences judged them on voice and gesture as well as argument, and the fans of rival speakers boasted of their own man against the rest.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/spirit-of-prophecy\/","n":"The Spirit of prophecy","s":"Jews of Jesus' day linked God's Spirit above all with prophecy. Many believed the prophets had fallen silent long ago, and they looked for the day God would pour out his Spirit again.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/letters-and-letter-carriers\/","n":"Letters, scribes and carriers","s":"Letters were usually dictated to scribes, carried by trusted travelers because there was no public post, and read aloud to the people they were sent to.","r":""}
Moralists attacked strife and envy, so the Corinthians' behavior failed even by their own culture's ethics (Keener and his notes). Moses' law required at least two witnesses for a charge (Deuteronomy 19:15), and Keener reads Paul as treating his visit as a courtroom battle; the cultural backgrounds notes say he will prosecute the unrepentant before God, and the CSB Study Bible expects the congregation to carry out discipline. Josephus gives the rule: "let not a single witness be credited, but three, or two at the least." Corinthian culture evaluated speakers, and Paul turns the test back on them (the cultural backgrounds notes). Wright does not think chapters 10-13 are the painful letter of chapter 2. Carson, Moo and Morris note that this threatened third visit fits neither the mood nor the plans of chapters 1-9, the main support for treating 10-13 as later. The visit did take place, and Paul wrote Romans from Corinth with no anxiety about it, which gives some hope that the letters worked, at least for a time; forty years later Clement of Rome wrote to the same church about its divisions.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on 2 Corinthians 12:19, 12:20 and 13:1-2
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on 2 Corinthians 12:19, 13:1, 13:5 and 13:10
- CSB Study Bible, note on 2 Corinthians 13:1
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 4.8.15, trans. William Whiston
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians, comment on 2 Corinthians 12:19-13:4
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 9, 1 and 2 Corinthians, The Integrity of 1 and 2 Corinthians
