Saturday, March 23, 2024

Lee Martin McDonald on Paul Referencing Now-Missing Epistles on 1 Corinthians 5:9 and Colossians 4:16

  

If awareness of inspiration of leading by the Spirit were an adequate criterion for inclusion of a text in the NT, then many other texts would have been included. For example, was Paul also inspired to write Scripture when he wrote his lost first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5:9) or the one that he wrote to the Laodiceans (Col. 4:16)? If so, then we have lost some of the sacred Scriptures. (Lee Martin McDonald, The Formation of the Biblical Canon, 2 vols. [London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017], 2:106)

 

. . . only a small portion of the total number of ancient written documents is known today, perhaps less than one percent, and perhaps future discoveries will lead to changes in our perspectives about what functioned as sacred writings in antiquity. Some of the early Christian writings were simply lost, e.g., the first letter in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence (1 Cor 5:9) or his letter to the Laodiceans (Col 4:16). (Ibid., 266)