James H. Charlesworth on 1 Corinthians 5:9 Potentially Being a "Missing Letter" of Paul's

  

First Corinthians may not be the first letter Paul writes to that “church.” In 1 Cor 5:9 we read about an earlier letter: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral ones.” Following the lead of Henrich Ewald (1803-1875), most scholars today assume there is a lost letter. Could this be the strong passage in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1? These verses seem interpolated. The exhortation “not to associate with immoral ones” is strikingly similar to “Do not be mismated with unbelievers” (2 Cor 6:14). Many of the words in the alleged interpolation, moreover, are not typical of Paul; it is possible this section was not composed by Paul. Would that make it an interpolation by a Paulinst? Would that make it pseudepigraphical? (James H. Charlesworth, “Preface: The Fluid Borders of the Canon and ‘Apocrypha,’” in Sacra Scriptura: How “Non-Canonical” Text Functioned in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. James H. Charlesworth, Lee McDonald and Blake A. Jurgens [Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies 20; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014], xvii)