Having presented a brief history of research on 2 Corinthians, Eve-Marie Becker outlines the process of Paul's communication with the Corinthian community and considers letter-production and letter-reception at the time. She develops a "literary-historical" model for reconstructing the original separate letters (1.1-7.4; 7.5-16; 8--9; 10--13) which were later compiled to form the canonical letter. She defines - by means of linguistics and communication theory - the central theoretical elements for Pauline letter-hermeneutics.

There is a thorough exegesis of those parts of 2 Corinthians in which Paul formulates aspects of his hermeneutics, based on the theory of letter-hermeneutics and on the results of the "literary-historical" reconstruction of the original form of 2 Corinthians. There is also an examination of the reception and interpretation of 2 Corinthians in the early church.

This is volume 279 in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series.