To the tact and firmness of Titus must be ascribed much of the successful issue of these dealings with the Corinthians. Paul spent the following winter at Corinth (Acts xx. 2, 3); while there he wrote the Epistle to the Romans, which in its milder tone gives clear indication that the day of violent controversy with Judaizing emissaries like those who came to Galatia had passed. There was indeed, as might have been expected, trouble from enemies among the Jews, but Paul escaped the danger, and with the money for the mother church, the collection of which had so long lain near his heart, he was able to start for Jerusalem in the spring of one of the years 55-59 (See PAUL).
In later time (circ. A.D. 95) we hear from the epistle of Clement of Rome that the Corinthian church paid full honour to Paul's memory; and circ. A.D. 139, the excellent Catholic (though Hebrew) Christian Hegesippus found himself deeply refreshed by the honest life and the fidelity to Christian truth of the descendants and successors of the Christians over whom Paul had laboured with such faithful oversight and so many anxious tears.
_Critical Questions._--The manuscript evidence for the Corinthian epistles is the same as for the other epistles of Paul (see BIBLE: New Testament). Of early attestation the amount is rather greater for First Corinthians than for other epistles. Not only were both epistles included without question in the Pauline canon of Marcion (circ. A.D. 150) and in the Muratorian list (end of 2nd century), and known to various Gnostic sects of the 2nd century, but Clement of Rome (circ. A.D. 95) makes a specific reference (xlvii. 1) to the fact that the Corinthians "received the Epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul," and proceeds with an unmistakable quotation from 1 Cor. i. 11-13. Other quotations from First Corinthians are found in Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, while use of the epistle can probably be detected in Hermas. Second Corinthians was, and still remains, less quotable, but it is probably used by Polycarp, perhaps by Ignatius, and by the presbyters known to Irenaeus, and it was freely used by Theophilus, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian.