Why are Paul's Letters not in chronological order?

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fastenatingguy

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Until I read a little about the history of the Paul and his travels, I hadn’t realized the order was not in chronology. Any thoughts?
 
They are in three basic groups- letters addressed to churches, then letters addressed to individuals, then finally Hebrews, which Western bishops in particular had a hard time accepting as canonical much less Pauline for a while, though it was eventually admitted into the canon, at the end of all the [other] Pauline epistles.

Within the two other categories, letters written to the same church or individual are placed together. Beyond that, I think the arrangement is more or less longer epistles first, shorter ones later.
 
Kind of hard to put his letters in chronological order when you don’t know when each of them was written.
 
Todd_Easton said:
Kind of hard to put his letters in chronological order when you don’t know when each of them was written.
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Well I was able to find this a few hours ago on a Catholic blogger’s site, but don’t know with certainty if it is accurate:

The Letters arranged by year are:

50-51: 1 and 2 Thessalonians
56-57: Philippians
57: 1 and 2 Corinthians
57-58: Galatians and Romans
61-63: Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon
65: 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy
67: Hebrews
 
Aelred_Minor said:
Within the two other categories, letters written to the same church or individual are placed together. Beyond that, I think the arrangement is more or less longer epistles first, shorter ones later.
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The Jews often placed (or subdivided) their books in order of length, rather than chronology. (Interestingly, the Qu’ran does this also, placing passages in order of length.)
 
fastenatingguy said:
Well I was able to find this a few hours ago on a Catholic blogger’s site, but don’t know with certainty if it is accurate:

The Letters arranged by year are:

50-51: 1 and 2 Thessalonians
56-57: Philippians
57: 1 and 2 Corinthians
57-58: Galatians and Romans
61-63: Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon
65: 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy
67: Hebrews
Click to expand...
Also…one can study Paul’s evolving theology and determine with some accuracy to an extent which were the first…the dates of the letters take his theological understanding into account as well.
 
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