Passage

1 Corinthians 16.21

Book: 1 Corinthians · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

◎ See this page's graph and discover linked topics →

Setting

• Speaker: Paul the Apostle
• Audience: the church at Corinth, a mixed Jew-and-Gentile congregation in a wealthy Roman colony, fractured over teachers, status, sexual ethics, and the limits of freedom
• Location: composed in Ephesus, addressed to Corinth
• Time period: c. AD 55-56

Theological reading

The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand. A single line that opens a window onto how the letter was physically produced. Paul dictated to a secretary, and the practice is documented elsewhere by name: the amanuensis of Romans identifies himself at Romans 16:22 as Tertius. At the close, Paul takes the pen to add a greeting in his own handwriting.

The same move appears at Galatians 6:11, where he draws attention to the size of his letters, and at Colossians 4:18 and 2 Thessalonians 3:17, the latter calling the autograph the token in every epistle. That last text implies a purpose beyond warmth: a handwritten close authenticated the letter, and 2 Thessalonians 2:2 shows why it might be needed, since a forged letter purporting to come from Paul was already a live concern in his lifetime.

This matters for how ancient letters are assessed. Dictation with a secretary means that variations of style and vocabulary between letters cannot be treated as straightforward evidence of different authorship, since an amanuensis may have been given more or less freedom in different circumstances. That consideration does not settle the authorship disputes around the later Paulines, but it is a standing factor in them, and this verse is one of the places where the mechanics become visible.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word.

No Strong's-tagged lexicon entry is curated for the key terms of this verse; the lexicon covers roughly 100 contested terms, not every word. See Lexicon Roadmap.

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

• Half of Pauls Letters Are Forgeries Objection Defeater

Notes

Your annotations.

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

• ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
• WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
• KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
• YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.