This is where the biographer enters a dark tunnel, the tunnel between the cheerful Paul of 1 Corinthians and the crushed, battered Paul of 2 Corinthians; the tunnel between the Paul who believes that Jesus will come back during his lifetime and the Paul who now expects to die in advance of that glorious moment; the black night when, ahead of any actual judicial decision, Paul heard, deep within himself, the sentence of death. We have no idea what precisely occurred. But he got to the point where he despaired of life itself.
