When Historical Backgrounds Obscure the Text: The Case Study of 1 Corinthians 15

Perth Theological Colloquium, November 2011, Matthew Malcolm

Socio-Historical Studies of 1 Corinthians

Over the last several decades, socio-historical studies of the New Testament have abounded, led especially by studies of Corinth and 1 Corinthians. I can only mention a few here. Edwin Judge published his book The Social Pattern of the Christian Groups in the First Century1 in 1960, and continued to show special interest in Corinth and 1 Corinthians. Jerome Murphy-O Connor s St. Paul s Corinth came out in 1983 and is now in its third edition. 2 A series of articles by Cambridge scholars appeared in the Tyndale Bulletin throughout the 1990s, on various social and historical backgrounds to the letter, from coinage to hairstyles to ancient documents on divorce and remarriage.3 One monograph to arise from this setting was Andrew Clarke s Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth,4 in which he argued that the leadership troubles mentioned in 1 Corinthians could be enlightened by socio-historical investigation. In 2001 Bruce Winter produced his influential book, After Paul Left Corinth,5 in which he argued that it was the influence of secular ethics and social change that caused the Corinthian problems. In 2010, the collection of essays, Corinth in Context was published,6 which evidences a vigorous and still-growing interest in social and historical backgrounds to the Corinthian Correspondence. And earlier this year, an entire session of the Paul and Pauline Literature stream at the International Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature was devoted to archaeological insights into Paul s Corinth. This immense interest in social and historical backgrounds to 1 Corinthians has, of course, made its way into the commentaries. In Anthony Thiselton s landmark 2000 commentary, he remarks, I pay especially close attention to the sociohistorical background since it clarifies many issues. 7 Roy Ciampa and Brian Rosner s 2010 commentary opens with the words, Virtually every modern commentary on 1 Corinthians agrees with James D. G. Dunn that an ancient text like 1 Corinthians cannot be properly understood unless it is read against the background of its historical context and as part of a dialogue with the Corinthian church itself. 8

Edwin Judge, The Social Pattern of the Christian Groups in the First Century: Some Prolegomena to the Study of New Testament Ideas of Social Obligation (London: Tyndale, 1960). 2 Jerome Murphy-O Connor, St. Paul s Corinth: Texts and Archaeology, Third Revised and Expanded Edition (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002). 3 For example: David W. J. Gill, The Importance of Roman Portraiture for Head-Coverings in 1 Corinthians Tyndale Bulletin 41/2 (1990) 245-260; David Instone-Brewer, 1 Corinthians 7 in the Light of the Graeco-Roman Marriage and Divorce Papyri Tyndale Bulletin 52/1 (2001) 101-116; 1 Corinthians 7 in the Light of the Jewish Greek and Aramaic Marriage and Divorce Papyri Tyndale Bulletin 52/2 (2001) 225-243. 4 Andrew D. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth: A Socio-Historical and Exegetical Study of 1 Corinthians 1-6 (Leiden: Brill, 1993). 5 Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001). 6 Steven J. Friesen, Daniel N. Schowalter, and James C. Walters (eds.), Corinth in Context: Comparative Studies on Religion and Society (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 7 Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), xvii. 8 Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (Pillar; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010), 2.

The Resurrection Chapter

Many of the articles, monographs, and textbooks that seek to pursue a socio-historical approach to 1 Corinthians are especially interested in the way that social and historical backgrounds might illuminate Paul s argument in the resurrection chapter, in which Paul is horrified that some of you are saying that there is no resurrection of the dead (15:12). Martinus de Boer, Bruce Winter, and many others, for example, hold that a modified Platonist view of the body, the soul, and the afterlife explains the Corinthians denial of the resurrection. According to this view, it is essential to recognise that for Greeks, the idea of the revivification of the body was not only physically impossible, but philosophically preposterous: the body was a decaying prison to be escaped, rather than something to be locked into for eternity! Winter comments: [R]esurrection would have been a complete enigma to the first-century Gentile who believed in the immortality of the soul and the cessation of the body s senses at death. 9 De Boer states that death was for the deniers of the resurrection of the dead in Corinth, the moment of the liberation of a primal, immortal spirit.10 On the basis of their commitment to a Greek worldview that they had inherited ultimately from Plato, the Corinthians could not conceive of a divine rehabilitation of the body, and so denied the resurrection of the body, while looking forward to the release of the immortal soul at death. Thus the slogan, there is no resurrection of the dead. Socio-historical investigation in this instance, the examination of cultural assumptions about the body and the soul has resulted in an enlightening interpretation of a New Testament passage: the Corinthians denied the resurrection because they despised the body, while setting their hopes on the soul. An enlightening interpretation of this passage. Or is it? How do we know that the Corinthians despised the body and longed for the release of an immortal soul? Certainly, it is true that the great Greek philosopher Plato viewed the body as having a subservient role to the soul. And it is demonstrably true that Plato believed that the immortal soul longed to be released from the confines of its bodily prison at death.11 So what s the problem? The problem is that Plato wasn t the only cultural influence on first century Roman Corinth. Not by a long shot. In fact, we have such a variety of potential backgrounds that it s hard to be decisive. This variety is due both to the immensity and scarcity of the evidence: there is an immense amount of literary and documentary material, but it represents scarcely a fraction of what made up day-to-day Corinthian
Winter, After Paul, 104. Martinus C. de Boer, The Defeat of Death: Apocalyptic Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988), 183. 11 Plato s Phaedo is an excellent example of this position.
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church life 2,000 years ago. This allows the dangerous situation in which biblical interpreters can find plenty of starting-points, and plenty of room for their imaginative amplification. So in terms of first century Roman Corinth, there were undoubtedly elements in which Plato s influence could be seen. But there were other elements. The two schools that Paul addressed on his way to Corinth (as attested in Acts 17) were the Stoics and the Epicureans. For these groups, far from sharing Plato s longing for the release of an immortal soul from its bodily prison, the soul was held to be mortal. For the sake of time, let s focus on the Epicureans. The Epicureans generally held, following Epicurus himself, that the soul was extinguished upon its release from the body. This is because the soul itself was corporeal, being intermixed with the bodily parts in such a way that post-mortal survival was impossible. On the corporeality of the soul, Epicurus writes: Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 67 So those who say that the soul is incorporeal are speaking vainly. Lucretius, writing in Rome in the first century BCE, similarly argues: Lucretius, 3.275 Intermixed with our members and entire body is the power of the soul and of the spirit. Epicurus consequently reasons that death is nothing to be feared: Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 125 Therefore death, the most fearsome of evils, is nothing to us, seeing as when we exist, death is not present; and when death is present, we do not exist. So death is nothing to those who are living or to those who have died, seeing as for the former, it is nothing, and for the latter, they are nothing. Again, Lucretius concurs: Lucretius, 3.830 Death, therefore, is nothing to us of no concern at all, if we understand that the soul has a mortal nature. Furthermore, despite arguing for the extinction of the soul at death, Epicurus insists that a qualitative sort of immortality will be borne by those who practise his ways during their present life: Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 135 But you [the follower of Epicurus ways] will live as a god among humans. For a person living amidst immortal virtues is nothing like a mortal being.

The fact that Plutarch refers to Epicureans as those who call themselves immortal/imperishable indicates that such a concept of qualitative immortality was alive in the first century.12 Indeed, the Epicurean rejoicing in personal embodied immortality went hand-in-hand with their lack of hope for the dead. Could this, then, provide a rival potential background to the Platonist background suggested by de Boer and Winter? According to the Platonist background, the Corinthians are dismissive of the idea of bodily resurrection, and long for the freedom of the soul so they say, there is no resurrection of the dead. But according to an Epicurean background, the Corinthians are dismissive of the dead, but think that they themselves have attained some sort of qualitative immortality already in the present so they say, there is no resurrection of the dead. It seems to me that we have here two mutually exclusive potential backgrounds: the Platonist background and the Epicurean background. Presumably, the assumption of the wrong background by the biblical interpreter might actually obscure the text, by forcing it to be read in a way that doesn t cohere with what Paul was actually responding to! Both potential backgrounds have a valid claim to existence in first century Roman Greece, both appear to cohere with elements of 1 Corinthians 15, and both are backed by different biblical scholars.13 So which, if either background, is the biblical interpreter to heed?

Rhetorical Function
My suggestion is that our attention to backgrounds needs to be guided by our attention to the rhetorical function of the text. In other words, we cannot evaluate possibilities that lie behind the text, without paying careful attention to what the text is doing the rhetorical function of the text. And paying attention to the rhetorical function of a Pauline text means paying attention to the cunning pastoral strategies of an apostle of Jesus Christ. Before we can determine the relevance of potential backgrounds to resurrection-denial in first century Corinth, then, we need to ask: what is Paul the pastor doing with this topic in his letter? What is this text directed toward achieving in relation to its Christ-following recipients? Let me attempt to address this question then, before returning to consider our choice of potential backgrounds.

Paul the Pastor

What is Paul the pastor doing with his discussion of the resurrection-denial in 1 Corinthians 15? Perhaps he is simply offering a straightforward correction to an issue of honest confusion 14 about the afterlife among the believers in Corinth. Perhaps that is worth considering. But it is also worth
Plutarch, Against Epicurean Happiness 1091b-c: What great pleasure belongs to these people [the Epicureans], and what blessing they enjoy, rejoicing about their lack of suffering and grief and pain! Therefore, is it not fitting, on account of these things, also to think and to speak as they do speak, calling themselves imperishable and equal to gods ? 13 Variations of the considerations that I have simplified as the Epicurean background are held to be of interpretative value especially in Graham Tomlin, Christians and Epicureans in 1 Corinthians, JSNT 68 (1997): 51-72; and H.W. Hollander and J. Holleman, The Relationship of Death, Sin and Law in 1 Cor 15:56, NovT 35/3 (1993): 270-291. 14 David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians (BECNT; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2003), 678.
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considering that, just like the earthly Jesus, Paul is not always straightforward in dealing with problems. He cannot be relied upon to give a straight-faced identification of a simple problem, followed by a transparent solution. In fact, that doesn t sound much like Paul at all. For example, when dealing with the problem of idol meat in 1 Corinthians 8 10, he does not simply identify a problem and present a straight answer. Rather, he begins by cunningly agreeing with his opponents that idols are nothing, but he ends by pulling the rug out from under their feet and declaring, Flee from idolatry! John Chrysostom remarks that it is in fact customary for Paul to be coy about the full impact of his argument until he has cunningly brought his hapless hearers onside: Do you see how little by little he leads to that which is close at hand? He does this customarily, beginning with distant examples, and ending with that which is more directly related to the issue.15 So although it is possible that in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is offering a transparent correction to an honest and singular mistake, it should not surprise us if there is more to it than that. It is worth looking again at the chapter and asking what Paul the pastor is doing with this issue. I want us to notice three things: 1. The position of the chapter within the letter 2. The obsession with the inescapability of death 3. The framing of the chapter

1. The Position of the Chapter Within the Letter

John Chrysostom himself comments: [In 1 Corinthians, Paul] places the most severe issue of all last that concerning the resurrection. 16 John Calvin ponders: [W]hy it is that he has left off or deferred to the close of the Epistle, what should properly have had the precedence of everything else?17 That is, if, in denying the resurrection of the dead, some in Corinth indicate that they have no knowledge of God as Paul reveals in 1 Corinthians 15 why spend fourteen chapters dealing with less pressing issues before disclosing this catastrophic error? What is Paul doing here? Why would Paul defer a detailed discussion of the gospel of the resurrection to the end of his letter? This is striking! But you might notice that the beginning of the letter is just as striking, for a related reason. In the opening chapters of the letter, Paul talks just as much about his gospel as he does in chapter 15
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Homily 35 on 1 Corinthians; PG 61.299. Homily 26 on 1 Corinthians; PG 61.212. 17 Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles, Vol.2; 7.

with one major difference: In the opening chapters, his gospel is just about the cross, never the resurrection. Notice how frequently he draws attention to the crucifixion in chapters 1 4, without so much as mentioning the resurrection: o o o o o o 1:13: Paul was not crucified for you, was he? 1:17: Christ did not send me to baptise, but to proclaim the gospel not in wise speech, so that the cross of Christ might not be made vain 1:18: The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed 1:23: We proclaim Christ crucified a scandal to Jews, and foolishness to Gentiles 2:2: I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified 2:7-8: We speak God s wisdom which none of the rulers of this age knew or they would not have crucified the Lord of glory

This appears as a devastating critique of the Corinthians status-driven embrace of impressive vitality: Paul refuses to let them meet Jesus as the affirmer of their proud status-seeking, but rather as the one who hangs on a Roman cross. And the apostles are presented in the same light as those stained by the death of Christ s cross: o 4:9: It seems to me that God has set us apostles as last as those condemned to death, so that we have become a spectacle to the world and angels and humans

Paul then calls upon the Corinthians to imitate him in this cruciform orientation and the language of the cross goes on to permeate the next ten chapters of ethical discussion.18 So this is the first element to notice in considering what Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians 15: he places the resurrection discussion at the end of an extended summons to come back to the cross.

2. The Obsession with the In escapability of Death

The second element to notice is that the resurrection chapter actually says more about death than resurrection. Consider to what extent this chapter exudes an obsession with the inescapability of death: o o o 15:6: He appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at once, of whom most remain alive to this day, but some have fallen asleep 15:8: And last of all, as to one who had been miscarried, he appeared also to me 15:12: But if it is proclaimed that Christ was raised from the dead, how is it that some of you are saying that there is no resurrection of the dead?19

Sometimes commentators find it hard to cope with this exclusive emphasis on the cross, and they add the resurrection in. Sidney Greidanus comments: Even the seemingly limited focus found in 1 Corinthians 2:2 of Paul knowing nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified may contain a much broader perspective. John Knox helpfully explains, .when Paul wrote the phrase, he was thinking first of all of the risen, exalted Christ, and his thought moved backward to the cross. Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans: 1999), 6. Bryan Chapell similarly suggests that in this verse the cross reference functions as synechdoche, representing the entire matrix of God s redemptive work past, present, and future, including the resurrection, advocacy, and reign his victory through the cross provides. Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, Second Edition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2005) 278.

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o o o o o o

15:20: But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 15:26: The final enemy to be brought down is death 15:31: Every day I die, as surely as you are my boast 15:36: You should know that the seed that you sow will not come to life unless it dies 15:52-3: For the trumpet will blast and the dead will be raised imperishably, and we will be changed. For it is necessary for this mortality to be clothed with immortality. 20 15:54-5: Death [will be] consumed by victory. Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?

Paul is constantly emphasising that resurrected glory and immortality and spirituality is only promised to the dead. Perhaps Paul is using the problem of denial of resurrection of the dead as the ultimate paradigm of the puffed up, status-obsessed Corinthian refusal to adopt the position of the crucified the very problem that underlies the rest of the letter.

3. The Framin g of the Chapter

The third element to notice is that the chapter is framed by the bookends of labour, vanity, and grace. At the beginning of the chapter, Paul tells the Corinthians that as an authorised witness to the gospel, he committed himself to deathly apostolic labour,21 and found that because of the grace of God (the God who raises the dead), this missionary labour was not in vain. At the end of the chapter, Paul tells the Corinthians that future resurrected victory is assured by the God of Jesus Christ. And this liberates present labour from the curse of vanity: So, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, abounding always in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labour is not in vain. So the whole chapter is framed as a challenge for those who suspect that present deathly labour is vain, to rather perceive that those who share Christ s death in present labour look forward to sharing Christ s resurrection when he appears, by the grace of God.

Ascertaining the Relevance of Backgrounds to the Resurrection Chapter

These three elements the position of the chapter at the end of a letter devoted to the cross; the chapter s obsession with the inescapability of death; and the framing of the chapter as a challenge to be steadfastly devoted to cruciform labour give us some insight into what Paul is doing in this chapter. Paul is presenting a challenge to those who deny the resurrection of the dead, which is in fact a heightening of the same challenge that he has been presenting throughout the letter: join the ranks of the dead, and so look forward to divinely granted resurrection. Regardless of what they meant by the slogan, Paul has creatively used the catchphrase there is no resurrection of the dead to
Indeed, as Chrysostom perceptively notes, Paul is continually adding from the dead even though this addition is semantically redundant (Homily 39; PG 61.332). 20 Chrysostom draws attention to the fact that even those who are alive are thus labelled with death: What he means is this: We will not all die, but we will all be changed, even those who do not die for they are also mortal . Homily 42; PG 61.364. 21 One might say ektromatic labour.
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represent the pinnacle of the Corinthians proud disdain for crucified Messiahs and appointed-to-die apostles. They say there is no resurrection of the dead. Paul counters that it is only the dead in Christ who will be raised to share in his immortal glory. We are finally ready, then, to consider which of the potential backgrounds might be genuinely illuminative of the issues in the resurrection chapter. Platonist? Epicurean? Other? The first thing to notice is that neither the Platonist nor the Epicurean suggestions have turned out to be decisive for getting to the bottom of the chapter; in fact, a commitment to either reconstruction of the problem might have obscured the text, by focusing our attention on the details underlying the slogan, whereas Paul is more interested in what the slogan unwittingly represents. The second thing to notice is that neither the Platonist nor the Epicurean suggestions entirely fit. In favour of the Platonist background, it seems reasonable that the Corinthians thought they were innocently denying the bodiliness of the afterlife. But de Boer seems very much off the mark when he claims that the resurrection-deniers looked forward to death as the moment of the liberation of a primal, immortal spirit. 22 On the contrary, it seems that Paul is obsessed with the need to convince them of the inescapability of death. In favour of the Epicurean background, then, it does seem likely that the Corinthians were proudly assuming that they had already entered into fullness of life in some sense. They seem to assume that they have no need to wait to become immortal, imperishable, or spiritual. They seem to assume that theirs should be a life of fulfilment, rather than a life of labour. And Paul is at pains to relieve them of these illusions. But against the idea of a comprehensively explanatory Epicurean background, it should be remembered that Paul begins on common ground with the Corinthians, with the testimony of death-stained witnesses that Jesus himself had risen from the dead a claim that would not be at all acceptable to those of an Epicurean stance. After all, the Corinthian recipients were Christians, not philosophers as much as they were influenced by the desire to appear culturally sophisticated. So these backgrounds need to be put into perspective. In this instance, there are a number of different elements in the chapter that may be usefully supplied with cultural colour by an examination of particular first century beliefs and practices including the influences of Platonism and Epicureanism. But we have only been able to make some intelligent progress in discerning the likely relevance of such backgrounds by attempting to be attentive to the cunning pastoral rhetoric of the apostle of Jesus Christ. If our attention to Paul s backgrounds is guided and tempered by our attention to Paul s pastoral rhetoric, we ll be in a position to see the text illuminated rather than obscured.

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Cited above.