"When You Were Gentiles": Specters of Ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul's Corinthian Correspondence 9780300209594

Citation preview

“When You Were Gentiles”

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Synkrisis: Comparative Approaches to Early Christianity in Greco-Roman Culture Series Editors Dale B. Martin (Yale University) and L. L. Welborn (Fordham University) Synkrisis is a project that invites scholars of early Christianity and the GrecoRoman world to collaborate toward the goal of rigorous comparison. Each volume in the series provides immersion in an aspect of Greco-Roman culture, so as to make possible a comparison of the controlling logics that emerge from the discourses of Greco-Roman and early Christian writers. In contrast to older “history of religions” approaches, which looked for similarities between religions in order to posit relations of influence and dependency, Synkrisis embraces a fuller conception of the complexities of culture, viewing Greco-Roman religions and early Christianity as members of a comparative class. The differential comparisons promoted by Synkrisis may serve to refine and correct the theoretical and historical models employed by scholars who seek to understand and interpret the Greco-Roman world. With its allusion to the rhetorical exercises of the Greco-Roman world, the series title recognizes that the comparative enterprise is a construction of the scholar’s mind and serves the scholar’s theoretical interests. Editorial Board Loveday Alexander (Sheffield University) John Bodell (Brown University) Kimberly Bowes (University of Pennsylvania) Daniel Boyarin (University of California, Berkeley) Fritz Graf (Ohio State University) Ronald F. Hock (University of Southern California) Hans-Josef Klauck (University of Chicago) Stanley K. Stowers (Brown University) Angela Standhartinger (Marburg University)

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“WHEN YOU WERE GENTILES” Specters of Ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence

Cavan W. Concannon

New Haven & London

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Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2014 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Postscript Electra type by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Concannon, Cavan W., 1979– When you were gentiles : specters of ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul’s Corinthian correspondence / Cavan W. Concannon. pages cm — (Synkrisis: comparative approaches to early Christianity in GrecoRoman culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-300-19793-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Bible. Corinthians—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Ethnicity in the Bible. 3. Gentiles in the Bible. I. Title. bs2675.6.e815c66 2014 227'.206—dc23 2013042867 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To the memory of Garry Francis Concannon with all of my hope and love, and with eternal gratitude to S. Scott Bartchy

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations, ix Preface, xi List of Abbreviations, xvii

Introduction: Of Ghosts and Specters: The Reception of Paul’s Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Corinth

Part 1 1

Corinth and Corinthians between Greece and Rome, 23

Becoming All Things: Paul and the Rhetoric of Ethnic Malleability

27

2 Marketplaces, Merchant Ships, and Festivals: Negotiating Identities in Corinth

47

3 Speech, Flattery, and the Negotiation of Identity for “Some” Corinthians

75

Part 2

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1

Corinth and Corinthians between Past and Present, 91

4 Walking in the Wilderness: Israelite Ancestors in the Corinthian Correspondence

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5 “In the City of Peirene”: Claiming, Erasing, and Challenging the Past in Corinth

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Contents 6 Usable Pasts in the Corinthian Wilderness: Spirits, Specters, and Negotiations of Identity at the Crossroads Conclusion: Haunted Futures

142 171

Notes, 177 Bibliography, 275 Index, 297

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ILLUSTRATIONS

(All photos taken by the author.) Figure 1.

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Southeast Building (possibly the Library) from the east

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Figure 2. View of the Isthmus from Acrocorinth

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Figure 3. North Market, from the north

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Figure 4. Babbius monument, Corinthian Forum

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Figure 5. Corinthian Forum, from the east

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Figure 6. Augustales monument, from the west

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Figure 7a. Facade of the Peirene Fountain, from the north

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Figure 7b. View of the Peirene Fountain from the Lechaion Road

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Figure 8. Glauke Fountain, from the north

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Figure 9a. Apollo Temple, from the southwest

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Figure 9b. Apollo Temple and Glauke Fountain, from the west

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Figure 10. Synagogue inscription, Corinth Museum

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PREFACE

You know that, when you were Gentiles, you were led astray before voiceless idols. —1 Corinthians 12:2

Writing to a community of Greek-speaking Gentiles in the city of Corinth in the early 50s CE, Paul offhandedly refers to his audience as people who used to be ἔθνη, those “of the nations.” The strangeness of this phrase may not be readily apparent, so accustomed are we to reading Gentiles as Christians, making a quick category switch in our heads. It is easy to think of Paul’s audience as Christians who used to be Gentiles, that is, nonbelievers. The development of the category Christian as an identity rooted in one’s beliefs, a particularly modern, Protestant construct, empties this verse of its strangeness by turning an ethnic designation into one of belief. But neither Paul nor his audience in Corinth knew of the term Christian (Χριστιανός), nor is it ever employed before Acts 11:26 and 26:28 and 1 Peter 4:16. To keep to a literal rendering of the text, the ἔθνη, constructed in Paul’s rhetoric as people characterized by idolatry, have become not-ἔθνη by changing their cultic practice. Paul’s reasoning assumes a connection between cultic practice and ethnic identity: to change one’s cultic practices and allegiances is also a means of changing one’s ethnicity, becoming no longer ἔθνη but now something else. Such a position is strange to modern, Western, Protestant ears, because it suggests that changing one’s religious practice might transform one’s ethnicity, a concept that we tend to associate more with biology, blood, and descent. But if such a connection might sound strange to our ears, what might we imagine Paul’s first audience heard in this ambiguous phrase?

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We might ask similar questions of passages throughout 1 and 2 Corinthians. Paul speaks of himself as one who can change his identity to become “all things to all people” (1 Cor 9:22) and claims that his Corinthian audience should think of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness as their “fathers” (1 Cor 10:1). How would such claims, and the arguments in which they are presented, be heard and interpreted at the busy crossroads of Corinth? In this book I show how Paul’s Corinthian audience, embedded in the first-century city of Corinth, participated in extant discourses of ethnicity that shaped their interpretation of Paul’s rhetoric. I focus on issues of ethnicity, civic identity, and empire in Corinth and in the Corinthian correspondence to understand how and in what context Paul’s first audience might have heard and responded to his rhetoric of ethnicity. This book makes three important contributions to the study of Paul, the Corinthian correspondence, and the city of Corinth. First, I show that ethnicity is an important part of the Corinthian correspondence, deserving of the kind of scholarly attention that has been paid to Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans. Studies of Paul and ethnicity have generally focused on these letters, except when discussing specific confrontations that Paul may have had with Jewish missionaries (for example, the “super-apostles” of 1 Cor 10–13). Thus, in Pauline studies, scholars have generally tackled the topic of ethnicity only when they have seen Judaism and Jewish voices opposing Paul’s. Ethnicity, however, was relevant as well to the Gentiles who heard and responded to Paul’s preaching in Corinth, though it was inflected differently. In what follows, I show the value of attending to the rhetoric of ethnicity with which Paul presented himself to his Corinthian audience and through which he argued over community boundaries and practices. Rather than using ethnicity as a way of talking about soteriology or justification by faith or the relations between Judaism and Christianity, I show that paying attention to the rhetoric of ethnicity in Corinth and Paul’s Corinthian correspondence opens up new ways of exploring the complex debates, politics, and practices among and between the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. Second, along with feminist, postcolonial, and other biblical scholars, I seek to shift the focus of analysis onto the audience that heard and interpreted Paul’s rhetoric in first-century Corinth, to recover the spectral voices of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. Rather than making Paul the “hero” of the story, I seek to present Paul as “one among many” who used ethnic rhetoric in Corinth and to imagine ways in which we might hear the spectral presences of the Corinthians to whom he wrote. Third, as a way of shifting the focus from Paul to those who heard and interpreted his letters, I look to the local context of Corinth that

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offered Paul’s audience myths, stories, practices, and experiences with which to think when interpreting Paul’s letters. By pairing literary and archaeological materials I show the ways in which the rhetoric of ethnicity was deployed in Corinth, both by Paul and by many others. Attention to ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul’s Corinthian correspondence allows us to see Paul and the Corinthians to whom he wrote alongside those who navigated the civic, discursive, and lived landscapes of Roman Corinth. Bruno Latour has argued that actors are, in some ways, the most free when they are most connected, most tied to other actors in a complex net-work/worknet. This has been my experience over the years, and this is what it has taken for this project to go from idea to dissertation to the book that you have before you. I have found myself freer to think about what I am doing as a historian and writer the more networked I have become to genial and encouraging colleagues, generous institutions, and supportive and loving family and friends. The attentive reader can perhaps hear, see, or feel the spectral presence, the effervescent traces, of these connections in what follows, but I’d like to conjure a few of them as a way of saying thank you to those who helped make this possible. This book began as a dissertation at Harvard University under the supervision of Laura Nasrallah. Laura was not just an amazing advisor, but a role model for what a scholar and educator could be. Karen King and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza graciously agreed to serve on my dissertation committee and were enormously helpful. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to Helmut Koester, who fundamentally reshaped my vision of early Christianity, and François Bovon, whose depth of scholarship and heart is still teaching me lessons. Many thanks also go to others who helped me throughout my doctoral studies at Harvard, including Kevin Madigan, Shaye Cohen, and Robert Orsi. Along the way, many wonderful colleagues have graciously read and commented on my work, including Denise Kimber Buell, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Larry Welborn, Brent Nongbri, David Pettegrew, Taylor Petrey, and Melanie JohnsonDeBaufre. While at Harvard University I benefited from the best of colleagues: Taylor Petrey, Ben Dunning, Kat Shaner, Robyn Walsh, Betsey Robinson, Emily Schmidt, Geoff Smith, Chris Hoklotubbe, Mikael Haxby, Ken Fisher, Carly Daniel-Hughes, Glenn Snyder, Brent Landau, Michal Beth Dinkler, and Courtney Wilson VanVeller. Much of the research for this project was done while holding the Jacob Hirsch Fellowship from the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA) during the 2008–9 academic year. I am grateful to the ASCSA for its financial

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and intellectual support. In particular I want to thank the staff of the school for their help and guidance, including Guy Sanders, Ben Millis, Bob Bridges, James Herbst, Ioulia Tzonou-Herbst, Nancy Bookidis, and Charles Williams. My work at the ASCSA was also made possible by a Charles Eliot Norton Fellowship in Greek from the Harvard University Classics Department. The revisions that took this project from a dissertation to a book were made possible by a postdoctoral fellowship in early Christianity from the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University. My colleagues at Macquarie were immensely supportive and gracious. The department itself, which brings together scholars from so many different fields of ancient history, is truly special. I want to thank especially Alanna Nobbs, Brent Nongbri, Mary Jane Cuyler, Malcolm Choat, Rachel Yuen-Collingridge, Edwin Judge, Tom Hillard, Lea Beness, Chris Forbes, and Jenny Cromwell. Further revisions were done while holding a New Faculty Fellowship at Duke University, made possible by the American Council of Learned Societies. My colleagues at Duke have been tremendously supportive, among them Liz Clark, Luk van Rompay, Mark Goodacre, Carol and Eric Meyers, Hwansoo Kim, Laura Lieber, Tolly Boatwright, Carla Antonaccio, Jed Atkins, Lindsey Mazurek, Jacques Bromberg, Hans Arneson, Maria Doerfler, Joel Marcus, William Johnson, Brittany Wilson, and Clare Woods. Special mention needs to be made of Larry Welborn, who both helped bring me to Macquarie and saw potential in this project, along with Dale Martin, the coeditor of Synkrisis. Larry’s depth of scholarship, sharp mind, and generous spirit have enlivened so many of our conversations and dramatically influenced my own thinking and research. I’d also like to thank Jennifer Banks, the staff of Yale University Press, and the anonymous external reviewers for their help. My brother, Traighe, and my mother, Patt, are the best family that I could ask for. My loving wife, Rae, has seen me through the ups and downs. She has always been there to hold my hand, to laugh and cry with me, and to care for me when I most needed it. She has followed me on many strange adventures, and I am eternally grateful to her. My daughter, Éowyn, will be one year old when this book is published. I hope that it does not bore her to tears when she reads it (I hope!) one day. Finally, I dedicate this book to S. Scott Bartchy and Garry Francis Concannon. It was Scott who first introduced me to the world of early Christianity and to the wild world that is Pauline studies. Were it not for Scott’s guidance and support, I would not be where I am now. He and his wife, Nancy Breuer, have become family to me, and I always look forward to meals and conversation in their lovely home.

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My father, Garry Concannon, did not live to see this book completed. Even though he never understood why I chose to squander my life and energy on the arcane minutiae of the ancient world, he always stood by me and supported me in whatever way he could. I miss him every day and hope that wherever he is he knows that I love him.

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ABBREVIATIONS

In the text and notes I make use of the abbreviations for journal titles and primary sources found in The SBL Handbook of Style (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999). All other journal titles are given in full. Several abbreviations have been used in the text as shorthand for primary sources. These are as follows: Edwards

Katharine May Edwards, Coins, 1896–1929, Corinth, vol. 6 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933).

Kent

John H. Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, Corinth, vol. 8.3 (Princeton, N.J.: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1966).

LXX

Septuaginta, ed. Alfred Rahlfs (Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt/Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1979).

Meritt

Benjamin Dean Meritt, Greek Inscriptions, 1896–1927, Corinth, vol. 8.1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931).

RPC

Andrew Burnett, Michel Amandry, and Pere Pau Ripollès Roman Provincial Coinage, vol. 1 (London and Paris: British Museum Press and Bibliothèque Nationale, 1992).

West

Allen Brown West, Latin Inscriptions, 1896–1926, Corinth, vol. 8.2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931).

References to the Greek text of the New Testament follow Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland, 27th ed.

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Introduction Of Ghosts and Specters: The Reception of Paul’s Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Corinth

[In Christianity] the barriers of sex, age, position, and nationality vanish entirely for Christians, as Christians. . . . Since Christianity is the only true religion and is not a national religion, but belongs to all mankind and pertains to our inmost life, it follows that it can have no special alliance with the Jewish people, or with their peculiar cult. The Jewish people of today, at least, stand in no favored relationship with the God whom Jesus revealed . . . [and the revelation prior to Christ to Israel] had as its end the calling of a “new nation” and the spreading of the revelation of God through his Son. —Adolf von Harnack, Outlines of the History of Dogma

Such is Adolf von Harnack’s summary of early Christian attitudes toward Judaism, in which a Christianity that wipes away sex, age, social position, and nationality is contrasted with the peculiar, national religion of Judaism. Coming from a leading German theologian of the generation before the rise of the Nazis, this statement is both chilling and familiar. The stereotyping of Judaism as a particular and strange ethnic religion is frightening in how it foreshadows Nazi propaganda, but the praise of a Christianity that saw the eradication of social, gendered, or ethnic barriers is itself a familiar part of contemporary Christian self-description. Placed alongside each other (as they are in Harnack), the two sentiments show how the rhetoric of a universal, nonethnic Christianity is created by labeling Israel and the Jews particular, ethnic, and peculiar. For

1

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Christianity to present itself as the universal religion of humankind, Judaism must be constructed as its particular Other. In addition to the interconnection between particularity and universalism, we can also see how, even for Harnack, early Christian rhetoric cannot escape the language of ethnicity, nationality, and peoplehood. In contrast with, but similar to, the “peculiar,” “national” religion of Judaism, Christianity is itself a “new nation.” Harnack’s use of the phrase reflects the ubiquity of the language of ethnicity and peoplehood in early Christian rhetoric, as in Paul’s famous use of Hosea in Rom 9:25: “I [the God of Israel] will call those who are not my people, my people and she who was not beloved, beloved (ὡς καὶ ἐν τῷ Ὡσηὲ λέγει· καλέσω τὸν οὐ λαόν μου λαόν μου καὶ τὴν οὐκ ἠγαπημένην ἠγαπημένην).1 But the scare quotes around “new nation” also signal how such language remains problematic for those who reconstruct an early Christianity that is universal and nonethnic. They show how the language of peoplehood and ethnicity must be taken as mere metaphor or a linguistic holdover from Jewish scripture for Christianity to remain a universal. Harnack’s summary of the “new nation” marks early Christian ethnic rhetoric as a problem to be noted and deferred. Throughout this book I highlight the ways in which Paul’s letters to the Corinthians deploy various rhetorics of ethnicity to persuade, cajole, or challenge audiences in Corinth. In so doing, I place my own work among that of a group of scholars of early Christianity who have emphasized how early Christians made use of the rhetoric of ethnicity in the production of early Christian identity and in disputes and contestations over community boundaries and praxis.2 Such work eschews the assumptions of scholars like Harnack who assume that Christianity is, at its essential core, a universal religion, unconstrained by the particularities associated with the categories of race, ethnicity, and nation. As I show in the chapters that follow, questions of peoplehood, ethnicity, identity, cultic practice, leadership, and diet are intertwined in Paul’s rhetoric, a far cry from the abstract, nonethnic universality espoused by Harnack. Along with showing the ways in which Paul makes use of rhetorics of ethnicity in the Corinthian correspondence, I suggest that paying attention to the broader context of ethnicity in Corinth by engaging with both archaeological and literary “texts” can offer us resources for reimagining how audiences in Corinth may have heard, interpreted, and responded to Paul’s rhetoric of ethnicity. I proceed along this admittedly speculative task by drawing on the spectral figure of the ghost to interrogate the haunted spaces at the intersection of ethnicity and historical reconstruction.3 Pauline scholarship remains haunted by race and ethnicity, a legacy of the kinds of racial categories and rhetoric used by Harnack and others. Similarly, the interpretation of Paul’s letters is

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also haunted by the exigent (non)presence of the half-forgotten Corinthians. Stereotyped in Paul’s rhetoric and in the reconstructions of Pauline scholars, the Corinthians with whom Paul worshipped, argued, spoke, and wrote have been simultaneously forgotten and remembered. Forgotten have been the ways in which the Corinthians themselves helped shape the content and context of Paul’s letters; but as they are remembered, the Corinthians have come to stand in for orthodox boogiemen: proto-Gnostics, charismatics, individualists, ascetics, or Roman collaborators. By interrogating archaeological and literary evidence from Corinth and looking differently at the Corinthian correspondence alongside feminist and postcolonial biblical scholars, I conjure a different picture of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. To think of the dual hauntings of race and the forgotten Corinthians is both to attend to how the past exerts its own force on the present and to remain open to how things can be thought otherwise in the future. As Denise Buell, in her own writings on race and haunting, notes, “Haunting is not simply the force exerted by the past on the present, the dead on the living; the specter is untimely, bringing future possibilities both dreaded and utopian.”4

Of Race, Ghosts, and Early Christians The discipline of early Christian studies has been “haunted” by the Western, colonial, academic discourse of race.5 Following Derrida’s Specters of Marx, haunting allows us to speak of the ways in which the past exerts itself on the present and “about how our visions for the future are unpredictably yet ethically bound up with our relationship to what has come before us.”6 Though we will speak of the future and its potential in the conclusion, I want to dwell on the haunted inheritance of race in early Christian studies, on the spectral presences like the scare quotes around Harnack’s “new nation.” Though most scholars and laypersons still speak of Christianity as a nonethnic, universal religion, this way of classifying Christianity has its own history. To focus on the ways in which Christian universalism relies on underlying assumptions about race and religion is to show how the specter of race continues to exert its influence on the field and opens us up to the possibility of thinking the future otherwise.7 To hear the ways in which ethnicity was constructed in Roman Corinth, by Paul and others, we must first conjure the ghosts of universalism in the history of Pauline scholarship. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the study of religion in western Europe, which had started to take institutional shape as a discipline within European universities, began to employ the categories of “national” and

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“universal” religions (Landesreligionen and Weltreligionen). This taxonomy saw the religions of particular nations (“national religions”) as inferior to those religions that had crossed national and ethnic boundaries (“world religions”). Disputes arose, not regarding the validity of the taxonomy, but regarding which religions did and did not fall under the category of world religions.8 In his National Religions and Universal Religions, Abraham Kuenen argued that “the universal religions are, with fair unanimity, placed in one group, and opposed to the national religions. Nothing is more natural. The difference on which this division rests is sufficiently striking, and seems, moreover, to have its roots in the nature of the religions themselves.” What emerges as the self-evident, “natural” criterion on which Kuenen bases this taxonomy is the question of whether a given religion has, by virtue of an inherent tendency toward universalism, risen above the nation in which it emerged. The early history of religious studies thus had a taxonomic problem with regard to classifying religions along national and universal lines. Implicit in the system was an unacknowledged bias toward Christian superiority and universality. Christianity remained the yardstick by which all other religions were classified and ranked.9 The discourse of Christianity as a universal religion is intertwined with a broader attempt to construct Christianity, particularly early Christianity, as nonethnic.10 Within the taxonomies of the early theorists of the study of religion, the nonethnic character of early Christianity was contrasted with the particularity and ethnicity of Judaism. Harnack’s characterization of a nonethnic (or even nongendered or class-free) Christianity in contradistinction to the ethnic particularism of Judaism is an example of this trend. Invoking the rhetoric of “world religions,” Harnack argues that Christianity “became a world-religion in that, having a message for all mankind, it preached it to Greek and barbarian, and accordingly attached itself to the spiritual and political life of the worldwide Roman empire.”11 After World War II and the atrocity of the Holocaust, scholars and theologians have continued to emphasize Christianity’s inclusiveness and universality, while also repudiating the anti-Semitic rhetoric that had been common in both the Nazi regime and Western Christianity more generally. But this has not changed the framework within which Christianity remains normative and universal over and against forms of religious practice that are marked as “ethnic.”12 Paul has often been cast as the pivot around which Christianity emerged as the universal out of Judaism’s particularity. One of the earliest and clearest examples of this trend is the work of F. C. Baur (1792–1860), a seminal figure in Pauline studies. Baur became an early devotee of Hegel, and his historiography was rooted in a Hegelian understanding of the dialectic of Spirit with itself in

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history, which he applied to the study of Christian dogma as part of the movement of Spirit in time. For Baur Christian dogma progresses through history from one form of Spirit to another, but in doing so it must transcend what came before, so that that which is transcended “is perceived in its untruth.”13 Baur’s Hegelian historiography frames his views on Paul’s role in bringing Christianity out from the particularity of Judaism. On Baur’s reading of Paul, Judaism is the opposite of Christianity, its necessary precursor, and the particular to Christianity’s universal. Working with Pauline categories of grace, law, and justification, Baur argues that Judaism “as law, is opposed to the grace of Christianity,” but also that it is “the subjective mediation of this opposition; for the knowledge of sin is only possible through the law.” At the same time that Judaism is oppositional and mediating, it is also transcended by Christianity through Paul’s notion of justification: “justification by faith simply realizes that which the law contains already as its universal, as the conception breaking through the particular form.”14 Baur views Paul as inhabiting the crux of Christian history as it moves from Spirit to Spirit. For this to occur, Paul must take the necessary step of transcending Judaism as Christianity’s particular, to “break through” from the particular to the universal. Though Pauline scholars since World War II have largely eschewed Baur’s racializing narrative and the anti-Semitism in which it is rooted, even those associated with the so-called New Perspective on Paul, which emphasizes Paul’s Jewish identity and rejects the notion that Judaism was “superseded” by Paul, still see in Paul a modern multicultural hero, who relativized ethnic identity in favor of an identity that transcends ethnic particularity. This tendency is also on full display among the Continental Marxist and Lacanian philosophers who have recently come to see in Paul the potential for a new way of constructing universalism and messianic time with revolutionary political potential.15 Though moderns in and outside the academy have become accustomed to speaking of Christianity as a nonethnic, universal “world religion,” the unspoken racial history remains a “not-there” (to use Toni Morrison’s phrase) of Christianity’s universalism: “We can agree, I think, that invisible things are not necessarily ‘not-there’; that a void may be empty but not be a vacuum. In addition, certain absences are so stressed, so ornate, so planned, they call attention to themselves; arrest us with intentionality and purpose, like neighborhoods that are defined by the population held away from them.”16 To forge a nonethnic Christianity, modern scholarship has had to posit an ethnic and particular Judaism out of which Christianity can emerge. Because of this, studies that draw attention to Christianity’s unspoken racial history have become important means by which this “not-there” of early Christianity can speak. The

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characterization of early Christianity as nonethnic obscures Christianity’s history with regard to race and also the ways in which early Christians drew on the rhetoric of ethnicity as a means of self-definition. As a form of rhetoric, ethnicity was used by early Christians to differentiate themselves from other peoples and among themselves.17 In the chapters that follow I show how Paul himself is one among many in Corinth who relies on a rhetoric of ethnicity in debates about issues traditionally assumed to be about theology or religion: idolatry, the Spirit, baptism, missionary strategy, and apostolic authority.18 By laying out the ways in which the rhetoric of ethnicity was deployed throughout Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, I challenge the assumption that early Christianity represented a universal, nonethnic form of religion; rather, like many other groups in the Roman Empire, Paul and other early Christian authors defined themselves and their communities using ethnic rhetoric. In showing how early Christians relied on the rhetoric of ethnicity in their own acts of self-definition, we can make visible the racializing, “not-there” history of early Christian studies and challenge that history at the same time. But we cannot stop with merely showing how early Christians used ethnic rhetoric and how modern Western scholars have created a nonethnic Christianity. As I noted above, our visions of the future are bound up with our relationships with the past. To deal with the haunting of race in early Christian studies, we cannot just upend its history but must work toward envisioning how that history might be thought otherwise. Such a thinking otherwise could take a number of forms, though I will suggest two here. First, we must go beyond merely asserting Paul’s use of ethnic rhetoric as a means of problematizing modern categories; rather, we must also interrogate how Paul’s rhetoric might be thought differently from how it has been in the history of interpretation. For example, in chapter 4 we will look at Paul’s use of the veil of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7–18 for his own political benefit and as a means of connecting his audience to the history of Israel through the person of Moses; however, this has not been how this text has been read by others. Paul’s discussion of a new covenant and a veil on the hearts of Israel has authorized Christian readers to assert that Christianity has superseded Judaism and become a “new” Israel.19 By reading Paul differently, I seek to make space for how we might read Paul not as the representative of a normative and imperial Christianity, but as one among many in Corinth seeking to make sense of life “in Christ.” As Denise Buell notes, “In the mid-late first century C.E., ‘Christianity’ is only a spectral possibility that subsequent generations of readers either materialize in competing ways or refuse to materialize.”20 To read Paul otherwise is to find new readings that make possible Christianities

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that have been heretofore unthinkable, that look anew at how our visions of the future can be changed by our relationship with the past. A second way in which we might speak otherwise of the haunting of race in Pauline studies is to open ourselves to the other voices “heard in the straining tensions of Paul’s own discourse. . . . They are voices suggesting that, once one is willing to render Paul’s rhetoric even momentarily contingent, other interpretations of power might reverberate and, for a moment, be rendered possible.”21 In the next section I explore how we might reconstruct those voices and hear them as spectral presences that haunt our readings of Paul’s letters to Corinth.

Haunted Corinth, Corinthian Ghosts As we saw above, Christianity as a nonethnic, universal religion has a forgotten, racializing past that remains “neither inert nor ineffective,” in Giorgio Agamben’s phrase: “But the shapeless chaos of the forgotten is neither inert nor ineffective. To the contrary, it is at work within us with a force equal to that of the mass of conscious memories, but in a different way. Forgetting has a force and a way of operating that cannot be measured in the same terms as those of conscious memory.”22 In this section I look at another of the forgotten spaces in early Christian studies: the Corinthian recipients of Paul’s letters. I have set these two “not-theres” next to each other because they both represent things forgotten or only half-remembered in early Christian studies that yet continue to exert their own force on the way that the field operates. Though race, particularly in relation to the construction of Judaism as Christianity’s particular Other, continues to shape the discourse of Christianity as a nonethnic religion, the Corinthians remain both forgotten and half-remembered. Scholars of the Corinthian correspondence have “forgotten” the ways in which Paul’s writings were produced “in community”; however, they have also filled the empty space left by this forgetting with half-remembered images of Corinthians as stand-ins for various Others: Gnostics, charismatics, libertines, and Roman collaborators, to name a few. In what follows, I want to interrogate how we might “remember” the Corinthians differently. Throughout this book I will suggest that by showing how Paul’s rhetoric of ethnicity is one among many in Corinth, we might open up space to reimagine the Corinthian audiences that heard and interpreted Paul’s writings. In what follows I reflect both on the goals and possibilities of such a reconstruction, relying on the work of feminist and postcolonial biblical scholars who have opened up similar spaces in Pauline studies, and on how we might begin to speak with the proper exigency about the forgotten Corinthians. Because the Corinthians

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will always be with us as “forgotten,” we cannot write a history of them with the same tools or linear narratives of historical scholarship. Rather, following Agamben, “one should remember that the tradition of the unforgettable is not exactly a tradition. . . . The alternatives at this juncture are therefore not to forget or remember, to be unaware or become conscious, but rather, the determining factor is the capacity to remain faithful to that which having perpetually been forgotten, must remain unforgettable. It demands [esige] to remain with us and be possible for us in some manner.”23 The Politics of Conjuring Ghosts Feminist biblical scholars have long pressed for ways of reading Paul’s letters that displace Paul from the center of analysis.24 By placing Paul back in the conversations, disputes, and debates to which his letters were directed, feminist scholars open up space for hearing other voices at work in the politics of early Christian communities. Here I explore three discursive sites around which feminist scholars have criticized “malestream” Pauline scholarship and the ways in which these criticisms might provide resources for reimagining the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. I begin by looking at Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s criticism of the “hegemonic politics of meaning” in Pauline studies, focusing on her isolation of the “politics of Othering” and the “politics of identification.” Then I look to Cynthia Briggs Kittredge’s criticisms of Pauline “authorship” and draw out the implications of her reconstruction of authorship “in community.”25 Schüssler Fiorenza describes the “politics of Othering” as a hegemonic Western discourse that vilifies and naturalizes difference. Stemming from androcentric Greek debates about who is qualified to participate in the polis, this discursive strategy stereotypes differences that are then “established as ‘relationships of ruling,’ in which structures of domination and subordination are mystified as ‘naturalized’ differences.” The politics of Othering can be seen in Paul’s repeated binary constructions (male-female, saved-perishing, wise-foolish) and in the binaries that scholars use to interpret Paul. In the latter case, the politics of Othering encourages biblical scholars to “understand canonical voices as right and true but vilify the submerged alternative arguments as false and heretical.”26 It is for this reason that the Corinthians to whom Paul writes are often stereotyped with negative attributes, such as being labeled sexual libertines, ascetics, or factions, or associated with other Others, such as Gnostics or charismatics. One can take as an example the important study by Walter Schmithals, who argued that the Corinthians were best described as “gnostics,” part of the great heresiological stream that so exercised early Christian condemnation. Having been “remembered” as the heretical Other, the Corinthians are marginalized

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from the theological conversation, able to offer no agency or theological insight that is not already deemed negative or problematic.27 In the chapters that follow I endeavor to speak of Paul and the Corinthians in ways that resist the politics of Othering as described by Schüssler Fiorenza. I analyze Paul’s characterizations of the Corinthians and others as rhetorical constructs that do particular kinds of political work.28 By treating Paul’s arguments as rhetoric, I do not accept Paul’s characterizations as natural or objective descriptions. I resist characterizing or stereotyping the Corinthians following Paul’s rhetoric. Part of working out such a stance involves avoiding the kind of binary logic that is involved in looking for Paul’s “opponents” in Corinth, a project that tends to assume both that Paul gives us an accurate picture of the debate in Corinth and that the debates in Corinth can be easily represented in a binary structure, which effectively becomes “us versus them” as scholars implicitly side with Paul. Rather, I highlight their agency as a discerning audience in Corinth.29 Throughout I avoid making facile connections between the Corinthians and Paul’s rhetoric, showing instead how Paul’s characterizations of the Corinthians serve his own interests. A further criticism that Schüssler Fiorenza levels against Pauline scholarship is what she calls the “politics of identification,” whereby scholars identify their own interests and concerns with those of Paul. This identification, which allows interpreters “to claim Paul’s authority for themselves,” also constructs a sameness between Paul and his audience “by identifying Paul’s discourses with those of the communities to whom he writes, thereby suppressing and eradicating the historical voices and multiplex visions that differ from Paul’s. Or, historicalcritical studies view Pauline texts and their arguments—that is, the rhetorical situation construed by Paul—as identical with the actual historical-rhetorical situation.” Beyond the problem of identifying Paul’s rhetoric with the actual historical situation, here Schüssler Fiorenza urges scholars to resist eliding the Corinthians with Paul. By placing Paul’s rhetoric within broader discussions of ethnicity and identity in Corinth, I make Paul one of many in Corinth, including the diverse voices of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote, who made use of such rhetoric to persuade Corinthian audiences. This focus on the local context in its complexity seeks to open up the space for hearing the “historical voices and multiplex visions” of the Corinthians by offering a more robust picture of what Corinthian audiences may have had available to “think with” when hearing, interpreting, and responding to Paul.30 Schüssler Fiorenza’s challenge to the politics of identification is to push Pauline scholars to recover the voices and visions of those with whom Paul dialogued, debated, and argued. In his attempts to offer a feminist, postcolonial reconstruction of voices within the Philippian community, particularly the place

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of Euodia and Syntyche as leaders in the community (Phil 4:2–3), Joseph Marchal offers two cautionary observations that must guide such reconstructions of voices other than Paul’s. Though emphasizing the exigency of such reconstructions, Marchal cautions, citing Gyatri Spivak, that we must be careful not to be “the first-world intellectual masquerading as the absent nonrepresenter who lets the oppressed speak for themselves.”31 In other words, we must be careful about how we make the voices of the forgotten Corinthians speak. Marchal further cautions that we must also avoid reconstructions that valorize the voices of those other than Paul. Speaking of his own reconstructions of Euodia and Syntyche (Phil 4:2–3) within the Philippian community, Marchal notes, “Recognizing Euodia’s and Syntyche’s potential position(s) in the intersecting kyriarchal orders of first-century Philippi, though, should not simply lead to an unqualified valorization of them as decolonizing feminist subjects,” since women have themselves been a part of colonizing missions in modern empires.32 Because empires often involve the appropriation of the agency of their subjects in the construction of imperial power relations, one has to imagine those we reconstruct as “both resistant and complicit, both colonized and colonizing.”33 In this book I endeavor not to valorize the Corinthians whom I reconstruct, merely shifting the politics of identification from Paul to his audiences. The reader can determine for herself whether I have succeeded. A final concern that feminist biblical critics have leveled against scholarly reconstructions in Pauline studies that I find useful relates to the question of authorship, or, more specifically, to the ways in which scholars have downplayed or ignored the roles that Paul’s audiences played in the very construction of his rhetoric and theology. As part of her criticism of the politics of identification, Schüssler Fiorenza has noted how scholars have largely ignored the independent agency of the communities to whom Paul wrote: “Insofar as scholars tend to understand Paul as having the authority of the gospel to compel, control, and censure the persons or communities to whom he writes, they tend to read Paul’s letters as authoritative rather than as argumentative interventions in the theological discourses of his audience. They thereby fail to understand that ‘Pauline Christianity’ is a misnomer for the early Christian communities to whom Paul writes. These communities existed independently of Paul although we know about them only in and through the letters of Paul.”34 Taking Schüssler Fiorenza’s lead, Cynthia Briggs Kittredge has questioned Paul’s “authorship” of his letters in ways that help us think more expansively about the independence of the communities to which Paul wrote. Both Schüssler Fiorenza and Kittredge have attempted to isolate hymns or theological statements in Paul’s letters that were written by others and only quoted

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or modified by Paul, such as Gal 3:28 or Phil 2:6–11.35 By isolating these nonPauline writings, they seek to make them into resources for the reconstruction of voices in early Christianity other than Paul’s. In her reflections on the effects of such textual work, Kittredge argues that we must shift our way of describing the authorship of Paul’s letters: It is necessary to use a model for the study of ancient communities that acknowledges the role of the community in the production of creedal and doxological statements and that recognizes the ongoing role of the present community as interpreter of Scripture. . . . Paul is neither the single author nor the central authority in the early Christian movement. Rather, the community experience of the gospel, which for many Christians was unrelated to Paul, is an equally important source for Christian language as well as a resource for theological reflection. This approach recognizes the role of community in producing and employing religious language.

Beyond Paul’s own use of preexisting written and oral traditions, Kittredge challenges us to think more critically about the production of Paul’s letters “in community.” When we presume that the communities to which Paul wrote functioned independently from him and that the experience and development of each community was continually worked out on a local level, we can approach the reconstruction of these communities otherwise.36 Specters of Women Prophets In the following chapters I examine the production of Paul’s rhetoric by accounting for the ways in which it was produced “in community.” On the one hand, this involves thinking more concretely about the material conditions and lived environment of Corinth in which the community took shape and developed. On the other hand, I also pay attention to how Paul’s letters are shaped by his own interaction with the Corinthians. In this way I follow the pioneering work of Antoinette Clark Wire. In The Corinthian Women Prophets (1990), Wire offered a nuanced reading of the context that shaped the rhetoric of 1 Corinthians. Wire analyzes the rhetoric of 1 Corinthians, laying out the various rhetorical strategies used by Paul to construct the letter and persuade his audience. Wire uses Paul’s rhetoric to reconstruct the theology of those about and with whom Paul is in tense dialogue and debate: the women prophets mentioned in 1 Corinthians 11. Reading 1 Corinthians for clues about the theology of this group, Wire revives a sense of the dialogue and debate that must have characterized the context in which 1 Corinthians was written, as differing theologies, politics, and ethics faced off between the Corinthians and Paul. She

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then speculates on the effects Paul’s rhetoric would have had on these female prophets in Corinth. The Corinthians, or at least a particular group of women among them, are thus restored as theological thinkers in their own right, offering a vision of communal life that differs from Paul’s, even as they draw inspiration from tendencies and possibilities in his own thought. In many ways this book was inspired by Wire’s pioneering work. Like Wire’s, my reconstructions are aimed at highlighting the variety of potential readers and readings of the Corinthian correspondence. Where Wire focuses on reconstructing a plausible picture of the women prophets of 1 Corinthians 11, I invoke the spectral presence of “some” Corinthians in two attempts at reconstructing responses to Paul that emphasize constructions of ethnicity and not necessarily gender (chapters 3 and 6), though I think it would be interesting to find ways to bring the two together.37 What we both share is a commitment to reconstructing a context of plurality and diversity, in which various positions, practices, and identities were up for debate within the Corinthian community and its wider civic context. While my work here builds on that of Wire and others who focus on the rhetorical context of the Corinthian correspondence, I am particularly interested in reimagining the reception of these letters by the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. Wire’s reconstruction of the women prophets is based largely on a literary reading “against the grain” of Paul’s rhetoric and focuses on how the politics and theology of these women influenced the production of the arguments in 1 Corinthians. Wire’s reconstruction tends to aim at the women prophets as they were at the time of Paul’s writing. Her thoughts on their afterlife in Corinth speculate on how Paul’s rhetoric would have affected their place in the community were it to be adopted wholesale by the Corinthians. Though I follow Wire in examining the rhetorical context for the production of 1 and 2 Corinthians, I am also interested not just in the effects of Paul’s rhetoric but also in the ways in which we might imagine Corinthians pushing back against or building alternative systems out of Paul’s rhetoric, theology, and practice. Because of this interest in the complicated politics of reception and response, my work looks to how Paul’s Corinthian audience was influenced by and participated in larger discourses related to ethnicity and religious practice in Roman Corinth. My approach in this book thus builds on the strengths of Schüssler Fiorenza’s and Wire’s rhetorical turn by intertwining literary and archeological analysis as a means of recovering the context in which the Corinthian correspondence was heard and interpreted by an audience living in Corinth. If we pay attention to the complicated and shifting relationships between Paul and the Corinthians and delve deeply into the material and discursive remains from

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Corinth, we may be able to hear through Paul’s letters the spectral presences of the Corinthians who helped shape the conversations to which these letters were directed and the debates that they sparked.38 These reflections from feminist scholars on the problems and possibilities of reconstruction shape the arguments of this book. Feminist scholars have pushed Pauline studies to think more critically about the place of Paul in the analysis of “his” letters, from the ways in which Paul has been treated as an objective observer to the demonization of Paul’s opponents and audiences as foils for our own theological interests. In what follows I make my own contribution to the work of these feminist scholars, by showing how archaeological and literary texts can be used to place Paul’s rhetoric of ethnicity within larger conversations about identity and community in Corinth. In so doing, I have tried to make space for the spectral presences of the Corinthians who heard and interpreted Paul’s letters as a means of, in Agamben’s phrase, remaining “faithful to that which having perpetually been forgotten, must remain unforgettable.”39

Conjuring “Some” Corinthians In the preceding sections I have dwelt on the specters of race and the halfforgotten Corinthians. I have argued that there is an exigency to look otherwise at these apparitions in our disciplinary pasts. In this section I lay out how I have approached the study outlined in this book, focusing on two questions of method. First, I describe the way that I make use of ethnicity as an analytic category. I treat ethnicity as a kind of rhetoric that is deployed to draw boundaries between groups through a discourse of fixity and fluidity. Second, I discuss the problems and the prospects of intertwining the study of textual and archaeological materials. An interdisciplinary approach that takes both materials and their limitations seriously may allow us to hear the spectral voices of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. Reading Ethnicity in Antiquity Walker Connor, in discussing the categories of nation, state, nationalism, and ethnicity, complains that ethnicity is “definitionally chameleonic.”40 One might even call it a ghostly specter, difficult to pin down, real and ephemeral at the same time. Indeed, one is likely to find as many definitions of ethnicity as there are groups that claim an ethnic identity. Its ghostly quality requires that I be specific about how I define ethnicity for the purposes of this study. To keep the conversation close to the material discussed in this book, I will focus on some of the ways in which scholars in the various fields of Mediterranean

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antiquity have used modern theories of ethnicity. Alongside a number of classical and early Christian scholars, I treat ethnicity as a kind of rhetoric that draws boundaries between groups through a discourse of fixity and fluidity. Studies of ethnicity in the social sciences have settled on seeing ethnicity largely as “socially constructed and subjectively perceived,” rather than as an innate quality that coheres by virtue of genetics and birth.41 Such a perspective challenges modern Western assumptions about race and ethnicity, which tend to be grounded in a biological understanding of race as something that we inherit from our parents. The important early study by Fredrik Barth remains a major influence within discussions of ethnicity as a social construction and plays a key role in this book.42 Barth focused on the shifting sets of boundaries that were socially constructed by ethnic groups as a means of marking difference and structuring cultural interaction. Rather than trying to list the “cultural stuff” that defines an ethnic group in contrast to others, Barth focused on the fluid and shifting boundaries that are continually negotiated between ethnic groups in multiethnic societies.43 The boundaries that ethnic groups create are continually shifting over time and place to do particular kinds of work in new social and cultural contexts. Boundaries are useful in exploring ethnicity because of how they not only change over time but remain porous as well. As Barth noted, boundaries both channel and structure social interaction. Boundaries focus social interaction into certain spheres of contact and exchange and also structure the means by which social interaction occurs between groups.44 But we still might wonder what differentiates ethnic boundaries from other forms of boundary marking. Sociologists and anthropologists have sought, in various ways, to define the particular ways in which ethnicity constructs boundaries around groups. Of the plethora of definitions of ethnicity in modern anthropological literature, a popular framework developed by Anthony D. Smith focuses on six markers that ethnic groups exhibit to varying degrees: (1) a common name; (2) a common ancestry; (3) a shared history; (4) a common culture; (5) a link to a homeland; and (6) a sense of solidarity. Smith’s list is a useful starting point for thinking about markers of ethnic boundaries, but others might be added, such as language, religious or cultic practice, or physiognomy.45 Jonathan Hall, in his groundbreaking study of ancient Greek ethnicity, accepts Smith’s list of common markers of ethnic identity, but he also seeks to refine them by applying David Horowitz’s distinction between indicia and criteria of ethnicity.46 Criteria are those markers without which one would not have ethnic identity. They form the essential core of constructions of ethnicity and ethnic identity. Indicia are those markers that come to be associated with an ethnic identity once it has been created, but do not constitute an identity

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as such. Hall argues that the primary criterion of Greek identity before the Persian Wars was a claim to genealogy and descent, often worked out through shared myths, histories, and connections to gods, heroes, and prominent ancestors. These shared claims to descent functioned aggregatively, drawing together groups into a common ethnic identity that was based on similarities rather than differences.47 Hall’s argument for an aggregative means of ethnic construction through genealogy has been influential in classical scholarship and will form the basis for some of the arguments used in this book. But some scholars have questioned whether genealogy and descent actually function as criteria, in Horowitz’s sense, for ethnic identity.48 As David Konstan has noted, the only sure marker of ethnic identity is its ascription, that is, when someone claims that (not) doing or (not) having X makes one Greek. Rather than being criteria of ethnicity, in Horowitz’s framework genealogy and descent function as indicia. Genealogy, as a discourse, does not always point to ethnic identity but can refer to other kinds of relationships. For a genealogical affiliation to be counted as a claim to ethnicity, it must be articulated as a means to delimit a people. What is always required is evidence that certain differences and commonalities were intended to signal an ethnic identity: “What counts is how the Greeks perceived themselves and each other, and like all other societies they availed themselves of a limited and largely arbitrary spectrum of traits by which to define identities.”49 This turns the conversation back to Anthony Smith’s identification of a “limited and largely arbitrary spectrum of traits” that are deployed as markers of ethnic identity. In marking ethnic identity in themselves and others, groups and individuals use different markers in different contexts, rearranging them according to the demands of the present.50 For example, in her study of Paul’s ethnic rhetoric in Galatians and Romans, Caroline Johnson Hodge has shown how Paul presents himself to his audiences through a shifting hierarchy of identities.51 She shows how Paul manages his multiple identities as a means of persuading his various audiences. Thus, Paul might emphasize his ability to be all things to all people (1 Cor 9:22) in one context, whereas in another he might stress his prestigious Jewish genealogy (Phil 3:3–6). Ethnicity is thus a kind of rhetoric that constructs boundaries around a number of relatively fixed markers that change depending on the context. But one of the problems that may result from this fluid approach to how ethnicity functions as rhetoric is reconciling the fluidity of ethnicity in practice with the sense of stability and permanence that is asserted by those who claim ethnic identities for themselves and others. In other words, how can we say that ethnicity is flexible and fluid, when so many people would say that they feel

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their ethnicity is fixed, stable, and even an essential aspect of who they are? To answer this question requires that we pay attention to how the rhetoric of ethnic identity relies on intertwined discourses of fixity and fluidity as part of how it marks difference and similarity between groups. In her work on “ethnic reasoning” in early Christian discourse, Denise Buell shows how ethnicity as rhetoric trades on discourses of fixity and fluidity as part of its persuasive power.52 On the one hand, ethnicity is often asserted as a fixed and unchanging identity that makes it appear stable, ancient, and uniform. For example, when Paul speaks of how the “sons of Israel” had a veil placed on them by Moses that remains over their reading “until today” (ἕως σήμερον), he is making a claim that roots Israelite identity in a fixed, ancient condition (2 Cor 3:12–18). Buell emphasizes that such claims are just that: claims to an unchanging and stable identity that are deployed for particular rhetorical goals. On the other hand, ethnic identity can also be described as malleable and fluid, using markers that focus on common purpose, language, education, way of life, or religious practice. To come back to Paul, when the apostle says that his Corinthian audience “used to be Gentiles” (1 Cor 12:2), he stresses the malleability of their ethnic identity. These two discourses, of fixity and fluidity, are the poles between which ethnic identity is discursively constructed. Attending to the ways in which various texts and authors deploy discourses of fixity and fluidity in the production of ethnic identity allows us to chart the work that these claims perform. To sum up what we have looked at so far, I take ethnicity to be a form of rhetoric that is deployed to mark boundaries between and among groups of people. Though there is no one essential marker of ethnicity, there are a number of markers that are selectively and hierarchically deployed depending on the context. These markers are deployed rhetorically by emphasizing the fixity and fluidity of ethnicity. But such a perspective does not, as yet, take into account the politics of ethnicity, particularly for a study of Paul and the Corinthians, both in their own way subjects of the Roman Empire. Hybrids and the Politics of Ethnicity Paul and others in Corinth wrote and spoke as subjects under the Roman Empire, a context that shaped the contours of how the rhetoric of ethnicity could be deployed and heard in Corinth. To work toward imagining the reception of Paul’s rhetoric in the local context of Corinth requires understanding how that local context participated in broader changes in the articulation and production of ethnic identity that pertained to Roman Greece. Throughout the book I make reference to the terminology of hybridity and negotiation to refer to the ways in which Paul and others in and around Corinth adapted, appropri-

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ated, and adopted identities as a means of resisting, negotiating, and participating in the production of Roman provincial society. Hybridity, of the kind evinced by Paul, is a result of the structural conditions of colonization operating in local contexts. The expansion of Roman imperial control over Greece created new power relationships within which ethnic identities were negotiated. Labels such as Greek and Roman took on new forms and values within the systems of colonial rule. In a provincial context Roman could refer to someone from Rome, someone from Italy, or a provincial citizen of the empire, regardless of his or her ethnic genealogy. The term Greek also came to be valued and defined differently under Roman rule, bearing new relations with perceptions of culture, education, effeminacy, and luxury.53 Though ethnic identities such as Greek, Roman, or Judean were categories that were useful in the management and classification of peoples in the Roman Empire, the expansion of colonial rule also created new possibilities for ethnic interaction and cultural exchange. These possibilities created conditions by which ethnic identities could interact, adapt, and change within the asymmetrical field of power relationships of Roman Greece.54 From these asymmetrical conditions of cultural exchange emerged hybrid identities, a category that I draw from the work of Homi Bhabha. For Bhabha hybridity helps explain the ambiguous identities that are forged by people under colonial rule, through mimicry, improvisation, or resistance. Colonial hybridity creates an “interstitial passage between fixed identifications [that] opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy.”55 These hybrid identities are tactical and provisional, allowing individuals and groups to position and reposition themselves within the shifting power relationships of the provincial landscape.56 They are also productive in that they participate in the redefinition of the categories that they mimic. By working within the “structured system of differences” created by Roman imperial power, hybrids participate in the redefinition of “imperial culture as a whole.”57 The language of hybridity and negotiation attends to the ways in which the rhetoric of ethnicity was part of a tactical response to the production of identity in Roman Greece. This allows us to see how the local political context within which Paul’s rhetoric would have been heard and interpreted was shaped by and also participated in broader changes brought about by Roman imperial expansion and consolidation. Reading the Corinthian Correspondence in Corinth In the previous section I discussed my working assumptions about how ethnicity functions as a kind of rhetoric, oscillating between poles of fixity and fluidity. I also discussed how attention to the rhetoric of ethnicity in Corinth

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and in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence must also take into account the political conditions of empire. Though I take ethnicity as a kind of rhetoric, this does not mean that the kinds of materials that we can study are limited to texts or the records of speeches; rather, in this section I want to argue for the importance of placing textual remains alongside the physical, material remains of ancient Corinth. As Laura Nasrallah has argued, “What is often missing from studies of early Christian literature is . . . attention to space, architecture, and art—an understanding of the broader material environment in which this literature was written and the varieties of responses that Christians had to the spaces of empire.”58 To take such an approach allows us to work across disciplinary boundaries that have kept early Christian studies, classics, archaeology, and art history separated into discrete disciplinary boxes. As we will see, the ethnic rhetoric that Paul deploys in the Corinthian correspondence touches on debates, boundaries, and identities that are being worked out in other literary texts written to or about Corinthians, as well as in the very built environment of the city itself. This is not to say that each of these different “texts” is doing the same kind of work as Paul (or even that Paul is consistent in his own rhetoric); rather, it is to say that there were many different conversations going on in and around Corinth about ethnicity, its boundaries, its meanings, and its relationships to things like cultic practice. In this book I attempt to revive these diverse and, at times, dissonant conversations taking place in the city of Corinth, though the paucity of our information makes this attempt more akin to conjuring ghosts than reviving the dead. To do so is to resist the tendency to see Paul’s own arguments as somehow separate and distinct from the conversations taking place in Corinth, while at the same time opening up space to hear the voices of others, alongside whom Paul was merely one among many. There was much in and around Corinth that was available for Paul’s Corinthian audience to “think with” when hearing, interpreting, and debating Paul’s letters. By pairing archaeological and literary texts together, we may get a sense of what those options might have been.59 This is not to say that such a braiding of archaeological and literary texts offers us a more objective or scientific way of writing history. In fact, it might even make the process more difficult! To take archaeological materials seriously is to recognize, as Laura Nasrallah has noted, that “architecture makes statements; statues speak, too.”60 This means that, when incorporating archaeological materials, attention must be paid to standard questions of date, stratigraphy, and style, and also to how these materials make their arguments to potential viewers, adding yet another layer of analysis that must be done carefully in historical reconstruction. The key to making this work is to treat archaeological evidence

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not as a solution to ambiguities in Paul’s texts, but as formed by the same discursive milieu to which Paul’s rhetoric was one kind of response.61 As she drew water from the Peirene Fountain in the Corinthian Forum, what stories might such a place evoke for a resident of Corinth? What might this fountain, encased in a long history of myth and legend about Corinthian history, say to citizen and visitor alike about the identity of Corinth and its inhabitants? How might a Corinthian, drawing water from a fountain so tied to the mythical genealogy of the city, respond to Paul’s claim that Gentile Corinthians who participate in the cult of a crucified Jewish savior are now descendants of the ancient Israelites? By asking questions about how monuments, statues, inscriptions, and even instruments of daily life might inform Corinthian perceptions of their own identity and place in the world, I remain attentive to the ways in which text and the lived experience of the everyday shape our experience of the world: “Our responses to the world—ethical, theological, political—are formed not only by our interaction with literature but also, and probably even more, by our interactions with the images and architecture which surround us, by our movements through cities and other spaces.”62 To expand a bit on why it is important to bring archaeological and literary “texts” together, I would suggest that this braiding offers us a way of reconstructing the discourse of ethnicity in Corinth. Jorunn Økland has offered a similar approach to material and literary remains that attempts to “reconstruct the ‘ideological matrix’ or discourse” of gender and sanctuary space in Corinth and in 1 Corinthians 11–14. Discourse is a useful term for Økland, ultimately deriving from the work of Michel Foucault, because it can encompass not just speech acts or written sources, but also artistic, architectural, and other materials “texts.” 63 Økland seeks by recourse to a discursive approach to reconstruct the shared presuppositions, common questions and tensions, and negotiated terrain of gender and space in Corinth. For her this offers the possibility of understanding the context to which Paul’s rhetoric about gender and ritual practice is directed and within which it makes sense. Though I am less interested in recovering the intentions behind how Paul directs his writing to a particular rhetorical context in Corinth, I take a similar approach to Økland’s, in that I look for the different ways in which ethnicity could be deployed within the context of Roman Corinth. In other words, I am looking for something like the discourse of ethnicity in Corinth. Within this discourse, Paul emerges as one among many who made use of ethnic rhetoric to persuade Corinthian audiences.64 Because I focus on the local conversations regarding ethnicity in Corinth, I have constrained the data that I explore in this book. I limit my use of comparative materials from contexts that are not specifically related to Corinth.

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Thus, I include literary texts that are addressed to or about Corinthians and archaeological evidence from Corinth between the first and second centuries CE. Materials from other contexts appear in endnotes unless they relate to issues or discourses that were available within Corinth.65 Second, I do not try to interpret 1 and 2 Corinthians by using comparanda from other Pauline letters. Paul’s letters, as has long been noted, are ad hoc and react specifically to local conditions. We cannot assume that Paul’s audience in Corinth would have been privy to the issues and theological rhetoric that Paul employs in Galatians, Romans, or any of his other letters to communities in the eastern Mediterranean. Similarly, I do not make use of Acts directly in reconstructing the context of Paul’s work in Corinth. Luke’s account of Paul’s ministry in Corinth is shaped by Luke’s own theological and political interests and cannot be taken as reflecting the conditions confronting Paul and his audiences in Corinth in the 50s CE. For example, Luke’s account focuses on Paul’s tumultuous relationship with the synagogue in Corinth, a conflict that is not discussed or alluded to in the Corinthian correspondence but does cohere with Luke’s larger rhetorical construction of the Jews in Acts as a whole. This is not to say that I ignore the story of Paul in Corinth in Acts 18; rather, when I make use of the story, I do so as a way of thinking about how Luke’s “memory” of Paul in Corinth offers another way of characterizing the city, its people, and the apostle from the vantage point of the second century CE. We can assume that the Corinthians would have had access only to the letters sent by Paul to Corinth.66

Plan of the Book The book is divided into two parts. Each part explores a different set of issues to which Corinthians and those who spoke to and of them directed different rhetorics of ethnicity. Part 1 explores the dynamics of Corinth and Corinthians between Greece and Rome, looking at trade, mobility, and the cultural exchange that they enabled. I show how Corinthians found ways to negotiate their local identities between Greece and Rome (chapter 2). Paul and, by comparison, the orator Favorinus both present themselves to Corinthian audiences as possessed of ethnically malleable bodies, expecting that such self-presentations might be praised by Corinthian audiences (chapter 1). Though Paul was adept at negotiating identity in the diverse landscape of Corinth, I show that his selfpresentation as one who could be “all things to all people” (1 Cor 9:22) and the cultic expectations surrounding his rhetoric might have been resisted by Corinthian audiences who were comfortable living in “multiple modes” of religion and identity (chapter 3).

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In part 2 I look at the uses of history—Roman, Greek, and Israelite—in Corinth. Paul invokes the history of the Israelites and their leader Moses in the wilderness (1 Cor 10:1–13 and 2 Cor 3:1–18) as a way of undergirding his own authority among the Corinthians (chapter 4). In and around Corinth we find monuments and literary sources that debate the connections between Corinth’s Greek past and Roman present (chapter 5). By pairing these multiple modes of invoking the past, I show how “some” Corinthians might have been drawn to and drawn from the stories of the Israelites as ways of negotiating identity and cultic practice in the landscape of provincial Corinth (chapter 6). In each of these two parts, I begin my discussion with Paul’s letters, looking at how they have been read by interpreters (chapters 1 and 4). I then turn in subsequent chapters to other examples of similar rhetorics from Corinth (chapters 2 and 5). Typically, studies that attempt to situate Paul within a particular discourse, genre, or theme build from the outside in, starting with materials drawn from other contexts that culminate in a discussion of Paul. By beginning with Paul and then moving out into the landscape of Corinth, we are better positioned to see Paul as one among many deploying a rhetoric of ethnicity in Corinth. The analysis of the materials from Corinth is not then forced to direct itself to how it will be used to interpret Paul’s text. Though I begin with Paul, each part of the book will end with a chapter that conjures the voices of “some” of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote (chapters 3 and 6).67 Such conjurings do not lend themselves easily to simple linear narratives. As Agamben argued, the history of the forgotten must take a different form from remembered history. In my conjurings, I aim at diversity rather than homogeneity, attempting to think of responses to Paul with the same kind of multiplicity that is present in the evidence from Corinth as a whole. Just as Paul was one among many in Corinth, there were undoubtedly many different viewpoints among the first audience of Paul’s letters. By ending each part of the book with “some” Corinthians, I seek to make these half-forgotten voices the focus and the goal of the work that is done in the book as a whole, placing Paul at the margins. This is not to discount Paul’s voice but is rather a recognition of the fact that he has been allowed to speak unopposed for millennia. Perhaps it is time that he too stood to the side and listened.

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Part One

CORINTH AND CORINTHIANS BETWEEN GREECE AND ROME

For you [Corinthians] honored me thus, not as one among the many that each season put in at Kenchreai, trader or spectactor or ambassador or traveler, but as a beloved friend who made an appearance with great difficulty after a long absence. —Favorinus, “Corinthian Oration,” §8

On his third visit to Corinth, the orator Favorinus tells a story of a Lucanian emissary to Syracuse (§24). In the story the unnamed Lucanian addressed the Syracusan assembly in pitch-perfect Doric, showing respect for the audience, their Greek dialect, and the Dorian genos. In return, the Syracusans rewarded the emissary with a talent and a statue. In the context of his oration, Favorinus uses this story to suggest a suitable behavior for the Corinthians, who ought to recognize and reward his own mastery of the Greek language and Greek culture, not because they speak a perfect Attic or Doric dialect, but because they too have “become Hellenic” (ἀφελληνίζω [§26]). It is by the mastery of all things Greek that Favorinus, a native of southern Gaul and a wealthy Roman, thinks he deserves praise. His mastery is such that he both seems to be and is Greek (Ἕλληνι δοκεῖν τε καὶ εἶναι [§25]). Favorinus and the unnamed Lucanian surprise their respective audiences by perfectly reproducing their dialect, playing with a discourse that marks language as a site of differentiation between Greeks and non-Greeks, Lucanian and Dorian. In both cases, the expectation is that such a display of oratorical imitation is deserving of praise. Favorinus’s play with the ways that language differentiates between and among identities, later claiming to be worthy of honor by the Athenians because “he atticizes” (ἀττικίζει [§26]), is meant to distinguish him among those

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who brought their oratorical and rhetorical wares for evaluation by Corinthian audiences. We will have more to say about Favorinus in what follows, particularly in chapters 1 and 5, but it is worth pausing here to reflect on his concern, cited above, with being honored as an exceptional polymorph and not as “one among the many” who arrived in Corinth each year (§8). From his viewpoint, Corinth sits at the crossroads of empire. Favorinus envisions traders arriving with goods to sell; spectators disembarking, perhaps to see Corinth’s famed Isthmian Games; ambassadors, sent by their cities to make formal requests of the imperial center; and even those “just passing through” (διερχόμενος) from one place to another. Among this imperial throng, Favorinus claims he was honored as a beloved friend (ἀγαπητός) who had unexpectedly appeared after a long absence. He is, as such, not “one among many” (ἔνα τῶν πολλῶν), but singular, beloved, important. Paul too came to Corinth among the throngs of traders, spectators, ambassadors, and other passersby who put in to Corinth’s ports of Lechaion and Kenchreai each year. Like Favorinus, Paul sought to distinguish himself within this teeming stream of imperial movement. Whereas Favorinus hoped to wow his Corinthian audience with the way in which training in Greek culture and education (paideia) could allow him to seem and be Greek, Paul offered a similar ethnically polymorphous self in 1 Cor 9:22, where he claims to have “become all things to all people” (τοῖς πᾶσιν γέγονα πάντα). But also like Favorinus, Paul was worried that he might come across as merely “one among many.” In his correspondence with the Corinthians, Paul at one point must plea, “For I am not like those who hawk the word of God in the marketplace, but I speak out of sincerity, as one sent from God, standing before God in Christ” (οὐ γάρ ἐσμεν ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ἐξ εἰλικρινείας, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ἐκ θεοῦ κατέναντι θεοῦ ἐν Χριστῷ λαλοῦμεν [2 Cor 2:17]). Paul is, he asserts to

a skeptical Corinthian audience, not one of those hucksters of spiritual things that come off the boats daily; rather, in prose that almost overloads its grammar with assertions of his fidelity, Paul is one who speaks sincerely, is sent by God, and, simultaneously, testifies before God. Both Paul and Favorinus fear that their uniqueness and importance will be missed in the hustle and bustle of Corinth, seated at the crossroads of imperial trade and travel. Rather than indulge the conceits of these two traveling orators, I treat both Paul and Favorinus precisely as “one among many” in Corinth. In particular, I look to how their self-presentations as the possessors of ethnically malleable bodies fit among the multiple ways in which the structural conditions of Roman imperial expansion shaped the options available for self-presentation in Corinth.

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The Corinth to which both Paul and Favorinus came was very much a city at the crossroads between Greece and Rome. Destroyed by the Romans in 146 BCE for its resistance to Rome’s presence in Greece and rebuilt a century later as a Roman colony, Corinth came to serve as a node in the broader patterns of trade, travel, and communication in the eastern Mediterranean. In particular, its strategic location along the quickest and safest route between Italy and Greece made it a site for cultural and ethnic exchange as much as it was a site for the exchange of trade goods. Because Corinth sat in what we might call the “middle ground” between Greece and Italy, its own ethnic identity was constantly open to question, contestation, and debate, a concern that we will discuss in more detail in part 2. Though which team the city as a whole “played for” remained open to discussion and debate, the meeting of Greek and Roman in Corinth that was afforded by trade allowed for multiple ways in which individuals and groups within Corinth might present their identities to others, some of which survive in the archaeological record of the city itself. By paying close attention to the spectral presences in these archaeological remains, we can begin to see the ethnic landscape of Corinth in new ways and perhaps also begin to imagine the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote and with whom he pleaded to be seen not merely as “one among many.” Part 1 of this book thus has two interrelated goals. First, I show how Paul was “one among many” in Corinth for whom ethnicity, cultic practice, and identity were interrelated concerns and sites of debate. When read alongside each other, Paul, Favorinus, and the spectral traces of individuals and associations from Corinth known through archaeological investigation are shown to be part of a similar set of conversations, disputes, and debates about identity between Greece and Rome. Second, by attending to the spectral presences of Corinthians in Corinth’s archaeological record, I seek to open up new avenues for reimagining the Corinthians who heard and responded to Paul’s rhetoric.

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1

Becoming All Things Paul and the Rhetoric of Ethnic Malleability

In this way, I think that the political man is by necessity of many figures and many forms. —Philo, On Joseph 34 Because he is not anything in himself, man can only be if he acts as if he were different from what he is (or what he is not). —Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains

Figuring the Political Man Writing as one who had done his fair share of “politicking” in the sometimes violent ethnic politics of the first century, Philo suggests that the political life was one that necessitated a polymorphic self, an ability to be many things for the sake of safeguarding one’s political community. Likening the politician to a steersman and a physician (On Joseph 33),1 Philo sees the good politician as both a leader and a polymorphous mirror image of the political system (politeia) itself: “for a political system is many-colored and multiform” (ποικίλον γὰρ πολιτεία καὶ πολύτροπον [On Joseph 32]). Though directed by a stable internal self, by which he guides the ship of state and cures the sick, the politician must also appear polymorphous, acting in that impossible space that Agamben conjures between what one is and what one is not. Speaking to the assembly (ἐκλλησία) in Corinth, Paul similarly presents himself as an ethnically polymorphous politician. Having “enslaved himself for all” (πᾶσιν ἐμαυτὸν ἐδοῦλωσα [1 Cor 9:19]), Paul trains his body so that he can “become all things to all people” (τοῖς πᾶσιν γέγονα πάντα [9:22]). Paul has trained his body like an athlete and punished it (9:24–27), so that he might develop a

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self that can become as a Judean, as one outside the law, as a Gentile under the curse of the law (as in Gal 3:23; 4:5, 21; 5:18), and as the weak (9:20–22).2 Paul has trained himself to cross boundaries, to “become all things to all people” (τοῖς πᾶσιν γέγονα πάντα [9:22]), and he expects praise from his Corinthian audience for what he has accomplished. As we will see, Paul’s polymorphous body is put to use in the politics of the Corinthian assembly. In this sense Paul was like the orator Favorinus, who deployed his own ethnically malleable self before an audience of Corinthians. Facing a dispute with the Corinthians over the destruction of his statue, Favorinus presents himself as an ethnic mimic, who, though a Roman equestrian from Gaul, not only seems but actually is Greek. Favorinus’s ethnically polymorphous body is made to parallel the Corinthians themselves, who are cast as Romans that have “hellenized.” Favorinus’s self-construction emphasizes education (paideia) and ethnic mimicry as attributes that should be praised by his Corinthian audience and acts as a defense of Favorinus himself as an arbiter of “true” Hellenism. Favorinus sets this self-construction against his Corinthian audience, suggesting that they only seem to be Greek and are really uncultured Roman rubes, unable to properly appreciate and understand Greek culture and education. In comparing Paul’s and Favorinus’s bodies, I do so alongside Elizabeth Castelli’s notion of “body power.” Castelli, following Foucault, has argued that the human body often functions “not simply as a (social or religious) symbol but rather as the site upon which competing discourses are played out. Furthermore, the body itself is seen, not as a blank slate upon which social meanings are inscribed, but as a changing and transitory articulator of multiple (sometimes conflicting and contradictory) identities, discourses, and meanings.”3 By looking in particular at these ethnically polymorphous bodies, we can see how various modes of discourse regarding change, adaptation, and negotiation of the self and the body could be used by those speaking to or about Corinthians. In their bodily constructions, Paul sought to influence Corinthian audiences and defend his authority by prominently displaying his body as able to negotiate multiple ethnic and cultural identities, whereas Favorinus presents his body as a model of Greekness through training and education. When we place these two bodily self-constructions alongside each other, Paul emerges as one among many in Corinth concerned with negotiating identity between and among multiple ethnicities. In the next chapter we will see how some of the Corinthian elite also found ways to negotiate their identities between and among ethnicities. Through this comparison, we can see Paul as he was to his Corinthian audiences: one among many in Corinth who made use of his body as a site of debate over ethnicity and identity.

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All Things to All People In his testy correspondence with an audience of Corinthians, Paul lifts up his ethnically malleable body as an object deserving of praise: For being free from all things, I enslaved myself to all, so that I might win more. And I became as a Judean to the Judeans, so that I might gain Judeans; as a Gentile under the curse of the Law to those under the Law (not being myself under the Law), so that I might gain those under the Law; as one outside the Law to those outside the Law (not being outside the Law of God, but in the Law of Christ), so that I might win those outside the Law. I have become weak to the weak, so that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all means I might save some. I do all this because of the gospel, so that I might become a partner in it. (1 Cor 9:19–23)

The malleable body that Paul presents to the Corinthians in this passage has offered a number of puzzling ambiguities that scholars have tried to unravel. I cannot resolve all of them here, nor does it seem to me that resolution is the most important task of the biblical scholar, but I will dwell briefly on several of the places in this passage that I take to be important for thinking about perceptions of Paul’s ethnic identity among the Corinthians. First, what does it mean for Paul to claim that he has “become as a Judean/ Ioudaios”? This claim has confused many interpreters, since it seems fairly clear that Paul was a Ioudaios. Some have suggested that Paul can become a Ioudaios because he has already ceased to be one. Having “converted” from Judaism, Paul is now a Christian, a status that has erased his former life in Judaism. This allows him to act as (ὡς) a Ioudaios without actually being one. Though this has perhaps been the dominant way in which this claim has been interpreted in Christian theology, I do not think that Paul has converted to anything like a Christianity as we know it; rather, I would say that Paul has located his calling as an apostle to the Gentiles within the purposes of the God of Israel.4 It is clear that Paul still thinks of himself as an Israelite (2 Cor 12:2; Rom 11:1) and that he regards the Judeans as his own people (Rom 9:3). Paul does not convert to “Christianity” but remains a Ioudaios who sees himself as one prophetically called to the Gentiles. A better way of framing this question would be to think outside categories of religious conversion for how ethnicity itself is often malleable and flexible. That Paul has “become as” a Ioudaios suggests that he has developed a flexibility with regard to his own ethnic identity. Paul never says that he has given up his identity as a Ioudaios, but that he has reconfigured that identity in light of his

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voluntary enslavement to the law of Christ. Later in the Corinthian correspondence Paul will refer to himself in a layered fashion as a Hebrew, an Israelite, and a descendant (seed) of Abraham (2 Cor 12:2), showing that he can inflect his ethnic identity through recourse to various other sub-identities or genealogical markers. As a Ioudaios to the Ioudaioi, Paul is signaling that he has a flexible sense of his own identity that he deploys in different contexts.5 Careful readers will also note that I have offered an unusual rendering of Paul’s claim to have become as those “under the law” (ὑπὸ νόμον). The identity of those represented by this phrase has been contested by scholars. Most think that those under the law are also Ioudaioi but viewed from a different perspective.6 In contrast to this position, I think it is more likely that Paul is here referring to Gentiles who had tried to follow the demands of the Mosaic law. In Jewish texts of the period, being ὑπὸ νόμον is not generally used to describe the relationship between Ioudaioi and the law. If the phrase is not one that would apply to Ioudaioi, it may fit better as a description of a particular kind of Gentile: those who have sought to keep the law but have failed because of the limitations of their passions and lack of self-mastery as Gentiles. Paul has encountered Gentiles who have put themselves under the authority of the law in other contexts, notably the situation that gave rise to the writing of Galatians. There Paul asks his Gentile audience whether they really want to place themselves under the law (λέγετέ μοι, οἱ ὑπὸ νόμον θέλοντες εἶναι, τὸν νόμον οὐκ ἀκούετε; [4:21]). The upshot of the question is that for Gentiles who allow themselves to be circumcised, placing themselves under the law like the Ioudaioi, Christ will be of no benefit to them (5:2). Those who place themselves under the law are required to obey it completely, cutting themselves off from Christ, who is the only path by which Gentiles can be grafted onto Israel (5:3–4). In the context of 1 Cor 9:19–23, Paul is envisioning Gentiles who, like some of those in Galatia, sought to place themselves under the law as a means of entering into Israel. Having failed, by virtue of the fact that they are Gentiles, they are now under the law’s curse.7 A final ambiguity that I want to dwell on is that of those who are “outside” the law, as I have rendered the term ἄνομος. Those who are ἀνόμοι pose a similarly difficult problem to those ὑπὸ νόμον. Is this a question of geography or morality? Are those who are ἀνόμοι outside of the law or are they immoral? I am inclined to read this as a question of geography: Gentiles who remain idolators and have not attempted to place themselves under the authority of the law of Israel’s God. This reading has a twofold benefit. On the one hand, when it is taken in combination with the preceding two categories (Ioudaioi and those ὑπὸ νόμον), the three categories cover the three types of people with whom Paul has as-

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sociated. From his letters we know that he has worked with Ioudaioi, Gentiles seeking to place themselves under the authority of the Mosaic law (Galatians and Romans), and Gentiles not connected with the law. Thus, this tripartite division of humanity corresponds to the scope of the Pauline mission as Paul has described it.8 On the other hand, this reading also makes it easier to imagine how Paul might have “become as” these persons. Were Paul referring to “immoral” people, it would be difficult to imagine how exactly Paul “became as” them. Did he adopt immoral practices? Partake in idolatrous rites? It is more likely that this term stands in for those outside the law, namely Gentiles.9 What exactly it means for Paul to “become as” a Gentile outside the law is an open question that I will not try to resolve here. We can imagine that Paul’s audience in Corinth, themselves former Gentiles (1 Cor 12:2), would have their own experiences to draw on when interpreting Paul’s claim. What we can see in this passage is a kind of symbolic universalism, wherein the whole spectrum of humanity, as Paul has experienced it through his preaching, is included among those who can be addressed by Paul’s ethnically malleable body. This enigmatic passage has often been treated by scholars as a window onto Paul’s “missionary strategy,” a phrase that perhaps fits better in the context of modern missionary society meetings than in the ad hoc and often haphazard conditions that attended Paul’s journeys in the eastern Mediterranean. More to the point, interpretations of this passage often take for granted that here we get a window onto Paul’s psychology or the intentions behind his clearly thought-out “strategy.” This is what Paul really thought he was doing when he traveled the world converting Gentiles to Christianity. Rather than speculate on whether this passage gives us such privileged access to the inner workings of Paul’s missionary strategy, what I want to focus on here is the work such a self-presentation does for Paul.10 How does presenting himself as the possessor of an ethnically malleable self work in Paul’s argument before a Corinthian audience? Placing Paul’s Malleable Body Paul’s self-presentation as one who can be all things to all people (9:19–27) comes within the larger argument of 1 Cor 8:1–11:1, which deals with the question of food sacrificed to idols.11 Paul’s argument is focused on ending what seems to have become a common practice in the Corinthian community of consuming food that was in some way related to traditional cultic practice (10:5–13, 22). Paul considers this behavior idolatry and deploys a number of arguments to persuade the Corinthians to change their behavior. Though we will explore the arguments of 1 Cor 10:1–13 in chapter 4, here I will focus on the

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interrelated issues addressed in 1 Corinthians 8 and 9, in which Paul parallels an argument about the conscience of a “weak” sibling with his own personal example of renunciation and adaptation in the service of bringing others to the gospel.12 By looking at 9:19–27 in this larger context, we can see how Paul presents his ethnically malleable self to his Corinthian audience as an example worthy of praise and obedience. Paul’s first line of attack on Corinthian “idolatry” involves the creation of a hypothetical “weak” sibling (ἀδελφός), whose conscience would be scandalized by seeing another sibling eating food sacrificed to the gods. It is for the sake of this sibling that the Corinthians ought to renounce their authority to eat food in such a way (8:1–13).13 From Paul’s perspective, the Corinthians should abstain from practices that Paul has deemed idolatrous to protect the conscience of such a weak sibling. In chapter 9 Paul offers himself as an example of a form of renunciation parallel to that of the Corinthians: he has renounced his own apostolic rights in the service of the gospel (9:1–18), and he pursues a pedagogical strategy (becoming “all things to all people”) that seeks to “please” and not give offense (9:19–27).14 The argument of the chapter turns on the surprising twist of the audience’s expectations. Paul builds up the authority that ought to accrue to a free apostle (food and drink, having a sister as a wife, and getting paid for one’s work [9:4–6]), and then he abruptly renounces them, or at least claims that he has not made use of them (9:15). The ultimate purpose of Paul’s renunciation has been to deliver the gospel free of charge (ἀδάπανον [9:18]). To present the gospel free of charge is Paul’s wage (μισθός), which he will receive because he has chosen not to make full use of his authority (9:18).15 Though he begins by arguing that he deserves a wage from the Corinthians, Paul quickly renounces his “rights” to a wage. Having confounded his audience’s expectations, Paul then turns to a parallel example of his own apostolic deportment in the presentation of the gospel (9:19–27). The point of this personal example, as we learn from Paul’s parallel comments in 10:31–11:1, is to model a renunciation that “pleases” others.16 In 10:31–11:1 Paul urges his Corinthian audience to imitate him (μιμηταί μου γίνεσθε [11:1]) by “pleasing” (ἀρέσκω) everyone and giving no offense (ἀπρόσκοπος). Paul’s adaptable self is deployed here as an example for the Corinthians to follow by analogy: just as Paul adapts his identity, deportment, and pedagogy to other people, so the Corinthians ought to adapt their practices so as not to offend but to please other siblings. That Paul presents himself as an example for the Corinthians to emulate should come as no surprise. Paul is the predominant example used in 1 and

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2 Corinthians. Paul’s use of himself as an example in 9:19–27 fits within the broader ideology of imitation in his letters. Paul’s rhetoric of imitation simultaneously reinscribes his authority over the Corinthian community and characterizes multiplicity and diversity as dangerous and threatening: “The very notion of multiplicity is characterized as problematic, dangerous, and utterly threatening to the communal existence of the Corinthians; sameness, singularity, and unity are advocated throughout the text as pathways to proper existence, and they also serve the function of consolidating Paul’s own authority insofar as he calls people to sameness and unity, on his terms.”17 As the object of imitation, Paul presents himself as the sole source of authoritative guidance in the community, which he roots further in a hierarchical connection to Christ: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ” (11:1). As with Paul’s concerns over schisms (σχίσματα [1:10]), imitation and unity go hand in hand. One can see this clearly in Paul’s call to imitation in 4:16. Before the appeal, he has recourse to kinship language: “Though you may have ten thousand pedagogues in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, through the gospel, I became your father. Therefore I exhort you to become imitators of me” (4:15–16). Even if there are other alternatives to his authority, the Corinthians are encouraged to recognize only one: Paul’s. The Apostolic Workout As an example to his Corinthian audience, Paul presents himself as the possessor of an ethnically malleable body, an example meant to encourage his audience to renounce their “right” (ἐξουσία) to eat food sacrificed to idols by seeking to please and not give offense. But to see how Paul’s self-presentation functions, we have to look at how he mixes a number of metaphors to offer an authoritative image of his apostolic practice. Paul portrays his transformations with a pair of metaphors: the slave and the athlete. Both metaphors attempt to present Paul as a powerful agent of God who transforms his body for the sake of the gospel. Paul presents himself throughout 1 Corinthians 9 as a slave of Christ and a slave “of all.”18 In 9:19–27 it is the latter that Paul employs to describe how and why he has taken up a protean body: “For being free from all, I have enslaved myself to all, so that I might win many” (Ἐλεύθερος γὰρ ὢν ἐκ πάντων πᾶσιν ἐμαυτὸν ἐδούλωσα, ἵνα τοὺς πλείονας κερδήσω). The power of this statement comes from its play on the paradox between slavery and freedom, which harks back to 9:1. The reference to Paul’s status as free echoes the opening rhetorical question of 9:1, yet it contradicts the sense of 9:16–18, where Paul speaks of his compulsion and lack of free will in preaching the gospel. In this new rhetorical

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turn, Paul returns himself to a position of freed status and then speaks of his voluntary submission.19 As Dale Martin has shown, the image of the “slave to all” was a common topos in the rhetoric of democratic politics. Claims by political leaders to have enslaved themselves for the benefit of the people were common. These claims carried powerful emotional force by showing that the politician had only the interests of the people at heart. As an enslaved leader, Paul lowers himself from freedom to slavery so that he might connect with and “gain” more.20 It is as a slave that Paul then “becomes as” (γίνομαι ὡς)21 the various groups mentioned in 9:19–23 (Judeans, Gentiles, the weak). Paul thus voluntarily moves from a position of freedom to one of slavery to others, which takes a polymorphic form as Paul constantly adapts himself to the people whom he meets in the service of the gospel.22 Paul’s adaptable self is thus a result of his enslavement to others, an attempt to win others to the gospel through condescension and the avoidance of offense. But Paul’s flexible self requires a workout regime to keep it in shape (9:24). Paul describes his apostolic workout through the metaphor of the athlete, who, in competing for the prize, exercises self-mastery (ἐγκράτεια) by punishing and enslaving his body (9:25–27). Like Favorinus, whom we will discuss momentarily, Paul must work to master himself as a means of achieving a believable transformation. But whereas Favorinus’s mastery came through paideia and mimicry, Paul’s comes through physical labor and struggle. The effect is to portray Paul’s boundary-crossing body as powerful and authoritative, able to win the prize for which it deserves praise. The athletic imagery in 9:24–27 draws on the figures of the runner and the boxer but characterizes these activities with language familiar to philosophical discussions of self-mastery: “Do you not know that all the runners in the stadium run, but one receives the prize? Therefore run that you might win! All who compete engage in self-mastery in all things: they so that they might receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run as one aimlessly nor do I box as though beating the air, but I punish my body and enslave it, lest in proclaiming to others I might myself be disqualified.” Key to understanding the metaphors of the runner and the boxer is focusing not on the goal or the finish line, but on the training process itself. Paul’s training for the gospel is a continuous process of self-mastery (ἐγκρατεύεται [9:25]), and it is his success at training that will determine whether he can finish the race or be disqualified.23 To achieve self-mastery, Paul runs and boxes with purpose, and he, in rather visceral language, pummels his body and enslaves it so that he might not be disqualified. This training regime conveys an image of Paul’s own bodily power but also trades, by its reference to self-mastery, on philosophical discussions

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of the control of the passions. Paul describes his exercise of self-mastery as an ascetic workout regime. Paul’s gym is not just the racetrack but also the boxing ring (9:26–27). He punishes and enslaves (δουλαγωγῶ [9:27]) his body to make it stay on course.24 Paul’s enslavement is to the apostolic workout. No pain, no gain. Through sheer physical abuse of his body, Paul is able to bring his passions under control and can thus exercise supreme authority over his whole self (σῶμα). Such physical mastery is important for Paul’s own pedagogic scheme. As he repeatedly notes, he may become as those under the curse of the law or outside the law, but he never fully changes. He remains ἔννομος Χριστοῦ, within the law of Christ (9:21). He may appear to have condescended, but, through a bodily philosophical workout in the ascetic gym, Paul remains true to his apostolic mission.25 Paul’s self-description is one of perpetual striving for bodily control that makes his malleable self possible. Paul has developed a workout regime to control his body physically, making it possible for him to be “all things to all people” while remaining within the law of Christ (ἔννομος Χριστοῦ [9:21]). Paul’s ascetic regime is situated within its own philosophical and evangelical conversation: the exercise of self-mastery over the body and the goal of bringing others to the gospel. It is through this ascetic regimen that Paul puts his body in the service of the gospel and through which he attains an adaptable self that can proclaim the gospel to others (ἄλλοις κηρύξας [9:27]). This image of the enslaved athlete presents Paul as a powerful bodily presence, able to transform his body in the service of the gospel, precisely where he appears to be weak, beaten, and enslaved. Though couched in the language of slavery, Paul’s self-presentation draws on the image of the powerful masculine body of the athlete and the moral rigor of the philosopher. Paul’s ethnically flexible body is presented to the Corinthians as a model of ascetic self-control and the selfless exercise of a divine calling; Paul claims to be both a slave of a powerful master who subjects his body to a painful workout for the sake of others and a free man with authority who renounces it for the benefit of all. Paul’s self-presentation thus serves as a site for what Castelli calls “body power,” wherein the body becomes a site where competing discourses coalesce around the articulation of identity.26 By drawing on a complex and paradoxical set of images and ideas, Paul presents his malleable self as a marker of his own authority within the Corinthian ekkle¯sia: a body that is both powerful and pedagogical. Paul thus merges two images of authority and control in his self-description: the demagogic slave and the philosophical athlete. Through this interwoven pair of metaphors Paul presents his polyethnic body as a pedagogical tool. Just

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as Favorinus’s body will teach others about true Greekness, so Paul’s body is pedagogical. Paul trains his body to adapt to the various kinds of people whom he meets as an apostle for Christ, tailoring his deportment, speech, and manner to what he assumes these peoples need. That Paul presents himself to the Corinthians as an example of how to avoid offending others suggests that he assumed that this image of the trained and flexible pedagogue would be viewed favorably by a Corinthian audience. Paul assumed that his audience would see in his adaptable practice a rationale for avoiding the dangers of idolatry and accepting Paul’s apostolic authority.

To Seem and to Be Greek Though Paul certainly saw himself as worthy of praise for the ways in which he was able to move between and among identities through mastery of an apostolic workout, he was not the only foreigner to offer up such an ethnically malleable persona for the consumption of Corinthian audiences. Sometime during the reign of Hadrian, the orator Favorinus defended himself before a Corinthian audience, arguing that his training in Greek culture and deportment made him the praiseworthy embodiment of what it meant to be Greek. A Roman of equestrian rank from Gaul, Favorinus claimed that he had transformed himself, so that he not only seemed to be but actually was Greek. Favorinus’s self-construction parallels Paul’s own in several important ways; however, the point of comparing the two is not to establish dependence. Rather, by comparing Favorinus to Paul, we can see how Paul was “one of many” in Corinth who presented themselves as possessors of ethnically malleable bodies. Another Traveler to Corinth Favorinus was a controversial figure who cut his way across the landscape of the Roman world. Much of what we know about Favorinus’s life comes from the work of Philostratus, who writes well after Favorinus’s death and who emphasizes his ambiguous gender and sexuality: Favorinus the philosopher . . . was proclaimed a sophist by the charm and beauty of his eloquence. He came from the Gauls of the West, from the city of Arelate which is situated on the river Rhone. He was born double-sexed, a hermaphrodite, and this was plainly shown in his appearance; for even when he grew old he had no beard; it was evident too from his voice which sounded thin, shrill, and high-pitched, with the modulations that nature bestows on eunuchs also. Yet he was so ardent in love that he was actually charged with adultery by a man of consular rank. Though he quarrelled with the Emperor

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Hadrian, he suffered no ill consequences. Hence he used to say in the ambiguous style of an oracle, that there were in the story of his life these three paradoxes: Though he was a Gaul he led the life of a Hellene; a eunuch, he had been tried for adultery; he had quarrelled with an Emperor and was still alive.27 (Lives of the Sophists, 489)

Favorinus, by virtue of his wealth and education, made a name for himself as a traveling orator and associated with a number of famous literary figures of what is commonly called the Second Sophistic, a “movement” of elite Greek thinkers who worked to revive classical Greek paideia, a commodity that was valuable on the Roman cultural market.28 He mixed with Greek writers such as Plutarch and was a teacher of Herodes Atticus. His antics and witty discussions on philosophy and the derivation of Latin words dot the pages of Aulus Gellius’s Attic Nights. As a traveling sophist, Favorinus was quite popular, particularly because of the vocal modulations he was able to induce during a performance. His chief oratorical rival was Polemo, whose Physiognomy mocked Favorinus’s hermaphroditism and suggested that he employed witchcraft as a means of enthralling female audiences. Whether entrancing audiences with his verbal wit or seducing consular wives, Favorinus was, if nothing else, a unique figure in the early second century CE.29 Sometime between 125 and 131 CE the famous hermaphroditic sophist and philosopher made his third visit to the city of Corinth. The oration that Favorinus gives on this occasion claims that on his second visit to the city, the people and the council, perhaps hoping that it would lead to benefactions for the city, set up a bronze statue of Favorinus in front of the city’s library (see figure 1).30 In the intervening years since his second visit, the Corinthians had grown troubled by their relationship with Favorinus, perhaps because they had heard the stories of Favorinus’s argument with Hadrian or his affair with a consul’s wife, and, for whatever reason, the Corinthians ultimately decided to take down Favorinus’s statue. The Corinthian Oration represents Favorinus’s defense of his statue and his honor on this third, ignominious visit to Corinth.31 Favorinus’s defense of himself and his statue is a confrontational speech that trades on his ability to transform, to become Greek through education (paideia) and mimicry. At the center of Favorinus’s oration is the creation of a judicial thought experiment, in which Favorinus pulls his audience into a hypothetical trial of his dishonored statue: “If it be the case that there were some such decree from you, namely that statues be subject to an accounting, or rather, if you wish, that this had already been decreed and the trial set up, permit me, permit me to make a defense speech in his [the statue’s] behalf before you as if in a courtroom” (§22).

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Figure 1. Southeast Building (possibly the Library) from the east

This long and complicated sentence is a grammatical mess in Greek, but this messiness is precisely what Favorinus intends. He begins with a thought experiment imagining the passing of a Syracusan law in Corinth. The first two ‘ifs’ are parallel examples of a protasis for a future-less-vivid conditional that switches abruptly into an absolute construction with the repeated imperative (“permit me, permit me”). This abrupt grammatical move forces the audience out of the conditional and asks them to treat the hypothesis as real. The audience is basically jerked into the fantasy world that Favorinus seeks to construct.32 Within this rhetorical fantasy Favorinus constructs the oppositions between himself and his audience with respect to their participation in authentic Greek identity. Speaking in character as his dishonored statue, Favorinus praises his own ability to seem and actually be Greek, a transformation that he will use to critique his Corinthian audience’s stillborn Hellenism. Seeming and Being Greek Taking on the voice of his statue, Favorinus praises himself, justifying the existence of his statue in Corinth (§23). The statue begins with the story of the Lucanian emissary, mentioned at the opening of part 1, who, on an embassy to the

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Corinthian colony of Syracuse, spoke to the assembly in such a perfect Dorian accent that the Syracusans honored the man by fulfilling his request and granting him money and a statue. This story, as told by Favorinus’s statue, offers a paradigm to be emulated by the Corinthians, the Syracusans’ mother city, and his Corinthian audience is soon offered a chance to follow their colony’s lead: If someone who is not Lucanian, but Roman, not from the plebeians but from the equestrian order, one who has not only emulated the language but also the thought and mode of living and style of the Greeks, and having done this with mastery and notable success, as no one, it will be said, neither among the Romans before him nor any of the Greeks of his present time has done— for it is possible to see the best of the Greeks there inclining toward Roman customs, but he inclines toward Greek customs. And for the sake of these things he has abandoned his wealth and political standing and absolutely everything, so that there might be for him one thing before all others: to both seem Greek and to be Greek.33 (§25)

In the character of his statue, Favorinus heaps up example after example of the practices by which he has mastered Greek culture and identity: accent, language, thought, mode of living, and style. Favorinus has mastered the role of the Greek, much like an accomplished stage actor. Like Paul, who trains and punishes his body like an athlete (1 Cor 9:24–27), Favorinus has perfectly taken up Greekness through a long process of emulation and training.34 Favorinus’s linguistic and cultural training is matched by his recounting of the costs of achieving his goal, which is similar to Paul’s renunciation of his own authority for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor 9:12, 15, 23). Favorinus’s hellenizing, he claims, has cost him everything, from his wealth (perhaps because he had to pay for too many graduate programs!) to his political standing. Yet this renunciation has brought him to his ultimate goal: both to seem Greek and actually to be Greek.35 But the claim that a Roman of equestrian standing from Arelate can both seem and be Greek is ambiguous, especially since the grammar of the sentence does not reconcile the language of seeming and being. The words Favorinus chooses to describe his training in Greekness reflect a conscious ambiguity about whether his emulation is literary, ethical, or cultural. The verb governing a number of the clauses here (ζηλόω) can refer to different types of emulation, either ethical or literary. Φωνή similarly can be parsed in a number of different ways, ranging from language to accent. Finally, σχῆμα can refer to one’s style of dress, one’s personal presentation, or a literary style. The ambiguous language skirts the line between literary and cultural imitation that Favorinus is claiming for himself.36 Where Favorinus excels in comparison with other Romans who

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have inclined toward Greekness is that he has moved beyond merely a mastery of Greek to a mastery of Greek thought, mode of life, and even appearance. The claim to mastery and notable success is a bold one, namely, that Favorinus, a hermaphrodite from Roman Gaul, is more Greek than even the best Greeks of his own day! But the audience is left wondering what it means both to seem to be Greek and to be Greek at the same time, an effect that Favorinus perhaps intended. Is this an act or the real thing? A performance or an actual transformation? The distinction between “being” and “seeming” is complicated by the very act of oratory and by rhetoric in general, an ambiguity that Favorinus will continue to play with throughout the oration. After such a long discussion of Favorinus’s educational achievements, the statue finally completes the conditional “if” (εἰ) from the beginning of §25 and then spins out its consequences: “Because of this is it not necessary to set up a bronze [statue of Favorinus] among you [the Corinthians]? And in every city too! Among you because, though Roman, he has become Hellenic,37 just like your hometown, and among the Athenians because he has atticized his accent, and among the Spartans because he is a lover of athletics, and among everyone because he philosophizes. Not only has he already encouraged many among the Greeks to philosophize with him, but he has also attracted not a few of the barbarians” (§§25–26). The speaker thinks that Favorinus deserves a statue not only in Corinth, but in every Greek city. This list of praiseworthy characteristics of Greekness shows the extent to which ethnic and civic identity are interconnected. Favorinus’s Greekness is perceived differently in different places: among the Athenians it would be perceived in the authentic imitation of the Attic dialect, at Sparta in the love of gymnastic education, and among all the rest, including the barbarians, in the call to the philosophic life. Even as he claims to be authentically Greek, Favorinus’s list of individual markers of civic identity shows the instability of the term Greek, masking as it does the varieties of Greekness in such places as Athens, Sparta, and Corinth. In speaking about Corinth, Favorinus lifts up the quality of becoming Hellenic (ἀφελληνίζω), which he ascribes to the Corinthians themselves. Having “become Hellenic” sets the Corinthians apart from other Greeks, who do not need to hellenize themselves. Favorinus’s own self-fashioning is made to mirror Corinth’s: “though Roman, he has become hellenized just like your hometown.”38 The speaker reminds the Corinthians that any claims to Hellenism are dependent on the invention of ancient traditions in a way that is similar to Favorinus’s own literary and cultural invention. The current inhabit-

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ants of the city are transplants, new arrivals, who have no share in the Greek history of this famous city. They are interlopers who must invent a history for themselves as they hellenize. Favorinus’s statement is thus not a description of the Greekness of Corinth in the early second century, as it has often been read by scholars. Rather, Favorinus does not so much describe Corinth’s Greek identity as he “explores/contests it.”39 Favorinus continues this play with questions of self-fashioning in the final section of his statue’s praise: “Moreover, it seems that he has been equipped by the gods for this as if on purpose: to the Greeks, so that the inhabitants of Greece might have an example that being educated is not different from nature with respect to seeming [Greek]; to the Romans, so that those who make a show of their own standing not overlook education with regard to standing; and to the Celts, so that no one among the barbarians might despair of Greek education, when looking at him” (§27). Favorinus speaks of himself as divinely equipped to serve as an example to Greeks and Romans and Celts, again a quality akin to Paul’s calling as an apostle to the nations. Indeed, Favorinus sounds strikingly like an apostle of Greekness to the barbarian Romans and Celts, though the extent to which this earnestness is meant to be comedic is unclear. He pushes to an extreme a logic of Greek identity and its relationship to paideia that goes back to Isocrates: if paideia is the root of what it means to be Greek, then one can become as a Greek through education and not birth.40 But such training also makes the educated and the natural self indistinguishable at the level of “seeming.”41 The distinction between “seeming” and “being” (not only to seem but to be Greek) returns to muddy the waters of what constitutes Greekness: “to the Greeks, so that the inhabitants of Greece might have an example that being educated is not different from nature with respect to seeming [Greek].” At the level of one’s oratorical performance, constructed self-fashioning is no less true than natural identity. The Celts, for example, have but to look on Favorinus (or his rhetorically constructed statue) to see a model of Greekness that will keep them from despairing of their own ability to be transformed. But how would they “see” him? Since it is only at the level of the oratorical performance that Favorinus’s self-fashioning levels the field between “seeming” and “being,” one must catch Favorinus on the stage, before a crowd, standing apart, delivering eloquent words and conjuring imaginary statues. Romans, Statues, and Corinthian Identity Favorinus stands before his audience as the ideal model of the adaptive self, able to transform so completely, to play the role of a Greek so well, that seeming and being blend into one another. Later in the oration, Favorinus parlays his

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self-presentation into a criticism of his Corinthian audience. Perhaps, he suggests, their Hellenism only “seems” to be. In his reflections on the transitoriness of statues as a form of honor, Favorinus presents the Romans, represented by Lucius Mummius, the sacker of Corinth in 146 BCE, as the archetypal disrespecters of statues, suggesting a parallel with the disrespectful treatment of Favorinus’s own statue by the Corinthians. Favorinus dwells on the trauma of the Roman sack of Corinth. He presents Mummius, the Roman people, and the Corinthians as thoroughly ignorant of Greek culture, unable even to distinguish a statue of Alcibiades from one of Nero. His argument thus seeks to characterize his Corinthian audience as uncultured Romans, unable to appreciate true Greek culture properly. On Favorinus’s telling, statues have suffered a number of dishonorable fates in Greek history. Statues can be carried off by foreign armies (as were the statues of the tyrannicides from Athens), melted down en masse (as were 1,500 statues of Demetrius of Phalerum), or urinated on (as was a statue of Philip II in Athens [§41]). The fate that captures Favorinus’s imagination, however, is the dishonor that is done to Greek statues by ignorant Romans: “Other statues still stand and are known, but which have another inscription. The thing that occurs is like an antispast in meter and, in a way, the makers offer contradictory instruction: a Greek manner and a Roman fate. I have seen Alcibiades, the beautiful son of Cleinias, I don’t know where, except I saw him in a beautiful place in Greece, having the inscription Chalcopogon (“Bronze Beard”), and I saw another mutilated at the hand, which was said to be of the workshop of Polycles. O Gaia and Helios, what a terrible spectacle: Alcibiades mutilated!” (§40). Favorinus bemoans the fate of Greek statues that were wrongly labeled by Romans. The prominent example here is of a statue of Alcibiades whose statue was renamed “Bronze Beard,” a common nickname of the emperor Nero. That a statue of a famous and beautiful Greek should suffer such a fate is shocking to Favorinus, though it is not uncommon to find such statues all over the Greek world.42 For Favorinus this is an example of great ignorance and a dishonoring of the person of Alcibiades, an act occasioned by lack of humility and true paideia on the part of uncultured Romans. As the discussion continues, Favorinus will label his Corinthian audience as similar cultural rubes, unable to discern properly what is authentically Hellenic and, therefore, valuable as a cultural commodity. But it is not the case that only the statues of men are easily dishonored. Not even the gods are spared mistreatment: Then, knowing that men do not even spare the gods, did I think that you would have regard for a [Favorinus’s] statue? I think I will be silent about

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the others, but the Isthmian [Poseidon], your agonothetes, Mummius, a man uncultured and untrained in proper behavior, pulling it up from its base, dedicated the brother to Zeus (alas, the ignorance!) as a votive offering. He [Mummius] inscribed “Zeus” on Philip, son of Amyntus, which he received from Thespiae, and on the youths from Pheneüs he inscribed “Nestor” on one and “Priam” on the other. And the Roman demos, as we might expect, thought they saw those same men, though they were actually seeing Arcadians from Pheneüs. (§42)

The orator takes his audience on directly. He addresses them as among those who honor neither the statues of gods nor those of men, which directly links them to the impious and uncultured behavior of other Romans. He then sharpens the critique by purposely selecting the moment that gave rise to the city’s historical discontinuity: the destruction of Greek Corinth by the Roman general Mummius in 146 BCE. Though decrying the impiety of the event, Favorinus retells the story of Mummius’s appropriation and mishandling of the statue of Poseidon. Poseidon, one of the patron gods of the city (§§11–12) and the lord of the Isthmian Games (a major marker of Corinth’s Hellenic identity [§§14–15]), was taken from the sanctuary at Isthmia and dedicated as a votive to Zeus, the god’s own brother, an action that is the height of impiety. The mislabeling of the two statues of the young men from Pheneüs is a comical addition, since both Nestor and Priam, important characters in the Trojan War, were old men. That Mummius and the Roman people did not even know such basic details about Greek history is both comical and a marker of their lack of culture and education.43 Though Favorinus is playing the part of the easily offended defender of piety, his feigned offense exposes the lack of cultural sophistication on the part of Mummius, the Romans, and, by implication, Favorinus’s Corinthian audience. The irony is that Favorinus is, himself, similarly a newcomer to Greek culture and identity. His outrage at Roman impiety takes the spotlight off his own tentative self-fashioning as the embodiment of Greekness. By not recognizing Favorinus’s own cultural achievements, education, and acclaim among the other Greeks, the Corinthians have shown themselves, similarly, to be ignorant Roman rubes, insufficiently able to see the value in his Greek performance. Commodifying Greekness In his description of Corinth in the early first century CE, Strabo recounts a version of the Roman sack of the city that is similar to Favorinus’s, dwelling on both the destruction of art by the Romans and Mummius’s exportation of vast amounts of Corinthian art to Rome and Italy.44 But Strabo goes on to tell

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of how the first Corinthian colonists, upon taking over the city, immediately ransacked the Greek graves in town for ceramics and bronzes that they could sell as “Necrocorinthia” to Rome. But after Corinth had remained a desert a long time, it was restored again because of its natural position by Caesar, son of God, who sent out colonists, most of whom were of the freedmen genos. When they were removing the ruins and also digging up the graves, they found many terra-cotta reliefs, and also many bronzes. And since they marveled at the workmanship, they left no grave unexamined; so that, abounding with such things and selling them for a high price, they filled Rome with “Necrocorinthia” [Νεκροκορινθίων]. For thus they called the things removed from the graves, particularly the terracottas. Now at the beginning the terra-cottas were very highly valued, like Corinthian-made bronzes, but later they ceased to care much when the terracottas gave out, and most of them were not well-made. (Strabo 8.6.23)

The marketing of Corinthian grave goods is but the last gasp of the influence that Corinth’s destruction by Mummius had on Roman cultural tastes.45 Favorinus is himself a product of the commodification of Greekness in the wake of Roman conquest. Favorinus, though a Roman citizen of equestrian rank, has become such a consumer of Greek culture that he now identifies completely with the product. But Favorinus also recognizes that by the very fact that a Roman Gaul can appropriate Greek identity for himself makes it difficult to identify who is truly a Greek and who merely “seems” to be one. That Romans can buy, steal, rename, mislabel, and mutilate the markers of Greek culture calls into question the very existence of a line dividing Greek from Roman. If anyone can access these cultural commodities, how does one determine who is truly Greek and who is merely a poser? It is within this cycle of conquest and appropriation that Favorinus’s criticism has real bite. Favorinus links the destruction of his statue by the Corinthians with acts of impiety and ignorance performed by other Romans, thus implying that their actions mark them as culturally ignorant rubes, unable to recognize proper Greekness. This calls into question their own claims to possessing an authentic Greek heritage and identity. Favorinus can show himself to be the true model for Hellenic transformation only by showing the Corinthians to be stillborn Greeks, stunted by their inability to divide themselves properly between Greek and Roman.46 Favorinus plays with the ambiguity of Greek identity as a commodity, suggesting that one can adapt and transform, but one can also fail, and dishonorably at that. In its mimetic ambiguity, Corinth only seems and cannot be.

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One among Many in Corinth We do not know the outcome of Favorinus’s rhetorical gambit before his Corinthian audience. Was he driven out of the Corinthian forum by an angry mob? Did they pick up on the subtle line of attack offered throughout the oration? Were they so overcome by his self-presentation that they rebuilt his fallen statue? We will never know the outcome of Favorinus’s oration, but we do know something of how Paul’s self-presentation and rhetoric were heard and interpreted in Corinth. In chapters 2 and 3 I will lay the groundwork for how we might hear the spectral presences of the Corinthians who responded to Paul. Before moving on, however, it is worth pausing to reflect briefly on what we have learned from placing Paul and Favorinus side by side. Both Paul and Favorinus claim to be able to cross ethnic boundaries: Favorinus, though a Gaul and a Roman, not only seems to be but is Greek, whereas Paul can become as a Judean, a Gentile, or anything else he needs to be to win others to the gospel. Both claim a divine mandate for their respective missions. Favorinus has been equipped by the gods to show all people, whether Greek, Roman, Celtic, or barbarian, that the ideal of Greekness can be achieved through education and training, and Paul is apostle to the nations who works both to gain a reward (μίσθος) and to become a partner (συγκοινωνός, 9:23) in the gospel. Both have trained their bodies to become other than what they are. For Favorinus this took the form of training in accent, deportment, and dress, whereas Paul’s training is for the athletic field or the arena. Both have given up their standing and renounced privileges for the sake of their goals. Favorinus sacrificed wealth, political standing, and “everything” to be Greek. Paul renounced his rights as an apostle, assumed an enslaved position, and condescended to become all things to all people. These similarities suggest that both authors saw it as advantageous to present themselves as able to cross ethnic boundaries, an achievement that was acquired through training and hard work. But what can we say about such bodies? Each body was presented to an audience of Corinthians as part of a deliberative political argument. Like Philo, with whom we began this chapter, these bodies are deployed in the service of political men, looking to convince an audience to assent to their arguments. Paul’s body sought to persuade an audience about proper dietary and cultic practice, whereas Favorinus asked the inhabitants of the city to reflect on their (from his perspective) poor choices. Favorinus made his body a site around which to interrogate the power of education as a means of transforming the self. He lifts up the paradox of his body, which speaks, looks, acts, and thinks as a Greek, while hailing from Gaul and holding Roman citizenship. This paradoxical body is

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made to be the ultimate model of what it means to be Greek. To miss the truth of Favorinus’s body is to show oneself to be culturally ignorant, lacking in sophistication and proper education. This is precisely how Favorinus characterizes his Corinthian audience: their affront to his statue, and thus to the orator himself, shows the Corinthians for the stillborn Greeks that they truly are. Paul’s body does a different kind of political work. Physically trained and tried as a philosophical athlete, Paul’s body morphs and adapts to each new context. Unlike Favorinus’s singular transformation from Gaul to Greek, Paul’s body is constantly in flux, perennially in motion. Driven to gain more for Christ and acquire a prize, Paul’s body competes vigorously, willing even to be enslaved for the gospel, a diminution of status that Favorinus never considers. Yet Paul does not offer this malleable body up to his Corinthian audiences as an object of imitation, as does Favorinus—at least not directly. The Corinthians should not strive for polymorphic bodies for themselves; rather, they ought to imitate Paul in “pleasing” others (11:1). In this particular case, Paul suggests that pleasing others means giving up eating food sacrificed to idols, a potential danger to the community and to hypothetical siblings. Paul’s body is thus put to political use in the Corinthian ekkle¯sia. Paul’s body is enfolded in discourses of philosophical self-control, athletic training, enslaved leadership, and pedagogical adaptability, all of which serve to reinforce the importance of Paul’s body as an example to be imitated, if not directly. Paul insists that his polymorphic body has a stable core “in the law of Christ” (ἔννομος Χριστοῦ), that beneath the vacillations and transformations there lies a “real” Paul. The disjunction between inside and outside, between stability and flux, calls to mind Favorinus’s playful contrast between seeming and being. Does Paul only seem to be what he claims? What is left when one strips away all those things that he “becomes as”? Is there a “real” Paul beneath all the seemings? As we will see in the chapters that follow, “some” Corinthians to whom Paul wrote asked such questions of Paul. In so doing, they read Paul’s polymorphic body not as worthy of praise and imitation, but as one among many in Corinth willing to say or do anything for his own ends.

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Marketplaces, Merchant Ships, and Festivals Negotiating Identities in Corinth

For [Corinth] is, as it were, a kind of market place, and at that common to all the Greeks, and a national festival. —Aelius Aristides, Isthmian Oration, 23

A Day at the Isthmian Games Every two years the Isthmian Games, dedicated to Poseidon and the hero Melikertes/Palaimon, drew competitors and tourists to Corinth from all over the Greek world, making it one of the four most important Panhellenic festivals. Along with athletes and spectators from all over the Greek world, the games brought increased commerce, as the crowds who attended the event would purchase provisions, housing, and souvenirs. Cultural luminaries competed in the artistic contests at the games or merely showed up to gain a larger audience. It was also not uncommon for the agonothetes (president of the games) to host banquets for the citizens of Corinth during the games, an opportunity to celebrate over food and to be reminded of how the Isthmian Games made Corinth a special place.1 Speaking at the games in the mid-second century CE, the famous orator Aelius Aristides praised Poseidon, the presiding deity, emphasizing how the god’s gifts to humanity are universal, creating new possibilities for trade, communication, and interaction between peoples: For it [Corinth] is, as it were, a kind of market place [ἀγορά], and at that common to all the Greeks [κοινὴ τῶν Ἑλλήνων], and a national festival [πανήγυρις], not like this present one which the Greek race [τὸ Ἑλληνικόν] celebrates here

47

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Corinth and Corinthians between Greece and Rome every two years, but one which is celebrated every year and daily. . . . For it receives all cities and sends them off again and is a common refuge for all [κοινὴ πάντων ἐστὶ καταφυγή], like a kind of route and passage for all mankind, no matter where one would travel, and it is a common city for all the Greeks [κοινὸν ἄστυ τῶν Ἑλλήνων], indeed, as it were, a kind of metropolis and mother city [οἵον μητρόπολίς τις ἀτεχνῶς καὶ μήτηρ] in this respect.2 (23–24)

These images of the city as a “common” (note the repetition of κοινός three times) marketplace and festival for all Greeks ties together the Panhellenism experienced at the games with the trade that moved through Corinth. The mixing occasioned by international trade is cast as a model of ethnic integration, emphasized by labeling Corinth a metropolis and a mother, words that evoke both Corinth’s past as a colonial empire in the archaic period and its present relationship to the new metropolis of Rome.3 Such a description places Corinth within the fabric of the Roman Empire, but it also emphasizes that Corinth can absorb other Greeks, like a common refuge (κοινὴ καταφυγή), without losing its identity or importance as the marketplace of the Greek world. As a center of Panhellenic culture Corinth is also, for Aristides, a wise teacher: Indeed, you would see it everywhere full of wealth and an abundance of goods [πλοὐτου . . . καὶ πλήνθου ἀγαθῶν], as much as is likely, since the earth on every side and the sea on every side flood it with these, as if it dwelled in the midst of its goods and was washed all around by them, like a merchant ship [τινα ὁλκάδα]. While traveling about the city, you would find wisdom [σοφόν] and you would learn and hear it from its inanimate objects. So numerous are the treasures of paintings all about it, wherever one would simply look, throughout the streets themselves and the porticoes. And further the gymnasiums and schools are instructions and stories. (27–28)

Like a merchant ship (ὁλκάδα), the bearer of international commerce, the city is flooded with things from all directions, bringing culture from far and wide and storing it in the very streets. It absorbs the new without diluting its Hellenic identity. The very fabric of the city exudes wisdom to the casual passerby, and its physical space is pedagogical.4 Along with this wisdom, the city speaks of the heroes and myths that imbue the city with Greek history and culture. Aristides mentions Sisyphus, Corinthus, Bellerophon, the invention of weights and measures, the building of the Argo, the first ship, and the taming of Pegasos (29). As a meeting place for famous figures in Greek history, the city acts as an important node in Greek culture, bearing as it does the tales of heroes and gods,

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the development of technology, and the practice of Greek values. The city thus comes to bear Greek identity by the storing of cultural artifacts and tales. This Panhellenic identity celebrated by Aristides is one that also requires the incorporation of the city’s Roman present. Aristides notes Corinth’s history of justice: “Indeed, the city was of old a starting point for good order, and even now administers justice for the Greeks” (καὶ μὴν εὐνομίας γε ὁρμητήριον ἡ πόλις ἔτι καὶ νῦν βραβεύει τὰ δίκαια τοῖς Ἑλλήσι [27]). Corinth’s past actions as a promoter of good order show a continuity with the present, where the city administers justice on behalf of the Romans as the provincial capital of the province of Achaia.5 As he draws his oration to a close, Aristides offers a prayer that invites the Roman emperors into the festival alongside the gods and the Greeks in religious piety: “It remains for each of us to go to our respective duties after a prayer to Poseidon, Amphitrite, Leucothea, Palaimon, the Nereids, and all the gods and goddesses of the sea, to grant safety and preservation on land and sea to the great Emperor, to his whole genos, and to the Greek race [βασιλεῖ τε τῷ μεγάλῳ καὶ γένει ξύμπαντι τούτου καὶ τῷ γένει τῷ τῶν Ἑλλήνων], and to us to thrive in oratory and in other respects as well” (42). In Aristides’ characterization, Corinth becomes a site for the integration of Greeks and Romans, “a Greek city which can absorb Roman influence, in a way which makes it more influential and more suited to Corinth’s position at the centre of the Greek world.”6 Aristides’ description of Corinth is clearly a construction, a panegyric that follows standard rhetorical patterns for how one might praise a city, but in his choice of details, Aristides draws on what he thinks praiseworthy in the city as he knows it. In his Corinth, Aristides conjures images of trade, travel, and mixing, the acquisition of wealth and culture, the delicate balance between Rome and Greece, and the blurring of cultic traditions and boundaries. In what follows I explore these themes as they emerge in archaeological and literary remains from the city in the decades before Aristides. Such attention to the local conditions of Corinth is essential to understanding not only how Paul’s and Favorinus’s rhetoric from the last chapter made sense within the landscape of Corinth. Attention to the local specifics of Corinth also allows us to learn something about what Corinthian audiences had available to them to “think with” when they heard and responded to speakers and writers like Paul and Favorinus. The goal of this attention to the local is to show something of the variety of ways in which ethnic identity was negotiated in the city, not as background for understanding Paul’s (or Favorinus’s) intention, but rather as a way of placing these utterances into a broader conversation. By looking at the varieties of

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Corinthian identity constructions, we free ourselves up to conjure other voices of Corinthians. I begin with an examination of Corinth’s position along the trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean. By studying data on trade in Corinth, I show how the Roman Empire created economic interrelationships that changed the processes of economic production and distribution, created opportunities for social and cultural interaction, and allowed for new patterns of consumption and luxury. From Corinth Roman and Italian goods made their way to Greece and vice versa, moving through social networks that connected Italy and Greece by way of Corinth. I then turn to the Corinthian elite, a group made up largely of those who could most easily benefit from Corinth’s place between Greece and Rome: Greek freedmen from prominent Roman families and negotiatores, Italian trading families with long-standing ties to Greece. Able to “seem” both Greek and Latin at the same time, the Corinthian elite capitalized on the opportunities made possible by Corinth’s position along ancient trade routes. Finally, we turn to examples of how the cultural exchange brought about by Corinth’s trading relationships created new possibilities for using language, benefaction, and cultic practice as a way of negotiating between and among Roman, Greek, and Corinthian identities. Attention to these subtle and complex negotiations, “the variety of discourses, material and intellectual resources, processes and practices by which people make sense of their lives in contexts of ancient pluralism,”7 opens up space to hear the forgotten voices of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote.

Thinking Theoretically Before moving on, I want to dwell briefly on the theoretical perspective that I bring to organizing the materials in this chapter. By examining evidence for the various negotiations of identity in Corinth, I am not looking to chart a unified ideology that would have been adopted by the Corinthians. Thus, I am not looking for “Roman imperial ideology” or the “ideology of patronage.” Neither am I am describing the “polis religion” of Corinth, a unified and stable set of cults and practices that gave the city a distinctive local identity. Rather, I attempt to invoke a sense of the multiple “ordering principles” that were negotiated in the landscape of Corinth. Ideology and civic religion are certainly two kinds of ordering principles, but other alternatives are also important: myth, place, oracles, pilgrimage, and travel, to name but a few.8 What I hope to convey in my exploration of Corinthian identity is a sense of how the inhabitants of

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Corinth negotiated between and among these various orders, thereby creating pluriform new ways of constructing identity and cultic practice. In describing these negotiations of identity among the inhabitants of Corinth, I use the category of the hybrid, which has been so useful for a number of postcolonial theorists. Hybridity is a result of the structural conditions of colonization operating in local contexts. A focus on the local conditions under a colonial regime allows us to examine both the larger, international structural characteristics of Roman colonial expansion and the ways in which “each local context is reproduced by various social groups, some of which can be defined as colonized and others as colonizing while still others appear to occupy positions in-between. This presents a much more complex, ambiguous or disorganized and contradictory appearance to the local colonial contexts than allowed for in the simple opposition between colonizers and colonized.”9 By focusing on complexity and improvisation in Corinthian life, we are able to offer a textured picture of the different hybrid practices and identities that could be constructed within the landscape of Corinth. Careful attention to the evidence from Corinth helps us imagine the “everyday practice of social actors and their daily interaction in constructing and reproducing colonial society.”10 This focus on the various ways that Corinthians positioned themselves within a colonial landscape, between Greece and Rome, is essential to understanding the complexity of the ethnic rhetoric that we will explore in later chapters. The deployment of ethnic rhetoric and the processes of group identity formation are always affected by larger economic and imperial structural forces, but also equally by local conditions and the possibilities afforded in the spaces between. By interrogating these spaces, we open ourselves up to new ways of thinking about how both Paul and the Corinthians to whom he wrote were equally negotiating their places within the complex and dynamic landscape of Corinth.

Trade and Commerce between Greece and Rome Many scholars have assumed that Corinth was a veterans’ colony, created by Julius Caesar as a means of resettling his veterans. But, as Ben Millis has recently argued, there is insufficient evidence for a sizable veteran population in Corinth, as we find, for example, in the neighboring Roman colony of Patras. Because of its unique location along the narrow isthmus connecting mainland Greece to the Peloponnesos, Corinth acted as an emporium for goods coming from Italy and the Greek East, while also creating a more efficient means of administrative and military communication.11

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Corinth and Corinthians between Greece and Rome

Figure 2. View of the Isthmus from Acrocorinth

The geographic benefits of the city’s location help explain why the Romans would see Corinth as a potentially important economic center. Corinth sits at a favorable spot for controlling trade and communication in the region (see figure 2). Situated along the slopes of Acrocorinth at the western end of the Isthmus, Corinth controlled access to mainland Greece for cities in the interior of the Peloponnesos. Via its two ports, Kenchreai and Lechaion, Corinth also controlled a maritime trade route that avoided treacherous sailing routes around the southern tip of the Peloponnesos. Cargo destined for Corinth or the inland Peloponnesos would be unloaded in one of the ports and then purchased by local merchants who would then ship them overland to places such as Cleonai, Argos, and Arcadia.12 Corinth’s two ports would also have functioned as collection points for goods arriving from east and west, which would then be sold, repackaged, or transferred to merchants involved in regional cabotage. Ships carrying heavier and bulkier cargoes, such as marble columns, sculpture, and grain shipments, probably had their cargoes broken up and transferred over the Isthmus.13 Since no road has been found connecting the two Corinthian ports directly to each

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other, it is likely that many offloaded goods made their way through Corinth itself, which allowed the Corinthians to control large segments of the trade passing through. Corinth thus acted as a middleman and marketplace for goods moving in and out of its ports. At the local level, there is evidence that the early colonists planned for a significant amount of trading activity. For example, Charles Williams has shown that the bulk of the civic buildings in the city center were devoted to banking, shipping offices, and markets, which suggests that the early planners made space for expanding trade networks from the very earliest stages of town planning. We can see an example of a typical Corinthian “office” in the North Market (see figure 3), an office complex north of the Temple of Apollo. Beyond the North Market, along the Lechaion Road, there were offices and a meat market, and offices and shops could be found in and surrounding the Corinthian Forum.14 These units would have housed shops for local merchants to sell their wares, offices for larger shipping businesses, and banking services, for which Corinth, along with Patras and Athens, was famous, if not infamous (Plutarch, Moralia 831 [“On Borrowing”]). The evidence for trade and commerce in Corinth

Figure 3. North Market, from the north

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Corinth and Corinthians between Greece and Rome

suggests that the city was a crucial node in commerce for the Greek East and Italy, a position that suggests both an interesting set of cultural influences and an environment in which we might expect to find evidence for a variety of patterns of consumption, cultural appropriation, and ethnic interaction. Corinth’s economy was based primarily on trade, not on the production of any one particular exportable good. Charles Williams has noted that Corinth was probably not able to produce enough food to satisfy local consumption, but depended on its regional trading network to provide it with resources to sustain the population. Since Corinth was not focused on one particular product, its market was highly diversified. Among the exports were wool, dyed woven goods, olive oil, honey, and bronze; however, these exports, while important to the local economy and the broader regional producers who moved their goods to Corinth for sale, were not the main producers of wealth for the city.15 This lay in the movement of imports into the city and its ports. In regard to waterborne trade, Corinth was a crucial node in the movement of goods from the east and west. We should not, though, overestimate the extent of Corinth’s trading partners. As Kathleen Warner Slane has shown, Corinth did not receive ships and goods directly from all the corners of the Mediterranean. Various regional collection points in the east and west served as intermediaries between local producers and Corinthian traders. For example, Ostia, Rome’s port, seems to have been a collection site for goods from central Italy, southern Gaul, Spain, and possibly North Africa, which then moved along a network connected to Corinth. Two other routes came in to the city from Asia via Ephesos and Pergamon to the north and a route from the Levant that ran along the north coast of Crete. So, though Corinth certainly saw its fair share of commodities and visitors from all over the Mediterranean, its trading relations, and thus the immediate social networks on which such economic relations were based, would have been less far flung. As a result, Latin and Greek were probably the dominant languages of trade. It is also likely that the cultural influences that moved through Corinth were largely filtered through these regional collection points.16 Slane’s work on the Roman pottery from Corinth allows us to assess broader patterns in trade that moved through Corinth. Though western commodities dominated Corinth’s imports up until the third quarter of the first century CE, there was always a strong influx of imports from the Greek East, which suggests again that there would have been a series of economic networks of Greeks and Italians that would have to be negotiated by Corinthian traders. Corinth’s earliest imports came predominantly from Italy; Italian sigillata or Arretine

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made up 63 percent of fine ware imports between 25 and 50 CE, and imports of Pergamene Çandarli ware were a close second. Until the third quarter of the first century, Corinthian imports were dominated by western sources routed to Corinth through Italy, when they were replaced by imports of eastern sigillata B, Arretine-influenced fine wares produced in the east.17 Not only do these imports tell us something about the development of pottery styles, but they also highlight the lines of trade, communication, and mobility that brought western commodities, social networks, and cultural connections, all of which marked new patterns of taste and luxury. For example, John Hayes has shown how the production of local Corinthian pottery, generally produced not for export but for local consumption, was influenced by the Arretine forms arriving from Italy.18 Local craftsmen imitated what must have been perceived as valuable or stylish pottery coming from Italy. In the early decades of the colony, the imported Italian fine wares may have been viewed as a way to display Roman forms of luxury and identity.19 This suggests that local aesthetics and tastes were shaped by larger trends, which in turn shaped Corinthian consumption and production. The evidence for trade in Corinth shows one of the networks that moved goods, people, and ideas between Greece and Italy. The successful negotiation of these links required that the early colonists be able to adapt themselves to Greek and Italian shifts in demand and production, which would have required social networks in Greece and Italy and facility with Greek and Latin, attributes that we will see emerge in the demographics of the Corinthian elite. The movement of goods from east to west and back again in Corinth also suggests that patterns of luxury, taste, and culture would be continually in flux. These patterns would no doubt shift as rapidly as the tenuous patterns of trade and production that characterized ancient trade as a whole. Arretine fine wares may have been a marker of Roman identity early in the colony’s existence, but by the mid-first century CE they were imitated by both local potters and the producers of eastern sigillata B at Tralles and Çandarli. What was perhaps first a marker of Romanness quickly became a commonplace commodity form, changing its significance in the ways consumption can mark identity.20 Corinth was a city whose fortunes were tied directly to the changing patterns of trade and imperial expansion brought by Rome to the Greek East. It was an agent for expanding Roman economic power abroad, acting as a friendly emporium for exports coming from east and west. The trade routes on which Corinth depended required a local elite that was able to adapt to changes in Greek or Italian consumption and production. It also facilitated cultural appropriation

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through changing patterns of consumption and opened the door to ethnic interaction among Greeks, Romans, Italians, and others who found their way to one of Corinth’s ports.

Are You Greek or Are You Roman? As we saw above, Corinth’s trading relationships offered new economic and political possibilities for those who could negotiate between and among Greek and Latin traders, merchants, and other social networks. When we look at the demographics of the Corinthian elite, we see individuals and families who were adept at negotiating these new possibilities, able to navigate the lines between Greek and Latin identities. In this section we look at how members of the Corinthian elite, particularly freedmen and their families, negotiated their identities and their places in the landscape of Corinth. This examination of the Corinthian elite produces two broad observations about their role in Corinth and in the redefinition of provincial society. First, some of the Corinthian elite seem to have been adept at positioning themselves within the social and material possibilities afforded to Corinth as a Roman colony in Greece, an ongoing process that would have been crucial to the city’s economic and political prosperity. Second, like other provincial elites in the Roman Empire, the Corinthian elite participated in their own reinvention of Roman identity and culture. By working within the “structured system of differences” created by Roman imperial power, the Corinthian elite could “negotiate their own power simultaneously in local and in imperial contexts.” Such negotiation was both constrained by Roman power and part of a process by which provincial elites influenced the culture of the empire as a whole. In Corinth many elites positioned themselves through public displays of devotion to the imperial family and to the gods that they patronized. In the process local acts of benefaction and patronage displayed connections and allegiance to the imperial center.21 The Demographics of the Corinthian Elite Antony Spawforth’s work on the demographics of the early elite suggests that the bulk of the colony’s elite came from two groups that would be best able to manage commerce between Greece and Rome: Greek freedmen and negotiatores, Italian trading families that had been operating in the Greek East for several centuries and which also included a sizable number of freedmen. Greek freedmen made up a large portion of the initial colonists in Corinth;

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presumably they were sent to Corinth because they would be well suited to manage trading interests for wealthy Roman families.22 Since Corinth was a Julian colony, freedmen there were able to hold public office (at least initially), and they account for 19 percent of the city’s duoviri, the highest administrative office. This is an impressive figure and attests to the possibilities that were open to freedmen in Corinth. Corinthian freedmen were also actively engaged in civic life in a number of voluntary associations, many of which were associated with the imperial cult.23 In such an environment, the status of a freedman was not necessarily an impediment to social advancement, even if some of the stigma was still present. Many of the freedmen who came to Corinth were connected to prominent Roman families, such as the Iulii or the Antonii. As Greek speakers they were able to manage trading interests for prominent patrons, acting as middlemen in the flow of goods that moved through the city. As freedmen they possessed Roman citizenship, a history of socialization within Roman households, and the backing of powerful patrons, occasionally including even the emperor himself. The economic success of these freedmen was translated into local acts of euergetism, or benefaction, that emphasized these connections through devotion to the imperial family and the deities that they favored. The negotiatores were members of families that had been part of the expansion of Roman trade networks in the Greek East for generations by the time of the colonization of Corinth. Spawforth notes that 29 percent of the early duoviri were drawn from the ranks of eastern negotiatores. This is a substantial number, but one that should not be unexpected in a Roman colony along a major axis of international trade. Because of the opportunities available in Corinth, the Corinthian duoviri were drawn from some of the more prominent Italian trading circles in the Greek East.24 The prominence of negotiatores in a number of Greek cities emerged through the expanding trade networks and cultural interactions that accompanied the growth of the Roman Republic as a colonial empire.25 These families comprised a mixture of native Italians (from Italy proper, Sicily, and Magna Graecia), foreign citizens of Italian cities, freedmen of Greek and eastern origin, and slaves from those same regions; they self-identified as Italian or Roman. As such, the negotiatores remained an agglomeration of persons from a variety of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. What held these groups together were the familial and patronal linkages that defined trading relationships in the ancient world and a self-identification as Roman or Italian. In inscriptions, they often identify or are identified as Ῥωμαῖοι, Ἰταλικοί, or Italici. Traders who could

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marshal connections with the emerging superpower in the west and with the resource producers in the east stood a greater chance of capitalizing on the trade between the two. Many of these negotiatores found their way to prominent positions in Corinth after it was colonized by the Romans in 44 BCE. Though both the freedmen and the negotiatores benefited from a connection with the rising power of Rome, the Italian trading families had deep connections in Greece and so had a history of negotiating between Greece and Italy. These families had learned to adapt their self-presentation as they sought to do business in Greece. All of this suggests that the very term that I have employed (“elite”) is something of a misnomer for Corinth. A large percentage of the Corinthian “elite” came from groups that we might not immediately classify as elite (freedmen, traders, clients), rather than from well-heeled Roman families or wealthy and cultured Greeks. This means that when we take a closer look at individual Corinthian elites and their families, we must pay attention to the ways in which they constructed their identities and status within the landscape of both Corinth and the wider Roman provincial society through marshaling whatever cultural, ethnic, and political resources were available to them. In this way we can see some of the dynamism of Corinthian identities between Greece and Rome. What’s in a Name? Freedmen among the Corinthian Elite Because freedmen were an important segment of the Corinthian elite, including those who were negotiatores, I want to explore the complex strategies by which freedmen and their families negotiated their place in Corinthian society. We can glimpse something of the ambiguities associated with freedmen and their status in Corinth by looking at how they represented themselves on inscriptions in the city, particularly in their names. Though some freedmen in Corinth were prominent members of the civic elite, they rarely self-identified as freedmen in inscriptions in this way;26 however, the marks of their status were not fully erased. Often it is in the very names of Corinthian freedmen that we can see the complex negotiations of status and ethnic identity in which these freedmen were engaged. One way that we often identify freedmen in Corinthian inscriptions is through a combination of two elements: the lack of any mention of a father and the use of Greek names commonly given to slaves. In typical Latin honorary inscriptions, it is common to include a patronymic (the first initial of the father’s praenomen plus f[ilius]) inserted between the nomen and the cognomen of the honorand (for example, Ti. Claudius P.f. Dinippus, where P.f. stands for “son of Publius”). Freedmen were often marked in inscriptions with a similar formula:

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Figure 4. Babbius monument, Corinthian Forum

“—. l[ibertus]” (“freedman of —”). Freedmen in Corinth often avoided the use of a patronymic in their names because such an inclusion would mark them as ex-slaves. When combined with a Greek cognomen, this often suggests that the individual was a freedman. An instructive example of this is that of Cn. Babbius Philinus, a prominent Corinthian benefactor in the early imperial period. Under Augustus, he donated an aedicula on the western end of the Forum (see figure 4), as well as several other prominent landmarks.27 From the inscriptions associated with his building projects, we learn that Babbius was an aedile and a duovir, the two most important administrative positions, and an official priest, though of what cult is not clear.28 None of the inscriptions associated with Babbius mentions his father, which suggests that he was a freedman.29 The cognomen Philinus further hints that Babbius was of Greek origin. Babbius, then, was probably a Greek freedman who came to the colony (perhaps at its inception) and built up enough wealth both to act as a major benefactor to the city and to take up various magistracies. The costs of public office in a Roman colony were considerable. Babbius must

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have amassed a rather large fortune to have been an officeholder and a generous builder. Another way in which the names of freedmen and their family members tell us something about the negotiation of Greek and Roman in Corinth can be seen in the name of Babbius’s son, Cn. Babbius Italicus. As we have seen, the elder Babbius was successful enough to move up the political ladder of Corinth rather quickly. All indications are that his wealth was enough for his descendants to remain active benefactors at both Corinth and Delphi, which placed them among the provincial elite for another century. The elder Babbius’s son is known from an inscription from the Southeast Building that commemorates his payment for marble revetment (Kent no. 327) sometime during the reign of Claudius or Nero.30 The cognomen Italicus (“Italic”) is interesting: the name does not suggest any moral or physical trait, but rather is a marker of ethnic affiliation. This suggests a desire on the part of his father to develop a more explicitly Italian or Roman image for the family, a move away from the Greek sound of his own cognomen. Indeed, it may be that a Greek cognomen was avoided for fear that it would retain an implicit admission of servile origin. It also may reflect the preferences of the child himself, who may have picked up the cognomen because of an affinity for travel or study in Italy before becoming an active benefactor and citizen of Corinth.31 Regardless, the cognomen Italicus reflects a broader concern among Corinthian freedmen and their families to present themselves as connected to Italy, Rome, and the imperial family. The Babbii show some of the possibilities available to freedmen and their descendants in Corinth, if they knew how to navigate the economic potential that drew the Romans to the city in the first place. We can see similar negotiations of identity between Greece and Rome in the use of names linking freedmen directly to powerful Roman patrons. Many freedmen of prominent Roman families continued to bear the praenomen and nomen of their former masters (for example, M. Antonius Orestes). This halferasure is a mark of how prominent freedmen in Corinth adapted to the new opportunities available to them in the city. By only partially erasing their past, these freedmen shed the explicit marks of slave-master filiation while at the same time displaying their intimate connections to the ultimate patrons: the Roman elite and the imperial family. Such adaptability allowed this segment of the colony’s elite to maneuver more effectively as Greek freedmen in a Roman city at the crossroads of Roman Greece. An example of this phenomenon comes with freedmen of Mark Antony and Julius Caesar. Identified by their use of the praenomen and nomen of their

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former masters (e.g., C. Iulius or M. Antonius), these freedmen probably found their way to Corinth as agents who might manage trading interests for their patrons. For example, we know of three C. Iulii who served as duoviri in the early years of the colony: C. Iulius ——, C. Iulius Nicephorus, and C. Iulius Hera[clanus]. The first and second C. Iulii are named duoviri on the two earliest minted series of coins in the colony.32 The third served as duovir quinquennalis, most probably in 7/8 CE. All three are most likely freedmen of Julius Caesar, who was known for having a large number of wealthy freedmen. The cognomina of the latter two Iulii suggest that their bearers were Greeks. That these freedmen took the name of their former master is relatively standard practice in the names of freedmen, but in Corinth, a city founded by their former master, the display of such an illustrious praenomen and nomen was a clear indication of the power and authority that was behind them.33 That the C. Iulii were some of the first leaders in a Julian colony is not surprising and suggests that they were able to take unique advantage of their patron’s position. They may have come to the colony of their own volition or, as is more likely, they were enrolled in the list of colonists at the request of their patron, who was no doubt interested in expanding his client base in an economically advantageous location in the Greek East. As Greek-speaking agents for their patrons, and, in the case of the Iulii, the patron, the wealthy freedmen of Corinth would have been ideally placed to negotiate business interests between Roman and Italian trading concerns and their Greek shipping partners.34 We can see another way in which the connection between a freedman and the emperor was represented in the earliest duoviral coinage that we have from the colony. Minted in 44/43 BCE under the authority of the duoviri C. Iulius and L. Aeficius Certus, the coins bear a laureate head of Julius Caesar with the name of the colony on one side and on the other an image of Bellerophon and Pegasos and the names of the duoviri (RPC I no. 1116).35 The imagery of the coin shows how being a freedman of a powerful Roman could be used in the local politics of Corinth. The display of Caesar’s image both shows respect for the colony’s deceased father and allows the viewer to make the connection between Caesar and the new duovir. A final example of freedmen who highlighted their connection to the emperor comes with the freedman P. Licinius (West no. 15). An inscription honoring a female divinity, perhaps Livia Augusta, was set up by Licinius, who fashions himself a philosebastos (a transliterated Greek term meaning “friend of Caesar”). The inscription uses a transliterated Greek term in a Latin inscription, evidence of bilingualism that we will see more of below, confirming the interaction of Greek and Latin in Corinth. In the inscription the freedman

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Licinius, who identifies himself as such by the abbreviation P.L., says that he set up of the monument for the health of Tiberius, perhaps after the plot of Sejanus was discovered. Licinius thus represents himself as a friend of Caesar while also setting up an inscription to his health. His concern for the emperor confirms, for the viewer, his title of friend but also shows him to be an imperial intimate, though he is not an imperial freedman. If Jones is correct in suggesting that the female deity honored in the inscription is Livia Augusta, Tiberius’s mother, the inscription testifies to a further connection that it seeks to create between Licinius and the imperial family. Though inscribed in behalf of the emperor’s health, the inscription presents Licinius as a loyal intimate of the imperial family, showing that, though a freedman, he is a person of influence and authority in Corinth.36 We have so far looked at several different ways in which Corinthian freedmen constructed their places within the local elite, largely by displaying their connections with the imperial family. But among the Corinthian elite there were also other ways in which one’s name could be used to place oneself within the landscape of Corinth. Because the negotiatores of Corinth included free persons and freedmen, some who made their way into the Corinthian elite sought to differentiate themselves from their contemporaries by stressing their “superior” genealogies. For example, two magistrates from the Fulvii in Corinth bear the names of famous Romans: Q. Fulvius Nobilior and Q. Fulvius Flaccus. The former was voted honorary magistrate status in Corinth (Kent no. 120) but bears the same name as the consul of 153 BCE and son of the conqueror of Aetolia. The latter was a duovir in either 54/55 or 55/56 CE (RPC I nos. 1189–1200) but bears the name of a famous consular family. Though the Corinthian Fulvii were not likely to have been descendants of a prominent Roman family, there is enough evidence to suggest that they were prominent negotiatores, possibly known for their connections to banking.37 By choosing names that evoked famous Romans, the Fulvii in Corinth stressed their “superior” genealogies to their fellow Corinthian elites who were freedmen or descendants of freedmen. The practice was not, however, restricted to free persons. The duovir Q. Caecilius Niger (34–31 BCE [RPC I nos. 1127– 28]), from a family with a long history among the negotiatores, was named for a Roman senator from the early first century BCE; however, since he served alongside the freedman C. Heius Pamphilus, he was probably himself a freedman. For the Fulvii and Caecilii in Corinth, names could be used as a means to display status among their contemporaries through claims to a prominent genealogy, just as the names of freedmen evoking Mark Antony and Julius Caesar served their own political interests.38 They thus represent another strategy

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for self-presentation among the Corinthian elite, where famous Roman names were used in local politics as free and freed vied for authority and status. If we reflect for a moment on these various strategies, we must assume that they were forged in competition for authority, status, and wealth among the various upwardly mobile families that came to define the Corinthian elite. Genealogy, ethnic cognomina, and kinship or friendship with the ruling family were all deployed by members of the elite as part of their attempt to assert their own place in Corinthian society. Some of these families became quite successful at gaining office in Corinth (such as the Heii and the Rutilii),39 though how these families came to dominate among the decurionate is probably impossible to know. Competition among the Corinthian elite was no doubt also shaped by the perceptions of other elites in the region. For example, the poet Crinagoras bemoaned the character of Corinth’s new colonists as unfitting for a city of Corinth’s stature (Greek Anthology 9.284) and other elites in the region seem to have been reluctant to associate themselves with the new colony until well into the middle of the first century CE. Even then this association may have been out of necessity, as was possibly the case with the exiled Euryclids of Sparta.40 Between Greek and Roman, free and freed, new and old, local and foreign, the Corinthian elite found a variety of ways to compete to establish their own places in both Corinth and the wider provincial landscape.

Negotiating Language, Space, and Cult Having looked at several strategies of self-presentation in the names of the Corinthian elite, I turn now to how attention to language use and cultic practice can allow us to see other negotiations of ethnic identity in Corinth. As our discussion of trade and elite identity has shown, Corinth was a site where cultural exchange between Greece and Italy created a complex and dynamic landscape, a context seldom explored by scholars of Corinth, many of whom have imaged Corinth as either “Greek” or “Roman.” The history of Corinth after its refoundation as a Roman colony has been imaged between two poles: the city was first “Romanized” by the early colonists who crafted a city that was a “mini-Rome” and then, by the second century CE, it was “hellenized” by an influx of Greek inhabitants who diluted the Romanness of the colony’s early years. These two models of social change presume that what constitutes Romanness or Greekness is static, along with the ways in which these identities are imposed on a civic landscape. Such an approach views social, economic, and political change through the prism of a constant or essential ethnic identity, which allows us to

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determine easily where the Roman ends and the Greek begins.41 By looking at the use of language and cultic practice in Corinth, this section examines how the history of Corinth between Greece and Rome can be reconstructed without presuming such static definitions of Greekness or Romanness. Language use in Corinth offers us an avenue along which to see how elite and nonelite citizens of Corinth situated and presented themselves with respect to Roman culture. Language is often a key marker of ethnic identity, particularly in bilingual and multilingual environments, where it is easier to mark difference through language or dialect. Bilingual contexts offer individuals and groups options for how to present themselves through the use of language, though these options were constrained by the structural conditions of Roman domination of Greece and Corinth’s relationships with Rome.42 The cultural exchange that produced Corinth’s bilingualism also afforded possibilities for the production of hybrid spaces and religious practices, such as priesthoods that honored Roman deities according to Greek cultic traditions. These hybrid spaces and cultic practices blur lines between Greek and Roman, offering us glimpses of new spaces that were opened up by individuals and groups in Corinth. They offer instances in which we can see “the negotiation of authoritative culture under conditions of empire,” suggesting possibilities for assimilation and resistance in the daily practice of life within the bilingual environment of Corinth.43 In particular, these hybrid cultic negotiations will be crucial in rethinking the creative agency of “some” Corinthians in chapters 3 and 6. Greek: The Language of the Street Though Corinth was a Roman colony, recent work by Ben Millis has conclusively shown that Greek was the language of daily life there.44 Millis is able to show this by examining the choice of language in contexts that suggest daily or mundane use. Graffiti on buildings across the excavated area of the city are almost always in Greek. Some graffiti not only show how Greek was used in daily life, but also indicate something of the ethnic diversity of Corinth. For example, a graffito in Greek from the bema reads: “Alexas and Sarapias are lovers of merriment” (Φίλοι | Ἀλεξᾶς | Σαραπιὰς | εὐφροσύνης [Kent no. 361]). Besides being written in Greek, the inscription is interesting for the names that it records, which are Syrian and Egyptian, respectively.45 Though these graffiti on architecture are hard to date, their testimony is buttressed by graffiti and dipinti on pottery, which can be accurately dated to the first centuries BCE and CE. Millis notes that the majority of personal marks on pottery indicating ownership are in Greek, in inverse ratios to those of Latin and Greek in public inscriptions. A similar ratio is found in the curse tablets

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found at the Demeter sanctuary, where seventeen of eighteen tablets are written in Greek.46 In these latter two cases we are dealing with uses of language that are nonpublic, and they thus offer testimony to the use of Greek in private or personal contexts. Further evidence comes from masons’ marks found on buildings in Corinth, where Millis can find only one example of marks using Latin characters. That the tradespeople and construction workers in the city made use of Greek in building suggests again that many nonelite members of Corinthian society spoke Greek. That Paul could assume an audience of Corinthians in the midfirst century CE would be fluent in Greek also adds to the evidence that Greek was the common language of daily life in the city.47 We can see evidence of how this might lead to problems in the display of Latin in Corinth. In two honorary inscriptions for the procurator P. Caninius Alexiadae f. Co[.] Agrippa (West nos. 65 and 66), mistakes were made by the workmen who cut the inscriptions. For example, in one inscription (no. 65) the final line reads, “BENE • ΛE SE • MIΛITO” (a nonsensical phrase mixing Greek and Latin characters), and not “BENE • DE SE • MERITO,” as West suggested, following what one would expect in Latin. In both cases, West thought that these errors were the work of Greek-speaking stonecutters who were not fully fluent in Latin. If this is the case, it suggests that many of the workers in Corinth were primarily Greek speakers and shows how the need to present oneself or one’s patron in a Latin idiom could run into difficulties in its execution.48 The evidence analyzed by Millis suggests that Greek, as opposed to Latin, was the language of daily life in Corinth and shows that the inhabitants of the city were predominantly Greek speakers or bilingual in Greek and Latin.49 This does not mean that the bulk of the inhabitants were from “Greece,” as the example of Alexas and Sarapias attests. In all likelihood it was the local elite who were the most bilingual part of the population, as this flexibility allowed them to better negotiate the complicated trade routes on which Corinth sat, while the nonelite, the craftsmen, builders, merchants, farmers, and others sitting at or below the poverty line were primarily Greek speakers. Latin, Monumental Writing, and “Roman” Space Whereas Greek was the language of the street, Latin was the language of monumental writing. Inscribed on the most prominent buildings in the city, and especially at the Forum, Latin was the language by which the city presented itself, to visitor and citizen alike. Latin inscriptions in the first centuries BCE and CE vastly outnumber those in Greek. This has often been used to suggest that Corinth was a particularly “Roman” city, and that only with the passage of

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time did it become “Greek” through the influx of Greek-speaking immigrants who took up residence in the city. Millis’s work forces us to rethink this characterization, since we now know that Greek was present as a commonly spoken language from the earliest years of the colony. Since a bilingual environment existed from the start, it is important to see the use of Latin in the inscriptions that dot the Forum not as dictated by the nature of the colony but as a mode of self-presentation within the field of agonistic competition for honor among the local and provincial elite. To think of Latin not as a default but as an option in elite self-presentation is to think beyond assumptions about Corinth as either a Greek or Roman space.50 Though language is an important means of marking ethnic identity, its importance shifts depending on the context. As Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has shown, Latin was not as central to Roman identity as Greek was to Greek identity. To be a Roman citizen did not necessarily require one to speak Latin, since the label “Roman” had a juridical content lacking in other ethnic labels in the Mediterranean.51 But this is not to say that the label Roman was in any way a stable identity. Rather, what it meant to be or claim to be Roman was “a work-in-progress, something to be argued for, not merely asserted.”52 Thus, the use of Latin in honorary inscriptions and dedications marking one’s euergetism was itself an argument about one’s ability to claim the label Roman, in so doing altering and coproducing Romanness. As Greg Woolf has argued, epigraphy was often used to address anxieties about identity, an anxiety that was no doubt felt by a colonial elite made up of mainly Greek freedmen and Italian traders.53 Monumental writing in Latin in the city center was a strategic mode for the city and its elite to present themselves as bearing a unified Roman identity, despite the realities. As Adams has shown through his study of Italian negotiatores on Delos in the Hellenistic period, Greeks tended to view any Italian as Roman, an ambiguity that was probably beneficial for the trading interests of Italian families who were not from Rome itself. The Italians on Delos preferred Latin as a designator of their community’s identity, as evidence from Delian inscriptions shows.54 The use of Latin as the language of monumentality in Corinth allowed Greek freedmen and Italian traders to present themselves and their city as “Roman.” If, as Woolf writes, “the primary function of monuments in the early Empire was as devices with which to assert the place of individuals within society,” the use of Latin in the colony suggests that the Corinthian elite saw their place in the world as tied to the power and patronage of Rome and the imperial family.55 We can also think about the options for self-presentation in ways beyond the linguistic by analyzing architectural style and the representation of gods and

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Figure 5. Corinthian Forum, from the east

goddesses, which also serve to mark ethnic difference within the city of Corinth. The monuments of the Corinthian Forum offer a space with which to think about such nonlinguistic modes of representation (see figure 5). It has often been noted that the Forum is a distinctly Roman and imperial landscape, where civic and provincial administration mixed with international commerce and religious devotion to the imperial family and to the gods of the Roman state, a statement of the city’s essential “Romanness.”56 In the Forum one finds Roman-style podium temples dedicated to popular imperial gods (Tyche/Fortuna, Clarion Apollo, and Venus), dedications honoring the emperors, such as the statue of Divus Augustus by the Augustales and those found in the Julian Basilica, and two monumental temples dedicated to Apollo and either Octavia or the Capitoline Triad. But the imagery of the Forum, with its ubiquitous Latin inscriptions, is less evidence of the city’s essential Romanness than it is a series of interrelated attempts by the Corinthian elite to present a Roman face to visitors and fellow citizens alike. The architecture of the Forum and the gods honored there draw on the “structuring principles” of Roman power to craft a civic landscape that argues for a privileged place within Roman provincial society.57 By translating economic power into public

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benefactions that mimicked Roman architectural style and honored the emperors and the deities they favored, the Corinthian elite negotiated the constraints of Roman power and produced new examples of the public display of Roman identity. One example of how the monuments of the Forum suggest a series of negotiations between Greek and Roman identities within the structuring principles of Roman power is the Augustales monument (see figure 6).58 Erected in the Tiberian period by two unknown local members of the Augustales, the monument consisted of a cyclical drum situated atop a rectangular bench on which probably stood an over-life-size statue of Augustus. The two Augustales dedicated the monument to Augustus as “divine” (divus). The monument might easily be seen as another instance of the “Romanness” of Corinth, but, as Margaret Laird has recently shown, its design plays with the dividing lines between

Figure 6. Augustales monument, from the west

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Greek and Roman, showing how the cultural exchange in Corinth created new possibilities for hybridized structures and identities. On the one hand, the monument represents a claim by the Augustales to prominence as benefactors during the remodeling of the Corinthian Forum in the early first century CE.59 The over-life-size statue of Augustus both honors the imperial family and presents Augustus as a patron of the Corinthian Augustales. On the other hand, the design of the monument itself invokes earlier Greek civic monuments. The bench built into the monument, which was a popular place to sit, judging by the wear on the stones, evokes Hellenistic exedrae that were popular models for other benches in the Forum. Further, the monument’s cylindrical base evokes a classical tradition that was used throughout Achaia in the erection of imperial statues. By making use of a classical Greek style, the Augustales monument evokes a Greek past within a Roman idiom as part of its attempt to display the importance of the Augustales themselves within the political and euergetistic landscape of Corinth.60 Built by members of an association that was often made up of freedmen, the monument also fits in a similar logic of affiliation with the emperor that we saw in the names of Corinthian duovirs. As the example of the Augustales monument shows, the styles and representations articulated throughout the Forum represent not a colonial “miniRome,” but a series of mimicries and appropriations that represent a new landscape of Roman social order between colonizer and colonized.61 The mixing of Greek and Latin offered new possibilities for negotiating identity in Corinth. The monuments of Corinth are best seen not as evidence for the Romanness of the city, but as arguments for particular relationships to Rome and for a variety of Roman provincial identities. GreekLatins and LatinGreeks The cultural exchange in the city brought about through international trade offered the possibility for a series of negotiations based on language use, selfpresentation, and cultic practice within the asymmetric power relationships of Roman provincial society. Though the use of Latin was not required of the Corinthians, it was associated with imperial power, which marked its use differently from that of Greek. Though Greek was probably the norm of daily usage in Corinth and could be used to mark Greekness as an identity or as a cultural commodity, Latin was the language of benefaction and administration. Within such an environment we should expect to see evidence of movement between the two languages, as the interaction of Greek and Latin created new grammatical structures or offered the possibility for sharing terminology. The examples of linguistic and cultic hybridity analyzed below point to the potential for multiple

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forms of cultural and ethnic hybridity between Greek and Roman.62 As such, they give us a sense of the variety of ways in which individuals and groups could strategically deploy and present their identities in Corinth between two ethnic labels (Greek and Roman); they offer another way of thinking about how Paul’s audience would have heard his own rhetoric of ethnicity. Among the funerary inscriptions from Corinth we find interesting examples of the mixing of Greek and Latin. One funerary inscription displays a Greek text that follows a Latin formula (Kent no. 294): Γ(άιος) Ἰούλιος Μαρκιανὸς ζῶν ἑαυτῶι καὶ Τερεντίαι Ἰουλίαι τῆι γυναικὶ καὶ Ἰουλίαι Ῥηκτείνηι τῆι θυγατρὶ ζώση[ι] (“Gaius Iulius Marcianus [purchased this] for himself while still living and for his wife Terentia Iulia and for his daughter Iulia Rectina while she was living”). As Kent notes, “The text is a literal translation of the Latin formula: C. Julius Marcianus v(ivens) sibi et Terentiae Juliae uxori et Juliae Rectinae f(iliae) v(iventi).” The text shows an interesting adaptation of Latin inscriptional practice by a freedmen family that had Latin names but wanted to display their burial site in Greek using a Latin formula.63 A parallel inscription is Kent no. 303: Ζῶν Π. Ἐγ[νάτιος] Ἀπολλ[ώνιος] Ἐφέσιος [ἑαυτῶ κ]αὶ Μοσχ[ίνη (?) γυνα-][κὶ] καἰ το[ῖς ἐκγόοις] (“While still living, P. Egnatios Apollonios from Ephesos [purchased this] for himself and for his wife Moschine . . . and for his parents”). This follows the same pattern (roughly) as the inscription above, employing a Latin formula in Greek. What is especially fascinating here is the international character of the inscription. An immigrant from Ephesos bearing a mixed Latin and Greek name has set up a funerary inscription in Greek that follows a Latin formula. More examples could be given, but these funerary monuments show how cultural exchange moved grammatical structures in a number of directions from Greek to Latin and back again.64 Cultural exchange in Corinth also shaped a series of negotiations in cultic practice and priestly offices, creating hybridized practices and institutions. Among the inscriptions of Corinth we find mention of two interesting offices: the theocolus of Juppiter Capitolinus (Kent nos. 152, 194–96, 198) and the irenarches of Janus (Kent no. 195). These priestly titles involve Roman gods with priestly offices named after transliterated Greek terms. They are thus an example of the hybridization of Greek priestly titles and practices with Roman deities. The use of the transliterated title theocolus (θεόκολος in Greek) goes back to the Augustan period, the earliest being an inscription honoring Sextus Olius Secundus (Kent no. 152). As Annette Hupfloher has noted, the title of theocolus was used for cult personnel mainly at Olympia, an interesting choice since the typical priestly title that was available for the Corinthians to choose was flamen Dialis.65 This suggests that the practice of the cult of Juppiter Capitolinus in

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Corinth must have been better described by the Greek term theocolus than by the typical Latin title. That the term appears on five separate inscriptions covering at least a century suggests that this was not due to the eccentricity of a particular priest. The creation of this office was the result of the hybridization of Roman and Greek cultic practices in Corinth. The office of the irenarches of Janus also suggests a similar hybridization of Greek and Roman religious practice in Corinth. The name of the officeholder is not visible in the single inscription that records this office (Kent no. 195), but this individual also held the office of theocolus of Juppiter. The term εἰρηνάρχης is common in Asia Minor, where it refers to an office not unlike that of a police commander, but that seems not to be the office referred to in this inscription. Kent suggests that the office may be to something like that of “the ruler of the peace of Janus,” which might have been connected to the symbolic closing of the doors to the temple of Janus in Rome during times of peace. Kent suggests that the events of 70 CE, in which the doors of Janus were closed and reconstruction began on the temple of Juppiter Capitolinus, may have been the occasion for the introduction of this office and its pairing with the title of the theocolus of Juppiter. Though the introduction of this office may have come as a result of events in Rome, it is still significant that the Corinthians named the office with a transliterated Greek title, which suggests that there was something about the cult as it was practiced in Corinth that fit better within the terminology of traditional Greek cultic practice.66 We might imagine what this looked like in reality by noting Apuleius’s description of cultic practice related to the Isis cult in Corinth’s southern port of Kenchreai (Metamorphoses 11.17). When a procession honoring Isis arrives at the temple, one of the priests reads from a book with prayers honoring the emperor, the senate, the knights, and the Roman people, along with prayers for sailors and ships, a prayer not unlike that which closed Aristides’ oration. The priest then proclaimed the “Launching of the Ships” (πλοιαφέσια) in Greek and then performed a Greek rite. This mixing of attention to the Romans and their leaders alongside a Greek reading and ritual suggests one of the ways in which one might envision the negotiations of cultic practice in Corinth between Greece and Rome. Delving further into Corinth’s official cultic offices, we find the common Latin titles of pontifex, augur, sacerdos, and flamen, but these are mixed with a series of Greek offices drawn from the Isthmian Games: hellanodikai, agonothetai, isagogeis, and pyrophoroi. Transliterated and not translated into Latin in honorary inscriptions in the city, these terms show how Greek titles have been appropriated into the Roman cursus, the path of honors by which elites moved up in civic life.

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The title agonothetes, the president of the Isthmian Games, often stands at the apex of an honorand’s cursus, showing that this office may have been as prestigious as that of the duovir quinquennalis. Transliterated into the Latin cursus in Corinth, the title of agonothetes was subject to further transformation. In a late first-century inscription (Kent no. 212), L. Papius Venereus is said to have served as the conagonothetes of the Isthmian Games with L. Vibullius Pius.67 This new title represents the further Latinization of the term in Corinth, with the attachment of the Latin prefix con- instead of the Greek συν-. These adaptations of titles from a local, Panhellenic festival into the order of local honors is not unique to Corinth. Barbara Levick has noticed similar local variations in Roman colonies in Asia Minor.68 Such inclusions were the result of the processes of assimilation and negotiation between Greek and Roman that shaped local discourses of selfrepresentation in Roman colonies. This mixing of cultic practices and titles in Corinth fits within broader changes in Corinthian cultic life that followed the city’s refoundation as a Roman colony. Christine Thomas has recently shown how the Roman colonists knew enough about Corinth’s earlier history to rebuild and reuse older cultic sites in and around the city, while also feeling free to change the architectural styles and ritual practices associated with the deities at these sites.69 Thomas focuses on the changes in architecture and cult at the Demeter and Kore Sanctuary on the slopes of Acrocorinth, but others could be noted as well. Pausanias (2.3.7) notes that, because of the Roman sack of the city and the introduction of new colonists, the Corinthians had ceased to make offerings to the cult of Medea’s children. Recently, Elizabeth Gebhard has shown how the Roman colonists introduced their own form of cult in the worship of Palaimon at Isthmia that both drew on earlier practice and introduced new forms.70 On the one hand, the colonists retained the use of the traditional mourning song for the hero, but they also built a new temple and introduced a subterranean chamber (adyton) that changed the focus of the cult. Thus, in a variety of places the Roman colonists felt free to keep, resituate, and adapt what they knew of Greek Corinthian cultic practice to suit their needs. These negotiations between the past and the present, between Greece and Rome, were but a few of many such negotiations in the landscape of Corinth. These hybridizations should not surprise us, even in a Roman colony. Like any Roman colony, Corinth was organized around models of administration chosen by Rome, followed a calendar and religious festivals associated with Roman history, and maintained strong connections to Rome and the imperial family. But Roman colonies were not “mini-Romes,” as is often suggested. As

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Wallace-Hadrill has shown, there is no one Roman way of colonial imitation. Even at such “prototypical” Roman colonies as Pompeii there is always a triangulation between Hellenistic influences, Roman forms and practices, and local languages, traditions, institutions, and culture that mark the production of social space and practice.71 Different coloniae expressed their Roman identities in different ways, and Corinth was no exception.

Defining Romanness in Corinth The evidence that has been assembled in this chapter offers a different picture of Corinth from what has been typical of scholarship by focusing on the multicultural environment of Corinth and the ways in which such an environment occasioned new possibilities for negotiating ethnic identity. Rather than seeing Corinth as either a Roman or Greek city, we looked at multiple ways in which the structural conditions of Roman imperial expansion shaped the options available for self-presentation in the city. This analysis requires that we be attentive to three interrelated patterns in the construction of identity in Corinth. First, the dominance of Latin and other forms of Roman architectural, administrative, and religious practice in Corinth should be viewed as appropriations and negotiations within an asymmetric field of provincial power relations and not as evidence that Corinth was an essentially “Roman” place. When seen as a series of appropriations, mimicries, negotiations, and resistances, the use of these forms in prominent places in the city, notably the Corinthian Forum, can be seen as an attempt by various Corinthians at various times to present themselves and their city as a “Roman” place. But the Romanness of Corinth will, by its very nature, be locally produced for Corinthian consumption, constructed as it is by the particular conditions that shaped the political, economic, social, and demographic conditions there. When they do occur, intimations of Romanness in Corinth often take the form of expressions of allegiance to the imperial family and the gods that they favored. This suggests that local benefactors perceived Romanness as defined partly by a relationship with the imperial family. Second, though I have emphasized the extent to which elite Corinthians had options in their self-presentation, I do not imply that these options were available to everyone. The evidence from Corinth is generally skewed toward the elites, who had resources that afforded certain advantages in self-presentation and education. That Paul wrote to his Corinthian audience in Greek, making no mention of Rome, Italians, or Romans, nor using any transliterated Latin terms, suggests that he did not have in mind an audience that was actively negotiating between Greek and Latin in the way that much of the evidence discussed in this

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chapter suggests. But some of the materials that have been discussed here suggest evidence for nonelite hybridity, whether in bilingual funerary inscriptions, “mistakes” by craftsmen in Latin inscriptions, or cultic practices that merged Greek and Latin elements.72 Nonelite Corinthians would also have been confronted by the monumental benefactions of the elite and could have seen in them ways of constructing their own identities as Corinthians. Finally, in the complex and dynamic cultural interactions in Corinth we should always expect to find a plurality of different ways of negotiating between Greek and Roman. Each of these instances will be shaped by particular interests and conditions; each needs to be accounted for in its own right and not as part of a broader narrative of the Romanization or hellenization of Corinth. Attention to the plural forms that these negotiations take gives us a better sense of the options available for articulating ethnic identity in Corinth, suggesting that we examine identity formation in Corinth as improvisational, provisional, and shaped by the complicated interaction between local and nonlocal influences. By looking for plurality over uniformity in our descriptions of Corinth and its inhabitants, we cultivate a historical imagination that is open to a diversity of constantly shifting voices, identities, and practices. These spectral presences, hinted at in roughly carved inscriptions, in the shards of earthen pottery, or in the barely discernible order of fallen stones, speak, if only partially, of the dynamism of daily life in Corinth. It is within this dynamism that we must cultivate an imagination that can hear again the voices of Paul and the forgotten Corinthians who heard and responded to his letters.

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3

Speech, Flattery, and the Negotiation of Identity for “Some” Corinthians

Mediterranean religious systems are concerned with expressions of change. . . . In some senses, this “religion of mutability” might be considered a more lasting, overarching structure than any of the specifics of Mediterranean religion. . . . The punctuated panorama of cult is constantly coming into being and dissolving. —Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea

Rethinking “Some” Corinthians from Puteoli In the latter half of the second century CE, a group of Tyrian merchants living in the Italian port of Puteoli sent an embassy to their hometown in Phoenicia. In the inscription detailing the embassy, dated to 174 CE, we learn that it was led by one Laches with the goal of acquiring from the Tyrian assembly a grant of 250 denarii per year to pay the misthos on the station. The merchants note that their numbers have diminished, which makes it difficult to pay for the station, the traditional rites and sacrifices to the paternal gods, a bull sacrifice at the local games in Puteoli, and expenses related to sacred days associated with the emperors, all of which the merchants have borne out of their own pockets. After recording the request delivered to the Tyrian assembly by Laches, the inscription then records the acta of the assembly. What is so fascinating about this part of the inscription is that it records a passionate debate in the Tyrian assembly over whether to grant the request of Laches and the Puteolian merchants. The leader of the opposition, a Tyrian council member named Philokles, son of Diodoros, resists the motion and offers a counterproposal that would see the Puteolian station absorbed by another station of Tyrian merchants in Rome. He even offers a misleading description of the relationship between the two stations

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at Puteoli and Rome. The acta go on to record exclamations from the assembly, some in favor of the request (“Justly do those in Puteoli ask”) and some opposed (“Philokles speaks well”). The debate is finally resolved by Laches, who reads from a tablet that contradicts Philokles’ description of the situation, but unfortunately the text breaks off at this point. The erection of the inscription, however, shows that Laches was successful in his mission and did receive the money from Tyre, despite the opposition of Philokles. This fascinating inscription, recording even the exclamations of what must have been a boisterous assembly meeting, offers us an example for imagining the fractious and complicated politics of the Corinthian community to which Paul wrote.1 The embassy of the Tyrians of Puteoli directed itself to a complicated situation involving international trade, linkages between voluntary associations and assemblies, money, patronage, and local political conditions, all of which were vigorously debated in the Tyrian assembly. The Corinthian community to whom Paul wrote was probably not all that dissimilar to the Tyrian assembly, full of competing and contesting voices that drove conversations about identity, money, authority, cultic practice, and theology. Whether we imagine the Corinthian community as a political assembly, a voluntary association, a meeting of related families, or a philosophical school, we have to assume a gathering of diverse opinions, perspectives, and experiences that would have been shaped by the kinds of hybridity that characterized our examination of Corinth in the last chapter. Because the evidence shows Corinth to be a dynamic landscape in which cultural exchange created possibilities for new negotiations of identity, we need to cultivate a disciplined imagination that looks for similarly diverse and shifting negotiations of identity among the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. In the spirit of cultivating such an imaginative historiography, I want to offer here a reconstruction of “some” Corinthians, focusing on reimagining negotiations of ethnic identity and potential evaluations of Paul’s ethnically malleable body and speech (1 Cor 9:19–27). Such conjurings, because they endeavor to bring the spectral voices of the forgotten into discourse, are not like writing the history of the remembered. Agamben, whom we discussed in the introduction, puts it well: “One should remember that the tradition of the unforgettable is not exactly a tradition.”2 Because the histories of those spectral and forgotten presences are different from other ways of writing history, as Agamben stressed, the reconstruction I offer is intentionally episodic, focusing on places where the analysis of the preceding chapters allows us to see the force exerted by these presences on Paul’s rhetoric. It is also a reconstruction that is necessarily braided, since the competing

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discourses of Paul and the Corinthians are intertwined in Paul’s own rhetoric, which we have seen was produced “in community.”3 Both episodic and braided, this reconstruction is provisional and open to contestation and development. In fact, I will build on this reconstruction of “some” Corinthians at the end of part 2 of this book, offering another episodic and braided reimagination around questions of shared (Israelite or Corinthian or both) history and identity.

Beginning from Somewhere I begin my reimagination of “some” Corinthians with an imaginative leap. Though there are probably many ways to start a reconstruction, I suggest we follow the lead of J. Z. Smith and assume from the outset that “some” Corinthians in the community, whether it was an assembly, voluntary association, collection of households, or philosophical school, were Greek-speaking im/migrants to Corinth. This is not to say that Paul’s audience in Corinth was itself made up of immigrants as we use the term today, nor that it was an ethnic association, like associations of Syrians and Phoenicians in places such as Delos or Athens; rather, I am using the term im/migrant as a way of focusing on trade, mobility, and movement in the city.4 Movement was not experienced in the same way by everyone who arrived in Corinth. Some came willingly, like the initial colonists sent out from Rome. Others perhaps arrived under compulsion, driven by economic necessity or to serve the interests of a patron or as a woman or child in a larger familia. Still others arrived through violence, such as slaves shipped, sold, or carried to Corinth.5 Brought to Corinth through the currents of trade, mobility, and opportunity that brought pottery from Asia Minor or marble from Nicomedia, some of those to whom Paul wrote came to the city from elsewhere. Many of their conversations included questions about what it might mean to worship their ancestral gods and commune with their deceased forebears in a land that was not theirs: How might they understand who they are as im/migrants to a new city, yet part of a colonial empire that covered the known world? How might they negotiate the very demands of daily life in a city bustling with trade, commerce, and the influx of new people and ideas? One of these new people was Paul, one among the many, a traveling Judean bearing a new cult transported from the east. Smith suggests that Paul, as one among many who arrived in Corinth with goods to sell or ideas to traffic, may have been less the actual founder of the Corinthian community than an intrusive element on indigenous discussions of cult, identity, and community formation. Paul’s very description of his arrival

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in Corinth is suggestive in this regard; he claims not to have come merely to Corinth, where he preached, cobbled together a following, and formed a new community, but to have come “to you” (πρὀς ὑμᾶς [1 Cor 2:1]). Paul’s phrasing leaves open the possibility that his first preaching in Corinth (1 Cor 2:1–5) was made to an existing association or cluster of groups.6 What may have started out as a loose affiliation of households, a regular gathering of workers of a similar trade, or migrants meeting to honor ancestral gods and deceased ancestors over a cultic meal could have developed into what Paul often calls the Corinthian ekkle¯sia through the activities of Paul, his coworkers (Timothy and Titus), and his rivals (Apollos and the “super-apostles”). It could also well be the case that Paul’s use of ekkle¯sia is aspirational, an attempt to encourage a cohesive group identity for a group that retained porous boundaries with its broader civic environment.7 Regardless, because they had a history before Paul, we cannot presume that Paul was the primary mover in shaping the identity and practice of the community. As Burton Mack has provocatively suggested: “That the Corinthians had bothered to give him [Paul] a hearing at all can only be understood as their reception of a traveling teacher/philosopher, with something of interest to say about ‘wisdom,’ ‘spirits,’ group identities, and meals in memory of ancestors. According to Paul, all of his instructions along these lines were derived from his message of ‘Christ crucified.’ But it seems that the Corinthians received him just as they would have entertained others and debated some of his ideas without having to assent to his gospel.” Mack may overstate the disconnect between Paul and the Corinthians, as William Arnal has argued, but his provocative assertion is useful: we cannot start a reconstruction of the Corinthians by assuming that they did not have a history of questions to be answered, issues to be explored, and practices that addressed their collective concerns.8 Rather than seeing the Corinthians as passive, and occasionally incompetent, receivers of Paul’s message, we ought, according to Smith, to assume that there would be some amount of misunderstanding between Paul and the Corinthians, not just over areas where there might be disagreement (on sexual ethics, for example), but even in regard to terms and categories that were shared. For example, Smith wonders if Paul and the Corinthians actually understood one another’s invocations of the “Spirit.”9 This is not to say that the Corinthians would have disagreed with or misunderstood everything about Paul’s rhetoric and theology, but that we must begin with the assumption that misunderstandings and genuine disagreements did occur. By beginning with the Corinthians as a group of Greek-speaking im/migrants who associate with Paul for their own reasons and to answer their own local questions, I want to take us through two

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experiments in reimagining “some” Corinthians in relation to the two subjects we have explored in part 1: local negotiations of identity and the evaluation of Paul’s claim in 1 Cor 9:22 to have become “all things to all people.” These experiments offer reconstructions of “some” Corinthians that highlight sites of disagreement and misunderstanding, places where it seems the Corinthians either operated outside Paul’s theological horizon or pushed back against Paul’s own rhetoric. In part 2 we will engage in another experiment in reconstruction, focusing on sites where “some” Corinthians seem to have been attracted to stories of the Israelites and Jesus, even if their responses continued to push the limits of what Paul deemed acceptable behavior.

Negotiating Identity In the opening sections of 1 Corinthians, Paul constructs his Corinthian audience as participants in a larger, biracial community: “For the Judeans ask for a sign and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we announce Christ crucified, a scandal to the Judeans and foolishness to the gentiles, but to those who are called, both Judean and Greek, Christ is the power and wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:22–24). In this characterization, Paul divides humanity into two ethnic groups: Greeks who seek God through wisdom and Judeans who seek God in signs. But these two groups are each split in two under the sign of God’s “calling” (κλητοῖ): Judeans who are called (or not) and Greeks who are called (or not).10 For Paul, this “calling” does not erase ethnic differences; rather, these differences (Judean and Greek) remain within the new opposition of called–not called. Such a construction of humanity as split by both the Greek-Judean binary and a “calling” in relation to a cult figure encourages Paul’s Corinthian audience to locate themselves within a broader series of ethnic negotiations, between Judeans, like Paul, and Greeks who have been called, and between those who are called and the Judeans and Greeks who seek wisdom and signs, respectively.11 The Corinthian correspondence suggests a context in which such negotiations of ethnic and cultural differences were ongoing and fluid. One way of seeing this fluidity is through the various ways in which Paul describes the new identity available to the Judeans and Greeks whom he envisions as part of the Corinthian community. Later in 1 Corinthians, Paul will refine the four identities of 1:22–24 into three using the image of a political assembly (ἐκκλησία): Judeans, Greeks, and the “assembly of God” (ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ [10:32]). Those who have been called “in Christ,” whether they be Judeans or Greeks, are now part of the assembly that belongs to God.12

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Paul’s favorite term for his Corinthian audience is siblings (ἀδελφοί),13 though other kinship terms are also invoked that continually shift the relations between Paul and the Corinthians from siblings to that of a father with his children (for example, 1 Cor 4:14–15). Paul also describes the identity of the community through the image of a body that includes Judeans and Greeks through baptism (12:13). Through baptism into the Spirit, Judeans and Greeks become part of the one body of Christ, a body that is characterized by the diversity of its members and their roles (12:14–27). Even in Paul’s later correspondence with the Corinthians he continues to negotiate the terms used to describe communal identity: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new foundation: the ancient things have passed away, and behold they have become new” (ὥστε εἴ τις ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ κτίσις· τὰ ἀρχαῖα παρῆλθεν, ἰδοὺ γέγονεν καινά [2 Cor 5:17]). A new κτίσις (“foundation”) need not have been heard as the transformation of the inner self “in Christ,” as is often the case in scholarship. The term was commonly associated with the foundation of a new colony, going back as far as the Archaic period.14 Perhaps what one might hear in this is the founding of a new colony, Christ serving as its patron, where new possibilities are available for colonists (ἄποικοι) “in Christ.” As these examples show, Paul’s description of his Corinthian audience continually shifts throughout his correspondence with them.15 Paul’s imagining of the Corinthians remains in a state of continual flux, often emerging from the space between the ethnic labels Judean and Greek. This fluidity allows Paul a kind of rhetorical flexibility in the way that he argues before his Corinthian audience. For example, in 1 Cor 1:22–24, with which we began this section, Paul’s use of the ethnic labels Judean and Greek-Gentile are part of a dispute with the Corinthians over the nature, practice, and politics of the community. Concerned with Corinthian interpretations of wisdom (σοφία) and signs (σημεῖα), Paul associates these terms with outsiders: Judeans and Greeks who are not “called.” The ethnic signifiers are given brief descriptions that stereotype their modes of seeking the divine: the Judeans look for signs and wonders, and the Greeks pursue wisdom through philosophy. Those who seek wisdom and signs like outsiders are scandalized by the crucified Christ and see his death as foolishness (1 Cor 1:23). Only those who are “called” see the crucified Christ for what Paul believes him to be: the true manifestation of the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24).16 Paul’s argument thus uses ethnic labels and stereotypes as a means of drawing boundaries around the community’s identity and enforcing unity.17 To seek the divine outside the crucified Christ is, for Paul, to behave as one of the Judeans

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or Greeks outside the community, as one who is not called. When Paul draws out a series of hybridized identities for his Corinthian audience from the space between Judean and Greek, whether they be “called” or part of the “ekkle¯sia of God” or the “body of Christ,” these identities are provisional, tactical, and particular, constructed by Paul to do particular types of work in his relations with the Corinthians to whom he wrote, from encouraging unity to arguing against an accommodating attitude toward traditional cultic practices. Though this rhetorical flexibility was useful for Paul, we might read the pluriform identities that Paul deploys to characterize the Corinthians as part of a broader openness to the negotiation of identity in Corinth. In chapter 2 we saw how the Augustales monument offered a local voluntary association an opportunity to convey its place within the local political order through an expression of loyalty to the emperor that drew on Greek and Roman artistic styles. Inscriptions, funerary monuments, and the cursus of the local elite allowed us to see the various ways in which Greek and Latin merged and blended within the life of the city, creating new negotiations between Roman and Greek identities. Just as other Corinthians negotiated the space between Roman and Greek, between past and present, so too might the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote have been open to a variety of multiple, at times contradictory, identities. In deploying a number of different ways of constructing group identity in Corinth, Paul may have been drawing on the plurality of identities in the air in the Corinthian community, or he may have unknowingly authorized “some” Corinthians to experiment with their identities in relation to the new cult of Christ. To return to J. Z. Smith, we might hear in Paul’s own shifting rhetorics of ethnicity something of the “multiple modes of religion” practiced by Corinthians and against which Paul sought to enforce unity, order, and homogeneity.18 Smith himself offers us some ways to think about what it might actually look like to reimagine the Corinthians as practicing “multiple modes of religion.” Drawing on reports of charismatic Christian practices in Papua New Guinea, Smith asks us to imagine the possibility of a “mistranslation” between Paul and the Corinthians of certain key concepts and practices. For example, Smith wonders if the Corinthians may have associated Paul’s language of “Spirit” (πνεῦμα) with the cult of ancestors, while Paul intended the term to refer to the spirit of God that manifests itself in the Hebrew scriptures. Further, Paul’s discomfort with speaking in tongues in the Corinthian community might also be redescribed as a mistranslation. The im/migrant Corinthians may have imagined themselves as connecting to the spirits of their ancestors and homelands, whereas Paul may have envisioned in the practice a bastardization of prophecy, imagining the incoherent speech of the Delphic oracle.19

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As Mack, who follows Smith’s suggestions, puts it, Paul’s discussion of meals, bodies, and the Spirit “indicates that the Corinthians may have been at work on ‘translating’ modes of remembering and relating to their ancestors now that they no longer had access to their tombs and the proper performance of their festivals in the districts from which they had come.”20 We might imagine a similar situation in relation to the funerary inscriptions we analyzed in chapter 2. For those negotiating the multicultural landscape of Corinth, an inscription that used a Latin formula in Greek may have been understandable and easily interpreted, but it may have been confusing for someone unfamiliar with either Latin or Greek forms of funerary dedications. A more interesting case is that of the “errors” on Latin inscriptions honoring the procurator P. Caninius Alexiadae Agrippa (West nos. 65 and 66). One wonders what a Latin speaker would make of the incoherence introduced by Greek letters or whether the Greekspeaking inhabitants who passed by the inscription each day would even notice the mistakes. Regardless of how we evaluate Smith’s suggestions, they help us orient ourselves to a way of reimagining how a Corinthian audience may have heard, misinterpreted, or resisted Paul’s own terminology in the construction of local practices and theologies. Smith also helps us reimagine the dynamics of local experimentation and adaptation among the Corinthians. Smith emphasizes the “ability of a small relatively homogeneous community to absorb a stunning series of changes within a brief span of time through strategies of incorporation and resistance” and the “capacity” of such a community “to experiment, simultaneously, with multiple modes of religion.”21 We might then imagine Paul and his message of a crucified Judean as the intrusion of a new cult into the “native religious formations” of Corinth, creating a new set of traditions through which the Corinthians might negotiate their place in Corinth. For example, just as some Corinthians felt it appropriate to honor Juppiter Capitolinus or Janus with Greek-style cults and offices, so the Corinthian community may have seen it as perfectly appropriate to worship at the temple of a Greek or Roman god while also maintaining an allegiance to the God of Israel, practicing Smith’s “multiple modes of religion.” Paul certainly fears in 1 Cor 8:1–11:1 that his Corinthian audience has become too closely connected to what he calls idolatry (an issue we will explore in more detail in chapter 4), but which his Corinthian audience may have seen as perfectly appropriate behavior for integrating the cult of Christ with the cults of Corinth. In either of the possibilities suggested by Smith’s work, we are forced to imagine Corinthians who were not merely the passive recipients of Paul’s letters but, rather, active agents who developed their own theologies and identities in conversation with their lived experience of life in Corinth.22

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As a more concrete example of seeing the Corinthians in “multiple modes,” we might return to the question of Paul’s example as the possessor of an ethnically malleable body, which we discussed in chapter 1. Placing Paul’s example alongside the complicated negotiations of identity in Corinth, like that of the Augustales monument or the priestly offices of the theocolus of Jove and the irenarches of Janus (discussed in chapter 2), and the very flexibility of Paul’s descriptions of the Corinthians, may offer us a means of hearing the spectral presence of the Corinthians. Since Paul’s ethnic malleability could reasonably be interpreted alongside the flexible identities of the Corinthians, it would not be impossible to imagine an audience taking Paul’s malleable self as a model for precisely the kind of behaviors that Paul seeks to combat among “some” Corinthians. If Paul can “become as” (γίνομαι ὡς) other kinds of people in the service of the gospel, one could imagine a response that sees participation in traditional Corinthian cults as a means of introducing the cult of Christ to new social contacts, an example of Corinthians practicing multiple modes of religion, in Smith’s sense. If the slogan in 1 Cor 8:1 (“All have knowledge” [πάντες γνῶσιν ἔχομεν]) was a position taken by some in the Corinthian community, it is conceivable that such a democratic perspective could have encouraged some Corinthians to participate in local cultic activities in Corinth. If all have knowledge, here defined as the possibility for understanding that there is one God and that no other gods exist (8:4–6), then participation in local cultic practices is not harmful to the individual and serves to maintain relationships with others who have yet to perceive the knowledge of the true God.23 Such a position would not have looked very much different from those taken by many Stoics, who disapproved of sacrificial religion while allegorizing the gods into abstract natural phenomena. Further, Richard Liong-Seng Phua has documented examples of Jewish writers who took a more accommodating view of the gods of other peoples and has also documented cases of Jewish participation in Gentile cults, noting that the definition of idolatry could vary from place to place. This suggests that the Corinthians “could have operated with a rather different understanding of what constitutes idolatry” from Paul’s.24 Rather than being discouraged from eating food sacrificed to idols, the Corinthians may have wondered why they could not “become as” others in Corinth as a means of serving the gospel in their own local context. The way that Paul shapes his ethnically malleable body into an example in 1 Cor 9:19–27 shows that he was concerned with this possibility. Paul makes his malleable self an example by analogy, which limits its range of applicability in Corinth. Paul does not encourage the Corinthians to imitate him directly and “become as” their neighbors in Corinth. Rather, Paul’s explicit point is that the

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Corinthians emulate his renunciation of authority (9:1–18) and his voluntary renunciation of status (9:19). This emulation, for Paul, should take the form of renouncing the right to eat food sacrificed to idols out of concern for another sibling. Paul’s malleable self (9:19–27) is meant to be an example only insofar as it should encourage the Corinthians to please and not offend others (10:31–11:1). There is no explicit encouragement in the example for the Corinthians to “become as” Paul by imitating his ethnic malleability. Further, Paul also feels the need to walk back even his own self-presentation as the possessor of a malleable self. Though he may be able to become as one who is ὑπὸ νόμον (“under the curse of the law”), he is still not ὑπὸ νόμον (9:20), and though he may be able to become as an ἄνομος (one “outside the law”), he does not actually go outside the bounds of God’s law but remains in the law of Christ (μὴ ὢν ἄνομος θεοῦ ἀλλ᾿ ἔννομος Χριστοῦ [9:21]). Even as Paul presents himself as the possessor of a malleable self, he constrains his presentation by stressing that his identity is rooted in a stable core that is ἔννομος Χριστοῦ. Thus, Paul attempts to control the possible interpretations of his own example by his Corinthian audience, who he fears will take his example literally.25 By emphasizing that his malleability is constrained by a stable core (that which is ἔννομος Χριστοῦ [9:21]) and by using his personal example only by analogy, Paul attempts to limit his audience’s reading of his embodied example. We might wonder whether Paul’s example would have been seen as a contradiction to his Corinthian audience, who had at this point a history of experimenting with multiple modes of religion in their negotiations of daily life in Corinth. Some Corinthians were certainly comfortable with bringing the Christ cult into other temple spaces (1 Cor 10:14–23) or developing new practices that brought deceased ancestors into relation with the cult of Christ (1 Cor 15:29). Paul’s own descriptions of the Corinthians reflect this diversity, in the sense that he never is able to settle on a technical terminology that describes their identity, even if he does try to turn this to his own advantage. By using his malleable example as an argument against a similarly malleable Corinthian practice, Paul appears inconsistent, particularly to the residents of a city where the fluidity between Greek and Roman cultic practices was common and accepted. Why should the Corinthians constrain their behavior when Paul boasts of his freedom (even though he is himself a “slave” [9:17, 19, 27]) to be “all things to all people”?

Speech and Flattery In the previous section I conjured “some” Corinthians who negotiated the cultural exchange of Corinth as active agents in the appropriations of the cult

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of Jesus working through “multiple modes of religion.” We also saw the ways in which Paul tries to turn the fluidity of identity in the Corinthian community to his own advantage by switching between and among ethnic, political, and familial metaphors in his rhetoric. But was Paul successful in persuading his Corinthian audience through invocations of ethnically fluid identities? By harking back to our discussion in chapter 1 of Paul’s claim to an ethnically malleable self (1 Cor 9:19–27), I want to explore how we might imagine a Corinthian response to Paul’s self-presentation. In chapter 1 we placed Paul’s malleable body within the elite politics of ethnicity in Corinth by comparing his self-presentation to that of the orator Favorinus. We saw how Favorinus presented his body as similarly able to cross ethnic boundaries, to become Greek through imitation and education. In so doing, Favorinus also lambasted his Corinthian audience as stillborn Greeks and Roman rubes, a charge leveled in response to the destruction of Favorinus’s statue by the Corinthians. In chapter 2 we saw how the Corinthian elite found ways to present themselves as able to negotiate the boundaries between Greek and Roman. Such negotiations were also part of how Aelius Aristides praised Corinth as a city embodying a new Roman Hellenism, a way of maintaining one’s identity while also benefiting from the opportunities available in the Roman Empire. Paul’s claim to possess, through a rigorous athletic training regimen, a multiethnic body with which he wins others to Christ could thus be seen as one among many examples from Corinth. But how might we imagine a Corinthian reaction to Paul’s self-presentation? I suggest that Paul may have come across as someone whose apostolic deportment was driven by duplicity and flattery, a concern that might suggest why Paul’s ethnic malleability does not return as an object of self-praise in 2 Corinthians. By imagining ways that Paul’s rhetoric may have provoked a negative response, particularly if the Corinthians perceived Paul’s own example as contradictory, we might begin to hear some of the Corinthian voices that responded to Paul’s letters. In particular, and by way of a conclusion, I argue that, when read alongside other parts of the Corinthian correspondence, Paul was unable to meet Corinthian expectations and unable or unwilling to compromise with a community that held a competing discourse of speech, power, and knowledge. The inconsistency of Paul’s argument that we discussed in the previous section may have fed into a more damaging Corinthian perception of Paul’s malleable body. That Paul describes himself as a slave who pleases and does not offend others could easily have been perceived as a valorization of flattery by a largely nonelite Corinthian audience, an audience that lacked the education and resources to benefit, as the local elites did, from Corinth’s place between Greece and Rome.

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Perhaps we can hear something of how Paul’s self-presentation was viewed in Corinth by listening to a criticism leveled by a later critic of Paul. In Macarius Magnus’s Apocriticus we hear an argument from a learned Hellene, possibly Porphyry or one of his students, that Paul cannot have his cake and eat it too: “But the one who says, ‘I am a Judean’ and ‘I am a Roman,’ is not either, though he be zealous for each” (ὁ γοῦν εἰπών· ἐγώ εἰμι Ἰουδαῖος, καὶ ἐγώ εἰμι Ῥωμαῖος, οὐδ᾽ ἑκάτερόν ἐστιν, ἑκατέρῳ προσκείμενος).26 After calling Paul a charlatan who will lie and cheat behind a mask to win over the gullible, he writes: “So if Paul plays that part of a Judean now and later a Roman, or one outside the law now and a Greek later, if, moreover, he should wish to be a foreigner and an enemy of each group, then he, slipping in secretly, renders each party useless, stealing from each, by means of flattery, the generative principle of each” (3.31). Drawing on Paul’s own terminology, the Hellene challenges the trustworthiness of one who can claim to be “all things to all people.” The means, in this case deception and flattery, do not justify the end of bringing all to the gospel. Similarly, in his summary of Paul’s argument in 1 Cor 8: 1–11, Mark Given writes: “Paul feels free to leave the world of being for that of seeming, ‘to become all things to everyone,’ in order to propagate the Truth, his gospel Truth. . . . The deceived must first be deceived for their own good.” To win Ioudaioi and Greeks to the gospel, Paul must veil himself, must pretend to be other than he is, for the larger goal of salvation. Or as Paul says in 2 Cor 4:3, “But even if our gospel is veiled (κεκαλυμμένον), it is veiled among those who are perishing.” In 9:19–27 Paul has lifted the veil on his missionary strategy, giving the Corinthians a glimpse behind the mask and on to the regimen that Paul keeps to stay fit for missionary work behind the veil. We get a glimpse of how, in Agamben’s phrase, “he acts as if he were different from what he is (or what he is not).”27 By presenting himself as a slave who was willing to adapt himself in order to please others, Paul was open to the charge of being a flatterer or “friend of many,” willing to do or say anything for the purpose of acquiring personal gain or patronal benefaction. Paul’s stated willingness to please everyone (πάντα πᾶσιν ἀρέσκω [10:33]) might not have assuaged those inclined to see in his selfpresentation a note of the duplicitous.28 The line between a flatterer and a true friend was fraught with elite concerns about the trustworthiness of their slaves, freedmen, and clients and with the competitive world of clients vying for the support of powerful patrons. It was also a concern among those of equal social standing. As Given has shown, Paul’s malleable self could easily be characterized as untrustworthy: “Paul’s ‘language of becoming’ actually raises the specter of a Paul who is beyond the bounds of a respectable philosophic rhetoric, a

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Paul who is willing, at least temporarily, to leave the realm of being for that of seeming.”29 Paul’s ethnically malleable self is used to encourage a dietary practice that could be described as duplicitous or, more positively, veiled.30 Though Paul agrees with many of the theological propositions of the Corinthians, particularly that there is only one God and no idol actually exists (1 Cor 8:4), he nevertheless asks his Corinthian audience to act as if idols existed so as not to offend the conscience of a sibling that held this erroneous belief. While the Corinthians eat food sacrificed to idols without fear or concern that they are betraying the cult of Jesus or their belief in the God of Israel, Paul asks them to veil their beliefs to please others. Paul’s advice may have seemed like an inducement for the Corinthians themselves to become waffling flatterers. When we look more closely at Paul’s later correspondence with the Corinthians, we can see hints that “some” Corinthians had indeed begun to distrust Paul as a flatterer willing to do and say anything to accomplish his own designs. In 2 Cor 2:14–4:6, which we will examine in more detail in chapter 4, Paul emphasizes his frank speech (3:12–13) and openness (4:1–3) in the face of concerns that he was merely one of many who sold the word of God in the marketplace (2:17). Later in the same letter fragment, Paul returns to the problematic issue of “pleasing” others (originally broached in 1 Cor 9:19–27 and 10:31–11:1). Instead of pleasing others, Paul claims that he aspires (φιλοτιμέομαι) to be pleasing to God (εὐάρεστος [5:9]). Paul stresses this point because he expects when he appears before the judgment seat of Christ to be either punished or rewarded for his actions. Therefore (οὖν), because Paul knows the fear of God’s coming judgment, he claims that he persuades people, but his conscience is known to both God and the Corinthians (εἰδότες οὖν τὸν φόβον τοῦ κυρίου ἀνθρώπους πείθομεν, θεῷ δὲ πεφανερώμεθα· ἐλπίζω δὲ καὶ ἐν ταῖς συνειδήσεσιν ὑμῶν πεφανερῶσθαι

[5:11]). No longer does Paul seek to please others; rather, he focuses on pleasing God, who knows the purity of his conscience, as the Corinthians also should. Such rhetoric suggests that Paul is still dealing with Corinthian concerns that he behaves like a duplicitous rhetor.31 Further indication that Paul has been labeled a potentially dishonest speaker comes in 2 Cor 1:13–24, where Paul responds to concerns that he has said one thing (regarding his intention to visit Corinth [1 Cor 16:3–9]) but done another. After Paul reneged on his intention to visit Corinth, the Corinthians may have suggested that he was like one of those flatterers who said “yes” now and “no” later, depending on the situation. In a fashion similar to his earlier critique of the ability of the Corinthians to “judge” him (1 Cor 4:1–7), Paul suggests that the Corinthians have understood him only in part (1:13–14), that he chose to

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avoid Corinth to spare the Corinthians (1:23–2:4), and that God, Christ, and the Spirit have been a part of framing the interdependent relationship between Paul and the Corinthians (1:21–22). In each of these cases, we see evidence that Paul’s speech was regarded in Corinth as potentially duplicitous.32 Or we can look at Paul’s suffering in 2 Cor 10–13, where his body no longer adapts to Judeans and Gentiles but is beaten by each (11:23–28). Paul’s body is now a suffering body, beaten by Judeans and Gentiles alike and constantly in danger from each. Ultimately, it seems that the image of Paul’s body as ethnically malleable was probably not an effective way of convincing the Corinthians to accept him as an authoritative figure over communal life, nor did it prove an effective rhetorical tool.33

Concluding with Speech By way of a conclusion, we can perhaps place Paul’s perception problem, if we can call it that, within his larger inability to live up to Corinthian expectations about proper apostolic or authoritative speech. It has long been recognized in scholarship on the Corinthian correspondence that Paul had a different understanding of proper ecclesial speech from his Corinthian audience’s. In 1 Cor 1:18–3:4 Paul attempts to reorient Corinthian perceptions of speech, arguing that the Corinthians have valued persuasive rhetoric when they should have been valuing the “foolishness” of the word of the cross that Paul preaches. Paul attacks “some” Corinthian concerns with his manner of speech in 2 Cor 10:10, where he characterizes his own speech as lacking in skill or artifice.34 Paul also struggled with Corinthian ecstatic speech, or speaking in tongues. In 1 Corinthians 12–14 Paul seeks to rein in this practice, subordinating it to prophecy and regulating it according to what Paul deems to be proper order and control. As Elizabeth Castelli notes, for Paul “prophetic speech is to be managed, but also claimed, precisely because it can command enormous power and authority; so Paul cannot condemn it, and in fact must claim that he is a privileged user of it.” Many feminist scholars have noted that Paul’s attempts to order Corinthian speech in the community sought to control the behavior of women in the community.35 These different examples of Paul’s trouble with Corinthian speech suggest that the apostle was out of step with the practice and evaluation of speech in Corinth, which helps us further contextualize Corinthian perceptions of Paul as an inconsistent charlatan and flatterer. But what can be said about Corinthian speech and its evaluation in Corinth? Paul’s continual resistance to different forms and modes of Corinthian speech

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suggests that there was a powerful alternative model active in Corinth. Several scholars have suggested that the Corinthians evaluated Paul’s speech according to elite models of oratorical performance. This is not inconceivable, given that people from many different social classes certainly watched, enjoyed, and evaluated the performances of famous orators.36 But we must be wary of such constructions of the Corinthians because of how scholars characterize their ideology as elite, which is marked as bad and blameworthy, in relation to Paul’s nonelite claims to speak foolishness to Corinthian wisdom, which is marked as good and praiseworthy. In contrast to judgments of Corinthian speech as tied to the elitism of the Roman upper classes, Castelli offers a compelling portrait of the different discourses of speech, knowledge, and power that were at stake between Paul and the Corinthians: Knowledge and power are aligned; multiplicities of discourses grounded in wisdom are possible, circulate, and render a diffuse kind of system of power. I do not understand the opposing views of power here to be egalitarian/utopian vs. hierarchical, but rather as different conceptual models: the Corinthians as knowers and speakers seem to understand power as a fluid, surging quality, occupying different bodies at different moments and with varying intensities; Paul, whose own position is ill-served by such a notion, continues to try to argue for power as inhering in roles and social positions and to claim authority for himself because he occupies these positions.

One can recognize immediately Castelli’s debt to Foucault’s notion of power in her description of the Corinthians’ ideology of speech. By using Foucault, Castelli is able to describe the differences between Paul and the Corinthians outside moralizing frameworks that prejudge either side, though she does offer some poignant critiques of Paul’s ethics of imitation elsewhere.37 For the Corinthians, power and its associated speech flow and surge, moving between and among bodies, as in ecstatic speaking in tongues. Paul differs from the Corinthians at a conceptual level: for him power does not flow freely but pools in wells around authoritative figures like himself. In his impassioned defense of his ministry (διακονία) in 2 Cor 3:1–18, which we will discuss in greater detail in chapter 4, Paul is fixated on resisting Corinthian challenges to his apostolic credentials. Having engaged with other missionaries (Apollos, Paul’s coworkers, the super-apostles, and, no doubt, others), the Corinthians had experience negotiating a world in which there were multiple kinds and qualities of authority figures. Indeed, their own prophetic speech in community was itself a powerful confirmation of the authorizing of the spirit.38

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This makes little sense to Paul, who sees power and authoritative speech as having pooled around him because of his apostolic calling (1 Cor 12:28). Paul seems to have been unable or unwilling to adapt his speech or writing to the opposing conceptual system deemed appropriate by the Corinthians.39 Corinth was a community that valued persuasive speech and the eruption of the voice of the divine in communal gatherings (1 Cor 14:1–19), so Paul’s attempts to rein in Corinthian practice while also presenting himself as one who oriented himself toward pleasing others would have been met with frustration. Ultimately Paul’s ethnically malleable example exacerbated his already contentious relationship with the Corinthian community over what counted as true and authoritative speech. We began this chapter with Tyrian merchants in Puteoli and the fractious politics of money, trade, voluntary associations, im/migrant communities, and political assemblies. I suggested that the voices of the Tyrian assembly shouting out their opinions on the dispute before them offered a challenge to scholars to imagine the similarly fractious politics of the Corinthian community. I then offered some thoughts on how we might revive the spectral presences of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. Paul’s Corinthian audience of Greek-speaking im/migrants sought to answer its own questions about identity, cultic practice, and ethics as they negotiated the dynamic landscape of colonial Corinth. Paul’s own attempts to negotiate the expectations of speech among the Corinthians by recourse to an ethnically malleable body fell flat, largely because Paul and the Corinthians disagreed on what characterized authoritative speech and because Paul’s choice of exemplary bodies presented more problems than solutions. But by tracing out these lines of miscommunication and conflict, we may come somewhat closer to hearing the spectral complexity and vitality of the Corinthian community to whom Paul wrote and for whom the cult of Christ offered opportunities for negotiating complex provincial landscapes similar to that of the Tyrian merchants hoping for help from their homeland.

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Part Two

CORINTH AND CORINTHIANS BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT

None of the ancient Corinthians inhabit Corinth any more, [it is inhabited by] colonists sent by the Romans. —Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.1.2

In part 1 we looked at how Corinthians negotiated their identities within the larger economic and political context in which the city found itself in the Roman period. We saw how Corinthians negotiated between Greek and Roman identities both as a way of managing trading relationships at a major node in international commerce and for securing a place for Corinth within the political realities of the Roman Empire. We looked as well at how this landscape created new opportunities and imperatives for negotiating identity in what J. Z. Smith called “multiple modes of religion.” Reimagining “some” Corinthians, both in and outside the community addressed by Paul, we attempted to revive Corinthian agency in navigating the complicated and dynamic landscapes of provincial Corinth. In part 2 we shift to how the past was negotiated in Corinth, particularly as a way of marking, traversing, and redefining ethnic boundaries. Beginning with Paul’s use of the history of Israel and the figure of Moses in his letters to the Corinthians and moving through the representation of Greek mythic pasts in Corinthian monuments and literature, part 2 explores the appropriation of pasts in the Roman present, thinking ultimately about how “some” Corinthians might have found resources to “think with” when hearing Paul claim for them the past of the people of Israel. Before moving on to the analysis of the chapters that follow, I want to dwell briefly on the relationship between ethnicity and the past, particularly as it was conceived of by

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many in Roman provincial Greece. Such reflections allow us to frame the dynamic engagement with the past that will characterize the chapters that part 2 comprises.

Ethnicity and the Past Ethnic groups tell stories: stories of founders and foundations, stories of wars and conquests, stories of heroes and gods. Such storytelling claims these pasts as possessions of the present. A line of continuity is drawn from the distant past to the present and back again. The stories that ethnic groups tell of the past are often extremely important ways of marking ethnic identity, as they root ethnicity in an ancient and stable line of descent from an appropriated past to the present.1 Stories about the past say something about where we are from, who we are, and what we do, but in doing so they represent decisions that are made about how the past is relevant to the present. As Judith Lieu writes, “The relationship between who we are and the past we tell is a reciprocal one and is rarely static.” To remember or discover a past is to retell and rebuild at the same time.2 Some things are emphasized (a glorious victory or a noble act), while others are forgotten (a humiliating defeat or an act of cowardice). The selection of what counts as the past is driven by the needs of the present. As such, the histories that we write and the stories that we tell are acts of power: the power to include and the power to exclude. Arguments that make use of the past are useful because the past can appear stable and fixed. Though the past is perceived as a “real” or “stable” ground on which identity can be constructed, it is actually flexible in that it allows for the constant reproduction of the past as useful for the present.3 To account adequately for how the past can be used as a discourse of power, we must place the uses of history within the context of the struggle to construct identity. Such an approach sees “histories as mobile constructions that rhetorically produce and recast, rather than describe, collective identities.” The past as a “mobile construction” serves as “a crucial site for authorizing the values and practices by which one could claim and demonstrate one’s present identity.”4 Not only can the past be used to construct group identity by encouraging certain values and actions, but it is also implicated in the construction of the interrelationships between ethnic identities.5 In a multiethnic world, arguments about one’s own past are made in relation to the pasts, and therefore the identities, of others.

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Marketing Greek Identity in the Roman World It may be going too far to say, with Glen Bowersock, that Greece in the early imperial period was “a country learning how to be a museum,” but there is something useful about this observation. We might think back on Strabo’s story (8.6.23), discussed in chapter 1, of how the Corinthian colonists dug up the graves they found in the city and sold the relics on the Roman market. By Cicero’s day wealthy Romans were traveling to Greece to see for themselves the sights of famous battles, mythological stories, and the tombs of historic figures.6 The demand for tourist attractions in Greece was partly due to the spread of Greek culture and learning throughout the Mediterranean basin, which created a more homogeneous, if also fraught with Roman ambivalence, cultural environment in which elites and nonelites alike were socialized. But the demand was also stoked by the marketing of sites of historical memory by local Greek communities. The marketing of historical memory perhaps reached its apex in Hadrianic Athens, particularly with the new institution of the Panhellenion, but other cities certainly showcased their connections to a classical Greek past. Though a backwater in the Roman period, Sparta saw its share of prominent Romans looking to see the spectacle of the Lycurgan Laws practiced before their eyes. It was clearly viewed as advantageous to have and present a famed Greek history to visitors and citizens alike.7 By speaking of the “marketing” of historical memory, I do not mean to characterize Greek cities as in any way crassly seeking to cash in on their history for economic gain. Recent work on Greek constructions of ethnicity has shown that it was common for Greeks to emphasize their history and descent as a key marker of Greek identity. Pausanias’s description of his travels in Greece shows one way in which Greek writers sought out a classical past to construct a Greek identity within the context of the Roman Empire. The usefulness of the past and its representation went beyond its ability to attract visitors to antiquarian curiosities. The history of a city was often deployed in the context of intercity diplomacy, whereby historical linkages and genealogical relationships could be used to lay the groundwork for creating diplomatic relationships.8

Who Owns Corinth’s History? A city’s past was also not completely its own possession, particularly in the case of Greek cities whose history was bound up with the stories, myths, and

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events that were told and retold as part of broader patterns of elite education. A city could market its past through the production of monuments, festivals, and rituals designed to evoke its “famed” history, but these actions had to compete with the perceptions of those outside the city, whose ideas about its identity had already been shaped by other forces. We can see how Corinth’s past could be imagined and even owned elsewhere in the imagery of a silver cup from a hoard found in Berthouville, in northern France. This silver cup, found in Berthouville in 1830 and dated to the early imperial period, offers an example of how a consumer in Gaul imagined Corinth and its history in a visual representation of the city that brings together gods and humans within a sacred landscape.9 As the viewer turns the cup clockwise to see the images displayed, the most prominent figure is that of a seated Poseidon, patron god of the Isthmus and the Isthmian Games. He sits entwined with his consort Amphitrite, and both gaze out at the two landscapes represented to the right. Here they look first on images of Pegasos and Peirene, who are cast amid a rocky landscape. Pegasos is emerging from a rocky outcrop to drink from Peirene’s spring, a representation of the famous mythological story of the taming of Pegasos by Bellerophon. Above and to the right of Pegasos and Peirene sits a temple on a hill, which undoubtedly represents the temple of Aphrodite on Acrocorinth. Aphrodite was the other patron deity of the city, and her temple evokes her presence watching over the city. The second scene over which Poseidon and Aphrodite look is of an Isthmian victor, standing nude with a pine wreath on his head. He stands before a herm with a satyr’s face and a prize table, on which sit a fillet and crown, showing that this victor has won more than one contest at the Isthmian Games. These two scenes draw together two important aspects of Corinth’s Greek history: the taming of Pegasos by Bellerophon at Peirene and the Isthmian Games. They are here placed next to each other under the watchful gaze of the city’s patron deities, bringing together humans, heroes, and gods into a sacred landscape that envisions the city through the lens of Hellenic memory. For the owner of this cup, Corinth becomes a place where a prominent Greek past can be experienced: through the elite acquisition of Greek history and myth, through education, through travel and tourism, and through the act of drinking from the cup itself. That Corinth could be represented (and acquired) as an idyllic, historical Greek landscape of gods, heroes, and athletes shows one of the many ways in which the past of Corinth could be appropriated by citizen and visitor alike. The variety of these appropriations forms the focus of chapter 5. Such appropriations, by Corinthians and others, “fit” within the broader contours of the Corinthian landscape that we discussed in part 1, where the Roman power cre-

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ated new possibilities and constraints in how identity might be constructed in provincial Greece. Because the past is always contestable, chapter 5 also examines how Corinth’s history could be used for criticism and attack in the verbal contests of offended orators and aggrieved neighbors. An orator such as Favorinus will subtly and ironically play with the city’s history as revenge for a perceived slight, and the author of the Argive Letter will wonder whether Corinth’s behavior makes it a Greek or Roman city. Corinth’s past could be marshaled to construct a Greek identity out of a prestigious mythical and historical Greek past, as it was in the Berthouville cup, or it could be disrupted by a critical reading of Corinth’s history. For good or ill, the past was a malleable, and hence usable, commodity in the production and disruption of Greek identity. It is precisely where the past comes up for debate in Corinth that I situate Paul’s use of the history of Israel in his letters to the Corinthians. In chapter 4 I discuss how Paul’s use of stories drawn from the period of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10 and 2 Corinthians 3) both attempts to draw boundaries around community practice and identity and works to reinforce Paul’s own authority as an apostle among the Corinthians. I then place Paul’s invocations of the past as political interventions in the context of Corinth’s other pasts in chapter 5, showing Paul to be one among many in Corinth talking about history and identity to Corinthian audiences. Chapter 6 then engages in another provisional and braided reimagination of “some” Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. Rather than focusing on how “some” Corinthians may have heard Paul against the grain of his own rhetoric, chapter 6 imagines “some” Corinthians for whom the history of Israel might have offered an appealing and useful way of negotiating identity within the pluralistic landscape of Corinth, if not exactly working in line with Paul’s own expectations of how such a past might inform one’s choices in the present.

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4

Walking In the Wilderness Israelite Ancestors in the Corinthian Correspondence

The Scriptures inspired reverence but also stimulated creative energies. —Erich Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism

In the introduction to part 2, we saw how history, often a marker of ethnic identity, could be deployed for a number of rhetorical purposes depending on the context and need. We saw, for example, how the silver cup from the Berthouville hoard invoked Corinth as a site where heroes, humans, and gods presided over a prestigious Greek history, a landscape that itself could be purchased and experienced with each draining of a glass of good wine. In this chapter we look at two of many invocations of the past in Corinth, focusing on how Paul uses the history of Israel in 1 Corinthians 10 and 2 Corinthians 3. In each of these cases, Paul draws on perceptions of a shared past among “some” Corinthians to argue for identities around which history and cultic practice are intertwined. Paul draws on the history of Israel in arguments in which cultic practice and religious identity are mobilized to define and differentiate peoples. In these passages the religious practice and ethnic identity of the Corinthians are coconstituted through recourse to examples from a shared past, that of the Israelites in the wilderness; simultaneously Paul uses this ethnic rhetoric to undergird his own position of authority over the Corinthian community.1 In what follows I examine these two passages of Paul’s Corinthian correspondence, looking for how ethnicity and the past are mobilized in Paul’s rhetoric. When these texts are read by New Testaments scholars, they often are mined not for reconstructing Paul and the Corinthians, but for the meaning of interpretation itself. This is particularly the case with 2 Corinthians 3, which has

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been a hotly contested site for scholars to think about how Paul interprets the Hebrew scriptures, and therefore how they ought to interpret them.2 Though most scholars of these passages mine them for how Paul and they ought to interpret salvation history,3 the goal of part 2, much like part 1’s, is to reconstruct the spectral presences of “some” of Paul’s Corinthian correspondents. Beginning with Paul, I focus here on the various figures, characters, and pasts that are inscribed in 1 and 2 Corinthians. My analysis takes seriously the rhetorical construction of Paul’s text and avoids trying to map those constructions neatly onto either the Corinthians or Paul’s opponents. In chapter 5, we will hear other voices speaking about the past in Corinth, of which Paul’s emerges as one among many. In chapter 6 I return to these texts from the Corinthian correspondence as part of my reconstruction of the rhetorical situations to which they were addressed and the Corinthians who provoked and responded to Paul’s invocations of the Israelite past. As at the end of part 1, through this process I conjure the spectral presences of “some” Corinthians who saw in the stories of Israel a way of thinking about their presents and futures within the landscape and history of provincial Corinth.

Moses, the Israelites, and Ethnic Identity Both texts that I examine in this chapter deal with events from the traditions of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness and both make mention of the figure of Moses. As such, they participate in a broader conversation in which the traditions of the Jewish scriptures were deployed as a means of constructing ethnic identity. In a compelling study of the use of biblical traditions in the Hellenistic period, Erich Gruen has shown how Jewish authors reused and reshaped stories from their scriptural and historical past in the creation of various diaspora identities.4 I will briefly note two examples from Gruen’s work that will be relevant to thinking about how Paul makes use of the traditions associated with the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites. When we place Paul in this broader conversation, the apostle emerges as one among many Jewish authors in the diaspora making arguments about identity with the wandering Israelites and Moses. In the next chapter we will see other uses of the Corinthian past that place Paul among yet others talking about the past. Seeing Paul as one among many is important for contextualizing his rhetoric for the purposes of this chapter; however, we will have to wait until chapter 6 to discuss how such invocations of an Israelite past might have been heard by Corinthians living in a Corinth where many of the most visible negotiations of the past involved navigating the space between Greek history and the Roman present.

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Both the Exodus narratives and Moses were textual sites whereby Jewish writers constructed and reimagined identities for Jews in the diaspora through creative rewritings of the past. In a fascinating chapter, “Use and Abuse of the Exodus Story,” Gruen shows how malleable the stories of the Exodus could be, particularly among Jews living in Egypt. Gruen shows how those stories were constantly in flux, shifting and changing to meet the needs of each particular writer and context. As he notes, “The Scriptures inspired reverence but also stimulated creative energies. Jews found in them a prod for imagination and inventiveness. . . . Many of them hewed closely to the received text and regarded themselves as faithful reproducers of it—even while adding, condensing, enhancing, or interpreting.”5 Moses, who is mentioned in both our texts from the Corinthian correspondence, is often a central figure in the reworking of Jewish identity. Diaspora writers deployed the character of Moses in a variety of contexts. Moses could stand for the lawgiver, a prophet, or an ideal king and could be lauded as a philosopher, hero, inventor, religious innovator, or something approaching the divine. How one characterized Moses often stood in for how one characterized Jews as an ethnos. For example, when the Egyptian writer Artapanus, writing from a Jewish community adapting itself to life in Hellenistic Egypt, recorded stories about Moses, he emphasized Moses’ miraculous powers while also portraying Moses as sympathetic to Egyptians and Egyptian religion. Moses was a common site for textual manipulation in the service of constructing a diaspora identity.6 A second example from Gruen’s work concerns the assertion by some Jewish writers that Jews shared a genealogical connection with Sparta. One version, recorded in Josephus and given voice by the Spartan king Areus, involves the discovery of a new document affirming the kinship (συγγένεια) between the Jews and Spartans: “Having happened upon a certain document, we have discovered that the Judeans and the Lakedaimonians are descended from one genos and have kinship with Abraham. It is therefore just that you, being siblings, send to us with regard to anything that you wish, and we will do likewise” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 12.226). This story, found in two Jewish sources (1 Macc 12.20–23; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 12.225–27), argued that the Jews and the Spartans shared Abraham as a common ancestor. This claim to Spartan kinship was a means to write Jews into the history of the Hellenic world while also maintaining Jewish distinctiveness and pride of place: the claim was that the Spartans came from the Jews and not the other way around.7 Both these examples help us approach Paul’s adaptations of the Exodus traditions in 1 Cor 10:1–13 and 2 Cor 3:7–18. First, they show how Paul’s reworking

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of these materials was part of a broader practice of changing, adapting, and translating these traditions into new contexts throughout the Mediterranean. Though we often tend to see Paul’s use of these traditions as a “Christian” expropriation of “Jewish” materials, it is worth remembering that Paul, a Judean of the diaspora, was one of many Jewish authors who recast these stories to fit the contexts in which they found themselves.8 Second, these two examples remind us of the ways in which the invocation of the past or of kinship can serve to explain both continuity and discontinuity between ethnic groups.9 When Paul appeals to the Israelites as “our fathers” in 1 Cor 10:1, he argues for the continuity between the Israelites in the wilderness and Paul’s audience in Corinth. Conversely, Paul’s use of the story of Moses’ veiling in 2 Cor 3:7–18 marks a difference between the “sons of Israel” and Paul’s Corinthian audience. Rather than seeing these as contradictions in Paul’s thought, we ought rather to see them as two sides of the rhetoric of ethnicity, whereby genealogy can emphasize fixity or fluidity (or both) to construct ethnic identity. As Buell rightly observes, such a “genealogical argument allows Paul to redefine Jewishness, suggesting a range of possible ways of understanding what it means to be a Ioudaios.”10 As we will see, Paul’s reworking of the history of Israel is part of a broader conversation in which these texts were reimagined and rewritten in the production of diaspora identities.

“Our Fathers” in the Wilderness Gruen’s work shows how Moses and the Exodus narratives were usable pasts that were deployed in a number of diasporic contexts to construct ethnic identity. As such, they act as “mobile constructions” that produce and recast identity. In what follows I explore two uses of this Israelite past in the Corinthian correspondence: 1 Cor 10:1–13 and 2 Cor 3:7–18. In 1 Cor 10:1–13 Paul offers another example to his Corinthian audience of why they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, a conversation that we have already explored in chapter 1. Paul offers up the example of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness as “our fathers” (οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν [10:1]), assuming a surprising genealogical connection between the Israelites and Paul’s audience in Corinth. In what follows, I explore how this genealogical connection “writes” Paul’s audience into the history of Israel, an effect that Paul uses to encourage his Corinthian audience to abstain from food sacrificed to idols or face the threat of divine wrath. Of Fathers and Idols in Corinth Before discussing 1 Cor 10:1–13 in detail, I begin by setting it within the context of the larger argument of 1 Cor 8:1–11:1.11 Paul is attempting to encourage

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his Corinthian audience to give up their “authority” (ἐξουσία) to eat food sacrificed to idols. In chapter 1 we saw how Paul used a hypothetical “weak sibling” as an example of a person who might be hurt by the behavior of the Corinthians (1 Cor 8:7–9:18). Paul further claimed that his ethnically malleable body offered an example of how the Corinthians might please, and not offend, others (1 Cor 9:19–27; 10:31–11:1). Following the example of Paul’s ethnically malleable body, the example of the Israelite “fathers” offers a rebuttal to the position of “some” Corinthians on food sacrificed to idols in 1 Cor 8:1–6. This position, as Paul presents it through slogans in 8:1–6, was rooted in a philosophical monotheism. The argument follows from the assertion that there is only one God (8:4). If this is the case, then no other gods exist (8:4), and if no other gods exist, then their idols and associated cultic practices do not mean anything. Thus, there should be no danger in eating food sacrificed to idols that do not exist. Underlying this argument is a democratic understanding of knowledge: “we know that all have knowledge” (οἴδαμεν ὅτι πάντες γνῶσιν ἔχομεν [8:1]). If all are able to understand that there is only one God, then the authority to eat food sacrificed to idols is available to all.12 Paul’s challenge to the position of “some” Corinthians takes two tracks. First, he challenges the slogan that all have knowledge (8:7), using the hypothetical “weak sibling” as an example of someone who might not possess knowledge. Paul’s second strategy uses the wanderings in the wilderness as a way of shifting the focus of the conversation. In 8:3–6 Paul accepts the monotheistic slogans, taking a position that implies that he too thinks that idols are meaningless; however, in 10:1–13 he shifts the focus of the argument by emphasizing divine jealousy and anger. Paul’s retelling of the wilderness wanderings of Israel emphasizes the divine punishments that befell the Israelites when they disobeyed God. Rather than focusing on arguments about whether idols exist, Paul shifts the focus to God’s jealousy as the rationale for why the Corinthians ought to “flee idolatry” (10:14).13 Paul can thus present himself as a monotheist while also using the fear of divine jealousy to encourage “some” Corinthians to change their dietary practices.14 Though Paul’s rhetoric presents itself as objective and conciliatory, his position is clear: the Corinthians are not to take part in any cultic activities involving deities other than the God of Israel (10:7, 14). As the argument unfolds, Paul is willing to deploy the threat of divine violence against those whom he perceives as transgressing the boundaries set by the God of Israel (10:22). The Miracles of Our Fathers Paul’s threat of divine violence involves a recasting of the narratives of the Israelites in the wilderness into two sets of examples: the blessings on the people

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for right behavior (10:1–4) and the curses for disobedience (10:5–11).15 Paul’s recasting of the wilderness stories “writes” the Corinthians into the history of Israel as descendants of their Israelite “fathers.” The usefulness of this rereading for Paul is that he can then use this adopted history as an example for his audience that requires a specific theological and social response. Just as there was one appropriate response for the Israelites to their God’s commands, so also is there one appropriate response for the Corinthians to the advice of Paul, that same God’s agent in the present. Though they have become something other than what they were, the Corinthians, in Paul’s telling, are now bound to a new set of divine mandates that must govern their behavior under threat of divine punishment. The first part of Paul’s recasting of the wilderness narratives emphasizes the miraculous events that occurred when the people were united in their obedience to God’s commandments: “For I do not want you to be ignorant, siblings, that all our fathers were under the cloud and all went through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that was following them. And the rock was Christ” (1 Cor 10:1–14). This description of the blessings in the wilderness is marked with repeated recourse to πάντες (five times) and πνευματικός (three times).16 Each miraculous event in the Exodus is shared by “all” (πάντες), suggesting a common unity in each. The repetition of the term (five times!) rhythmically reasserts the theme of unity for the reader. The same goes for the repetition of the term πνευματικός, which is tied to food and drink and accompanied by the neuter pronoun αὐτό (“the same” [10:3–4]). That the Israelites ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink builds on the effect of πάντες by reinvoking the common experience and unity of all the Israelites during these miraculous events. Thus, 1 Cor 10:1–4 makes the Israelites positive examples of recurring themes in Paul’s letter: unity and spiritual blessings go hand in hand, whether on issues of food or community practice, just as they did when the Israelites were traveling in the wilderness.17 In 1 Cor 10:1–4 Paul also makes four important connections between the Israelite past and the Corinthian present. First, in 10:1 he describes the Israelites as “our fathers,” positing a genealogical continuity between the Israelites and his Corinthian audience. Appeals to genealogy and kinship are central to the rhetoric of ethnicity because they anchor group identity in the fixity and permanence of the past. Paul appeals to kinship to present the Israelites as ancestors of the Corinthians, ancestors whose history becomes a potential site for imitation or rejection. The use of one’s ancestors as examples for contemporary behavior is a

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common topos in rhetorical literature. Its purpose is to encourage the Corinthians to emulate the good behavior of their new ancestors and reject the bad. In what follows, Paul holds the Corinthians to a new standard of behavior rooted in the antiquity of their community and its ancestors.18 Second, Paul addresses the Corinthians directly as “siblings” (ἀδελφοί). Though it is a common label for Paul’s audience, the use of the term here underscores the genealogical claim being made about the “fathers.” The genealogical metaphors combine to form a more complete image of kinship. The Corinthians and Paul are siblings with a common set of fathers and ancestors.19 Third, in 10:2 Paul makes the ambiguous reference to the Israelites being baptized “into Moses” (εἰς τὸν Μωϋσῆν) in the cloud and in the sea. Just as the Corinthians have been baptized into Christ (12:13), so also their forebears were baptized into Moses. Whatever this meant for Paul, the parallel between past and present baptisms creates another link to the genealogical reference to “our fathers” in 10:1. A final link is created in 10:4, where the rock from which the Israelites drank (Exod 17:6; Num 20:8) is identified as Christ. Though many scholars have focused on the possibility that Paul is here referring to the preexistence of Christ, the identification between Christ and the rock further connects the history of Israel with the Corinthians. Just as Christ was present with the Israelites in the wilderness, so he is also present with the Corinthians now.20 Thus, in 1 Cor 10:1–4 Paul draws on the blessings of the Israelite ancestors as examples of unity for the Corinthians. At the same time, he creates a line of continuity between the Israelite past and the Corinthian present with references to baptism and Christ’s presence among the Israelites that underscores the genealogical connection introduced by “our fathers” in 10:1. The Corinthians are thus encouraged to see the history of the Israelites as “their” history.21 The Curses on Our Fathers Just as the Israelite past, as Paul constructs it, offers an example of proper behavior, so it also encodes examples that show the dangers of disobedience. The second half of Paul’s retelling (1 Cor 10:5–11) turns to the divine punishments that were meted out when the Israelites strayed from God’s commandments: But God was not pleased with many of them, for they were laid low in the desert. These things became examples for us, so that we would not be desirers of bad things, just as they desired. Do not become idolators as some of them, just as it is written, “the people sat down to eat and drink and they rose up to play.” Do not indulge in porneia as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. Do not put the Lord to the test, as some of them did,

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and were destroyed by serpents. Do not complain, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them as examples, written as a warning for us, upon whom the end of the aeons has come.22

Despite their earlier blessings, the God of Israel became displeased with most of the Israelites (ἐν τοῖς πλείοσιν αὐτῶν), and they suffered as a result. Paul offers a list of Israelite offenses with corresponding divine punishments that escalate in severity (10:7–10). Paul lists four punishments, which parallel the blessings of 1 Cor 10:1–4. Some of them committed idolatry, some committed sexual immorality, some put the Lord to the test, and some complained. In response, the God of Israel allowed 23,000 to fall on the same day, killed others with snakes, and then destroyed others by the destroyer (ὑπὸ τοῦ ὀλοθρευτοῦ). Interestingly, these transgressions (idolatry, sexual immorality, putting the Lord to the test, and complaining) mirror many of the issues that Paul treats in the letter as a whole. In each case the πάντες who were blessed by the Lord are replaced by a mysterious “some” (τινες αὐτῶν). It is this “some” who are the real danger, both for the Israelites and now for the Corinthians.23 Unity, Diversity, and Infection Paul thus offers the Israelites as an ambivalent example for the Corinthians, promising the potential for blessings or the threat of judgment. The force of this retelling fuses two of Paul’s assumptions that occur throughout the letter: a rhetoric of mutual benefit and punishment and a concern with pollution. As an example of the former, we might take 1 Cor 11:27–30, where Paul suggests that the improper manner in which the Corinthians have celebrated the Eucharist is the reason that many of them have become sick or died. Because factions (σχίσματα/αἱρέσεις) have created a situation in which some eat and drink at the Eucharist before others arrive (11:17–22), Paul suggests that the whole community is at risk: “So the one who should eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner is liable for the body and blood of the Lord. . . . Because of this, many among you are sick and many have died” (11:27, 30). There is always a danger that “some” might put the whole community at risk by their behavior. Intertwined with this logic is that of disease and pollution.24 As Paul notes in the case of the man sleeping with his stepmother: “A little yeast leavens the whole lump of dough” (μικρὰ ζύμη ὅλον τὸ φύραμα ζυμοῖ [5:6]). A similar logic is at play in 6:15–20, where Paul is concerned with the effects of uniting one’s body with a prostitute. Someone “in Christ” visiting a prostitute can make the body of Christ “one body” (ἓν σῶμα) with the prostitute (6:16). The actions of

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the Corinthians themselves can bring pollution into the community, which in turn threatens the overall health of the “body.” The great threat for Paul comes from within the community, rather than from forces outside it. Those “in Christ” can become bearers of a contamination that will infect all. Paul sees the infection of disagreement and difference, of strife and factionalism, by a few as a threat to all. The unity of purpose that led to divine blessing of the Corinthians (1:26–31), just as it did for the Israelites, can easily descend into factionalism and divine punishment. The punishments meted out for this factionalism and transgression are an increasingly violent response from God, according to Paul.25 In an argument about the proper position on idol meat, Paul draws on the adopted Israelite history of his Corinthian audience to make larger points about proper behavior and unity as the faithful response to that history. On Paul’s reading, the miracles in the wilderness came when Israel was unified and free of factionalism. It was only when “some” of the Israelites sinned in much the same way that “some” of the Corinthians have, in Paul’s eyes, that the God of Israel punished everyone. Paul’s reading of this mythic account leaves little room for dispute: behave and submit or suffer divine wrath.26 In 1 Cor 10:1–13 Paul draws on stories from the Israelites’ wanderings in the wilderness for specific rhetorical purposes. Paul uses these traditions to encourage his audience to take a particular stance with regard to food sacrificed to idols: “Flee from idolatry” (φεύγετε ἀπὸ τῆς εἰδωλολατρίας [10:14]). By creating a genealogical continuity between the Israelite past and the Corinthian present, Paul deploys the stories of the community’s “ancestors” as examples of proper and improper cultic and social behavior. At the same time, Paul constructs these examples to contrast unity and diversity: the former brings spiritual benefits, and the latter represents a contagion that might elicit a violent response from God. For the community to be safe from divine wrath, Paul suggests that they must become united under the authority of the apostle. The effect of this deployment of the past is the production of a group, the boundaries of which are marked by abstention from cultic practice.

“From Glory to Glory”: Paul, Politics, and Moses’ Veil In 1 Cor 10:1–13 Paul deploys a retelling of the wilderness narratives as examples for the Corinthians of the proper and improper behavior of their Israelite “fathers.” Relying on the creation of a genealogical relationship between the Corinthians and the Israelites, Paul uses their example as a means of persuading

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the Corinthians to “flee from idolatry” (1 Cor 10:14) or risk the wrath of a jealous God. The history of an ethnos is thus used as a mobile construction in debates about dietary and cultic practice in the present. In this section I look at another use of the Israelite past in 2 Cor 3:7–18, where Paul draws on traditions of Moses’ veiling before the Israelites in Exodus 34. Within a highly polemical context, a context that is different from that which confronted Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, in which Paul’s honesty and qualifications as an apostle have been called into question by the Corinthians, he uses this tradition to argue against accusations about his character and to associate his ministry and calling with the Spirit. In so doing, Paul claims that only those who recognize his apostolic authority have access to the ministry of the Spirit and the promise of transformation that it offers “from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18). In this way Paul’s use of the tradition of Moses’ veiling is similar to that of 1 Cor 10: 1–13, where the thrust of his argument relies on an implicit threat; however, Paul’s mapping of people in 2 Cor 3:7–18 also suggests a simultaneous continuity and discontinuity between the Corinthians, Gentile “unbelievers,” and the “sons of Israel,” each of which is marked by a different ability to perceive the glory of God. In his use of the story of Moses’ veiling, Paul offers Israelite history as a way of showing “some” Corinthians how their experience of the Spirit as a people has its own history that can be “read” out of the scriptures of Israel. But through this reading Paul also argues that the experience of the Spirit is itself mediated by him, just as Moses mediated between God and the sons of Israel. In this way, ethnicity, religious experience, and history are mobilized in a complicated argument designed to prove Paul’s authority among the Corinthians. Differentiating the Peoples of 2:14–4:6 In our discussion of 1 Cor 10:1–13, we saw how the appeal to a continuity with the history of the Israelites could be used to draw boundaries around the community based on a particular form of cultic practice. In 2 Cor 2:14–4:6 Paul’s use of the story of Moses’ veiling offers a similar construction of ethnic and religious identity through the use of the Israelite past, though here he emphasizes a discontinuity between the Corinthians and the Israelites. To see how this discontinuity is constructed, we must account for all the groups of people that are mentioned in the argument of 2 Cor 2:14–4:6. These include the Corinthians, Gentile “unbelievers,” and the “sons of Israel.” The first group is the Corinthian community, which Paul constructs in relation to the Spirit that authorizes and is mediated by him. The Corinthians constitute, for Paul, a part of “those who are being saved” (σῳζομένοι [2:15]) through the power of his διακονία of the Spirit (3:7–11). They are also those who

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are being transformed from “glory to glory” (ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν [3:18]) and who have seen the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of [Jesus] Christ” (φωτισμὸν τῆς γνώσεως τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ [Ἰησοῦ] Χριστοῦ) shine on their hearts (4:6).27 This group is contrasted with two others in the course of 2:14–4:6: Gentile unbelievers “who are being destroyed” (ἀπολλυμένοι [2:15–16; 4:3–4]) and the “sons of Israel” (υἱοὶ Ἰσραήλ [3:7, 13–15]). Those who are being destroyed are called “unbelievers” (ἀπιστοι [4:4]), a term that Paul generally associates with Gentiles who are outside the community and not Judeans or Israelites. The unbelievers who are being destroyed constitute the primary field for Paul’s mission to the Gentiles (1 Cor 12:2; 1 Thess 1:9–10; Gal 2:8–9; Rom 11:13; 15:15–16), and thus they represent the group out of which the Corinthians themselves have come (1 Cor 12:2). Because of this, Paul repeatedly draws a porous boundary between his Corinthian audience and the unbelievers who are perishing, hinting that the Corinthians might easily slip back into their dangerous former identities. Whether it be the threat of expulsion as one who is “a sibling in name only” (τις ἀδελφὸς ὀνομαζόμενος [5:11]) or the menacing invocation “let the one who seems to be standing take care lest he fall” (ὁ δοκῶν ἑστάναι βλεπέτω μὴ πέσῃ [1 Cor 10:12]), Paul’s repeated reminders of the porous boundary between the community and the unbelievers are meant to reinforce his version of proper behavior. Whether it is eating food sacrificed to idols or questioning Paul’s authority, inappropriate behavior can lead one away from the realm of the Spirit to join those who are perishing.28 The second group that Paul contrasts to the Corinthians is the “sons of Israel.” In contrast to the “fathers” of 1 Cor 10:1, here Paul distinguishes the Corinthians from the Israelites: because the sons of Israel are blinded by a veil on their hearts that goes back to Moses, they have not been able to see the glory of the Lord and its power to transform the Corinthians “from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18). Paul derives the phrase “sons of Israel” from the text of Exodus 34:34.29 It carries an ethnic designation, as it asserts a genealogical connection that runs from the past to the present. Throughout the passage the sons of Israel are portrayed in a distinctly passive manner. They are unable to gaze on the glory of Moses’ face (3:7, 13), but it is Moses’ lack of frank speech (παρρησία) that causes him to hide the truth of his deactivated glory from the sons of Israel by veiling himself (3:13). As a result of Moses’ actions, the minds of the sons of Israel were hardened (ἐπωρώθη [3:14]).30 The veil that Moses placed on his face remains on their reading (ἀνάγνωσις) of the ancient covenant and the hearts (καρδία) of the sons of Israel (2 Cor 3:14–15). The veiled reading of the ancient covenant (ἐπὶ τῇ ἀναγνώσει τῆς

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παλαιᾶς διαθήκης) and “Moses” stand in contrast to the self-evident clarity of the

Corinthians, read and understood by all men as Christ’s letter (3:2). That these readers read the ancient covenant does not seem to be a negative. Rather, the problem is not what they read but what stands between the ancient covenant and the reader (namely, Moses’ veil [3:15]). The veil itself is set aside only, for Paul, “in Christ” (3:14). The veil over the reading of the sons of Israel has a temporal sense as well. It was placed there in the past by Moses, as a result of his lack of frankness. It remains up to Paul’s present (ἄχρι τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας [3:14]; ἕως σήμερον [3:15]). Paul asserts a continuity between the past and the present, drawing on the genealogical sense of the phrase sons of Israel. The continuity of the veil across time is the result of its being passed on genealogically from the Israelites, who could not gaze at Moses’ face, to those who read “Moses” in Paul’s present. The sons of Israel are thus defined by Paul as an ethnic group that is marked by a particular quality: the inability to perceive the surpassing glory of God properly because of a hereditary veil that comes as the results of Moses’ duplicitous actions.31 Comparing Paul and Moses In constructing groups in 2 Cor 2:17–4:6, Paul emphasized the discontinuity between the Corinthians and the sons of Israel, in contrast to what we saw in 1 Cor 10:1–13; however, Moses emerges in 2 Cor 3:7–18 as a site at which Paul does a variety of rhetorical work. He uses Moses as a point of comparison, showing that he is both authorized by, and a mediator of, a ministry of the Spirit greater than that of Moses. In addition, Paul suggests he is a more honest and frank leader than Moses, whose veiling before the Israelites was a form of duplicity. By comparing himself with Moses, Paul addresses Corinthian concerns about his honesty and writes his own ministry into the history of Israel, claiming access to a glory in the Spirit greater than that experienced by Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness. Ultimately, Moses and the Israelites become usable pasts in Corinthian politics.32 In 2 Cor 3:7–18 Paul draws on the story of Moses’ veiling twice (3:7–11 and 12–18). The first use of the tradition allows Paul to compare himself with Moses, by which Paul emerges as the mediator of a more glorious ministry of the Spirit. In response to a Corinthian request for a letter of recommendation, Paul shifts the conversation, asserting that the Corinthians themselves are Paul’s letter, written on his heart by the Spirit (3:1–3): “You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all people, showing that you are Christ’s letter, serviced by us, written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God, not

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on tablets made of stone but on tablets made of fleshly hearts.”33 This binary between the Spirit and ink, tablets of stone and hearts, marks Paul’s shifting of the conversation from the Corinthian request for letters to his connection to the Spirit, which Paul suggests is a more appropriate criterion than a letter for determining the qualifications behind his authority. The invocation of the image of the stone tablets hints at where his argument will go next. Paul’s claim to the authority of the Spirit comes by way of a comparison between his ministry and that of Moses. Having hinted at the stone tablets of the Decalogue in 2 Cor 3:3, Paul takes up the question of where his qualifications (ἱκανότης) come from, if not from letters of recommendation. Paul claims that his qualifications come directly from God, who has given him standing in the ministry of the Spirit: “Our qualifications come from God, who has deemed us qualified as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:5–6).34 From Paul’s perspective, the apostle has been deemed qualified by God as a minister (διάκονος) of the Spirit and is, implicitly, in need of no written recommendation. His authority is rooted in a higher power than letters can provide. To further emphasize the power of the ministry of the Spirit, and his authority as its representative, Paul compares it with the glory of the ministry that came to Moses in the Tabernacle in the wilderness (Exodus 34): “If the diakonia of death, in letters inscribed on stones, came in glory, so that the sons of Israel were not able to look upon the face of Moses because the glory of his face was becoming inactive, how much more will the diakonia of the spirit come in glory? For if there is glory for the diakonia of judgment, the diakonia of justice will abound in much more glory. For even that which has been glorified is not glorified in this case for the sake of the exceeding glory. For if that which is being deactivated (comes) through glory, that which remains (comes) in much more glory” (2 Cor 3:7–11).35 Comparing the glory (δόξα) of each ministry (διακονία), Paul associates Moses’ glory with death and judgment and speaks of his glory as in the process of being deactivated (3:7–8, 9, 11, respectively). By contrast, Paul’s ministry, that of the Spirit, is of surpassing and enduring glory. His ministry is thus presented as that of the Spirit, approved by God and possessed of a glory that exceeds that of Moses. By invoking the Spirit, Paul lays claim to a key component of how the Corinthians seem to have constructed their identities. Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthians suggests that the Spirit (πνεῦμα) was viewed as that which made experience of the divine and the evaluation of authority possible. In 1 Corinthians Paul characterized his initial preaching in Corinth as manifesting “spirit and power” (πνεύματος καὶ δυνάμεως [1 Cor 2:4]). Throughout 1 Corinthians Paul

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presents the Spirit that he proclaims as an animating force in the community’s experience of the divine, a discerning presence that differentiates people and authorizes authority, and an agent of bodily transformation. At its most visible, the Spirit was the animating force behind the community’s practice of speaking in tongues (1 Corinthians 12–14), the performance of which seems to have been a criterion for leadership. The Spirit functions similarly in 2 Corinthians outside 2:14–4:6. This overabundance of “Spirit” language suggests the powerful attraction that Paul assumes his audience attached to the Spirit. By associating his διακονία with the Spirit, Paul attempts to constrain his audience’s options: to question Paul’s διακονία is to side against the Spirit.36 By arguing that his letter of recommendation is spiritual, written on the heart, and authorized by God, Paul presents himself as one who both possesses the highest form of recommendation available and does not require a physical letter of recommendation, as “some” do (τινες [3:1]), a label reminiscent of the dangerous “some” of 1 Cor 10:1–13.37 Those Corinthians who have asked for a recommendation from Paul show themselves to be operating outside the realm of the Spirit and the new covenant. So far, we have seen how Paul drew on the tradition of Moses’ veiling to address concerns about his qualifications as an apostle that had emerged because of his behavior. Paul used the tradition as a means of associating his ministry (διακονία) with the Spirit, an important presence in the life of the Corinthian community. In 2 Cor 3:12–18 Paul draws on the story of Moses’ veiling a second time to compare himself to Moses, whose lack of transparency has caused a veil to fall on the hearts of the “sons of Israel.” Though Paul speaks with frankness (παρρησία) and freedom (ἐλευθερία), Moses hid the truth about his fading glory from the sons of Israel, causing a veil to be placed over their hearts that endures to Paul’s present. In this comparison, Paul emerges as the better leader: his frankness comes from hope in the Spirit, the divine presence experienced by the Corinthians, whereas Moses’ veiling has prevented the sons of Israel from recognizing the work of the Spirit among the Gentiles. The key elements of Paul’s comparison with Moses emerge in 3:12–13: “Having such hope [in the glory that will come], we make use of much frank speech and not as Moses when he put a veil upon his face so that the sons of Israel could not look at the completion of (the glory) that was being deactivated.”38 A similar connection that Paul makes with the frankness of his speech comes in 2 Cor 3:17: “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν· οὗ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου, ἐλευθερία). In both instances Paul draws on traditions common to Greek democratic discourse: frank speech (παρρησία) and freedom of speech (έλευθερία). A com-

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mon concern among orators, philosophers, and clients was that they might lose their freedom to speak, a cornerstone of the democratic discourse of the Greek polis. To claim to speak freely was to claim to speak without motives tinged by greed as a free male with altruistic political goals. What distinguishes Paul’s selfpresentation is the ambiguous relationship he constructs between his speech and the Spirit, a connection that echoes the connection Paul earlier made between his ministry and the Spirit.39 As Paul reconstructs the tradition, Moses’ veiling begins to look like the behavior of a servile flatterer who says and does what his patron or the demos wants, a potential characterization of Paul himself that we explored in chapter 3. Moses veils so that the Israelites do not see the truth, a truth that is revealed only by one who has the freedom to speak frankly. This reading of the narrative in Exodus is strikingly different from the LXX version, while also being dependent on it.40 We can see this, for example, in the reasons the LXX and Paul give for Moses’ initial veiling: And Aaron and all the elders of Israel saw Moses and the sight of the complexion of his face was glorified and they were afraid to go near him. . . . And when [Moses] stopped speaking to them he placed a veil upon his face. (Exod 34:30, 33 LXX)

And not like Moses when he placed a veil upon his face so that the sons of Israel could not see the completion (of the glory) that was being deactivated. (2 Cor 3:13

The impression given by the text of the LXX is that Moses took up the veil because the Israelites were afraid of his shining face. The shining glory of Moses’ face was terrifying to the Israelites, potentially because they associated it with the deadly presence of the divine (Exod 33:18–23). By contrast, Paul’s summary of the events suggests that Moses placed the veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not see the truth about the fading glory on his face.41 Rather than frankly explaining to them why the glory on his face was being deactivated, Moses chose to hide this by placing a veil over his face. As a result of Moses’ actions, the minds of the sons of Israel became hardened (ἐπωρώθη τὰ νοήματα αὐτῶν [2 Cor 3:14a]), and the veil was passed down through the generations on their reading of the ancient covenant and on their hearts (2 Cor 3:14b-15).42 Moses acted with a lack of frankness, an action that resulted in negative consequences for the sons of Israel. Paul, on the other hand, speaks with frankness because he speaks out of the hope in the glory to come and from the place of freedom that is afforded by the Spirit of the Lord.

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Comparing himself with the founding lawgiver, Paul argues that his διακονία of the Spirit is superior to Moses’, which was in the process of being deactivated from the very beginning (2 Cor 3:7–11). It is because Moses hid this from the Israelites that they have had a veil placed on their hearts, a consequence of Moses’ lack of frankness (2 Cor 3:12–18). By comparison, Paul presents himself as one who speaks with frankness and freedom that come from his authorization by the Spirit. In each case, Paul has built his retellings of Moses’ veiling in such a way as to emphasize his own connection to the Spirit, an element of divine agency that is an important part of the Corinthian community, its cultic practices, and its identity. This ultimately serves Paul’s own political goals, emphasizing his divine calling and associating him with the animating Spirit of the community. To reject Paul is to reject his role in mediating the presence of the Spirit in the community and the transformation that it continues to bring (3:18).43 Moses and the Corinthians So far we have seen how 2 Cor 3:12–18, in contrast to 1 Cor 10:1–14, creates a discontinuity between the Corinthians and the sons of Israel, and we have seen Paul compare himself to Moses, to the latter’s detriment, as a means of shoring up his authority in Corinth. Despite all this, Moses still remains, for Paul, an implicit point of continuity between the Corinthians and the history of Israel. Through Paul’s ministry of the Spirit, the Corinthians can achieve an enduring transformation “from glory to glory” by the same glory that transformed Moses’ face, if only temporarily, in the wilderness. They are thus linked by a comparable participation in the glory of God.44 Though Paul’s narrative emphasizes the discontinuity between the Corinthians and the sons of Israel, Moses offers a point of contact with the history of Israel in which the Corinthians might read their own experience of the Spirit. Paul thus reads “Moses” as person and text to place the Corinthian experience of the Spirit into the history of Israel. By comparing himself to Moses, Paul presents himself as the true mediator of the Spirit and the transformation it offers for the Gentile Corinthians. To reject Paul as a mediator greater than Moses is to place oneself outside the ministry of the Spirit. Paul’s use of Moses as a point of contact for the Corinthians can be seen in the closing lines of 2 Cor 3:12–18. Though Moses hid the fading glory from the Israelites, he still experienced the glory of the Lord in the Tabernacle, a glory that can become available to the Corinthians on a permanent basis through the Spirit: “And whenever he would / one might turn to the Lord, the veil was / is removed. And the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We all, with unveiled face, reflecting (as in a mirror) the glory of the

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Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as [we are transformed] by the Spirit of the Lord” (3:16–18).45 In 2 Cor 3:16, Paul makes a heavily edited allusion to Exod 34:34 that transitions from the effects of Moses’ veiling on the sons of Israel to how the glory of Moses’ face is available to the Corinthians. To see Paul’s editing, here is a parallel of the text of the LXX with Paul’s quotation: Whenever Moses went before the Lord to speak to him, he removed the veil until he came out. (Exod 34:34 [LXX])

And whenever he/one might turn to the Lord, the veil was/is removed. (2 Cor 3:16)

Paul’s selective editing leaves the text ambiguous in a way that it is not in the LXX.46 The third-person singular subjunctive ἐπιστρέψῃ and the ambiguous middle or passive of περιαιρέω open the quotation up to several readings.47 This ambiguity leaves open a number of options for how the allusion was heard. On the one hand, the reader might supply Moses as the subject. Though Moses hid the truth from the Israelites, it remained true that Moses’ veil would still be taken off in the presence of the Lord, and he would have experienced the Lord’s glory with an unveiled face. Moses thus can serve as an example of someone who experienced the glory of the Lord directly, which is what Paul’s ministry of the Spirit promises to the Corinthians (3:18). On the other hand, the reader might assume an indefinite subject of the verb: “Whenever one might turn to the Lord, the veil is removed.” Reading an indefinite subject into the quotation invites readers to read themselves into the place of Moses, who removed his veil and met the Lord face-to-face. Paul’s characterization of the glory that was available to the Corinthians in 2 Cor 3:18 suggests that this latter reading may be the more appropriate, but we might do well to leave the ambiguity of the quotation in its place.48 In either case, Moses, who was characterized negatively in comparison to Paul, becomes a site at which the Corinthians are invited to read their experience of the Spirit. Moses becomes, on this reading, an ancestor in the Spirit like the fathers in 1 Cor 10:1, a point of continuity between past and present. Moses as a point of contact for the Corinthians is emphasized further in 3:18, where the Corinthians are invited to be permanently transformed by the glory of the Lord with “unveiled faces.” The image of the unveiled face reflecting the glory of the Lord is an allusion to the veiling story,49 but the crucial difference is that the Corinthians now have the possibility of manifesting the glory of the Lord permanently. Though Moses merely bore the effects of the glory of the

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Lord on his face for a short time, the Corinthians are offered the possibility of being permanently transformed (μεταμορφόω) into a new image (εἰκὼν). The form of this image to which the Corinthians are being transformed is alluded to in 2 Cor 4:4, where Paul describes Christ as the “image of God” (εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ).50 Christ, as the image of God, becomes the telos of the transformation, which moves from “glory to glory.” The glory of the Lord on Moses’ face is now refigured as the image of Christ; it is the “light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (φωτισμὸν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου τῆς δόξης τοῦ Χριστοῦ [2 Cor 4:4]) and the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of [Jesus] Christ” (φωτισμὸν τῆς γνώσεως τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ [Ἰησοῦ] Χριστοῦ [2 Cor 4:6]) that make possible the complete transformation of the Corinthians. Paul even draws from the Creation narrative, rooting his argument in an earlier time than the narrative in Exodus 34. He suggests that “the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ shines in our hearts” (ὁ θεὸς ὁ εἰπών· ἐκ σκότους φῶς λάμψει, ὃς ἔλαμψεν ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν [2 Cor 4:6]), paraphrasing Genesis 1:3–4.51 What was once temporary on the face of Moses is now made permanent through the work of Christ, who offers direct knowledge of God’s glory to the Corinthians. Having named Moses as the cause of the veil over the sons of Israel, Paul suggests that Moses remains a point of contact for his audience to embody a transformed life in the Spirit, free from the constraints of the veil. Though Paul contrasts the Corinthians’ experience and the possibilities open to them with the veiling of the Israelites, the effect is to write the Corinthians into the history of Israel, much as Paul does with the mention of the Israelite “fathers” in 1 Cor 10:1. Though the sons of Israel have been veiled from reading the potential in “Moses” (as person and text) for the transformation of the Gentiles (3:14–15), Paul’s reading of “Moses” is one in which the Gentile Corinthians have the ability to experience a permanent transformation similar to Moses’. The Corinthians are thus “read” into the history of the Israelites, though not as genealogical descendants of the “fathers” (1 Cor 10:1), but as distinct heirs to Moses. It remains true for Paul, however, that this transformation “from glory to glory” is available only through the work of the Spirit, and it is this same Spirit that has authorized and is mediated by Paul. To fall outside Paul’s ministry of the Spirit is to find oneself back among the Gentile “unbelievers” who are being destroyed (2 Cor 2:15; 4:3–4).52

Of Veils, Ancestors, and Identity In this chapter we have looked at two different uses of the Israelite past by Paul in the Corinthian correspondence. In 1 Cor 10:1–13 we saw how Paul made

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use of the genealogical connection to Israelite “fathers” as a means of policing the dietary and cultic practices of the Corinthian community. In 2 Cor 3:7–18 we saw how Paul used the story of Moses’ veiling both to defend himself from charges leveled at him in Corinth and to construct the Corinthians as a people of the Spirit, distinct from the Israelites but heirs to a divine glory that manifested itself on the face of Moses. In both cases Paul draws genealogical and historical connections between the Israelite past and the Corinthian present. These connections construct Corinthian identity and simultaneously undergird Paul’s own authority over the Corinthians, both as an arbiter over dietary and cultic practice and as a mediator of the Spirit that animates and transforms the community. Taken with Paul’s off-hand, yet surprising, formulation in 1 Cor 12:2 (“when you were Gentiles” [ὅτε ἔθνη ἦτε]), these two uses of Israelite history show us how Paul constructs an “in-between” identity for his Corinthian audience in which cultic practice and ethnicity are intertwined. Paul’s comment in 1 Cor 12:2 suggests that the Corinthians, who used to be Gentiles, have become something different. Their differentness is now marked by a changed cultic practice: as non-Gentiles, the Corinthians are no longer compelled to serve mute idols. But what then have these non-Gentiles become exactly? In 1 Cor 10:1–13 Paul suggests that they are children of the Israelites, their “fathers”; however, in 2 Cor 3:7–18 the sons of Israel in the wilderness are kept separated from the Corinthians by a veil on their hearts. Though Moses becomes a site on which the history of the Corinthians and the Spirit is constructed, the disconnect between the “fathers” and the “sons of Israel” is not resolved, nor is the identity of the Corinthians given a single signifier. Rather, as we saw in chapter 3, the identity of the Corinthians remains fluid and “in-between” in Paul’s rhetoric. Just as the Corinthians might be non-Gentiles in 1 Cor 12:2, in 1 Cor 1:22–24 they are Greeks who have been “called” (κλητοί). Corinthian identity, for Paul, resides in the spaces “in-between”: between Judean and Greek, Gentile and Israelite. This “in-between” identity offers Paul a great deal of rhetorical flexibility. As we have seen in this chapter, Paul mobilizes different episodes from the wilderness narratives in constructing a past for the Corinthians. Because he does not settle on one way of constructing Corinthian identity, Paul is not bound by one way of making these narratives speak to the Corinthian present. But Paul’s rhetorical flexibility in constructing the Corinthians suggests its own counternarratives, the spectral traces of which I conjure in chapter 6. Space needs first to be made for the Corinthians themselves who heard and interpreted Paul’s letters. In the next chapter I look at other configurations of the Corinthian past that were available for Corinthians to think with when

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they heard Paul’s mobile constructions of Israelite history. As he did in part 1, Paul emerges from this comparison as one among many talking about the past and its relation to the present in Corinth. It is by placing Paul back into this conversation that we can remain attentive to the spectral presences of “some” Corinthians who heard, read, and interpreted Paul from precisely within that “in-betweenness” that he so carefully constructed for them.

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5

“ In the City of Peirene” Claiming, Erasing, and Challenging the Past in Corinth

Knowledge of one’s own history (whether fabricated or not) can be highly important in the fashioning of ethnic identity. —Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism

In part 1 we looked at how various Corinthians negotiated their ethnic identities, either within the bilingual context of Corinth or by presenting themselves as possessors of ethnically malleable selves. This chapter looks at how the past was used as a means of negotiating ethnic identity in Corinth. A shared history is a common means of marking ethnic identity; it creates a sense of social cohesion rooted in an ancient and fixed past. But the past does not remain completely fixed. Rather, it is constantly reused in different contexts and in different ways as part of the construction of ethnic identity. This chapter explores how Corinth’s Greek past and Roman present were negotiated in texts and monuments within and around the city. I examine literary texts and monuments that use Corinthian history as a means of creatively reappropriating local myths and historical events in the service of constructing an identity between Greece and Rome. Evidence from Pausanias and the fountains of Peirene and Glauke show how a prestigious Greek Corinthian history was put to use within a Roman present in the construction of ethnic identity. But Corinth’s history could also be read differently. Though a mythical past could be used constructively to produce a Corinthian identity in the Roman present, so too could a mythical past be used to disrupt Corinthian identity, effectively writing the Corinthians out of a prestigious Greek history. The socalled Argive Letter and Favorinus’s Corinthian Oration show how Corinth’s past could be read in such a way as to critique a Corinthian audience and disrupt their ability to claim a prestigious Greek identity. Each of the examples discussed points to the importance of Corinth’s “usable past.” In addition, each 117

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demonstrates the extent to which the past does not retain one particular meaning or essence but can be put to use for a variety of goals in the present. History “is not a product of the past but a response to requirements of the present.”1 I begin by looking at uses of Corinth’s past by the Roman colonists, focusing on the ways in which the remodeling of the fountains of Peirene and Glauke show how these colonists claimed the prestigious past of Greek Corinth within the constraints of a Roman present. The appropriations of the Greek past by the Roman remodelers of Peirene and Glauke allow us to imagine other ways that the past could be heard and used by those to whom Paul wrote. Then I look at three examples of authors who use Corinth’s history as a means of disrupting the city’s Greek identity: Pausanias, Favorinus, and the author of the so-called Argive Letter. These examples show how history and the past are open to multiple uses in rhetoric in and about Corinth. Just as the Corinthians could create monuments like Peirene and Glauke to claim prestigious aspects of Corinth’s history for themselves, so others could use Corinth’s history in a contrasting strategy that disrupts Corinthian claims to Greek identity. In both cases, the Greek history of the city becomes fodder for the production or disruption of identity in Corinth. By attending to the double-edged negotiation of history within the city, we will be better able to see the constraints and possibilities for thinking ethnicity, history, and identity among “some” Corinthians who heard and responded to Paul.

Claiming the Corinthian Past On his journey through Corinth, Pausanias recounts an indigenous myth relating how Corinth came to have two patron deities (Helios and Poseidon): “The tale of the Corinthians about their land is not peculiar to them, but it seems to me that the Athenians were the first to speak so proudly of Attica. The Corinthians say that Poseidon had a dispute with Helios concerning the land, and that Briareos arbitrated between them, rendering the judgment that to Poseidon belonged the Isthmus and what was connected to it, and awarding to Helios the high place [Acrocorinth] above the city. From this time, they say that the Isthmus has belonged to Poseidon” (2.1.6). Pausanias puts little stock in the myth itself, suggesting that it is not particularly unique. The Athenians, as they always seem to do, thought of it first. Pausanias is aware that these types of stories were often told to bolster the pride one might take in one’s place.2 That Pausanias notes this was a story told by the Corinthians themselves shows how appealing it must have been in Corinth. Poseidon in particular was an important deity in Corinth, connected as he was with the Isthmian Games administered by the city.

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Further evidence for the myth’s importance comes from Favorinus’s ironic retelling in his Corinthian Oration (§11–15). On Favorinus’s reading, the fact that two gods dwell in the city is “neither a small nor dim sign of its eminence with regard to others [cities]. For while the others are an allotment and property of the gods individually—Argos of Hera and Athens of Athena—and while with regard to these same gods [about whom I was speaking]—Rhodes belongs to Helios and Onchestus to Poseidon—Corinth belongs to each of them [Helios and Poseidon]” (§12). Much as Pausanias dismisses Corinthian uniqueness, Favorinus has to rehearse a number of other foundation myths before he can pare down the claim of Corinthian uniqueness that undergirds the power of the story. In this story we hear an echo of how Corinthians may have boasted of their city and its mythological heritage and how it might be critiqued by those who had no interest in privileging the mythic history of the city.3 But there are other examples of local Corinthian uses of the past in the archaeological record from Corinth. Here I look at how the Roman colonists of Corinth sought to draw on the Greek history of their adopted city, highlighting famous events and associations in the monumental landscape of the colony. Throughout their remodeled city the Corinthians built monuments to remind visitors and citizens alike of the heroes and gods who once walked among them. They sought to make their city speak its Greek history to those who walked its streets. Aelius Aristides, from whom we heard in chapter 2, was one of Corinth’s visitors who trumpeted the ability of the city to speak its history: “While traveling about the city, you would find wisdom (σοφόν) and you would learn and hear it from its inanimate objects.”4 In what follows we will look at two monuments in Corinth and see if we can learn and hear wisdom from them, in Aristides’ words: the fountains of Peirene and Glauke. As the Corinthians sought to make their city speak its history, they did so by drawing on Roman architectural styles, displaying Greekness in a Roman guise, an expression of Greece made Roman. Corinth’s use of its Greek history is another example of the hybridity between Greek and Roman identities that we have explored in previous chapters. Colonizing a Greek Myth: The Peirene Fountain The monumental fountain complex of Peirene was one of the first buildings to be remodeled in the precarious early days of the colony. And it was not only remodeled but remodeled on a monumental scale. Renovations in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE had created a facade with six chambers, in front of which was an open space, flanked on the east by a hexastyle stoa with Doric columns. As Betsey Robinson has shown, beginning about 30 BCE the fountain underwent a series of renovations that radically altered its appearance (see figures 7a and b). Retaining walls were added to the east and west sides to extend the

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Figure 7a. Facade of the Peirene Fountain, from the north

Figure 7b. View of the Peirene Fountain from the Lechaion Road

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facade and mask the living rock out of which the fountain was carved. Shortly thereafter a facade, two stories high, was added to the front of the fountain. It had arches of Doric half-columns and an upper colonnade of Ionic columns. The fountain was soon enclosed by another wall with a large apse on the north side, closing off and redefining access to the space.5 The new design of Peirene places it squarely within the architectural trends current in Augustan Rome. Along with remodeled springs and grottoes, freestanding monumental arches like the new Peirene facade were all the rage in Rome. These arched structures combined Roman bricked-arch construction with the use of the Greek column orders as supports and became popular throughout Italy and the larger Mediterranean world. As William MacDonald has argued, the arch with the incorporation of Greek column orders became a symbol of Romanitas in architectural form, a new combination of traditional forms that presented a Roman imperial face on buildings that went up throughout the new imperium.6 The choice of this Roman style of architecture tells us something about the interests of the early colonists. As Robinson argues, “Choices were made, and the result was an early and very conspicuous example of ‘empire imagery’ in Roman Greece. [Viewed alongside the other monuments in the Forum] the architecture of Peirene clearly articulated the privileged place of Corinth in the new Imperial order. . . . Corinth’s ambivalent past and probable future as a commercial center of Roman Greece demanded an architecture that explicitly articulated a direct connection to the Imperial capital.”7 But why did the early colonists put so much energy into remodeling a fountain? Just as the Fountain of Peirene was cut into a rock scarp to the north of the Roman Forum and along the road to Lechaion, so the mythological story of Peirene likewise cut its way through the Mediterranean world, from Pindar to the frescoes of the Casa di Virnius Modestus in Pompeii to the silver cup from the Berthouville hoard.8 It was at Peirene that Bellerophon was said to have tamed the winged horse Pegasos, with the help of Athena. Minted on Corinthian coins from the Archaic to early Roman period, Peirene and Pegasos became metonyms for Corinth itself, beginning with Pindar’s Thirteenth Olympian Oration, in which the poet can speak of something that occurs ἐν ἄστει Πειράνας (“in the city of Peirene” [61]).9 Famed as a well-watered spring derived from an ancient nymph and the scene of a famous mythological event, the Peirene Fountain was a potent symbol of Greek Corinth’s antiquity and fame. The mythological complex that intersected with the actual fountain connected to other points of Corinthian pride: the quality of Corinthian bronze, the ingenuity of Corinthian craftsmanship, and the invention of the

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bridle. Such a close connection between the spring and the Greek city was certainly part of why the renovation of the fountain was so important to the first Roman colonists. In their reconstruction of the fountain, the early colonists sought to trade on the power of this myth, framing it within a monumental, Roman-style fountain complex that reimagined the myth in the cityscape of the new Corinth, a landscape in which, by Pausanias’s day, included a temenos to Bellerophon in the Craneion district, a fountain of Bellerophon and Pegasos on the Lechaion Road, and a hieron to Athena Chalinitis (Athena the Bridler) near the theater on the road to Sikyon. Each of the players in the myth is given a monument that alerts visitors of their approach to the actual site of the event at Peirene. Combined with the reintroduction of Pegasos onto many of the early Roman duoviral coins, this appropriation of the myth and its placement within the landscape of the city suggests its power for the Corinthians.10 The Peirene Fountain is not only a site at which visitors could gaze into the caverns of a famous mythic site, but also a glimpse into the cultural formation of early Roman Corinth. Peirene was a potent symbol of Greek Corinth, a metonym for the city itself. By renovating the fountain in monumental, Roman style, the Corinthians sought to reconfigure the meaning of the space and the cultural value of the myth within a new urban environment. To see the fountain rendered in the architecture of Romanitas was to see an image of Corinth itself, a Greek city reforged by Roman power. Over time monuments to the myth developed around the city, flowing out from the fountain itself to announce its presence to visitors and residents alike. Here architecture, history, and cityscape coalesced around an urban strategy that channeled the power of myth into the creation of civic identity.11 Inventing a Mythic Place: Glauke One of the more eye-catching monuments at the current Corinth excavations is the Fountain of Glauke, a square stone structure that seems to rise out of the bedrock to the west of the archaic Temple of Apollo (see figure 8). The fountain house itself was carved out of what used to be the natural hill line. The rest of the hill was quarried by the Roman colonists, leaving this odd square of oolithic limestone.12 The structure is undoubtedly the Fountain of Glauke mentioned by Pausanias as he leaves the Forum on the road to Sikyon (2.3.6). That this prominent fountain in the center of the city should be named after Glauke would be no surprise to an ancient visitor. Second only to the Bellerophon and Pegasos myth in its internationally recognizable association with Corinth is the story of Jason, Medea, and King

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Figure 8. Glauke Fountain, from the north

Kreon’s daughter (later to be given the names Kreousa or Glauke), and the climax of the famous voyage of the Argo. But unlike the Fountain of Peirene’s, this fountain’s name developed through murky channels and, by the time of the Roman colonization of Corinth, the remodeling of the fountain would become an act of historical imagination meant to “historicize” the city center as a theater of memory, to use a phrase from Susan Alcock.13 Like Peirene, the Fountain of Glauke was a site where the need to give place to a myth actually resulted in the reimagining of a prominent local monument. As such, it is also a place where we can see how the city’s Greek past was useful in the construction of a Greek identity. Sometime in the fourth century BCE, the Fountain of Glauke was carved out of the limestone hill on which the Temple of Apollo now stands. Water was stored in large reservoirs cut into the rock and accessed by a staircase on the north side. One of the things that makes Glauke different from Peirene is that it is not directly linked to a natural water source. Rather, it had its water piped in from elsewhere, most likely the water source connected with the fountain of Hadji Mustafa to the south. Such a complicated water system would have

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made Glauke a state-of-the-art water source in the fourth century, a major accomplishment for the city and its rulers.14 Over time the limestone around the fountain was quarried and removed, leaving the stone structure in its current freestanding form. The quarrying of the rock around Glauke occurred in stages, its final form taking shape in the first century CE, when the building of the Odeion and Temple C changed the shape of the surrounding area. Temple C was built right up to the back of the fountain, which required almost all the rock next to the eastern reservoir to be taken away. After the end of Roman quarrying in the area, the damaged steps of the fountain were repaved; at this point they linked the fountain with the road out of the city toward Sikyon. The Romans did not add a marble revetment to the outer facade of the fountain; the structure thus had an antique look alongside the Temple of Apollo in a city that was rapidly decking itself in marble.15 The mythological complex that came to be associated with the fountain was the story of the death of Glauke, which was part of the Jason and Medea myth. In contrast to Peirene, which was well attested in literary sources, the fountain is mentioned only by Pausanias (2.3.6). The various traditions regarding Jason, Medea, Glauke, and the sailing of the Argo are a complicated web of mythologies and etiologies. One of the most important versions is that of Euripedes in his Medea, wherein Jason tires of Medea and takes a new wife, the daughter of Kreon. Medea, jealous of this new woman, sends her sons to give Kreon’s daughter a poison robe, which immediately causes her to burst into flames. Kreon himself also perishes as he embraces his dead daughter. Medea then murders her sons and flies off in a chariot with winged snakes.16 Euripedes does not give the name of Kreon’s daughter, but she soon takes on two competing names: Kreousa and Glauke. To early Latin writers she is known as Kreousa, but the scholiasts of Euripedes and Pausanias know her as Glauke. By the first and second centuries CE, the woman, no matter her name, had found a place within the broader myth itself, finding visual representation on sarcophagi and mentioned by Lucian as a popular pantomime (Saltatione 42).17 Like that of Peirene, its neighbor to the east, the myth associated with Glauke was displayed in other monuments in the city center. Pausanias saw a tomb of Medea’s children near the Odeion, just west of the fountain (2.3.6). He notes that the traditional rites associated with this monument ceased to be observed after the Roman destruction and colonization of the city (2.3.7). Favorinus also mentions that Jason had dedicated the Argo at Isthmia (§15). These monuments further knit the story into the fabric of the city, marking other sites associated with the myth. The mythic history associated with Glauke, Medea, and Jason became visible in the city and thus served as evidence for the Corinthian claim on these events.18

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How Glauke came to be associated with the fountain carved out of Temple Hill has been something of a mystery to archaeologists, since Pausanias, writing in the second century CE, is the only author to identify the fountain by this name. The most recent archaeological work on the site has suggested that the name came to be associated with the site around the time of the Roman colonization of the city. Regardless of the provenance of the fountain’s name, the Roman colonists clearly decided to retain Glauke as a monument of Greek antiquity in their Roman colony. The colonists chose to leave the fountain looking like an ancient monument: “While the original form of Glauke seems not to have been determined by a Roman literary spirit, its maintenance as a rupestral fountain-house, a sort of ‘romantic ruin,’ surely was by choice, and it betrays the will of the Corinthians to add another monument of the heroic age to the landscape.”19 The structure was not remodeled in a grand fashion, as occurred at Peirene, but was left in a state that emphasized its antiquity. The archaic look of the fountain can be paired with the archaic Temple of Apollo to its east (see figures 9a and 9b). After the Roman colonization, the temple’s exterior facade, with its squat Doric columns, was retained, while extensive renovations were made to the interior, dramatically changing the use

Figure 9a. Apollo Temple, from the southwest

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Figure 9b. Apollo Temple and Glauke Fountain, from the west

of the space. These renovations left the exterior of the temple with an archaic appearance, while changing the orientation of the temple from east to west. The temple and its temenos would now be accessed from the west. Those visitors who came into Corinth from the road to Sikyon would now meet both the Temple of Apollo and the Fountain of Glauke, each of which retained an appearance of great antiquity. In “conversation” with the archaic Temple of Apollo, Glauke became a “memory theater” within which the Roman colonists presented their city to visitors and citizens alike as embodying a prestigious Greek lineage and history.20 Of Fountains and Corinthian Pasts Like many other Greek cities of the time, Corinth sought to cultivate monuments commemorating its Greek past, even when such commemoration manifested itself in a distinctly Roman idiom. Whether it was Peirene’s monumental facade or Glauke’s archaic appearance, these two fountains show how Corinth’s Greek past could be reimagined in a Roman present as part of how the city presented its identity to citizen and visitor alike. Both monuments trade on

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the Greek past of Corinth but put that past into conversation with the Roman present. In this way, Glauke and Peirene are “texts” similar to Aristides’ Isthmian Oration, which we explored in chapter 2. Aristides looked at the mixing of Greek and Roman in Corinth through international trade and saw the potential for a way of constructing Greek identity in the Roman Empire. For Aristides, Corinth, as a metropolis, marketplace, and merchant vessel, was a model of retaining Greek cultural identity while also benefiting from finding a place within the Roman imperial order. For Aristides, Peirene, and Glauke, Corinth is a place where Greek history and the Roman present meet in a mutually beneficial dialogue, where the lines between Greek and Roman identity blur in the colonial encounter.

“When I Say ‘You,’ I Mean Your Ancestors”: Arguing with the Past in Corinth In a short lyric, written during the Augustan period, Crinagoras speaks in the voice of an elite Greek just after the fall of Corinth to the Romans: “What colonists have you received, O pitiable [city], and in place of whom? Woe for the bad fortune of Greece! Would, Corinth, that you lay lower to the earth and more deserted than Libyan sand, rather than wholly given over to such good-for-nothing slaves who afflict the bones of the ancient Bacchiadae.”21 The tragedy of the city’s destruction is overshadowed here only by the colonists (οἰκήτορες) who now dwell in the ruins. These inhabitants are described as being παλιμπρήτοισι, which can mean “good for nothing” but derives from a title for a slave who is so bad that he passes frequently from one hand to the next. These new servile inhabitants bring a fresh calamity on Greece and bring disgrace on the memory of the oligarchic Bacchiadae, who had ruled Greek Corinth for centuries. Written sometime during the reign of Augustus, this lyric could describe the period after the destruction of Corinth, when the survivors and their surrounding Greek neighbors sought to make do in the scarred city. It could just as easily describe the early years of the newly founded Roman colony, when freedmen from Rome began to rebuild, creating a Roman city amid renovated Greek buildings. Either way, or perhaps in both cases, Corinth remained a site where one might criticize a city filled with people, whether squatters or freedmen, who could not live up to the Greek standards of their adopted ancestors. In this section we look at three examples of authors who use Corinth’s Greek history as a means of disrupting the city’s Greek identity. Pausanias uses the Roman destruction of Corinth to emphasize the break between Roman and Greek

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Corinth. Favorinus, whose oration we discussed in chapter 1, offers an ironic rereading of Corinth’s Greek history that challenges the ability of the city to claim a Greek identity for itself. Finally, we look at the Argive Letter, an anonymous document written to a Roman administrator on behalf of Argos in regard to a dispute with Corinth over the financing of spectacle entertainments. The author uses Corinth’s behavior to question whether the Corinthians are truly descended from either the Romans or the Greeks. These examples show how history and the past are open to multiple uses in rhetoric in and about Corinth. Just as the Corinthians could create monuments like Peirene and Glauke to claim prestigious aspects of Corinth’s history for themselves, so others could use Corinth’s history in a contrasting strategy that disrupts Corinthian claims to Greek identity. In both cases, the history of the city becomes fodder for the production or disruption of Greek identity in Corinth. Pausanias, Kingship, and Greek Identity In his description of Corinth in the late second century CE, Pausanias offers a number of comments that highlight the discontinuity between Corinth’s Greek past and its Roman present. We have already looked at how Corinth’s Greek history might be claimed by Corinthians in a Roman present. Here we begin to see how an elite provincial Greek like Pausanias might argue that the Roman colonists could not own Corinth’s Greek history because they were new arrivals to the region, transplants who were not “native” Corinthians. Pausanias opens his discussion of Corinth by emphasizing the discontinuity between old and new Corinth: “None of the ancient Corinthians inhabit Corinth any more, [it is inhabited by] colonists sent by the Romans” (Κόρινθον δὲ οἰκοῦσι Κορινθίων μὲν οὐδεὶς ἔτι τῶν ἀρχαίων, ἔποικοι δὲ ἀποσταλέντες ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων [2.1.2]). Later, in a description of Elis and the Olympian sanctuary,

Pausanias lists the Corinthians as the most recent inhabitants of the Peloponnesos: “The Corinthians are now the newest [settlers] of the Peloponnesos, and from the time in which they received the land from the king to me is two hundred and seventeen years” (Κορίνθιοι μὲν γὰρ οἱ νῦν νεώτατοι Πελοποννησίων εἰσί, καὶ σφισιν, ἀφ᾽ οὖ τὴν γῆν παρὰ βασιλέως ἔχουσιν, εἴκοσιν ἔτη καὶ διακόσια τριῶν δέοντα ἦν ἐς ἐμέ [5.1.2]). As the newest (νεώτατοι) ethnic group to arrive in

the Peloponnesos, the present Corinthians are distinguished sharply from the former Dorian inhabitants of Corinth before the sack of Mummius.22 Pausanias mentions the missing Greek Corinthians and the newness of the present Corinth several more times (2.2.2; 2.3.1; 2.3.7; 5.25.1). Pausanias’s emphasis on the discontinuity between Greek and Roman Corinth is one of several ways that he subtly undermines Corinth’s claim to a Greek identity. The gap between the

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past and the present is but one of several strategies by which Pausanias dismisses Corinth’s Greek identity and its place in provincial Greece. One way that we can see Pausanias’s play on Corinth’s history at work is in the way in which he highlights or ignores monuments that he finds in the Corinthian Forum. Pausanias’s account of the Corinthian Forum is shaped by a predilection for thinking about the Greek past of Corinth in contrast to its Roman present. Pausanias privileges the traces of Corinth’s Greek past in his journey through the Forum, often giving little notice to the self-evidently Roman buildings in the city center, frustrating modern archaeologists in the process.23 For Pausanias the only things “worthy of mention in the city” (λόγου ἄξια ἐν τῇ πόλει) are the “remnants of ancient times” (τὰ λειπόμενα τῶν ἀρχαίων [2.2.6]). In his emphasis on the difference between the contemporary and ancient inhabitants of the site, Pausanias sees the monuments of the city through a “cultural construct” that privileges the Greek over the Roman.24 Another strategy by which Pausanias marks the difference between Greek and Roman in Corinth is by emphasizing Corinth’s role, as the head of the Achaian League, in bringing about the conquest of Achaia by the Romans. His description of the sack of Corinth dwells on the horror of Mummius’s violence, but it also places blame for the destruction and Greece’s current provincial position on the Achaian League, of which Corinth was the leader (7.16.7–10): “The Romans call [their provincial governor] a governor not of Greece but of Achaia, because they conquered the Greeks as a result of the Achaians, when they were the leaders of the Greek polity” (καλοῦσι δὲ οὐχ Ἑλλάδος, ἀλλὰ Ἀχαΐας ἡγεμὀνα οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, διότι ἐχειρώσαντο Ἕλληνας δι᾽ Ἀχαιῶν τότε τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ προεστηκότων [7.16.10]). As Christian Habicht argues, “As far as Pausanias is

concerned, Greek history ends in 146 B.C. with the catastrophic defeat of the Achaeans and the destruction of Corinth.”25 Not only are the current inhabitants of Corinth different from the Greek Corinthians of the past, but the destruction of Corinth itself marks a significant break in Pausanias’s understanding of Greek history. Finally, Pausanias’s rethinking of Corinthian history takes aim at the archaic Greek past of the city, reevaluating the kingship of Bellerophon and Corinthian participation in the Trojan War. During his tour through the Corinthian Forum, Pausanius breaks off his discussion of the Temple of Athena Chalinitis (the Bridler), a temple dedicated to Athena as the helper of Bellerophon in the taming of Pegasos, to discuss the question of whether Bellerophon was an autonomous king: “That Bellerophon did not rule as a self-sufficient king, but was ruled by Proteus and the Argives, is believed by both me and him who has read the poems of Homer with care” (2.4.2). Pausanias argues that Bellerophon

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could not have been a true king, since, at that time, the region was under the control of Proteus and the Argives, the evidence for which comes from no less a historical source than Homer. Subjected to the despots of Argos or Mycenae, the Corinthians went to Troy, not under their own king, but under Agamemnon: “On their own they furnished no leader for the expedition against Troy, but were under the command of Agamemnon, along with the Myceneans and others, as part of the army that he led” (2.4.2). The implication here is that full participation in the Trojan War, a defining moment in Greek identity, can be attributed only to those who fought under an autonomous king. That the Corinthians did not have autonomy because they were not ruled by a king under whom they could fight independently at Troy can be read as an implicit challenge to Corinthian claims to full participation in Greek identity.26 By emphasizing the discontinuity between Corinth’s Greek past and Roman present, occasioned by the destruction of Corinth by Mummius in his war with the Achaian League, Pausanias challenges Corinth’s ability to claim a prestigious Greek history.27 But at the same time Pausanias subtly reconfigures Corinth’s Greek history by questioning the kingship of Bellerophon and Corinth’s participation in the Trojan War. Corinth’s Greek history is separated from the Roman present and downgraded at the same time. By these intertwined strategies, Pausanias shows how one might read Corinthian history in such a way as to challenge the city’s Greek identity. We can read this history as a subtle disruption of the logic that pervades the remodeling of the Peirene Fountain, where Corinth’s history was displayed in a monumental fashion as a means of presenting a prestigious Greek past in the idiom of the Roman present. As we will see below, Favorinus will offer a similar rethinking of Corinth’s history as a means of disrupting the use of the city’s past in the production of Greek identity. History as Irony: Favorinus’s Corinthian Oration One of the most damning characterizations of the Corinthian past comes in the ironic praise of Favorinus’s Corinthian Oration. We looked at several sections of this oration in chapter 1, where we saw how Favorinus claimed an ethnically malleable self that could both seem to be and actually be Greek. Here we look at how the oration presents an ironic retelling of Corinth’s Greek history that disrupts Corinthian claims to a Greek identity.28 In examining these portions of the oration, I will focus on Favorinus’s use of Corinthian genealogy and history as a means of argument. With regard to Corinthian genealogy, Favorinus draws on the example of Corinth’s ancestors and colonies to encourage his audience to take particular actions within the logic of the oration. At the

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same time Favorinus offers an ironic reading of Corinth’s Greek history that undercuts his audience’s ability to claim that history for themselves. A similar rhetorical goal was explored in chapter 1, where Favorinus portrayed his audience as stillborn Greeks, held up by the fact that they are uncultured Roman rubes. The opening sections of the oration show how one might use the Greek history of Corinth to criticize the behavior and identity of Corinthians. As a doubleedged sword, this history is used by Favorinus to challenge the extent to which Corinth could call itself Greek. Favorinus thus offers an implicit challenge to the fountains of Peirene and Glauke, each of which sought to claim Corinth’s Greek history for the Roman colony. It also resembles a similar argument by Paul, who draws on his audience’s adopted Israelite history as a means of critiquing practices in the Corinthian ekkle¯sia with which he disagrees (1 Cor 10:1–13). Peirene and Glauke construct a particular form of Greek identity for Corinth out of the city’s history, but Favorinus draws on that same history to disrupt Corinth’s Greekness. Several times in the oration Favorinus speaks in the language of kinship and descent, referring to the ancestors (προγόνοι) of his Corinthian audience or drawing on stories about a Corinthian colony (Syracuse) that he thinks deserve imitation by his audience. By drawing on the language of Corinth’s ancestors and colonies (for which the city is called a μητρόπολις or “mother city” [§23]), Favorinus makes use of a common rhetorical argument that deploys claims to kinship to persuade an audience to take a particular action.29 Favorinus uses descent and kinship as a means of arguing that the Corinthians recognize his importance as a model of Greekness. At the same time, Favorinus offers hints of a larger strategy that seeks to trouble the ability of the city to claim a Greek identity for itself because of its actions in rejecting Favorinus. Favorinus uses the language of kinship and genealogy as a means of disrupting the ethnic construction of Corinthian identity. From the very opening lines of the oration, Favorinus makes genealogical connections between his audience and the Greek Corinthians of the past. He opens his oration with a reference to his past visits to the city, paralleling them with the visit of Arion, the inventor of the dithyramb, during the reign of Periander (§1): “When I first stayed in your city, nearly ten years ago, and shared my oratorical skills with your demos and magistrates, I seemed to be on friendly terms with you, to an extent not exceeding Arion of Methymne. Yet you did not make an image of Arion (and when I say ‘you,’ I mean your ancestors and Periander the wise, son of Cypselos).”30 In mentioning the story of Arion’s rather ignominious visit to the city,31 which he derives from Herodotos (Histories 1.23), Favorinus interrupts his storytelling

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by positing the continuity between past and present: “and when I say ‘you,’ I mean your ancestors (προγόνους) and Periander the wise, son of Cypselos” (§1). Favorinus uses a term of biological descent that asserts a genealogical connection between his audience and the Corinthians of the archaic past, when Periander was the tyrant of Corinth. Favorinus will return to the genealogical connection between the Corinthians of the Greek past and the Roman present later in his discussion of illustrious visitors to Corinth who did not receive statues: “And also Herodotos, the writer, came to you bearing stories both of other Greeks and Corinthians, which were not yet false, for which he deemed it worthy to receive a reward from the city. And failing at this (for your ancestors did not deem it worthy to buy such stories), he transformed those stories that we have all heard concerning Salamis and Adeimantos” (§7). The reminder of Herodotos’s account of Corinthian cowardice at the Battle of Salamis (Histories 8.94) subtly reasserts the similarity between Greek and Roman Corinth, while also bringing up an unflattering characterization, a potential embarrassment to his Corinthian audience. On the one hand, Favorinus’s mention of the unflattering portrait of the Corinthians (even as he claims to disavow it [cf. §§18–19]) reminds the audience of the perceived failure of Corinth at a crucial moment in Greek history. The memory of Corinthian cowardice at Salamis (like not being full participants in the expedition to Troy) undercuts Corinth’s ability to claim a distinguished Hellenic pedigree, even at the same time as it classes the Corinthians with the “other Greeks” (ἄλλοι Ἑλληνικοί). Herodotos’s audience is left ambiguous: who is the “you” he has come to visit? The Corinthians of the past or of the present? Even though he disavows Herodotos’s account of Corinthian cowardice, Favorinus introduces an embarrassing topic into his ironic praise of the city and blurs the line between the Corinthians of the past and of the present. But at the same time that Favorinus reasserts a connection between Corinth’s Greek past and its Roman present, he quietly critiques his audience by how he describes their ancestors’ (οἱ ὑμέτεροι πρόγονοι) reaction to Herodotos’s request for a bribe. The Corinthian ancestors refused to pay for honorable stories to be written about them, which caused Herodotos to make up slanderous stories about Corinthian cowardice. As Jason König notes, Favorinus invites the audience to see a contemporary parallel: in their courting of imperial favor by taking down Favorinus’s statue, after his falling-out with Hadrian, the present Corinthians are doing to Favorinus what their ancestors would not have done.32 Corinth’s history is thus made to serve Favorinus’s interests, as he portrays the members of his audience as failing to live up to the standards of their ances-

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tors. As the oration continues, Favorinus will continue to show the failure of his Corinthian audience to live up to the virtues of Corinth’s Greek history, while also calling that very history’s virtue into question. In the third section of the oration, Favorinus begins to push his audience to allow him to defend his fallen statue as if it had been given a fair trial before the citizen body. As part of his argument, Favorinus offers the example of a similar practice that occurred at Syracuse, a colony of Greek Corinth: If there should be a trial of a statue,33 of the sort that they say occurred in Syracuse—and the manner of which [it occurred] I will not hesitate to relate by way of a parenthesis. Bronze and money had failed for the Syracusans, your colonists, as a result of their many wars against the Carthaginians and the other barbarians who dwelt in Sicily and Italy. So they voted on breaking up the statues of the tyrants—and there were many among them made from bronze—having held a trial among themselves, as regards which of them was worthy of being melted down and which were not. And there survived with the trial—so that you also should hear this—Gelon son of Deinomenes. And all the others were broken down, except Dionysios the elder of the two that are presented in the form of Dionysos. (§§20–21)

Favorinus uses Syracuse’s statue trial as an example of what should have occurred in Corinth. His example suggests that the Corinthians should have learned a lesson from their colonists and treated his statue as the Syracusans had treated the statues of tyrants. If a tyrant deserved such consideration in Syracuse, a model of Greekness like Favorinus certainly should as well. The example functions much like an argument from genealogy, and here Corinth’s colonists are treated like descendants and family members.34 This continues Favorinus’s use of history and genealogy as a means of asserting and disrupting Corinth’s Greek identity. Favorinus continues to use the Syracusans as an example for the Corinthians immediately after the discussion of their trial of tyrannical statues. He turns next to the story of the Lucanian ambassador with which we opened part 1. On an embassy to Syracuse, this unnamed Lucanian surprised everyone with a perfect Doric accent, which honored his Syracusan hosts. The Syracusans honored the Lucanian by assenting to his city’s request and by granting him a talent as a reward for his linguistic mastery. Favorinus suggests that the Corinthians should imitate their colonists in a similar way in his own case: “So [to show] that I was set up well and justly and beneficial for your city and for all the Greeks, I wish to describe one thing to you, though having many things to say, which occurred

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in this very same Syracuse. For the example is fitting, and equally just as well: just as those [Syracusans] honor the mother city, thus also is it right for you to imitate your colonists” (§23). In introducing the example of the Lucanian ambassador, Favorinus makes its import explicit: just as the Syracusans honor their mother city, as is fitting for a colony, so the mother city ought to follow their colony’s example. In the case of the Syracusans, they had rewarded a foreigner for his ability to imitate their dialect perfectly. In Favorinus’s case, the Corinthians ought to imitate their colony and reward Favorinus, who has shown a complete mastery of all things Greek (§25). But the fact that they have taken down Favorinus’s statue shows that they have failed to live up to the example set by their colonial relatives. As we saw in chapter 1, Favorinus links the Corinthians’ rejection of his statue with their inability to properly discern true Greekness, a characteristic that shows them to be merely uncultured Roman rubes. Favorinus alludes to the outcome of his argument here: it is not only good and just that his statue be set up in Corinth, but it is also beneficial (συμφερόντως) for both Corinth and all the Greeks. To appreciate Favorinus and to bestow honors on him is in keeping with the traditions of Corinth’s Greek colony of Syracuse and is beneficial for both Corinth and all of Greece. Favorinus’s various appeals to genealogy and descent in the opening sections of the oration show how he plays with the fictional kinship that could connect his audience to their Greek “forebears.” Contrary to the denial of such a connection by Pausanius, Favorinus constructs his audience’s kinship with the Greek Corinthians, much as the colonists themselves did with the remodeling of Peirene, but he then uses it to his own advantage, challenging the members of his audience to live up to the examples set by their adopted ancestors and colonists. Favorinus sharpens his ironic retelling of Corinthian history in his account of Greek Corinthian opposition to foreigners and tyrannies, a retelling that skirts dangerously close to outright parody. Having determined that he must be special indeed to have received a statue in Corinth, unlike so many other famous visitors before him, Favorinus ponders how his statue might have disappeared (he has not yet explicitly mentioned that the Corinthians took his statue down), using an altered quote from Homer as a starting point: “Honor, like a dream, taking to the sky flies away” (τιμὴ δ᾽ ἠΰτ᾽ ὄνερος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται [§9]).35 From here Favorinus wonders aloud why his statue (his “honor”) would have flown away from Corinth; perhaps it had been given wings like a statue of Daedalus (§10). Favorinus then lists a number of factors that would have encouraged his statue to remain in Corinth: the patronage of two gods (Helios and Poseidon)

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and the Isthmian Games, which hosted so many famous athletes and heroes (§§11–15). No statue would have voluntarily flown from such a prestigious location, particularly in this case, since Favorinus’s statue had been placed by the Corinthian boule¯ in front of the library so that it might stimulate others to follow his philosophical example (§9). Favorinus must then search for another explanation, which leads him to an ironic reading of Corinth’s Greek history. The solution must be then that the statue was taken down by the Corinthians, without either a trial or a charge brought against it. Favorinus feigns outrage at such a slight, wondering, “And who would have believed such a thing against the Corinthians, whose ancestors among all the Greeks prominently practiced justice?” (§16). Favorinus invokes the example of Corinth’s ancestors, from whom his Corinthian audience should have learned proper justice. What was implicit in his earlier reference to Herodotos’s demand of a bribe (§7) is now explicit: the Greek ancestors of the Corinthians would not have done such a thing. This line of argument deploys the rhetoric of ethnicity, here focusing on the example of one’s ancestors, to critique the actions of the present Corinthians, a strategy that was employed in a similar way by Paul in 1 Cor 10:1–13. But would the Greek Corinthians have behaved as nobly as Favorinus suggests? Favorinus then enumerates a series of examples from Corinthian history that “prove” Corinthian justice. Yet these examples are often so comical that they fail to convince, leaving us to wonder whether Favorinus is not also undermining even the pedigree of Greek Corinth, turning its history into a farce. Favorinus employs a complicated rhetorical strategy. He uses the Greek Corinthians as examples to be imitated by his audience while also subtly suggesting that those ancestors may not have been so noble and virtuous themselves. Favorinus can thus disrupt Corinthian claims to Greek identity by emphasizing the difference between them and their ancestors and diminishing the prestige of those very ancestors at the same time. Favorinus begins his enumeration of historical examples of Corinthian justice by praising Corinth’s resistance to tyranny: “For did they not put down the tyrannies in other cities and set up democracies, having even freed Athens from tyrannies: first from Hippias and later from Kleomenes?” (§16). Favorinus claims that the Greek Corinthians took part in banishing the tyrants Hippias and Kleomenes from Athens, a fact that no other ancient historian mentions.36 This historical invention is puzzling in several respects. First, Favorinus seemingly gets a key detail wrong: Kleomenes was a Spartan king and not a tyrant (Herodotos 5.64, 70). In fact, Kleomenes was the one who expelled the tyrant Hippias! Second, it is strange that the city of Periander the tyrant, whose tyranny is discussed at length by Favorinus in §§5–6, should be said to have put

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down tyrannies in other cities and set up democracies. Corinth, the city of the dynasties of Periander (the Cypselids) and the Bacchiadae, is presented here as a democratic nation builder. Though by this time the city was no longer ruled by a tyrant, it had developed a constitution that was hardly democratic and was basically an oligarchy. When the Peloponnesian War began, this made Corinth a fast ally of Sparta, which had a similar oligarchic form of government, and an enemy of democratic Athens. One cannot fail to hear Favorinus’s portrait of Corinth’s “neoconservative” foreign policy credentials as strangely ironic. But Favorinus is not quite finished and moves on to further evidence of Corinth’s “justice” during the period of the Peloponnesian War: And after these things [the expulsions of Hippias and Kleomenes], (were they not), when the Athenians themselves attempted to take up the business of Hippias and Isagoras and set themselves up as tyrants over Hellas, the first to understand (what was going on) and, being particularly grieved (at this), became leaders for the freedom of others? And did they (not) maintain this intention not only against the Athenians, but also against the Lakedaimonians? For, with the cities of Thebes and Elis, they opposed the Lakedaimonians in behalf of the common rights of Hellas,37 by which they showed themselves to be not simply lovers of honor but lovers of Hellas and lovers of justice and lovers of freedom and haters of evil and haters of tyranny. (§17)

As further examples of Corinthian “justice,” the Corinthians are said to have resisted Athenian attempts to set up a tyranny over Hellas. Presumably Favorinus is thinking of the Corinthian alliance with Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, but on his telling they (the Corinthians), not the Spartans, are made the primary actors: the Corinthians were the first to see what was going on and remained vigilant over both Athens and Sparta, ever on the lookout for signs that they were verging on international tyranny. Thus, Favorinus has placed the Corinthians at the forefront of the Peloponnesian War! As a result, Favorinus showers the Corinthians with a long list of exaggerated honors: lovers of Hellas, lovers of justice, lovers of freedom, haters of evil, and haters of tyranny. The irony of this should be readily apparent. Not only is a city known for its tyranny at home engaging in democratic nation building, but it is being presented as the primary force for justice and democracy in Greece.38 A final parodic twist comes in Favorinus’s attempts to show that the Corinthians were also foremost in their hatred of barbarians: “For they were such haters of barbarians that they sent four hundred of their own to Thermopylae when the Lakedaimonians sent only three hundred” (§18). That the Corinthians deserve more credit and honor than the Spartans at Thermopylae could not but elicit a

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laugh. Such hyperbole can be taken only as comic and ironic, and it ultimately serves to diminish Corinth’s participation in the wars against the Persians.39 The cumulative effect of these rewritings of Corinthian history suggests that Favorinus sought subtly to mock the Corinthians through abject flattery. Such flattery skirts the line between praise and ridicule, challenging the very use of history itself as a proof of Corinth’s Greek pedigree.40 First, there is the rhetorical situation within which the discussion takes place, namely that any claims to Corinthian justice have been compromised by the fact that the Corinthians have already taken down Favorinus’s statue without a charge and a formal trial. In this sense, the Corinthians have already shown themselves to be deficient with regard to their own history of justice, which itself has been purposely overemphasized by Favorinus. This overemphasizing of Corinth’s role in Greek history similarly challenges Favorinus’s own claim that the Corinthians be considered lovers of Greece (φιλέλληνες) and lovers of justice and freedom (φιλοδίκαιοι καὶ φιλελεύθεροι). In praising Corinth hyperbolically, the exalted conclusion is put into doubt. Ultimately, “Favorinus’ praise of Corinth’s Hellenism is in fact part of a consistent strategy of mocking his listeners for failing to live up to the heritage which they claim for themselves, teasing them with the possibility that they are not ‘properly’ Greek.”41 But it is also a shadow game, in which the very history that the Corinthians have not lived up to is also degraded as well. Favorinus’s ironic characterization of Corinthian history is bound up with his own concerns about self-presentation and the defense of his statue and honor. As we saw with Pausanias, Favorinus shows how Corinth’s Greek history could be an ambiguous source for social capital in provincial Greece. A Corinthian might lift up the myth of Bellerophon and Pegasos at Peirene, while Favorinus could respond with the comic claim that the Corinthians were more important than the Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae. Corinth’s history was an ambivalent story that could be put to work in a variety of ways, for praise or ridicule. Favorinus exploits the ambiguity of Corinthian history to challenge it as a place that could be called “properly” Greek. Your Games Are neither Hellenic nor Ancient: The Argive Letter Pausanias and Favorinus both found elements of Corinth’s genealogy or history that they could mock or attack as a means of distancing the city from its Greek past or disrupting its claims to Greek identity and cultural prestige. For Pausanias Corinth was the cause of Greece’s subjugation to Rome and the home of Greek interlopers sent from Rome, whereas for Favorinus Corinth’s history was a weapon used in defense against an affront to the orator’s honor.

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But Corinth’s history, particularly its genealogy, could also be used in disputes between cities in provincial Greece. Written by an unknown benefactor of Argos in the late first century CE, the Argive Letter uses an argument about the financing of beast hunts (venationes) to question Corinth’s ethnic identity, suggesting that its actions toward Argos have shown it to be neither Greek nor Roman. The argument of the letter draws on history and spectacle as a means of marking the boundaries between Greeks and Romans and differentiating Greeks from other Greeks.42 The letter, written by an unnamed but influential provincial Greek on behalf of Argos, functions as a letter of introduction and support for an embassy sent by Argos to the provincial governor to appeal a ruling in a case Argos had brought against Corinth. The Argives claim that Corinth had been exacting tribute from them to pay for wild beast shows (τὰ κυνηγέσια), a particularly Roman form of entertainment in which trained bestiarii hunted exotic animals in the arena. This dispute was ostensibly over money, and the letter draws on civic history and ethnic identity to persuade the governor that Corinth had wronged Argos in forcing its citizens to pay for “a festival that is neither Hellenic nor of ancient date” (409a). Spectacle and the manner in which it was staged and financed allow the author to set up a series of differentiations marking the boundaries between Greek and Roman and superior and inferior Greek cities. Ultimately, the author presents Argos as a prominent Greek city that is too prestigious to be subjected to paying for a foreign spectacle put on by a city that is properly neither Greek nor Roman.43 The text begins by describing Argos’s prestigious and ancient Greek history (407b–408a). The Argives were leaders of the Greeks during the Trojan War (407c), descended from the Heraclidae, and colonized Macedonia, which makes them heirs to the deeds of Alexander the Great.44 They were neighbors to the Spartans, yet they were never subject to them (ἀδούλωτον ἀεὶ καὶ ἐλευθέραν φυλάξαι τὴν πόλιν [407d]). Finally, the Argives were in equal standing with Romans: “And later [Argos] obeyed the Romans, not so much as conquered as like an ally in war, and, as I think, she also, as the rest [of the Greek cities], shared in the freedom and other rights which the rulers always distribute to the cities constituting Greece” (408a). This self-presentation displays the city as inhabiting a privileged place wherein its citizens enjoy an unimpeachable Greek pedigree combined with equality in respect to the Roman rulers of Greece. Argos’s history is reconstructed in such a way as to make it stand out from other Greek cities, suggesting that it ought not to be subjected to others like Corinth. The argument over tribute is cast as one in which the Corinthians have acted in a particularly un-Greek fashion (408b–410a). Seven years before, when Ar-

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gos was assigned to the territory of the Corinthians by Rome (τῆς βασιλευούσης πόλεως), the Corinthians compelled the Argives to pay tribute (408b). Delphi and Elis were given immunity because of the sacred games they funded, yet the Argives, who sponsored a Panhellenic festival of their own (the Nemean Games), were not exempted and were compelled to pay for “a festival that is neither Hellenic nor ancient” (οὐδὲ πρὸς Ἑλληνικὴν οὐδὲ παλαιὰν πανήγυριν):45 “For it is not to furnish gymnastic or musical contests that the Corinthians need so much money, but they buy bears and panthers for the hunting shows which they often exhibit in their theaters. And they themselves by reason of their wealth are naturally able to support these great expenses,—especially as many other cities, as is fair, help by contributing for this purpose,—so that they purchase the pleasure of indulging their temperaments” (408d–409a). The author opposes Greek musical and athletic games with foreign, non-Greek beast hunts, taking a position similar to that of Dio Chrysostom (31.121) and Philostratus (Life of Apollonius 4.22), who viewed Roman spectacle in Corinth as behavior outside the bounds of proper Greekness. This behavior is compounded, for the author, by compelling such a famous city as Argos to pay for such foreign spectacles. The author bemoans the fact that the Argives are now lacking in money because “they are compelled to be enslaved to a foreign spectacle [given] on behalf of others” (ξενικῇ θέα καὶ παρ᾽ ἄλλοις ἐπιδουλεὐειν ἀναγκαζόμενοι [409b]). This unjust behavior is unbecoming of cities that are neighbors (ἀστυγείτονες) and is not in keeping with the longstanding relationship between Argos and Rome. Not only has Corinth behaved in an un-Greek fashion, but it has chosen not even to behave as a good Roman neighbor, in violation of the standard set by the Romans themselves. The argument of the Argives is not just about using spectacle to differentiate between Greek and Roman, but also about differentiating between Greek cities. The author has already emphasized the unique history and relationships that characterize Argos as a prominent Greek city. In arguing against Argos’s obligation to fund these venationes at Corinth, the author notes in passing that such obligations are fair (ὡς εἰκός [409a]) for other cities. Argos is not disputing that Greek cities ought to contribute financially to Roman spectacles in honor of the Roman emperors; rather, it is arguing that it is not right for such a prominent Greek city as Argos to be subjected to this. The author thus uses Argos’s own history as a means of differentiating both Greeks from Romans and Greeks from other Greeks. The use of spectacle as a means of differentiating Greek and Roman returns as the author ponders what Corinth’s behavior says about whether its citizens

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are Greeks or Romans. The author wonders which side of the fence the Corinthians sit on: And yet someone might fittingly put this also before the Corinthians, whether they think it right to abide by the customary laws of ancient Greece, or rather by those which it seems they recently took over from the ruling power? For if, on the one hand, they love the majesty of the ancient laws, it is no more fitting for the Argives to pay tribute to Corinth than for the Corinthians to pay it to Argos. If, on the other hand, (they abide by the laws) they now have in the city, they claim that their city has gained power since they received the Roman colony, then we will exhort them moderately not to be more arrogant than their fathers and not to break up the customs which their fathers with sound judgment maintained for the cities of Greece, or remodel them to the injury and detriment of their neighbors. (409c–d)

Where does Corinth’s allegiance lie? If Corinthians live according to the ancient (read: Greek) laws, then Corinth ought to treat Argos as an equal, as they were when they were independent city-states. If they live according to Roman customs as Roman colonies, they should follow the moderate example of their “fathers” and respect the customs of the Greeks. According to the author, the problem with Corinth’s behavior is that it has been guided by neither Greek nor Roman traditions. The ambivalence of the city as both Roman and Greek opens up the space for this strange call on the part of the Argives: pick your fathers and your ancestral laws and act accordingly! For the author of the Argive Letter, the Corinthians are a people without a history, and as such they have behaved lawlessly, forcing a venerable Greek city to pay for their wild-beast shows. By both ethnicizing different forms of spectacle and praising Argos’s prestigious Greek history, the author distinguishes Argos as deserving of an exemption from the obligation to pay for Roman spectacles. This distinction is not just about Greek and non-Greek but is also internal to Greekness: though Argos should be exempt, it is fitting for others to pay up. At the same time, the author offers a criticism of Corinth’s behavior in funding these games that plays on the ambiguities of Roman spectacle in Greece. The presentation of Roman spectacle in Greek cities becomes an occasion to discuss the limits of Greekness, which the author of the letter turns to Argos’s advantage. We have already seen how Corinth’s history could be used as a means of critique by an orator like Favorinus, who played with the difference between Greek and Roman Corinth. The author of the Argive Letter makes similar use of Corinth’s ambiguous ethnicity, though here the means of differentiation is the manner in which Corinth comports itself in holding its games and in its

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relations with its neighbors. In both cases, Corinth has behaved in ways unrecognizable to either Greeks or Romans. It does not seem to know what it is.46 The author of the Argive Letter plays with notions of fixity and continuity, autonomy and equality, both to distinguish Argos from other Greek cities and to challenge Corinth’s own identity. Corinth’s behavior in relation to the production of Roman spectacles has shown that it is neither Greek nor Roman. It is thus not fit to demand money from others.

A Malleable Past In this chapter we have looked at how Corinth’s history could become a double-edged sword. At two prominent fountains in the center of town the inhabitants of Corinth could claim the city’s Greek history in a Roman idiom. Whether it be Peirene’s monumental facade or Glauke’s archaic appearance, these two fountains show how the Greek past could be reimagined in a Roman present as part of how the city presented its identity to citizen and visitor alike. In each case we find examples of Corinthian negotiations between Greek and Roman, between the past and the present. But the past could also be made to work against the Corinthians. Pausanias, Favorinus, and the Argive Letter use the past to critique their Corinthian contemporaries, encouraging them to live up to a different set of standards or challenging their very possession of an authentic Greek identity. The past thus offered a way of negotiating and contesting identity, practice, and politics in the present by means of the rhetoric of ethnicity. It was in such an environment that the audience for Paul’s Corinthian correspondence would have heard that the Israelites wandering in the wilderness after the Exodus were their “fathers” (1 Cor 10:1) and that they had the potential to become like a new Moses, transformed by the light of the divine presence that once inhabited the Israelite Tabernacle (2 Cor 3:18). In the next chapter I turn to thinking how both Paul’s invocations of an Israelite past and the various contestations of Greek and Roman Corinthian history might have been heard by the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. By keeping in mind these uses of the Corinthian past, whether Greek, Roman, or Israelite, we may be able to hear echoes of how Paul’s Corinthian audience engaged in a similar negotiation between their adopted Israelite past and the Corinthian present, how they used the materials available to them to “think with” as they adapted their new identities “in Christ” to the demands of life in a Corinth between Greece and Rome.

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6

Usable Pasts in the Corinthian Wilderness Spirits, Specters, and Negotiations of Identity at the Crossroads

There is something disappeared, departed in the apparition itself as reapparition of the departed. The spirit, the specter are not the same thing, and we will have to sharpen this difference; but as for what they have in common, one does not know what it is, what it is presently. It is something that one does not know, precisely, and one does not know if precisely it is, if it exists, if it responds to a name and corresponds to an essence. One does not know: not out of ignorance, but because this non-object, this non-present present, this being-there of an absent or departed one no longer belongs to knowledge. At least no longer to that which one thinks one knows by the name of knowledge. —Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx

Afternoon in the Corinth Museum In the courtyard of the museum at the Corinth excavations, it is not uncommon to find a cluster of people gathered around a small, poorly etched inscription hanging along the north side of the courtyard (figure 10). This inscription, which reads, “ . . . ΓΩΓΗ ΕΒΡ . . . ,” might not seem worth so much attention; however, its popularity is based on how it has been reconstructed by the Corinthian archaeologists: [ΣΥΝΑ]ΓΩΓΗ ΕΒΡ[ΑΙΩΝ] (“Synagogue of the Hebrews”).1 Those who make their way to this corner of the Corinthian museum often do so because their tour guide informs them that this may well be the inscription over the lintel of the synagogue in which Paul preached, according to Acts 18:4–7, a 142

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Figure 10. Synagogue inscription, Corinth Museum

tangible, physical marker through which Christian pilgrims and scholars can connect themselves to the story of Paul in Corinth. The inscription itself cannot be connected with any specific building, and its lettering is clearly from a period well after the time of Paul. Nevertheless, the possibility of drawing a connection between the inscription and the synagogue in which Paul preached proved too great for a number of scholars. For example, writing in 1939, well after the official publication and dating of the inscription, Harold Willoughby evokes the romanticism of one walking in Paul’s footsteps: “[At Corinth] we can actually stand on the Bema of Gallio, inspect the market where consecrated meat was offered for sale, walk the pavement laid by Erastus the Aedile, and read the inscription over the entrance to the Jewish synagogue.”2

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The temptation to link Acts 18 to a physical object is part of the legacy of Christian pilgrimage and elite European tourism that continues to affect the use of archaeological materials in historical reconstructions. This temptation is all the more enticing, given that there is little evidence outside Acts 18 for a major Jewish community in Corinth in the mid-first century CE.3 But if this is not where we should look to think about the “Jews” in Corinth in the mid-first century, then where should we? This question is particularly important for thinking about how Paul’s invocations of Israelite history could even make sense within the landscape of a Corinth that, as I have argued, was focused on negotiating its own history between a Greek past and a Roman present. Chapters 4 and 5 looked at uses of ethnic history in Corinth. Paul’s rhetoric made use of figures from the Israelite wilderness wanderings, including both the Israelites and their leader, Moses. In the material and literary evidence from Corinth and its environs, we saw a number of different configurations of Corinth’s Greek past and Roman present, in which pluriform configurations could be deployed, from the Roman architectural reappropriation of the Periene Fountain to Favorinus’s challenge to Corinth’s Greekness. Could these different histories be brought into conversation? What might the Israelites in the wilderness have to do with Bellerophon and Pegasos? How might we think about the invocation of Israelite history in a Corinth between Greece and Rome? In chapter 3 I suggested that we might begin a reconstruction of the Corinthian community to whom Paul wrote by imagining them as Greek-speaking im/migrants, brought to Corinth by the same patterns of trade, movement, and communication that ushered Paul into the Corinthian port of Kenchreai. To begin with this assumption opens up new interpretive possibilities for thinking about the agency of the Corinthians in regard to their cultic, communal, and social choices within the broader landscape of Roman Corinth. As we saw in the opening of part 2, stories about the past are an important part of how ethnic communities forge, reaffirm, and negotiate their identities. In this chapter I want to focus on the intersections of history and migration, stories and movement, as a way of reconstructing the spectral presences of “some” Corinthians who found in and through stories of Jesus, Moses, and the Israelites new ways of organizing the life of their shared community. In what follows, I explore several sites through which to imagine the spectral presence of “some” Corinthians at the intersections of history and migration. At each of these sites I hope also to answer the question with which I began this chapter; namely, how might Israelite history find a place within a Corinthian landscape dominated by negotiations between Greece and Rome? To begin, I look at how Corinthian experiences of mobility, and the social networks such

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mobility negotiated, help us see the emergence of Corinthian communal discernment against which Paul’s ethnic rhetoric in 2 Corinthians 3 was directed. I then turn to how Israelite stories might have found purchase within the landscape of a Corinth that was seeking antiquity amid newness. Just as some Corinthian elites built or renovated monuments to Corinth’s Greek antiquity, so “some” Corinthians might have found themselves attracted to stories of ancient peoples, their miracles, and their God; however, this is not to assume that such Corinthians would have adopted such pasts in the ways that Paul, or other traveling apostles, might have wanted. Finally, I ask how stories of an Israelite past and Judean savior might have resonated among those searching for ways to understand themselves, their histories, and their cultic practices outside the familiar, familial traditions and geographies of the homeland. These three exercises in imagination offer avenues toward a reconstruction of “some” of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote beyond the categories and descriptions offered by Paul himself. This is not to say that Paul’s theology, ethics, or politics remain completely outside or external to this conversation; rather, by thinking around Paul we are better able to place him as one among many within the conversations and innovations, debates and developments, that shaped the lives of “some” Corinthians. It is my hope that such explorations not only place Paul back into a conversation but also help open up space for a kind of knowing that can make some accounting for Corinthians who, in Derrida’s terms, can be known only as non-objects, non-present presents, a being-there of absent or departed ones.

Movement in a Port City Before diving into the Corinthian correspondence, I want to pause and look in a bit more detail at the kind of movement and mobility that I want to use as the background for reconstructing “some” of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. In chapter 2 I examined the patterns of trade and commerce that moved through Corinth. There Aelius Aristides helped us think about a Corinth that had grown wealthy, prosperous, and cultured, thanks to the trade routes that moved through the city. But there were other ways of presenting Corinth and its inhabitants at the hub of international trade. Writing before the city was rebuilt as a colony, Cicero speaks of Corinthians and the dangers of life at the water’s edge: Maritime cities also suffer a certain corruption and degeneration of morals; for they receive a mixture of strange languages and customs, and import foreign ways as well as foreign merchandise, so that none of their ancestral institutions

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can possibly remain unchanged. Even their inhabitants do not cling to their dwelling places, but are constantly being tempted far from home by soaring hopes and dreams; and even when their bodies stay at home, their thoughts nevertheless fare abroad and go wandering. In fact, no other influence did more to bring about the final overthrow of Carthage and Corinth. . . . And what I said of Corinth may perhaps be said with truth of the whole of Greece. . . . Clearly the cause of the evils and the revolutions to which Greece has been subject is to be traced to those disadvantages which I have just mentioned briefly as peculiar to maritime cities. (Cicero, Republic II.4)4

Cicero’s account of Greek Corinth’s eventual fall before Roman might links geography with the corruption of the mind, dangerous mixings of peoples, and factionalism. Such presumptions about the sickness of Corinth and Corinthians are not altogether foreign to biblical scholars.5 We might take as an example Gordon Fee’s characterization of the Corinthians: “The scattered pieces of evidence from Acts, 1 Corinthians, and Romans suggest that the church was in many ways a mirror of the city. . . . Although they were the Christian church in Corinth, an inordinate amount of Corinth was yet in them, emerging in a number of attitudes and behaviors that required radical surgery without killing the patient. This is what 1 Corinthians attempts to do.”6 Paul the doctor is here invoked as the cure for the sickness of the Corinthians. This privileging of Paul’s normativity and voice has been a tendency that I have resisted throughout this book. Such tendencies, both ancient and modern, force us to find new ways of thinking of Corinth and the Corinthians outside the rhetoric of sickness that we see in both Cicero and Fee. As I reconstruct “some” of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote, I do so by reading against the assumptions that Cicero makes about those living in maritime cities. Though Cicero views the mixing of peoples, languages, customs, and ideas as a degeneration of morals and ancestral customs, I read this diversity as a site for the production of identities in “multiple modes” of religion and ethnicity.7 Where Cicero sees movement as a danger, I see it as an important part of how authority and discernment were produced between and among Paul, other apostles of Jesus, and the Corinthians themselves. Where Cicero sees the sea as eroding thoughts of homeland or tradition, I read “some” Corinthians as those drawn to the stories of Israel out of a need to create new linkages with the homelands from which they came. In what follows, I read against these tendencies in both Cicero and Pauline studies more generally, reimagining “some” Corinthians as im/migrants making meaning, discerning leaders, and negotiating identity in ways that were shaped by trade, movement, and mobility.

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As I noted in chapter 3, by speaking of “some” Corinthians as im/migrants, I do not want to suggest that we are dealing with what, in other cities, we might call an “ethnic” association, such as associations of Syrian merchants on Delos or the Tyrian traders of Puteoli. Though it is possible that such organizations formed the base for Pauline communities in other places, this is not what I focus on here. Rather, I use the term to focus our attention on the movement that characterized life in Corinth, and which was so problematic for Cicero. I look at how history might offer a “mobile construction”8 by which identity was negotiated within a context of im/migration and movement in and around Corinth. Such negotiations of identity were not merely isolated acts of individuals working on themselves, but were social acts carried out both in community and over geographic distance, lived space, and time. More to the point, we should expect such negotiations to be complex, contextual, and prone to misunderstanding. This is not a quest for Paul’s “opponents” among the Corinthians, but a way of thinking imaginatively about what people did with and through and against Paul’s writings in Corinth, a search that privileges plurality rather than univocity.9 Just as we “heard” the cacophony in the inscription of the Tyrian merchants in Puteoli, I hope to summon the complexities of an association of Corinthians in a city “on the move.”

Of Veils, Social Networks, and Apostolic Mobility In chapter 4 we looked at how Paul’s use of the story of Moses’ veiling in 2 Corinthians 3 offered Israelite history as a way of showing “some” Corinthians how their experience of the Spirit as a people has its own history that can be “read” out of the scriptures of Israel. I argued that through this reading Paul implies that the experience of the Spirit is itself mediated by Paul, just as Moses mediated between God and the sons of Israel. Those who would place themselves outside the authority of Paul’s ministry would find themselves bereft of the Spirit itself. What I did not address in chapter 4 was the question of which rhetorical context might have required Paul’s assertion of his own authoritative control of the Spirit. In this section I want to return to this question as a way of thinking about how we might reimagine Corinthian agency and discernment in the context of migration, mobility, and the social networks on which such movement depended. In the ebb and flow of travelers coming to and from Corinth, the Corinthians would have known Paul as one among many who offered new ideas in the Corinthian marketplace. It is clear as well from Paul’s own correspondence that he was not the only Corinthian visitor telling tales of Jesus and the Israelites (2 Cor 11:4). The Corinthians themselves must have

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become discerning listeners and evaluators of apostolic speech, a process that is itself evident in Paul’s need to defend his ministry so forcefully in 2 Corinthians 3. By thinking the Corinthians within the context of movement to and from Corinth afforded by international trade, we open up space for seeing how Paul’s invocation of Moses and the Israelites is a response to Corinthian agency and discernment. Setting the Context One of the most difficult aspects of studying any part of 2 Corinthians is the question of how best to frame the historical and rhetorical context to which a particular part of the text was addressed.10 Any reconstruction of the situation behind Paul’s use of the veiling of Moses in 3:7–18, itself embedded in the larger arguments of 2 Cor 2:14–4:6, must always be tentative and clear about its assumptions. This is particularly important in the context of the various theories among scholars about the integrity and composition of 2 Corinthians itself. It is important, then, to say from the start that in what follows I presume that 2 Corinthians, as we currently have it, is a composite text made up of fragments of a number of Pauline letters to Corinth. My reconstruction of Corinthian discernment about Paul’s apostolic authority places 2 Cor 2:14–4:6 in the context of an ongoing dispute between Paul and the Corinthians over questions of money and the evaluation of multiple itinerant authorities. The context to which Paul addresses his reading of Moses’ veiling was one in which “some” Corinthians were concerned about Paul’s integrity, authority, and handling of money. As Margaret Mitchell has argued, after the writing of 1 Corinthians and the fund-raising letter of 2 Corinthians 8, the Corinthians had come to have reservations about participating in Paul’s collection for Jerusalem.11 Paul, having claimed he rejected his right to accept money for his missionary work in 1 Cor 9:1–18, had initiated a fund-raising project to which he expected the Corinthians to contribute (1 Corinthians 16); however, by the time that Paul wrote a follow-up fund-raising letter (2 Corinthians 8), he had changed the conditions under which the money would be collected and delivered, creating doubts among the Corinthians about his integrity. Hints of the Corinthians’ concerns frame and shape Paul’s use of Moses’ veiling. In 2 Cor 2:17 Paul is at pains to differentiate himself from “the many who peddle the word of God as in the marketplace” (οἱ πολλοὶ καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ).12 Rather than acting like those who sell the word for material gain, Paul emphasizes his integrity and his divine commission: “We speak as from pure motives, as sent from God, in the presence of God, in Christ” (ὡς ἐξ εἰλικρινείας, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἐκ θεοῦ κατέναντι θεοῦ ἐν Χριστῷ λαλοῦμεν).13 In 2 Cor 4:1–6

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Paul similarly contrasts his behavior with those who “go about in craftiness and distort the word of God” (περιπατοῦντες ἐν πανουργίᾳ μηδὲ δολοῦντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ [4:2]), emphasizing again his pure motives and his divine calling.14 Concerns about Paul’s financial accounting seem to have caused some concern among the Corinthians, so that Paul feels he must defend his own financial integrity.15 In regard to Paul’s financial integrity, it is important to put the Corinthians’ concerns within the larger matrix of early Christian missionary activity, made possible by the Corinthian trade networks that we examined in chapter 2. It is clear from the Corinthian correspondence that the Corinthians were familiar with a number of missionary figures beyond Paul, whether they be Paul’s “coworkers” Timothy, Titus, and Sosthenes (1 Cor 1:1; 4:17; 16:10; 2 Cor 1:1, 19; 2:13; 7:6, 13–14; 8:6, 16, 23; 12:18), his colleague Apollos (1 Cor 1:12; 3:4–9, 22; 4:6; 16:12), the super-apostles (2 Cor 11:5; 12:11), or any of a number of missionaries who may have made their way to, from, or through Corinth and its two ports.16 Beyond the movement of missionaries there was also the movement of numerous devotees of Jesus, such as Phoebe the διάκονος of the ekkle¯sia in Kenchreai, for whom Paul wrote a letter of introduction (Romans 16),17 or those who carried letters and news to and from Corinth, like the mysterious “people of Chloe” (τῶν Χλόης [1 Cor 1:11]) who brought news to Paul of divisions in the community. Because of this movement, we have to postulate a community in Corinth with the intellectual resources and social networks necessary to form their own evolving views about how a missionary of Jesus was to be evaluated: for example, whether a missionary should receive pay for his labor (1 Cor 9:1–18) or whether a missionary should have a letter of recommendation to confirm her qualifications (2 Cor 3:1–13). It is this latter issue that comes to be a focal point in Paul’s self-defense in 2 Cor 2:14–4:6. Having grown concerned with Paul’s financial integrity, the Corinthians asked him to supply them with a letter of recommendation (ἐπιστολὴ συστατικῶν [2 Cor 3:1–13]), something that he had not provided in his initial work in Corinth. Members of the community may have assumed that this would be relatively easy for Paul to do and that such a document might go a long way in alleviating concerns about Paul’s character. Paul, however, seems to have taken the request as a challenge to his qualifications as a διάκονος (“minister” or “messenger”). Paul responds to this request in rather visceral language, seemingly hurt that his long-standing relationship with the community did not count as proof of his integrity and his authority.18 What is surprising about this exchange is how mundane it seems. From the Corinthians’ perspective, such a request for a letter may have been rather

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innocuous: a simple request for documents that they presumed Paul possessed. Other missionaries had come through Corinth bearing letters from other communities attesting to their successes and trustworthiness (2 Cor 10:12, 18), and one would expect Paul to have something similar. The Corinthians, who were being asked by Paul to provide a substantial amount of money to his collection for Jerusalem, no doubt assumed that he could provide letters to prove his trustworthiness and qualifications.19 Clearly, Paul did not possess such documents, since neither here nor in 2 Corinthians 10–13 does he make any recourse to documentary evidence; rather, he invokes the historical memory of the community. Judging by the long-standing financial relationship between Paul and the assemblies of Macedonia, he could easily have asked for a letter from these communities. That he does not do so suggests either that Paul was operating on some sense of principle or that the Corinthians would not have recognized a letter from them. That they seem reluctant to participate in the collection indicates a reticence on their part to affiliate with certain of the communities in Paul’s network. It is within this context that Paul invokes the history of the Israelites and Moses’ veil. Paul defends his ministry as one animated by the Spirit and, therefore, superior to the Spirit that animated Moses’ face in the Tabernacle. As I argued in chapter 4, this invocation of the Spirit is both a defense and also an attack: those who ignore Paul’s authority might find themselves bereft of the Spirit. Rather than being a generic theological discussion about the church and its relationship to Judaism, as the passage has often been taken in scholarship,20 Paul’s defense is best seen as directed at Corinthian practices of discernment about the authority of Paul’s ministry. Corinthian Discernment In contrast to scholarship that has assumed Paul’s authoritative role over the Corinthian community, an echo of Paul’s own authority as part of Christian scripture, recent rhetorical studies of the Corinthian correspondence have highlighted the ways in which the Corinthians, and not Paul, possessed the authority to decide on matters ranging from theology to the recognition of authority figures.21 Such work shifts the balance in the power relationships between Paul and the Corinthians, emphasizing how Paul’s letters were not pronouncements but attempts to persuade the Corinthians to side with him on a range of matters. This observation should force us to shift our reconstructions of the Corinthians, emphasizing the practice of communal discernment and Paul’s marginal role in ongoing debates within the community itself.

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Recent scholarship on the cultural interactions at the fringes of the Roman world has looked at how cultural difference was negotiated by Romans, the ethnic groups that they encountered, and those mediating figures that moved betwixt and between. Such interactions involved complex interpretations, dialogues, and misunderstandings. For example, James Rives has looked at the ways that Romans interpreted the gods of the peoples that they encountered, either directly or by means of reports from merchants moving farther outside the boundaries of the empire.22 Romans out on the fringes of the empire were constantly negotiating ways to make sense of the gods of foreign peoples, sometimes equating them with existing deities, adding new deities to the list of known supernatural entities, or even worshipping different versions of the same divine being. We might imagine a similar process of negotiation and misunderstanding among the Corinthians, far from the fringes of the empire, who entertained multiple missionaries moving to and through Corinth. With each new arrival, the Corinthians would be forced to make sense of the new ideas, practices, and social contacts that they encountered. Such negotiations might be imagined along the lines of a traveler encountering a new deity: “He had first to consider the various characteristics that the worshippers attributed to the deity, such as gender, ‘age,’ area of power, attributes, and so forth, and then attempt as best he could to match them up with those of a deity already known. . . . The process of interpretatio was hardly ever straightforward and uncontested; the translation that one traveller decided on might well have differed from that chosen by another.”23 We need to expect similar indeterminacy in Corinthian interpretations of Paul and other missionaries bringing tales of Israelites, Moses, and Jesus to Corinth. Questions would be asked, concerns raised, tentative interpretations advanced, all of which were shaped by the local civic landscape and by the perceived needs of Corinthians themselves. Distance would have added to the possibilities for misunderstanding and misinterpretation on both sides, but also facilitated the creative agency of the Corinthians, who would need to make choices, both individual and communal, about what to do, say, think, and believe about themselves in relationship with the God, ancestors, and stories of the Israelites. Paul would be only one among many involved in these processes, a marginality that was increased by his absence from Corinth. Paul hints at such a discernment process in 2 Cor 11:4: “For if someone comes heralding another Jesus than the one we heralded or you receive a different spirit than the one you received, or a different gospel that you did not receive, you gladly suffer it”

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(εἰ μὲν γὰρ ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἄλλον Ἰησοῦν κηρύσσει ὃν οὐκ ἐκηρύξαμεν, ἢ πνεῦμα ἕτερον λαμβάνετε ὃ οὐκ ἐλάβετε, ἢ εὐαγγέλιον ἕτερον ὃ οὐκ ἐδέξασθε, καλῶς ἀνέχεσθε). For Paul other missionaries carry different Christs and different spirits and different gospels, each of which would have to be discerned by the Corinthians. That Paul is concerned about multiple spirits and Christs in Corinth does not reflect a concern with heresy or wrongheaded ideas being taken up by the Corinthians; rather, it reflects the capacity within Greek modes of religious practice to hold multiple perspectives on the names of deities. Take, for example, Pausanias’s observation that in the Corinthian Forum there were three statues of Zeus: one with no epithet, one called Chthonios, and a third called Hypsistos (2.2.8). Are these the same god in different modes or different deities? As Versnel has provocatively argued, gods with the same name but different epithets “may but need not” be the same deity: “Gods bearing the same name with different epithets were and were not one and the same, depending on their momentary registrations in the believer’s various layers of perception. Theirs was a chameleonic nature, with different aspects or indeed identities rising to prominence and fading into the background in alternation, according to shifts in perspective.”24 Those who walked through the Corinthian Forum had a choice that they could make each time they approached one or all of the three statues of Zeus, and they may not have made the same choice on different days. Similarly, the Corinthians who interacted with the multiple missionaries of Jesus and the Spirit would need to decide: Was this the same deity about which Paul preached or a different one? More to the point, they may have been quite content to make no theoretical decisions on the matter, open to different manifestations of these deities “depending on their momentary registrations in the believer’s various layers of perception.” Paul may have been less concerned with doctrinal difference than with convincing “some” Corinthians that they needed to make a choice between competing gods, and that his was the only correct choice.25 To take another example of these processes of negotiation and interpretation: the presence of multiple missionary contacts and the absence of Paul from Corinth created conditions in which the Corinthians would have developed their own means of discerning qualified and unqualified apostles. Paul’s defense of his integrity and apostolic qualifications hints at Corinthian concerns about Paul; however, such a defense also shows Paul recognized that the Corinthians could be persuaded in their collective discernment to rethink their evaluation of his ministry.26 Outside 2 Corinthians 3, Paul’s other writings to Corinth are similarly shaped by his dealings with a discerning community with the power to accept or reject

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his interests, theology, and authority. Paul navigates these power relationships by encouraging communal discernment in certain situations and discouraging it in others. Throughout the Corinthian correspondence Paul suggests that the Corinthians ought to engage in a communal form of judgment regarding a number of issues:27 the man sleeping with his stepmother (1 Cor 5:1–13, esp. 12–13), the settling of legal disputes within the community (1 Cor 6:1–11), the dangers of idolatry (1 Cor 10:15), the appropriateness of female head coverings (1 Cor 11:13), the proper way to celebrate the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:28–32), the interpretation of spiritual gifts (1 Cor 14:26, 28–33a), and the evaluation of Paul’s authority with regard to the super-apostles (2 Cor 10:7). These examples show that Paul’s letters contended with and were directed toward an actively discerning community that could be persuaded but would ultimately pass its own judgments on issues related to Paul’s ministry. The authority of the Corinthians with respect to Paul’s ministry emerges in the places where Paul resists Corinthian judgment, which generally relates to the evaluation of his apostolic authority. In 1 Cor 4:1–5 Paul suggests that the Corinthians have begun to investigate him in some fashion. Paul’s response is to shift the question of judgment from the sphere of the Corinthians to the sphere of the pneumatic (πνευματικός) and the divine. Having labeled the Corinthians as fleshly (σαρκικός) in 3:1–4 as a result of their factions (here described as jealousy and infighting [ζῆλος καὶ ἔρις]), Paul suggests that they do not have the ability to pass judgment on him. As a servant of Christ and a slave manager of the mysteries of God (ὡς ὑπηρέτας Χριστοῦ καὶ οἰκονόμους μυστηρίων θεοῦ [4:1]), Paul is to be judged by God alone (4:4–5). Paul thus tries to undermine the efficacy of the Corinthians’ communal discernment in regard to the evaluation of his own ministry. But Paul’s argument only underscores the sense that the Corinthians are actively involved in making their own decisions about how to evaluate and view him.28 In our examination of 2 Cor 3:7–18 and its surrounding context (2:14–4:6), we saw that Paul took a rhetorical position that differed from his resistance to communal examination in 1 Cor 4:1–5. Rather than suggesting that the Corinthians are unable to evaluate him, that his gospel is somehow “veiled” (4:3), Paul stresses the transparency of his motives and dealings with the Corinthians (2 Cor 2:17; 3:12–13; 4:2). Paul’s resistance to the community’s evaluation of his ministry may not then have been well received in Corinth, which forced Paul to take a different tack. Instead of stressing his immunity to human judgment, Paul presents himself as a frank speaker whose motivations and actions are transparent and honest. For him a “yes” is a yes and a “no” a no (2 Cor 1:17–20). Indeed, Paul invokes God as a witness to his sincerity rather than as the sole judge of his

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actions (2 Cor 1:23; 2:17). This suggests a continuity of communal discernment in Paul’s dealings with the Corinthians that have shaped the ways in which Paul has presented himself and argued for his apostolic authority. We can thus say that one feature of the Corinthian community that can be reconstructed with some confidence is an ongoing practice of communal discernment with which Paul has to deal, either in encouraging the community to take a particular position, as one voice among many in debate, or in defense of communal scrutiny of his actions and motives.

Antiquity amid Newness The Corinthians to whom Paul wrote were accustomed to receiving and evaluating travelers bearing messages about the Israelites and Jesus. In such a context, we might also expect that they made discerning choices about other aspects of their collective or individual identities. As a result, it is worth asking about whether and in what ways “some” Corinthians might have adopted an affiliation with the ethnic category of Israel, as seems to be presumed by 1 Corinthians 10, 2 Corinthians 3, and the arrival of the super-apostles. As we saw in the opening of part 2, history is an important part of how ethnic identity is constructed. The past offers a way of grounding ethnicity in an ancient and stable essence, a powerful argument in the ancient world, where antiquity was prized over novelty.29 Because it “proved” antiquity and fixity, history was an important part of why so much energy was put into adopting the Greek history of Corinth. By representing the city’s Greek past in the Roman present, those Corinthians with the resources to remodel prominent landmarks were making arguments about the venerable history of the city, about its importance as a center of Hellenic culture and prestige within the larger landscape of provincial Greece. Claims to an Israelite history would also have offered Corinthians a way of connecting themselves with the perceived stability of an ancient people, customs, and history. But the question remains whether such a history would have been attractive to residents of Corinth, where much of the civic energy was being directed toward the city’s Greek history. Debating Jewish Bodies in Corinth As a way of framing this issue, I want to look at a recent argument that presumes Paul’s Jewishness was a problem for the Corinthians, thus suggesting by implication that Paul’s invocation of Israelite history was not attractive in Corinth. In a recent article Tat-siong Benny Liew has rightly argued that interpretations of 1 Corinthians, which have recently focused a great deal of atten-

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tion on the “body,” have not adequately accounted for the Jewishness of Paul’s own body. Liew sees Paul’s Jewish body as a problem, since it would have been perceived as colonized, feminized, and abject by the “Greco-Roman colonizers” who made up Paul’s audience in Corinth. As a result, “his [Paul’s] Corinthian converts experienced a status inversion in joining a religious minority, and thus became even more zealous in the competition for status,” both among themselves and with Paul.30 Thus, it is Paul’s Jewishness, and the Jewishness of his overall message of a crucified Judean criminal, that explains the factions in the Corinthian community (1 Cor 1:10) and the community’s resistance to Paul’s authority. Liew’s article offers a salutary reminder that scholarship on Paul’s letters has ignored the imperial politics of race and ethnicity, but I think that his explanation of the situation in Corinth lacks attention to the contours of the conversation among the Corinthians. First, Liew describes the Corinthians as GrecoRoman colonizers, which both places the Corinthians on the side of empire and forced colonization and implies that Paul’s audience was made up of those who themselves did not suffer from the dislocations and complications of Roman rule in Greece. Second, Liew’s reconstruction assumes that the Corinthians have “converted” to a minority Jewish religion. Such a formulation assumes a linear progression and a static state for those who might have been attracted to Paul’s (and others’) message in Corinth, ignoring how Corinthians found ways to adapt, negotiate, and reconfigure their own communal and individual practices within Corinthian society. Further, Liew pays little attention to 2 Corinthians, noting only the condemnation of Paul’s speech and body in 2 Cor 10:10. In 2 Cor 11:22 we learn that the super-apostles (οἱ ὑπερλίαν ἀπόστολοι [2 Cor 11:5]) claimed that they were Hebrews, Israelites, and descendants of Abraham. One might also wonder about Corinthian interest in Cephas (1 Cor 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5) and Apollos (1 Cor 1:12; 3:4–6, 22; 4:6; 16:12), if we take Acts 18:24 as accurately reflecting the latter’s Judean background. If Jewish bodies were a problem for the Corinthians, one would think that these other figures would have also struggled to gain audiences in Corinth. This is not to ignore how Jewish bodies were perceived negatively in the Roman world by many people; rather, my concern here is with the way Jewishness is used to explain conflict at Corinth when it seems clear that some of Paul’s rivals for authority in the community were themselves Jews.31 If we think back to Corinthian reactions to Paul’s ethnically malleable body in chapters 1 and 3, we might find another way of thinking about how Paul’s Jewish body was bound up with the question of authority in Corinth. When, in 1 Cor 9:19–27, Paul emphasizes his ability to become “all things to all people,”

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it is quite possible that the Corinthians perceived this malleability as indicative of a Paul who was not a frank speaker but a servile flatterer, willingly shifting his ethnic identity with the prevailing winds and for his own ends. This would help explain why Paul ceases to use this form of self-praise in 2 Corinthians and also why he emphasizes his frank speech, purity of motives, and transparency in 2 Cor 2:17–4:6.32 We might now go further and suggest that it was only when a serious threat emerged in the form of the super-apostles that Paul felt the need to stress that he, too, was a Hebrew, an Israelite, and a descendant of Abraham (2 Cor 11:22, 26). They may have found success in Corinth precisely as Jews, by aligning themselves with the figure of Moses, making them yet another group in Corinth constructing arguments about Israelite history to Corinthians. “Some” Corinthians seem to have deemed some Jewish male bodies, rather than being simply a problem, to be sites of authoritative speech (2 Cor 10:10; 11:4–6).33 What Do Our Fathers in the Wilderness Expect of Us? Perhaps the way to think beyond whether Jewish bodies were accepted or rejected by the Corinthians is to look to what kinds of affiliation with the category of Israel were encouraged or accepted in Corinth. Such an approach recognizes that what it means to claim or accept affiliation with the ethnic signifier of Israel was constantly up for contestation, negotiation, and debate. Affiliation could mean different things to different people at different times. A tantalizing example of this comes in the figure of a prominent Corinthian citizen and benefactor from the middle of the first century CE. Gaius Iulius Spartiaticus was the scion of a Spartan dynasty whose fortunes had ebbed and flowed beginning in the tumultuous years of the Roman civil wars. His grandfather Eurycles came from a line of pirates and received the generous grant of the island of Cythera after siding with Octavian at Actium. Eurycles’ son Laco moved in the right circles before running afoul of Tiberius and going into exile with his younger son, Spartiaticus. During and after exile, the two settled in Corinth, where they became prominent benefactors and magistrates.34 What makes Spartiaticus and his family relevant in this context is the connection that they may have had to a Judean lineage. A Spartan connection to the Jews had been claimed and periodically reaffirmed during the Hellenistic period (1 Macc 12:5–23; 14:16–23; 2 Macc 5:9; Josephus, Jewish War 1.425; Antiquities of the Jews 12:225–227; 13:164–70).35 Spartiaticus’s grandfather seems to have used this genealogical connection to ingratiate himself into the inner circle of Herod the Great’s family, enriching himself and sowing discord in the process,

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if we are to believe the accounts of Josephus (Jewish War 1.513–31; Antiquities of the Jews 16:301–10). While the evidence for Spartiaticus does not suggest that he made any attempts to advocate actively for or affiliate with Judean groups in the Peloponnesos, inscriptions honoring him make reference to his “Judaizing” grandfather (as in West no. 68). Though we might not imagine Spartiaticus encouraging circumcision or the adoption of kosher food laws, it would not be hard to imagine a Judean community approaching him as a patron to whom they might appeal on the basis of a genealogical connection to Judea or Israel. In all likelihood, such an appeal would probably not have struck Spartiaticus as problematic or insulting, but as part of the regular discourse of diplomacy and patronage among the elites of the empire.36 Were he “reminded” of his genealogical connection to his Israelite “fathers” in the wilderness (1 Cor 10:1), Spartiaticus probably would have started to get his checkbook out, rather than expecting parenesis about his cultic or dietary practices. Spartiaticus offers us one point on a spectrum of how inhabitants of Corinth might have expressed affiliation with Israel or Jews. A genealogical connection might encourage a prominent Corinthian to offer some form of patronage or benefaction to a person, group, or city, but that might be the limit of what sorts of actions or dispositions such a connection might produce. We might envision Paul at a different place along that spectrum, where affiliation with Israel and its history required a moral, cultic, and social transformation. In contrast to how someone like Spartiaticus might negotiate his connection to Israel, Paul expects his audience of Corinthians to make some major changes to their ethnic identities in order to see themselves as descendants of the “fathers” in the wilderness. Paul expects his Corinthian audience, those who “used to be Gentiles” (1 Cor 12:2; cf. 1 Cor 5:1), to stay away from any activity that involves cultic worship of traditional Greek and Roman gods (1 Cor 8:1–13; 10:1–22). If this advice is adopted in the way that Paul suggests, the Corinthians would have had to sever many of the social, political, and cultic ties that structured daily life in Corinth, effectively isolating members of the community from their neighbors. Such social isolation would have been compounded by Paul’s encouragement that the Corinthians avoid the civic legal system in the resolution of their internal disputes (1 Cor 5:1–6:11). In addition, Paul’s assertion that Greeks seek wisdom and that the community’s beliefs were as foolishness to other Gentiles (1 Cor 1:22–24) further alienates the new identities being formed within the community from Greekness. In contrast to a larger history of interpretation that sees Paul as converting Gentiles to Christianity, if Paul’s

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Corinthian audience were to adopt all his prescriptions for affiliating with the God of Israel, they would have looked to their Corinthian neighbors like a group of Judeans more than anything else.37 If we pan out to look at Paul’s ministry more broadly outside the Corinthian correspondence, we can see that this was part of his larger project. As Caroline Johnson Hodge has shown in her work on Romans and Galatians, Paul conceives of his message as having a dual focus: to the Judeans first and also to the Greeks (Rom 1:16; 2:9–10). For the two groups the gospel does different work: “The content of the good news is the same for Jews and Greeks, but what it means for each group differs. The relevance of the gospel for gentiles is obvious: through Christ, they receive Abrahamic ancestry and blessings, and therefore establish a new and salvific relationship with God. The relevance of this good news for Ioudaioi, who already have these things . . . is that it signals arrival of the awaited time. Through Christ, the nations are coming to Israel, and, with Christ’s return, the world will soon be God’s.”38 Paul thus sees his gospel as signaling different responses depending on the ethnic group to which it is addressed. For the Ioudaioi the gospel of Christ should rightly signal the arrival of the end time, when the promises of the God of Israel will be enacted. For the Greeks Paul’s gospel signals the possibility of a new relationship in the family of Abraham and in relationship to the ethnic signifier Israel. Johnson Hodge further works out the implications of the new lineage that is applied to the Greeks (or Gentiles) “in Christ”: Paul never says, for example, that the Ioudaioi have to give up any portion of their ethnic and religious identity. Their God, their practices, their scriptures are all intact. The gentiles, by contrast, must give up goods that are central to their identity: their gods, religious practices, myths of origin, epic stories of their ancestors and origins. . . . Although Ioudaioi and Greeks receive equally impartial treatment from God, these two peoples arrive at this position with different ethnic identities and ethnic histories. The Ioudaioi are marked by ethnic continuity and the Greeks by ethnic disruption and rearranging.

Not only does Paul’s gospel have a different resonance with different ethnic groups, it also requires a different response. For the Greeks this is the most dramatic, requiring a total reorientation of worldview and all the practices and markers that give content to their ethnic identity.39 Paul and Spartiaticus offer just two points on what must have been a broad spectrum of how affiliation with Jews might have been negotiated in Corinth. For Spartiaticus a Jewish-Spartan genealogical connection might have prompted acts of patronage for a group of Jews in Corinth. For Paul Gentile affiliation

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through Christ with Israel required radical changes to practices, relationships, beliefs, and kinship groups. Alongside Paul were other Jewish figures associated with the cult of Jesus (Cephas, Apollos, the super-apostles, Paul’s own associates) who would have offered their own opinions on what might be required of those who chose to affiliate with Israel. The Corinthians themselves, as a discerning community, would have made decisions about the requirements they would accept for affiliating with Israel, decisions that seem to have generally run counter to what Paul hoped for.40 Within the broader landscape of Corinth it is likely that few of the city’s inhabitants found themselves interested in such a connection, though some certainly did. There was little benefit in associating oneself with a people equally under the control of Rome and a movement that placed a crucified criminal at its center. But it is certainly not the case that Jewish bodies were so anathema in Corinth that they could only be viewed as sites where status might be lost. Comparing Antiquities With that being said, how might we envision the appeal of an Israelite history and association in Corinth? What I would suggest is that Israel’s history offered access to an antiquity that might be usefully compared with other Corinthian attempts to claim a Greek antiquity for the city. Set alongside the fountains of Peirene and Glauke, the attraction for at least “some” Corinthians to the stories of Israel makes sense. As I argued in chapter 5, the use of the past in the construction of ethnic identity was part of the monumental texture of Corinth. The Corinthian past was malleable, allowing history to function as “mobile constructions that rhetorically produce and recast, rather than describe, collective identities.”41 The pasts of the Corinthians, like that of the Israelites, were always open to being recast, rewritten, and reinterpreted as part of constructing ethnic and civic identity in the present. We might take as an example the Fountain of Glauke. At Glauke the story of a famous mythical event was localized in a peculiar monument in the center of the city. The stuccoed appearance of the building spoke of its antiquity, alongside the archaic Temple of Apollo to its east, and it came to be associated with the equally ancient story of Jason and Medea. The Corinthian colonists, who consciously maintained the archaic appearance of the fountain, adopted a famous and widespread myth for themselves, making it part of how the city presented its identity to visitor and citizen alike. For the Corinthians, Glauke was a monument that “proved” the ancient and prestigious history of the city, a mark of honor among cities competing for pride of place in a world that valued a storied Greek history.

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A similar process can be associated with the remodeling of the Peirene Fountain. In taking a Corinthian myth and reinterpreting it within the monumental architecture of an emerging Roman imperial style, the Corinthians who remodeled Peirene presented the Greek past within a contemporary idiom. The colossal Roman grandeur of Peirene spoke of the city’s famous Greek history at the same time that it displayed the Corinthian connection to the power of Rome. If we knew the benefactor who paid for Peirene’s remodeling, we might imagine such a person claiming that very connection to Rome and its power for herself within the local politics of Corinth.42 Between the monumental arches of Peirene one can still see the columns of the earlier and more modest Greek facade, a reminder of the history that was both claimed and effaced in the remodeling of the fountain. Both Peirene and Glauke remain as testaments to the desire of prominent Corinthians for a connection to the city’s Greek past, a connection that was valorized by Aelius Aristides and attacked by Favorinus and the anonymous author of the Argive Letter. Paul’s use of the Exodus narrative in 1 Cor 10:1–13 is not unlike the Corinthian use of Glauke; in both cases a popular legendary story from the past is appropriated by (or for) a new group of people—Roman colonists and other inhabitants—and used in the construction of group identity. Where Paul differs from Glauke is the extent to which ethnic identity and cultic practice are intertwined with the use of the past. The Fountain of Glauke and 1 Cor 10:1–13 write new Corinthians into a history that was not originally theirs, but Paul uses that history as an example to encourage his audience to mark boundaries between themselves and others on the basis of particular cultic and dietary practices. These boundaries are similarly policed by the invocation of the past: failure to keep them rigidly fixed may result in destruction at the hands of an angry God. What these examples from both Paul and Corinth show is that an ancient history was, if not a commodity, at least something that was important to “some” Corinthians. Though Paul makes use of the history of Israel for his own purposes, it is not out of the question to think that that history was itself important to his audience in Corinth, particularly since there were so many Jewish figures that found their way in and out of the graces of the Corinthians. In an environment in which negotiations between an ancient past and the present were part of both the civic and discursive landscape, we might also imagine that other kinds of pasts could be attractive in Corinth.43 If we think back to the connections that were negotiated between Sparta and the Jews in the Hellenistic period, connections that were important to the

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family of Spartiaticus, we can see something of how such an argument might resonate in Corinth. This genealogical connection was one among many arguments that were used by Jewish authors in the Hellenistic and Roman periods to “prove” the antiquity of their community and their laws. Aristobulus argued that the great figures of Greek culture had learned philosophy from Moses: Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, Homer, Hesiod, and Orpheus (quoted in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 13.13.1–2). Josephus’s work tracing the “antiquities” of the Jews back to the beginning of the world and his disputations with those who questioned aspects of Jewish history in his Against Apion show the energy that some put into defending Jewish antiquity. That the Jews were an ancient people seems to have been assumed by the ambivalent and anti-Semitic alike. Hecataeus of Abdera thought that Moses was one of three figures who led people of out Egypt, alongside Danaus, the founder of Argos (a Corinthian neighbor), and Cadmus, the founder of Thebes (quoted in Photius, Bibliotheca 40.3). Tacitus, whose screed against the Jews in the fifth book of his Histories is one of the most anti-Semitic rants to survive from antiquity, offers a number of theories about the origins of the Jews (5.2–3), all of which presume that they are an ancient people. He notes that their “rites . . . are supported by their antiquity” (hi ritus . . . antiquitate defenduntur [5.5]). These may be reasons why an Israelite history may have appealed to “some” Corinthians. Claims to such antiquity would have easily sat alongside other claims to Greek antiquity in Corinth, though they may not have sat comfortably. Whatever their appeal in Corinth, we cannot assume that such histories would have been appropriated in a straightforward way. The example of the Peirene Fountain helps us think here. In their appropriation of the myth, the Corinthians remodeled a Greek fountain in a Roman idiom, blurring past and present. Such appropriations are akin to the kinds of negotiations we looked at in chapter 2. Many Corinthians seem to have been comfortable negotiating multiple modes of religion and identity, and we should expect similar negotiations in how “some” Corinthians might have appropriated an Israelite history for themselves. Such negotiations emerge out of the movement in and through Corinth itself. Im/migrant identities, forged in travel, dislocation, and movement, are often situational, malleable, and layered: “How one identifies oneself in terms of social, ethnic, and other identities may shift from one situation to another, and there is potential for a blending of identities, or hybridity.” As Rina Benmayor and Andor Skotes have noted, “Im/migrant subjects constantly build, reinvent, synthesize, or even collage identities from multiple sources and resources, often

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lacing them with deep ambivalence.”44 Those Corinthians who adopted Israelite ancestors may have done so as one among many connections through which they navigated life in Corinth. We might even imagine those who saw themselves as Greek and Israelite, identities that might have been deployed as fixed and ancient in some contexts and that might have been beneficial for “getting by” in Corinth, not unlike Boyarin’s own formulation of Paul as Jewgreek or Greekjew (or both).45 Eurycles’ Spartan connections to Herod the Great and the Israelites might be one example of how this worked, minus the moral invective directed at him by Josephus. Regardless of Paul’s own attempts at moral and cultic reform among the Corinthians to whom he wrote, “some” of these same Corinthians may have been quite comfortable affiliating with an ancient Israelite history, as part of their own negotiations of life in Corinth. In the next section I explore some of the ways in which this might have worked, focusing on how an Israelite history might have been part of negotiating distance, absence, and linkage to a “homeland.”

Homeland The interest among “some” Corinthians in an ancient history like that of the Israelites might also have come from a desire to find new ways to negotiate identity in diaspora. Im/migrants to Corinth, brought by larger patterns of trade and mobility, would find themselves in a landscape bereft of ancestral traditions, the familiar cults of their homelands, or access to family burial sites.46 Such dislocations might inspire precisely the kinds of experimentation that one sees among “some” Corinthians in the Corinthian correspondence. To think about these Corinthians, I look at the importance of homeland in antiquity and the ways that many travelers found to keep connected across distance and time. I then return to Corinthian uses of the Spirit and the ambiguous reference in 1 Cor 15:29 to “some” Corinthians who are baptizing in behalf of the dead (οἱ βαπτιζόμενοι ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν). I will suggest that the Spirit and baptism might be seen as ways of negotiating relationships with deceased ancestors both in the foreign landscape of Corinth and in relation to the cult of Christ preached by Paul and others. Negotiating Divine Relationships, Landscapes, and Movement To account for a Corinthian concern with the homeland, it is important to note the importance of place for ancient religious practices and identity. Identity was often tied to how one negotiated relationships among family, city, and

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the gods through cultic practices in the home and the homeland. Travelers and im/migrants found ways to deal with absence from the cults of their place. This absence was mediated in part by the construction of civic and cultic landscapes of travel.47 A traveler leaving home on business would find cultic sites along the roads, such as a herm, linking the city to a broader network of territory or marking boundaries between one region and another. The same traveler might bring with her objects that connected her with the patronage of deities from home or who were known for watching over travelers. She might expect to be approached by a deity in a vision or through an omen, and she might have begun and ended the trip with a vow or a sacrifice. Travel, because it put the individual in a situation where she would be separated from the webs of meaning at home that were a major part of her social identity, was envisioned and experienced as a negotiated movement through a landscape populated by a variety of divine beings. Though operating with a slightly different metaphysical paradigm, Paul certainly saw his travel experiences as movement through divinely ordered space.48 Those Corinthians who traveled as part of their work or to maintain communication between Paul and the community, like “Chloe’s people” (1 Cor 1:11) or Phoebe (Rom 16:1–3), would themselves have looked at their movements within the network of relationships, divine, human, and material, that structured the landscape through which they moved. For Corinthian im/migrants, the question of distance and geography would be inflected differently. Some Corinthians may have been temporary residents of Corinth who traveled to and from the city on periodic business or for particular seasons. Others may have come to Corinth permanently as part of forced or economically necessary migration, whereas others may have come to advance their careers in the provincial capital.49 In each of these situations, im/migrants would find ways to connect to the gods and traditions of their homelands. One way of negotiating home and away was to invoke the patronage of deities from one’s homeland. Travelers to and from Corinth might have invoked the patronage of the Egyptian deities. Isis was worshipped in both Corinth and Kenchreai, where she was associated mostly with the sea and with sea travel (Pausanias 2.4.6). Isis was often known for her compassion in other parts of the Mediterranean and could be associated with healing, or something similar, if we also include her aid to the stricken donkey Lucius in the Golden Ass. More specifically related to deities “from home” may be the Temple of Sarapis “in Canopus” mentioned by Pausanias as one of two temples to the god on Acrocorinth. As Dennis Smith has pointed out, Canopus was a city near Alexandria with a Temple of Sarapis that was famous for being both an oracle and a place

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of healing.50 As patrons of travelers and as deities associated with particular geographic regions, the Egyptian cults may have been useful for some Corinthians in linking Corinth with their homelands. In a similar way, we might see particular traditions of divine ordering and presence in the stories of the Israelites as another set of resources by which “some” Corinthians might have negotiated their own experiences of movement. Stanley notes that Paul seems to expect the Corinthians to have knowledge of the Creation account in Genesis 1–3 (1 Cor 8:6; 11:8–9, 12; 15:21–22, 44–45; 2 Cor 4:6; 11:3) and the Exodus narrative (1 Cor 10:1–10; 2 Cor 3:3–18).51 Paul invokes the Genesis Creation stories to address concerns and debates about gendered and resurrected bodies, but the divine ordering of the Creation is also assumed behind the Corinthian “slogan” in 1 Cor 8:6. Divine control over the cosmos might be useful in thinking about how to connect movement to place for “some” Corinthians. The wilderness narratives that appear in 1 Corinthians 10 and 2 Corinthians 3, where God’s presence accompanies the Israelites on their wanderings, could offer comfort to travelers or im/migrants far from home. Paul’s use of these traditions presumes that his Corinthian audience might be persuaded to follow his moral and cultic authority by the promise of divine presence and blessing similar to that experienced by their Israelite “fathers.” In addition, Paul’s own rhetoric of mobile structures (the group as a body [1 Cor 12:12–27] and the individual as a temple where the Spirit dwells [1 Cor 3:16; 6:19]) might be appealing as a means of both addressing Corinthian questions about their own movement and negotiating the issues that would arise as a result of mobility. Though away from home, the community and its traditions become ways for reaffirming the presence and patronage of the God who ordered the cosmos and who blessed the Israelites in their wanderings. Familiar Spirits and Baptisms for the Dead Paul’s invocations of the group as a “body” also suggest how the community itself might create new ways of negotiating identity for im/migrants in Corinth. As Philip Harland has noted, “Associations based on shared ethnic identity were a further means by which immigrants were in some significant ways firmly planted not only in traditions of the homeland but also, to various degrees, in their societies of settlement.” They were thus ways of negotiating “acculturation and continual attachments to the homeland.”52 Some of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote may have gathered together, both before Paul’s arrival and after, as a way of negotiating between Corinth and home. To see how the community might be a site for negotiating between home and away, I look at “some” Corinthians’ experience of the spirit and experimentation with baptism.

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In chapter 3, we looked at Paul’s difficulties in negotiating speech among “some” Corinthians. Paul’s rhetoric of ethnic malleability was one among several instances in the Corinthian correspondence that suggested that Paul fell short in regard to Corinthian discernment about the connections among speech, knowledge, and authority. In chapter 4 we looked at how Paul attempts to lay claim to the Spirit in his use of the traditions about Moses’ veiling, the same Spirit that animated some forms of Corinthian speech (1 Corinthians 12–14). Speech and Spirit may not, at first glance, be an intersection where we might expect to find Corinthians negotiating relationships with a homeland; however, it is possible to imagine such a connection. To make such a connection, we have to remain open to the possibility of mistranslation between Paul and the Corinthians about the Spirit itself. As biblical scholars who have access to, and a great facility with, printed (and searchable digital) Bibles, we often make the assumption that terms like the Spirit (πνεῦμα) were clearly understood by Paul’s audiences. In a context of low rates of literacy, the prevalence of verbal communication, and the vagaries of distance in epistolary communication, we cannot assume that Paul’s definitions were heard, understood, or accepted in Corinth. As J. Z. Smith has suggested, the definition of “Spirit” might be just such a site of miscommunication.53 As 2 Cor 11:4 suggests, there was debate or disagreement between Paul, the Corinthians, and other itinerant missionaries over what the “Spirit” actually was: “For if someone comes heralding another Jesus than the one we heralded or you receive a different spirit than the one you received, or a different gospel that you did not receive, you gladly suffer it” (εἰ μὲν γὰρ ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἄλλον Ἰησοῦν κηρύσσει ὃν οὐκ ἐκηρύξαμεν, ἢ πνεῦμα ἕτερον λαμβάνετε ὃ οὐκ ἐλάβετε, ἢ εὐαγγέλιον ἕτερον ὃ οὐκ ἐδέξασθε, καλῶς ἀνέχεσθε). The assumption here is that there are different no-

tions of the Spirit floating around Corinth, the result of multiple authorities offering different definitions and experiences to a discerning Corinthian audience. In speaking of and experiencing the Spirit, “some” im/migrant Corinthians may have imagined themselves as connecting to the spirits of their ancestors and homelands, whereas Paul may have envisioned in the practice a bastardization of prophecy, imagining the incoherent speech of the Delphic oracle. As Burton Mack puts it, Paul’s discussion of meals, bodies, and the Spirit “indicates that the Corinthians may have been at work on ‘translating’ modes of remembering and relating to their ancestors now that they no longer had access to their tombs and the proper performance of their festivals in the districts from which they had come.”54 The Spirit as a vehicle for connecting with one’s ancestral spirits would be useful for Corinthians “on the move” and looking for ways to negotiate connections between Corinth and their homelands.

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One can perhaps hear something of the logic involved here in Paul’s own rhetoric of the Spirit. The divine presence with the Corinthians’ Israelite fathers is characterized by a variety of “spiritual” objects: food, drink, and a rock that was Christ (1 Cor 10:3). The spiritual food and drink of the Israelites parallels and creates a historical continuity with the eating practices of the Corinthians, which are the focus of Paul’s discussion of meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Cor 8:1–11:1. The image of drinking the Spirit returns in Paul’s discussion of the community as a body in which all drink of one Spirit (πάντες ἓν πνεῦμα ἐποτίσθημεν [1 Cor 12:13]). Spiritual food and spiritual drink and a spiritual rock that was Christ create “spiritual” connections between past and present. Similarly, the Spirit mediates distance between Paul and the Corinthians. Though absent from discussions about the man who is sleeping with his stepmother (1 Corinthians 5), Paul is nevertheless present in the Spirit (5:3–4). The Spirit thus can, among other things, connect past and present, near and far. The Spirit is also implicated in how Paul speaks about baptism. In baptism members of the community are made into one body in the Spirit (1 Cor 12: 12–13). Like the Spirit, baptism is also a link to the Corinthians’ Israelite past, when the Israelites undergo a mysterious, but similar, baptism into Moses in the wilderness (1 Cor 10:2). Finally, baptism connected people together through the ritual act itself, beyond the idealized body envisioned by Paul. Paul’s report from Chloe’s people suggests that some in Corinth envisioned baptism as a ritual that linked the baptized to the baptizer (1 Cor 1:13), perhaps even creating different factions within the community. In each of these cases, baptism is more than just an empty ritual; rather, it is a means of linking people together across time and space. It also could function as a way of mediating relationships with the dead, to which we now turn.55 Paul’s reference to a baptism “in behalf of / for / because of” the dead in 1 Cor 15:29 has been a puzzle for many exegetes, who seem concerned that such a practice bordering on the superstitious could ever be associated with Paul. In a series of studies of this ambiguous passage, Richard DeMaris has situated baptism for the dead, and baptism more generally, within the larger context of water use in Corinth.56 To see baptism as part of “a spectrum of water use” in Corinth allows us to see how “some” Corinthians were finding ways to innovate in their cultic practices as a way of connecting themselves to their homeland. Water was an important part of the civic landscape of Corinth. The abundant local aquifers in the Corinthia brought more water to the city than to other sites in the arid region and were the reason that the city was often known as “well-watered.” The abundant water supply allowed the Romans to construct a

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civic landscape around water, its use, collection, and dispersal. In the Corinth of Pausanias’s day, we have evidence for many waterworks: Hadrian’s aqueduct, which brought water from Lake Stymphalos (Pausanias 8.22.3); the refurbishing of the northern port of Lechaion to expand commerce and capacity; a series of fountains, the most prominent of which were Peirene, Glauke, and the Fountain of Poseidon on the west terrace of the Forum; and a number of baths (Pausanias 2.3.5), including new baths built at Isthmia.57 Despite the role that water played in structuring the civic landscape of Corinth, DeMaris notes the strange absence of water from cultic rituals after the Roman refounding, a marked shift from Corinth’s Greek past, when a number of cults made use of water in their rituals. The exception to the lack of water in Corinthian ritual is baptism; however, it was still one of many uses to which water was put in the Corinthian landscape. Though a ritual that certainly had a life before Paul arrived in Corinth, the meaning, practice, and utility of baptism were negotiated within a civic context in which water was present in myriad ways. As such, “baptism represents an act of creative interaction with the complex cultural situation that typified life” in Corinth.58 One way in which we can see how the ritual of baptism was adapted and negotiated by the Corinthians is to take a similarly broad view of baptism for the dead (1 Cor 15:29). Because the dead are the focus of this mysterious rite, it makes sense to look at wider patterns of interaction with the dead in the Corinthian landscape.59 Paul himself will link baptism with the individual’s participation in the death and burial of Jesus (Rom 6:3–4). Though the evidence for Corinthian mortuary practices is rather scant, what there is does offer us some insight into the local funerary practices that are relevant to imagining how baptism for the dead might function as one among many Corinthian negotiations with ancestors and the homeland. Burial sites in the region were not isolated from daily life but were designed to be visited and seen. Clustered on the east and north of the city, most graves were placed along major roads in and out of the city. Often their layout was constructed in such a way as to maximize the visibility and accessibility of the site to the road. The funerary assemblage from the Corinthia also suggests that grave sites were not only visible monuments to the deceased and their families, but also places where Corinthians might gather for meals and other rituals connected with the dead. Death and burial in Corinth would have been a public process, as funeral processions moved through the city and out through the gates on either the north or the east toward the major burial sites. Once the body was deposited in a grave site (though when cremation was involved, there would have been an intermediary step before depositing the remains), a whole

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host of public rituals would have attended the process, and family members would probably continue to meet at the burial site at various times thereafter.60 As social sites, burial places in the Corinthia would be the locus of a variety of ritual actions by which Corinthians negotiated their relationships with the dead. As part of a “culture in which aiding the dead was all-important and which assumed that the world of the living could affect the world of the dead,”61 it makes sense that “some” Corinthians might adapt a ritual like baptism, itself a water rite introduced in a “well-watered” town, as a way of negotiating relationships with the dead, both within the community and “back home.” There is evidence to suggest that already in the first century CE, Corinthians were changing how they commemorated the dead. One finds in Corinthian burials the use of both cremation and inhumation at this time.62 These differences suggest that what one did with the dead was up for debate and scrutiny in Corinth. Baptism for the dead would have been another Corinthian negotiation with the dead. Whatever the ritual looked like in practice, Paul’s admittedly opaque description suggests that the ritual involved some form of benefit that was provided to the dead and an element of vicarious participation. DeMaris suggests that the Corinthian practice of the ritual was developed as a way of helping deceased members of the community negotiate their transition between the world of the living and the world of the dead.63 Though this was quite likely one use to which the ritual might have been put, it seems equally possible that it may also have been a vehicle with which “some” Corinthians connected with the ancestral spirits of their homeland. Because these Corinthians lacked access to the burial sites of their ancestors, the lararia of their former homes, and the shrines of familiar local deities, baptism for the dead may have been a way of connecting with traditions, family, and other “spirits” across geographic space. Like the Israelites who were baptized into Moses during their own wanderings (1 Cor 10:3), “some” Corinthians may have seen baptism for the dead as a practice that ameliorated the dislocations of life on the road by connecting them and their distant and departed relatives to the Spirit and to the Israelites.64 If “some” Corinthians were indeed asking questions about how to connect with their homelands while traveling, it makes some sense of how Paul might have been initially received in Corinth. As Mack suggests, “That the Corinthians had bothered to give him [Paul] a hearing at all can only be understood as their reception of a traveling teacher/philosopher, with something of interest to say about “wisdom,” “spirits,” group identities, and meals in memory of ancestors. . . . It seems that the Corinthians received him just as they would have entertained others and debated some of his ideas without having to assent to

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his gospel.”65 As a traveling teacher-philosopher, Paul may have offered “some” Corinthians new ideas about how to reconcile the problems occasioned by distance from home. They were already interested in finding ways to connect with the “spirits” of their families and ancestors back home, and Paul offered a way of thinking about Spirit that could link people together across distance and space. Similarly, while Paul introduced baptism as an entry rite to the community, “some” Corinthians may have adapted the practice to connect to their ancestors, as one among many practices involving water and burial that were being negotiated in the Corinthian landscape. Such practices may not have ultimately been what Paul intended for his Corinthian audience, but this does not mean that they would not have been fitting theological and cultic responses to the challenges faced in a Corinth where movement to and fro required new solutions to how identity might be maintained far from home.

Conjuring Spirits We began this chapter standing with pious tourists in the Corinthian museum, looking at a fragmentary synagogue inscription and wondering how we might talk about Israelite history in Corinth. For many who come here, there is no need to imagine alternative histories of Jews in Corinth. They can see the truth of it before their eyes, in this cracked stone affixed to the wall, a confirmation of the words they see on the pages of their Bibles. Walking farther out from the museum, tourists and their guides linger over the inscription commemorating the benefactions of the aedile Erastus, who they are told may be the same Erastus mentioned in Rom 16:23, or stand under the rectangular block that remains of the city’s rostrum, more commonly referred to as the bema mentioned as the site of Paul’s trial before Gallio in Acts 18. It is not uncommon to see some of these same tourists singing hymns, listening to short homilies, or even baptizing one another in the presence of these biblical ghosts, memories written onto the stony, fragmented landscape that remains of the once-vibrant Corinthian Forum.66 The theater of memory that is the site of ancient Corinth offers a pilgrimage experience around which cluster some of the same themes that we have traced in this chapter.67 Often arriving in tour buses snaking up the gentle rise in the hillside from the port of New Corinth, ancient Corinth remains part of the tourist and pilgrimage route of modern Greece for precisely the same reason it attracted traders, sailors, and wandering missionaries of Jesus: it remains close to the busy port of New Corinth astride the Corinth Canal and along the highway connecting the Peloponnesos to mainland Greece. The synagogue inscription conjures ancient Jews before Christian eyes, evoking a “history” of Jewish

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life in Corinth that is claimed in the Christian story. This story unfolds in the Corinthian Forum, where the memory of Paul’s courageous stand against both the Jews of Corinth and the Roman governor (Acts 18) is reenacted. Here many of the visitors reaffirm their commitment to these stories about their “ancestors” by singing hymns and baptizing. The Corinthian landscape still seems able to invoke complicated ethnic histories and ritual acts linking past to present. Standing in the ghostly presence of Paul, these visitors find ways to connect with ancestors long passed and imagine in the process new ways of affirming that genealogy through ritual acts and ethical commitments in the present. This chapter is the second of two experiments in this book in conjuring a different set of spirits, ghosts who lack the solidity that seems to attend the various weighty ghosts of Paul that float around library shelves. What I have tried to do here and in chapter 3 is to conjure other ghosts that haunt our discourse of early Christianity in more subtle ways than our Pauls. To invoke Derrida again, “One does not know what it is, what it is presently. It is something that one does not know, precisely, and one does not know if precisely it is, if it exists, if it responds to a name and corresponds to an essence. One does not know.”68 What exactly those whom I have called “some” Corinthians might have been still eludes me, though that is by intention. The Corinthians whom I have conjured are active agents looking to ask and answer questions that may or may not have been of interest to Paul or fallen within the scope of his vision for what a community of people affiliated with the cult of Christ ought to look like. These spectral Corinthians press on Paul’s rhetoric and its legacy in normative Pauline studies. Their ghosts wonder about the integrity of Paul’s arguments and selfpresentation, search for ways of living and being that bridge past and present, distance and proximity, and construct identities in the spaces in between the plurality of early Christian missionaries, local cultic practices, and the broader social networks of which they were a part. I make no presumptions that these conjurings were the “real” Corinthians, something I wish more biblical scholars would admit in their conjurings of the weighty ghosts of Paul. The Corinthians whom I have sought to conjure in this book are possibilities that may have been and might yet be, possibilities that beg to be given even spectral bodies as some kind of existence. It is my hope that what amounts to a number of séances might have conjured for the reader new ways of thinking of what might have been, what could be, and what should be different in how we tell our histories of earliest Christianity, of Paul, and of the Corinthians who remain for us “the shapeless chaos of the forgotten [that] is neither inert nor ineffective . . . [that] is at work within us with a force equal to that of the mass of conscious memories, but in a different way.”69

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Conclusion

Haunted Futures

Could one address oneself in general if already some ghost did not come back? If he loves justice at least, the “scholar” of the future, the “intellectual” of tomorrow should learn it and from the ghost. He should learn to live by learning not how to make conversation with the ghost but how to talk with him, with her, how to let them speak or how to give them back speech, even if it is in oneself, in the other, in the other in oneself: they are always there, specters, even if they do not exist, even if they are no longer, even if they are not yet. —Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx

In the Introduction I discussed the dual hauntings of race and the halfforgotten Corinthians. Both “not-theres” continue to make their presence felt in the study of Paul’s letters and early Christian history more broadly. I argued that the history of early Christian studies has been marked by a haunted racial history wherein Christianity was constructed as a nonethnic, universal, world religion by constructing Judaism as its peculiar, nationalistic, ethnic Other. Paul, in particular, has been made to sit at the crux of this racial history, marking the transition from the particular of Judaism to the universal of Christianity. I have also argued that the half-forgotten Corinthians have themselves haunted Pauline studies. Though the force they exerted on the shape of Paul’s writings has been forgotten, the Corinthians have been “remembered” by modern scholars as any number of Others. By placing these “not-theres” together, this book has sought to examine the ways in which Paul draws on the rhetoric of ethnicity in his letters to the Corinthians and to conjure the ghosts of “some” Corinthians. In so doing, I have sought to challenge prevailing notions that Christianity is the nonethnic world religion that it has been long assumed to be. Rather, from

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the very first, Christians made use of ethnic rhetoric as a way of marking identity, policing boundaries and behavior, and arguing with others. I have further contended that by paying attention to the way that the rhetoric of ethnicity was deployed by Paul and others in and around the city of Corinth, we might conjure the spectral voices of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. This commitment to conjuring other Corinthians comes out of my own history working within feminist biblical scholarship. For decades, feminist biblical scholars have continued to draw attention to the unspoken ideology of Pauline studies, usually receiving a response from their “malestream” colleagues that offers some combination of condescension, bewilderment, or disgust. The ideology of Pauline studies privileges Paul’s voice over others and makes use of his voice to enforce and authorize the theological, political, and social views of the interpreter, who is usually white, Western, and male. What undergirds this ideology is a desire for univocity, a search for a single meaning, a universal truth, that lies somewhere in the letters of Paul. It is hard to find a Pauline scholar or reader, whether conservative or liberal in outlook, who does not hope to hear a transcendent divine truth spoken in and through his or her interpretation of Paul. The problem with this ideology, among others, is that it makes it all too easy to marginalize, categorize, and label as Other those with whom we disagree. If there is a transcendent truth locatable within Paul’s writings, then diversity and difference become deviance. To fall outside the ambit of Paul’s rhetoric, however it is constructed by scholars and lay readers alike, is to place oneself outside the fold, the norm, and the conversation. By privileging univocity and uniformity and locating that uniformity in the construction—or reconstruction—of Paul’s theology or rhetoric, difference becomes a problem. It is not hard to see how any number of evils might follow, from the torture of heretics and nonbelievers to the casual disregard and paternalistic condescension often met by those who think otherwise. The work that has gone into conjuring “some” Corinthians in this book has been directed at a different politics of interpretation. Rather than looking to Paul as the norm, the yardstick against which to measure thought and theology, I have tried to cast him as one among many, a move that privileges diversity. In this sense, I have sought to conjure other spectral voices, to invite spirits to a séance, rather than perform an exorcism on Paul’s ghost. My interpretive work does not look for Paul’s interpretation, lingering over other voices only long enough to label, criticize, and then ignore them. By privileging diversity, I assume that there are many voices, disagreements, misunderstandings, viewpoints, and opinions behind every text, particularly a text directed to a vibrant

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collective of active agents. What I have tried to do in these pages is to make space for “some” Corinthian ghosts to have their possibilities; however, these are not the only Corinthians who might be conjured. I hope that my Corinthian ghosts might find a home among the women prophets conjured by Antoinette Wire and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and among other Corinthians who might yet take shape. These acts of conjuring are not innocent acts. They are just as political and theological as the monologic interpretations of malestream scholarship. For me, they have emerged out of a commitment to plurality, a desire for difference, and the hope that a form of sociality might emerge that does not worship transcendent univocity and rigidly police and enforce its borders. I conjure other pasts because I am committed to a pluriform future. Conjure is a verb that I have used frequently in this book, evoking séances that call forth the spirits of the dead. It is meant to evoke the ghostly appearance of the forgotten Corinthians and the unspoken history of race for Christianity and biblical studies. But, as Jacques Derrida points out, conjuration and conjurement (and their German equivalents, Verschwörung and Beschwörung) can also refer to an “act that consists in swearing, taking an oath, therefore promising, deciding, taking a responsibility, in short committing oneself in a performative fashion.”1 By conjuring these ghosts, I am myself making a decision, taking a responsibility, committing myself to looking beyond, around, and outside Paul for ways of thinking, believing, acting, and doing that might have been and that might still be. In so doing I hope, in Joseph Marchal’s words, to find “gaps indicative of other concepts of space and time.”2 Such gaps may, perhaps, open up new possibilities for that which is otherwise, that which might call into existence what could be. I hope, following Michel Foucault, to think of new lives and communities that emerge “by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction . . . [that] ‘de-individualize’ by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations.”3 The point after all, to paraphrase Marx, is not just to interpret the past, but to change it, and in so doing reckon with the inheritance that it has bequeathed to us.4 The purpose of such a project is not just to think about the past and how to reconstruct it in the present, but also, as the quotation from Derrida above notes, to interrogate our visions for the future. To pay attention to the ghosts that haunt our interpretations of early Christian texts is to remind us of the promise and the threat of these texts and their futures. We conjure these historical ghosts precisely because they have been and continue to be implicated in the dangers of racism, sexism, imperialism, and many other evils. These are the dangers that accrue to a tradition and its receivers when they have become the tool of the

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ruling classes.5 To attend to the racializing history of Christianity is to reckon with an inheritance that continues to exert its effects on us. In speaking of ghosts and specters, Derrida rightly argues that such spectral presences are themselves inheritances. To inherit “does not mean that we have or that we receive this or that, some inheritance that enriches us one day with this or that, but that the being of what we are is first of all inheritance, whether we like it or know it or not.”6 As Buell notes, an “inheritance may not be consciously willed but rather passed on despite the best efforts not to transmit habits, patterns, traumas; and the living may have to reckon with that which is literally unspeakable and not of their own experience.”7 To avoid the perils of passing on the inheritance of Christianity’s intertwined racial history to our descendants, we must wrestle with that which is unspeakable in that history. To invoke Derrida again, “Inheritance is never a given, it is always a task.”8 A similar exigency exists in reimagining the voices of the Corinthians. To work to recover those voices that have been silenced by Paul’s writings, even as they helped shape them, is to remain faithful to how history might be thought otherwise. Walter Benjamin cautions that “in every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. . . . Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.”9 As Giorgio Agamben has noted, the forgotten, even the dead, remain with us as a force that exerts an exigency over us. To remain faithful to the unforgettable, to that which has perpetually been forgotten, is to look for how we might imagine the forgotten as a possibility: “omne existens exigit possibilitatem suam, each existent demands [esige] its proper possibility, it demands that it become possible.”10 By allowing “some” Corinthians to demand their “proper possibility,” we make space for other theological voices to be heard, for other visions of life to make their case to us, for other ways of organizing society and forming the self to present themselves to us. The ghost that demands her proper possibility is perhaps a frightening prospect, reminiscent of the ghosts that force their (often violent) presence on unsuspecting subjects in modern horror movies. The past and its ghosts can be menacing when they assert themselves, calling forth the traumas that haunt the past, present, and future alike. Buell, Agamben, and Derrida challenge us to confront the menace of the past and, we can hope, to live into a different future. This is certainly what the unspeakable history of Christian, and Pauline, complicity in racism and anti-Semitism demands of us, whether we fall within the ambit of Christian tradition or not. There can be no truly just future without a serious reckoning with the not-theres of the past.

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Though the specters of Christian racism can and should evoke a righteous menace that hovers over our reading of the Bible and Christian tradition, I think that we might conjure the ghosts of the Corinthians for a different, yet related, purpose. While ghosts and specters haunt and scare, menace and terrorize, they are also spectral, ephemeral, half here and half there, between worlds. As such, they pale in comparison to the terror that is the face of our living neighbor. Moviegoers flock to watch ghosts menace and terrorize, but we find it so much harder to look “real” Others in the eye, to acknowledge those whom we fear as human, to accord humanity to those we lock in secret prisons, enumerate on watch lists, or simply pass by as they lie before us in the street. Our real Others are so much more terrifying if only because they are here and now, demanding from us acknowledgment, respect, and (occasionally) justice. It is so much easier just to forget or ignore or pass by in silence, on the way to enjoy the pleasures of ghost stories in a movie theater. To conjure “some” Corinthians out of a distant past might become a kind of pedagogy, a training in looking for and affirming difference. If we grow comfortable with seeing and hearing and finding pluralities, if we learn to desire difference, if we make our readings exercises in dialogue and debate without assuming that we must arrive at a singular truth, perhaps we can learn to look in the faces of those we fear and hate and, perhaps worst of all, simply ignore and instead see in them the face of God. In so doing, we might thus be aided by the heretofore unthinkable possibilities of the ghosts of other pasts.

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NOTES

Introduction 1. For other claims to early Christians as a people, see Buell, Why This New Race. 2. Some of the projects that have made excellent use of ethnicity as a form of rhetoric include Byron, Symbolic Blackness; Lieu, Christian Identity; Buell, Why This New Race; Johnson Hodge, “Apostle to the Gentiles”; A. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument; Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs; Nasrallah and Schüssler Fiorenza, eds., Prejudice and Christian Beginnings; Nasrallah, Christian Responses. 3. In what follows I am indebted to Denise Kimber Buell, “God’s Own People,” for her discussion of “haunting” and race in early Christian studies. 4. On this point I am indebted to Buell, “God’s Own People,” 167. Buell is here summarizing aspects of Derrida, Specters of Marx. For an excellent recent use of Derrida’s Specters of Marx to think about Paul’s haunting of the rhetoric of sexual difference in early Christianity, see Dunning, Specters of Paul. One can see other ways of exploring the “haunting” of race in biblical studies, particularly in the history of biblical interpretation in the United States, in the important studies by Felder, ed., Stony the Road We Trod; Blount, Then the Whisper Put on Flesh; Nash, Reading Race, Reading the Bible; and Nasrallah and Schüssler Fiorenza, eds., Prejudice and Christian Beginnings, among others. 5. Denise Kimber Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race”; Buell, Why This New Race, 21–29; Buell, “God’s Own People.” 6. Buell, “God’s Own People,” 165. 7. Buell, “God’s Own People,” 170, notes the dynamic here, speaking of it in the language of inheritance: “The inheritance may not be consciously willed but rather passed on despite the best efforts not to transmit habits, patterns, traumas; and the living may have to reckon with that which is literally unspeakable and not of their own experience.” 8. The study of religion had begun to be institutionalized in the form of chairs at major universities in Europe and endowed lectureships. At this formative period Dutch scholars of religion (such as Cornelis Tiele, Louis de la Saussaye, and Abraham

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Kuenen) and Otto Pfleiderer, one of the founders of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, began to employ the categories of national (Landesreligionen) and universal religions (Weltreligionen) in their classifications of religious traditions (Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, 108–9). See also Buell, Why This New Race, 25–29. Most scholars never questioned the status of Christianity and Buddhism as world religions. Islam, however, was highly debated, as it was considered a religion that was essentially nationalistic that had spread beyond its own Arabian borders by sheer historical good luck. See, for example, Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, 179– 206. In his What Is Religion? Wilhelm Bousset reflects on this controversy over Islam, writing that “Mahomet” embodied some of the prophetic spirit, but “out of the wild, fantastic, half-corrupt religious ideas he created for his half-barbaric Bedouin tribes a religious conception suitable to their stage of civilisation” (Bousset, What Is Religion? 140). A generation later, Albert Schweitzer would hold a similar view: “There is no need for a comparison of spiritual values between Christianity and Islam. . . . [Islam] lacks spiritual originality and is not a religion with profound thoughts on God and the world. Its power in the world is based on the fact that, while it is a monotheistic and also to some extent an ethical religion, it has preserved all the instincts of the primitive religious mind and is thus able to offer itself to the uncivilized and the half-civilized peoples of Asia and Africa” (Schweitzer, Christianity and the Religions of the World, 34). Early on Tiele became frustrated with using this taxonomy to define the “character” of particular religions. In his entry “Religion” in the 1885 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Tiele develops further his own criteria along similar lines: “Without serving longer to determine the character of certain religions, the term ‘world religions’ might still be retained for practical use, to distinguish the three religions [Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam] which have found their way to different races and peoples and all of which profess the intention to conquer the world, from such communities as are generally limited to a single race or nation, and, where they have extended farther, have done so only in the train of, and in connexion with, a superior civilization” (cited in Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, 112). Tiele’s taxonomy avoids the essentialism of Kuenen’s definition by relying on the fact of transnational status, the intention for expansion (“to conquer the world”), and the possibility that a national religion spread through the accident of association with a “superior civilization.” 9. Kuenen is quoted in Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, 111; emphasis in original. Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, 111, notes that this is not such a self-evident claim, as it conflates two criteria, namely whether what matters most is the number of adherents to a given religion and the quality of its inherent universalism. Buddhism and Islam come up for discussion as world religions only because of the ways in which they resemble Christianity. As Masuzawa puts it, by the end of the nineteenth century “ ‘world religion’ in this exclusive sense was not synonymous with, but rather distinct from and diametrically opposed to, the ‘religions of the world,’ that is, other religions” (ibid., 119).

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10. Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 453: “Most historical reconstructions published in the last twenty years depict earliest Christianity as an inclusive movement that rejected ethnic or racial specificity as a condition of religious identity.” 11. Harnack, Outlines of the History of Dogma, 12. The original is in italics. The work of Adolf von Harnack, who wrote about the same time as the early theorists of the study of religion, offers a useful example. Harnack’s work shows the connection between universalism and race that dominated the early studies of world religions. For Harnack two distinct traditions emerge out of Jewish particularity. First, there is diaspora Judaism (represented by Philo), which takes on universalism by virtue of its connections with Greek culture and philosophy: “The Judaism of the diaspora was long since surrounded by a retinue of half-bred Grecian brethren, for whom the particular and national forms of the Old Testament religion were hardly existent. . . . And, further, this Judaism itself had begun to transform for the Jews the old religion into a universal and spiritual religion without casting aside its forms” (ibid., 23). One can clearly see in this quotation the connection between particularity and nationalism. Second, there is the person Jesus of Nazareth, whose teaching was directed toward an intraJewish movement, but which contained a latent universalism. This Jewish movement became divided early on by those who wanted to deny the universalism inherent in the Jesus tradition (Cephas, James, and Paul’s opponents) and the emerging Gentile mission of Paul. It is with the Gentile mission that the latent universalism of Jesus’ gospel begins to find its more perfect expression. By linking with universalistic tendencies in diaspora Judaism, this movement was able to realize its latent tendencies, but it also found a base of support already prepared in advance: “The Gospel, being received into these [diaspora Jewish] circles, completed simply and almost suddenly the process of spiritualizing the old religion, and it stripped off the old forms as shells” (ibid.). In this sense, diaspora Judaism served as a preparation for the universalizing of the gospel: “And these [diaspora Jews] prepared the soil for the Christianizing of the Greeks, as well as for the establishment within the empire of a great Gentile Church from the law . . . a kind of universal society with a monotheistic background” (ibid., 29). The result of this process is that Christianity emerges as the universal, open, tolerant religion of the world, while Judaism remains the nationalistic Other to Christianity’s universalism: “Since Christianity is the only true religion and is not a national religion, but belongs to all mankind and pertains to our inmost life, it follows that it can have no special alliance with the Jewish people, or with their peculiar cult. The Jewish people of today, at least, stand in no favored relationship with the God whom Jesus has revealed; whether they formerly did is doubtful; this, however, is certain, that God has cast them off” (ibid., 42). This rather chilling characterization of Judaism’s relationship to Christianity and God is part of Harnack’s silencing of Judaism’s connection to Christianity. 12. Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 453–58, shows how the attempt to separate race and religion in regard to Christianity has also perpetuated assumptions about the ethnic neutrality and normativity of “whiteness.” On the racialization of Jews and

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13.

14. 15.

16.

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Notes to Page 5 Christians in Germany, see Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus. Heschel’s work is discussed in relation to the legacy of Ernst Renan in Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 453–55. On the history of research on the historical Jesus and its connection to racializing discourse in the academy, see Kelley, Racializing Jesus. Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ. For more on Baur and his contribution to Pauline studies, see Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 33–68. Baur’s Hegelianism infuses his definition of religion: “Religion itself, however, is essentially a relation of Spirit to Spirit, in which Spirit mediates itself with itself through the activity of thinking” (Baur, On the Writing of Church History, 297). This has consequences for how he reads the history of dogma: “The entire history of dogma is a continual procession of Spirit in never-ending conflict with itself, never able to become truly one with itself; it is a constant binding and loosening, a never-resting work in which Spirit, like Penelope, continually unravels its own web, only to begin again anew” (Baur, On the Writing of Church History, 300). The history of dogma moves between two poles: “On the one hand stands dogma in its objective truth before Spirit . . . on the other hand, the absolute truth of dogma can only correspond to the equally absolute certainty of the subject within himself” (Baur, On the Writing of Church History, 305–6). Thus, dogma moves forward progressively in history as the process by which dogma deepens its own understanding of itself as Spirit: “Dogma itself is simply Spirit become objective to itself and mediated with itself in this antithesis between objectivity and subjectivity” (Baur, On the Writing of Church History, 306). Dogma cannot progress in its development, it cannot move forward as the self-moving concept from one moment to the next, without being related negatively to everything that movement transcends. The progression to a new form of consciousness is possible, therefore, only in so far as the previous form is perceived in its untruth (Baur, On the Writing of Church History, 306). Baur thus conceives of dogmatic history as a dialectic between neutral development (of Spirit wrestling with its own objectification) and critical judgment (of previous manifestations of Spirit). Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ, 191, 192. For discussions of the New Perspective and its legacies, see Gager, Reinventing Paul; Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 7–9; Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 95–126. I must admit, however, that I would place my own work within the broad stream that is the New Perspective on Paul, or, more specifically, alongside scholars that Zetterholm, Approaches to Paul, 127–64, has called the “radical new perspective.” On the Continental philosophers reading Paul, see Badiou, Saint Paul; Zižek, The Ticklish Subject; Zižek, The Fragile Absolute; Zižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf. A related yet distinct series of attempts to place Paul within a revolutionary paradigm can be found in Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, and Agamben, The Time That Remains. Both Taubes and Agamben frame Paul as a Jew, in contrast to the universal subjecthood envisioned by Badiou and Zižek, and as an eschatological and messianic thinker, in dialogue with the work of Walter Benjamin, particularly so in Agamben’s book. Morrison, “Unspeakable Things Unspoken.”

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17. On the uses to which early Christians put the rhetoric of ethnicity, see Buell, Why This New Race, 2–5. 18. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, has found similar kinds of ethnic rhetoric in Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans. In these letters Paul relies on a series of genealogical arguments that place his Gentile audiences in the family of Abraham. 19. To see both how this charge is read from the text and how it has been resisted, see Boyarin, A Radical Jew, 86–105, and Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 122–53. For another reading that emphasizes hermeneutics, see Timothy L. Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 167–69. 20. Buell, “God’s Own People,” 181. 21. Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 217. 22. Agamben, The Time That Remains, 40. 23. Ibid. Agamben is here working with an early essay by Walter Benjamin on Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. 24. See, for example, Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets; Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her; Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic; Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 197–222; Marchal, The Politics of Heaven; and JohnsonDeBaufre and Nasrallah, “Beyond the Heroic Paul,” 161–74. 25. Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 180–88; Schüssler Fiorenza, The Power of the Word, 82–89; Kittredge, “Rethinking Authorship.” Schüssler Fiorenza adds a third politics to her criticisms of biblical scholarship: the politics of identity. This refers to the “drive to coherence, unity, and identity [that] is the motivating methodological and ideological force in Pauline studies. It is expressed in the positivistic ethos of ‘scientific’ exegesis as well as in the essentializing tendencies of Pauline theology” (Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 182–83). 26. Quotations from Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 181, and Schüssler Fiorenza, The Power of the Word, 84. On the androcentrism of the polis, see Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity. 27. Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 10, laments that “in spite of the great advances in Pauline research in the historical-critical study of 1 Corinthians . . . Paul’s opponents are still seen as no more than the contrasting background to his own exemplary humility. . . . Our interpreters remain bound by their heritage in Protestant Orthodoxy to cast these opponents negatively in order to affirm Paul. It is as if every opinion the interpreters hold is Pauline and every opinion of Paul’s is their own.” See also Wire, “Response: The Politics of the Assembly in Corinth,” 127. Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth, famously argued that the Corinthians were “gnostics.” This is not to say that Schmithals was himself attempting to smear the Corinthians with a heresiological label. Under the influence of earlier scholars in the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule and of Rudolf Bultmann, Schmithals sought to uncover a stream of early Christian thought that would become the gnosticism of later centuries. Like those who preceded him, Schmithals was sympathetic to this position and thought that Paul himself did not understand it; however, regardless of Schmithals’s own views, his characterization of the Corinthians with a heresiological label has given subsequent scholars ammunition

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28.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

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Notes to Pages 9–11 for marginalizing the views of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote as “heretical.” As Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 210, notes, “qualifiers like ‘libertinism’ applied to the Corinthian position serve polemically to reinscribe Paul’s discourse as truth while rendering other discourses contingent.” In addition, Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 182, notes that “such interpretive dualistic oppositions muddle and play down the linking and connecting terms (such as ‘audience,’ ‘community,’ ‘gospel’) by subsuming them under either pole of the opposition rather than seeing in them a possibility for overcoming the argumentative dualism constructed by Paul.” I have been aided in this by Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” who shows how Paul’s rhetoric participates in the ever-shifting relationships of power operative in the Corinthian community. This is not to say that looking for “opponents” is itself a flawed endeavor. Such work has been an important part of shaping and refining reading strategies in scholarship on the Corinthian correspondence. See, for example, Georgi, The Opponents of Paul; Sumney, Identifying Paul’s Opponents. Though such work is interesting in itself, I am not looking here for one single group of opponents, but trying to think about diverse responses to Paul that may overlap with the groups that other scholars have identified. Quotation is from Schüssler Fiorenza, The Power of the Word, 87. For similar appraisals of Pauline scholarship, see Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 10, and Stowers, “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power,” 106–9. Stowers characterizes the dominant strain of Pauline scholarship as “Christian theological modernism.” On the importance of charting what was available for audiences to “think with,” see Johnson-DeBaufre and Nasrallah, “Beyond the Heroic Paul.” Marchal, The Politics of Heaven, 94. Marchal cites from Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marchal, The Politics of Heaven, 107. Ibid., 107, 108. In her reconstruction of the Corinthian positions on power and knowledge, Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 209, offers a similar caveat: “I do not understand the opposing views of power here to be egalitarian/utopian vs. hierarchical, but rather as different conceptual models.” Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 186. On authorship, see Kittredge, “Rethinking Authorship.” On early Christian hymns, see Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 205–41; Kittredge, Community and Authority, 74–86. Kittredge, “Rethinking Authorship,” 331. Kittredge suggests a similar approach to what I have articulated here. For her, feminist biblical scholars “operate with a model of theologizing in which communities of worship and praxis are in the process of working out how the gospel will be embodied, rather than a model in which one man’s mind must be shown either to be consistent or to have reasonable factors that ‘changed’ it. This model allows us to imagine conflict between aspects of Paul’s vision and elements of other Christian visions” (ibid., 326).

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37. This is an approach discussed by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Introduction,” who calls for an “intersectional” approach that reads race, gender, and status together in the context of ancient and modern kyriarchy. I take the phrase “ ‘some’ Corinthians” from Cameron and Miller, “Redescribing Paul and the Corinthians,” 245–57, who offered this formulation of reconstructive efforts to highlight the diversity of identities, viewpoints, and boundaries at work in the Corinthian community, noting that any reconstruction can capture only “some” of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. 38. In a similar vein, Mitchell, “Paul’s Letters to Corinth,” 321–23, has suggested that we must also take into account the roles that Paul’s letters as letters played in the relationship between Paul and the Corinthians: “This means taking very seriously the impact of each missive and its range of perceived meanings on the unfolding relationship between Paul and the Corinthians” (ibid., 323). 39. Agamben, The Time That Remains, 40. 40. Connor, “A Nation Is a Nation,” 378, cited in A. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument, 25. I do not wade into the larger discussions of identity in scholarly literature, though below I will speak more specifically about ethnicity as a kind or subset of identity. Without getting into these discussions of identity, I will assume that identity “involves ideas of boundedness, of sameness and difference, of continuity, perhaps of a degree of homogeneity, and of recognition by self and by others” (Lieu, Christian Identity, 12). 41. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 19. A famous study of ethnic relations in Thailand offers an example of ethnicity as a subjectively perceived, discursive claim. In this study Michael Moerman found that he had difficulty explaining what exactly were the essential characteristics of the Lue, the people he was ostensibly studying (Moerman, “Ethnic Identification”). Moerman noticed that the Lue shared a number of characteristics with their neighbors (territory, language, cultural practices) and that there was not one specific boundary marker that differentiated the Lue as a distinct group. Yet despite the lack of a clearly defined and essential boundary marker or cultural quality, the Lue retained a clear sense of the difference between themselves and other ethnic groups. Moerman’s conclusion was that ethnicity can be identified only where people claim it for themselves: “Someone is Lue by virtue of believing and calling himself Lue and of acting in ways that validate his Lueness” (Moerman, “Ethnic Identification,” 1219). Moerman’s conclusion suggests that ethnicity is, primarily, an identity that is ascribed, and, as such, it is discursive rather than biological or physical. This is not to say that there are not actual ethnic groups in the world. To say so would fly in the face of experience and miss the key role that ethnicity plays in politics, religion, and culture. Rather, ethnicity refers to an identity that human groups create and which they ascribe to themselves and to others that they recognize as part of their group. The modern study of ethnicity is, in many ways, a reaction to the overly biological and determinative studies of race that were widely used by the Nazis to justify the Holocaust or by white supremacists and eugenicists in the United States to justify slavery and segregation (Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 454–55). Hall,

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Hellenicity, 17n46, finds the first usage of the term ethnicity in 1941. It is a modern term that was coined as a means of escaping the legacy of the word race. Whereas race was assumed to reflect a fixed, biological definition of group identity, ethnicity was coined to reflect a growing assumption in the social sciences that identity was largely a social construction, malleable and fluid even as it seemed fixed and immutable (Konstan, “Defining Ancient Greek Ethnicity,” 97–98). As many scholars have pointed out, this attempt at a clean break between race and ethnicity was not so clean as had been hoped, and the logic of race has not fully been expunged from ethnicity. One early example is that of Barth, Introduction, 10–11. See also Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 19–20. Though I recognize that race and ethnicity are intertwined, for the purposes of this study I have chosen to work primarily with the term ethnicity when speaking of ancient groups, texts, and monuments. I do this because ethnicity best captures the sense of malleability and fluidity of identity that my examination of the evidence from Corinth suggests. I fully support, however, those who use race and ethnicity interchangeably in their work to stress the fact that neither term can be completely isolated from the other (Buell, Why This New Race, x–xi, 13–21; Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 450n3). 42. Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, offers a collection of essays by anthropologists on ethnicity. Most who make use of Barth’s work focus on his Introduction to the volume, which lays out his framework and the framework followed by the other contributors. 43. Barth, “Introduction,” 15: “The critical focus of investigation from this point of view becomes the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses.” Barth’s main concern with the absence of attention to boundary formation is that it produces an idealized notion of an ethnic group. The standard reading of an ethnic group as a distinct cultural, genealogical, and linguistic unity “allows us to assume that boundary maintenance is unproblematical and follows from the isolation which the itemized characteristics [of ethnicity] imply: racial difference, cultural difference, social separation and language barriers, spontaneous and organized enmity. This also limits the range of factors that we use to explain cultural diversity: we are led to imagine each group developing its cultural and social form in relative isolation, mainly in response to local ecologic factors” (ibid., 11). Barth was also working specifically against those who saw culture as the key to understanding ethnic identity. By fully explicating the contents of a culture, one could then define the ethnic group that participated in that culture. What Barth and those following him have emphasized is the extent to which culture is an insufficient means of explaining ethnic identity. On the one hand, culture can change over time without the loss of ethnic identity. An example of this might be the radical changes that accompanied the ethnic group called the Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple and the shift toward a Judaism centered on rabbinic interpretation and tradition. On the other hand, it is also possible for multiple ethnic groups to share similar cultural practices. This was the insight of Moerman with respect to the Lue, mentioned above. Ultimately, as Eriksen notes, “It is only when they make a difference in interaction

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Notes to Pages 14–16

44.

45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51.

52.

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that cultural differences are important in the creation of ethnic boundaries” (Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 39). “Thus the persistence of ethnic groups in contact implies not only criteria and signals for identification, but also a structuring of interaction which allows the persistence of cultural differences. The organizational feature which, I would argue, must be general for all inter-ethnic relations is a systematic set of rules governing inter-ethnic social encounters. . . . Stable inter-ethnic relations presuppose such a structuring of interaction: a set of prescriptions governing situations of contact, and allowing for articulation in some sectors or domains of activity, and a set of proscriptions on social situations preventing inter-ethnic interaction in other sectors, and thus insulating parts of the cultures from confrontation and modification” (Barth, “Introduction,” 16). A. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 22–30. For essays discussing other ways of defining ethnicity, see Hutchinson and Smith, eds., Ethnicity. Scholars of antiquity have often pointed to Herodotos’s famous definition of Greek identity as consisting of shared blood, shared language, shared way of life, and shared cultic practice (8.144.2). Buell, “Ethnicity and Religion,” 246–47, examines how this text has been interpreted by several scholars of antiquity. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 20–21. Hall draws on Horowitz, “Ethnic Identity.” Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 20–21. This is not to suggest that Hall sees ethnicity as being any less a social construct. He merely argues that there is one key marker that must be involved in the social construction of an ethnic identity. He notes that “ethnic identity is a cultural construct, perpetually renewed and renegotiated through discourse and social praxis” (ibid., 19). A recent dissertation on the language of unity in Paul’s writings and their relationship to ethnic rhetoric also draws its framework from Hall and Horowitz: Hansen, “ ‘All of You Are One.’ ” For another recent dissertation that follows Hall in studying early Christian uses of ethnic rhetoric, see Townsend, “Another Race?” Konstan, “Defining Ancient Greek Ethnicity,” 97–110; Buell, “Ethnicity and Religion,” 244–45. Konstan, “Defining Ancient Greek Ethnicity,” 106; emphasis in original. A. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument, 28, offers a helpful observation: “To assert the discursive nature of ethnic identity is not to deny the reality of those markers, but rather to recognize the non-necessary relationship between such markers and the (constructed) identity.” Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs. See also Buell and Johnson Hodge, “The Politics of Interpretation.” Johnson Hodge is in conversation with Baumann, The Multicultural Riddle. In her work Buell argues for a connection between ethnicity and religion in antiquity that helps pave the way for a study such as this one. Buell argues that religion and ethnicity are both mutually co-constituting discourses, meaning that they develop in tandem through the interplay of fixity and fluidity (Buell, Why This New Race,

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7–8). Buell, “Ethnicity and Religion,” offers a review of Gerd Baumann’s work, from whom she develops her theory of religion and ethnicity as co-constituted. As such, “the boundaries between religion, ethnicity, civic identity, and philosophy were often blurred in antiquity” (Buell, Why This New Race, 37). Examining how and why these distinctions are blurred helps us see the power relationships that exist behind their deployment. Buell lays out four ways in which recourse to religion or religious practice was used to define Christians as a people or ethnic group: (1) To mark differences between groups, helping produce a collective civic or ethnoracial identity especially under conditions of colonialism and diaspora; (2) to enable ethnoracial transformation; (3) to establish connections between otherwise distinct groups; and (4) to assert and regulate differences within groups (Buell, Why This New Race, 41). By showing how the discourses of ethnicity and religion are intertwined in ancient debates about identity, Buell offers us the means by which to see how Paul and others in Corinth drew on arguments about cultic practice and theology to define the boundaries of who is inside and outside the people of God. Religious practices were often used to mark differences and similarities between ethnic groups. Paul and his audience would have been familiar with such concerns and would have seen arguments about proper religious practice as a way of marking “us” from “them.” 53. On Romanness, see Buell, Why This New Race, 40. Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, explores the double-edged constructions of Greek identities by Romans. 54. Robert Paul Seesengood, Competing Identities, 23: “Hybridity and mimicry argue . . . that every moment of interaction or encounter is a moment of exchange on a field of unequal power and is mutually transformative.” To think of the possibilities for ethnic interaction and exchange, I have benefited greatly from R. White, The Middle Ground. 55. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 5. I take hybridity to mean more than just the blending of two distinct things to produce a new, third object. As Kapchan and Strong, “Theorizing the Hybrid,” 242, point out, the discourse of hybridity is often preoccupied with the creation of the “new.” Hybridity is “the name for the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal” (Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 159). It does this through the articulation of the ambivalence (dialogism) of colonial discourse, which asserts itself to be a unified voice of authority: “Faced with the hybridity of its objects, the presence of power is revealed as something other than what its rules of recognition assert” (Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 160). The assertion of this ambiguity represents an act of subversion, whereby the claims of the authoritative discourse are turned upside down. The mimicry of the colonial subject is a crucial aspect of postcolonial hybridity. For Bhabha “the effect of mimicry on the authority of colonial discourse is profound and disturbing” because the hybrid identities that result are “almost the same, but not quite.” The inability to completely transform the colonized subject into an authentic double of the colonizer casts doubt on the civilizing project. The “partial” presence of hybrid selves remains for the colonizer “at once a resemblance and menace” (Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 123). For a similar reading of hybridity, see Gallagher, “Mapping the Hybrid World.” For a critical discussion

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56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

62. 63. 64.

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of the term hybridity and its legacy in a number of different academic disciplines, see Young, Colonial Desire. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 91–110. See also Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs. Quotations are from Woolf, “Beyond Romans and Natives,” 341, and Hingley, Globalizing Roman Culture, 48, respectively. Nasrallah, Christian Responses, 2–3. On what Paul’s audiences had to “think with,” see Johnson-DeBaufre and Nasrallah, “Beyond the Heroic Paul.” Though not without their difficulties, archaeological materials offer a great many potential benefits for studying the milieu within which New Testament texts were produced and to which they were directed. As Økland, Women in Their Place, 25, has argued, “non-written-texts (e.g. sanctuaries, votive offerings, public statues) say more about the environments most people lived and worked in than literary texts do. . . . Through the ways that houses were built, other values than the ones verbalized in public discourse also become visible.” Laura Nasrallah’s work on the Galerian Rotunda in Thessaloniki and her recent book on early Christian responses to Roman art and architecture are also useful in charting how “a focus on spatiality recognizes the materiality and socio-politics of the cityscape . . . [taking] into account the lived experience of city dwellers of all statuses, as well as elite manipulation of city space” (Nasrallah, “Empire and Apocalypse,” 469). See also the more recent Nasrallah, Christian Responses, 7–12 particularly. For Nasrallah it is vitally important to take into account the ways in which the built environment that surrounds us affects our own constructions of identity. Nasrallah, Christian Responses, 10. Oster, “Use, Misuse and Neglect,” has offered a strong argument for caution among New Testament scholars who want to use archaeological evidence in their interpretations of Paul. Such cautions are important, since many New Testament scholars have used archaeological materials, either as proof texts to validate the historicity of the Bible or as ways of naively “solving” problems in Pauline exegesis. This is not to say that such materials have no place in interpreting the New Testament, only that they must be treated with the same care and specificity as literary comparanda. For a discursive approach to the milieu of Paul’s rhetoric, see Økland, Women in Their Place, 25n47. Nasrallah, Christian Responses, 2. Økland, Women in Their Place, 26–30. On the term discourse, see Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge. Another recent study that takes a similar approach to Økland’s is Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined. Kahl examines Paul’s letter to the Galatians, paying particular attention to the discursive construction of Galatians/Gauls as a dangerous Other in Roman society. The recent work of Oakes, Reading Romans in Pompeii, offers another way in which modern scholars have begun to take account of the importance of the “spaces of empire,” to use Nasrallah’s phrase. Working from studies of domestic space in Pompeii and recent conversations about the Roman economy, Oakes explores the places in which the recipients of Paul’s letter to the Romans would have lived and the

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people who lived there. He ultimately offers a plural reading of Romans, in which different hypothetical readers from different social, economic, and gendered positions are made to hear different resonances and themes in Paul’s letter. 65. Scholars of the New Testament have often drawn on archaeological materials from disparate contexts to supply the background for their analyses. Material and literary evidence from Rome is often seen as useful to understanding texts produced in the provinces, an assumption that is problematic. We cannot assume that the monuments and texts produced in the capital would have been accessible to those living outside Rome. In a recent essay, S. R. F. Price has encouraged New Testament scholars to take a local approach to analyzing how archaeological materials can elucidate New Testament texts (Price, “Response”). It is important to note that I make use of materials from before and after the time of Paul. I do this because I am attempting to lay out the various options for deploying the rhetoric of ethnicity within the landscape of Corinth, broadly construed. The evidence for life in Corinth is spotty and haphazard, as it is for many other cities in the ancient world. We thus have to be open to the fact that many of the dynamics that applied to the formation and articulation of identity in the second century could also have been present in the first. The goal here is not to argue for some kind of causality or dependence, but to imagine possibilities available to a Corinthian audience. In terms of texts written about, but not to, Corinthians, I discuss comments by Pausanias and the unnamed author of the Argive Letter in chapter 5. Though these texts were not directly available to Corinthians, I include them because they suggest an awareness of Corinth’s reputation among other Greek cities and are indicative of tendencies that are present in other texts that were available for Corinthian consumption. 66. On Luke’s construction of the Jews in Acts, see Wills, “The Depiction of the Jews in Acts.” On the uniqueness of each Pauline letter, see Lohse, Paulus, 166. I want to thank Larry Welborn for the reference. This is not to ignore the excellent work that has been done on ethnic identity in Paul’s other letters, particularly Galatians and Romans. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, is one of the best studies to date that tackles how Paul deploys a rhetoric of ethnicity to place his Gentile audiences into the family of Abraham and the nation of Israel. In reading individual passages from 1 and 2 Corinthians, I will gesture toward others passages in the correspondence as a means of thinking about how Paul may have shifted or maintained a particular position within his evolving relationship with the Corinthians. This approach seeks to retain a sense of the conversation between Paul and the Corinthians as “ongoing” without requiring a theory of chronology and partitioning of the Corinthian correspondence. For a persuasive and interesting study of the evolving conversation within a particular partition theory, see Mitchell, “The Corinthian Correspondence,” and Mitchell, “Paul’s Letters to Corinth.” 67. Cameron and Miller, “Redescribing Paul and the Corinthians,” 245–57, offered this formulation of reconstructive efforts to highlight the diversity of identities, viewpoints, and boundaries at work in the Corinthian community, noting that any reconstruction can capture only “some” of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote.

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1. Becoming All Things 1. The image of the steersman has a long history, going back to Alcaeus (Welborn, Politics and Rhetoric, 42). 2. I have chosen to render Ἰουδαίοι as Judeans in general throughout this book. This is part of an attempt to capture the geographic resonances of the term and to resist scholarship that too readily assumes a connection between the Ἰουδαίοι of the text and the “Jews” of today. I also think that Judeans tends to resist the ascription of a purely religious identity to the Ἰουδαίοι, as can happen with Jews. For a sense of the complexities of what has become a debate in New Testament scholarship, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 11–15, and Harland, Dynamics of Identity, 14–19. 3. Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 209 4. For examples of Paul’s “conversion,” see Gager, Reinventing Paul, 22–27. On Paul’s calling to work for the God of Israel, see Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles; and Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Conzelmann interestingly solves the problem by arguing that the ὡς in ὡς Ἰουδαῖος was superfluous; Paul “is a Jew. To the Gentiles he must become a Gentile” (Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 161). 5. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 124, describes Paul’s flexible ethnic identity. We can see a parallel example to those in 1 and 2 Corinthians in Paul’s self-characterization in Philippians 3, which shows a devaluation of his former identity, comprising as it did several sub-identities that were layered together: circumcised, Israelite, Benjaminite, Hebrew of Hebrews, and Pharisee. Paul’s identity as an Israelite is layered with a number of different relationships and practices, ranging from forms of descent to religious practice. Paul now holds to an identity that is “in” Christ (3:9) or which seeks to “know” him (3:10). This new identity leads to a reshuffling of Paul’s multiple identities but does not lead to a rejection of Paul’s affiliation with Israel. As Johnson Hodge notes, “Paul has given up advantages of his Jewish identity in order to put first his identity as an apostle-in-Christ” (Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 125). Baker, “ ‘From Every Nation under Heaven,’ ” argues that Jewish identity was multiethnic in Paul’s day, allowing someone to hold local identities alongside a Judean identity (for example, Judean and Egyptian). A similar reading is offered by Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, 135. 6. Glad offers the most convincing argument for this position, noting that Paul breaks with his normal practice of referring to Gentiles as “Greek” or ἔθνη (Glad, Paul and Philodemus, 255–56). See also Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 369–70; Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 160–61; Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 428–29; Lietzmann and Kümmel, An die Korinther I–II, 43; Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 2:343–45. 7. For Paul the solution to Gentile alienation from the God of Israel is not the taking up of the yoke of the law but the act of being grafted onto Israel through Christ (Romans 11:17–24). On Paul’s use of ὑπὸ νόμον, see Gager, Reinventing Paul, 91. On the lack of self-mastery among the Gentiles, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 124–25. 8. Glad reads the ἀνόμοι as “immoral” (Glad, Paul and Philodemus, 272–77), whereas Given challenges this characterization (Given, Paul’s True Rhetoric, 107).

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9. Paul has already spoken of his adaptation toward Gentiles (Gal 4:12), and he uses the adverbial form (ἀνόμως) in Rom 2:12. There it stands in a similar contrast with ἐν νόμῳ to the contrast here with ἐννόμος. Though Paul, as a Ioudaios, is within the law, Gentiles are outside the law, except in cases where they have chosen to place themselves ὑπὸ νόμον. That even Gentiles who place themselves under the law do not actually become Ioudaioi in Paul’s mind is borne out by his unwillingness to grant that title to Gentiles in Christ. As Johnson Hodge has argued, even when Paul argues for the grafting of Gentiles onto Israel, he argues only for Gentile inclusion, not equality or full integration (Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 137–48). 10. Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 242, notes the importance of this passage for understanding Paul: “Für die Beurteilung der Persönlichkeit und religiösen Stellung des Paulus ist dies ein (viel zu wenig gewürdigtes) Dokument ersten Ranges.” On 1 Corinthians 9 as missionary strategy, see Bornkamm, “The Missionary Stance of Paul.” Among those who treat 1 Corinthians 9 as a window onto Paul’s intentions are the two best recent expositions of this passage by Clarence Glad and Caroline Johnson Hodge. Glad, Paul and Philodemus, focuses his study on how this passage gives us a sense of Paul’s adaptive psychagogy, a pedagogical strategy that Paul deploys in reaching his Gentile audiences. An important development of Glad’s perspective in early Christian theological discourse is Mitchell, “Pauline Accommodation.” Johnson Hodge, “Apostle to the Gentiles,” builds on Glad’s work, but she adds a useful theoretical reflection on layered identities. For Johnson Hodge we can best read passages like 1 Cor 9:19–23 as examples of how Paul hierarchically layers his multiple identities. Such layered identities are malleable, context-specific, and directed toward particular political and rhetorical ends when they are articulated. Though I largely agree with the perspectives offered by these studies, I look in what follows to the work that Paul’s self-presentation does as rhetoric, a position that coheres with Johnson Hodge’s perspective, while tabling the attempt to reconstruct Paul’s own intentions or psychology. 11. The term εἰδωλόθυτος is commonly assumed to refer to meat that has been sacrificed to an idol, perhaps because of Paul’s reference to the meat market (μάκελλον [10:25]), but this is not necessarily the case, as both animals and agricultural products could be used as offerings in cultic practices. Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 189, notes that wine used in libations to the gods was considered just as profane by some first-century Jews as meat sacrificed to idols. 12. The contours of the conversation and its background have been hotly debated by scholars. In a lost earlier letter, Paul wrote to the Corinthians urging them not to associate with idolaters (1 Cor 5:9–11). This may have been perceived as a contradiction of his earlier preaching in Corinth, which emphasized the freedom that was offered “in Christ.” As John Hurd has argued, the Corinthians may be responding to a perceived contradiction in Paul’s first preaching and his most recent letter (1 Cor 5:9–10). In his first preaching in Corinth Paul probably focused on the freedom that one possesses “in Christ,” whereas his first letter took a harsh line on the exercise of that freedom in regard to idolatry. For a useful summary of Hurd’s view, see Hurd, The Origins of I Corinthians, 290–93. For a reconstruction of the Corinthians’ question to Paul on idol food, see Hurd, The Origins of I Corinthians, 146. For criticism of Hurd’s views,

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see Cheung, Idol Food in Corinth, 97–101. Cheung argues that Paul was consistently against idolatry all along and that the Corinthians have returned to a practice of eating in temples owing to external social pressure (112). Though Paul seems to have encouraged abstaining from contact with all idolaters, by the time he comes to write 1 Corinthians, he walks his earlier argument back, saying that he intended only to encourage breaking contact with someone who went by the name of a sibling while continuing to engage in idolatry (μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι ἐάν τις ἀδελφὸς ὀνομαζόμενος . . . εἰδωλολάτρης). Paul will later speak of idolaters as unable to enter the kingdom of God, noting that many of those in his Corinthian audience used to be idolaters (1 Cor 6:9–11). The exegetical decisions that I have made here are based on a belief in the compositional unity of 1 Corinthians, as defended by Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, among others. A minority position, going back to the work of Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, xxxix–xliii, argues that 1 Corinthians is a composite letter. For other examples of this position, see Schenk, “Der 1. Korintherbrief als Briefsammlung”; Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms, 23–40; Schmithals, “Die Korintherbriefe als Briefsammlung,” 263–88; Jewett, “The Redaction of 1 Corinthians”; Klauck, Herrenmahl und hellenistischer Kult; Welborn, An End to Enmity, xvi–xviii. 13. Though Paul creates the category of the “weak” and sets them against a faction that possesses γνῶσις, the dispute itself is between Paul and a roughly unified Corinthian ekkle¯sia (Cheung, Idol Food in Corinth, 98). This position is a minority opinion among scholars, most of whom follow the groundbreaking work of Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, in distinguishing between a wealthy group (the “strong”), who possess knowledge, and a poorer group that has been labeled by the strong as “weak.” One of the most important recent defenses of this position, which looks at questions of philosophical and medical understandings, is that of Martin, The Corinthian Body. I am persuaded, however, that the weak sibling introduced by Paul here is a hypothetical construction used for the sake of argument. As Hurd, The Origins of I Corinthians, 117–25, has forcefully argued, the “weak” probably do not represent an actual group in Corinth in conflict with the “strong.” Cheung, Idol Food in Corinth, 87–92, offers a compelling argument in favor of this position, though he admits that there probably were people in the Corinthian community who fit Paul’s characterization. Though I espouse an admittedly minority position on this matter, this does not affect the overall argument that I am making here about both Paul’s rhetorical goals and the potential responses of at least “some” Corinthians, whether that be a faction of wealthy, educated members (following Theissen and Martin) or a more unified community (following Hurd and Cheung). It has occasionally been argued that the “weak” in Corinth were Jewish Christians, who did not accept the Corinthian argument in favor of eating food sacrificed to idols. This argument goes back as far as F. C. Baur, who linked the weak with the faction associated with Cephas (1 Cor 1:12). It is clear to me that the “weak” to whom Paul is referring, if they did exist as an observable group, are Gentiles, since Judeans would not be accustomed to idols (τινὲς δὲ τῇ συνηθείᾳ ἕως ἄρτι τοῦ εἰδώλου [8:7]). The characterization of the “weak” as Jewish Christians goes along with a characterization of Paul as having made a more radical break with his Jewish past.

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On sibling language in Paul’s writings, see Bartchy, “Undermining Ancient Patriarchy”; Aasgaard, My Beloved Brothers and Sisters. For a discussion of “conscience,” see Martin, The Corinthian Body, 179–89. Though reconstructing the situation as a conflict between the weak and strong, Martin argues for how one might conceptualize a συνείδησις as both strong and weak. 14. The form and function of 1 Corinthians 9 has been hotly debated in scholarship. Willis, “An Apostolic Apologia?” offers a useful summary of many of the important positions. Some scholars have assumed that this section was the result of an editorial misplacement, calling into question the literary integrity of 1 Corinthians (Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 231–49; Héring, The First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 75; Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth, 87–113). Others see this section as an excursus from the main line of argument about idol food (Barrett, Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 200; Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 151). Conzelmann offers a helpful summary of the some of the major partition theories (Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 2–4). Willis argues persuasively for seeing the section as integral to the argument of 1 Corinthians 8–10. Of particular weight are the conceptual links between 9:1–27 and its surrounding context, notably the words ἐλεύθερος, ἐξουσία, πάντες, ἀσθενής, ἀνακρίνω, and μετέχειν, along with the thematic connections of obstacles placed before others, doing all for the sake of others, and considering the effect of one’s conduct on others (Willis, “An Apostolic Apologia?” 39–40). Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 130–38, 243–50, and Martin, Slavery as Salvation, 77–80, follow Willis in seeing 9:1–27 as integral to the argument at hand. In terms of its genre, chapter 9 functions as a mock defense speech (ἀπολογία [9:3]). Following Willis, “An Apostolic Apologia?” 34, I do not see the presence of the forensic terms ἀπολογία and ἀνακρίνειν as requiring the context to be that of a proper defense, for which a mere two verses certainly seems inadequate. Mitchell takes a similar position to Willis’s (Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 130, 243n327, 244–45n330, 246–47). Willis suggests reading the participle τοῖς ἀνακρίνουσιν as indicating a future: Paul is anticipating a possible criticism of the position he is about to lay out. By casting this line of argumentation as an apologia, Paul is able to praise himself without opening himself up to the charge of self-flattery. He thus uses a tactic similar to that taken by Favorinus, who used the fiction of a mock trial and a number of fictional characters to offer praise for himself. For a discussion of Paul’s use of himself as an example, see Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 134, particularly note 413. Mitchell also notes the problem of self-praise and Paul’s use of the trope of an apology to guard against it (246–47). For a different reading that eschews the form of a defense speech, see Horrell, “Theological Principle or Christological Praxis?” 91–95. In analyzing Paul’s rhetoric here it is important to note that, though Paul makes recourse to the rhetoric of idolatry, we cannot assume that there was one stable definition of idolatry that Paul and the Corinthians shared. If the Corinthians were motivated to continue to participate in traditional cultic practices by virtue of their “knowledge” (γνῶσις) that there was but one god (on Corinthian knowledge, see Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 140), such a position would not have looked very much dif-

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ferent from those taken by many Stoics, who disapproved of sacrificial religion while allegorizing the gods into abstract natural phenomena (Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 149–50). On the background of the Corinthian slogans in popular philosophy, see Martin, The Corinthian Body, 70–73; Paige, “Stoicism, Ἐλευθερία and Community,” 214–15. Indeed, Phua, Idolatry and Authority, 91–125, has documented examples of Jewish writers who took a more accommodating view of the gods of other peoples and has also documented cases of Jewish participation in Gentile cults, noting that the definition of idolatry could vary from place to place. This suggests that the Corinthians “could have operated with a rather different understanding of what constitutes idolatry” from that of Paul (125). 15. Mitchell reconstructs the argument’s form thus: (1) 9:1–3 set out Paul’s premises: his freedom, his apostleship, and his founding of churches; (2) 9:4–12a, 13–14 present a series of arguments; (2a) 9:4–6: the behavior of others apostles; (2b) 9:7, 12a: common sense; (2c) 9:8–11: proofs from scripture; (2d) 9:13: common cultic practice; (2e) 9:14: a word of the Lord; (3) 9:12b, 15a, 18b give Paul’s renunciation of the rights he has just argued for (Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 247–48). 16. Parallels with Paul’s closing arguments in 10:31–11:1 suggest a thematic connection with 9:19–27. There Paul summarizes his concern with the proper behavior toward idol food by reinvoking his own example: “Just as I please everyone in all things, not seeking my own advantage but that of the many, so that they might be saved. Become imitators of me as I am of Christ” (καθὼς κἀγὼ πάντα πᾶσιν ἀρέσκω μὴ ζητῶν τὸ ἐμαυτοῦ σύμφορον ἀλλὰ τὸ τῶν πολλῶν, ἵνα σωθῶσιν. μιμηταί μου γίνεσθε καθὼς κἀγὼ Χριστοῦ

[10:33–11:1]). The parallels between this conclusion and Paul’s exemplum in 9:1–27 are manifold, particularly with respect to 9:19–27. Paul reinvokes the goal of saving (σῳζω) the many (9:22; 10:33). This goal is achieved through renunciation. In 9:1–27 Paul renounces his ἐξουσία, while here he presents himself as seeking not his own advantage (σύμφορος) but that of the many. This concern is found also in Paul’s injunction in 10:24. Paul’s goal of being all things to all people is paralleled in a repetition wherein he claims to please all in all: τοῖς πᾶσιν γέγονα πάντα // κἀγὼ πάντα πᾶσιν ἀρέσκω (“I have become all things to all” // ”Just as I try to please all in all” [9:22//10:33]). Though the referents for the two forms of πάς are flipped, the formal parallel is noticeable. Finally, Paul reinvokes his own example in 10:32–33 in ways that suggest a direct parallel with his self-characterization in 9:19–27 and not just that in 9:1–18. Paul asks his Corinthian audience to become blameless (ἀπρόσκοποι γίνεσθε) before Judeans, Greeks, and the ekkle¯sia of God, just as (καθώς) he pleases all people in every way. In 9:1–18 Paul’s example was as one who renounced authority that he possessed for the benefit of others. Here, however, Paul reinvokes the self he presents in 9:19–27, a self that is flexible enough to adapt to any context for the benefit of others. Paul then closes the larger argument regarding idol food and idolatry with an explicit call for imitation (11:1). All this suggests that Paul envisions his self-presentation in 9:19–27 as part of his own example to the Corinthians. 17. Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 216. In Antoinette Wire’s words, Paul’s calls to imitation are arguments about the “structure of reality” (Wire, Corin-

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18.

19.

20.

21.

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Notes to Pages 33–34 thian Women Prophets, 35–36). On Paul as an example, see Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 49–50. For a fuller discussion of Paul and the language of imitation, see the important work of Castelli, Imitating Paul, 89–117. For a critique of Castelli’s use of imitation, see Marchal, The Politics of Heaven, 59–90. Paul explicitly calls for Corinthian imitation in 4:16, though there are other instances where Paul lifts himself up as an example without the explicit injunction to imitation. See, for example, 1 Cor 7:6–9; 8:9; 9:23–24; 13:9–11; and 14:18–20. On these two roles, see Martin, Slavery as Salvation, 50–85, 117–35, respectively. Though I will not directly discuss it here, Paul’s role as a slave of Christ is an important part of his rhetorical self-presentation to the Corinthians. Rather than illustrating Paul’s humility, his claim to be a slave of Christ presents the apostle as an agent of the most powerful patron in the universe and, therefore, as a person of authority and power (ibid., 56). Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 425. Malherbe, “Determinism and Free Will,” 252–54, sees Stoic and Cynic influences in this statement. He argues that the Stoics would have approved of 19a but disapproved of the idea of enslaving oneself to others (19b). Malherbe sees the latter as having more in common with a “moderate” wing of the Cynic tradition. Daube, “Κερδαίνω as a Missionary Term,” sees rabbinic parallels to Paul’s use of κερδαίνω. Cf. Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke, 369. The image of the enslaved leader was common to the rhetorical topos of the democratic demagogue (Martin, Slavery as Salvation, 125). Martin argues that this movement from high to low status for the benefit of others is rooted in Paul’s own conception of Christ’s descent. Just as Paul is a slave of Christ, so Christ is also represented in Phil 2:6–11 as one who takes on the status of a slave, though being of much higher status. It is through Christ’s self-abasement that he is ultimately exalted. This paradigm of debasement and then exaltation may be part of the fabric of Paul’s soteriology and thus the logic of the passage (ibid., 129–32). Mitchell, “Pauline Accommodation,” offers a reading similar to Martin’s. Mitchell argues, by careful readings of Clement, Tertullian, John Chrysostom, and Origen, that Paul’s self-presentation in 9:19–23 was heard as the pyschagogic-pedagogic (Greek) practice of accommodation that had been theologically connected (through Philo and Hellenistic Judaism) with a theology of divine (or christological) condescension. Drawing on the work of Glad, Paul and Philodemus, Mitchell sees Paul as combining Epicurean pedagogy with a theology of divine condescension. Just as God/Christ has condescended to save humanity, so Paul must condescend to human difference to teach the nations about the salvation available “in Christ.” The question of what it means to “become (as)” others in the service of the gospel has vexed scholars. Most argue that Paul took up the practices of Judeans and Gentiles depending on the context (Wendland, Die Briefe an die Korinther, 75; Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 427–28; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 369). This creates a problem for many interpreters because it shows Paul to be rather inconsistent in his behavior. See, for example, P. Richardson, “Pauline Inconsistency,” and Richardson and Gooch, “Accommodation Ethics.” Carson, “Pauline Inconsistency,” offers a response to Richardson and Gooch. Some explain Paul’s inconsistency by noting how

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he is no longer bound by the law: “Paul legt Wert darauf, dass er selbst sich der Tora und ihren Einzelvorschriften nicht mehr unterworfen fühlt” (Klauck, 1. Korintherbrief, 68). Others see Paul as under a compulsion to preach the gospel, which places him above the “petty consistency” of religious difference (Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 427). E. P. Sanders even goes so far as suggesting that Paul’s self-presentation is hyperbolic: “Paul depicts himself as apostle to everyone in the Mediterranean area. One can understand that he could sometimes think of himself in that way, and even sympathize with the breadth of his view, without thinking that the two statements are literally true” (Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 186). In an interesting paper Mark Nanos has suggested that we must take “become (as)” to mean that Paul adapted his rhetorical practice, not his religious practices or lifestyle, to his audience (Nanos, “Paul’s Relationship to Torah”). I want to thank the author for allowing me to see an advance copy of his manuscript. Though I believe that Nanos’s reading of 9:19–27 is largely correct, I think that we cannot necessarily make such a clear distinction between lifestyle and rhetoric. Certainly Paul would adapt his oratory and rhetoric to the different audiences that he addressed, but he does not make it explicit here that he is referring only to his practice of speaking and reasoning. Further, as Glad has pointed out, Paul also displays a desire to associate with others as part of his preaching of the gospel, which suggests a broader range of practices that would have to be negotiated in his association with others. This is closer to Glad’s view that Paul describes his pedagogy in 9:19–23 (Glad, Paul and Philodemus, 252–56). Glad sees Paul as taking up an adaptable position in order to reach a variety of people, as a teacher adapts her pedagogy to meet the needs of her students. 22. That Paul is aware of his use of this metaphor is apparent in his claim that he pursues this path not for his own personal gain, though he clearly expects to receive a partnership in the gospel from his efforts (9:23, 27), but for the sake of others, namely, their salvation (e.g., 9:22). As a συγκοινωνός in the gospel, Paul’s position again shifts, from the slave to a more equal partner, and he expects that he will receive a wage (μισθός [9:17–18]) for his services. The concern with receiving a wage will reemerge in 9:24–27, where Paul speaks of winning a prize (βραβεῖον) and an imperishable wreath (ἄφθαρτον στέφανον) as part of his service to the gospel. In 1 Cor 9:1–18 Paul’s reward is related to his own renunciation of authority, which allows him to present the gospel free of charge (ἀδάπανον [9:18]). As the chapter concludes, Paul is concerned with his own self-mastery and perseverance, so that he might not be disqualified (ἀδόκιμος) from receiving his prize or wage (9:27). Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 368, makes an intriguing argument for the connection between Paul’s wage and his boasting: “Paul is identifying his ‘recompense’ (misthos) with his ‘boast’ (kauche¯ma, v. 15). He must preach the gospel; that is the ‘stewardship’ (oikonomia) with which he has been entrusted; but he is under no obligation to preach it ‘free of charge’ (adapano), as he has been doing (cf. 2 Cor 11:7). In so acting, he has a reason for his ‘boast,’ and this is his ‘recompense.’ ” 23. As Edgar Krentz has noted, Paul makes the bulk of his references to athletic and gladiatorial imagery in the Corinthian correspondence (Krentz, “Paul, Games, and the Military,” 351–53). Aside from this passage, Paul describes himself as one whose

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death sentence has become a spectacle to the world (1 Cor 4:9), and he speaks of fighting with wild beasts in Ephesos (1 Cor 15:32). In 2 Cor 4:8–12 Paul makes use of an extended gladiatorial metaphor to describe his work as an apostle (Krentz, “Paul, Games, and the Military,” 352–53). Krentz also notes that the mention of the lyre and flute in 1 Cor 14:7 might have had an athletic resonance for the Corinthians, since the Isthmian Games included events for each of these instruments. Whether Paul intended these references to have a resonance with his Corinthian audience, it is possible that his audience may have had their own experience of watching the Isthmian and Caesarean games in Corinth. For more on the Isthmian Games, spectacle entertainments, and Paul’s self-presentation, see chapter 5. On prizes for athletic contests, see Broneer, “The Apostle Paul and the Isthmian Games,” 16–17. On disqualifications at the Isthmian Games, see D. Jordan, “Inscribed Lead Tablets.” One of the disqualification votes was first reported in an earlier publication: Jordan and Spawforth, “A New Document from the Isthmian Games.” The combination of ὑπωπιάζω, which literally means “to strike under the eye,” with σῶμα is awkward here, as noted by Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 374. 24. The language of enslavement, which was so prominent in 9:1–19, returns in the description of Paul’s workout (9:27): “I pummel my body and enslave it” (ὑπωπιάζω μου τὸ σῶμα καὶ δουλαγωγῶ). Linking self-mastery with bodily punishment and enslavement fuses two differing conceptions of the idealized body. The athletic body is fused with the enslaved apostle, about whose suffering the Corinthians have heard in 4:9–13 and will hear again in 2 Cor 4:7–12; 6:3–10; and 11:23–33. As Stowers, “Paul and Self-Mastery,” has shown, the language of self-mastery is found throughout Paul’s writings and draws on larger philosophical discussions about the control of the passions as a means of achieving total moral control of the self. See also Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 2:365–66. Unlike the general trend in the traditional philosophical discourse of self-mastery, Paul’s representation of his struggle with the passions is not primarily conceptual: “For Stoics, however, passions and desires are not distinctly bodily problems and the way to self-mastery lies through obtaining true beliefs with reasonings rather than with ascetic suppression of the body” (Stowers, “Paul and Self-Mastery,” 540). For a more in-depth discussion of Paul’s debt to popular philosophy, see Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics; Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers. 25. It is also possible to see Paul’s athletic imagery as part of the vocal training encouraged by doctors and orators as a means of properly aerating the body (Gleason, Making Men, 82–102). Gleason argues that “the voice in particular was subject to regular discipline, and both physicians and educated laymen believed that the training of the voice affected not only a man’s speech, but also the well-being of his entire body” (ibid., 84). Paul may envision here a process by which he trained his voice and manner of speaking to be able to present his message according to the ethnic makeup of his audience. As Favorinus’s concern with the proper performance of Greekness makes clear, to err in one’s performance could be disastrous: “For those whose activities included public speaking, flaws in vocal control could combine with other signs to make a very unfortunate impression” (ibid., 83). If Paul’s athletic imagery does

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fall within the realm of vocal and oratorical training, he may have chosen the wrong workout, since his oratorical performance was criticized by others in the orbit of the Corinthian ekkle¯sia: “They say, ‘[His] letters are deep and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech amounts to nothing’” (ὅτι αἱ ἐπιστολαὶ μέν, φησίν, βαρεῖαι καὶ ἰσχυραί, ἡ δὲ παρουσία τοῦ σώματος ἀσθενὴς καὶ ὁ λόγος ἐξουθενημένος [2 Cor 10:10]). Gleason, Making Men, 83, notes that the ideal male voice for ancient orators, physicians, and physiognomists was one that was deep and low, suggesting a courageous spirit. Vocal training regimes for the elite male were designed to create such a voice. Paul by his own judgment did not measure up to contemporary rhetorical expectations; he characterizes his own oratory as “untrained” (ἰδιώτης [2 Cor 11:6]). It is worth keeping in mind, however, that this may be merely rhetoric on Paul’s part. Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament, 35–57, argues that Paul has shaped the charge of bodily and vocal inadequacy to his own advantage. According to the physicians of the day, if Paul had wanted to train himself for oratory, he had chosen the wrong workout. Galen, for example, “disapproved of people who worked out too frequently in the gym. That sort of exercise renders the flesh crass and contributes nothing to the soul’s progress in virtue” (Gleason, Making Men, 87). Similarly, the author of “On Hygienic Declamation” contrasted vocal exercise with athletic exercise: “While vocal exercise makes the body light, athletic exercise makes it heavy, massive, and ponderous (15). . . . It is for this reason, the author observes, that athletes generally are more thickheaded than other people (16)” (Gleason, Making Men, 90). If Paul did intend his athletic imagery to speak to his oratorical training, by means of which he could speak to each ethnic group according to its needs and expectations, the evidence from 2 Corinthians suggests that Paul was not very successful. Perhaps he had chosen the wrong workout. 26. Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 209. 27. Translation taken from Wright’s edition of Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists. 28. The Second Sophistic is a term coined by Philostratus (ibid., 481) and used by many modern scholars to refer to the revival of classical oratorical forms in Greece in the second and third centuries CE. Whitmarsh has offered a history of the scholarship on this “period” and a convincing challenge to its uniformity (Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 42–45). Nasrallah also offers a succinct description of those involved in this “movement”: “Among those who participated in and resisted the second sophistic, ‘Greek’ marked not only a region, ethnicity, or language, but also a set of practices which included antiquarian impulses, an emphasis on the importance of Plato and Homer, the use of the Attic dialect, and the manipulations of genres associated with classical Greece, such as dialogue. The second sophistic was not a club to be joined, but rather an educational and political trend . . . , which spawned satire and debate over culture or education (paideia), cultic practices, and ethnic identity under Rome” (Nasrallah, “Mapping the World,” 287). Paideia, or Greek culture and education, was integral to the construction of Greek identity for many writers of the Second Sophistic (see, e.g., Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 90–130). As a cultural commodity, “paideia was not a single, doctrinally coherent system, but the locus for a series of competitions and

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29.

30.

31.

32.

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Notes to Pages 37–38 debates concerning the proper way in which life should be lived. . . . Across the multiplicity of forms and modes of Roman Greek education, one feature remained common: the attempt to root all forms of status and identity in the prestigious past. . . . To be ‘educated’ generally meant to be able to write and declaim fluently in a form of Greek [the Attic dialect] that had passed from popular currency some five centuries earlier” (Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 5–6). As Maud Gleason has argued, paideia was implicated in the pursuit of elite male self-fashioning: “Paideia, for both Greek and Roman gentlemen, was a form of symbolic capital” (Gleason, Making Men, xxi). “Those involved in this later ‘movement’ were interested in rhetoric as persuasion, and thus also in the concrete power—patronage, wealth, and status—that Greek paideia offered to masters of such rhetoric and knowledge. Both attempts to be Greek and to critique Greekness are a response to the fact that Greek identity was a hot item on the Roman market” (Nasrallah, “The Acts of the Apostles,” 536–37). On Favorinus in Gellius’s Attic Nights, see Beall, “Homo Fandi Dulcissimus.” Beall argues that Favorinus is very much the “star” of Gellius’s work, mentioned in twentyseven anecdotes. Beall describes Favorinus’s appeal to Gellius by adding three paradoxes of his own: “Favorinus was a polymath who passed for a philosopher, a philhellene who studied Roman culture, and a Greek ‘Asianist’ with ties to Latin archaism” (ibid., 87–88). On Favorinus in Polemo’s physiognomic corpus, see Swain and BoysStones, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul. For the contours of this competitive relationship, see Bowersock, Greek Sophists, and Gleason, Making Men. It is also possible that Favorinus is the figure parodied in Lucian’s The Eunuch. Favorinus, however, probably refused the offer, presumably because he had taken up a similar position in Ephesos (Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 490). Though a patron of Ephesos, Favorinus seems often to have resisted attempts to conscript him into expensive forms of civic benefaction. One of the possible sources of his quarrel with Hadrian was over whether he could avoid service as a priest in his home town of Arelate. See L. M. White, “Favorinus’ ‘Corinthian Oration,’ ” 67–73, for the argument that the Southeast Building was the city’s library. It is possible that Favorinus wrote but never delivered the oration, and we have no external evidence to prove or disprove that he did. Gleason thinks that “a speech with such dramatic possibilities” would not have been left undelivered, though she does wonder whether it was actually given to a Corinthian audience (Gleason, Making Men, 8n32). Favorinus’s oration is found as number 37 among the collection of Dio Chrysostom’s orations. The Greek edition that I use here is Cohoon and Crosby’s edition of Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, which is based on the critical editions of Arnim, Dionis prusaensis, quem vocant Chrysostomum, quae exstant omnia edidit, and Budé, Dionis Chrysostomi orationes post Ludovicum Dindorfium. I have also fruitfully consulted the excellent edition and commentary by Barigazzi in his edition of Favorinus, Opere. All translations of the Greek are mine, except where explicitly noted. Gleason, Making Men, 38–39.

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33. The “if” (εἰ) that opens this section introduces a conditional element that will not be answered until later. As Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 5, notes, the claim to membership in the equestrian order marks Favorinus here as a Roman, and not primarily a Gaul. 34. Such training was common for professional orators in Favorinus’s time and was part of a broader set of concerns about the policing of masculinity. For many elite male orators in Favorinus’s time, physicians prescribed a whole range of bodily practices for exercising the voice, training it to embody a particular masculine tone. The training of one’s voice was part of a larger set of disciplines that sought to shape the ideal, elite male body (Gleason, Making Men, 84–87). Gleason writes, “Exhorted by moralists and philosophers to transform his existence into a kind of perpetual training program, a right-thinking gentleman of this period was by no means inclined to treat his body with benign neglect. . . . He aspired to a body that was light and dry, to flesh minimally tainted with unwholesome humors, to pores unclogged by the lingering effluvia of his digestive processes” (ibid., 84). Voice training, which involved a variety of exercises, postures, and practices, could both shape a properly deep and masculine voice and provide for overall bodily health and virtue (ibid., 87–91). Vocal training was also part of maintaining proper gender difference by keeping a strict difference between male and female voices (ibid., 94–102). The claim that being “Greek” was a matter of culture and education has a long history, going back to Isocrates, who famously distinguished between those who were Greek by education and culture and those who were Greek by descent (Panegyricus 50). 35. This claim, that education (paideia) can be a vehicle for changing not only social status but even ethnicity, was common in the Second Sophistic (Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 116–29). 36. Ibid., 119. See also Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 5. What is interesting about this claim is the characterization of Favorinus by other writers of the period, some of whom knew him personally. Aulus Gellius, with whom Favorinus partied in Rome, includes vignettes of Favorinus demonstrating a piercing knowledge of Latin in his Attic Nights (2.22; 20.1); Galen, who wrote after Favorinus, criticized him for not fully atticizing his dialect, suggesting that his writing remained too “western” (König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 161n96). 37. The term used here is ἀφελληνίζω. The root, as Wallace-Hadrill has noted, suggests a process of becoming and not of being, similar to Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus (Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 6; Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice). The prefix ἀπο- suggests that the process of making oneself Hellenic is completed. The same term is used by Philo to describe one of the beneficial actions of the reign of Augustus (Legatio ad Gaium 147). 38. Here Favorinus exploits the status of Corinth as a “mimetic city,” to use Tim Whitmarsh’s phrase (Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 121). 39. Ibid. In other sections of his oration, Favorinus skillfully exploits the cultural and historical discontinuity between Greek Corinth and Roman Corinth. Favorinus can

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40.

41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

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Notes to Pages 41–47 demonstrate his literary and linguistic mastery of Greek by putting it to work in deconstructing the artifice of Corinth’s own claims to Greek history. We will explore these passages in detail in chapter 5. “Athens has so surpassed other men in thought and speech that its pupils have become teachers of others, and it has made it seem that the name of Greeks belongs more to cast of mind than to descent, and that it is those who share our education (paideuseo¯s) who are called Greeks rather than those who share our common nature” (Panegyricus 50, translation from Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 8). Paideia does not merely influence notions of Greekness, but is similarly leveled against constructions of Roman and Greek identity. Celts too, through paideia, can have a share in the Hellenic by imitating Favorinus’s own educational discipline. Romans must also incorporate Greek paideia into their identity, by insisting on education as a means of forming identity, rather than relying on birth or social standing. Paideia as a practice of education and social mimicry is made to transcend birth and descent, offering a share of the Hellenic to barbarians and a model of ethnic formation for the Romans. Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 120. See, for example, Miles, Art as Plunder. Favorinus is not alone in ascribing cultural ignorance to Mummius. Mummius was known in a number of contexts for his lack of a properly cultured perspective on Greek art and his behavior after the sack of Corinth and other Greek cities. See, for example, Yarrow, “Lucius Mummius and the Spoils of Corinth.” Favorinus has used this technique before of bringing up a traumatic event, an event that marks the distinction between Greek and Roman Corinth, only to decry it. A prime example is the reminder of Herodotos’s unflattering portrayal of the Corinthians at Salamis, even as the author claims to reject Herodotos’s account (§7). “And almost all the most and best of the other votive offerings in Rome came from there [Corinth]; and some the cities around Rome have” (Geography 8.6.23). All translations of Strabo are my own and based on Jones’s edition of Strabo, Geography. As Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 131–33, notes, Mummius, whose looting of the city flooded the Roman and Italian markets with Greek artistic commodities, changed in significant ways the tastes of the cultural elite. He sees an “implicit link between urban expansion in second-century Italy and the spoils of the eastern war” (132). But just as such commodities were valuable in the market, so Greek culture also became, for the Romans, an object of ambivalent cultural capital. Though often decrying the luxury and effeminacy of the Greeks, the Romans prized Greek culture and learning as marks of cultural sophistication (Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, 1–17). König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 167

2. Marketplaces, Merchant Ships, and Festivals 1. The Isthmian Games were held biennially in the spring. They originated in the sixth century BCE (Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 28). Their importance can be seen

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during the reign of Domitian, who restricted the rights of victors at athletic contests to claim immunity from civic office to only those who had won at one of the festivals of “old Greece” (antiqua Graecia) (Spawforth, “Agonistic Festivals in Roman Greece,” 193). The games even attracted the emperor Nero in 67 CE, when he both competed in the games and proclaimed Greece free from taxation (Engels, Roman Corinth, 20). It was on the same spot in 196 BCE that Flamininus had proclaimed Greece’s freedom, an illusory promise that would culminate rather in the destruction of Corinth, at the head of the Achaian League, in 146 BCE. The games invoked a long religious tradition that was associated with the city, and the rites that accompanied the games would have reinvoked the founding myth and the long history of athletic glory that had accrued to the contests. On the ritual program of the Isthmia, see Broneer, “The Apostle Paul and the Isthmian Games,” and B. Jordan, “Isthmian Amusements.” For a description of the festival at Isthmia, see Dio Chrysostom’s oration On Virtue (8.6–19). The games also had a complex administrative apparatus. In western Roman colonies the costs of games were borne chiefly by the magistrates (see, e.g., Lex Coloniae Genetivae 70, 71, 128), but in Greek cities this task usually fell to an agonothetes (Geagan, “Notes on the Agonistic Institutions of Roman Corinth,” 69). The office of agonothetes was an elected one and its holder was responsible for the entire cost of the games (Geagan, “Notes on the Agonistic Institutions of Roman Corinth,” 70). There was no limit to the number of times one could hold the office. Antonius Sospes served three times as agonothetes (Kent no. 226). Because of its expense, which included putting up the prize money, staffing the games, housing visiting athletes and dignitaries, making necessary renovations, and providing food and refreshments, the post must have been seen as a prestigious office. Judging by the forms in which elite Corinthians display their résumés of civic offices (the cursus honorum), the role of agonothetes was deemed more prestigious than that of the duovirate, though it was occasionally outranked by the office of duovir quinquennalis (Geagan, “Notes on the Agonistic Institutions of Roman Corinth,” 76). For a member of the Corinthian elite, or even the occasional Greek provincial notable, the office of agonothetes of the Corinthian Isthmia and Caesarea was a tempting, if expensive, way of associating oneself both with a prestigious Greek festival and a major Roman celebration of the new political regime. 2. Translation and numbering are taken from Behr’s edition of Aelius Aristides, The Complete Works, unless otherwise noted. I have added some of the Greek text to the translation. König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 153, dates the oration to 156 CE. 3. König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 155. This stands in contrast to Cicero’s characterization of maritime cities as places where trade occasions a dangerous mixing of people and practices that dilutes culture and pollutes those who come into contact with it (Republic 2.4). 4. König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 156. This characterization of the city represents it as fully recovered from the sack of Mummius, who was noted for his indiscriminate plundering of art from the city. Strabo, in his description of the Roman destruction of Corinth, notes with some sadness that the Roman soldiers destroyed

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5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

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Notes to Pages 49–51 many of the great works of art in the city and that the rest were taken back to Rome as spoils of war by the general L. Mummius (8.6.23). So great was the haul that most of the best dedicated offerings to the gods came from Corinth: σχεδὸν δέ τι καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀναθημάτων τῶν ἐν ῾Ρώμῃ τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ ἄριστα ἐντεῦθεν ἀφῖχθαι. Strabo says that the colonists dug up terra-cotta reliefs and bronze vessels from the destroyed buildings and opened graves and sold them to Romans in great quantities. On this, see chapter 1. On Corinth as the capital of the province of Achaia, see Alcock, Graecia Capta, 166–68. König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 156. Ibid., 153n67, notes that such prayers that included the emperor became part of several genres of praise in the rhetorical theory of later centuries. In fact, a similar wish for the health of the emperor and the Roman people comes in a prayer offered by a priest of Isis at Kenchreai in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (XI.17). Aristides himself was no apologist for Roman rule in Greece, but he does evince a positive attitude to the benefits that are available for an upperclass Greek under Rome. I follow Swain in seeing Aristides’ rather effusive encomium To Rome as evincing not so much what Aristides himself believed about Roman rule but what the emperors liked to hear said about their rule (Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 274–84). In general his circle of friends comprised other provincial Greek notables, most of whom had attained Roman citizenship under the empire because of their wealth and influence (Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 259–60). From the vantage point of the wealthy and sophisticated Greek elite, Rome was a beneficial hegemon, which offered citizenship, advancement, and power to the noble and wealthy elites of the provinces (To Rome, in Aristides, Aristides in Four Volumes, ed. Behr, 59). Aristides’ loyalty to the regime was grounded in the benefits he and other elites received from Rome (Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 283). As Simon Swain notes of Aristides’ disposition, “Greeks should be proud of their inheritance; but the world is now a Roman one and it is to the Roman emperor that a family must look for advancement and honor” (Swain, Hellenism and Empire, 259). A proud Greek with an eye to the benefits that could be accrued by successfully navigating the realities of Roman hegemony in Greece, Aristides saw in Corinth an example of how a city might “fit” within the world of Roman Greece. King, “Which Early Christianity?” 72. Woolf, “Polis-Religion,” 46–52. On the idea of representing multiple ordering principles, see J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Relating Religion. Dommelen, “Colonial Constructs,” 310. On hybridity, see the introduction to this volume. Dommelen, “Colonial Constructs,” 309. On the veteran population, see Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 17–21; Walbank, “The Foundation and Planning of Early Roman Corinth,” 97; and Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 33. Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 170–71, earlier noted the small number of veterans that could be found among the colony’s magistrates but continued to think that there was nevertheless a sizable veteran population in the city. Millis shows how the assumption that Corinth was a veterans’ colony cannot be backed up by archaeological evidence, noting that the “evidence for veterans is practically non-existent” (20).

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The demographics of the city’s elite suggest that it is more likely that Corinth was founded for economic reasons (Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 33–34). See also Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 31, who notes the additional military advantages of having a Roman colony to manage the diolkos (the footpath across the narrowest part of the Isthmus) and the two Corinthian ports. It is not inconceivable that Caesar had economic interests in mind when he chose to colonize Corinth. Narbo Martius, founded in Gaul in 118 BCE, is an example of a colony that was established with an eye to commercial benefit (Levick, Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor, 3). On Corinth as an emporium and not a thoroughfare for international trade, see the important recent study of Pettegrew, “The Diolkos of Corinth.” For a discussion of Corinth as a bridgehead, see Alcock, Graecia Capta, 169. 12. Studies of imported pottery forms at Argos and Nemea show that Corinth probably served as the middleman for the introduction of western commodities into sections of the eastern Peloponnesos via these overland trade routes. Among the imported Italian sigillata from 25–50 CE, the stamps of the Corinthian wares correspond to those found at Argos, which suggests “the two sites [Nemea and Argos] were supplied from the same Italian source or that Corinth supplied Argos” (Slane, “Corinth: Italian Sigillata and Other Italian Imports,” 32). Corinth would not have been the only point of entry for such goods into the eastern Peloponnesos. Both Argos and Gythion could have served as entry points for western commodities (Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 38–39). Of the products that moved to Corinth via overland trade routes, pine and spruce from Stymphalia would have been present (Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 38). A warehouse on the western side of the city was probably a storage facility for olive oil that came in to the city from the road to Sikyon and the northern slope of Pentiskoufi (Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 44–45). Since this warehouse was not easily accessible to the Corinthian ports, Williams thinks it likely that the olive oil stored here was for local consumption. Pausanias says that Lechaion had a sanctuary and a bronze image of Poseidon (II.3). According to Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 46, the harbor at Lechaion was remodeled under Claudius: “The interior harbor and the creation of the two huge sand hills by the harbour were . . . also part of the design of Claudius’ engineers.” Pausanias notes that Kenchreai had a temple and a stone statue of Aphrodite, a bronze image of Poseidon on the harbor’s mole, harborside temples of Asclepius and Isis, and a stream called Helen’s Bath (II.3). Apuleius says that Kenchreai had a safe harbor and was crowded with a great population (magno frequentatur populo) in the second century (Metamorphoses X.35). For recent archaeological research on Kenchreai, see Rife et al., “Life and Death at a Port in Roman Greece,” and Rife, “Religion and Society at Roman Kenchreai.” On overland trade connections, see Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 31n3. For a discussion of the various overland trade routes that moved through Corinth, see Wiseman, The Land of the Ancient Corinthians. 13. Pettegrew, “The Diolkos of Corinth.” This description stands at odds with the traditional portrayal of Corinth as a thoroughfare for trade goods. In this model, cargo

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Notes to Pages 53–54

moving from Italy to points farther east and vice versa would be unloaded in one port and then shipped over land to the other for a smooth transition to a new ship on the opposite side, saving time and limiting the risks that attended maritime trade. See, for example, Slane, “Corinthian Ceramic Imports,” 219. In contrast to what has been found at Delos, another large international trading center, there is no evidence of foreign trading groups with bases in the city. This suggests that the Corinthians themselves managed the flow of goods through their city. On the breaking up of larger and heavier shipments, see Slane, “East-West Trade,” 299. 14. Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 33–41. The Corinthian Forum, defined largely by the preexisting South Stoa, is about four times larger than the forum at Pompeii, a city of about 10,000 inhabitants (ibid., 37n7). For the commercial venues on the Lechaion Road, see ibid., 39–41. The meat market was converted to the Peribolos of Apollo after the earthquake that hit Corinth in the last quarter of the first century CE. The shops in the Forum could be found in the South Stoa, the central shops, which spread out from the bema, and the west shops, which were nestled along the southern ridge of the hill on which the Temple of Apollo was built. On the commercial uses of these buildings, see ibid., 37–38. 15. On the diversity of Corinth’s market economy, see Slane, “East-West Trade,” 299, and Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 38. On Corinth’s dependence on regional trading partners, see Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 31–33. Williams suggests that Corinth would have needed to import grain on a regular basis from the time of the Flavians up to Hadrian’s reign (“Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 38). See also the discussion of Corinth’s consumption in Engels, Roman Corinth, 22–42, though one should be wary of some of the conclusions Engels draws (see, e.g., an important critique of Engels in Spawforth, “Roman Corinth and the Ancient Urban Economy”). This dependence on imports, a problem common to Rome as well, runs counter to the general ethos of self-sufficiency that seems to have driven many local decisions with regard to trade in antiquity (Morley, Trade in Classical Antiquity, xii–xiii). 16. An additional piece of evidence for this characterization is Spawforth’s observation that more local trade routes might be more important for understanding cultural change and interaction at Corinth. Spawforth, “Roman Corinth and the Ancient Urban Economy,” notes the strong elite connections between Corinth and Thespiae, noting that “this small Boeotian city across the water . . . quickly became something of a cultural (and, no doubt, economic) annexe of the Roman colony.” On Corinth’s trade routes, see Slane, “East-West Trade,” 306, and Slane, “Corinthian Ceramic Imports,” 224. The trade routes on which Corinth sat were tenuous. We can see how tenuous this new trade arrangement is in the second century. After the city is hit by a large earthquake, much of the trade stops. At this point 92 percent of all pottery found is locally made, suggesting that trade has been adversely affected (Slane, “Corinthian Ceramic Imports,” 223). The earthquake seems to have forever shifted the trade balance in the city. By the early second century eastern imports finally match and overtake western imports, a change that is permanent. An exception to the broader trends in Corinth’s trading patterns may have been the importation of rare building materials. Williams notes the presence of giallo antico

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from Tunisia and porphyry and granite from Egypt (Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 38). It is possible that these stones also came through other intermediaries, where the stone may have been precut for assembly in Corinth. An example of this is the circular monument of Babbius on the western end of the Forum, which was prefabricated in Athens (Scranton, Monuments of the Lower Agora, 7–32; Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 38). 17. Italian sigillata is common from the beginning of the colony until about 150 CE. Eastern sigillata A is the second largest import in the early years (35–40 percent) but declines sharply after 25 CE. Eastern sigillata B appears in the last decade BCE and becomes the dominant import from 75 to 200 (62–69 percent). African red slip emerges around 100 and becomes the dominant import between 300 and 400. Imports from Pergamum (Çandarli and late Roman C) remain constant at about 30 percent between 50 and 500, except for a sharp rise to 50 percent from 200 to 225 (Slane, “East-West Trade,” 307; Slane, “Corinth’s Roman Pottery,” 331). Corinth was an early adopter of Italian sigillata. Some of the western pottery, notably pre-Arretine and early Arretine, appear in Corinth “at least half a generation earlier than it is imported to other eastern sites such as Athens or Benghazi. So far what one discerns is a not unnatural preference by the colonists for ceramic ‘luxury’ items from central western Italy, a preference which overlies a substratum of typically eastern products such as are found on most eastern sites of Augustan date and need not be on their way west” (Slane, “Corinthian Ceramic Imports,” 221). For more on Corinth’s early adoption of Arretine, see Slane, “Corinth: Italian Sigillata and Other Italian Imports,” 40–41. The potters associated with the earliest Italian sigillata (A. Sestius, A. Titius, various Annii, and Sentius) are from central Italy, and the forms are attested in northeastern Spain, southern France, Aquileia, Magdalensberg, Neuss, and Mainz (Slane, “Corinth: Italian Sigillata and Other Italian Imports,” 31). In the late Augustan period Italian sigillata became more popular, and the Perennii were the chief suppliers of relief vessels. This suggests that Pisa was not a major source of sigillata at Corinth (ibid., 32). Through the second century central Italy and Etruria remained the primary source. Looking at the broader trends in east-west trade, we find a series of shifts (Slane, “East-West Trade,” 307). Western fine wares are dominant in the first half of the first century and from the second quarter of the third through the early fifth. The period from 75 to 200/225 is dominated by eastern fine wares. What is interesting is that between 150 and 200 there is a huge drop in western fine wares in relation to those from the east; 200 to 225 represents a low point in general for the colony’s imports, taking it back almost to the level of the early foundation (Slane, “East-West Trade,” 309). This drop may be due to a rebuilding phase east of the theater district during this period. The drop seems to be largely the result of a drop in eastern sigillata B, suggesting a problem with its chronology. With regard to amphoras, which are harder to date, the chronology of imports seems to be roughly parallel. 18. Hayes, “Roman Pottery from the South Stoa,” 469. Arretine and other Italian-made pottery types were the biggest imports to the city from Augustus to the Flavians. Local potters also seem to have adopted the practice of stamping from these Arretine imports. Though most stamps are in Greek, some are in Latin, clearly in imitation of Arretine.

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19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

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Notes to Pages 55–57 Thin-walled wares that appear in the city also seem to be modeled on Italian types. The only local products following Greek forms are cooking pots and basins (ibid., 470). According to Wallace-Hadrill, Arretine was “not to be sniffed at” (Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 411). On broader changes in consumption and fashion in this period, see ibid., 315–440. “There could be a period down to c. 10 BC when Italian fine wares were ‘personal possessions,’ a mark of Roman status. This might explain the unusually high proportion of large, radially stamped platters at Corinth compared to sites in the West and to Magdalensberg. Then only after 10 BC did Italian ceramics become part of a regular commercial exchange between Italy and Corinth” (Slane, “Corinth: Italian Sigillata and Other Italian Imports,” 40). Wallace-Hadrill, in looking at the spread of Arretine to Roman military camps in Gaul, offers a similar conclusion: “A key to the new Augustan social order is the restoration of dignity not only to the elite but to the citizen. The aspiration to new ‘quality’ wares by the citizen is part of an assertion of social dignity in a world re-emerging from chaos” (Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 416). By the first century CE, “Arretine” was being produced well beyond Arezzo and had significantly influenced the production of eastern sigillata B (Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 417–20). On eastern sigillata, see Hayes, Handbook of Mediterranean Roman Pottery, 52–59. See also Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 416–21. Arretine had also become something of a brand name; pottery stamps claiming the name were found at production centers outside the region, even as far away as Le Graufesenque in southern Gaul and Tralles (Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 411). Quotes are from Woolf, “Beyond Romans and Natives,” 341, and Hingley, Globalizing Roman Culture, 47. As Hingley (47) notes, the expansion of Roman power in the Mediterranean created “new landscapes of culture . . . [forming] changing and challenging physical and imaginative environments within which others were compelled to live.” There are similarities between the hints we have in the material record about the demographics of the Corinthian elite and some recent discussions of “passing.” Some of the materials discussed in later chapters are more explicit about the ambiguities of identity and self-presentation. On passing, see Sánchez and Schlossberg, eds., Passing. For a discussion of passing in Justin Martyr, see Lyman, “The Politics of Passing,” 36–60. “This type of resettlement programme obviously suited the policies of the aristocratic families in the Roman Senate who voted for the refounding of Corinth but who by law could not themselves operate the business of the new East-West trade route that Colonia Laus Julia Corinthiensis would service. . . . These freedmen were sent out to ensure Roman control of the markets at this point on the east-west trade route and to secure positions for interested Roman families in this new distribution center in the eastern Peloponnesos” (Williams, “Roman Corinth as a Commercial Center,” 33). On the demographics of the Corinthian elite, see Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite.” On freedmen holding office in Corinth, see Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 169; Walbank, “Evidence for the Imperial Cult,” 209; West, Latin

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Inscriptions, 1896–1926, 108. Corinth’s administration was headed by two duoviri, modeled on the office of the consuls in Rome. The duoviri were elected to one-year terms and were the supreme magistrates in the colony, exercising authority over legal questions within the colony, though lacking in the imperium that was associated with the Roman consul or praetor. This power resided with the provincial governor, who possessed the military and supreme legal authority in the city (Digest 50.1.26; Gizewski, “Duoviri, Duumviri,” 740). The duoviri also convened the meetings of the decurions and the popular assembly, presiding over the election of officers in the latter (Digest 50.4.14, 18; Gizewski, “Duoviri, Duumviri,” 740). They might also represent the city before the emperor or in official embassies between cities. We know many of the names of these duoviri from coinage minted in Corinth until 69 CE that bore their names. Duoviri could serve multiple times in the office and did so with relative frequency in Corinth. Occasionally a duovir praefectus iure dicundo would be elected or appointed when the duovir for that year could not fulfill the responsibilities of office. This generally occurred not because of a failure on the part of the elected individual, but because the duovir for that year was either a member of the imperial family or a high-ranking Roman official who had been voted into office as an honor. Every five years the duovir for that year would be named the duovir quinquennalis, tasked with conducting a census of the colony and its elite members, much as the Roman censors did. The primary effect of this census was to revise membership in the local decurionate, which was modeled on the Roman Senate. On the possibilities available to freedmen in Roman society, see Woolf, “Monumental Writing,” 35–36. The key difference between the early Corinthian freedmen and those of other cities is that freedmen could hold public office in Corinth without having to take the alternative path to civic benefaction offered by the Augustales. This remained the case in the early decades of the colony. For more on the Augustales, see Taylor, “Augustales, Seviri Augustales, and Seviri.” Like most other cities in the Roman world, Corinth also hosted several associations open to freedmen, offering yet another set of possibilities for social advancement. Later in this chapter we will look at the example of the Augustales monument, which was dedicated by an organization that was often made up of freedmen. There is further evidence for associations in Corinth that included freedmen. A marble cornice block from a small building or temple found at the east end of the Northwest Stoa (West no. 121) bears the inscription (.12 × 1.05 m): LIBERTI • QVI • CORINTHI • HABITAN[T] (“The freedmen who dwell in Corinth”). West suggests a possible Augustan date from the lettering. Dean thinks that the lettering dates from the first half of the first century CE (Dean, “Latin Inscriptions from Corinth. III,” 460). The inscription suggests that there was an association of freedmen in the city who met at this location. Also found in the southeast corner of the Forum were four fragments of a white marble slab (Kent no. 52). Kent reconstructs the inscription thus: [DIVO A]VGVS[TO] // [SAC]RVM // CN [• CORNELIV]S • SPERATVS • AVG • // OB • I[USTITIA]M (“Sacred to Divus Augustus. Cn. Cornelius Speratus, an Augustalis, [dedicated this monument] on account of his justice”). We know nothing of this person, though the name Speratus comes up under Trajan (Kent no. 136). Speratus was a member of the Augustales and so is probably

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himself a freedman. The Augustales and the seviri Augustales were new voluntary associations, mixing religious and collegial aspects, that sprang up in the west alongside the inclusion of Augustus in the compital cults and the worship of his genius. What is so interesting about the references to the Augustales in Corinth is that the organization is almost never heard of outside Italy and the west. For more on the Augustales, see Taylor, “Augustales, Seviri Augustales, and Seviri”; Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion; and Laird, “The Emperor in a Roman Town.” A final example of an association of freedmen in Corinth comes from an inscription found in the southwestern corner of the Forum (Kent no. 62). It is carved on a small block of limestone (.35 × .445 × .352 m) and reads: [DECERNENTE] • COLLEGIO • LARVM • DOMV[S] // • DIVINAE • // CVRAM • AGENTIBVS • COLLEGIANI[S] // PRIMI[S] • T • FLAVIO • AVG • LIB • ANTIO[CHO] // ET • TI • CLAVDIO • PRIMIGENIO • (“Erected by the association of the Lares of the Imperial House, under the direction of the first members of the association: Titus Flavius Antiochus, freedman of the emperor, and Tiberius Claudius Primigenius”). The inscription was donated according to a decision of the Association of the Lares of the Imperial House. It honors two of its oldest or leading members, T. Flavius Antiochus and Ti. Claudius Primigenius. The former displays his freedman status, undoubtedly because he was a freedman of one of the Flavian emperors. The use of libertus in his name is rare in Corinth, where there are few explicit references to freedman status. This suggests that Antiochus was proud of his connection to the emperor and wanted to display it publicly. Kent suggests that Primigenius was probably the son of a freedman because of the Julio-Claudian praenomen and nomen that he bears (Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 35). The inscription probably dates to the 120s CE. Like the Augustales, this association does not have priests, nor does it seem to have any distinct titles for officers or members. Those being honored are called merely the oldest or leading (depending on how you read primis) members. 24. The seminal study is that of Hatzfeld, Les Trafiquants. This work is augmented by Hatzfeld, “Les Italiens résidant à Délos.” For an updating of some of Hatzfeld’s work, see Wilson, Emigration from Italy. Among these trading families in Corinth we find such names as Aemilius, Arruntius, Baebius, Caelius, Castricius, Cestius, Clodius, Cornelius, Egnatius, Granius, Iunius, Manlius, Marius, Munatius, Olius, Pontius, Saufeius, Stlaccius, Terentius, Trebius, Turranius, Valerius, and Vibius (Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 172). The names Cestius and Stlaccius appear in Corinth as Cestianus and Stlaccianus, respectively (West no. 56). Spawforth isolates these names from others in Corinth by comparing them with the list of prominent negotiatores found in Hatzfeld, Les Trafiquants, 383–407. This list, dating from 1915, is still a classic, but it does not contain a complete listing of the eastern negotiatores. 25. This is not to say that trade with the east came about in Italy only with the expansion of the republic. The Greek settlements of Magna Graecia and Sicily had maintained trading links with the Greek East for centuries. But certainly this trade took on a new form as Rome emerged as a world power in the Mediterranean in the first half of the second century BCE. The change in trade took three major forms (Wilson, Emigration from Italy, 87–88). First, the volume of trade went up significantly. Second, traders

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began to come not just from Magna Graecia and Sicily, but from the heartland of Italy, which had already become more Romanized than the south, and included traders from prominent Roman families. Finally, traders became settlers in a way that had not occurred in great numbers in previous centuries. 26. Most of the freedmen duoviri that Spawforth studies are identified only by either the adoption of the nomen and praenomen of their masters or by their Greek cognomina. There are, however, several prominent examples of freedmen benefactors, notably Kent no. 321 and West nos. 77 and 121. 27. The monument was built of precut Pentelic and Hymettian marbles that were numbered in Athens with mason’s marks so that they could be easily assembled upon arrival in Corinth (Williams, “Roman Corinthas a Commerical Center,” 38n12; see further Scranton, Monuments in the Lower Agora, 7–32). The inscription on the monument (West no. 132) reads: [C]N • BABBIVS • PHILINVS • AED • PONTIF[EX] [D(E)] • S(UA) • P(ECUNIA) • F(ACIENDUM) • C(URAVIT) • IDEMQUE • II • VIR • P(ROBAVIT) •. “Gnaeus Babbius Philinus, aedile and pontifex, had this built at his own expense and he approved its construction as duovir.” Kent dates Babbius’s duovirate to sometime between the quinquennal years 7/8 and 12/13 CE (Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 25). The inscription is on the epistyle of the aedicula. It was found in the Corinthian agora in 1907. The letters range from .08 to .07 m high. The S, C, and I in line 2 are damaged or reconstructed by West. Another inscription from the podium of the aedicula repeats the dedicatory inscription above (Kent no. 155). The inscription was found on an orthostate revetment slab, which was next to the monument. The inscription took up two lines and has been reconstructed by Kent thus: [CN • BABBIUS • PHILINU]S • AED • PONTIF(EX) [D • S • P • F • C • IDEMQUE • ] II • VIR • P •. Beyond donating this aedicula, Babbius probably contributed a number of other buildings in the center of town. His name is inscribed on four fragments of architectural blocks (West nos. 98–101, 131–32), which suggests that he was a prominent builder in the colony. He probably donated the fountain of Poseidon, which is near to the aedicula on the western side of the Forum (Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 169). Two inscriptions bearing Babbius’s name mark donations to Neptune (West nos. 2–3). This implies that Babbius was associated particularly with gifts to the patron deity of the Isthmus and may suggest that his priesthood was associated with the same deity. White argues that he was the dedicator of the Southeast Building, which probably functioned as a library (L. M. White, “Favorinus’ ‘Corinthian Oration,’ ” 81–84). White argues this on the basis of a combination of West no. 122 and Kent no. 323 (L. M. White, “Favorinus’ ‘Corinthian Oration,’ ” 104). These fragments of an Ionic epistyle are part of the architrave from the Southeast Building and form the dedicatory inscription. The only available lettering from the first line of text is IR • PONT, which means that the dedicator was both a duovir and a pontifex. West (no. 122) believes that the dedicator is probably Philinus, since he was the only duovir we know of who was also a pontifex. White agrees with this assumption (L. M. White, “Favorinus’ ‘Corinthian Oration,’ ” 82). Babbius’s name also occurs in a list of names from the Julian Basilica (Kent no. 364). The names all occur in the nominative, which suggests that this could be a list of members or of persons who do-

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28.

29.

30.

31.

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Notes to Pages 59–60 nated money. If the Julian Basilica functioned as a sort of collegium connected to the imperial family, this might suggest that Babbius was a member. One inscription (Kent no. 241) found on a small circular base in the Odeion may be the base for a statue of Babbius as a patron of the city. The base, made of white marble, was found in the cavea of the Odeion in 1929. It is very fragmentary and has two lines of letters (.055 m high): CN // PHILIN. Kent reconstructs the inscription as CN [• BABBIO] // PHILIN[O], but he notes that it could also have been written in the nominative. The aediles were elected annually and functioned as city managers. They maintained public services, managed the marketplace, and were responsible for public revenues derived therein. Kent notes that one of the main responsibilities of the aediles was to act as judges over commercial and financial litigation (Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926– 1950, 27). In Corinth the aediles were probably responsible for supervising the local games in the theater and amphitheater but not the Isthmian Games (Engels, Roman Corinth, 18). Like the duoviri, they probably had to make a down payment upon assuming the office, though there is evidence that they often paid for a benefaction, like a new paving or renovation, as part of an electoral promise (Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth, 15). The aedile had to be thirty years old to hold the office, and he was given the honor of wearing the toga praetexta (Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth, 16). For an example of the costs associated with holding the duovirate or aedileship in a Roman colony, see Lex Coloniae Genetivae LXX–LXXI (in Crawford, Roman Statutes, I.25). West no. 132. Spawforth also supports this view (Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 169). White thinks that Babbius’s father may have been named Cn. Babbius Pius (L. M. White, “Favorinus’ ‘Corinthian Oration,’ ” 106–7). He derives this from West no. 14, which is an inscription recording a dedication to Augustus. The dedication was made by three men bearing the praenomen Cnaeus. One, Cn. Pius, is then connected to a fragmentary inscription that seems to bear the names Babbius and Pius (Kent no. 391). Because of the fragmentary and speculative nature of the material, I am unconvinced that this offers us evidence for Philinus’s father. White offers a detailed argument for the dating of this inscription to the second phase of the building’s history (L. M. White, “Favorinus’ ‘Corinthian Oration,’ ” 83–90). Spawforth has collected the evidence for the descendants of Babbius (Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 169). Cn. Babbius Maximus was honored at Delphi as a ἱερὸς παῖς of Apollo. He made donations at the site in honor of L. Cassius Petraeus, a member of Plutarch’s circle. He was also Delphic archon after 120 CE. His father, Babbius Magnus, was Delphic archon a generation earlier. Spawforth sees enough connections between these Babbii and those at Corinth to suggest that they were part of the same family. Later one finds a Gellia Babbia of senatorial rank (Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 22.481). The classic example of this would be the cognomen given to Cicero’s friend Titus Pomponius Atticus. It is not out of the realm of possibility that a freedman would give such attention to the name and future prospects of his son. Mary Gordon has shown

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how freedmen in Italy, where the only path to municipal advancement for a freedman was through his son, went to great lengths to shape their development as respectable Roman citizens (Gordon, “The Freedman’s Son in Municipal Life”). Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 22, notes a broader trend in Corinth and among freedmen in other places in the Roman Empire. He suggests that there was a trend away from using Greek names for the second generation of freedman families. In this he is following the suggestion of Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 175, and Treggiari, Roman Freedmen, 231–32. 32. Edwards nos. 16, 17, and 32, respectively. On the dates of their duoviral years, see Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 24. Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 174, 179, discusses Caesar’s freedmen more generally. Beyond the C. Iulii who served as duoviri in Corinth, we also have evidence for a C. Iulius Syrus who made a dedication to Isis and Serapis found in the Corinthian theater (Kent no. 57). 33. Among the list of other successful freedmen in the colony we find a number who were connected to Marc Antony or his partisans. This should not be surprising as, soon after the death of Julius Caesar, Antony came to prominence within the Second Triumvirate and took control of the eastern parts of the empire. After appearing with a laureate head on the first issue of duoviral coinage (44/43 BCE), Julius Caesar’s image disappears on coins until an issue dated between 10/9 and 5/4 BCE (RPC I no. 1134). This no doubt reflects the instability of the period of the Second Triumvirate. Sometime between 39 and 36 BCE, Antony makes an appearance on an issue of coins in Corinth (under the duoviri P. Aebutius and C. Pinnius [RPC I no. 1124]). Antony had taken control of the east in 40 BCE as part of the division of the empire by the three triumvirs. It is beginning at this point that we begin to see the emergence of Antonian freedmen in the duoviral lists of Corinth. Three freedmen of Marc Antony held duoviral posts. M. Antonius Orestes (Edwards no. 27; RPC I no. 1122) was duovir quinquennalis in 40 BCE, the same year that Antony took control of the east. He was a Greek who was either enfranchised by Antony or a freedman (see Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 176). M. Antonius Theophilus (Edwards nos. 22–24; RPC I nos. 1129–31) was duovir quinquennalis and was probably Antony’s steward in Corinth (Plutarch, Antony 67). The third Antonian freedman was M. Antonius Hipparchus (Edwards nos. 28–31; RPC I nos. 1134–35, 1136–37), son of Theophilus and twice duovir in Corinth. Plutarch says of Hipparchus that he had a great deal of influence on Antony and that he was the first to go over to Octavian’s side (Plutarch, Antony 67). Among the four issues of coins from the two duovirates of Hipparchus is the first to reintroduce an image of Julius Caesar (RPC I no. 1134). In this coin Caesar’s head bears a laurel crown on the reverse, while the bare head of Augustus and the names of the duoviri appear on the obverse. Another issue of coins under Hipparchus, this time dating from 2 or 1 BCE, features the head of Augustus on the obverse again and the heads of Gaius and Lucius Caesar facing one another on the reverse (RPC I no. 1136). As a prominent Antonian who went over to Octavian, Hipparchus, these coin issues suggest, was pleased to display his connections with the new regime despite the affiliations reflected in his servile name. After Hipparchus there appear

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few Antonii in the lists of civic officials until the second century CE, which suggests that the name fell out of fashion after the last generation of Antonian freedmen. The record of the prominent M. Antonii from the early years of Corinth shows the adaptability of a few prominent freedmen in the tumultuous decades following the assassination of Caesar. Though owing his rise in the city to his connections with Antony, Hipparchus quickly allied himself with the new power and represented this connection visually on his duoviral coinage. Spawforth also identifies several other freedmen of Antonian partisans who served as duoviri early in Corinth’s history (Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 170). P. Ventidius Fronto (Edwards nos. 54–55) is probably a descendant of a freedman of the Antonian P. Ventidius, who was consul in 43 BCE, and [M.] Barbatius M.[f.] Celer (West nos. 67, 80), who served as duovir and duovir praefectus iure dicundo, may be the descendant of a freedman of one of Antony’s quaestors, M. Barbatius Pollio. 34. The death of Caesar just before the foundation of the city would no doubt have complicated matters. The Caesarian freedmen probably supported Antony, whose freedmen also become prominent in the early years of the colony. The rise of Octavian in competition with Antony would further muddy the waters. After Antony’s defeat, the nomen Antonius disappears from the Corinthian elite for some time. Caesarian and Antonian partisans were not the only group of freedmen in Corinth who were possessed of imperial connections. P. Vipsanius Agrippa (Edwards nos. 47–49; RPC I nos. 1172–79) served as duovir in 37/38 CE and was probably descended from a freedman of Agrippa. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa had been associated with Corinth since he captured the city before Actium (Dio Cassius 50.13.5). Judging by an inscription honoring him as a patron, Agrippa probably visited the city in 16 BCE. The inscription (West no. 16), found on a block of marble north of Peirene (.5 × .465 m), reads: M • AGRIPPAE • COS // TERT • TRIB • POTEST / D • D • TRIBVS • VINICIA // PATRONO. West is right to point out that Agrippa is here honored as the patron of the colony and not of the Vinicia tribe (West, Latin Inscriptions, 1896–1926, 15). West reads D • D as decreto decurionum, a common abbreviation used on inscriptions that present honors voted on by the decurions. Dean restored the abbreviation as dedit, dedicavit, which strikes me as less common. Agrippa himself gave his name to one of the voting tribes at Corinth (West no. 110), of which he was probably the direct patron. Agrippa’s son, Agrippa Postumus, was featured on an issue of coins in 4/5 CE (RPC I no. 1141), which corresponds to the year in which he was adopted by Augustus. There were still other freedmen who possessed direct connections with the imperial house. The duovir Ti. Claudius Optatus (Edwards nos. 61–64; RPC I nos. 1201–2) held office under Nero in either 57/58 or 58/59 CE. He was probably a freedman of the emperor Claudius, since his cognomen (which means “pleasing” or “dear”) has a servile origin (Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 177). These examples show further how freedmen continued to arrive in Corinth after the founding of the colony, presumably through their connections to prominent members of the new regime. 35. The coins of C. Iulius Nicephorus bear images of Bellerophon and Poseidon (RPC I no. 1117). Those of C. Iulius Herac[lanus], minted around the turn of the common

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36.

37.

38.

39. 40. 41.

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era, bear an image of Augustus (RPC I no. 1138). On the importance of Bellerophon and Pegasos to Corinthian identity, see chapter 5. On the Corinthian Aeficii, see Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 175–76. West reconstructed the female divinity as Diana, but Jones, “Epigraphica VIII–IX,” 94–95, has made a persuasive argument that we ought to reconstruct the honorand as Livia, wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius. West suggested a connection with the plot of Sejanus and links the inscription with a similar one honoring a certain Callicratea as priestess of Providentia Aug. et Salus Publica (West no. 110). The two inscriptions also stood near each other. Another example of a similar title is the use of the term philoscaesar in Kent no. 240. On the famous names of these two Fulvii, see Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 178. For Fulvii among the negotiatores, see Hatzfeld, “Les Italiens résidant à Délos,” 3; Hatzfeld, Les Trafiquants, 391–92; and Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 178. For connections to banking, see Wilson, Emigration from Italy, 119. Though not found among the negotiatores, another Corinthian example of this practice is found in P. Vipsanius Agrippa. As Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 181–82, shows, this Agrippa, whose term as duovir was probably in 37/38 CE (RPC I nos. 1172–79), was probably the descendant of a freedman of the famous Agrippa. His name was thus intended to invoke the family’s famous patron. The practice of invoking a famous Roman through naming is not unique to Corinth. As Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 178, shows, there are examples of the practice in Elis, Calinodea, and Pompeii. On the Caecilii among the negotiatores, see Hatzfeld, “Les Italiens résidant à Délos,” 22–23. See the catalogue in Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 178–79, 181. My thanks to Larry Welborn for pointing this out to me. Ibid., 173–74. On the Euryclids and their connection to Corinth, see chapter 6. Take, for example, the conclusion of Charles Williams: “The Roman attitudes of Julius Caesar’s colony did not emerge intact from exposure to the Greek influences and pressures that culminated in the Hadrianic wave of Pan-Hellenism” (Williams, “The Refounding of Corinth,” 35. See also, Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 18–19. There is some truth to this periodization, as one can clearly see in the archaeological record the rise in public inscriptions in Greek, a shift in Latin’s numerical supremacy in the first century. The problem that one faces in interpreting this evidence is how to account for this broader change while also refusing to allow it to determine our interpretations of individual texts, monuments, and events. An earlier periodization of Corinthian history also exists for the period between the city’s destruction by Mummius in 146 BCE and its refoundation. Scholars have long assumed that, in the century between the sack of the city and its refoundation as a Roman colony, the city remained a ruin, bereft of all but perhaps a few squatters with no real semblance of an economic life. As recent work on the pottery in Corinth is beginning to indicate, this vision of Corinth’s lost century is turning out to be erroneous. See James, “The Hellenistic Pottery from the Panayia Field, Corinth.” For the opposing argument, see Williams,

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42.

43.

44.

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Notes to Page 64 “Corinth 1977, Forum Southwest,” 21–23; Williams and Russell, “Corinth: Excavations of 1980,” 27, 34–44. Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” notes a distinctly different periodization of Corinth’s history that plays down the Romanness of Corinth’s inhabitants, noting in particular Edwards, Coins, 1896–1929, 6. Recently the stability of Roman and Greek identities has been criticized by a number of scholars. See, for example, Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 3–37; Mattingly, “Being Roman”; Mattingly, “Vulgar and Weak ‘Romanization’ ”; Woolf, “Beyond Romans and Natives”; Hingley, Globalizing Roman Culture. Much of the discussion revolves around the problematic term Romanization. König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 146, offers a reading similar to what I advocate here. He suggests we adopt “a model whereby some members of the elite were able (albeit differently in different contexts) to combine elements of both Greek and Roman affiliation and self-presentation within versions of Corinthian identity, which would no doubt usually have been experienced as something self-evident and unproblematic.” This does not mean that language is always constitutive of ethnic identity. It is often the case that a single language can be used by multiple ethnic groups or that a single ethnic group can use multiple languages. See, for example, the groundbreaking study by Moerman, “Ethnic Identification.” As De Vos, “Ethnic Pluralism,” 23, notes, a group’s language often needs to be made explicitly symbolic of the group before it can become a primary marker of ethnic identity. For studies on the importance of Greek and Latin in the formation of Greek and Roman identities, see Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 177–80; Woolf, “Becoming Roman, Staying Greek”; Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 57–70; Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire. Nasrallah, “Mapping the World,” 288. Speaking of creole languages and creolization, Kapchan and Strong, “Theorizing the Hybrid,” 241, write, “Arising from the need to communicate across linguistic and cultural boundaries, creole languages facilitate the transfer of goods and capital, whether symbolic, aesthetic, or economic. As a medium of exchange, then, a creole language, like a creole body or a creole culture, is a locus of power relations.” As Barth, “Introduction,” 10, 14–16, notes, ethnic boundaries, which often include linguistic boundaries, function both to channel and structure social interaction. Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 13–35. I want to thank Dr. Millis for making an early draft of this article available to me. Without his work, many of the insights that I pursue in this chapter would not have been possible. The inscription that was carved on what “seems to have been used either as an orthostate slab or as a backer for one of the benches in the eastern schola of the Bema” (Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 141). Kent notes that the original publishers of the inscription read Ἀλιζάς instead of Ἀλεξᾶς and interpreted the graffiti to mean that two men were lovers of a woman named Euphrosune. Kent notes that Σαραπιὰς is a woman’s name and Ἀλιζάς is not attested. Ἀλεξᾶς is a masculine name that is attested in Syria. One is tempted to see behind these names Greek speakers from areas on the fringes of the Hellenistic world.

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46. 47.

48.

49.

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Greek graffiti was found in Building 5 along the street east of the theater (Williams, “Roman Corinth: The Final Years of Pagan Cult Facilities,” 227–29). A destruction layer from an earthquake in the second quarter of the second century CE contains fragments of green wall plaster on which two separate hands have scratched graffiti in Greek. As Williams describes them: “One fresco fragment was scratched with uppercase letters in a practiced style; the other two were written in a more cursive style. . . . Two of the fragments, although small, preserve two lines of Greek, the third only the bottom of a single line” (ibid., 228–29). Though there is not enough text to discern what was inscribed, these graffiti further attest to the use of Greek in everyday life in Corinth. Several other examples of graffiti in Greek were found in the Odeion. One inscription may have been scratches made by an usher to remember which sections of the cavea had not yet been filled for a performance (Broneer, The Odeum, 135 no. 3). Broneer concedes that it may also have been mere scribbling. A second inscription in Greek from the Odeion was carved into the stucco that covered the surrounding rock while it was still wet (Broneer, The Odeum, 135 no. 4). The only certain evidence for graffiti in Latin are the letters NER carved onto a tripod base found above the sacred spring (Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 26n44). Millis’s observations about graffiti in Corinth are shared by Williams, “The Refounding of Corinth,” 37n20. On the curse tablets, see Bookidis and Stroud, The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore, 435. Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 25–26, notes this phenomenon as evidence for Greek as the language of daily use in Corinth. He suggests that Paul’s use of Greek was intended to reach the widest possible audience for his message. The mason’s marks noted by Millis come from the Timoleon monument and were used to disassemble and reassemble the monument (Kent, “The Victory Monument of Timoleon,” 9–10). These marks are tricky to date and analyze because they could have been inscribed in any number of different contexts ranging from quarrying to the actual assembly of the building. Millis also looks at manufacturers’ marks and stamped tiles, each of which contributes to the picture of a populace that probably spoke Greek (Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 29). In West no. 66 the error is harder to understand. In line 4 of the inscription there occurs the word STRABD, which does not correspond to any name or abbreviation known to West. He speculates that this may also have been due to the same problems associated with no. 65, where a Greek workman made mistakes in a Latin inscription. A much later example of this phenomenon can be seen in an inscription that may date to the period of Diocletian (West no. 24). Here the Latin term FORTISSIMO is written as FOPTISSIMO, with a Greek rho inserted instead of an R. Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 31, summarizes: “The more an inscription was meant for public display and public consumption in a Roman context, the more likely it was to have been written in Latin. The more an inscription was used for private communication, the more likely it was to have been written in Greek.” König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 146n21, makes a similar observation. Speaking of Engels, Roman Corinth, 101–2, who sees the Latin in the Forum as indicating

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52. 53.

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Notes to Page 66 the city’s essential Romanness, König writes, “In doing so he fails to take account of the possibility that those responsible for the inscriptions saw these contexts as particularly suitable for the use of Latin, whereas they may have put up inscriptions in Greek or even spoken Greek, in different contexts.” In Kent’s collection of inscriptions alone, he notes that of the 104 inscriptions datable to before the reign of Hadrian, 101 are in Latin (Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 18–19). The primary exception to the Latin epigraphic habit of the Corinthians can be found at Isthmia, where most inscriptions are in Greek. By way of comparison with Ephesos, Horsley, “The Inscriptions of Ephesos and the New Testament,” 121n70, notes that there are few Latin inscriptions in the voluminous collection of inscriptions, though there are a number of bilingual Latin and Greek inscriptions. I take the phrase “monumental writing” from Woolf, “Monumental Writing.” As Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 57–63, has shown, the rhetoric among Latin writers against the use of Greek by proper Romans was more a literary idealization that played on particular anxieties about Greek culture: “Greeks must be subjected, not merely militarily, but in everything; and Romans must beware the seduction implicit in their culture” (ibid., 60). See also Dench, Romulus’ Asylum, 302–29. Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 460. “The specific anxieties to which inscriptions seem to have been addressed revolved largely around identity. The identities that were preserved through monumentalization might be defined essentially, in terms of qualities or virtues, such as conjugal affection, loyalty, or patriotism, for example; or of personal achievements (res gestae) such as embassies performed, military successes, or the magistracies or priesthoods held. Identities might also be constructed relationally, that is in terms of membership of particular collectivities—collegia, familiae, tribes—or else as friends, fellowsoldiers, children, or parents” (Woolf, “Monumental Writing,” 32). J. N. Adams, “Bilingualism at Delos,” 109. See also Wilson, Emigration from Italy, 94. Adams notes that the inscriptions with the terms Ἰταλικοί and Italici generally refer to the Italians in either the dative or the nominative. In the dative references the Italians are the recipients of the dedication and are thus not in control of the language used. But in the nominative references the Italians are seen as making choices about the language of the monument that they are setting up. In the latter cases Latin is the preferred language (Adams, “Bilingualism at Delos,” 110–11). But this picture is a bit more complicated. In the two cases where a nominative inscription occurs in Greek, the recipients of the dedication are local figures. In all the Latin nominative inscriptions the honorands are Roman officials who are outsiders to Delos. This suggests that “within Delian society itself the Italici were usually happy to be seen as Greek-speaking, but . . . when their dealings were with outside Roman officialdom, they were careful to project a Latin-speaking, or at least bilingual, identity” (Adams, “Bilingualism at Delos,” 111). This should not be surprising, and we might actually expect Italians in the Greek East at this time (the first and second centuries BCE) to have felt a need to foster such a bilingual identity. The Italians may have used Latin as a way of safeguarding themselves under the protection of Rome in hostile times or

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places: “Indeed, several of the Latin inscriptions in the name of the Italici actually come from the period when Italians and their eastern trade were under threat and when they were reliant on Roman protection” (Adams, “Bilingualism at Delos,” 112). The threats Adams is here referring to are the two sacks of Delos in 88 and 69 BCE by Mithridates and pirates (respectively). Wilson argues that the Italians on Delos enjoyed no special trading privileges by virtue of their connection to Rome (Wilson, Emigration from Italy, 102). This makes it all the more likely that these persons would have sought to make whatever advantage they could out of the use of Latin and their contacts with the country that controlled the island. Latin may have thus served as a means of encouraging the association between traders of Italian origin and Roman citizens where such an association might lead to protection for the community or increased prestige among the local population. Many of these trading families emigrated before the Social War and the granting of rights to Italian communities. This would have changed after 89/88 BCE, when citizenship was conferred on Latins and Italians living outside Italy (Wilson, Emigration from Italy, 94). Regardless, we can see that Latin was a marker of a community identity tied to descent from Italy (even though Latin was not the ancestral language of Italy itself). At the same time the Italici were flexible in their use of language, seeking to represent themselves as insiders in Delian society by their use of Greek in honorary inscriptions. 55. Woolf, “Monumental Writing,” 29. In chapter 1 I discuss Paul’s self-description as a slave of Christ and the use of this phrase to suggest Paul’s authority as a representative of a powerful patron. An interesting example of the use of Latin as a means of social differentiation can be found among the Italian negotiatores on Delos. In inscriptions connected with collegia, the Italians tended to prefer Latin or bilingual inscriptions, apparently feeling pressure to present a “Latin-speaking identity” (Adams, “Bilingualism at Delos,” 113–14). The exception to this trend was the Competaliastai, a group with a Latin-based name that was made up of the freedmen and slaves of Italian families. Of the 221 Italians found in inscriptions on Delos, 95 were freedmen and 48 were slaves (Wilson, Emigration from Italy, 106). Their membership lists had primarily Greek names and represent “the servile entourage of the Italici, drawn from the slave population of Rome and Italy or acquired directly from the east” (Adams, “Bilingualism at Delos,” 114). This group was never included in inscriptions with other collegia of Italici, nor are Italici included in their inscriptions, which are always in Greek. From this we can see that Latin performs a dual function in these public inscriptions: “On the one hand it established the Italian identity of the collegia of negotiatores in a Greek world, and on the other it was a marker of the distinction between the socially superior and the servile members of the Italian group, at least as they presented themselves in public” (Adams, “Bilingualism at Delos,” 115). 56. See, for example, Bookidis, “Religion in Corinth,” 151–59. Bookidis notes that most of the cults in the Forum are tied to the Roman state, so it is not inconceivable that they would celebrate their ceremonies and sacrifices at roughly the same time (ibid., 157). These celebrations must have taken many different forms. In the small temples on the west side of the Forum, sacrifices were probably performed by the appointed priests on a small altar at the steps to the temple. The larger temples would have had public

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and more elaborate celebrations. The large Forum temples do not seem to have had space for ritual dining. It may be that dining associated with public festivals was done in the theater or in the Forum (ibid., 158). 57. Woolf, “Beyond Romans and Natives,” 341. One can see the Corinthian interest in displaying Romanness in other elements of civic life, such as the fact that the voting tribes of Corinth bear names associated with the Julio-Claudian family. The names of the tribes discovered so far include Atia (West no. 86), Agrippia (West no. 110; Kent no. 154), Aurelia (West nos. 90 (?), 97), Calpurnia (West no. 68), Domitia (Kent no. 249), Hostilia (West no. 109), Livia (Kent no. 258), Maneia (West no. 56), Vatinia (?) (Kent no. 222), and Vinicia (West no. 16). Membership in these tribes associated one’s civic identity with the empire, the imperial family, and its high-ranking friends. In exercising one’s voting rights as a citizen of the colony, one did so through a connection to the imperial family, binding tighter the connections between colony and metropolis. This no doubt also went the other way, in that the naming of tribes in honor of an imperial family member might be a way of showing gratitude for patronage and benefaction. On the Roman style of the temples to Tyche/Fortuna, Clarian Apollo, and Venus, see Williams, “The Refounding of Corinth,” 26–29. On the architecture and cult of the Julian Basilica, see Scotton, “The Julian Basilica”; Scotton, “A New Fragment of an Inscription.” On the imperial portraiture, see Swift, “A Group of Roman Imperial Portraits at Corinth”; Swift, “A Group of Roman Imperial Portraits at Corinth. II”; Swift, “A Group of Roman Imperial Portraits at Corinth. III”; Swift, “A Group of Roman Imperial Portraits at Corinth. IV”; F. Johnson, “The Imperial Portraits at Corinth”; F. Johnson, Sculpture, 1896–1923, 70–84; and Ridgway, “Sculpture from Corinth,” 432–34. On the identification of the temples of either Octavia or the Capitoline Triad, see the debate between Williams, “A Re-Evaluation of Temple E,” and Walbank, “Evidence for the Imperial Cult in Julio-Claudian Corinth.” 58. The original report on the discovery of the Augustales monument is in Morgan, “Excavations at Corinth, 1936–37,” 551. For further early discussion of the monument, see Scranton, Monuments in the Lower Agora, 142–43. Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 84–85, notes that the base and statue were probably erected under Augustus because they are oriented in relation to the third paving of the Forum at that time. But the commission was probably added only under Tiberius, since it is oriented along the sightlines of Temple E, which is of Tiberian date. I am indebted to Laird’s work on the monument in what follows. Judging by the size of the cuttings for the statue’s feet (measuring .75 m in length), the statue was itself somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0 m high (Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 91). This would have made it the largest statue base for a Roman emperor in Achaia (Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 95). See also Walbank, “Evidence for the Imperial Cult in Julio-Claudian Corinth,” 211. Scranton, Monuments in the Lower Agora, 142–43, thought the statue on the monument was Athena. Laird has plausibly reconstructed the dedicatory inscription as follows: [divo a]VGVS[to sacr(um)] | [nomen nomen] | [au]GVSTALES [ob h(onorem) d(ecreto) d(ecurionum)] (“The Augustales X and Y [set this up] as sacred to Divus Ausgustus on account of his honor by a decree of the decurions”). The inscription was originally published as Kent 32. For Laird’s reconstruction in contrast to Kent’s, see Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 76–84.

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59. Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 93. The Augustales were a voluntary association that emerged in Italy in the late first century BCE as a means of encouraging a parallel path for wealthy freedmen and other outsiders to that of the traditional cursus honorum. Members of the Augustales were mostly freedmen (Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor, 219; Taylor, “Augustales, Seviri Augustales, and Seviri,” 231), though at Corinth members were both freedmen and freeborn (Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 74). Members were generally drawn from across the whole spectrum of occupations: “Among the men who held these titles were merchants and traders, physicians, officers in professional corporations, caretakers of temples and shrines, and assistants to government officials. . . . Practically every prominent freedman in towns where these institutions were known had one of these titles; many other freedmen record these titles as their only honors” (Taylor, “Augustales, Seviri Augustales, and Seviri,” 231). These associations were popular among freedmen and freeborn alike because they offered a path to civic honors to those who had been disqualified from membership in the local senate (Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 74–75). In most Latin cities freedmen were not permitted to hold any of the major magistracies in the civic administration. Other cities may have had too many eligible males and so would add other impediments to taking up the magistracies. This left freedmen and some freeborn males out of the competition for civic status and authority, and it deprived municipalities of the financial resources that wealthy benefactors could provide as part of holding public office (Gradel, Emperor Worship, 230). Membership did not involve the holding of priestly office for the provincial or municipal imperial cult. These offices are noted by the title of flamen or pontifex. The Augustales should be distinguished from the college of the Sodales Augustales, which was formed in 14 CE for the worship of Divus Augustus (Gradel, Emperor Worship, 181). They were involved in emperor worship, but this seems to have been at the unofficial level. 60. Laird’s description of the result is apt: “What is extraordinary is that the Augustales, a ‘quintessentially’ Roman organization, built ex novo a monument that ‘deliberately masqueraded as a Greek one,’ that not only paid homage to the city’s Greek past but Romanized it with an imperial statue” (Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 108). Laird is quoting from Williams and Zervos, “Corinth, 1986: Temple E and East of the Theater,” 34–35, who are speaking of the Glauke Fountain. On the benches, see Scranton, Monuments in the Lower Agora, 142, and Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 95–97. On the base, see Laird, “Emperor in a Roman Town,” 97–110. 61. As Woolf notes, “The effects of Roman expansion were not limited to recruiting new members to a more complex society. Roman expansion also resulted in a complexification of Roman society itself” (Woolf, “Beyond Romans and Natives,” 345). This “complexification” is the result of colonial expansion that transforms both the new territories acquired by the empire and the imperial center. The result is that “Roman power in fact created new kinds of difference, between social classes, between regions and between individuals” (ibid., 347). New provincial elites were thus not assimilated to a unified “Roman” culture, but participated in the production of a new “Roman” social order, which included both conqueror and conquered. Therefore, “rather than conflict, competition or interaction between two cultures, we have to do with the

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creation of a new imperial culture that supplanted earlier Roman cultures just as much as it did the earlier cultures of indigenous peoples” (ibid., 341). 62. Within bilingual environments, this is often the case. As Wallace-Hadrill notes, “There exists a power-relationship between languages that is determined by social and historical context: frequently one is the language of dominant power, one of subjection” (Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 63). In looking at the evidence for Corinthian bilingualism, I have been aided by linguistic theories on code switching. Monica Heller defines code switching thus: “I take codeswitching as a means of calling into play specific forms of linguistic and cultural knowledge, forms which conventionally possess certain kinds of value. That value is linked to the extent to which those forms facilitate access to situations where other kinds of symbolic or material resources are distributed, resources which themselves have value based in the prevailing modes of organisation of social life in the community (and who controls them)” (Heller, “The Politics of Codeswitching,” 124). She takes “codeswitching as a point of entry into the exploration of processes whereby dominant groups use conventions of language choice to maintain relations of power, while subordinate groups may (at times simultaneously) acquiesce to or resist them, and may even exploit conventions of language choice to redefine them” (Heller, “The Politics of Codeswitching,” 126). Wallace-Hadrill’s discussion of code switching generally operates from the perspective of Roman elites who choose to code-switch into Greek (Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 63–64). Elite Roman authors, such as Cicero, had the luxury of choosing to inflect their speech in various contexts, though even these were policed by their peers in the agonistic competition of social life: “The key to success is knowledge of the social contexts that demand or permit the change of language. In Syracuse in the gymnasium, or Naples, or your private hortus or peristyle, go Greek; but woe betide if you let your cre¯pides show in the senate” (Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 64). I am more interested in the opposite phenomenon, namely, provincial, Greek-speaking Roman citizens inflecting themselves in Latin. 63. Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 116. The inscription was first reported in Mitsos, “Inscriptions of the Eastern Peloponnesus,” 77. The dating of the inscription is up for debate; Mitsos favors the first century BCE/CE and Kent the mid-second century CE. See further Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 25n38. As Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 25, notes, the choice of Latin as a means of display on funerary monuments may function as an indicator of the family’s success within the Roman system: “The use of Latin was a mark of status and could be used to denote one’s social level within the community or the group with which one wished to be identified.” 64. Also from the pool of funerary inscriptions come two bilingual inscriptions. The first (Meritt no. 130) is a beautifully cut stele of white marble (.67 × .57 m). The names of the deceased are written at the top in Latin, and an epigram is written below in Greek. Meritt describes the epigram thus: “The Greek is cast into three elegiac couplets of Doric style” (Meritt, Greek Inscriptions, 1896–1927, 89). The deceased clearly wanted to present themselves as both Romans (hence the Latin used for their names) and learned in Greek. A different kind of bilingual inscription is Kent no. 342. Inscribed on a fragment of an Ionic epistyle block made of poros stone, it has a fragmentary line

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of Latin above a fragmentary line of Greek. Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 25n39, suggests it may be a Roman funerary inscription with a translation into Greek. Kent has restored part of the Greek to read [φα]μιλίαι, which would correspond to a transliteration of the Latin. Thus, the inscription was probably written in Latin but then translated, some Latin words being transliterated, into Greek. As is the case with the other examples, this suggests both an attempt on the part of the deceased to present a dual identity and an expectation on his part of a bilingual or multilingual “audience.” A parallel example may be West no. 152: a fragmentary marble slab with the letters ΛIBEPT. West suggests that a Greek workman inadvertently added a lambda and rho while writing the Latin word liberti. Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 25n40, thinks it more likely that the inscription was actually in Greek but contained transliterated Latin. We also find another example of a Latin inscription with Greek letters added in Kent no. 310. Wiseman has noted what he calls a “nonsense” inscription, where Latin and Greek letters are mixed together in an inscription with no discernible words (Wiseman, “The Gymnasium Area at Corinth, 1969–1970,” 40–41, no. 29 [I-70-13]). This kind of linguistic switching was not uncommon in bilingual environments. On Delos the Italian negotiatores occasionally made use of Greek grammatical forms in their inscriptions. One example of this trend is the adoption by the Italici of the Greek practice of referring to the honorand of an inscription in the accusative. In Greek inscriptions it is common to place the name of the honorand in the accusative case, and the implied verb is one of honoring. In Latin inscriptions the honorand is named in the dative with a different verb implied or used (such as the common fecit or posuit) (Adams, “Bilingualism at Delos,” 115). At Delos all the honorific inscriptions associated with the Italici employ the accusative for the honorand (ibid., 116). This suggests a Greek influence on the Italians, who have clearly accommodated their linguistic tendencies to their Greek neighbors. The accusative of the honorand is employed consistently by other Italians in Greek-speaking cities, which suggests that “there is a convention deliberately adopted by the Italici at work here” (ibid.). That we find similar interaction between Greek and Latin inscriptional practices at Corinth suggests that “a significant percentage of the population was capable of drawing upon both Greek and Roman traditions and of effecting a combination of the two” (Millis, “Social and Ethnic Origins,” 25). 65. Hupfloher, “A Small Copy of Rome?” 156–57. The term theocolus also occurs in Kent nos. 203 and 207. In the former it is unclear which deity the term is associated with, whereas in the latter the term is associated with Cronus. In cases where the larger cursus of the honorand is discernible, the holder of the office has also held other prominent offices, both civic and religious, which suggests that this was not a minor priestly office (ibid., 158). 66. Kent, The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, 87. We may have evidence for the inclusion of another Greek office in the Corinthian administrative system in West no. 104a. The unnamed recipient of this inscription is listed as a duovir, a quatorvir, a priest of Saturn, and an argyrotamias. As West noted, this is a transliterated Greek term used to describe an office that was common in Greek and Latin cities in the second century. In his study of Athens after Sulla, Geagan, “The Athenian Constitution after Sulla,”

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67. 68.

69.

70.

71.

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Notes to Pages 72–73 121–22, showed that the office could involve the management of public money lent at interest. In this case it was to be associated with the office of the curator Kalendarii, a common office in the Roman west. The curator Kalendarii could also be appointed by the local senate to manage private donations given to cities, which happened with greater regularity beginning at the end of the first century CE (Duncan-Jones, “Epigraphic Survey of Costs in Roman Italy,” 206). Purcell, “The Apparitores,” 165, notes that the office was often given to former apparitores, a class of mid-level administrators who served as attendants to civic and imperial magistrates. They formed a small but influential class below the knights. The use of the term argyrotamias in a Latin inscription is another example of a Greek term used to describe an office that could just as easily have been labeled with an available and common Latin word. Whether the office of the argyrotamias was installed at Corinth is a different question, since we do not have enough of the inscription to determine if the honorand served this function in Corinth. The inclusion of the office of quatorvir, which is not otherwise attested at Corinth, suggests that this person may have served a number of functions in another city. Kent was able to find a join unavailable to West, who published the first four fragments of this inscription as his no. 95. One example of this comes from the Roman colony at Antioch, which possessed the standard offices of Roman administration but also included the unique offices of grammateus and curator arcae sanctuarii (Levick, Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor, 74, 85). Thomas, “Greek Heritage in Roman Corinth and Ephesos,” 119–23. Thomas focuses particularly on the Demeter sanctuary, which has been at the center of a number of important studies on changes in Corinthian religion: Bookidis and Stroud, The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore; Økland, Women in Their Place; Bookidis, “Religion in Corinth”; Spaeth, The Roman Goddess Ceres; Økland, “Ceres, Κόρη, and Cultural Complexity.” What continuity exists in cultic practice between the sack of Corinth and its colonization may have come from local knowledge among the inhabitants who dwelt in Corinth during this interim period. Wiseman, “Corinth and Rome I,” 493–96, argues that there were inhabitants in the city during this period who may have been descended from the Greek citizens. Gebhard, “Rites for Melikertes-Palaimon,” 172, supports this view but also suggests that Italian businessmen (negotiatores) who had trading interests in Corinth passed information on to the new inhabitants. Gebhard, “Rites for Melikertes-Palaimon,” 189–203. See further Koester, “Melikertes at Isthmia.” For more on Isthmia and the mixing of Greek and Roman in Corinth, see König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 148–53. DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 43–44, further notes the disappearance of water rituals in the transition from Greek to Roman Corinth. See Wallace-Hadrill’s extensive discussion of Italian towns in Rome’s Cultural Revolution, 73–143. The triangulation of identities at Pompeii and other colonies in Italy is different from what we find in Corinth. Since Corinth was destroyed and then rebuilt with a new population, there was not the continuity that we might find in Pompeii, where colonial status was imparted to an already existing polity. By our period, the local mythological and historical events associated with Corinth would have belonged

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to the city’s Greek past and would represent part of the Greek identity of the city. The production of local identity would emerge out of the interaction between Greek and Roman influences. On colonies as “mini-Romes,” see, for example, Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome, 1:331, who qualify this statement by noting that in practice the “coloniae imitated their own image (or conflicting images) of the religious institutions of the capital.” 72. In regard to the last, though the priesthoods of Juppiter Capitolinus and Janus and the offices associated with the Isthmian Games would have been open only to elite Corinthians, nonelite Corinthians would have experienced these cults and festivals as part of the religious life of the city. As for Paul, one must also entertain the possibility that he would not have been able to write in Latin were he to be presented with such an opportunity. Numerous references to Roman spectacle in 1 and 2 Corinthians (e.g., 2 Cor 4:8–13) suggest that Paul was very much aware of the practices associated with Roman forms of spectacle entertainment, even if he did not necessarily speak Latin.

3. Speech, Flattery, and the Negotiation of Identity for “Some” Corinthians 1. On the inscription, its reconstruction, and the historical context that it describes, see Sosin, “Tyrian Stationarii at Puteoli.” I have benefited greatly from conversations with Josh Sosin about the inscription, though any errors in interpretation are my own. See also Harland, Dynamics of Identity, 115–16. Two major issues with the inscription remain unresolved. First, why would the merchants go to the trouble to send a formal embassy to Tyre just to acquire a 250-denarii grant? The cost of the voyage alone would have been almost double the amount that was requested. The trip from Rome to Tyre would have taken about eighteen days, covered 3,000 kms, and cost about 477 denarii each way. (Travel cost, length, and time were calculated using Walter Scheidel and Elijah Meeks, Orbis: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World.) Why go to all the trouble for such a small amount of money? Second, what is the legal framework that is in place that would give the Tyrian assembly authority to open, close, or merge associations of Tyrian merchants in other cities? 2. Agamben, The Time That Remains, 40. 3. Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 204. In this work Castelli pursues a course that reads against the grain of the text and across its rhetoric. It seems as though such an approach would not allow the text to speak for itself; however, she also recognizes, as I do, that such readings can be useful because they are disruptive: “If power circulates and infuses relationships within communities, it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. To subject it to scholarly specular intervention is to disrupt its course, to arrest its movement, to reify and objectify what might be better understood as a quality, a resonance, or a value (in the sense that color qualifies, has tone and value)” (ibid., 200). 4. J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Redescribing Paul. On the various options for comparative models of early Christian communities, see the classic discussion in Meeks, The First Urban Christians. For an approach that sees these options not as direct mod-

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6.

7.

8.

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Notes to Pages 77–78 els for imitation but as sites for comparison of practices, see Kloppenborg, “GrecoRoman Thiasoi,” 187–205. On associations based on geographic and ethnic origins, see Harland, Dynamics of Identity, 99–142. Harland, “Pausing at the Intersection of Religion and Travel,” 4–23, offers a number of reasons people might travel from one place to another in the ancient world: honoring the gods, promoting a deity or way of life, encountering foreign cultures, migrating, making a living. Paul uses this phrase in the Corinthian correspondence when addressing the Corinthians as a community and speaking of his previous stays in or plans to travel to Corinth (1 Cor 4:18–19, 21; 14:6; 16:5–7, 12; 2 Cor 1:15–16; 2:1; 3:1; 6:11; 7:4, 12; 8:17; 11:9; 12:14, 17, 21; 13:1). In his letter to the Romans, Paul uses the phrase to address a community of Jesus’ followers that already exists (Rom 1:10, 13; 15:22–23, 29). Paul does not use the phrase to describe his first arrival and preaching in a city, except in the case of Thessaloniki (1 Thess 1:9; 2:1–2), where it has been plausibly argued that the ekkle¯sia there had a previous life as a voluntary association of craft workers (Ascough, “The Thessalonian Christian Community”; Ascough, Paul’s Macedonian Associations; Ascough, “Of Memories and Meals.” See, for example, the opinion of Mack, “Rereading the Christ Myth,” 51–52. See also Stowers, “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power.” On the porous boundaries between the Corinthians and Corinth, see Barclay, “Thessalonica and Corinth,” and Walters, “Civic Identity in Roman Corinth.” Quote from Mack, “Rereading the Christ Myth,” 52. Arnal, “Bringing Paul and the Corinthians Together.” Paul’s own assertions that he was the father and foundation builder of the community (1 Cor 3:6, 10; 4:15; 2 Cor 10:14) need not be read as reflecting the formation of a church out of nothing, which is the model that is often assumed for Paul’s missionary activity. In each case, Paul can be read as merely asserting that it was he who brought the cult of Jesus to the Corinthians, not that he founded their group. One can see the problem even in the fictional account of Paul’s “founding” of the community in Acts 18. On Luke’s telling, Paul arrives in Corinth, draws on his ethnic and occupational commonalities with Prisca and Aquila to obtain lodging and a social network and then proceeds to preach first to those Greeks and Judeans in the local synagogue. After he meets opposition, Paul moves with a core group of followers from the synagogue to the house of Crispus next door and sets up a rival organization. The point here is not to defend or attack the historicity of this account, but to note that even in Luke’s version Paul begins his work in Corinth not as a missionary building a church from scratch but as part of a larger social network that includes ethnic affiliations, common occupations, and cultic organizations that predate his arrival in the city. Regardless of whether my reading of the prehistory of the Corinthian community is persuasive, this still should not obscure the fact that the Corinthians with whom Paul worked and to whom he wrote would have had their own interests, agency, and ideas, some of which may have differed from Paul’s. J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Relating Religion, 348–50. Smith thinks that the Corinthians may have connected the language of Spirit that Paul so often invokes to their indigenous practice of honoring the cult of deceased ancestors.

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10. These splits and reformations of ethnic identities might be approximated to what Kapchan and Strong, “Theorizing the Hybrid,” 243, call hybrid genres. The term refers to the hybridity that “is effected whenever two or more historically separate realms come together in any degree that challenges their socially constructed autonomy.” See the similar bisecting of the two terms in Agamben, The Time That Remains, 51. The technical term κλητός (“called” or “invited”) plays a crucial role in Paul’s ethnic rhetoric by splitting the binary of Ἰουδαίοι and ἔθνη/Ἕλλην. Paul applies the term to himself in 1 Cor 1:1, as he does in Rom 1:1. The term is also applied to Paul’s audience in both letters, where each is “called to be saints” (κλητοῖς ἁγίοις [1 Cor 1:2; Rom 1:7]). Paul uses the term a third time in the opening address to the Romans, referring to has audience as those who are “called or invited as belonging to Jesus Christ” (κλητοὶ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ [Rom 1:6]). In each case the term refers to one who has been called or invited to a new identity “in Christ” (ἐν Χριστῷ [1 Cor 1:2, 4, 30; 3:1; 4:10, 15, 17; 15:18–19, 31; 16:24; 2 Cor 2:17; 3:14; 5:17, 19; 12:2, 19]). Because of Paul’s frequent association of Christ with the term κύριος (“Lord”), we would be justified to add still more examples of this phrase as a marker of group identity: 1 Cor 1:31; 4:17; 7:22, 39; 9:1–2; 11:11; 15:58; 16:19; 2 Cor 2:12; 10:17. It is this phrase that is used to express the identity of those who are “in” for Paul, and those who find themselves “in” possess this identity by virtue of being invited. The phrase is surprisingly versatile. It can refer to one’s identity (1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 5:17), one’s mode of life (1 Cor 1:30), Paul’s teaching (1 Cor 4:17), the place from which one who is inside can speak (1 Cor 15:31; 2 Cor 2:17; 12:19), a hermeneutic for reading scripture (2 Cor 3:14), and a position from which the God of Israel acts in the world (2 Cor 5:19). It is also interesting that, in the New Testament, the phrase is restricted to those texts that are written by Paul or that might be justly called Pauline. The phrase occurs in Romans (13 times), 1 Corinthians (11 times), 2 Corinthians (6 times), Galatians (6 times), Philippians (10 times), 1 Thessalonians (3 times), Philemon (3 times), Ephesians (9 times), Colossians (3 times), 1 Timothy (2 times), 2 Timothy (7 times), and 1 Peter (3 times). Both the world (κόσμος) and the community of the called (κλητοῖ) are said to be made up of Judeans and Greeks. “World” (κόσμος) is used 24 times in the Corinthian correspondence. In the case of the passage at hand, it functions as an oppositional category in the immediate context, used 4 times in 1 Cor 1:20–21, 27–28. 11. For more on how the calling of God does not erase ethnic difference, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 137–48. Johnson Hodge’s discussion deals primarily with the recurrent theme in Romans: “to the Judean first and also to the Greek” (Ἰουδαίῳ τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλληνι [Rom 1:16; 2:9, 10]). Though I may be in danger of importing a phrasing used in Romans to my reading of 1 Corinthians, I think that Paul’s comparison of Judean and Greek in 1 Cor 1:22–24 does not simply negate the existence of ethnic differences. Rather, they remain; those who are now “called” are called as Judeans and Greeks. They may have a new identity, but this is layered on (or splits open) their previous ethnic identities. This does not necessarily mean that there were Judeans in the Corinthian ekkle¯sia. I think it likely that there were not large numbers of Judeans, though it is entirely possible that some Corinthians identified as Judean. It may even have been the case

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that some “Gentile” Corinthians had come to identify themselves as Judean, in opposition to what most Judeans themselves would have thought. As will become clear in part 2, Judeanness became an issue under discussion in Corinth, particularly in the appropriation of the history of Israel by Paul, the “super-apostles,” and the Corinthians themselves for their own identity-making purposes. In general, my resistance to thinking that there was a sizable number of Judeans among the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote is based on Paul’s address in 1 Cor 12:2, in which he speaks of his audience as those who used to be Gentiles (ἔθνη). This is not exactly a phrase that would be applicable to Judeans. One can see this in other places, for example, when Paul refers to the people of Israel as a group distinct from Paul’s audience (1 Cor 10:18; 2 Cor 3:12–16). The account of Paul’s mission to Corinth in Acts 18 suggests that Paul’s initial work in Corinth was facilitated by the Judeans Prisca and Aquila, recently exiled from Rome, and carried out in the local synagogue, from which Paul gains Crispus, an archisynagogos, as a follower and patron. Though the Acts account does not suggest that the Corinthian community was made up of a large number of Judeans, I question whether it reflects accurately the early history of the community itself. Paul’s work in Corinth in Acts 18 follows a series of tropes that occur throughout the narrative, which gives the impression that much of the narrative was created by Luke to resemble conditions in the Corinth of his own day. On these tropes, see Wills, “The Depiction of the Jews in Acts.” By Luke’s day there would most likely have been a synagogue in Corinth, owing to the influx of Judean slaves sent to work on a canal across the isthmus in the wake of the failed Jewish War (Josephus Jewish War 3.359–40). 12. Paul uses ἐκκλησία thirty-one times in the Corinthian correspondence. The phrase ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ occurs in the opening address of 1 and 2 Corinthians (1:2; 1:1, respectively). The particular phrasing of the address (“to the assembly of God which is in Corinth” [τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Κορίνθῳ]) is interesting for several reasons. The phrasing suggests that Paul conceptualizes the Corinthian ekkle¯sia as part of a larger whole, since it is distinguished by its location. One can also see this sense in 1 Cor 11:16, where the plural suggests that there are multiple “assemblies of God,” of which the Corinthians are just one. Taken with 1 Cor 11:22 and 15:9, which speak of the assembly of God as a singular entity with no geographic modifier, this suggests that Paul envisioned something like a broader, translocal entity called the assembly of God, of which local assemblies were a part. But this does not necessarily suggest that there would have been a single assembly in Corinth. Rom 16:1 suggests that there was an assembly at nearby Kenchreai, of which Phoebe was a deacon. Paul also speaks in a broader geographic shorthand, as when he refers to the assemblies in Achaia simply as Achaia (Ἀχαΐα [2 Cor 9:2]). By the term fluidity I am making use of the insight of Buell, who argues that ethnicity was a useful rhetorical tool in early Christian self-definition. She shows how a number of authors play with the fixity and fluidity of ethnic rhetoric to position themselves and their communities as superior to other groups, whether they be Romans, Greeks, Jews, or other Christians. For Buell ethnic rhetoric, which she calls “ethnic reason-

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15.

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ing,” plays with the fixity and fluidity of identity. Claims to fixity, to an identity that is rooted in blood, descent, or history, “imbue ethnoracial identities with a sense of stability, essence and longevity” (Why This New Race, 40). Buell emphasizes that these claims are just that: claims to an unchanging and stable identity that are deployed for particular rhetorical goals. Intertwined with arguments for the fixity of identity, ethnic identity can also be defined by its malleability and fluidity, using markers that focus on common purpose, language, education, way of life, or religious practice (ibid., 41). These two discourses, of fixity and fluidity, are the poles around which ethnic identity is discursively constructed. Buell’s approach to early Christian self-definition sees ethnicity as a rhetorical claim that is constructed through a shifting set of discursive boundary markers that play on the fixity and fluidity of identity. For a recent study that applies Buell’s work to Eusebius, see A. Johnson, Ethnicity and Argument. ἀδελφ-based words are used fifty-three times in the Corinthian correspondence. Dougherty, “Archaic Greek Foundation Poetry,” charts the use of ktisis as a topos in Archaic and Hellenistic poetry. For a typical example of κτίσις interpreted as a transformed inner self, see Wendland, Die Briefe an die Korinther, 206. Stowers, “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power,” 125, notes: “Paul is engaged in a complex and highly negotiable practice of making distinctions by ethnic-religious mythmaking. In his rhetoric, the Corinthians are not Gentiles, but were Gentiles who are importantly different from Gentiles and who are now related to Jews, but are importantly different from them.” It has long been recognized that Paul is critical of what has been called the Corinthians’ “Wisdom Theology.” On this see Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 14–15; Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 55–62; Koester, Paul and His World, 80–86. For an interpretation that seeks an empathetic reading of wisdom in Corinth, see Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets. The term signs (σημεῖα) does not appear often in the Corinthian correspondence. In 1 Cor 14:22 the singular σημεῖον is used to describe speaking in tongues. In this context Paul uses the term to define the proper audience for such behavior, namely, those who are unbelievers. He is trying to convince the Corinthians to see speaking in tongues as a practice that can be used to impress unbelievers and thereby lead to their affiliation with the Christ cult, but not as a means of differentiating status within the group. This is not to say that Paul does not himself make recourse to the categories of wisdom and signs. Though Paul is critical of Corinthian wisdom, he does not reject the term wholesale; rather, he reframes it in relation to the crucifixion of Christ. It is the crucifixion that is the true manifestation of the wisdom of God in contrast to the wisdom of humanity (1 Cor 1:24–25; 2:6–10). Similarly, Paul does not reject the possibility of using signs as criteria for recognizing divine authority. In 2 Cor 12:12 Paul speaks of how the signs of an apostle (τὰ σημεῖα τοῦ ἀποστόλου) were manifested by him among the Corinthians. This underscores the broader point about Paul’s flexible rhetoric; namely, that it allows him to address new rhetorical contexts and shape specific arguments for those situations. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 106–7, notes Paul’s rejection and use of these terms.

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18.

19.

20. 21. 22.

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Notes to Pages 80–82 On Judeans who seek signs, see Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 46n75; Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 1:183. On Greeks and wisdom in connection to philosophy, see Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 106. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 89–90, notes how Paul’s recourse to the language of “calling” seeks to combat diversity or factionalism with the rhetoric of unity. She argues that Paul saw the ethnic diversity of the community as a threat to unity, much like the various factions mentioned in 1 Cor 1:10. I do not follow Mitchell in seeing conflict within the community between ethnic groups, but her focus on the ways in which Paul seeks to create boundary lines around the community through the language of calling is important. This is an example of how the invocation of a term for the group can be used rhetorically to undergird a political argument about community practice. J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Relating Religion, 347. Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 210–11, suggests something of the shifting multiplicities I am conjuring by noting that the Corinthians do not seem to share Paul’s concerns about pollution and infection of the body: for the Corinthians “bodies are not transformed by interactions with others, in this view, perhaps because the body is not seen as an empty vessel, but as a site of knowledge; bodily meanings are not unstable and precarious in this view.” J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Relating Religion, 350. For an approach that focuses on the dead, particularly in relation to the baptism of the dead that took place among the Corinthian community (1 Cor 15:29), see DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 57–71. DeMaris argues that there may have been a number of intimate connections between local Corinthian devotion to the dead and the underworld that gave rise to the Corinthian ekkle¯sia engaging in baptismal rituals that also included the dead. DeMaris at times proposes that Paul may have shaped his own baptismal language to appeal to a Corinthian audience familiar with chthonic rituals, but he does not suggest whether the Corinthians or Paul initiated or approved of the baptism of the dead. What I find interesting about Smith’s reading of the Corinthian situation is the possibility that the Corinthians and Paul may have been operating on different wavelengths. DeMaris’s work is an important example of thinking about how the Corinthian environment gave rise to particular practices among the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote, but it remains for us to think further about how these practices may have relied on or resisted Paul’s rhetoric and teachings. Mack, “Rereading the Christ Myth,” 52. J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Relating Religion, 347. That the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote interacted with the lived environment in Corinth has long been noted in secondary scholarship. Of most interest to my thinking here is the work of Walters, “Civic Identity in Roman Corinth,” following in many respects Barclay, “Thessalonica and Corinth.” Walters notes that in 1 Corinthians Paul seems concerned with erecting social and cultic boundaries around the Corinthian ekkle¯sia. This is in contrast to Paul’s attitude in 1 Thessalonians, which seems to presume a community that is experiencing persecution from its neighbors.

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23. Knowledge here “is not merely a formal capacity that can concern itself with manifold objects (knowledge of the laws of nature, for example, or of moral laws). It has a specific content: εἷς θεός, ‘[there is] one God,’ along with the conclusion: accordingly the gods are nonexistent” (Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 140). On elements of what may have been the self-understanding and theology of the Corinthians, see Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 110–13. 24. Phua, Idolatry and Authority, 125. On the Stoic parallel here, see Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 149–50. On the background of the Corinthian slogans in popular philosophy, see Martin, The Corinthian Body, 70–73; Paige, “Stoicism, Ἐλευθερία and Community,” 214–15. 25. Take, for example, what Paul writes in Galatians: “Siblings, become as I have, I beg you, just as I have become as you” (γίνεσθε ὡς ἐγώ, ὅτι κἀγὼ ὡς ὑμεῖς, ἀδελφοί, δέομαι ὑμῶν [4:21]). In this section of Galatians, Paul is concerned both with his Gentile audience’s interest in circumcision and with their return to observing festivals and special days, practices that marked their former life (4:9–11). Paul here explicitly asks his Galatian audience to become as he is, a call to direct imitation of Paul’s behavior. In the context of the disputes in Galatia, Paul is invoking his boundary-crossing self as emblematic of his position with regard to Gentile inclusion: Gentiles should be included as Gentiles and not as proselytes who must go through the ritual of circumcision (Nanos, The Irony of Galatians, 88n12). The call there is to take Paul’s side in a debate, whereas in 1 Cor 9:19–27 Paul uses his malleable body as an indirect example to his audience: just as I do this, so you should (analogously) do that. It is unclear to me how we should take the phrase ἔννομος Χριστοῦ. Fitzmyer explores several options, concluding that “love” is the law of Christ in which Paul places himself (Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 371). Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 161n27, takes the phrase to mean “obliged to be obedient to Christ.” Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 100, memorably calls the phrase “virtually untranslatable.” 26. Quoted in Macarius Magnes, Apocriticus, 3.31. See the edition of Harnack, Kritik des Neuen Testaments. Harnack originally proposed that Macarius’s textual interlocutor was Porphyry. There has been a vigorous scholarly debate about Harnack’s claim. For a summary of the issues and a brief bibliography, see Hoffman’s translation of Porphyry, Porphyry’s Against the Christians, 21–23. Since he is writing at a much later period, the Hellene knows of the claim in Acts that Paul is a Roman citizen (22:25–29), which is why he contrasts Roman and Judean here. Paul never uses the term Roman in his correspondence. 27. Given, Paul’s True Rhetoric, 111; Agamben, The Time That Remains, 37. 28. “The flatterer has only his personal advantage in view. In an attempt to secure his advantage he consents to everything, praises indiscriminately, speaks in order to please, and is charming, affable, and witty. In rendering his services he accommodates himself to those he flatters. . . . The flatterer’s all-assenting behavior, his speaking in order to please, his indiscriminate praise as well as servility, are all variations of adaptability” (Glad, Paul and Philodemus, 23, 28). The flatterer is willing to change his mode of speech, his behavior, his stated preferences, and his philosophical positions in play-

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ing the part of the patron’s “friend.” Plutarch and others also mention the “friend of many,” a figure who was similar to the flatterer: “The friendship of a freeborn is that of ‘like manners,’ but a flatterer associates with persons of different manners; he can associate with all and imitates even the base in all things. . . . The friend of many . . . like the flatterer . . . assumes different σχήματα as he adapts himself to the pursuits and lives of others” (ibid., 29). The negative evaluation of adaptability trades on concerns about constancy and trustworthiness, on the relationship between what a person says and what he thinks and does. Beyond mere duplicity, Paul was also open to being charged with a lack of proper discrimination regarding association. Association was an act with social consequences. Whom you ate with and whom you spent time with were seen as markers of social status. Among elite writers such as Seneca and Plutarch, these concerns took the form of treatises discussing the extent to which one could enter into relationships with others; they bear titles such as On the Dangers of Association with Our Fellow Men (Seneca) and On Having Many Friends (Plutarch). Association without discrimination could have a detrimental effect on the general character of the philosopher (Epictetus Discourses 3.16.1–2, cited in Glad, “Paul and Adaptability,” 24). 29. Given, Paul’s True Rhetoric, 111. Friends and flatterers were two sides of the same coin within the social matrix of patronage: “In the social matrix of patronage, the practices of friends and flatterers converge. . . . Friends and flatterers were . . . lumped together by some because of their similar behavior—both were accommodating, affable, and pleasant—while others attempted to distinguish the two. This reflects a social matrix of patronage where the practices of ‘friends’ and ‘flatterers’ were similar. The flatterer was the client of a rich and powerful patron, and, one should add, more often than not a valued member of the entourage of the rich. As such his position was not different from that of poets, philosophers, astrologers, social climbers, and other ‘friends’ who attached themselves to the houses of the rich” (Glad, Paul and Philodemus, 31–32). It was no doubt the case that actual clients of powerful patrons felt differently about the extent to which they accommodated their behavior. Not all may have styled themselves as “true friends,” but certainly most fell short of being flatterers and sycophants. Slaves and freedmen certainly did not have much of a choice in their relations with their masters or patrons. The freedman generally owed his economic livelihood to his patron and was no doubt expected to play a role somewhere between those of the slave and an educated courtesan. His need to maintain a beneficial relationship with his patron would no doubt have left him open to the charge of flattery, but when economic and social survival was at stake it is difficult to find fault. That slaves and freedmen were part of the entourage of a powerful patron no doubt also pushed those with pretensions to membership in the elite to develop the charge of flattery and its related epithets. One way that ancient authors sought to distinguish between friends and flatterers was through the distinction between pleasure and pain: the flatterer, unwilling to speak a harsh word of truth to a patron, brought only pleasure, whereas the true friend spoke the truth frankly (παρρησία), often speaking with harshness out of love and fidelity (Glad, Paul and Philodemus, 33–36). To claim the ability to discern the good from

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30. 31.

32.

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35.

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the bad or the flatterer from the friend was to make an argument for distinguishing one’s trustworthiness from among the scores of clients who attended on a wealthy and powerful patron. The charge of being a flatterer was leveled horizontally, by those who stood to gain from another client’s downfall, within the agonistic matrix of the patronage system. Given, Paul’s True Rhetoric, 116–17. Chadwick, “ ‘All Things to All Men,’ ” 262, suggests a similar reading. He notes that the charge of flattery was also leveled at Paul by his opponents in Galatia (Gal 5:10–12). There it was suggested that Paul had changed his preaching regarding circumcision. It is important to note that some have read Paul’s potential flattery as part of a larger pedagogical or rhetorical scheme. Glad, Paul and Philodemus, has argued that Paul works from a form of psychagogy in which he condescends to the level of his “students” to meet them where they are, a view shared also by Mitchell, “Pauline Accommodation,” who notes the connections with theological images of divine condescension. Johnson Hodge, “Apostle to the Gentiles,” largely follows Glad, but she places Paul’s adaptable self within modern anthropological discussions of how individuals possess malleable hierarchies of identities. Martin, The Corinthian Body, paints Paul’s rhetorical strategy as one in which he repeatedly sides with the “weak,” here categorized as the poorer, less educated members of the community, against the “strong.” Each of these attempts offers an interesting set of readings that get Paul out of the problem of his perception in Corinth. Though I accept the possibility that there was a coherent strategy in Paul’s rhetorical dealings with the Corinthians, my focus is on Corinthian perceptions of Paul and the way those have shaped Paul’s own rhetoric. In this sense, I have made the case that Paul was continually in need of a defense from Corinthian concerns about his integrity and honesty. On Paul’s beaten body, see Glancy, “Boasting of Beatings.” For more on flatterers and the perception of Paul as a flatterer, see Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 70–90, 281–324. In an insightful comment, Chadwick, “ ‘All Things to All Men,’ ” 263, suggests that Paul was sensitive to his portrayal as a flatterer “because it fitted in with the total picture of himself as his opponents were painting him, and because in that picture there was some element of truth.” On Paul’s speech problem, see Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 47–62, 135–58, and Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament, 35–57. Harrill argues that Paul’s attack on the charges against his speech works to Paul’s own rhetorical advantage, working within a Cynic-Socratic tradition that resists common physiognomic rhetorical attacks. Another proposal is that of Welborn, An End to Enmity, 102–21. Welborn argues that Paul is accurately reporting the charges leveled against him and that the unnamed critic is drawing on the vocabulary of literary criticism, similar to that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Pseudo-Demetrius, and Pseudo-Longinus. Quotation from Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 215. Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 135–58, argues that the targets of Paul’s restrictions on prophetic speech are the women prophets mentioned in 1 Cor 11:5, a position also accepted by Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 211. Økland, Women in Their Place, 131–223, has argued that Paul’s rhetoric in 1 Corinthians is similarly

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36.

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Notes to Pages 89–92 directed at women in the community. In particular, she argues that Paul plays with distinctions between household and ecclesial space as a means of controlling women’s participation in the community. See, for example, Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists. Bowersock, Greek Sophists, discusses the popularity of traveling orators, who were the prima donnas of their day. On the power of Corinthian speech, see Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 206. Quotation from Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 209. On the critique of imitation language in Paul, see Castelli, Imitating Paul, 89–136. For more on the concept of power employed by Castelli, see Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1:75–132. “The Corinthian prophetic discourse, as with other contested practices, must have paid far less attention to questions of order, asserting itself through bold and powerful articulations and with a certainty that caused Paul’s own claims to authority to pale significantly” (Castelli, “Interpretations of Power in 1 Corinthians,” 215). Paul’s discomfort with speaking in tongues in the Corinthian community might also be redescribed as a mistranslation. The Corinthians, perhaps themselves recent im/ migrants to Corinth, may have imagined themselves as connecting to the ancestral spirits of their homelands, while Paul may have envisioned in the practice a bastardization of prophecy, imagining the incoherent speech of the Delphic oracle (J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Relating Religion, 350).

Introduction to Part Two 1. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 41, writes, ““If . . . we accept that view that ethnicity is not a primordial given, but is instead repeatedly and actively structured through discursive strategies, then clearly myths of ethnic origins are among the very media through which such strategies operate. They function as cognitive artefacts which both circumscribe and actively structure corporate identity.” Though I think Hall is correct to stress the importance of descent and genealogy to ethnic identity, I do not follow him in seeing these as primary criteria for an ethnic group (ibid., 19–26). Hall derives his distinction between the criteria of ethnicity and indicia of ethnicity from Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict. For a critical reading of Hall’s focus on myths of descent and genealogy, see Konstan, “Defining Ancient Greek Ethnicity.” An example of lines of continuity between past and present are claims of descent from particular ancestors (Hellen, Aeneas, Abraham), commonly used in antiquity as “a central way of communicating a sense of ethnic/racial ‘fixity,’ essence, and continuity. . . . Genealogical lists can function as a shortcut for tracing ethnoracial essence over time. Appeal to descent from particular ancestors is among the favored techniques for shaping claims to a common past” (Buell, Why This New Race, 75). 2. Lieu, Christian Identity, 62. See also Buell, Why This New Race, 69. On retelling and rebuilding, see Lieu, Christian Identity, 64. See the interesting example of the Huron Indians in Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 70–71, and Malkin, “Introduction,” 17–18.

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3. On the appearance of stability and fixity of the past and its simultaneous flexibility, see Buell, Why This New Race, 64–70. Lieu writes eloquently of the power involved in writing histories: “Remembering as well as forgetting—that is, the construction of the narrative of identity—are both acts of power and means of maintaining power; if they include, they of necessity will also exclude” (Lieu, Christian Identity, 64–65). 4. Buell, Why This New Race, 63, 64. Lieu makes a similar point, using Hobsbawm and Ranger’s theme of the “invention of tradition,” wherein a set of ritualized practices governed by generally accepted rules are deployed in times of change and turmoil to create values and behaviors by repetition, a repetition that is rooted in a continuity with the past (Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, from Lieu, Christian Identity, 70). 5. “But the past was itself contested—how one framed the past conditioned how one measured ‘Greekness,’ ‘Jewishness,’ ‘Romanness,’ etc., and the interrelations of such collective categories in the present” (Buell, Why This New Race, 64). For example, the Roman claim to descent from the Trojan hero Aeneas served a number of goals. On the one hand, it rooted the ethnic origins of the Romans in a distant, heroic, and stable past. On the other, it coordinated the origins of the Romans with existing points in the timeline of Greek history, an act that was useful for both Greeks and Romans. For more on the process of synchronizing Roman and Greek history, see Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 7–137. 6. Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World, 90–91. Alcock, Graecia Capta, 224–27. 7. This antiquarian sensibility had its origins in the Hellenistic period and the instability that was introduced to Greece at that time. We can see this, for example, in the creation of local cults to Homeric heroes by cities throughout Greece (Alcock, “The Heroic Past in a Hellenistic Present”). In a period in which the polis was changing in the face of larger hegemonic leagues and empires, the creation of local cults to ancient heroes provided a source for “elite legitimation, civic prestige, symbolic protection, [and] a sense of communal identity” (ibid., 34). This was not strictly limited to Greek cities. Gruen has shown how Jewish writers in the Hellenistic period sought to write themselves into Hellenistic culture (Gruen, “Fact and Fiction”; Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism). The classic study of Hadrian and Athens is Graindor, Athènes sous Hadrien. See also Boatwright, Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire, 144–57. On the importance of the Panhellenion to this process, see Nasrallah, “The Acts of the Apostles”; Oliver, Marcus Aurelius, 92–138; Oliver, “Panachaeans and Panhellenes”; Spawforth and Walker, “The World of the Panhellenion. I. Athens and Eleusis”; Spawforth and Walker, “The World of the Panhellenion. II. Three Dorian Cities.” On Sparta, see Cartledge and Spawforth, Hellenistic and Roman Sparta. 8. See Jones, Kinship Diplomacy. On the deployment of history and descent in Greek ethnic constructions, see, for example, Woolf, “Becoming Roman, Staying Greek,” 129: “Foundation stories supplied links between cities, provided foci for cult and located the city in the religious community of the Greeks, myths offering both a way of relating gods and men and a cultural vocabulary shared by all Greeks.” On the importance of the past, see Bowie, “Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic.”

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On Pausanias, see Habicht, Pausanias’ Guide; Elsner, “Pausanias: A Greek Pilgrim in the Roman World”; Alcock, Cherry, and Elsner, Pausanias. 9. “Trésors d’orfèvrerie gallo-romains,” 84–85. The cup is one of fifteen vessels discovered in the hoard. It was owned by Q. Domitius Tutus, who dedicated them to Hermes. Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 186, argues that Tutus was probably not the original owner. Of the original owner Robinson writes: “Likely, the original commissioner was a member of the class of elite Italians who fancied themselves connoisseurs of Hellenic art and culture, and would have appreciated both the cup’s mythological references and what their display implied of his erudition. Such silver services performed a dual role, holding an evening’s spirits and inspiring table-talk. The holder of this cup might have spoken of the colony at Corinth, attendant gods and heroes, its sacred games and landmarks, and perhaps personal experience; from it, he could drink from the spring of Peirene in the company of friends” (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 186–87). For an extended discussion of the imagery of the cup, see Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 185–91, on whom I have depended in my description.

4. Walking in the Wilderness 1. I view Paul’s rhetorical strategy in both cases as a form of “ethnic reasoning.” In this case, a usable past is deployed within a discourse that presumes the interconnection between ethnicity and religion. As Buell, “Rethinking the Relevance of Race,” 459, notes, “Ethnic reasoning was a valuable rhetorical strategy for early Christian authors in part because religiosity and race were already perceived as mutually constitutive in Roman period texts, institutional practices and policies.” On the co-constitution of ethnicity and religion, see ibid., 458. Buell writes, “In the conceptual landscape of the Roman world, religious practices were often deemed key indicators of ethnic or civic identity” (ibid.). 2. In his recent dissertation, Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 167, puts the problem well: “For most exegetes . . . meaning is thought of as a goal, an answer to a question, enlightenment where there was once darkness. Yet when approaching 2 Cor 3, modern discussions often do not get past the notion of meaning as a question; that is, scholars spend as much time discussing what sort of answer, what sort of meaning, we should be looking for in this section.” In my reading I am mindful of Marquis’s concern, alongside that of Hickling, “Is the Second Epistle?” 3. Take, for example, the analysis of Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 122–53, which focuses on 2 Corinthians 3. Hays is concerned with finding in this passage an insight into Paul’s hermeneutics of the new covenant. The goal here is to discern how Paul reads scripture, which is then lifted up as a way in which Hays and his readers ought to read scripture. The passage thus becomes a lesson on reading. This is a perfectly acceptable way to frame the interpretation of 2 Corinthians 3, but it is not the frame that I have chosen, precisely because such a frame keeps us from seeing the ways in which Paul deploys an ethnic rhetoric to confront a tense political situation that has developed between himself and the Corinthians.

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4. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism. See also Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 424–26. The two texts that I examine in this chapter make use of the Exodus narrative. Hickling, “Paul’s Use of Exodus,” 367–68, notes that both texts make use of events from Exod 32:1–34:35. Hickling argues that readers in antiquity would have read these chapters as a single continuous narrative, since at each end the narrative is bracketed by long expositions on the Tabernacle. 5. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 137. Indeed, 1 Cor 10:1–13 and 2 Cor 3:7–18 are the two longest engagements that Paul has with scripture in his letters (Hickling, “Paul’s Use of Exodus,” 368–69). Generally, he discusses quotations from the Hebrew scriptures only to the extent that he can make them fit as proof texts for his arguments. Of particular interest is the extent to which Jewish intellectuals in Egypt seem to have been comfortable adapting the traditions of the Exodus, even going so far as adopting local Egyptian legends that made the Jews into conquerors of Egypt who destroyed local temples and idols: “The Book of Exodus held profound meaning for Jewish identity and memory. But those Jews scattered in the Diaspora and particularly those dwelling in Egypt had strong incentive to reshape the tale. To them the reasons for escape from Egypt were less important than the justification for their return” (Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 71). 6. Artapanus lived in Ptolemaic Egypt (Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 127–32). In the fragments we have available to us, Artapanus presented Moses as a great national figure. He smoothes over embarrassing biblical traditions and highlights Moses’ miraculous powers, to the extent that he is held in divine honor. Artapanus, in a move that attempts to posit Jewish origins of Egyptian religion, even goes so far as suggesting that Moses was a crucial religious figure in the foundation of Egyptian worship of animal deities. On other adaptations of the Moses narratives, see Barclay, “Manipulating Moses,” and Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 426–28. For a discussion of Josephus’s construction of Moses, see Feldman, “Josephus’ Portrait of Moses.” For Philo, see Borgen, “Moses, Jesus, and the Roman Emperor.” On non-Jewish interpretations of Moses, see Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism. 7. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 266–67. “The invention of the συγγένεια did more than to assert bonds between Jewish and Hellenic worlds. It constituted a Jewish appropriation and transformation of the Spartan mystique to declare the primacy of the Jews” (ibid., 267). For further discussion of this and other genealogical connections, see Gruen, “Cultural Fictions and Cultural Identity,” and Gruen, “Fact and Fiction.” I discuss this text and the connections between Judeans and Spartans in more detail in chapter 6. 8. To characterize Paul and other diaspora Jewish writers this way is to recognize that there is no way to separate unique Jewish forms of thought and practice from Greek or Roman at this time, since all are participating in and constructing identity within the same cultural frame. Boyarin, A Radical Jew, 79, is thus correct to note that for Paul and other diaspora writers, “Jewgreek is Greekjew.” 9. “In appeals to the past, descent and kinship may especially connote continuity, but can also serve to explain discontinuity” (Buell, Why This New Race, 76).

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10. Ibid. This comment comes in a discussion of Paul’s use of Abraham as an ancestor in Galatians and Romans, but it is germane to the current context as well. For a more well-developed discussion of Paul’s use of genealogical connection with Abraham, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 5, 79, respectively: “Paul’s myth of gentile origins in a Jewish lineage is not a thoroughly worked-out epic story with all the details in place. Rather, it is as though we are catching him in the act of mythmaking. The result is somewhat patchwork; we find different versions of the argument, seen from various angles, throughout his correspondence”: “Paul understood kinship to be a powerful and flexible means of constructing new identities, rearranging power relationships, and associating peoples.” 11. There has been some debate over the composition history of 1 Cor 10:1–13. Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 249–50, thought that 10:1–5 was a preexisting midrash. Others think that 10:1–13 (or 14) comprises an earlier sermon, midrash, or paraenesis, written by either Paul or someone else, that is edited into the argument of 8:1–11:1. See Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 165; Meeks, “ ‘And Rose Up to Play”; Wills, “The Form of the Sermon,” 288–89; and Collier, “That We Might Not Crave Evil.” Some of the questions about 1 Corinthians 10 are bound up with debates over the compositional unity of 1 Corinthians as a whole. See, for example, Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, xxxix–xliii; Schenk, “Der 1. Korintherbrief als Briefsammlung”; Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms, 23–40; Schmithals, “Die Korintherbriefe als Briefsammlung”; Jewett, “The Redaction of 1 Corinthians”; Klauck, Herrenmahl und hellenistischer Kult; Welborn, An End to Enmity, xvi–xviii. For a summary of the arguments in favor of unity of the composition across chaps. 8 to 10, see Willis, “1 Corinthians 8–10,” 103–5; Delobel, “Coherence and Relevance of 1 Cor 8–10.. Hurd, The Origins of I Corinthians, 25–26, argues that Paul’s previous letter to Corinth (mentioned at 1 Cor 5:9, but not extant) had contained a command or encouragement that the Corinthians avoid idol food. It seems likely that the “slogans” found in 6:23; 8:1–6, 8; and 10:23 are part of a reply to Paul’s arguments sent by the Corinthians. 12. A fruitful way of thinking about the theological convictions of the Corinthians is articulated by Wire. She suggests that the γνῶσις of the God of Israel has “set them free from the subordination to multiple divine and human jurisdictions and from the fears and dissipation of energy that they entail” leaving them with the obligation to “exercise this authority fully and not abdicate it in fear of offending others” (Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 112). For a similar characterization, see Martin, The Corinthian Body, 180–81. That γνῶσις is available to all means that, for those with a weak conscience, the solution becomes instructing all in the proper knowledge of the nature of the deities and daimons. Such a position, though rooted in a radical monotheism, was not dissimilar to stances taken by the Cynics (Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 194). On similarities between the Corinthian positions and those of Demetrius the Cynic and others, see Grant, Paul in the Roman World, 45–52. It has been argued that the slogan claiming all have knowledge represents not the community as a whole, but the beliefs of a group of wealthier and better-educated Corinthians who are commonly referred to as the Strong (Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, 57, 98, 132–40). This would undercut the “democratic”

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aspect of the slogan; however, even those who argue that the distinction between the Strong and the Weak is operative here can still regard the orientation of the slogan as democratic. See, for example, Martin, The Corinthian Body, 69–76. In this case, the Strong hold a position about idols and the proper knowledge of them that the rest of the Corinthian community (the Weak) do not share, but they still believe that such knowledge is theoretically available to all. Thus, for Martin the slogan is both voiced by the educated faction of the Strong and reflective of their belief that the knowledge that they possess is available to all. As Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 253, notes, 10:14 parallels an earlier injunction by Paul to “flee porneia” (φεύγετε τὴν πορνείαν [6:18]). Here the injunction is to φεύγετε ἀπὸ τῆς εἰδωλολατρίας. Cheung, Idol Food in Corinth, 113–14, notes the structural parallels between Paul’s arguments in 10:14–22 and 6:12–20. But Paul also seems to agree with the opposite position, that there is something dangerous about idols and their meat, after all (10:14, 21–22). He associates the danger not with opposing divinities but with demons (10:20). Ultimately, Paul wants to show himself to be the possessor of a sophisticated monotheism, while still avoiding practices associated with idolatry. Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 194, rightly notes that it would not have been strange for a first-century Jew both to see idols as essentially meaningless and to think it inconceivable to participate in their cults. Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 98–99, argues that Paul’s rhetoric in 8:1–13 is dissociative: namely, these arguments try to dissociate the positions of the Corinthians “from a thorough-going monotheism by preferring what is loving and practical.” On Paul’s tendency to accept the positions of his opponents as a strategy in his argumentation, see Chadwick, “ ‘All Things to All Men,’ ” 263–70. In 1 Cor 10:1–13 Paul offers a selective retelling of the events of the wilderness in two parts (1 Cor 10:1–4 and 10:5–11), with a concluding summary (1 Cor 10:12–13). Paul’s argument assumes that his audience is familiar with a good deal of the wilderness narrative, which allows Paul to allude to, without explaining, a number of events in the narrative. Stanley, Arguing with Scripture, 75–78, 83–90, has shown how Paul’s argument relies on an assumption that most of the people in his Corinthian audience were familiar with at least some of the details of the Exodus narrative. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 165, noted this, suggesting that “the new element which Paul has to offer is the interpretation introduced by οὐ θέλω ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν” (emphasis in original). Though focused on the Exodus account itself, there is little explicit citation of the text. Except for the citation of Exod 32:6 in 10:7, Paul only alludes to the events described. As Hays notes, “Israel’s story, as told in Scripture, so comprehensively constitutes the symbolic universe of Paul’s discourse that he can recall the elements of that story for himself and his readers with the sorts of subtle gestures that pass between members of an interpretive family” (Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 92). These occur in 10:1 (twice), 2, 3, 4 and 10:3, 4 (twice), respectively. Paul’s use of all here seeks to draw the power of that term away from the possessors of γνῶσις whom he is opposing. For them all is a democratic term that sees knowledge as being available to everyone. Paul’s retelling of the Exodus narrative recasts the appropriate all as a community united in its cultic practices. The implication is that the all is to be found

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not in the disrupting, pedagogical practices of the possessors of knowledge but in the unity of compromise advocated by Paul both in his personal example of renunciation (1 Cor 9:1–18) and in the example of the Israelites. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 446–47, suggests that Paul uses the term spiritual because it conveys both the supernatural giving of the food and water in the wilderness and the presence of the spirit in analogy to the Lord’s Supper. The miraculous events Paul alludes to are the cloud that the Israelites followed in the Exodus (Exod 13:21–22 // 10:1–2), the crossing of the Red Sea (Exod 14:21–31 // 10:1– 2), the gift of the manna (Exod 16 // 10:3), and the spring that came forth when Moses struck the rock (Exod 17:1–7; Num 20:2–13 // 10:4). Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 379, suggests that Paul’s summary is dependent on Numbers, particularly Num 11:4, 34–35; 14:20–35; 21:4–9; 25:1–9. The γάρ connects the material that Paul turns to now with what has preceded it in chap. 9. This suggests that Paul considers the two arguments linked. The phrase οὐ θέλω ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν is common in Paul as a means of denoting something he deems important (Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 380). Smit, “ ‘Do Not Be Idolaters,’ ” 43, thinks this marks a transition point in the argument of 1 Cor 8:1–11:1, where Paul begins to speak of the theological rationale for rejecting idol food. On Smit’s reading, 8:1–3 and 8:7–9:27 argue against eating idol food for the social effects it has on fellow siblings (Smit, “ ‘Do Not Be Idoloters,’ ” 42–43). 17. It is only those who are free from strife and faction who Paul claims can be called πνευματικός. Those who give in to strife are merely σαρκικος (3:1–4). Similarly, Paul’s concern with lawsuits in the community is rooted in the notion that only a unified community is acceptable in the face of the coming eschaton. That anyone in the community is committing unjust acts puts him in danger of losing his place in the kingdom of god: “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of god?” (οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἄδικοι θεοῦ βασιλείαν οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν [1 Cor 6:9]). 18. On ancestors as rhetorical topos, see Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 42. This might suggest that we rethink Paul’s claims that these stories are given as typoi for the Corinthians in the present (10:6, 11). Paul is not so much inventing Christian typology or allegory as he is engaging in a common rhetorical practice in deliberative rhetoric for an audience that shares a common history and a common set of ancestral heroes. With my argument here I am mildly disagreeing with Margaret Mitchell’s view (Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 47). Mitchell argues that “Paul appeals to the ancestors . . . from the Hebrew Bible in 10:1–13 as negative examples from whom the Corinthians should learn how not to act.” I would also emphasize that the unity of the Israelites in 10:1–4 is meant also to work as an example of proper behavior. It is perhaps worth addressing here a potential objection from 1 Cor 10:18. In discussing the implications of his call to “flee idolatry” (φεύγετε ἀπὸ τῆς εἰδωλολατρίας [10:14]) on the practice of the Eucharist, Paul asks, βλέπετε τὸν Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα· οὐχ οἱ ἐσθίοντες τὰς θυσίας κοινωνοὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου εἰσίν; (10:18). How we translate this verse may affect how we evaluate the connection to “our fathers” in 10:1. The sense of 10:18b is clear: “Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar (on which they were sacrificed)?” What is more difficult is how to translate 10:18a, particularly the phrase κατὰ σάρκα. Several options are possible, though these are not intended to be exhaus-

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tive: (1) “Consider the Israel according to the flesh”; (2) “Consider Israel from a human perspective”; (3) “Consider those who literally interpret scripture (as opposed to those who interpret it spiritually)”; and (4) “Consider the nation of Israel” or “Israel by genealogical descent.” I tend toward the last view, following similar uses in 1 Cor 1:26; 2 Cor 5:16(?); 22:18; Rom 1:3; 4:1; 9:3, 5. In these cases, Paul seems to suggest that κατὰ σάρκα refers to kinship and descent. In other contexts, the phrase can be used to refer to immoral behavior, which gives itself over to the desires of the flesh (Rom 8:5, 12–13), or to behavior that is measured by mere human standards (2 Cor 1:17; 10:2–3). It can also be paired with the category of the Spirit (Rom 8:4; Gal 4:23, 29). In view of the multiple ways that the phrase can be used, I think the simplest way to take it in 1 Cor 10:18 is as an expression of genealogical descent. When we look at it in the context of the whole verse, which cites a legal precedent particular to a specific group of people, we get something like the following: “Consider those descended from Israel: according to the laws by which their nation is governed, are not . . .” 19. The argument relies for its efficacy on an assumption of patriarchal lines of descent, even as it uses a biological metaphor to create a fictive kinship between the Israelites and the Gentile Corinthians. On other uses of patriarchal descent in Paul, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs. For a discussion of sibling language in Paul’s letters, see Bartchy, “Undermining Ancient Patriarchy,” and Aasgaard, My Beloved Brothers and Sisters. 20. On baptism into Moses, Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 250. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 381–82, suggests that Paul associates the cloud with God’s salvific presence and the sea with his deliverance of the chosen people. Paul imagines a similar power in baptism into Christ. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 166, sees only a connection between the divine presence in the cloud and the presence of the Spirit in baptism. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 444, thinks that the inclusion of baptism early in the list of Israelite blessings in the wilderness parallels the journey of those who have undergone baptism at the start of their new life. The reference to being baptized into Moses also recalls the question of the relationship between the ritual of baptism, leadership, and factions that Paul introduces in 1 Cor 1:12; 3:4. Some in the community were claiming a particular status attached to them by virtue of who baptized them. Some in the community claimed to be “of Christ” (Χριστοῦ), suggesting that they had been baptized by Christ in a way that may not be dissimilar to what Paul alludes to here. Paul links baptism to the Spirit in 1 Cor 12:13, an element that is predominant in this passage, where the Spirit is present in the food, drink, and the rock in the wilderness. Ellis, “A Note on First Corinthians 10.4,” examines the history of the strange phrase ἐκ πνευματικῆς ἀκολουθούσης πέτρας. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 166–67, and Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 383–84, argue that the reference to Christ here assumes his preexistence. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 449, notes that this stresses “the continuity between Israel and the Corinthians.” 21. This goes a bit beyond most commentators who focus primarily on the way in which Paul “mirrors” the Israelite past and the Corinthian present (e.g., Smit, “ ‘Do Not Be Idoloters,’ ” 43). The effect of this mirroring is to create a situation in which the Corinthians see the Israelite past as their own, at least the way that Paul constructs it.

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22. There are some thorny textual and interpretive issues in this passage. τύπος has often been seen as suggesting that Paul is engaging in a typological or allegorical interpretation of the “Old Testament.” See, for example, Boyarin, A Radical Jew, 69–81. I prefer to follow the use of the term in 1 Thess 1:7 and Phil 3:17, where it means merely “example.” Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 252, prefers to read “examples” (Bespiels) or “models” (Vorbilds) in 10:6. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 384–85, and Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 452, both lean toward a position somewhere between example and typology. Fee, however, notes that it is not Israel that serves as a τύπος but the events in the wilderness (458). The traditions on which Paul draws come from Exod 32:1–35 (10:7); Num 25:1–18 (10:8); Num 14:1–45 and 21:4–9 (10:9); and Num 11:1–35 (10:10). The explicit quotation comes from Exod 32:6. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 454, notes that this citation of Exodus refers not just to idolatry but to the connection between eating and idolatry in the presence of the golden calf. On the case of the “missing thousand” who fell in a single day, see Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 456. With regard to reading κύριον in place of the NA-27 reading, I choose here not to follow the NA-27, which prefers the reading of “Christ.” Lord (κύριον) is found in a B C P 33 104 326 365 1175 2464 and some Syriac sources. θεόν is preferred by A and 81. Χριστόν is found in P46, D F G Y 1739 1181 the Majority Text, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic texts, and in Irenaeus and Origen. Though there is a great deal of weight behind the NA-27’s reading, I think it more likely that the Christologically friendly reading of Χριστόν would be inserted than taken out. For a contrasting opinion, see Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 457, and Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 386. 23. Also noted by Meeks, “ ‘And Rose Up to Play,’ ” 65. As the positive examples in 10:1–4 drew on the surrounding context (i.e., concerns about unity and food), so here as well (Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 377–78). The story draws on themes that exist outside the immediate rhetorical context: themes that have come already (eating, sexual misconduct, pride in knowledge/power, grumbling against Paul) and those that are about to emerge (eating and drinking at the Lord’s supper [10:14–22; 11:17–34]). Idolatry is an issue that is under discussion in the section as a whole (8:1–11:1). Sexual immorality comes up in the instance of the man sleeping with his stepmother and in several other contexts (5:1–13; 6:9–20; 7:2 [where it is a cause for divorce]). Putting authorities to the test and complaining (10:9–10) could be related to the emerging sense among the Corinthians that Paul’s authority might be questionable (4:1–5), a concern that will manifest itself sharply in 2 Corinthians. These latter two certainly connect to the larger concern in the passage, and the letter as a whole, with the unity of the Corinthian ekkle¯sia. It is because the examples in 10:1–13 connect to so many other issues in 1 Corinthians as a whole that I do not follow Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 379 (and others), who think it is required to treat 10:1–13 as a prelude to 10:14–22. Certainly there is a relationship between the two that needs to be accounted for, but Paul is also thinking beyond the immediate context. 24. On the logic of disease and pollution, see Martin, The Corinthian Body, 139–62, 168– 74 (on 1 Corinthians 5), and 190–97 (on 1 Cor 6:15–20). See also Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 26–27.

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25. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 252, notes that for Philo and Josephus each of the events in the wilderness that Paul alludes to here was seen as an example of rebellion caused by factionalism. The threat of factionalism is the concern that drives the logic of infection and the threat of violence. By contrast, Paul’s logic of holiness works in exactly the opposite direction. As he notes in 1 Cor 7:14, an individual “in Christ” can spread holiness to his or her unbelieving spouse and to their children. For a further discussion, see Johnson Hodge, “Married to an Unbeliever.” The underlying threat of divine violence for transgressing God’s (and Paul’s) boundaries is not confined to the example in 10:1–13; rather, it spills out into the specific argument over eating idol food. In 10:22, after discussing the danger of partaking in a table of demons, Paul asks, “Or are we provoking the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” (παραζηλοῦμεν τὸν κύριον; μὴ ἰσχυρότεροι αὐτοῦ ἐσμεν). Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 99, rightly notes the implicit threat that underlies Paul’s rhetoric in this second section of chap. 10: “[Paul] threatens them with the same consequences if they also desire what is bad, worship idols, are sexually immoral, test God, or conspire to rebel.” Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 192, has made the interesting observation that Paul’s rhetoric throughout 1 Cor 8:1–11:1 is characterized by a logic of “all . . . but not all”: The “sustained rhetorical use of the word ‘all’ and its corresponding opposites is another common feature. . . . Its effect is ambivalent: it expresses both an overwhelming and all-embracing movement and a repeated particularization and stressing of exceptions. When viewed in the perspective of the chapters as a whole, the restrictive tendency seems to be more prominent. . . . It seems that Paul felt the need to use all the means at his disposal to tell the Corinthians not to do something” (emphasis in original). 26. The choice that the Corinthians are given is not one between good and bad, but between survival and destruction (Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 253). Hurd, The Origins of I Corinthians, 142–43, notes the increased threat in Paul’s rhetoric. In the context of the debate over idol food, the visceral accounts of divine judgment for Israel’s idolatry are meant as a warning to those who may take eating too lightly and calls on its audience to guard itself with the same rigor that Paul uses to train his body (9:24–27). The repetition of earlier themes (sexual misconduct, pride in knowledge or power, legal issues, and challenging authority) builds on a similar fear of improper behavior before a potentially angry God. Paul includes a warning reminiscent of his critique of the wisdom of the world (1:27; 3:18–20): “So you who think you are standing, take care lest you fall” (ὥστε ὁ δοκῶν ἑστάναι βλεπέτω μὴ πέσῃ [10:12]). Paul does offer the Corinthians space to judge for themselves (10:15) about what their response ought to be to these examples, but he assumes they will assent as “reasonable people” (ὡς φρονίμοις). Just as Paul emphasized the unity of the Israelite community in 10:1–4, so his larger concern in this section is over the dangers of factionalism and the threat of divine punishment that it brings. The concern with putting authorities to the test (πειράζω) and complaining (γογγύζω) reminds the reader of the legal disputes in the community (6:1–8) and the factionalism that Paul worries has developed among members

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(1:10–17). His recurrent use of the phrases “most of them” (ἐν τοῖς πλείοσιν αὐτῶν [10:5]) and “some of them” (τινες αὐτῶν [10:7, 8, 9, 10]) contrasts with the repetition of “all” in 10:1–4. Paul periodically refers to “some” (τινες) whose views and behavior are taken to be inappropriate (1 Cor 4:18; 6:11; 8:7; 15:12, 34; 2 Cor 3:1). At issue here is the potential danger to the community of a few bad apples, who choose to act contrary to the group’s best interests and incur divine wrath. At those moments when Israel is blessed with the divine presence, it is the “all” that are made the focus. This changes when Paul shifts to the negative moments of factionalism, when the focus becomes the ambiguous “some.” The examples given here move the hearer to think beyond the context of idol meat to the nature of the Corinthian community as it exists in comparison to its ancestors and founders (Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 252–53). The upshot of the argument is that religious unity and social unity are interrelated, and one cannot exist without the other. 27. They are also constructed as those for whom the smell (ὀσμή) of Paul is as “from life to life” (ἐκ ζωῆς εἰς ζωήν [2:16]). Wan, Power in Weakness, 74, rightly notes that throughout 2:14–4:6 Paul speaks in an ambiguous first-person plural (“we”), which makes it difficult to tell whether he is speaking of himself, his coworkers, or the entire ekkle¯sia. 28. In 1 Cor 6:6 Paul admonishes the Corinthians for taking disputes among community members before unbelievers, which certainly refers to Gentile magistrates in Corinth. Similarly, in 1 Cor 10:27 Paul assumes that dining at the house of an unbeliever might present one with the troubling possibility of eating meat that has been sacrificed to an idol. This suggests that we should read the discussions of unbelievers in 1 Cor 7:12–15 and 1 Cor 14:22–24 as referring to Gentile outsiders to the community. The constant invocation of the group’s boundaries suggests their porosity throughout the Corinthian correspondence. In 1 Cor 5:1–13 Paul counsels the Corinthians to give the man who has been sleeping with his stepmother over to Satan, “so that the pneuma might be saved on the day of the Lord” (ἵνα τὸ πνεῦμα σωθῇ ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ κυρίου [5:5]). On my rendering of pneuma, see Martin, The Corinthian Body, 168–69. Such an offender is, in Paul’s phrasing, “a sibling in name (only)” (τις ἀδελφὸς ὀνομαζόμενος [5:11]) and is to be rendered “outside” (ἔξω) the community because his behavior is comparable to that of the Gentiles (5:1, 9–11). Such a person has not been fully transformed from his past status as an idolatrous and sexually immoral Gentile (which Paul suggests occurred to the rest of the community in 1 Cor 6:11 and 12:2). Similarly, Paul cautions the Corinthians in 1 Cor 10:12 to beware, lest they assume a sure standing and be made to fall (ὥστε ὁ δοκῶν ἑστάναι βλεπέτω μὴ πέσῃ). The logic here is similar to that found in the olive tree of Rom 11:17–24, particularly 11:21: “For if God did not spare the branches by nature, [surely] he will not spare you (εἰ γὰρ ὁ θεὸς τῶν κατὰ φύσιν κλάδων οὐκ ἐφείσατο, [μή πως] οὐδὲ σοῦ φείσεται). Those who are inside the community today may not find themselves there tomorrow, a change that puts them at risk of divine judgment. In 2 Corinthians 10–13 we can also see how Paul envisions a blurry boundary line between the Corinthians to whom he writes and those who are being destroyed by the working of the god of this aeon. There Paul worries precisely about obstacles that might affect the community’s possession of the “knowledge of God” (γνῶσις τοῦ

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29. 30.

31.

32.

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θεοῦ [10:5]; cf. 2 Cor 2:14; 4:6), fearing that the super-apostles will, like the snake in Eden, destroy their minds (τὰ νοήματα ὑμῶν [11:3]; par. 2 Cor 4:4). Paul explicitly makes the connection with Eden: “I am afraid lest, as the snake deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds will be led astray from sincerity [and purity] with regard to Christ” (φοβοῦμαι δὲ μή πως, ὡς ὁ ὄφις ἐξηπάτησεν Εὕαν ἐν τῇ πανουργίᾳ αὐτοῦ, φθαρῇ τὰ νοήματα ὑμῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ἁπλότητος [καὶ τῆς ἁγνότητος] τῆς εἰς τὸν Χριστόν). They thus show themselves to be false apostles, deceitful workers, and διάκονοι of Satan (11:13–15). It is tempting to imagine that Paul sees the super-apostles as the agents of the god of this aeon, who blinds the minds of Gentiles and continues to work against Paul’s ministry to them. The boundaries that Paul is concerned with in Corinth are thus those that separate Gentiles “in Christ” from other Gentiles. One can see this, for example, in Paul’s concern in 1 Cor 5:1, where he is disturbed that the Corinthians have fallen back into habits that are taboo even for Gentiles. One could also see his concerns about idolatry in 1 Corinthians 8–10 in a similar light. Paul is concerned that the Corinthians will fall back into the idolatry that characterizes Gentiles more generally (1 Cor 12:2; 1 Thess 1:9–10). The LXX uses the phrase υἱοὶ Ἰσραήλ, which approximates the Hebrew ‫בּנׂי ישראל‬, three times in Exod 34:32, 34, and 35. This echoes the hard heart that is given to Pharaoh by God in the Exodus narrative and, perhaps, Isaiah 6:9–10. The verb here is passive (ἐπωρώθη), showing that the Israelites remain the passive spectators in Paul’s interpretation. In 2 Cor 3:13 Moses is described as acting without the παρρησία that characterized Paul’s ministry. Unlike Paul, Moses “placed a veil upon his face so that the sons of Israel did not look upon the completion of [his glory’s] deactivation” (ἐτίθει κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου). The movement of the veil in the passage suggests that Paul had difficulty in making this story fit his rhetorical interests. The veil starts out on the face (πρόσωπον) of Moses, then moves to cover the reading (ἀνάγνωσις) of the sons of Israel, and finally comes to rest on their hearts (καρδία). But what exactly is “veiled” for the sons of Israel? Paul is distinctly unclear on the subject, which leads to a number of different possibilities. I would argue that what is veiled for the sons of Israel is the opening up of the Gentile mission in the ministry of Paul. Thus, when they read “Moses” they do not see the prophecies in the text about the incoming of the Gentiles. Moses and the sons of Israel were privy to the glory of God’s presence, but Moses hid from them the possibility for the coming of a greater glory that would manifest itself in the entry of the Gentiles into a relationship with the God of Israel, here described as access to the “knowledge of the glory of God” (γνῶσις τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ [2 Cor 4:6]). Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 172–74, helpfully describes the situation: because of concerns about Paul’s qualifications and the strain in their relationship, “the apostle needed to employ a remarkably new way of commending himself, especially to distinguish himself from the other teachers of the gospel who had reached Corinth after him.” In what follows I focus on Paul’s comparison between himself and Moses outside the possible competition that he may or may not be engaging in with the super-

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33.

34.

35.

36.

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Notes to Pages 109–110 apostles. Georgi, The Opponents of Paul, 254–71, offers a compelling account of the use of Moses by these rival missionaries. For more discussion of the larger political and missiological context of this passage, see chapter 6. I follow Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:224, in translating the genitive Χριστοῦ as a genitive of origin, rather than an objective genitive (“a letter about Christ”). On the various ways in which one can translate διακονέω, see ibid., 1:225. In my translation I have chosen to emphasize the connection between other διακον-based words that pepper the argument of 2:14–4:6. Therefore, I speak of Paul’s servicing of the community, just as he manages the service to the saints in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 208–9, notes how Paul’s reference to qualifications is rooted in a larger tradition of prophets protesting their inadequacy before God when called to a divine mission (as, for example, in Exod 4:10 LXX). For a fascinating discussion of the translation of καταργέω, see Agamben, The Time That Remains, 95–97. See also Hafemann, “Paul’s Argument from the Old Testament and Christology,” 288–89, who suggests “to render (something) inoperative, ineffective, powerless” is “to nullify (something) in terms of its effects.” The key question is for whom is the law deactivated, rendered inoperative, or nullified in its effects? It seems to me that this deactivation refers to the end of the curse of the law on Gentiles and does not render the law inoperative for Jews in a universal sense. As Duff, “Glory in the Ministry of Death,” 318, argues, Paul’s use of δόξα is in keeping with the general tendency of the LXX, which commonly uses the term to translate ‫כבוד‬. Thus, “when Paul speaks of ‘glory’ (δόξα) in connection with his own as well as the Mosaic ministry, he refers to the presence of God as mediated through each of these διακονίαι.” For Duff, “Transformed ‘from Glory to Glory,’ ” 771, this is essentially an argument from the lived experience of the Spirit by the Corinthians themselves. Duff sees Paul’s focus on Corinthian transformation “from glory to glory” as intimately linked to Paul’s claiming of the Spirit. πνεῦμα, πνευματικός, and πνευματικῶς occur seventy-three times in the Corinthian correspondence. Mount, “1 Corinthians 11:3–16,” 316, goes so far as to argue that Paul’s religion “can be characterized as a spirit-possession cult.” In 1 Corinthians 1–4 Paul focuses on the discernment of the Spirit. The Spirit reveals and searches the divine (2:10), allowing one access to the things that belong to God (2:11). The Spirit not only gives access to the divine, but also distinguishes people. It bestows particular gifts on individuals, manifesting a diversity that exists within the unity of the Spirit (12:4, 7–11). Paul deploys the language of the Spirit to distinguish between those who are spiritual and those who are fleshly or soulish (2:14–15). The Spirit also authorizes authorities. Paul calls himself a teacher who, having been taught by the spirit, interprets spiritual things to the spiritual (ἀλλ᾿ ἐν διδακτοῖς πνεύματος, πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκρίνοντες [2:13]). In 1 Corinthians 12–14 it is the regulation of the manifestation of the Spirit’s presence in communal life that is the focus of Paul’s concern. The Spirit manifests itself initially at baptism (12:13) and dwells in the community (3:16; 6:19). Some individuals in the Corinthian community have been moved by the Spirit (12:11) to prophesy and speak in tongues. The Spirit enters the individual

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Notes to Pages 110–111

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

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at baptism (6:17; 12:13) and manifests itself in the community’s gatherings, but it also relates to the form of the resurrected body (15:44–46). Belleville, “Paul’s Polemic and Theology of the Spirit,” 282–83: “The Spirit is intimately linked with the preaching of the gospel (3:18; 6:6–7; 11:4), with the activities of enlightenment (3:17), regeneration (3:6–11; 18), and resurrection-transformation (5:5), with the formation (1:22; 3:1–3), unity (13:13 [14]), and continuing existence of the church (1:21; 3:2–3) and with the credentialing of the minister of the gospel and the confirmation of the gospel (3:1–3; 6:6; 11:4).” Murphy-O’Connor, The Theology of the Second Letter to the Corinthians, 32. It is worth pointing out that, in the Corinthian correspondence, the label “some” (τινες) is generally presented as representing those who act in a dangerous fashion or hold an incorrect opinion. The term occurs eleven times in the Corinthian correspondence. It can refer to people who hold an erroneous opinion (1 Cor 4:18; 8:7; 15:12, 34), to the previous immoral behavior of the Corinthians themselves (1 Cor 6:11), or to those who act contrary to God’s commandments (1 Cor 10:7–10 [four times]). The only time it is used in a neutral manner is 1 Cor 15:12. That Paul uses “hope” suggests that the glory of his διακονία is, in some sense, potential and not yet actualized in the life of the community or Paul (Bultmann, The Second Letter to the Corinthians, 84). Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 218, helpfully notes the connection being made: “Paul wants to make clear that the δόξα borne in Moses’ complexion is, in effect, the same thing as the πνεῦμα κυρίου which characterizes Paul’s ministry.” On frank speech and freedom, see Nasrallah, “The Acts of the Apostles,” 543; Nasrallah, “Mapping the World,” 297; Duff, “Transformed ‘from Glory to Glory,’ ” 767; Sumney, “Paul’s ‘Weakness,’ ” 74–75; Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry, 57. See also Bultmann, The Second Letter to the Corinthians, 85, who also considers Πεποίθησις in 3:4 equivalent to παρρησία. Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel, 346, highlights a number of traditions that describe Moses as displaying παρρησία, but he concludes from this that Paul is paralleling and not contrasting himself to Moses. The material that Hafemann gathers shows, it seems to me, that Paul’s self-description draws on common tropes in the traditions about Moses, but it applies them to himself. As such, this remains a contrast but one rooted in the constraints of common constructions of Moses’ character among Jewish writers. Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 24–25, shows that Paul bases his retelling of the story on the LXX. On her reading, Paul does not merely interpret Exodus 34, but rather weaves together a “tapestry of traditions,” both biblical and nonbiblical, with his own contributions (Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 79). Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 213–15, refers to this reading of Paul’s rhetoric as “traditional” (noting its use by Furnish, II Corinthians, 232) and juxtaposes it with a reading that sees Moses’ veiling as a prophylactic that protects the people from dying, a fate that would befall all who came into the direct presence of God. I find this reading unpersuasive. Were Paul interested in conveying Moses’ intentions as directed at saving

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the Israelites, he could have easily said so. The focus throughout 3:12–18 is on Moses’ actions and their negative effect on the Israelites. This is not to say that Paul “rejects” Moses or “Judaism” through this reading, which has often been the interpretation of this text. Rather, Paul compares himself to Moses and deems the glory of his ministry to be greater. By engaging in a comparison, Paul simultaneously praises Moses for being a mediator of the divine and presents himself as one who is like, if greater than, Moses, as Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 217, also notes. The positive side of this comparison can be seen in 3:18, where both Paul and the Corinthians are promised a permanent glory on their unveiled faces like that experienced by Moses. Moses thus becomes both a means by which Paul can claim authority over others and a model for the coming glory. 42. This position runs counter to that of Hafemann, “Paul’s Argument from the Old Testament,” 288–89. Hafemann argues that, for Paul, the veil is put in place to protect Israel from the glory that would kill them if left unchecked, an opinion shared by Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 213–15. The eventual removal of the veil for the Corinthians, as discussed in 2 Cor 3:18, allows them to stand in the presence of the divine glory without being destroyed (Hafemann, “Paul’s Argument from the Old Testament,” 290). Hafemann’s reading is accurate in that it reflects a more literal interpretation of the LXX narrative, where the divine presence is frightening because of its potential to kill those who encounter it. But this interpretation ignores the motivation that Paul ascribes to Moses, which is clearly absent from the LXX text. As I look at Paul’s use of the veil, I find Duff, “Glory in the Ministry of Death,” 327–28, helpful when he writes, “The veil keeps Israel from seeing that the status of the gentiles before God has changed. Or to put it another way, Paul understands that Moses’ act of veiling his face prevented the Israelites (past and present) from seeing that the Torah’s condemnation of the gentiles would not last forever.” I think that this is a useful characterization of how Paul imagines the theological rationale for his argument; however, this does not allow us to ignore the implications of such a position. Duff’s position is not unlike Paul’s statement in Rom 11:11 in which he speaks of how Israel has stumbled but has not fallen, and by stumbling Israel has allowed salvation to come to the Gentiles. On the stumbling of Israel in the context of Romans 9–11, see Stowers, A Rereading of Romans, 285–316. 43. Paul was certainly not the only Jewish writer to reimagine the narrative of Moses’ veiling. Philo’s retelling of Moses’ descent from Sinai (On the Life of Moses 2,70) follows the biblical account but adds, like Paul in 2 Cor 3:7, that the Israelites were unable to gaze at Moses’ shining face. Philo also suggests that Moses’ transformed appearance was the result of a new diet consisting of contemplations from heaven (ibid., 2,69). For a discussion of other sources that make use of the Exodus 34 narrative of Moses’ glory and veiling, see Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 20–79. What is unique about Paul’s retelling of the story is the focus on Moses’ culpability in veiling himself before the Israelites and the desire to hide the deactivation of the glory of his face. 44. As Duff, “Glory in the Ministry of Death,” 317–28, has shown, by not recognizing that both the Corinthians and Moses have access to glory from the same source, albeit in different quantities, most commentators are drawn to mistake an argument from the

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Notes to Pages 113–114

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

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lesser to the greater as one of direct opposition, wherein the ministry of Moses comes to stand as the antitype for the ministry of Paul. The argument, though, is one of continuity and affiliation: both participate in the same glory, but with different constraints. My thinking about what Paul refers to by the expression “from glory to glory” has been shaped largely by Duff, “Glory in the Ministry of Death,” and Duff, “Transformed ‘from Glory to Glory.’ ” Duff argues that from the perspective of the law, the Gentiles are under a curse for not keeping the law (Duff, “Glory in the Ministry of Death,” 321–26). The law, which came in glory to the Israelites, is thus a διακονία of death for those who are outside it. It is only through the unilateral action of God “in Christ” that Gentiles can experience the knowledge of God, or God’s glory. In this sense the two covenants, the new and the ancient (3:6, 14), are distinct: the ancient covenant was a bilateral agreement between Israel and its God, whereas the new is a unilateral action taken by God in behalf of the Gentiles. The Gentiles have moved from the glory that is the ministry of death to the glory that is the ministry of the Spirit. Therefore, the Corinthians can see themselves within the biblical narrative at the same time as they remain distinct from the Israelites within it. Duff has much in common with the New Perspective on Paul, a conversation in which I would place my own reading of Paul. On the New Perspective, see Gager, Reinventing Paul. On the mirror and transformation in 2 Cor 3:18, see Jan Lambrecht, “Transformation in 2 Corinthians 3,18.” On the complexities involved in rendering the phrase ἀπὸ κυρίου πνεύματος in English, see Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:286–87. My translation of 2 Cor 3:16 is taken from Barrett, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 122, which retains the ambiguities in the Greek that I discuss below. On Paul’s dependence on the LXX in his retelling of the story, see Belleville, Reflections of Glory, 24–25. It may also be a subtle allusion to the language of conversion that Paul inserts over the LXX reading (Wan, Power in Weakness, 73; Barrett, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 122). Wan, Power in Weakness, 73. Lambrecht, Second Corinthians, 54, notes the ambiguity but prefers the second, indefinite reading. Barrett, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 122, prefers something like the second reading, though he notes others possibilities for the ambiguous third-person subject: the heart that was veiled by Moses’ actions (3:15) or the Israelites, who would be seen as converting to Christ. The use of the dative singular is odd, since the subject of the sentence is plural (“we all”) and must point back to the singular figure of Moses as he stands with an unveiled face before God (2 Cor 3:16). Wisdom can also be described in similar terms. For example, wisdom “is the reflection of the eternal light and a blameless mirror of God’s activity and an image of his goodness” (ἀπαύγασμα γάρ ἐστιν φωτὸς ἀϊδίου καὶ ἔσοπτρον ἀκηλίδωτον τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνεργείας καὶ εἰκὼν τῆς ἀγαθότητος αὐτοῦ [Wis 7:26 LXX]). The LXX also speaks of humanity as being made “according to the image” (κατ᾿ εἰκόνα) of God (Gen 1:26). This is echoed in Philo (De opificio mundi 25, 69, 71–72; Legum allegoriae 1:31, 53, 90–94; 2:4; 3:96;

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De plantatione 19; De confusione linguarum 146, 169; Quis rerum divinarum heres sit 164, 231; De fuga et inventione 68; De mutatione nominum 31; and De somniis 1:74). Philo also uses the same form as Paul when he speaks of humanity as the “image of God” (εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ [Legum allegoriae 2:4]). For Philo the creation of humanity in the image of God refers to only one of the two men created in the Genesis narrative: the heavenly (οὐράνιος) man and the earthly (γήινος) man (Legum allegoriae 1:31). Paul may share something of Philo’s dual nature of human creation, as, for example, in 1 Cor 15:49. See further Boyarin, A Radical Jew, 187–91. 51. The phrase is also very similar to that found in Job 37:15: “We know that God has appointed his works, having made light from darkness” (οἴδαμεν ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἔθετο ἔργα αὐτοῦ φῶς ποιήσας ἐκ σκότους [LXX]). Murphy-O’Connor, The Theology of the Second Letter to the Corinthians, 43, argues that Paul is combining Job 37:15 with Isa 9:2. 52. The veil of Moses is not a question of Jewish unbelief created out of a sense of frustration at their rejection of Paul’s universal message of salvation (as, for example, Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:261, contends). Nor is the veil a hindrance placed on Israel so that it could not see the demise of its own covenant with God. Rather, the veil is a means by which Paul writes the experience of his Gentile Corinthian audience into the history of Israel and its God. Paul’s reconstruction of the narrative forces the Corinthians into the history of Israel, but the sons of Israel are not forced out in the process. Paul assumes that a place in the history of Israel would be welcomed by his audience. But we must also not forget that Paul’s reconstruction is itself an assertion of power over the narrative and the people whom that narrative constructs: power to write a new covenant that sits alongside and above the ancient one and the power to control access to the Spirit that is the precondition for the new covenant.

5. “In the City of Peirene” 1. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 72. 2. In his instructions on how to praise a city, Menander Rhetor lists the founding of a city by a god as the highest form of praise for a city’s origin (1.353). He continues by noting that cities with divine founders can also be praised for being “god-loved (θεοφιλότητος [1.361.22]). More praise can be gained for a city based on the number and quality of the gods who were involved in the founding (1.361–62). My textual references follow those used in Russell and Wilson, Menander Rhetor. 3. It is possible that there was some local knowledge of Corinth’s history and cultic practice available to the original colonists. It may be that some of those who dwelt in the city during the period between its sack and its colonization were descendants of the Greek Corinthian inhabitants. On this see Wiseman, “Corinth and Rome I,” 493–96, and Gebhard, “Rites for Melikertes-Palaimon,” 172. The story is also referenced by Lucian as a possible subject for a pantomime dance (On the Dance 42). 4. Aelius Aristides, “Regarding Poseidon,” in Aristides, Aristides in Four Volumes, ed. Behr, 28.

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5. Corinth received its charter as a Roman colony at a rather inauspicious time. The city was founded by Julius Caesar just before the dictator’s death in 44 BCE; its colonists would have to build a new city during the tumultuous decades that would follow. What resources were available in those early years were probably shifted toward the fighting that accompanied the rise of the Second Triumvirate, and it is probable that the city was forced into shipbuilding service by Mark Antony (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 31). It was probably only after Actium that Corinth would have had the resources, support, and stable political environment in which to truly expand as a major commercial and colonial center. In its early form, the fountain had been carved out of the living rock from which it issued. One accessed the water by walking down into the cave itself and drawing from one of two (or three) basins that collected the water supplied from a settling tank on the west end of the cave, which was in turn supplied by a supply tunnel to the west (Hill, The Springs, 29–36). At a certain point one basin was divided into what are now called basins A and B. In the fifth century BCE the fountain was remodeled into a much larger complex. Four stuccoed chamber reservoirs were dug into the rock behind the basins, and a facade was placed in front of the complex (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 24–25). This facade consisted of five pillars, which afforded four openings onto the water basins (Hill, The Springs, 36). In the fourth century BCE this facade was altered by the creation of six chambers into which one would step to draw water from the basins (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 26). In front of the fountain was an open space, flanked on the east by a hexastyle stoa with Doric columns (Hill, The Springs, 51). The open space of the courtyard was a pleasant place to draw water, rest in the shade of the stoa, or people watch (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 28). The new design both obscured and framed the views into the caverns that held the fountain’s water. The monumental facade hid the rock face of the scarp and the foundations of the stoa above, and the six arches framed one’s view into the darkness of the cave itself. As Robinson writes, “To gaze into the darkness was to look through a symbolic gateway between daily life and a world ‘through the looking glass,’ one of underground rivers and lakes, primordial springs, and a cast of gods, nymphs, and heroes” (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 36). In the second phase of renovations, an open-air court was constructed along with (or just subsequent to) the propylaea on the Lechaion Road. This necessitated the construction of a retaining wall on the eastern side of Peirene (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 37). The creation of the meat and fish market to the north of the fountain probably was also part of the planning that went into the construction of the courtyard. Another wall was added to the north side of what was once the courtyard of Peirene, closing off and redefining access to the space. The north wall had a large apse, which was probably used to house a statue. The entrance to the complex was now afforded by two doors from the north and a staircase on the eastern side that came down from the propylaea. A pool (hypaithros krene) in front of the facade was added sometime shortly after this phase (ibid., 41–44). These renovations probably

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6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

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Notes to Pages 121–122 took place sometime during the last decade of the first century BCE, judging by coins found under the floor of the basins (ibid., 44–45). The coins are duoviral issues of M. Antonius Theophilus/P. Aebutius (30 BCE) and M. Novius Bassus/M. Antonius Hipparchus (between 10/9 and 5/4 BCE). For dating, see Burnett, Amandry, and Ripollès Alegre, Roman Provincial Coinage I, 249. MacDonald, “Empire Imagery in Augustan Architecture”; Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 46, 48. In the early phases of the Augustan period, water became an important architectural issue. In his mammoth reshaping of the water system of Rome, Agrippa, who was also a prominent patron of Corinth, built new fountains throughout the city, and many fountains of mythic significance were restored (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 51–52). Sacred and mysterious grottoes were also very much part of the artistic and aesthetic imagination in Italy, often displayed on frescoes in the homes of well-to-do Romans (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 51–57). Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 49–50. For the cultural importance of the myth and its appearance in Greek and Roman contexts, see Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 149–206. In one stunning example from the Casa di Virnius Modestus (IX 7,16) in Pompeii, Pegasos drinks quietly from the spring, situated in an idyllic setting within a grove with a statue and a small pedestal temple. Bellerophon and his helper, Athena, approach from behind while the nymph of the spring looks on from the right (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 192–94, and Robinson, “Fountains and the Formation of Cultural Identity,” 119–120). Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 162–63. The diffusion of Corinthian coins throughout the classical Greek world would have cemented the connection between the city and its myth into the minds of other Greeks. Even the modest renovations of the fountain in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE were no doubt intended to make a more monumental space for a site celebrated in verse and so closely identified with the city. In the earliest duoviral coin issues after the city’s refoundation, the duovirs and their minters presented images of Pegasos, in a knowing imitation of the Greek Corinthian practice. Included here from the reign of Augustus alone are: (1) RPC I no. 1116, from 44/43 BCE, with Bellerophon with a spear mounted on Pegasos; (2) RPC I no. 1117, from 43/42 BCE, with Bellerophon seizing Pegasos by the bridle; (3) RPC I no. 1121, from 42/41 BCE, with Pegasos flying; (4) RPC I no. 1127, from 34–31 BCE, with Pegasos flying; (5) RPC I no. 1128, from 34–31 BCE, with Bellerophon on Pegasos striking at the chimaera; (6) RPC I no. 1133, from 17–16 BCE, with Pegasos flying. Two other coin issues have only an image of the chimaera that Bellerophon killed with the help of Pegasos (RPC I nos. 1119 and 1125). Minted around the time in which the Peirene Fountain was being remodeled, the coins suggest that the Corinthians saw the fountain as central to their city’s public image. Pausanias records a number of monuments to the myth, though none of them has been discovered in the excavations of the site. On the way into the city on the road from Kenchreai a traveler would have passed by a grove of cypress trees in the Craneion, within which was a temenos of Bellerophon (τέμενος Βελλεροφόντου [2.2.4]). As

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11.

12. 13. 14.

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a visitor walked toward the city center from Lechaion, but before reaching the Peirene Fountain, she would pass what Pausanias calls the most noteworthy of the small fountains in the city: an image of Bellerophon and Pegasos in which water flows from the horse’s hoof (2.3.5). For discussion of the location and description of this fountain, see Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 357–61. The statues and the fountain were said to be next to the Bath of Eurycles. The figures were no doubt in bronze, and Pegasos was probably rampant, which would allow his hoof to be raised in such a way that it might serve as a fountain spout. The water that poured from the horse’s hoof no doubt alluded to the mythical founding of springs on Mt. Helicon and Acrocorinth by the hoof of Pegasos. Finally, on the road to Sikyon, near the theater, was a temple (ἱερόν) of Athena Chalinitis (2.4.1, 5). Athena’s epithet of Χαλινίτις (“bridler”) refers to her role as helper to Bellerophon in his taming of Pegasos. All three of these monuments essentially surround the city center with images of the myth, showcasing elements of the story at each of the three major roads in and out of the city. Pausanias also notes that images of Bellerophon and Pegasos were carved in relief on the base of the Poseidon statue in his temple at Isthmia (2.1.9). The two characters also make an appearance in comic form in a procession at Kenchreai in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses XI.8. “The Roman Corinthians appropriated the mythology, history, and indeed the landscape, in constructing its new identity, and deriving its legitimacy” (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 203). DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 40–42, offers us another way of thinking about the effect of Peirene’s remodeling. He uses the term indigenization in his study of cultic practice in Corinth, by which he means “exercising hegemony by the conscious adoption and manipulation of native elements” (42). Williams and Zervos, “Corinth, 1983,” 97–101. Alcock, “The Reconfiguration of Memory,” 334–35. On the use of this concept in early Christian apologetic writings, see Nasrallah, “The Acts of the Apostles.” The general assumption has been that the fountain was itself created in the Archaic period, though Williams has argued that it was built by the Romans (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 210–11, summarizes key points of Robinson’s arguments). For the early reports of the excavations of Glauke, see R. Richardson, “The Fountain of Glauce at Corinth,” and Elderkin, “The Fountain of Glauce at Corinth.” Richardson thought that the temple was built by Periander at the same time as the Temple of Apollo to the east (R. Richardson, “The Fountain of Glauce at Corinth,” 470–71). Elderkin devotes a section to comparable fountains of the time of the tyrants (Elderkin, “The Fountain of Glauce at Corinth,”44–50). For Williams’s conclusions, see Williams and Zervos, “Corinth, 1983,” 97–101; Williams, “The Refounding of Corinth,” 34–35. The axis of the fountain lines up more closely to the alignment of the Greek buildings at Corinth, those predating the Roman refounding of the colony. This suggests that the fountain’s layout was planned during the pre-Roman period of the city (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 211). The reservoirs that store and collect water in the fountain resemble those at other Corinthian fountains from the Classical period. The most compelling evidence for a pre-Roman date for

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15.

16.

17. 18.

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Notes to Page 124 the building is the use of a particular form of Greek mortar that was found in one of the draw basins (V) at the front of the structure (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 214). Robinson concludes from this evidence that the Fountain of Glauke was probably created in the fourth century BCE (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 215). It should be pointed out that Williams and Zervos do concede the possibility for a Hellenistic date for Glauke (Williams and Zervos, “Corinth, 1983,” 100). Though he is aware of Robinson’s work on Glauke, DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 40–42, sides with Williams’s earlier Roman dating. On the water source for Glauke, see Elderkin, “The Fountain of Glauce at Corinth,” 43–44; Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 212–13. The use of such a complex pipe system does not mean that the fountain must be a later, Roman creation. Pipe systems for creating fountains were used in other parts of Greece beginning in the sixth century BCE (213–14). Scranton, “Temple C and the Sanctuary of Hera Akraia,” 146–47; Williams and Zervos, “Corinth, 1983,” 97–101; Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 210–20. The outer surface was covered mostly with stucco, which added to the rough and ancient appearance of the structure. On the excavations surrounding Temple C, see Scranton, “Temple C and the Sanctuary of Hera Akraia.” Early on the death of Medea’s children became associated with the temple of Hera Akraia, where an earlier version of the story had it that Medea had hidden her children in the temple so that they might gain immortality (Pausanias 2.3.10–11). Robinson, “Fountains and the Formation of Cultural Identity,” 133n56, 137–38. Excavations have not found any evidence for the tomb of Medea’s children, which should have lain, from Pausanias’s reference, between the Odeion and the Fountain. There has been cause to question whether there was actually a tomb or merely a memorial to Medea’s children in this spot. Pausanias uses the word μνῆμα to refer to the site, which can often refer to a memorial and not a tomb proper, usually referred to as a τάφος. As Dunn, “Pausanias on the Tomb of Medea’s Children,” has shown, Pausanias frequently uses μνῆμα and τάφος interchangeably in his writings. This suggests that Pausanias saw a monument claiming to be the resting place of Medea’s children. Others have opined that Pausanias was thinking of a monument that he saw dedicated to Medea’s children at Perachora, on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf. For this argument, see Johnston, “Corinthian Medea and the Cult of Hera Akraia.” Scranton, “Temple C and the Sanctuary of Hera Akraia,” 149–65, argues that Temple C, which was built during the first century CE, was dedicated to Hera Akraia, another prominent player in the myths surrounding Jason, Medea, and Glauke. He argues that there was originally a cult to Hera Akraia on the roof of the Fountain of Glauke that was destroyed in the Roman sack. Temple C is then a successor to the cult of Hera Akraia in Corinth. On the Argo, Favorinus implies that it was still there when he visited the city in the second century CE. It is doubtful that such a landmark would have survived the sack of Corinth and the Isthmian sanctuary by Mummius. It may be that another version of the Argo was set up in Isthmia by Favorinus’s day. Aristides associates the building of the Argo with Corinth and says that the ship set out from there (“Regarding Poseidon,”

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in Aristides, Aristides in Four Volumes, ed. Behr, 29). There is also a duoviral coin from P. Aebutius and C. Pinnius, dating to 39–36 BCE, which pictures a prow on the reverse (RPC I no. 1124). 19. Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 232; emphasis in original. The early excavators, Richardson and Elderkin, argued that the fountain was built in the Archaic period, during the reign of the tyrant Periander. On this reading, the fountain was built expressly to create a connection between the myth and the monument, an action that was deemed useful for the interests of the tyrant. As noted above, this date for the sanctuary is no longer supported by the archaeological evidence. Williams argues that the fountain was built by the Romans during their quarrying activity at the time of the building of the Odeion. Williams sees the Romans as the creators of both the fountain and its associations with Glauke: “I would suggest that the design was determined by the literary spirit of the educated Roman colonist, who wanted to be able to show a monument of ancient Corinth fitting, as he saw it, the myth of Medea as it was passed down, . . . perhaps justifying the local version of the tragedy over that set down by Euripedes” (Williams, “The Refounding of Corinth,” 35). Robinson takes a slightly different line, arguing that the fountain was built in the fourth century BCE, but that it was given its name by the Romans for much the same reasons as Williams suggests. The problem, as she sees it, is the artificiality of the fountain, which was not a natural fountain but relied on piped-in water. At the time of its construction, such a structure could not have justifiably marked the spot where the ancient story of Glauke was enacted. For Robinson the archaic appearance of the fountain itself, several centuries old when the Romans moved into the city, would have suggested great age and antiquity, particularly in comparison with the archaic Temple of Apollo nearby. Its proximity to the tomb of Medea’s children may have prompted the Corinthians to invent an association between the fountain and the myth. Glauke was thus placed into the life of the Roman colony, which drew on the story much as did the Fountain of Peirene. Lacking a close connection to the history of the city itself, the Romans invented a history for the site, creating a memory theater for themselves on the western side of the city (Robinson, “Fountains and the Formation of Cultural Identity,” 133–34). Robinson thus takes a position not unlike Williams’s: both see the Roman colonists as actively inventing a mythological connection with the fountain to serve their own ends of establishing a connection with the Greek history of the city. While I follow Robinson’s characterization of the fountain’s archaeological history, it is difficult for me to imagine that the Romans would simply manufacture a mythological connection. It may be worth reconsidering Williams’s suggestion that there were local traditions at play. In the literary representations of the myth, Glauke always perishes in the palace, making it strange that her place of death would be associated with a fountain. What we may have in Corinth is a local tradition that associated Glauke’s death with a fountain, perhaps developed through associations with Glauke as a sea nymph or Nereid (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 224–25). Something like this tradition may have attached itself to the monument during the time between the fountain’s construction in the fourth century BCE and the Roman settlement. Those Greeks who lived in Corinth during the interim (between

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20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

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Notes to Pages 126–129 the city’s destruction and colonization) may have informed the colonists about these associations, along with the locations of the other Greek cults that were revived by the Roman colonists. On these, see Williams, “The Refounding of Corinth,” 31–35. Robinson, though noting its possibility, argues against this position. Robinson’s chief concern with the influence of a local tradition is twofold. First, there would be no opportunity for the creation of a local myth associated with the fountain in the Hellenistic period, given that the city remained continuously inhabited until its destruction (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 225). Second, there is little evidence for a robust local tradition that could compete with the literary tradition that was influenced by Euripedes (Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 231). Robinson’s criticisms are justified, but I wonder if there was yet some local knowledge in Corinth that played a part in the identification. Robinson, “Fountains and the Culture of Water,” 234. On the renovations of the Temple of Apollo, see Williams, “The Refounding of Corinth,” 31–32. The interior columns of the temple were removed and used to create a colonnade extending north from the South Stoa on its western end. The introduction of a basilica at the eastern end of Temple Hill also required the removal of the original altar and the reorientation of the entrance to the complex from the southeast to the west. On “conversation” within an architectural program, see Nasrallah, Christian Respones, 35–44, who uses the term to discuss the fountain of Regilla at Olympia. Crinagoras, in The Greek Anthology 9.284. Text taken from Paton’s edition of The Greek Anthology. The translation is my own. On the problem, for Pausanias, of the “break” in Corinth’s history, see König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 157–58. Williams, “A Re-Evaluation of Temple E”; DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 39–42; Alcock, Graecia Capta, 249–50. Elsner, “Pausanias: A Greek Pilgrim in the Roman World,” 15. Elsner writes of Pausanias’s description of Corinth: “Despite its new population and Roman credentials, what interested Pausanias about Corinth were its ancient (pre-Roman) associations and sights, which were explained to Pausanias by his contemporary Corinthians. By virtue of being in that place, according to the Pausanian definition these people had become ‘Greek’; the place itself had imparted its identity to them. Hence the stories recounted of Corinth are about Artemis (ii.3.2) and Medea (ii.3.6 f.), Bellerophontes (ii.4.1 f.) and the ancient history of the Corinthian kings (ii.4.3–4)” (ibid.). I agree with Elsner that Pausanias sees the landscape of Corinth through a “Greek” lens, but I disagree with his characterization that the modern Corinthians are Greek by virtue of living in the same spot. As noted above, he has gone out of his way to mark them as different, suggesting that he emphasizes the Greek history of the city despite its Roman present. Though he does rely on Corinthians for information about the city, as we saw in his discussion of the story of Helios and Poseidon’s patronage of the city earlier in this chapter, Pausanias did not seem to trust the story that he received from the Corinthians to whom he spoke. Pausanias seems to have been rather fixated on Corinth as marking a new stage in Greek history. Habicht, Pausanias’ Guide, 123, notes that Pausanias displays little interest in Greek history after the fall of Corinth in 146 BCE.

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25. Habicht, Pausanias’ Guide, 123. 26. That this was not the only voice with regard to the Corinthian expedition to Troy can be found in an epitaph to the city, written after its destruction by the Romans: “Lucius has smitten sore the great Achaean Acrocorinth, the Star of Hellas and the twin parallel shores of the Isthmus. One heap of stones covers the bones of those slain in the rout; and the sons of Aeneas left unwept and unhallowed by funeral rites the Achaeans who burnt the house of Priam” (Polystratus, in The Greek Anthology 7.297; translation taken from Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth, 41). The author clearly identifies the Corinthians slain in the sack as Greeks (Achaians) who were descended from those who sacked Troy, the legendary city of origin of the Romans. Two epigrams from Antipater of Sidon (7.493 and 9.151 in The Greek Anthology) also show something of the lament that accompanied the destruction of Corinth. This reconstruction of the autonomous history of the city finds an echo in Menander Rhetor’s observation that, “concerning the political system, it is best for the city to reckon itself according to its own will and not to be ruled against its will” (δεῖ δὲ νομίζειν περὶ πολιτείας ἄριστον εἶναι [καὶ] τὸ ἑκοῦσαν ἀλλὰ μὴ ἄκουσαν ἄρχεσθαι τὴν πόλιν

27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

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[1.360.10–11]). König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 159. I divide the opening of the oration into three sections that drive the argument forward. In the first (§§1–8) Favorinus recounts other illustrious visitors to Corinth who did not receive a statue from the city, showing how special Favorinus himself must have been to have warranted a statue. In the second (§§9–15) Favorinus asks the hypothetical question why his statue, if it had been imbued with wings like a statue of Daedalus, would leave a city with such a famous Greek history. The final section with which we will deal here (§§16–21) asks whether it would have been fitting for Favorinus’s statue to be given a trial before being taken down. Drawing on the precedent of Corinth’s colony of Syracuse, Favorinus urges a trial be convened wherein he might offer a defense of his statue. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 42. My translation of the phrase “to be on friendly terms” is a bit conjectural. Capps has added οἰκεῖος to qualify ἐπιτήδειος. ἐπιτήδειος can have the sense of being on friendly terms with someone (cf. Pausanias 3.9.3), but it generally has the sense of being favorable toward something. Arion was set on by the sailors who were transporting him and thrown overboard. He was saved by a dolphin and arrived at Corinth before the ship. He informed Periander of the betrayal, and the sailors were tried upon their arrival in Corinth and killed (§§2–4). König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 162. On the relationship between Favorinus’s statue and his honor, see Gleason, Making Men, 8–20. The use of genealogical connections between cities was a common trope in the rhetoric of the time and served to aggregate cities into larger collectivities on the basis of myths of origins. See, for example, Jones, Kinship Diplomacy. For the use of the Panhellenion and the lists of nations in Acts to create connections to a larger polity, see Nasrallah, “The Acts of the Apostles.”

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Notes to Pages 134–138

35. The quotation is taken from Odyssey 11.222. Favorinus substitutes τιμὴ for ψυχὴ. 36. No other source notes Corinthian involvement in Sparta’s expulsion of Hippias. The Corinthians did refuse to participate in Kleomenes’ plan to place Isagoras as tyrant in Athens, but that is precisely the point: Kleomenes was never tyrant in Athens but was often brought in by outside forces seeking to instate a particular tyrant over the Athenians. It is clear that Favorinus is not ignorant of the details, since in the very next sentence he mentions Hippias and Isagoras as tyrants whom the Athenians imitate in their imperial ambitions. 37. This second example refers to Corinth’s involvement in the Corinthian War. During the war the democratic party in the city expelled the oligarchy, which fled to the nearby Spartan ally Sikyon. These allies brought a Spartan force to Corinth and seized Lechaion, the northern port on the Gulf of Corinth. The democrats succeeded in holding the city until an Argive army arrived, pushed back the Spartan allies, and forcefully merged the citizen bodies of Corinth and Argos (Diodorus Siculus Library 14.92.1; Xenophon Hellenica 4.5). 38. A further example of Corinth’s attack on tyranny is in §19: the campaign of Timoleon that drove Dionysius out of power in Syracuse. Dionysius seems to have come to live in Corinth after he was deposed and became something of a curiosity to all there, citizen and philosopher alike (Plutarch Timoleon 14–15). 39. Favorinus follows this with a discussion of the role of the Corinthians at Salamis, where he again brings up Herodotos’s embarrassing story of Corinthian cowardice even as he seeks to defend the Corinthian role in the battle (§§18–19). 40. But there was one line that Favorinus does not feel free to cross. As König points out, one of the elements of Favorinus’s retelling of Corinthian history that is absent is the Corinthian resistance to Rome: “Conspicuous by its absence, as if too sensitive to mention, Corinth’s participation in the Achaean League not only represents an instance where the ancient city failed in its anti-imperial labours, but also once again reminds us of the discontinuities of her history” (König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 164). Corinth’s leading role in the Achaian League’s resistance to Rome, a true case of Corinthian resistance to tyranny and love of Hellas (though, as we saw above, Pausanias might disagree with this statement), has been expunged from Favorinus’s ironic history. Perhaps we get a sense of the sentiment of Favorinus’s Corinthian audience in this regard. Though writers free from the immediacy of a Corinthian audience feel free to mention Corinth’s resistance to Rome, Favorinus might sense that mentioning this to their faces could be going too far, even for him. 41. König, “Favorinus’ Corinthian Oration,” 142. 42. In a fascinating article, Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” has argued convincingly that a letter ὑπὲρ Ἀργείων collected as Letter 28 of the Emperor Julian’s correspondence is actually a letter written sometime between 80 and 100 CE. Spawforth’s argument is based on several important observations about the text, following the earlier work of Bruno Keil (ibid., 213–14). First, the letter assumes that Corinth had been refounded as a colony relatively recently (409c). Second, the description of Argive festivals matches what we know of these festivals in the period between 80 and 120 CE. Third, the name of one of the Argive ambassadors, Lamprias,

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can be connected epigraphically to a prominent family (the Statilii) that was active in Argos during this period. The Greek text I have employed here is taken from Julian, The Works of the Emperor Julian, trans. Wright. All translations are my own. 43. It is possible that these games were held in Corinth under the auspices of the revived Achaian League, which would have been headquartered in Corinth, the provincial capital, and of which Argos would have been a contributing member. Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 218–21, draws on several pieces of evidence to come to this conclusion. Chief among this evidence is an inscription honoring C. Iulius Spartiaticus as the first of the Achaians to hold the office of federal high priest of the Augustan house (West no. 68), which is dated to between 54 and 59 CE because of its reference to Nero’s mother (Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 218–19). The cult itself would have been based in Corinth, and this would have been the location for the festivals associated with it. The Spartiaticus inscription bears this out in praising the lavish generosity of the honorand toward the colony (ll. 10–13). Spawforth also notes that the author of the Argive Letter mentions “many cities” that have contributed to the games at Corinth, a fact that suggests that at issue is Argos’s participation in “the collective funding of a federal or provincial imperial cult such as is found in Roman Asia, where the provincial koinon appointed special officials to administer the contributions from member cities for this purpose” (Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 221). There is evidence that the Achaian League grew significantly in the mid-first century CE by making ties with other smaller leagues in the Peloponnesos. There is evidence that this larger group of cities celebrated a festival in honor of Gaius’s ascension in 37 CE in Argos (Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 222–23). This may have been repeated by the same governor (Memmius Regulus) in 41 CE. This Panachaian practice could have resulted in the creation of a federal imperial cult in Achaea at Nero’s ascension in 54 CE. On the basis of Spawforth’s work, we can reconstruct something of the history of the cult at Corinth with which the Argive Letter is concerned. In 54 CE a cult of the emperors was instituted at Corinth for Nero’s accession by the Achaian League (Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 226). This cult held an annual festival at Corinth with venationes and gladiatorial shows; its first priest for life was Spartiaticus. The forerunners to this cult were periodic celebrations, at the proconsul’s request, in honor of the accessions of Gaius and Claudius at Argos by the Panachaian League. The governor (Memmius Regulus) might have been the main encouragement behind the earlier celebrations. This follows an inscription of P. Cor. Scipio, who in 2 CE was actively promoting the cult in Achaea as a quaestor (Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum XXIII 206). Greece was not overly excited about Augustan control and seems to have frequently complained about the senatorial management of the province, so much so that Tiberius transferred the province to his control in 15 CE (Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 227). That the new cult of the Achaian League was pushed by the Romans is seen in the fact that it is centered in Corinth. The choice of Corinth may have reflected the influence of the governor and not the Greek members of the league, who would have wanted the cult celebrated in their cities (Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 228). The colonial

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elites seem to have used the colony’s position to curry favor and personal ties with the Roman administration (see Kent no. 125). These celebrations were expensive, and the Argives seem to have successfully been able to get an exception at first on the grounds that they had to pay for their own games. This may hint at a lack of enthusiasm about the new cult. That the Argives were eventually forced to pay into the system shows that the imperial government had a hand in organizing the financing of the games. The reimposition of obligation on the Argives seems to correspond with the loss of influence by prominent Argives in the Achaean League. On venationes, see Kyle, Spectacles of Death, 79–90. These games were generally held in conjunction with the imperial cult. See Robert, Les Gladiateurs dans l’Orient grec, 267–80; Carter, “Presentation of Gladiatorial Spectacles in the Greek East,” 5, 64; Frilingos, Spectacles of Empire, 29: “Roman-style entertainment arrived in the province [Asia Minor] as an extension of the imperial cult.” On the imperial cult in Asia Minor, see S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power. On the politics of spectacle and identity in Corinth, see Concannon, “Ecclesia Laus Corinthiensis,” 280–340. 44. It is worth remembering Pausanias’s claim, discussed above, that the Corinthians were subjected to the Argives when Bellerophon was king and that they went to Troy at the command of others (2.4.2). For the contours of ethnic reasoning about questions of antiquity and novelty, see Buell, Why This New Race, 63–93. 45. The problem has been made worse by the addition of two new sets of games in Argos, meaning that they now must pay for four games in four years (408c). Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 221, argues that if these games were held as part of federal celebrations under the Achaian League, Delphi and Elis could not have been part of the league itself. Rather, “on the matter of Delphi and Elis the author descends into ‘humbug’ (‘Spiegelfechterei’), setting up a false parallel between the broad exemption which these two cities enjoyed . . . as ‘free and immune cities’ (civitates liberae et immunes).” 46. Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult,” 229–30, suggests something similar: the obligation to the Corinthians may have “constituted a loss of civic face, one made all the more bitter by the fact that these ‘others’ were the jumped-up Roman colonists at Corinth. . . . Argos was probably still smarting from a loss of regional standing as Caesar’s colony went from strength to strength.”

6. Usable Pasts in the Corinthian Wilderness 1. Meritt, no. 111; Oster, “Use, Misuse and Neglect,” 55–58; Koester, “Corinth.” 2. Willoughby, “Archaeology and Christian Beginnings,” 33–34. The original publication of the inscription in 1903 dated it to the first century and made the connection with the synagogue of Acts 18 (Powell, “Greek Inscriptions from Corinth,” 60–61, no. 40). It is this dating, later corrected by Meritt in the official publication, that seems to have influenced the reconstructions of biblical scholars. See, for example, Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 13–14n7. For a balanced examination of the Corinthian meat market (macellum) referred to by Willoughby, see Cadbury, “The Macellum of Corinth.”

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3. The connection has found its way into a number of commentaries on 1 Corinthians and continues to be recited by tour guides leading groups of Christian audiences through the Corinth museum. Even so shrewd an interpreter as Conzelmann was taken in by the synagogue inscription (Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 12). See Oster, “Use, Misuse and Neglect,” 55–58, for more examples. A less bold but no less problematic interpretation of the synagogue inscription suggests that, though the inscription is from a later synagogue, the synagogue of Paul’s day was probably in the general vicinity. See, for example, Meritt, Greek Inscriptions, no. 111, and W. McDonald, “Archaeology and St. Paul’s Journeys,” 41. Since we can connect the inscription to no surviving building, and since the inscription is of such poor quality that it is not likely to have been part of a building set up so close to the center of town, we should be cautious in assuming a connection between the spot where it was found and its original location. Outside Acts 18, the only evidence for this period comes from Philo, who, in a list of places where one might find diasporic communities, lists “Argos, Corinth, and the most abundant and best places in the Peloponnesos” (Ἄργος Κόρινθον τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ ἄριστα Πελοποννήσου [Legatio ad Gaium 281]). It should be evident from how Philo draws the list to a close that the rhetorical point here is that Jews can be found in the best places in the Peloponnesos, Corinth and Argos being two prominent examples. This strikes me as more of a rhetorical construction that emphasizes the prominence of Jewish communities abroad than a researched list of places where Philo “knows” of large communities. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 10n3 is generally supportive of the accuracy of Philo’s list, citing Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 14.115– 18, quoting Strabo) and Acts 2:9–11 in support of Philo’s list; however, neither Acts 2 nor Josephus speaks of specific colonies in Greek cities. Josephus’s quotation of Strabo is concerned primarily with the condition of the Jews in Cyrene and Alexandria. I think it more likely that there was no major Jewish community in Corinth before the end of the first century CE, when a large influx of Judeans was sent by Vespasian to dig a canal across the Isthmus (Josephus, Jewish War 3.539–40). This strikes me as the event that gave impetus to the arrival of Jews in Corinth that is then presumed by Luke to have been the case in an earlier generation. This is not to say that there were no Jews in Corinth in the first century, but is merely a caution against assuming that there existed the kind of community presumed by Luke. 4. Translation taken from Keyes’s edition of Cicero, De re publica, De legibus. 5. As Harland, Dynamics of Identity, 100–101, has also noted, the presumption of a general sense of “rootlessness” in the Roman world has been common among classicists as well, following in the footsteps of M. P. Nilsson and E. R. Dodds. 6. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 2–4. 7. J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians,” in Relating Religion, 347. 8. Buell, Why This New Race, 63. For the argument that the Thessalonian community was actually an association of artisans, see Ascough, “Of Memories and Meals.” This represents a summary and updating of Ascough’s earlier studies that build on his Ph.D. dissertation: Ascough, “The Thessalonian Christian Community”; Ascough, Paul’s Macedonian Associations. 9. This is not to say that looking for “opponents” is itself a flawed endeavor. Such work has been an important part of shaping and refining reading strategies in scholarship

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on the Corinthian correspondence. See, for example, Georgi, The Opponents of Paul, and Sumney, Identifying Paul’s Opponents. While such work is interesting in itself, I am not looking here for one single group of opponents, but trying to think about diverse responses to Paul that may overlap with the groups that other scholars have identified. 10. In his recent dissertation, Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 167, puts the problem well: “For most exegetes . . . meaning is thought of as a goal, an answer to a question, enlightenment where there was once darkness. Yet when approaching 2 Cor 3, modern discussions often do not get past the notion of meaning as a question; that is, scholars spend as much time discussing what sort of answer, what sort of meaning, we should be looking for in this section.” In my reconstruction I am mindful of Marquis’s concern, alongside that of Hickling, “Is the Second Epistle?” I seek to reconstruct the rhetorical situation as it is inscribed in the text and build a reconstruction of the historical situation that imagines the reception of Paul’s rhetoric in Corinth. This approach takes seriously the rhetorical construction of Paul’s text and avoids trying to map those constructions neatly onto the Corinthians or Paul’s opponents. Paul uses the story of Moses’ veiling in two segments (3:7–11 and 3:12–18). These uses fit within a particular line of argument that runs from 2:14 to 4:6. The argument of 2 Cor 2:14–4:6 is structured in three sections: 2:14–3:6, 3:7–18, and 4:1–6 (Lambrecht, “Structure and Line of Thought in 2 Corinthians 2,14–4,6,” and Bultmann, The Second Letter to the Corinthians, 61–109). The first section (2:14–3:6) breaks off the discussion of Paul’s search for Titus (2:13) and deals explicitly with the question of letters of recommendation. The second, 3:7–18, takes up the question of the dichotomy between spirit and letter that Paul mentions in 3:6. He then alludes to the giving of the law on Sinai and discusses the story of Moses’ veiling in Exodus 34. The third, 4:1–6, offers a summary statement, drawing together Paul’s defense of the qualifications of his διακονία, the transparency of his ministry, and the transformative potential that his ministry makes available to the Corinthians themselves. There has been a great deal of debate about the compositional history of 2 Corinthians. Most scholars think that 2 Corinthians is a composite letter, in which two or more fragments of letters of Paul have been pieced together by a later editor. The first partition theory of 2 Corinthians was articulated by Semler, who argued that there were two sets of letters: (1) 2 Cor 1–8; Rom 16; 2 Cor 9 and 13:11–13; and (2) 2 Cor 10:1– 13:10 (Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, 3–4). Since Semler the variety of partition theories has grown exponentially. The most complicated have been those of Weiss, Earliest Christianity, 356–57, who posits six letters, and Schmithals, who posited nine (Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:48). I will list, briefly, the most popular theories. The first sees two letters: (1) 2 Cor 1–9 and (2) 2 Cor 10–13 (Barrett, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians; Furnish, II Corinthians). The second theory, which reversed the order of the first, was originally proposed by Adolf Hausrath (Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, 12–13) and followed quickly by Kennedy, The Second and Third Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians. A third theory posits three letters: (1) 2 Cor 1–8; (2) 2 Cor 9; and (3) 2 Cor 10–13 (Windisch, Der zweite Korintherbrief; Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on

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the Second Epistle to the Corinthians; and Héring, The Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. The most popular theory postulates five letters, with an interpolation at 2 Cor 6:14–7:1: (1) 2 Cor 2:14–7:4; (2) 2 Cor 10:1–13:10; (3) 2 Cor 1:1–2:13; 7:5–16; 13:11–13; (4) 2 Cor 8; and (5) 2 Cor 9. The most prominent exponents of this theory are Bornkamm, “Die Vorgeschichte des sogenannten zweiten Korintherbriefes”; Georgi, The Opponents of Paul; and Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. For a list of most theories and their expositors, see Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:47–49. For a more detailed history of the partition theories, see Betz, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, 3–36 (current to 1985). Some continue to argue that 2 Corinthians is a unified composition. The best defense of this position is that of Bieringer and Lambrecht, Studies on 2 Corinthians, and Lambrecht, Second Corinthians. I side with those who see 2 Corinthians as a composite letter. I am most convinced by the partition theories of Mitchell, “Paul’s Letters to Corinth,” and Welborn, An End to Enmity, xix–xxviii. Mitchell’s theory differs from those of Bornkamm, Betz, and Georgi only with regard to the chronology of the Corinthian correspondence. She sees a total of seven letters as constituting the Corinthian correspondence in the following chronological order: (1) letter mentioned in 1 Cor 5:9; (2) 1 Corinthians; (3) 2 Cor 8; (4) 2 Cor 2:14–7:4 (minus 6:14–7:1); (5) 2 Cor 10:1–13:10; (6) 2 Cor 1:1–2:13; 7:5–16; 13:11–13; (7) 2 Cor 9. Mitchell’s chronology is persuasive because it accounts for the ways in which each letter fragment helps create the context for the production and reception of what follows it. A more sustained attempt to examine these interrelationships can be found in Mitchell, “The Corinthian Correspondence.” Welborn’s reconstruction, with which I tend to side, differs from Mitchell’s in putting 2 Cor 10:1–13:10 ahead of 2 Cor 2:14–7:4. Welborn also departs from Mitchell in considering 1 Corinthians itself to be a combination of three separate letter fragments. Though I view 2 Corinthians as a composite letter, I will assume that 2:14–4:6, within which the narrative of Moses’ veiling is discussed, can be analyzed rhetorically without requiring that we assume either the compositional unity or disunity of 2 Corinthians as a whole. Duff, “Glory in the Ministry of Death,” 329, rightly locates the argument of 2:14–4:6 within the larger rhetorical unit of 2:14–7:4. It is clear that 2 Cor 2:14–7:4 is delimited from the rest of 2 Corinthians by transition points at the beginning and end. The narrative of Paul’s search for Titus breaks off after 2:13 and returns at 7:5. I also agree with most scholars that 6:14–7:1 is a non-Pauline interpolation, but this does not disturb a rhetorical analysis of 2:14–7:4. Whether an interpolation or not, 6:14–7:1 represents a digression from the larger argument of 2:14–7:4 and so does not directly bear on the rhetorical analysis of the whole. Duff makes a similar argument for reading 2:14–7:4 as a discreet unit, regardless of the compositional nature of 2 Corinthians, in Duff, “Transformed ‘from Glory to Glory,’ ” 761–62. Lambrecht, “Structure and Line of Thought in 2 Corinthians 2,14–4,6,” 257–58, considers 2:14–4:6 a “fairly independent” unit, even though he argues for 2 Corinthians as a unified composition. 11. It may be that concerns with Paul’s management of the collection for Jerusalem or his perceived vacillation about visiting Corinth (2 Cor 1:15–2:4) led the Corinthians

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to question his credentials. On some of the possible Corinthian concerns, see Duff, “Transformed ‘from Glory to Glory,’ ” 762–63. Mitchell, “Paul’s Letters to Corinth,” 327–28, suggests that Paul overreached by ignoring an earlier promise to let the Corinthians choose their own envoys to accompany their part of the collection. Interestingly, it may have been Paul himself who opened himself up to the charge of being unqualified. In 1 Cor 15:9 Paul notes of himself: “I am the least of the apostles, who is not qualified to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the ekkle¯sia of God” (Ἐγὼ γάρ εἰμι ὁ ἐλάχιστος τῶν ἀποστόλων ὃς οὐκ εἰμὶ ἱκανὸς καλεῖσθαι ἀπόστολος, διότι ἐδίωξα τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ). Though Paul is perfectly willing to describe himself and his ministry in more grandiose terms, this rhetorical recourse to humility may have been used by Corinthians frustrated with Paul’s behavior to wonder if Paul himself might have been onto something. Perhaps Paul really had not demonstrated sufficient proof of his apostolic credentials and behavior. A careful reader or hearer of 1 Corinthians would notice that Paul’s claims to his apostleship were rather weak. His vision of the risen Jesus came to him after that vision had come to all the other apostles (1 Cor 15:8). He had also persecuted the church before his call. It is possible that the Corinthians had begun to wonder about Paul’s qualifications as an apostle after having met other missionaries who made their way through Corinth bearing stronger proofs of their miraculous deeds or connections to persons who had traveled with Jesus before his death and resurrection. If those whom Paul will later call the super-apostles (2 Cor 11:5; 12:11) had already made their way through Corinth, bearing their own letters of recommendation, the Corinthians may have wondered what credentials Paul could present to prove that he was a trustworthy διάκονος of the gospel. Additional conflict with the Corinthians may have emerged as a result of conflict between Paul and the “wrongdoer” of 2 Cor 2:5–11 (Welborn, An End to Enmity). Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, argues that Paul’s refusal to accept money from the Corinthians was another cause of the tense relationship between the two parties. Essentially, Marshall sees Paul’s refusal as a breach of conventions of friendship. Paul seems convinced that he should be given greater credit as an apostle because of his refusal to accept money, which probably created a disconnect in Corinth when Paul admitted that he took money from other communities (2 Cor 11:8). Mitchell, “Paul’s Letters to Corinth,” 327, suggests that Paul had angered the Corinthians by usurping their privilege of choosing their own envoys for the collection and writing letters on their behalf. In 1 Cor 16:3 Paul promised the Corinthians that they could send their own envoys with letters to accompany their gift to Jerusalem: οὓς ἐὰν δοκιμάσητε, δι᾿ ἐπιστολῶν τούτους πέμψω ἀπενεγκεῖν τὴν χάριν ὑμῶν εἰς Ἰερουσαλήμ. In 2 Corinthians 8 Paul sends a letter along with envoys that he has chosen (8:22), potentially usurping the authority he had offered to the Corinthians. This is one of the key pieces of evidence that Mitchell uses to argue that 2 Corinthians 8 came next after 1 Corinthians in the Corinthian correspondence. 12. The contrast that Paul sets up in 2:17 is between those who peddle (καπηλεύω) the word of God and those who speak with pure motives and divine authority. καπηλεύω is a hapax legomenon in Paul and the New Testament, but it retains a rather negative set of connotations in the LXX, Philo, and Josephus, where it is used to suggest the

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seamy side of business in the marketplace, involving hints of sexual misconduct and impure behavior. Philo uses the verb to describe the activities of a prostitute who sells the flower of an hour (ἑταίραν τὸ τῆς ὥρας ἄνθος καπηλεύουσαν [On the Virtues 112]) and Apelles, an actor and counselor of Gaius who made a market of his body before taking up a life on the stage (ἐκαπήλευσε τὴν ὥραν ἔξωρος δὲ γενόμενος ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν παρῆλθεν [Legatio ad Gaium 203]). Philo uses the noun form (καπηλεία) in a list of business activities that the Essenes do not engage in as part of living out their ideal community (Quod omnis probus liber sit 78). Josephus similarly uses καπηλεία to describe business practices that are beyond the bounds of proper behavior (Antiquities of the Jews 3.276; Against Apion 1.61). Merchants (κάπηλοι) are held in similar dishonor in Sir 26:29 and Isaiah 1:22 (LXX). Barrett, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 103, lists other references from other classical sources. The use of the term here could suggest two different interpretations of what Paul is suggesting. First, the peddler could simply be one who sells his preaching services, much like a philosophical or rhetorical teacher in the marketplace. Were this the case, Paul might be setting up a contrast that is based on the acceptance of money for service (διακονία) to the community, which he claims in an earlier part of the Corinthian correspondence to have renounced (1 Cor 9:1–18) and which will become a point of contention in 2 Cor 11:7–11 and 12:13–16. Because καπηλεύω also carries with it some rather seamy implications, a second option might be that those who peddle the word in some way change it or pervert it by how they proclaim it. Had Paul sought to refer simply to those who merely sell their services he might have employed the less judgmental ἐμπορεύομαι, which tends to be a more neutral verb for describing commercial activity. It is probably best to think of the term here as doing double duty in Paul’s contrast. Barrett, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 103, notes the same two meanings of καπηλεύω and sees them working together, but he prefers the more neutral “to water down” to render the verb in English. Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:212–15, takes a similar position, seeing both material gain and perversion of the message as being intertwined. An alternative reading of λοιποί is present in P46 D F G L and others. The meaning is not radically changed in either case; the implication is that those who peddle the word of God are numerous in comparison to those who are the true speakers of the word. 13. Windisch, Der zweite Korintherbrief, 100, notes how the Vulgate translator tried to clean up the confusing syntax of this verse. I want to thank Larry Welborn for the reference. Paul presents himself as a trustworthy envoy sent by God in a string of descriptions that border on incoherent (2:17b). Paul claims to speak out of pure motives (ἐξ εἰλικρινείας), a direct contrast to those who might be peddling the word of God merely for material or social gain. Paul then parallels this description with an awkward string of references: ὡς ἐκ θεοῦ κατέναντι θεοῦ ἐν Χριστῷ. Taken individually each phrase conveys something about Paul’s characterization of his motives and actions. He is one who is sent by God (ἐκ θεοῦ) and thus speaks for God (Duff, “Metaphor, Motif, and Meaning”). Paul also speaks as though he were standing in the presence of God (κατέναντι θεοῦ). This evokes the sense that Paul is answerable to God alone and that

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God acts as a witness on his behalf (Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:215–16; Barrett, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 104). Finally, Paul speaks “in Christ” (ἐν Χριστῷ), which could mean that Paul speaks “under the direction of Christ” (Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:216) or that he speaks as one on the inside, called like the Corinthians to a relationship with God in Christ (Barrett, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 104). Paul has overloaded his self-description with claims to divine authorization to proclaim the word of God. This overloading of authorizing language strengthens the differentiation from the peddlers of the word and suggests that the Corinthians have raised concerns about the purity of Paul’s motivations and the trustworthiness of his actions. Paul responds by describing his work as derived from pure motives, as authorized and evaluated by God, and authenticated in relation to Christ. 14. Paul speaks of his διακονία as deriving from God: “we have this diakonia in as much as we have received mercy (from God)” (ἔχοντες τὴν διακονίαν ταύτην καθὼς ἠλεήθημεν [4:1]). He also is at pains to contrast his behavior with that of those who “go about in craftiness and distort the word of God” (περιπατοῦντες ἐν πανουργίᾳ μηδὲ δολοῦντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ [4:2]). Rather, Paul recommends himself to all people “by the manifestation of the truth” (τῇ φανερώσει τῆς ἀληθείας) and “before God” (ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ [4:2]), an allusion to the κατέναντι θεοῦ of 2 Cor 2:17. Finally, Paul asserts that he proclaims Christ and himself as slave of the Corinthians “through Jesus” (Οὐ γὰρ ἑαυτοὺς κηρύσσομεν ἀλλὰ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν κύριον, ἑαυτοὺς δὲ δούλους ὑμῶν διὰ Ἰησοῦν [4:5]). As he does in in 2 Cor 2:17, Paul defends the sincerity of his motives and the character of his διακονία, which suggests that these had been called into question by the Corinthians. He claims authority from God, pure motives, and transparent (the sense of φανέρωσις in 4:2) behavior in response. 15. This concern would have worked in tandem with Corinthian concerns about Paul’s vacillation about visiting Corinth (2 Cor 1:15–2:4). In this context Paul is at pains to respond to skepticism that he is merely a flatterer: “Was I vacillating when I planned this [visit to Corinth]? Do I plan as those who plan according to the flesh, so that with me it is just ‘Yes, yes’ and ‘No, no’? God is faithful, so that our word to you has not been ‘yes and no’ ” (2 Cor 1:17–18). 16. Paul generally seems to have found the plurality of early Christian missionaries threatening to his authority. Take, for example, the way that Paul presents Apollos in 1 Corinthians 1–4. Apollos enters the rhetoric as a potential faction leader (1:12; 3:4). In chap. 3 Apollos is a fellow servant (διάκονος) of Paul (3:5) and a coworker (συνεργοί [3:9]). Paul and Apollos are both nothing (οὔτε . . . ἐστίν τι) with respect to the work that God does through them and one (ἕν) in their pursuit of the same missionary goals (3:7–8). But Paul also speaks of a differentiation in the task that each performs: Paul is the planter and Apollos the waterer (3:6). This differentiation marks Paul as the superior or prior member of the pair. As the “planter” of the Corinthian community, Paul is also the wise architect (σοφὸς ἀρχιτέκτων) who lays a foundation that no one may alter (3:10–11). By chap. 4 Paul asserts his primacy in kinship terms: “For though you might

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have thousands of slave teachers (παιδαγωγοί) in Christ, you do not have many fathers (πατέρες). Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel” (4:15). Apollos is now lumped in with the numerous pedagogues who might have influence over the Corinthians, while Paul is the father who can threaten the community with paternal punishment: “What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” (4:21). As Apollos moves to the background, Paul presents himself as the sole authority over the Corinthians. Though in reality there were probably a number of missionary groups making connections with the Corinthian ekkle¯sia, Paul preferred a hierarchical line of authority that would be operative over the community (Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 119). See also Welborn, “Paul’s Caricature of His Chief Rival.” 17. Edgar J. Goodspeed, “Phoebe’s Letter of Introduction.” 18. Recommendation letters were common in a wide variety of contexts at the time, and Paul himself wrote several such letters (Romans 16; Philemon). See Georgi, The Opponents of Paul, 244. On the content of recommendation letters, see Clinton W. Keyes, “The Greek Letter of Introduction.” On Latin letters of recommendation, see Cotton, “Mirificum Genus Commendationis”; Cotton, “The Role of Cicero’s Letters of Recommendation.” On Romans 16 as a letter of introduction, see Goodspeed, “Phoebe’s Letter of Introduction”; and J. I. H. McDonald, “Was Romans XVI a Separate Letter?” Baird, “Letters of Recommendation,” 169, argues that Philemon is a letter of recommendation. Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 219n219, disagrees, since Onesimus is already known by Philemon. Belleville, “Paul’s Polemic and Theology of the Spirit,” 290n33, also adds 1 Cor 16:15–18; 2 Cor 8:18–24; and Phil 2:19–24. Other letters of recommendation are mentioned in Acts 9:2 and 18:27. Both Paul and the super-apostles claim the title διάκονος Χριστοῦ (1 Cor 3:5; 2 Cor 6:4; 11:15, 23). Paul, however, does not necessarily share their self-perception, implying that these people are false apostles and even διάκονοι of Satan (2 Cor 11:13–15). On this, see Thrall, Critical and Exegetal Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 2:731. On his reading, Georgi, The Opponents of Paul, 27, suggests that διάκονος Χριστοῦ is roughly equivalent to that of apostle (ἀπόστολος [2 Cor 11:13–15]). In 2 Cor 2:14–4:6, διακον-based words occur seven times (3:3, 6–9; 4:1). The Corinthian correspondence contains twenty-three of thirty-five total uses in Paul’s writings. The term διάκονος was a leadership title in early Christian communities from very early on. For a history of the term and its use, see Georgi, The Opponents of Paul, 27–32. Georgi thinks that it takes on the sense of “envoy” in Paul’s usage. See also Bieringer, “Paul’s Understanding of Diakonia in 2 Corinthians 5,18,” 413–21. As a title of leadership, the term occurs in 1 Cor 3:5, 2 Cor 3:6, and 2 Cor 11:15, 23. διακον-based words are used only three times in 1 Corinthians, suggesting that it had not yet become a site of contention. Paul uses the term διάκονος in 1 Cor 3:5 in a general sense to refer to the service that both he and Apollos performed in Corinth. In 12:5 διακονία is mentioned in the discussion of spiritual gifts. There Paul speaks of a variety of services. Finally, in 16:15 Paul praises the household of Stephanas for its devotion to the service to the saints (διακονίαν τοῖς

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19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

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Notes to Pages 150–152 ἁγίοις). This may be a reference to the collection for Jerusalem, which Paul describes by a similar phrase in 2 Cor 8:4 and 9:1: τῆς διακονίας τῆς εἰς τοὺς ἁγίους. See, for example, Mitchell, “Paul’s Letters to Corinth,” 332, who thinks that part of the reason for the Corinthian request is a sense that Paul has usurped their authority to recommend envoys for the collection, argues that the Corinthians have asked for letters from Paul precisely because he has presumed to write them on behalf of others without providing any for himself. The best evidence that the super-apostles had letters for themselves is in 2 Cor 10:12 and 10:18. In 10:12 Paul attacks those who “recommend themselves” (τῶν ἑαυτοὺς συνιστανόντων). The verb here (συνίστημι) is the same used for the letters of recommendation in 2 Cor 3:1. In 2 Cor 10:18 Paul repeats a line of argument similar to that found in 2 Corinthians 3 that opposes the written word with the Spirit: “The one who is approved is not the one recommending himself, but the one whom the Lord recommends” (οὐ γὰρ ὁ ἑαυτὸν συνιστάνων, ἐκεῖνός ἐστιν δόκιμος, ἀλλὰ ὃν ὁ κύριος συνίστησιν). The written letter of recommendation is here subordinated to the recommendation that comes from the Lord. All this suggests that the super-apostles, by bearing letters of recommendation, may have given the Corinthians a charge to level against Paul when the relationship began to go sour. See, for example, Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 122–53, and Boyarin, A Radical Jew, 97–105. This change has been most closely associated with Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, who showed how Paul employed deliberative rhetoric as an appeal for unity in 1 Corinthians. Mitchell’s important turn to rhetorical analysis was preceded by Betz, Galatians, and Welborn, “On the Discord in Corinth.” Feminist scholars have also emphasized Paul’s deployment of rhetoric intended to persuade. See, for example, Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 105–28; Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 1–6; and Nasrallah, An Ecstasy of Folly, 63–64, to name but a few. Rives, “Roman Translation.” See also Woolf, Tales of the Barbarians. H. S. Versnel, Coping with the Gods, 41, notes similar clues to determining the identity of a god: “appearance, quality, characteristic behaviour, (professional) domicile.” Rives, “Roman Translation,” 176–77. Versnel, Coping with the Gods, 82–83. He notes that the Greeks “had an extensive range of divine images in store, and boasted an uncommon capacity of evoking different identities of a god in rapidly shifting perspectives, generating (seemingly) incompatible statements to the distress of the modern observer” (ibid., 6–7). As Stowers, “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power,” 122, notes, “Many of the passages that the Christian church has cherished as theological are less anachronistically described as Paul appealing to the interests of aspirants to paideia by ‘showing his stuff’ in intellectualizing issues that were ‘practical’ and strategic for most of the Corinthians.” Versnel further notes that when the micro meets the macro, when the local meets the national or regional, there are always questions and negotiations. As a result, the “Greek gods suffer from multiperspectiveness,” participating in both Panhellenic and local pantheons (Versnel, Coping with the Gods, 114). Both the local gods and the ge-

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Notes to Pages 152–155

26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

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ography that they mark (polis, houses, graves, boundary stones, cultic sites) “together construct the lived identity of the local population” (Versnel, Coping with the Gods, 118; emphasis in original). As Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 43, rightly notes, we should not also make the mistake of assuming that the Corinthians only wanted to choose one leader from among the many: The Corinthians “do not understand Christ in a way that excludes allegiance to separate leaders because of an exclusive possession by Christ who is possessed by God.” That Paul envisions a collective judgment process is suggested by his references to the Corinthians “coming together” (1 Cor 5:4; 11:18; 14:26). Paul’s discussion of the process of expelling the man sleeping with his stepmother includes his casting his own vote (5:3), which suggests that some sort of voting procedure was involved in communal decision making. I have been aided in seeing this strategy by the recent dissertation of Miller, “Ekkle¯sia,” 142–56. For a fuller discussion of Paul’s rhetorical strategy, see Miller, “Ekkle¯sia,” 148–52. Paul also suggests the possibility of communal examination in 1 Cor 9:3. Buell, Why This New Race, 70–75. Liew, “Redressing Bodies,” 138n70; 133. This stands in contrast to the “New Consensus” position of Meeks, First Urban Christians, who has famously argued that “some” Corinthians would have been drawn to early Christian communities to resolve their own status inconsistencies (namely, that they had more economic than social capital in the city). On renewed attention to the body, see Martin, The Corinthian Body. For negative perceptions of Judeans in the ancient world, see Schäfer, Judeophobia. Though I do think that Schäfer’s “Judeophobia” did exist in the first century, I also think it important to recognize that there were pockets of “sympathy” for the Jews as well, which Schäfer also notes (ibid., 6). In such a disparate and diverse empire, there would be many opportunities for individuals, groups, and communities to act counter to the prevailing trends of Judeophobia in the Roman world. Whether Corinth was such a place is possible, but without any data on a Jewish community in Corinth it is impossible to tell. Whatever situation existed during the lifetime of Paul would have undoubtedly shifted after the Jewish War, when Josephus says that large numbers of Jewish slaves were shipped to the Isthmus to work on digging a canal (Jewish War 3.539–40). Such large numbers, if Josephus is accurate, may be the reason that Luke can envision a community of Jews in Corinth in Acts 18 that is hostile to Christian missionary activity. It is possible that these larger numbers of Jews in Corinth did spur a negative reaction on the part of the populace. In a fascinating argument, Mount, Pauline Christianity, 131–39, argues that Paul is inserted by Luke into an existing story about Sosthenes and Gallio, which would suggest a tradition of conflict about Jews in Corinth in the late first century. For the classic formulation of the ethnic claims of the super-apostles, see Georgi, The Opponents of Paul, 40–60. I should add that I find other aspects of Liew’s argument to be quite fascinating and instructive, particularly his discussion of the ways in which Paul’s internalization of his own marginalized, stereotyped body might have expressed itself in a fear of women

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32.

33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

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Notes to Pages 156–158 and uncontrolled sexuality (Liew, “Redressing Bodies,” 139–43). Liew’s two references to 2 Corinthians can be found at 132 and 140n79. Liew is close to the mark when he suggests why Paul’s malleability might have been perceived as a threat in Corinth: “Claiming an identity that is ‘marked at once by indistinguishable sameness and irreducible difference,’ Paul arouses an anxiety caused by the unclassifiable, or what Zygmunt Bauman calls ‘proteophobia.’ Paul becomes in effect a vexing and menacing figure to the Corinthians, especially in light of the sociocultural mixing, rhetorical self-fashioning, and yet colonial racial/ethnic markings that characterized the Greco-Roman world. Paul claims for himself a reproducible body that is simultaneously a double agent that can disrupt, if not exactly dissolve, the scripted performativity of race/ethnicity by performing its contingency, changeability, and convertibility” (Liew, “Redressing Bodies,” 138). See Georgi, The Opponents of Paul, 254–71. On the importance of speech among the Corinthians, see the discussion in chapter 3. On the career of Eurycles, see Bowersock, “Eurycles of Sparta”; Cartledge and Spawforth, Hellenistic and Roman Sparta, 97–104; Welborn, An End to Enmity, 312–15. On Laco’s career, see Welborn, An End to Enmity, 312–17. On Laco’s benefactions and magistracies in Corinth, see West no. 67. For inscriptional evidence in Corinth for Spartiaticus, see Meritt no. 70 and West no. 68. For more on Spartiaticus’s career, see Taylor and West, “The Euryclids”; West, Latin Inscriptions, 1896–1926, 50–53; Spawforth, “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult”; and Welborn, An End to Enmity, 309–12. Other inscriptions honoring Spartiaticus include IG VI.1469 (Epidauros), IG V.1.463 (Laconia), and IG III.805 (Athens). He was one of the few Greek notables who began to become active in Corinth during the reign of Claudius. For a discussion of this trend, see Spawforth, “Roman Corinth: Formation of a Colonial Elite,” 173–74. I want to thank Larry Welborn for his suggestion to me that Spartiaticus might be useful in this context, though I take full responsibility for any errors in the use to which I put Spartiaticus and his family. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 253–68. For further discussion of this and other genealogical connections, see Gruen, “Cultural Fictions and Cultural Identity,” and Gruen, “Fact and Fiction.” Jones, Kinship Diplomacy. This is certainly a possiblility, given the difficulty of identifying Judeans in the Roman Empire. In his landmark study, Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, 27–49, has shown that it would have been practically impossible to distinguish a Jew from a Gentile on the basis of looks, clothing, speech, names, occupations, or circumcision in antiquity. Circumcision, which will play such a prominent role in Paul’s debates with his opponents, seems to have been a particularly poor boundary marker: “In the eastern parts of the empire, at least until the first century C.E., circumcision cannot have served as such a marker because it was practiced by non-Jews as well as Jews” (ibid., 44). Therefore, “there is no evidence that the Jews in antiquity ever actually used [circumcision] as a means of detecting fellow Jews” (ibid., 48). But were there any useful ways in which Jewish identity could be marked in antiquity? Cohen outlines two: “You might reasonably conclude that people you see associating with Jews

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Notes to Pages 158–160

38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

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are themselves Jews, and you might reasonably conclude that people you see observing Jewish laws are Jews” (ibid., 53). Were the Corinthians to follow Paul’s advice and also adopt an affiliation with Israelite “fathers,” they certainly would be perceived as Judeans by their Corinthian neighbors. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 139. Ibid., 140–41. But this does not mean that the two groups, now that they have been affiliated in Christ, have an equal relationship. As Johnson Hodge notes, “Impartiality does not imply equality” (ibid., 141). The logic of “to the Ioudaioi first and also to the Greeks” encodes a hierarchical arrangement of persons, within which the Greeks are the latecomers, the second-class citizens. Though they have all the rights of citizens, they remain different. This can be clearly seen in the metaphor of the olive tree, in whichPaul draws on an agricultural image to link the distinct peoples of the Ioudaioi and the Gentiles (ibid., 141–47). This sort of genealogical thinking was common in antiquity (Hall, Hellenicity, 56–89). In the olive tree it is the Ioudaioi who have the favored position. They are the cultivated branches that have always been connected to the roots. The Gentiles have been grafted on as wild branches. This affiliates them with the others but does not erase the difference in quality and pedigree between the two. Though now part of the same tree and connected to the same roots, the Gentiles remain lower hierarchically than the “natural” branches. Paul’s use of the olive tree metaphor suggests that he is not seeking to eliminate ethnic difference but to establish relationships among peoples (Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 147). Paul does not represent a universalizing logic whereby all peoples become equal in the sight of an impartial God. Rather, Paul seeks to create a relationship with a general category of people (all those who are not Ioudaioi) that allows them to affiliate themselves with the family of Abraham and the people of Israel. This solves what for Paul is the problem of Gentile alienation from the God of Israel: through Christ the Gentiles have a place in Israel and, therefore, a connection to the God of Israel. “We can conclude with confidence that even if the Corinthians fully understood what Paul wanted them to do, they would have been selective about what they wanted to do, and could not have given up their religion wholesale, even if they had wanted to do so. . . . The deep failures that Paul sees among the Corinthians are likely the result of their selective and mixed appropriation and outright resistance to Paul” (Stowers, “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power,” 112). Buell, Why This New Race, 63. Indeed, Regilla, the wife of Herodes Atticus, had a statue set up in her honor in a later phase of remodeling at Peirene (Hill, The Springs, 102–3), which suggests she may have been a benefactor at one point. It is not out of the question to imagine a woman as a benefactor of such a monument in Corinth. Regilla herself built another fountain at Olympia. This approach presumes, along with Stowers, that “there were clearly other bodies of knowledge [available to inhabitants of Corinth] with producers, distributors, and interpreters. Most obviously, these appear as ethnic knowledges, for example, the wisdom of the Egyptians, Syrians, and Jews. Forms of these knowledges with their

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44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

56.

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Notes to Pages 162–166 authoritative texts and interpretive practices ceased to be merely local and both competed and overlapped with the dominant paideia at points” (Stowers, “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power,” 113). Harland, Dynamics of Identity, 8–9; Benmayor and Skotnes, “Some Reflections on Migration and Identity,” 15, cited in Harland, Dynamics of Identity, 9. This is similar to what Johnson Hodge has argued about Paul’s own ethnic identity, building on the work of Gerd Baumann (Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs; Baumann, The Multicultural Riddle). See also Buell and Johnson Hodge, “Politics of Interpretation.” Boyarin, A Radical Jew, 79. One might imagine this as a reason Paul attacks the “Greeks” who seek wisdom in 1 Cor 1:22–24. Such an identity might have been attractive for Corinthians who saw it as a way of asserting their own connections to a cultured and ancient identity. In his work on foreigners in Rome, Noy, Foreigners at Rome, 60–63, notes that most of the identifiable im/migrants to Rome were men, suggesting that not all im/migrants would have come with their families, let alone their extended families, to a new city. Frankfurter, “Traditional Cult,” 547–52; Muir, “Religion on the Road,” 33–45. On the religion of mobility in the Mediterranean, see Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 438–49 As but one example, see Paul’s description of his divinely led travel in 2 Cor 2:14–16. For an excellent analysis of the intertwining of travel and cult in this passage, see Marquis, “At Home or Away,” 133–66. Noy, Foreigners at Rome, 53–55, identifies several different motivations people might have had to migrate to Rome: local movement to connect with markets in the city; seasonal, temporary migration; chain migration along various social networks; and career advancement. D. Smith, “The Egyptian Cults at Corinth,” 227–28. With three cult sites associated with Sarapis in the city (two on Acrocorinth and one in the South Stoa), the shrine associated explicitly with Canopus may have been a place where Corinthians might expect healing in the midst of a medical crisis. On the Acrocorinth sanctuaries, see ibid., 210–12. On the chapel in the South Stoa, see Broneer, The South Stoa, 132–45; D. Smith, “The Egyptian Cults at Corinth,” 212–16. Stanley, Arguing with Scripture, 76–77. He also notes that Paul presumes some knowledge of some Torah commands (1 Cor 5:1, 7–8; 14:34), Christological interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures (1 Cor 15:3–4, 27), and Jewish ideas and practices (1 Cor 1:30; 2:1, 6–7; 3:13; 7:18; 8:13; 16:8; 2 Cor 3:6, 14; 5:21) Harland, Dynamics of Identity, 101. J. Z. Smith, “Re: Corinthians.” in Redescribing Paul. Mack, “Rereading the Christ Myth,” 52. I use the phrase empty ritual with some sarcasm and not to fall into the trap of linking ritual with inauthenticity or a lack of proper religious belief. For a more nuanced use of ritual, see Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 57–71. In two parallel articles, DeMaris has made a compelling case for thinking about the role of mystery cults in

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Notes to Pages 167–168

57.

58.

59. 60.

61. 62.

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the landscape of Corinthian religion (DeMaris, “Demeter in Roman Corinth”; and DeMaris, “Corinthian Religion and Baptism for the Dead.” For references to “well-watered” Corinth, see Hill, The Springs, 1–4. On Lechaion, see Rothaus, “Lechaion, Western Port of Corinth.” On Corinthian baths, see Biers, The Great Bath. On baths at Isthmia, see DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 46. On water and cult more generally in Mediterranean religion and geography, see Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 412–13. DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 50. DeMaris goes further and suggests that baptism was a use of water that was subversive, even as it mimicked Roman bathing practices, because it was a use of water that evaded Roman control (ibid., 49). Ibid., 61. In his systematic study of mortuary practices in the Corinthia, Rife, “Death, Ritual, and Memory,” catalogues 426 individuals buried at twenty-eight discrete sites from the first three centuries after the colonization of Corinth. On the location of graves in the Corinthia, see ibid., 210–218. In her forensic examination of human remains from Corinth in the early Roman Empire, Sherry Fox has shown that, when compared with statistics gleaned from remains from Paphos in Crete, mortality rates for children were higher in Corinth, though life expectancy was higher for those who lived into adulthood (Fox, “Health in Hellenistic and Roman Times”). Fox’s study was based on the remains of ninety-four individuals isolated from thirty-three bone lots excavated throughout the city. Of these, eighteen could be identified as female and twenty-three as male. For these the average age at death for men was 42.3 years and for women 39.6. Fox also notes that Corinthians were, on average, shorter than residents of Paphos and more prone to exhibit enamel hypoplasia (a dental condition), which may have come from dietary stress or disease during development (Fox, “Health in Hellenistic and Roman Times,” 78–79). Rife notes that the most frequently attested ceramic vessels found among graves are those related to drinking and eating (Rife, “Death, Ritual, and Memory,” 270–71). This suggests that, much like people from other places in the Mediterranean, Corinthians often dined at grave sites. Some of the larger tombs in the region were equipped with benches or other architectural features that would have made dining and sacrificial rites possible, both at the time of death and afterward (Rife, “Death, Ritual, and Memory,” 292–95, 299). DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 59. By the end of the second century, burial in tombs had become a more common practice in the Corinthia. The tombs of this period are both more crowded with human remains and less expensive in their production, which suggests that by this time “a larger proportion of the Corinthian population was concerned to identify itself not only as prosperous and eminent members but also as belonging to a specific descent group” (Rife, “Death, Ritual, and Memory,” 331). This trend is part of a larger homogenization of burial practices (ibid., 328–32). The arrival of the Romans introduced the custom of cremation into the landscape of Corinth, which was practiced alongside traditional forms of inhumation (ibid., 254–55). By the end of the second century cinerary urns containing cremated remains were found strictly inside tombs, a combina-

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63.

64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

Notes to Pages 168–174 tion of Greek and Roman forms of burial practice (ibid., 331). See also DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 70. “As an entry rite, baptism on behalf of the dead would have confirmed the departure of deceased community members from the circle of the living and enabled their entry into the community of the dead” (DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 64). He further argues that such a focus on the dead was related to broader Corinthian interest in chthonic cults (ibid., 66–71). On this see also DeMaris, “Demeter in Roman Corinth,” and DeMaris, “Corinthian Religion and Baptism for the Dead.” DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 62–64, notes examples of funerary rites that could involve surrogacy and substitution, as when a body needed to be buried but could not be acquired. He also shows how the notion of the dead benefiting from a funerary ritual was quite common. Baptism for the dead functions like a rite carried out for a person in absentia (DeMaris, The New Testament in Its Ritual World, 64). Paul certainly suggests a similarly vicarious interpretation of baptism in Rom 6:3–4. Another position that combines the best of both is that of Stowers, “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power,” 125: “Paul taught [the Corinthians] that they could share in the pneuma of the pneuma-bringer, Christ, and that the divine pneuma would connect them to the renowned ancient ancestor, Abraham. They saw another ritual means for improving the lot of their more immediate ancestors. Baptism for the dead would incorporate those dead into the distinguished lineage and ancestry. Without baptism for the dead, their own baptisms might cut them off from their extended families of the significant dead.” Mack, “Rereading the Christ Myth,” 52. For more on the perils of using archaeology to “prove” the Bible, particularly in the interpretation of the Corinthian correspondence, see Concannon, “The Archaeology of the Pauline Mission.” For the phrase theater of memory, see Alcock, “The Reconfiguration of Memory,” 334–35. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 6; emphasis added. Agamben, The Time That Remains, 40.

Conclusion 1. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 50; emphasis in original. 2. Marchal, The Politics of Heaven, 93. 3. These quotations come from Foucault’s preface to Deleuze and Guattari, AntiOedipus, xiii–xiv. Foucault is here discussing ways in which Deleuze and Guattari’s work might be made into a handbook for a life lived in resistance to fascism. 4. Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach reads: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Translation from Marx, Selected Writings, 101; emphasis in original. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 51, also cites the eleventh thesis in his discussion of “hauntology.” 5. Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 255, no. VI.

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Derrida, Specters of Marx, 54; emphasis in original. Buell, “God’s Own People,” 170. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 54; emphasis in original. Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 255, no. VI; emphasis in original. Agamben, The Time That Remains, 39.

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INDEX

Abraham, 30, 99, 155–56, 158, 181n18, 188n66, 236n10, 269n39, 272n64 Acts of the Apostles, 18:1–18, 20, 169–70, 188n66, 224n8, 225–26n11, 267n31; 18:4–7, 142–44 Aedile, 210n28 Agamben, Giorgio, 7–8, 174 Agonothetes, 43, 47, 200–201n1; and the cursus honorum, 71–72 Agrippa, 212n34 Alcock, Susan, 123 Ancestors, 14, 77–78, 81–82, 84, 102–5, 113–16, 130–35, 140, 151, 158, 162–70; as trope, 238–39n18 Antonii, 211–12n33 Apollo: Clarion Apollo, 67; temple of, 67, 124–26, 159, 253n19, 254n20 Apollos, 78, 89, 149, 155, 159, 264–65n16 Apuleius, 71 Argive Letter, 137–41, 256–57n42, 257–58n43 Argos, 137–41 Argyrotamias, 221–22n66 Aristides, Aelius, 119, 202n6; Isthmian Oration, 47–50 Aristobulus, 161 Arnal, William, 78 Artapanus, 99, 235n6 Augustales: monument in Corinthian forum, 68–69, 207–8n23, 218n58, 219n59–60 Augustus, 67–69

Babbius Italicus, Cn., 59–60, 209–10n27, 210n29–30 Baptism, 80, 103, 164–70, 228n19, 239n20, 272n63, 272n64 Barth, Fredrik, 14, 184n43, 185n44 Baur, F. C., 4–5, 180n13 Bellerophon, 94, 121–22, 129–30, 250n9, 250–51n10 Benjamin, Walter, 174 Berthouville Cup, 93–95, 234n9 Bhabha, Homi, 17, 186–87n55 Bilingualism, 64–65, 216–17n54; and codeswitching, 220n62 Bookidis, Nancy, 217–18n56 Bourdieu, Pierre, 199n37 Boussett, Wilhelm, 177–78n8 Bowersock, Glen, 93 Buell, Denise, 6, 16, 174, 183–84n41, 185–86n52, 226–27n12, 233n3, 234n1 Caecilius Niger, Q., 62 Castelli, Elizabeth, 28, 35, 88–89, 223n3 Christianity: and race, 3–7; universalism, 1–2 Cicero, 145–46 Corinth: and Argos, 137–41; and Rome, 49, 256n40; and the past, 159; and the Peloponnesian War, 135–36; and Thermopylae, 136–37; and trade, 25, 48, 51–56, 77, 145–47, 204n15, 204–5n16, 205n17;

297

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298

Index

Corinth (continued) as destination, 23–24, 47–48; as metropolis, 48, 131–34; as site of cultural exchange, 69–70; as theater of memory, 142–44, 169–70; burial practices, 167–68, 271n60, 271–72n62; demographics, 56–58; destruction of, 25, 42–43, 127, 201–2n4; ethnicity of, 213–14n41; forum, 66–69, 204n14, 217–18n56; Greekness of, 40–41; refounding of, 249n5; synagogue in, 142–44, 258n2, 259n3; tribes, 218n57; water use in, 166–67 Corinthians: “one among many,” 183n37; “some,” 77, 87, 103–4, 110, 168–69, 245n37; agency of, 78–79; ancestors of, 131–33, 139–41; and Israel, 19, 157–60, 164, 166, 269n39; and speech, 84–90; as im/migrants, 77–79, 128–29, 161–70; as specters, 170–75; bilingualism of, 220–21n64; discernment, 150–54, 267n26, 267n27; ethnicity of, 255n26; forgotten by scholars, 3, 7–8, multiple modes of religion, 81–84, 228n18; Paul’s descriptions of, 16, 79–81, 114–16, 157–59, 225n10, 225–26n11, 226n12; weak and strong, 191n13, 231n32 1 Corinthians: 1–4, 244–45n36; 1:10, 228n17; 1:13, 166; 1:18–34, 88; 1:22–24, 79–81, 115, 157; 1:26–31, 105; 2:1–5, 77–78; 3:3–11, 264–65n16; 3:16, 164; 4:1–5, 153; 4:14–15, 80; 4:15, 264–65n16; 4:15–16, 33; 4:21, 264–65n16; 5:1–13, 166, 242n28; 5:1–6:11, 157; 5:6, 104; 5:11, 107; 6:6, 242n28; 6:16, 104–5; 6:19, 164; 7:12–15, 242n28; 7:14, 241n25; 8:1–11, 86; 8:1–11:1, 100–101; 8:1–13, 31–32; 8:1–6, 83; 8:6, 164; 9:1–18, 32, 193n15; 9:19–23, 29–31; 9:19–27, 27–28, 33–36, 83–84, 86–87, 155–56, 193n16, 229n25; 9:22, 15, 24; 10:1–13, 100–105, 110, 160, 237n15, 237–38n16, 240n23, 241–42n26; 10:2, 166; 10:3, 166; 10:12, 107, 242n28; 10:14–23, 84, 105; 10:18, 238–39n18; 10:22, 241n25; 10:27, 242n28;

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10:31–11:1, 32–33, 193n16; 10:32, 79; 11:5, 231n35; 11:17–30, 104; 12–14, 88–90, 244–45n36; 12:2, xi, 16, 31, 115; 12:12, 227n16; 12:12–13, 166; 12:12–27, 164; 12:13, 166, 239n20; 12:13–27, 80; 14:22, 227n16; 14:22–24, 242n28; 15:8–9, 261–62n11; 15:29, 84, 162, 164–69; partition of, 192n14, 236n11 2 Corinthians: 1:13–2:4, 87–88; 1:15–2:4, 261–62n11, 264n15; 1:17–20, 153–54; 2:14–4:6, 87, 106–8; 2:17, 24, 148–49, 262–63n12, 263–64n13; 2:5–11, 261–62n11; 3, 234n3; 3:1, 266n19; 3:1–13, 149; 3:1–18, 89; 3:1–3, 108–9; 3:12–18, 16; 3:13, 111, 243n30; 3:16, 113; 3:16–18, 112–13; 3:17, 110; 3:7–18, 6, 105–14, 260n10; 4:1–6, 148–49, 153, 264n14; 4:4, 114; 4:6, 114; 5:17, 80; 8, 148, 261–62n11; 10–13, 88, 242–43n28; 10:10, 196–97n25; 10:12, 266n19; 10:18, 266n19; 11:4, 151–52, 165; 11:6, 196–97n25; 11:8, 261–62n11; 11:22, 155–56; 12:2, 29–30; partition of, 148, 260–61n10 Crinagoras, 63, 127 Curator Kalendarii, 221–22n66 DeMaris, Richard, 166–68 Demeter, sanctuary of, 64–65, 72 Derrida, Jacques, 3, 142, 170, 173–74 Duoviri, 57, 61, 206–7n23 Epitaphs: bilingualism of, 70 Ethnicity: “ethnic reasoning,” 234n1; and boundaries, 14; and race, 179–80n12, 183–84n41; and religion, 185–86n52; and the past, 92, 126–27, 233n4–5; as commodity, 93–95; as rhetoric, 13–16; discourse of, 19–20; fixity and fluidity, 15–16, 226–27n12, 233n3; indicia and criteria, 14–15; markers of, 14–15 Euryclids, 156–57, 268n34 Exodus: 13:21–22, 238n16; 14:21–31, 238n16; 16, 238n16; 17:1–7, 238n16; 17:6, 103;

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Index 32:1–35, 240n22; 33:18–23, 111; 34:30, 33, 111; 34:32–35, 243n29; 34:34, 107, 113; narrative of, 99–105, 141, 160, 164, 235n4–5, 237n15, 237–38n16, 243n30 Factionalism, 103–5, 238n17, 241n25, 241–42n26 Favorinus, 23–24, 119; biography of, 36–37; Corinthian Oration, 36–44, 130–37, 255n28; ethnicity of, 28; on being and seeming Greek, 38–41 Fee, Gordon, 146 Flatterer, 84–88, 110–12, 155–56, 229– 30n28, 230–31n29 Foucault, Michel, 28, 173 Freedmen, 44, 50, 56–63, 66, 68–70, 127, 206–8n23, 210–11n31, 211–12n33, 212n34, 219n59 Fulvii, 62 Galatians: 4:21, 30, 229n25; 5:2–4, 30 Gebhard, Elizabeth, 72 Genealogy, 15, 30, 62–63, 93, 99–100, 102–5, 107–8, 114–15, 130–34, 156–58, 170, 232n1, 236n10, 238–39n18, 255n34, 269n39 Genesis: 1:3–4, 114 Given, Mark, 86–87 Glad, Clarence, 189n6, 190n10, 194–95n21, 229–30n28, 230n29, 231n32 Glauke Fountain, 122–26, 159, 251–52n14, 253–54n19 Gleason, Maud, 196–97n25, 199n34 Graffiti, 64–65, 214–15n45 Greek: use in Corinth, 64–65 Greekness: and dialect, 23–24; and Greek, 64–65; and paideia, 40–41; and the past, 233n7 Gruen, Erich, 98–100 Habicht, Christian, 129 Hall, Jonathan, 14–15, 183–84n41, 185n47, 232n1

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299

Harland, Philip, 164 Harnack, Adolf von, 1–2, 179n11 Hayes, John, 55 Hecataeus of Abdera, 161 Herodotos, 131–32 Homer, 134 Horowitz, David, 14 Hurd, John, 190–91n12 Hybridity, 16–17, 51, 186–87n55 Idolatry, 31–32, 82–83, 101, 104–6, 192– 93n14, 241n26 Imperial Cult, 57, 218n57, 257–58n43 Inscriptions: bilingualism of, 220–21n64 Interpretatio, 151 Irenarches, 70–71 Isis, 71, 163–64 Israelites: as usable past, 16, 97–116; Paul as, 29–30 Isthmian Games, 47–50, 94, 200–1n1 Iulius Spartiaticus, Gaius, 156–57 Iullii, 60–61 Jews/Judaism, 268–69n37; ancient views of, 160–61; Judeophobia, 267n31; particularism, 1–2 Johnson Hodge, Caroline, 15, 158, 188n66, 189n5, 269n39 Josephus, 99, 161, 259n3, 262–63n12, 267n31 Kahl, Brigitte, 187n64 Kinship, 33, 80, 99–100, 102–3, 131, 134, 236n10, 239n18, 264–65n16 Kittredge, Cynthia Briggs, 10–11, 182n36 König, Jason, 132–33 Konstan, David, 15 Kuenen, Abraham, 4 Language: and ethnicity, 14, 16, 64; and Greekness, 23–24, 39, 66; and Romanness, 66; use in Corinth, 64–67, 69–73

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300

Index

Latin: monumental writing, 65–66, 217n55; use in Corinth, 65–68 Licinius, P., 61–62 Lieu, Judith, 92 Liew, Tat-siong Benny, 154–56 Macarius Magnus, 86 MacDonald, William, 121 Mack, Burton, 78, 82, 165, 168–69 Marchal, Joseph, 9–10, 173 Marquis, Timothy, 243–44n32, 245–46n41, 260n10 Martin, Dale, 34, 194n20 Marx, Karl, 173 Masuzawa, Tomoko, 178n9 Medea, 122–24, 252n18 Menander Rhetor, 248n2 Millis, Ben, 51, 64–65 Mitchell, Margaret, 148, 194n20, 261n10 Moerman, Michael, 183n41 Morrison, Toni, 5 Moses, 98–100, 102–3, 106–14, 166, 168, 243n30, 243n31, 246n43; frank speech, 245n40 Mummius, Lucius, 42–43, 129, 200n43 Nasrallah, Laura, 18–19, 187n59, 197–98n28 Necrocorinthia, 43–44 Negotiatores, 50, 56–58, 62, 66, 208m24, 217n55, 220–21n64 New Perspective, 180n15 Numbers: 11:1–35, 240n22; 14:1–45, 240n22; 20:8, 103; 25:1–18, 240n22 Oakes, Peter, 187–88n64 Økland, Jorunn, 19, 187n59, 231–32n35 Paideia, 28, 37, 41–42, 197–98n28, 200n40, 266n25 Palaimon: cult at Isthmia, 72 Panhellenion, 93 Paul: “one among many,” 24; and Corinthian discernment, 152–54; and speech,

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227n16; as “one among many,” 46; as athlete, 34–36, 195–96n23, 196–97n25; as flatterer, 84–88, 231n32; as Jew, 155; as slave, 33–34, 195n22, 196n24; collection for Jerusalem, 148–50; ethnicity of, 189n5, 194–95n21, 268n32; frank speech, 107–12; freedom of speech, 110–11; inconsistency of, 84; malleable identity of, 27–28, 29–36, 46, 83–88, 101, 155–56; ministry and qualifications, 109–12, 149–50, 264n14, 265–66n18; polymorphic body, 29–36, 46 Pausanias, 118–19, 124, 128–30, 254n24 Pegasos, 94, 121–22, 250n9, 250–51n10 Peirene Fountain, 94, 119–22, 160, 249–50n5 Pettegrew, David, 203–4n13 Philippians: 3:3–6, 15; 4:2–3, 9–10 Philo of Alexandria, 27, 45, 246n43, 247–48n50, 259n3, 262–63n12 Phoebe, 149, 163, 265n18 Phua, Richard Liong-Seng, 83 Pollution, 104–5 Polystratus, 255n26 Poseidon, 42–43, 94, 118–19 Pottery, 203n12; and trade, 54–55; consumption, 55; grave robbing, 43–44; sigillata, 54–55, 205n17, 205–6n18, 206n20 Puteoli, Tyrian merchants of, 75–76 Religions: universal and particular, 3–4, 177–78n8 Rives, James, 151 Robinson, Betsey, 119–21 Romanness, 63–64; and Corinthian forum, 66–69; and Latin, 66, 73–74 Romans: 2:12, 190n9; 6:3–4, 167; 9:3, 29; 11:1, 29, 246n42; 11:17–24, 242n28; 16, 265n18; 16:23, 169 Salamis: battle of, 132 Sarapis, 163–64 Schmithals, Walter, 8–9, 181–82n27

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Index Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, 8–13, 173, 181n25, 181–82n27, 183n37, 264–65n16 Schweitzer, Albert, 177–78n8 Second Sophistic, 37, 197–98n28, 199n35 Self-mastery, 30, 34–35, 195n22, 196n24 Slane, Kathleen, 54 Smith, Anthony D., 14–15 Smith, J. Z., 77, 81–82, 165 Sosin, Joshua, 223n1 Sparta, 93; and the Jews, 99–100, 156–57 Specters: and race, 3–7, 7–13, 169–75 Spirit, 106, 108–14, 164–69, 244–45n36, 272n64; Corinthian uses of, 78–79 Stoics, 83 Stowers, Stanley, 196n24, 272n64 Strabo, 43–44 Super-apostles, 149, 153, 155–56, 242– 43n28, 265–66n18, 266n19

301

Thomas, Christine, 72 Tiele, C. P., 177–78n8 Travel, 23–25, 162–63 Usable Past, 108, 117, 142–70 Venationes, 138, 257–58n43 Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew, 66, 72–73 Welborn, L. L., 189n1, 231n34, 261n10, 261–62n11 Williams, Charles, 53–54 Wire, Antoinette Clark, 11–13, 181n27, 236n12 Wisdom, 48, 78–80, 89, 157, 168–69, 227n16, 247–48n50 Woolf, Greg, 66, 206–7n23, 216n53 Zeus, 42–43, 152

Tacitus, 161 Theocolus, 70–71, 221n65

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