Recovering an Undomesticated Apostle: Essays on the Legacy of Paul 9780228017721

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r e c ov e r i n g a n u n d o m e s t i c a t e d a p o s t l e

stu dies in c hr i st i a ni t y a nd j udai s m Series editor: Richard S. Ascough The Studies in Christianity and Judaism series publishes volumes dealing with Christianity and Judaism in their formative periods, with special interest in studies of the relationships between them and of the cultural and social contexts within which they developed. The series is sponsored by the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion whose constituent societies include the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, Canadian Society of Patristic Studies, Canadian Theological Society, Société canadienne de théologie, and Société québécoise pour l’étude de la religion.

1 Sacred Ritual, Profane Space The Roman House as Early Christian Meeting Place Jenn Cianca 2 The Christian Moses Vision, Authority, and the Limits of Humanity in the New Testament and Early Christianity Jaeda Calaway 3 Recovering an Undomesticated Apostle Essays on the Legacy of Paul Edited by Christopher B. Zeichmann and John A. Egger

Recovering an Undomesticated Apostle Essays on the Legacy of Paul

Edited by

c h r i s to p h e r b . z e i c h m a n n and jo h n a . e g g e r

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2023 ISB N 978-0-2280-1707-3 (cloth) ISB N 978-0-2280-1772-1 (ep df) Legal deposit second quarter 2023 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Recovering an undomesticated apostle : essays on the legacy of Paul / edited by Christopher B. Zeichmann and John A. Egger. Names: Zeichmann, Christopher B., editor. | Egger, John A., editor. | Vaage, Leif E., honoree. Series: Studies in Christianity and Judaism ; 3. Description: Series statement: Studies in Christianity and Judaism ; 3 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220474656 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220474818 | IS BN 9780228017073 (cloth) | I SB N 9780228017721 (eP D F ) Subjects: lc s h: Paul, the Apostle, Saint—Criticism and interpretation. | lc gft: Festschriften. Classification: l cc bs 2651.r43 2023 | ddc 227/.06—dc23 This book was typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon.

Contents

Figures and Tables

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Abbreviations

xiii

part one: introductory remarks Prelude: Another Paul Is Possible | 3 Rene Baergen and Lucio Rubén Blanco Arellano Introduction: Chipping Away at a Domesticated Paul | 10 Christopher B. Zeichmann

part two: paul’s precarious life 1 “Whoever Boasts, Should Boast in the Lord” (2 Cor. 10:17): What Does It Mean to “Boast in the Lord”? | 25 Thomas Schmeller 2 Paul the Manual Labourer: Rereading 1 Cor. 9:1–18 | 46 Catherine Jones 3 Acts and the Invention of Paul’s “Prison” Letters | 70 Christopher B. Zeichmann 4 Three Times Beaten with Rods/Tres veces golpeado con varas: A Reflection on 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 | 94 Alcris Limongi and John A. Egger 5 Who Saw Any of This Coming? Response to Schmeller, Jones, Zeichmann, and Limongi and Egger | 117 Colleen Shantz

vi

Contents

part three: paul’s undomesticated gospel 6 “Which Is Not Another”: Paul’s Precarious Gospel in Gal. 1:6–7 | 133 John A. Egger 7 Biblical Cartography and the Master Narrative of Paul’s Mission | 153 Santiago Guijarro 8 Hidden Wisdom: The “Solid Food” Paul Reserved for “the Mature” (1 Cor.2:6–3:4) | 169 Scott G. Brown 9 “Assembled with One Accord in Jerusalem”: Response to Egger, Guijarro, and Brown | 193 Terence L. Donaldson

part four: paul on matters “domestic”: gender and bodies 10 The Devolution of Paul’s Relationship with the Corinthian Women: The Incongruence between Paul’s Apostolic Defence and His Instructions to Women | 207 Lee A. Johnson 11 Where Did the Horse Come From? Caravaggio and Paul’s Conversion as a Bodily Experience | 227 Halvor Moxnes 12 The Pauline ekklesia as Third Space | 245 Carlos Gil Arbiol 13 The Body as Space of Resistance: Response to Johnson, Moxnes, and Gil Arbiol | 261 Margaret Y. MacDonald

part five: domestication of paul’s “voice” 14 On Pauline Indeterminacy | 277 Ryan S. Schellenberg 15 Whodunnit? Paul’s Peculiar Passion and Its Implications | 305 A.J. Droge

Contents

vii

16 Imperialization of the Remains: How Church Fathers Standardized the Pauline Corpus | 334 Kieren Williams 17 A Useless Apostle: Response to Schellenberg, Droge, and Williams | 357 William E. Arnal

part six: concluding remarks Conclusion: Recovering Paul, the Undomesticated Apostle | 377 John A. Egger Denouement: Last Man Leif | 393 Vincent L. Wimbush Contributors | 399 Index | 405

Figures and Tables

f ig u r es 7.1

11.1

Paul’s “third” missionary journey, copyright of Chris and Jenifer Taylor of The Bible Journey, FreeBibleimages.org 160 Caravaggio, The Conversion of St Paul, public domain, from artvee.com 234

ta b l es 1.1 5.1

Structural similarities between 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 and 12:1–9a 39 Scrutiny of scholarly doxa 119

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to the many people who made this volume possible. Terry Donaldson, the erstwhile editor of the series Studies in Christianity and Judaism, strongly encouraged us to pursue this project and advised us on the process of editing a collected volume. When Terry stepped down as series editor, Richard Ascough took on the project. We are grateful for his support through this transition. Across this entire process, Kyla Madden, with her insight and depth of institutional knowledge and experience, has been a reliable source of assistance. Lisa Aitken has also played an important role in the editing process, and we value her work. It is difficult to sufficiently sing the praises of McGill-Queen’s University Press and its staff. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Emmanuel College of Victoria University at the University of Toronto has also generously provided funding for this project. Finally, we would like to thank Leif E. Vaage for inspiring the following essays, all of which are dedicated to him as a celebration of his career. We hope that he finds in them the sort of provocation that he often offers us, and that we have now returned the favour. To quote Diogenes (apud Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology 3.13.44), οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχθροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὼ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω. That is, “although other dogs bite their enemies, I do so to my friends to keep them safe.”

Abbreviations

b ib l ic a l texts Ancient Versions lxx mt vul

Septuagint, Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible Masoretic Text Vulgate

Greek New Testament na 28

Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th edition, edited by Nestle and Aland

Versions of the Bible in English asv ceb esv gnt gw kjv msg nasb ncv net niv nkjv nlt nrsv

American Standard Version Common English Bible English Standard Version Good News Translation God’s Word King James Version The Message New American Standard Bible New Century Version New English Translation New International Version New King James Version New Living Translation New Revised Standard Version

xiv

rsv web ylt

Abbreviations

Revised Standard Version Word English Bible Young’s Literal Translation

The Books of the Bible hebrew bible/old testament Gen. Exod. Lev. Num. Deut. Josh. Judg. Ruth 1–2 Sam. 1–2 Kgdms. 1–2 Kgs. 3–4 Kgdms. 1–2 Chr. Ezra Neh. Esth. Job Ps. Prov. Eccl. Song

Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth 1–2 Samuel 1–2 Kings (lxx) 1–2 Kings 3–4 Kings (lxx ) 1–2 Chronicles Ezra Nehemiah Esther Job Psalms Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Songs

Isa. Jer. Lam. Ezek. Dan. Hos. Joel Amos Obad. Jonah Mic. Nah. Hab. Zeph. Hag. Zech. Mal.

Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Ezekiel Daniel Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi

new testament Matt. Mark Luke John Acts Rom.  1–2 Cor. Gal. Eph.

Matthew Mark Luke John Acts Romans 1–2 Corinthians Galatians Ephesians

1–2 Thess. 1–2 Tim. Titus Phlm. Heb. Jas. 1–2 Pet. 1–2–3 John Jude

1–2 Thessalonians 1–2 Timothy Titus Philemon Hebrews James 1–2 Peter 1–2–3 John Jude

Abbreviations

Phil. Col.

Philippians Colossians

Rev.

xv

Revelation

s e co n da ry s o u rc e s : jo u rnals, peri odi cals , m ajo r r e f e r e n c e wo rks, and s eri es ab abr

AcBib anf

antc atr basp

bbb bdag bdf becnt betl bevt bht Bib BibInt bntc br bt btb

bts bznw cbq

ClAnt cnt csic ctq c urbr

ekk EstBib

Anchor Bible Australian Biblical Review Academia Biblica Anti-Nicene Fathers Abingdon New Testament Commentaries Australasian Theological Review Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Bonner biblische Beiträge Danker, Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature Blass, Debrunner, and Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature Baker Ecumenical Commentary on the New Testament Biblioteca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium Beiträge zur evangelischen Theologie Beiträge zur historischen Theologie Biblica Biblical Interpretation Black’s New Testament Commentaries Biblical Research The Bible Translator Biblical Theology Bulletin Biblical Tools and Studies Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Catholic Biblical Quarterly Classical Antiquity Commentaire du Nouveau Testament Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas Concordia Theological Quarterly Currents in Biblical Research Evangelisch-katholisch Kommentar Estudios biblicos

xvi etl

ExpT fc ff frlant

gnt grbs

hthknt htr

hut h vts t ib

icc Int jaar jbl jbt h jecs jets jfsr jgrc hj

jlcrs jr jrs jshj jsnt jts

kek lcl ld lhbots lnts lsj

mm mtsr

naasr

Abbreviations

Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses Expository Times Fathers of the Church Foundations and Facets Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Grundrisse zum Neuen Testament Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament Harvard Theological Review Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie Hervormde teologiese studies Interpreter’s Bible International Critical Commentary Interpretation Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of Biblical Literature Jahrbuch für biblische Theologie Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion Series Journal of Religion Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal of Theological Studies Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament Loeb Classic Library Lectio Divina Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies Library of New Testament Studies Liddell, Scott, and Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Method and Theory in the Study of Religion North American Association for the Study of Religion

Abbreviations

NewDocs

nicnt nigtc NovT NovTSup ntd ntl nts

ORom ötk

pg ResQ rgrw ribla

SacPag sbab sbl sblds sblecl

sblsp sblss scj seå

sntsms StBibLit StPatr tdnt

thknt tsaj tsk usqr

utb vc

wbc wc

xvii

New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. Edited by Greg H. R. Horsley and Stephen Llewelyn. North Ryde: The Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, Macquarie University, 1981–present. New International Commentary on the New Testament New International Greek Testament Commentary Novum Testamentum Supplements to Novum Testamentum Das Neue Testament Deutsch New Testament Library New Testament Studies Opuscula Romana Ökumenischer Taschenkommentar Patrologia graeca Restoration Quarterly Religions in the Graeco-Roman World Revista de interpretación biblica latinoamericana Sacra Pagina Stuttgarter biblische Aufsatzbände Society of Biblical Literature Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Early Christianity and Its Literature Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series Studies in Christianity and Judaism Svensk exegetisk årsbok Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series Studies in Biblical Literature Studia patristica Theological Dictionary of the New Testament Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum Theologische Studien und Kritiken Union Seminary Quarterly Review Uni-Taschenbücher Vigiliae christianae Word Biblical Commentary Westminster Commentaries

xviii

wmant wunt ww znw

Abbreviations

Wissenshlaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Wissenshlaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Word and World Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche

a n c ie n t l it e rature Following the conventions of biblical scholarship, the names of ancient texts are often abbreviated. Readers unfamiliar with these texts are encouraged to seek out their English translation in the Loeb Classical Library, the Ante-Nicene Fathers, or Patrologia Graeca collections. 1 Clem. 2 Clem. 2 Apoc. Jas. 2 Apol. 3 Cor. A.J. Acts Thom. Aeg. Aem. Aeth. Alex. Ant. rom. Ascen. Isa. Bapt. Bib. Ant. Bib. Hist. Cael. Cal. Cat. Maj. Cat. Min. Cels. Cho. Cic. Cod. theod.

1 Clement 2 Clement 2 Apocalypse of James Justin, Second Apology Pseudo-Paul, Third Letter to the Corinthians Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Acts of Thomas Aelius Aristides, Aegyptios Plutarch, Aemilius Heliodorus, An Ethiopian Tale Lucian, Alexander Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates romanae Ascenscion of Isaiah Tertullian, De Baptismo Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica Cleomedes, Lectures on Astronomy Lucian, Calumnae non temere credendum; Suetonius, Gaius Caligula Plutarch, Cato Major Plutarch, Cato Minor Origen, Contra Celsum Aeschylus, Choephori Plutarch, Cicero Codex Theodosianus

Abbreviations

xix

Jerome, Commentariorum in Epistulam ad Galatas libri III Comm. Matt. Origen, Commentary on Matthew Comp. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De compositione verborum Conf. Augustine, Confessionum libri XIII Congr. Philo of Alexandria, On the Preliminary Studies Corp. herm. Corpus hermeticum Crat. Plato, Cratylus; Proclus, Cratylus Dem. Plutarch, Demosthenes Demetr. Plutarch, Demetrius Dial. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho Diatr. Epictetus, Diatribai Dig. Digesta (various authors) Div. quaest. Simpl. Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum Doct. Chr. Augustine, De doctrina christiana Eloc. Pseudo-Demetrius, De Elocutione Ench. Epictetus, Enchidrion Ep. Gregory of Nazianus, Epistles; Pliny the Younger, Epistulae Ep. fest. Athanasius, Festal Letters Ep. Pet. Phil. Letter of Peter to Phillip Eph. Ignatius, To the Ephesians Epist. Jerome, Epistulae Eq. Aristophanes, Knights Exc. Clement of Alexandria, Excerpts from Theodotus Exp. Gal. Augustine, Expositio in epistulam ad Galatas Fug. Lucian, Fugitivi Gen. an. Aristotle, Generation of Animals Gos. Jud. Gospel of Judas Gos. Phil. Gospel of Phillip Gos. Thom. Gospel of Thomas Gos. Truth Gospel of Truth Great Pow. Concept of Our Great Power Haer. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies; Irenaeus, Against Heresies Herc. fur. Euripides, Madness of Hercules Hier. Eusebius, Against Hierocles Hist. eccl. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Comm. Gal.

xx

Hom. 2 Cor. Hom. Gal. Hom. Phil. Hyp. Arch. Iamb. ad Sel. Ios. J.W. Lao. Leg. Leuc. Clit. m.B.Bat. Magn. Marc. Mart. Fruct. Co. Mart. Mont. Luc. Mart. Pal. Mart. Pol. Men. Metam. Mor. Moral. Mur. Frag. Myst. Nat. Od. Oed. tyr. Oneir. Or. Pan. Peregr. Phld. Phoen. Praep. ev. Praescr. Prob. Pyth. orac. Quint. fratr.

Abbreviations

John Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ii ad Corinthios John Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ad Galatas commentarius John Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ad Philippenses Hypostasis of the Archons Amphilochius, Epistula Iambica ad Seleucum Philo of Alexandria, On the Life of Joseph Josephus, Jewish War Pseudo-Paul, To the Laodiceans Plato, Laws Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon Mishnah, Bava Batra Ignatius, To the Magnesians Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem Martyrdom of Bishop Fructuosus and His Deacons, Augurius and Eulogius Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius Eusebius, Martyrs of Palestine Martyrdom of Polycarp Lucian, Menippus Apuleius, Metamorphoses Plutarch, Moralia Gregory the Great, Moralia Muratorian Fragment Iamblichus, On the Mysteries Pliny the Elder, Natural History Homer, Odyssey Sophocles, Oedipus tyrannus Artemidorus, Oneirocritica Dio Chrysostom, Orationes Epiphanius, Panarion Lucian, De morte Peregrini Ignatius, To the Philadelphians Euripides, Phoenician Maidens Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel Tertullian, De Praescriptione haereticorum Philo of Alexandria, Every Good Person Is Free Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis Cicero, Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem

Abbreviations

Rep. Rhet. praec. Rom. Sat. Sib. Or. Smyrn. Sobr. Somn. Sull. Superst. T. Jud. Tib. Tract. Ps. Trall. Tro. Val. Verr. Vesp. Vet. Med. Vit. Vit. Apoll. Vit. Procl.

xxi

Plato, Republic Lucian, Rhetorum praeceptor Ignatius, To the Romans Juvenal, Satirae; Petronius, Satyricon Sibylline Oracles Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans Philo of Alexandria, On Sobriety Lucian, Somnium Plutarch, Sulla Plutarch, De Superstitione Testament of Judah Suetonius, Tiberius Jerome, Tractatus in Psalmos Ignatius, To the Trallians Euripides, Daughters of Troy Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos Cicero, In Verrum Aristophanes, Wasps Hippocrates, Ancient Medicine Philodemus, De vitiis X Philostratus, Life of Apollonius Marinus, Proclus

a n c ie n t in s c r ip t ions and papyri cil

dfsj

IEph

IHierapJ

IHistria

Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, Consilio et Auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Regiae Borussicae Editum. Berlin: Reimer, 1863–1974. Lifshitz, Baruch. Donateurs et fondateurs dans les synagogues juives: Répertoire des dédicaces grecques relatives à la construction et à la réfection des synagogues. Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 7. Paris: Gabalda, 1967. Engelmann, H., H. Wankel, and R. Merkelbach. Die Inschriften von Ephesos. igsk 11–17. Bonn: Habelt, 1979–1984. Judeich, Walther. “Inschriften.” In Altertümer von Hierapolis, ed. Carl Humann, Conrad Cichorius, Walther Judeich, and Franz Winter, 67–181. Jahrbuch des kaiserlich deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Ergäzungsheft 4. Berlin: Reimer, 1898. Pippidi, D.M. Inscriptiones Scythiae Minoris graecae et

xxii

Abbreviations

latinae: Volumen primum. Inscriptiones Histriae et Viciniae. Inscriptiones Daciae et Scythiae Minoris Antiquae.  Bucharest: Academiei Scientiarum Socialum et Politicarum Dacoromana, 1983. IMilet Wiegend, Theodor, Georg Kawerau, Albert Rehm, and Peter Herrmann. Milet: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen seit dem Jahre 1899. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1889–1997. P.Cair.Zen. Edgar, C.C. Zenon Papyri, Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire. Cairo, 1925–1940. P.Col. Columbia Papyri. New York, 1929–1998. pgm Preisendanz, K. Papyri graeci magicae: Die griechischen Zauberpapyri. Berlin, 1928. P.Harr. The Rendel Harris Papyri of Woodbrooke College, Birmingham. Cambridge, 1936–1985. P.Lond. Greek Papyri in the British Museum. London, 1893–1917. P.Mich. Michigan Papyri. 1931–present. P.Oxy. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1898–present. sb Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Aegypten seg supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum tam Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Tituli Asiae Minoris. Vienna: Hoelder, Pichler, Tempsky, 1901–1989.

pa rt o n e

Introductory Remarks

Prelude: Another Paul Is Possible Rene Baergen and Lucio Rubén Blanco Arellano

Over the course of his academic career, Leif E. Vaage has engaged Pauline scholarship in both North Atlantic and Latin American contexts. While the essays collected here reflect the former, it is in the latter context, and more specifically in the context of popular biblical education in Peru, that Vaage’s work on the historical Paul has been the most historic, which is to say, life-altering. To be sure, Vaage has kept a foot in both intellectual environments, preferring, in his own words, the “uncertain state” that attends a “borderline” academic life lived between north and south to the more limited prospects when forced to choose between the two.1 But it remains the case that he laid much of the groundwork for what would become a rereading of Paul in the Latin American context, and thus, significantly, in Spanish.2 To a certain extent, this is simply to notice, by way of prelude, the geographic “shuffling around” that has attended Leif’s professional career.3 That career began in Claremont, California, where Leif completed a dissertation on the ethos of the early Christian document known as Q.4 But his academic life took shape in Lima, Peru, where Leif worked with Lutheran pastoral leaders in various shantytowns on the edge of the city and in a slum at its centre while teaching at an emerging ecumenical Protestant seminary, all against the backdrop of a brutally violent civil war. Vaage would subsequently return to North America to take up a position at Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto, but by his own account his experience in Peru continued to “unsettle” his sense of purpose and identity as a biblical scholar. Leif returned to Peru almost annually. He served a long tenure on the editorial board of Revista de Interpretación Biblica Latinoamericana (ribla ; roughly translating as Journal of Latin American Biblical Interpretation), locating him squarely

4

Rene Baergen and Lucio Rubén Blanco Arellano

within a group of biblistas intent upon underwriting a reading of the Bible from and for the poor of Latin America and the Caribbean.5 This is finally the cultural and linguistic locus of Vaage’s most extensive (so far) intervention in Pauline studies. That Leif would notice and then begin to interpret the signs of struggle in Paul’s literary remains from within this context, in which “the struggle to survive” is not merely academic, as though voluntarily chosen, but lived, as a matter of course, should not surprise.6 This is simply to underline what Leif articulates to be his historiographical wager, namely, that all reading, his included, is necessarily and always both materially situated and thoroughly “inflected” with “our own” voices.7 Taking this wager seriously – reading Paul in Peru in the midst of civil war – meant reading Paul “off the grid,” at least vis-à-vis the typical concerns of North Atlantic biblical scholarship,8 and this put a more lively set of questions on Leif’s plate – questions which evidently offered themselves, or demanded attention, and found resonance in Spanish in a way that has not yet been fully “translated” into English.9 This is the first point to notice at the outset of the present collection: what is here developed in English, in the guise of North Atlantic academic biblical scholarship, echoes an impulse that was first called forth in a different register – socially, culturally, and economically, to be sure, but also linguistically. If Leif’s approach to Paul was initially and continues to be nurtured “off the grid,” it also participates in the attempt to reclaim the apostle, and the discourse that proceeds in his name, for a particular purpose, namely, “for the sake of knowing a better life.”10 That Leif should be as clear as he is in this respect, albeit most explicitly in the name of his fellow biblistas at ribla , has much to do with the particularly fraught space within which the Bible exists in Latin America, where the practice of interpretation served historically, and still does, either to support the status quo or to underwrite an alternative.11 Within this context, contesting the conventional image of Paul inevitably implies a certain mode of social action, intended to articulate another set of latent, as yet unrealized, possibilities. Within the context of North Atlantic biblical scholarship, Vaage frames his intention more conventionally in terms of “displacing” or “cracking open” the dominant discourse. Perhaps, however, these are two sides of the same moneda. In other words, what is taken up in the name of “chipping away” in what follows, is also, at least in Leif’s hands, an attempt to enable “an alternate future.” This would be the second point to notice before proceeding: at play in the scholarship which this volume seeks to honour is a mode of reading intentionally

Prelude

5

and self-consciously “in concert with,” “in service of,” and “as a resource for” the search for a more abundant life.12 Such is the horizon of Leif’s work on Paul. Call it (or compare it to) “revolutionary reading,” “militant biblical scholarship,” “organic intellection,” “peripheral biblical scholarship,” or “poetic thinking,” as Leif does on various occasions – or “borderline exegesis,” as he does more recently.13 The point of his intervention is a rereading which moves the discourse that proceeds in the name of Paul from problem, as it has been experienced so often in Latin America, to possibility; or, to say it more pointedly, from a position within the apparatus of power to a place within the exercise of hope.14 In this way, in Leif’s hands, the “chipping away” at Paul’s conventional persona serves as an entrée to something else – which we might call in Spanish la vida abundante – and the historical Paul, as Leif says of the Bible itself, is “as good as anything else to think with.”15 This is the conversation that Leif initiated in Peru.16 It typically began with a challenge to reread Paul from within the Peruvian reality, in order to see what the “apostle” had to say to those whose greatest hope was simply to survive. This was not always a comfortable prospect: unfortunately, it remains the case that many of us in the south are accustomed to imbibe, and in some cases also to repeat, what is offered exegetically from the north. Nonetheless, Leif made it his business to underline the importance of social location: “Brothers and sisters, there is no such thing as a neutral reading!” he would say, with hands and voice raised. Leif insisted, in other words, that each of us do our own relectura. He stressed again and again that such a rereading must be serious, accountable exegetically, and supported by the best biblical scholarship from the north and especially from the south. But the point of Leif’s challenge was always to read Paul from within our own social and material locations. Toward this end, Leif would seize upon the distinction between the canonical Paul (as constituted by the cumulative biblical record) and the historical Paul (as reconstructed from a more selective set of texts in tandem with careful methods), a distinction typically met with surprise and not a little disquiet. As the contradictions emerged between the image of Paul sponsored by the “authentic” Pauline letters, the image that arises from the letters considered generally to be post-Pauline, and the image derived from Acts, doubt would turn to suspicion that beneath the singular Paul of the canon we might actually count three disparate “photographs” of Paul – one the Paul of Acts, another the Paul of the post-Pauline epistles, and a third, “Paul’s Paul,” of flesh and blood. Closer examination of the Paul of Acts, for instance, reveals

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a “giant” of a man in almost every respect: born a citizen of Rome (16:37, 22:38), Pharisee and son of Pharisees (23:6), educated “at the feet of Gamaliel” (22:3), verbally in control (17:18–31, 22:1–21, 24:10–21, 26:2–23), miraculously endowed (20:9–12, 28:3–5), and singularly converted (9:1–9) – an image so thoroughly confessional as to be almost out of touch with the Paul of the “authentic” letters, who claims little for his upbringing, says less about his education, and is left to make what he can of a commoner’s tongue, a labourer’s misery, and a body repeatedly dishonoured.17 This is the point at which the following essays pick up the conversation. And for those readers with a giant of a man in their heads, from whom they require similarly “grand” (comprehensive and/or normative) claims, the conversation ahead may be longer than hoped for and quite possibly more arduous. But for those unencumbered by such requirement or presumption, for the poor and disenfranchised, for example, who rather quickly grasp the significance of what is being raised to prominence in the name of a Paul of flesh and blood, the destination is already in sight: “¡Este Pablo sí que me gusta!” “Al escuchar la vida de Pablo, me doy cuenta que ha sido como yo: ¡Pobre!” “¡Nunca me había imaginado que sufriera tanto, como nosotros hoy!” “¡Podemos ser socialmente pequeños como él, pero gigantes espirituales!” “Este Pablo sí que ayuda al pueblo.”18 In other words: This is a Paul “that I like.” This is a Paul “who is like me” in his effort to exist against all odds, in his desire for an alternative reality that would make such a collective existence more fully possible. “This is a Paul who helps our people.” None of the foregoing is intended to suggest that Latin America occasioned on its own the angle of vision which Vaage has pursued when reading Paul. Nor is it intended to interrupt or otherwise to take away from the rigorous work on display in the following essays. It is simply to underscore, at the outset, that the “posture” adopted and explored in the remainder of this volume was not first adopted or explored, in Leif’s case, in the university office, but in the shantytown and the slum, not as an academic reading strategy but as an intervention in the interest of life in its fullness; and, having underscored this horizon, also to insist that

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it matters, both to Paul’s project and to Leif’s. The reader can of course decide. But it seems to us an important point of order. Leif’s work on Paul is historic because it aspires to enable another set of possibilities – a better life – here and now.19 If this collection of essays can participate in such a horizon of hope and happiness, the realization of which begins to emerge in the promise and the struggle of a less domesticated Paul, then indeed it will be a collection worthy of the one who inspired it. ¡¡¡Y la vida … Vencerá!!! no t e s 1 “Borderline” references Vaage’s Borderline Exegesis, Signifying (on) Scriptures (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017). More than “merely” cross-cultural or intercultural, however, Vaage (Borderline Exegesis, 2) has in mind a sort of “peripheral” scholarship, written quite intentionally “at the edge of the dominant social body, in the margins of its well-being, toward a horizon of hope, in the still fantastical realm of what yet could be.” Cf. Borderline Exegesis, 1–15. 2 Thus, for example, “‘Es preciso gloriarse’: la palabra extasiada de Pablo – y de ribla ,” ribla 50 (2005): 99–102; “El cuerpo paulino – Un débil fuerte y el poder debilitante,” ribla 55 (2006): 7–11; “Presentación,” ribla 62 (2009): 5–7; “Introducción metodológica a los escritos de Pablo,” ribla 62 (2009): 9–14. But recently in English, see “The corpus paulinum,” in T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul, ed. Ryan S. Schellenberg and Heidi Wendt, T&T Clark Handbooks (London: T&T Clark, 2022), 9–22; “A Displaced Jew: The Nature of Paul’s Earthly Identity,” in Intersections: Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honour of Terence L. Donaldson, ed. Ronald Charles, lnts 628 (London: T&T Clark, 2021), 41–57. 3 The characterization is Vaage’s (Borderline Exegesis, 13). Cf. Vaage’s “scriptural biography” in Borderline Exegesis, 92–104. 4 Published in expanded form as Vaage, Galilean Upstarts: Jesus’ First Followers according to Q (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994). 5 As per the back cover of ribla : “The pain, utopian vision, and poetry of the poor have become, through the life of the communities, decisive hermeneutical mediations for the reading of the Bible in Latin America and the Caribbean. This journal has as its context of origin the afflicted life of our peoples and their tenacious resistance for the sake of an existence characterized by dignity and justice. The communities of the poor located there thus become leaven for biblical interpretation in general.” (trans. Vaage, Borderline Exegesis, 15) He has more recently joined the editorial board of Brazilian theological journal Fragmentos de Cultura.

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6 Compare the penchant of North Atlantic biblical scholarship to describe away Paul’s manual labour as voluntarily chosen, for example, and his persistent experience of struggle as primarily rhetorical; see Jones, “Paul the Manual Labourer” (present volume), 46–69. 7 As per Zeichmann, introduction (present volume), 21n14, on Vaage’s most transparent statement of this wager (“corpus paulinum,” 12). Cf. Leif E. Vaage, introduction, in Subversive Scriptures: Revolutionary Readings of the Christian Bible in Latin America, ed. Leif E. Vaage (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1997), 13: “There is no such thing, in other words, as ‘free’ inquiry, if, by such an expression, one were to suggest a disinterested or, more pointedly, apolitical approach to biblical study.” 8 The expression, once again, is Vaage’s (Borderline Exegesis, 96). 9 Thus Vaage (Borderline Exegesis, 14; cf. Vaage, “Presentación,” 5): “Why must we suffer as we do? And why is there never enough of virtually everything? Is this the only possible way for the world to be? As good as it gets? What hope is there?” Indeed, Vaage wonders about the adequacy of translation into a language, like English, that is so thoroughly aligned in the projection of late capitalism. 10 This is how Vaage (Borderline Exegesis, 3) describes the origin and intent of the four essays (originally published in ribla ) which make up, and thus exemplify, Borderline Exegesis. On the complexities of translating Vaage’s work into English, see Limongi and Egger, “Three Times Beaten” (present volume), 105–11. 11 See Vaage, introduction, 3: “The Christian Bible has … always been, in Latin America, a site of partisan debate about the legitimacy of prevailing cultural practices and, most importantly, a locus of enduring utopian demand for the proper – better – construction of a new world order.” As Vaage says elsewhere in this regard (“Text, Context, Conquest, Quest: The Bible and Social Struggle in Latin America,” in sblsp 1991, 357), “There is no innocence in such a project.” 12 See Vaage, introduction, 9, 13, 15; Borderline Exegesis, 9. 13 On revolutionary reading: Vaage, introduction, 7, 10–15; militant biblical scholarship, following Jorge Pixley: Vaage, introduction, 12–13; organic intellection, following Antonio Gramsci: Vaage, introduction, 8–9 and Vaage, Borderline Exegesis, 3; peripheral biblical scholarship: Vaage, Borderline Exegesis, 2; poetic thinking, following Dars Grünbein: Vaage, Borderline Exegesis, 9, 30. “Borderline exegesis” is Vaage’s own turn of phrase (Borderline Exegesis, 1–15). 14 So Vaage, “Introducción metodológica,” 9: “El discurso paulino todavía se presenta, para mucha gente, más como problema para superar o evitar, que como pozo de aliento y de pensamiento alternativo que ayuda a sentirse reanimado y encaminado por buen sendero.” Or, in English: “Pauline discourse

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15 16

17 18

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is still presented, for many, more as a problem to be overcome or avoided than as a wellspring of inspiration and alternative thought which might help one to feel revived and placed along a good path.” Vaage, Borderline Exegesis, 7. See Lucio Rubén Blanco Arellano, “Testimonio: Al encuentro con el Pablo histórico,” ribla 62 (2009): 96–104. The following four paragraphs have been adapted from this essay. Cf. Vaage, “Cuerpo paulino,” 7–10; “Introducción metodológica,” 10–11. These responses can be rendered into English as: “I really like this Paul!”; “Upon hearing of Paul’s life I realize he was like me: Poor!”; “I would have never imagined he suffered so much, just like us today!”; “We may be socially small like him, but spiritual giants!”; “This Paul really helps the people.” In other words (Vaage, Borderline Exegesis, 9), “a fulsome life that is not merely the living death of every human body whose possibility of thriving has been perpetually truncated or programmatically foreshortened. Rather, it is a life that ultimately merits the effort it requires because it satisfies sufficiently, however much it may also be marked by everything else that happens under the sun.”

in t ro du c t i on

Chipping Away at a Domesticated Paul Christopher B. Zeichmann

It has become commonplace to assert that key biblical figures were somehow “radical,” “subversive,” or otherwise “revolutionary.” N.T. Wright’s monograph Paul and the Faithfulness of God, for instance, uses the word “revolution” or its derivatives 66 times, various forms of “subversive” 50 times, and variations on “radical” an astounding 279 times.1 Yet, for all Wright’s insistence upon the newness of his analysis of the apostle Paul, Paula Fredriksen argues in her review for Catholic Biblical Quarterly that there is little novel about his depiction of the apostle: None of this, of course, matters to [Wright’s] construct. His interpretive context is generated not by a critical sifting of primary evidence but by the requirements of his master narrative’s plot: how Paul invented a triumphalist, eschatologically realized Christian theology. In this regard, Paul and the Faithfulness of God represents a return to the good old days, pre-1977 (E.P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism [Philadelphia: Fortress]), pre-1963 (Stendahl’s “Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” htr 56: 199–215), indeed, pre-1906 (the German original of Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus, with its robust reconstruction of Jewish apocalyptic hopes). [Wright]’s book is historically important, therefore, for the light it sheds not on Paul but on the last century of Pauline studies. We have not, after all, undergone a paradigm shift. We stand transfixed between two paradigms: Paul the Christian theologian and Paul the apocalyptic visionary.2 And yet Wright is hardly exceptional in his declarations of a radical and novel vision of Paul. Other monographs also claim to be giving us fresh

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visions of the apostle, asserting for example that they are “reclaiming the radical visionary behind the Church’s conservative icon,” that Paul was an “anomalous Jew,” or that Paul’s practice of the Lord’s Supper was tantamount to “subversive meals.” Fredriksen’s comments, while harsh, lead one to wonder if categories like “radical” and “subversive” bear any usefulness at all, given that they can be so freely deployed in a work like Wright’s: a depiction of Paul that is not merely conventional but regressive in that it disregards crucial developments from the past century of New Testament scholarship. Both Jonathan Z. Smith and William E. Arnal have argued that scholarly preoccupation with the uniqueness of early Christians serves as crypto-normative claims about Christian theology today.3 If anything, the emergence of Pauline biographies that purport to be new, revolutionary, and radical is entirely predictable. However radical these understandings of the apostle purport to be, authors nevertheless insist that Paul was not that radical.4 More often than not, purportedly subversive biographies of Paul end up depicting him in a manner that is in fact quite traditional. Paul is routinely described as a man of conventional privilege, fitting into conventional practices, ministering to ekklesiai that fit one’s image of what conventional churches look like.  These studies come across as replays of Paul’s “greatest hits,” rearranging the key moments in Paul’s life or highlights of his thought, but lacking in empirical detail or significant deviation from the received depiction. This preoccupation with subversion in scholarly discourse on Christian origins might prompt us to ask a few questions. Does the notion of the “radical” within early Christianity retain any usefulness for scholarly analysis? How might one unsettle the scholarly predilection for depictions of Paul that are “radical, but not that radical”? The present volume pushes the matter even further: the grand claims within the genre of Pauline biography almost seem to require conventionality in their conclusions; the sheer scope of totalizing claims leaves limited space for an understanding of Paul that differs significantly from that with which we are already familiar (e.g., a novel reading of Galatians may be placed in context by a conventional reading of Acts or vice versa). Consequently, it should come as little surprise that some of the most crucial advances in Pauline biography are found in articles of limited scope, rather than totalizing monographs.5 Essays in the present volume participate in this tradition of bold, but limited-scope, analyses of the apostle Paul, a tradition also at work in Leif E. Vaage’s writings on the topic – Vaage being the honouree of the present collection. As evidenced by the diverse range of his publications on Paul, there are

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other ways of going about the task of Pauline biography, less dramatic perhaps, less ambitious in their claims, but ultimately more fruitful. One of Vaage’s approaches is characterized by focusing on a given topic of Paul’s life and treating it as a “site” for empirical redescription. The effect is not a new or revolutionary biography; it is a slow chipping away that unsettles the conventional image of Paul. Rather than criticizing how “conventional” scholars represent Paul’s theology, Vaage destabilizes one particular aspect of the conventional depiction of Paul, namely, his status as a fundamentally “strong” figure.6 Paul’s peculiarity has long been recognized, if often implicitly: much of what he says – whether about himself, other members of the Christ-cult, or any number of other matters – is so incredibly weird. But for all this strangeness (whether relative to our context or within his own), many continue to insist that he was not strange. This has prompted centuries of efforts to explain away Paul’s strangeness and revise his public memory so as to beckon him closer to the orbit of respectability. Examples are numerous and occur within and outside the canon: interpolations in authentic letters that “clarify” adjacent passages, or pseudonymous letters written in Paul’s name to “correct” possible misunderstandings of what Paul says.7 Indeed, representations of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, Catholic Epistles (e.g., 2 Pet. 3:16), non-canonical literature (various apocalypses, acts, and so on), the writings of the church fathers, and even New Testament scholarship itself function as efforts to “domesticate” a problematic apostle and render him both appealing and safe. As a growing body of scholarship demonstrates, these attempts to tame Paul were largely successful, in that they often became part of the default image of the apostle – permitting claims that have long been assumed without question. Consider the following points of dissent regarding Paul’s domestication: Paul as a peregrine non-citizen (Wolfgang Stegemann) Pauline ekklesia as comprising labourers (Richard Ascough) centrality of Paul’s ecstatic experiences to his self-authorization (Colleen Shantz) Paul as rhetorically unlettered (R. Dean Anderson) Paul as manual labourer (Ronald Hock) Paul’s marginal and “whippable” body (Jennifer Glancy) canonical homogenization of the Pastoral Epistles’ distinctive voices (William Richards) “authenticity” as an unviable category for assessing Pauline literature (Benjamin White)

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discrepancies between the economic status of early Christians in Acts versus the epistles (Steven Friesen, Justin Meggitt) post-Pauline distinctions between Paul as “document” and Paul as “monument” (François Bovon, Andreas Lindemann, Daniel Marguerat) common use of interpolations to “correct” eccentricities in the corpus paulinum (William Walker, John Strugnell) Paul’s singleness and askesis (Vincent L. Wimbush) Paul’s strategy of ethnic conversion throughout the oikoumene (Terence L. Donaldson) collection and development of the corpus paulinum (David Trobisch) Acts’ anti-Pharisee polemic and Paul’s Pharisaic ambitions (Hyam Maccoby) attempts to “correct” Paul’s ambiguous gender politics in later Christian literature (Dennis R. MacDonald, Margaret Y. MacDonald) composite nature of Pauline epistles (various) “epic” tendencies in Acts’ depiction of Paul (Dennis R. MacDonald, The Acts Seminar) Paul’s contemplation of suicide in his letter to the Philippians (Craig Wansink) Though there might seem to be little holding these variegated insights together, they share a similar posture toward the life of Paul, a posture that eschews a conventional image of Paul while also avoiding the “radical, but not that radical” variety of Pauline scholarship. The same can be said of the present collection: it is unified by a shared posture or stance toward the study of Paul, rather than any particular method or theory. This prompts the obvious question: what characterizes the stance of the works and contributions to the present volume? First, and most importantly, these works to different degrees call into question the image of Paul as a man of conventionally identifiable “strength” and instead point toward his social marginality. The prevailing image of Paul has largely located him within the expectations of patriarchal masculinity (both in antiquity and in the context of scholarly knowledge production): Paul is depicted as an educated man of agency and self-sufficiency who adheres to the politics of respectability, give or take an incident here or there. Paul emerges as a man whose existence is comparatively comfortable within hegemonic power systems (e.g., education, gender, economics; even though he may contest the legitimacy of these systems), rendering him literally “domestic,” a man comfortable in an honourable domus. The following works instead tend to emphasize

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his social situation in the underclass, exhibiting “signs of a persistent struggle for social recognition as well as physical survival.”8 Many of the following pieces may be understood as a continuation of Adolf Deissmann’s project, which foregrounded Paul’s status as an ancient and “weak” commoner.9 Second, the following contributions eschew idealist theories of both human subjectivity and religion. The human subject known as “Paul” is understood better by carefully examining the various social and material dimensions of his world than by parsing the nuances of his thought. Phrased differently, there is a widespread tendency to treat Paul’s “religion” as limited to his “theology,” though the following chapters instead conceive of religion as a mode of social identity and practice (the issue of his shifting status within the cultural worlds of early “Judaism,” the early “Christian” activity of apostleship, the experience of ecstasy, the claim of mysterious knowledge, etc.).10 Drawing upon theoretical insights within the study of religion and historiography, these works reject the assumption that beliefs dictate behaviour – that is, a person’s “internal world” precedes and determines the “outer world” of their actions.11 By beginning with practices or material conditions, one apprehends that in many instances, Paul’s “theology” is secondary in that it legitimates or otherwise authorizes his precarious social situation: Paul laboured not (merely) because it was common for philosophers and Jewish intellectuals to do so but because he required its income for survival as a member of the Roman underclass (as Catherine Jones argues below); Paul boasted about his ecstatic and spiritual experiences not (merely) because of their cosmic significance but because they provided the one incontrovertible source of authority for a man otherwise lacking social capital (as Ryan S. Schellenberg, Lee A. Johnson, and Scott G. Brown argue below). A virtue is frequently made out of a necessity. This applies mutatis mutandis for post-Pauline recollections of the apostle: Acts depicted Paul as a wealthy Roman citizen not (merely) because its author was familiar with such memories of the apostle but because it lent credibility to the author’s apologia pro imperio (as I argue in my own contribution below); the collecting of letters into the corpus paulinum was not (merely) an effort to memorialize a respected figure in early Christianity but a constructive project of legitimation within the early church (as Kieren Williams argues below). Third, these works critically engage (if implicitly, at times) the received narrative of Pauline biography, taking seriously both the interests and data that have led to its popularity. Many of these are obvious: the “patriarchal” Paul authorizes the ecclesial structure of many scholars’

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denominations; the “educated” Paul who studied rhetoric resembles scholars writing careful prose about him; etc. Others are less obvious: Colleen Shantz contends that mainline Protestant suspicion of “religious experience” has led scholars to downplay this aspect of Paul’s life.12 Often, the interests governing a prevalent reading of Paul are entirely mundane: the hegemony of Acts’ depiction of Paul (what I call the “tyranny of Acts” in my own contribution) is difficult to discard, even among those who attempt to do so, given roughly 2,000 years of interpreting Paul’s letters in light of Acts’ narrative; likewise, the interpretive inertia of pseudo-Pauline epistles. In this regard, the present collection might be understood as a collaborative study in the memory of Paul: how certain depictions of Paul prevail over opposing depictions – depictions that often bear as much evidentiary support as the hegemonic image. Why are scholars so certain about matters that have yet to be explored in any serious manner, often taking for granted the traditions that we have received? What can this volume offer by way of “radical” critique? Prevailing uses of the term “radical” within New Testament studies have tended to act as covert claims of ontological uniqueness, exceptionalism, and sui generis origins. Such a narrative of uniqueness “paradoxically signals distinction from (to be unlike, dissimilar) as well as excellence (immanence, superiority).”13 Within New Testament scholarship, exceptionalist narratives often implicitly assert the uniqueness of Christianity: Jesus is often understood as a “radical” Jew, locating him alongside his Jewish peers while simultaneously rendering him incomparable with them; Paul is similarly understood as a “radical” Jew, positioning him among but clearly above his peers. “Radical” remains a largely untheorized term within New Testament scholarship, despite the heavy load it carries. This point is essential to most of Leif Vaage’s writings about Paul. While most ostensibly “revolutionary” interpretations of Paul seek to enlist the apostle into the service of one or another theological project by extensive discussion of his thought (e.g., criticism or endorsement of imperialism, the importance of this or that theological category), Vaage is willing to imagine Paul as an emphatically “useless” figure – a biographical site worth excavating not because of his political usefulness but as an act of memorializing a lost life. The life of Paul is worth recovering not because he would have endorsed one or another partisan project but for the same reason one might venerate the bones of one’s ancestors. Even though one cannot access the “real” life that formerly inhabited these remains, they nevertheless bear the potential to illuminate other matters. Such acts of veneration are significant because

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they provide an opportunity to reflect on our own concerns and gesture toward broader meaning-making practices. We are who we are because we participate in (or at least claim descent from) this lineage. For this reason, Vaage’s work is particularly instructive and his imprint can be felt throughout the present volume: Paul is a man of antiquity who cannot speak to us directly – but his life becomes meaningful in the same way one remembers each life as unique. The act of remembering itself, rather than anything inherent about the individual, renders the practice meaningful.14 If this volume can be said to advance a “radical” vision of the apostle Paul, it is relative and contextual: it is radical vis-à-vis prevailing images of Paul as a man of conventional “strength”; it is radical visà-vis prevailing theories of religion in the twenty-first century that emphasize belief and theology as determinative of practice; it is radical vis-à-vis its engagement with the dominant depiction of Paul on one or another topic. Following the work of Vaage, this volume is animated by its posture toward the prevailing image of the apostle. This volume’s participation in the biographical genre is thus not along lines of the traditional “great lives” that populate the biblical studies section of academic libraries but under the rubric of “polyphonic” biography: “to tell a life from several angles and in several voices, supplementing and contradicting one another, so the narratives invite the reader into the biography.”15 This book, as with other polyphonic biographies, presents a series of snapshots and anecdotes of an individual with select themes in mind, encouraging reflection on – in the present case – the undomesticated, messy, and seemingly counterintuitive aspects of the apostle Paul’s life, rather than concerns of origins, consistent chronology, or ultimate causes. As readers will have noticed, this collection is unusual in that it opens with a prelude and closes with a denouement. These contributions pay tribute to the festschrift’s honouree from different perspectives. The prelude, written by Rene Baergen and Lucio Rubén Blanco Arellano, reflects on Leif Vaage and his Pauline scholarship from the perspective of Latin America and the time that Vaage has spent in Peru. The denouement, written by Vincent L. Wimbush, reflects on Vaage and his academic work from the perspective of North American biblical scholarship – Wimbush having known Vaage since his days as a PhD student. Whereas Baergen and Blanco Arellano see considerable potential in the sort of Paul advanced in the pages of this volume, Wimbush is more cautious and instead emphasizes how Vaage’s scholarship takes seriously the colonial environment from which biblical scholarship emerged as a modern discipline.

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The body of the present book comprises four subsequent sections that tackle the questions of Pauline biography with increasing levels of abstraction. The second section examines a series of topical “sites” that direct our attention toward Paul’s marginality within Roman society. Starting concretely, with the various abuses inflicted upon Paul’s body, allows us to identify the cracks in the sculpture of the “strong Paul” that continues to dominate the scholarly imagination. These sufferings, whether punitive or occupational, are consistently interpreted as voluntary – even self-humbling – within academic analyses. While Paul occasionally frames experiences in such terms, these chapters are unified around the supposition that such framing is rhetorical: Paul makes a virtue of unfortunate necessity. In chapter 1, Thomas Schmeller takes up Paul’s own rhetoric of “weakness” and “strength,” addressing the issues of Paul’s strength and weakness that are major themes throughout the volume. Schmeller argues that Paul proffers multiple, even conflicting, understandings of the relationship between power and weakness. Examining theoretical work on rituals of initiation, he concludes that although Paul “subverted the clear-cut set of traditional values … he did not invert them.” Schmeller’s reading pushes back against the influential interpretation of Martin Luther that locates Paul’s conception of human power as residing solely in God. Catherine Jones takes up the question of Paul’s manual labour in chapter 2. Biographical approaches to Paul consistently suppose that Paul’s labour was a matter of choice, typically drawing upon 1 Cor. 9:1–18 and linking it with rabbinic and philosophical parallels. Jones, by contrast, contends that this toil was never optional for Paul and that this requirement shaped his self-understanding on the key matters of his apostleship and the nature of his mission. Chapter 3 is my own contribution. I note the discrepancy between Acts’ preoccupation with imprisonment and the much vaguer descriptions of Paul’s punishments in the letters. I propose that other possibilities for Paul’s phrasing, especially convict labour, offer compelling alternatives to the idea that Paul wrote his letters from “prison.” This is part of a larger project of reading Paul’s letters separately from the tyranny of Acts, which presents Paul as a strong figure in ways that often exceed our cognizance. Chapter 4 is a co-authored contribution by Alcris Limongi and John A. Egger that compares Paul’s beatings as described in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 with the Roman playwright Plautus’s representation of slave-beatings in the Asinaria. Focusing particularly on how language is used in each case to express experience, they go on to reflect on the nature of translation and language, using the example of Vaage’s engagement with Spanish and English in his scholarship on Paul. This section

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concludes with a response by Colleen Shantz, who ties these chapters together with the question “Who saw any of this coming?” She explores how Paul makes meaning of the vagaries of his existence through constant attention to them in his letters. The third section takes up the book’s challenge by problematizing the raison d’être for Pauline literature, namely, the content and nature of the apostle’s message. Even though Paul’s preaching and mission are perennial topics of interest for biblical scholars, these works reveal the degree to which our comprehension of Paul’s gospel has become domesticated. Chapter 6 is a solo effort by John A. Egger that considers how scholars construe Paul’s reference to ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο (literally, “a different gospel, which is not another”) in Gal. 1:6–7. In spite of the simplicity of the grammar, scholars typically take Paul to be saying that his opponents’ gospel is “really no gospel at all,” a reading perpetuated in one way or another by nearly all biblical translations. According to Egger, however, Paul was not calling into question the legitimacy of this “other gospel,” only arguing that it did not fundamentally differ from his own, defending his gospel as best he could from a position of vulnerability. In chapter 7, Santiago Guijarro examines the emergence of discourse on Paul’s “three missionary journeys” alongside colonial missionizing and cartographic technologies. Guijarro demonstrates that the historical Paul, as evidenced in his letters, operates with wildly different understandings of Mediterranean geography and his mission from what appears in Acts, both of which are then collapsed into a grand scheme of three missionary journeys that more closely reflects colonial preoccupations than historical realities. Chapter 8 is Scott Brown’s provocative analysis of esoteric language in 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4. Despite commentators’ efforts to explain away Paul’s phrasing, Brown argues that Paul harboured secret teaching that was not revealed to all, but only to the most advanced learners. This section concludes with a response by Terence L. Donaldson, who contemplates how deeply entrenched images of Paul continue to shape our imagination of the apostle. The fourth section takes up the question of Paul’s taming in a matter that is literally domestic: here gender and bodies within (and without) the household take centre stage. How did Paul’s failed masculinity and problematic body present a problem for him and his interpreters, whether ancient or more recent? Lee A. Johnson’s chapter opens this section. She notes that for all Paul’s emphasis on gender equality, he jettisons such rhetoric whenever his authority is seriously called into question. Johnson specifically cites the inconsistent way in which Paul talks about “the spirit” in his

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letters: although Paul invokes it as the quintessential authorizing mechanism with regard to his own ministry, he insists on the regulation of the spirit with regard to the practices of others. Halvor Moxnes, in chapter 11, considers Paul’s body in a considerably different capacity – reflecting upon Caravaggio’s painting The Conversion of St Paul (1601) and its common-but-unbiblical depiction of Paul on horseback as an opportunity to think about queerness and sexual submission. Moxnes locates Caravaggio’s painting within the reception of the pericope in medieval, Counter-Reformation, and modern cultures, drawing attention to how gender, sexuality, and queerness have informed its interpretation. In chapter 12, Carlos Gil Arbiol examines Paul’s overlapping discourse on the church, the temple, and the body to reconfigure the social space of the church. Gil Arbiol contends that Paul conceived the assembly as a temple where believers worship God through their ethical behaviour, in the way that they treat the social body. By doing this, the Corinthians challenge Roman social values by means of civic worship. Margaret Y. MacDonald responds to these chapters, emphasizing how Paul’s letters have considerable effects on the lives of real human beings, ancient and modern. The fifth section consists of methodological interventions that help frame the rest of the volume by way of their relationship to the data that make up the “Pauline voice.” Tackling questions of Pauline biography more abstractly than other contributions in the collection, these three essays problematize the historiographic confidence that often typifies Pauline studies. Ryan S. Schellenberg opens this section with chapter 14, which theorizes Paul’s “indeterminacy.” It is something of an open secret that Paul’s discourse in his letters is frequently confusing and difficult to understand, leading to voluminous exegetical debate (the present volume as a case in point). Against the common depiction of Paul as an early Christian “intellectual,” Schellenberg contends that this obscurity sponsors instead a portrait of Paul as a Christ-possessed purveyor of ancient mysteries. A.J. Droge takes on a different methodological question in chapter 15, considering the passion of Christ in 1 Cor. 2:6–16. Droge observes the numerous points at which the passage contradicts Paul elsewhere, including within the Corinthian correspondence. Comparison with texts often deemed “gnostic” leads Droge to the conclusion that the passage was a later interpolation into 1 Corinthians. One can imagine John Strugnell, with his call for other scholars to publicly confess their personal conjectural emendations, smiling in his grave.16 Kieren Williams, in chapter 16, starts with a consideration of two of the earliest surviving Pauline letter collections (i.e., that of Marcion as reported by Tertullian and P46). She

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observes that there is little evidence that these two early letter collections were preoccupied with Paul as the author of the letters, instead seeming to think of him as one among many apostoloi, a matter progressively obscured by the church fathers, who instead wanted to imagine him as the central organizing principle of the collection. This section concludes with a response by William E. Arnal, who notes that these inquiries call into question the biographical project itself in their emphasis on the instability and multiplicity of the authorial voice of the Pauline texts. The volume is rounded out with a conclusion by John A. Egger and the denouement by Vincent L. Wimbush, both reflecting on the book and its relationship to the scholarly production of Leif E. Vaage. Just as Wimbush’s denouement pairs well with Baergen and Blanco Arellano’s prelude as bookends to the volume, so also Egger’s conclusion acts as a companion to the present introduction. Egger reflects more extensively on the “posture” toward Paul advanced in this volume and within Vaage’s academic work. Rather than glossing over the tensions between the contributions in this collection, Egger considers how such points of disagreement further augment our understanding of this critical posture. All in all, this collection seeks to chip away at the conventional understanding of Paul by offering studies that examine how he has been domesticated, a common theme in Leif Vaage’s teaching and scholarship. The present volume does not offer a single, totalizing portrait of the apostle Paul. Rather, the contributions within it present us with a question. How might we re-imagine Paul, attending to the apostle in all of his strangeness? no t e s 1 N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2 vols (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013). 2 Paula Fredriksen, review of Paul and the Faithfulness of God, by N.T. Wright, cbq 77 (2015): 390–1. 3 Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianity and the Religions of Late Antiquity, jlcrs 14 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); William E. Arnal, The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity, Religion in Culture (London: Equinox, 2005). 4 The phrasing here draws upon James G. Crossley, Jesus in an Age of Terror: Scholarly Projects for a New American Century, BibleWorld (London: Equinox, 2008); Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, “Jesus and the Anti-Roman Resistance: A Reassessment of the Arguments,” jshj 12 (2014): 1–105; Robert J. Myles, “The Fetish for a Subversive Jesus,” jshj 14 (2016): 52–70.

Introduction

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5 E.g., Wolfgang Stegemann, “War der Apostel Paulus ein römischer Bürger?” znw 78 (1987): 200–29; Krister Stendahl, “Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” htr 56 (1963): 199–215; John Knox, “‘Fourteen Years Later’: A Note on the Pauline Chronology,” jr 16 (1936): 341–9; John Knox, “The Pauline Chronology,” jbl 58 (1939): 15–29. 6 See, e.g., Leif E. Vaage, “Introducción metodológica a los escritos de Pablo,” ribla 62 (2009): 9–14. 7 On interpolations, see e.g., Droge, “Whodunnit” (present volume), 305–33; Birger A. Pearson, “1 Thessalonians 2:13–16: A Deutero-Pauline Interpolation,” htr 64 (1971): 79–94. On pseudepigraphy, see e.g., Dennis R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1983). Or, outside the canon, rendering Paul an intellectual conversant in Stoic philosophy, Laura Nasrallah, “‘Out of Love for Paul’: History and Fiction and the Afterlife of the Apostle Paul,” in Early Christian and Jewish Narrative: The Role of Religion in Shaping Narrative Forms, ed. Ilaria Ramelli and Judith Perkins, wunt 348 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 73–96. 8 Leif E. Vaage, unpublished. 9 Adolf Deissmann, St. Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History, 2nd English ed., trans. Lionel R.M. Strachan (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1927). 10 Leif E. Vaage, unpublished. 11 See the discussion in Mallory Nye, Religion: The Basics, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2008), 105–28. 12 Colleen Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 13 Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, Next Wave (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 3. 14 Vaage suggests that we remain “haunted by the specters of an ancestral past, listening for its other voices, whose repetition (à la Kierkegaard) in the form of historiography always will be thoroughly inflected with our own present-day circumstances because, in fact, we can only invent (in accordance with the double dynamic of the Latin verb invenire) whatever we would claim to know in such fashion.” Leif E. Vaage, “The corpus paulinum,” in T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul, ed. Ryan S. Schellenberg and Heidi Wendt, T&T Clark Handbooks (London: T&T Clark, 2022), 12. 15 Birgitte Possing, Understanding Biographies: On Biographies in History and Stories in Biography, University of Southern Denmark Studies in History and Social Sciences 538, trans. Gaye Kynoch (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2017), 81–3. 16 John Strugnell, “A Plea for Conjectural Emendation in the New Testament: With a Coda on 1 Cor 4:6,” cbq 36 (1974): 543–58.

pa rt two

Paul’s Precarious Life

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“Whoever Boasts, Should Boast in the Lord” (2 Cor. 10:17): What Does It Mean to “Boast in the Lord”? Thomas Schmeller

In Leif Vaage’s poem “Shrove Tuesday,”1 selected as one of Canada’s best English poems in 2008, the first-person narrator recounts an outdoor experience on two “glorious” days which precede Shrove Tuesday. The first two stanzas of this wonderful poem read as follows: Either Sunday or Monday, it doesn’t matter, Both days were glorious, I was thinking about the structure Of praise; or, rather, its style – how essential it is Not to reach for words. I don’t know what Happened to that thought. The bay was blue With the sky. A broad band of another Blue followed the shoreline like milk in a glass bowl Wanting to curdle. There was no wind. The narrator who prepares to laud those days starts thinking “about the structure / Of praise.” He does not bring this thought to an end. After imagining “how essential it is / Not to reach for words,” he forgets about the problem. Nature captures his attention. His ideas dissolve into pure experience, into pure existence. The beginning of this poem illustrates something I believe to be typical of Leif Vaage as a New Testament scholar – the insistence that every common conviction, every supposed certainty, needs to be analyzed anew and from scratch. Leif Vaage is convinced that, in doing so, old

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and venerable ideas dissolve, just as in his poem rational conceptions are dissolved by the experience of a glorious day. Paul seems to have been especially domesticated by scholarship over the centuries and needs to be set free. We must discover his strangeness again, questioning the traditional picture exegetes have been forming for so long. In my attempt to honour Leif Vaage, I follow his lead. I focus on a seemingly clear and unproblematic verse: “Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord” (2 Cor. 10:17). Is this verse as simple as scholars normally assume? Should we read it following the exegetical mainstream or is it possible that the way Paul boasts is as volatile as the above narrator’s thoughts about praise in general?

in t e r p r e tat io n o f 2 cor. 10:17 2 The verse we are trying to understand is part of 2 Cor. 10:12–18. This unit continues Paul’s fight against his opponents which had started in 10:1–11. There, Paul had dealt with criticisms concerning his personal weakness and the incompatibility of this weakness with his strong letters. Against such reproaches, Paul had threatened the addressees with a powerful visit which would overthrow their misconceptions about him. Now, in 10:12–18, the argument takes a turn. Paul compares his behaviour as a missionary with the behaviour of opponents who had come to Corinth during his absence. Whereas Paul kept to the measure given to him by God when he preached in Corinth, these interlopers went beyond their measure and boasted of another missionary’s (i.e., Paul’s) labours. Therefore, it is Paul, not his opponents, who is approved and who may boast in the Lord. So far, the line of thought in this pericope can be followed without too many problems. But if we look closer, some significant points of the passage are unclear. What does it mean to exceed or not to exceed a certain “measure” (μετροῦντες, εἰς τὰ ἄμετρα, κατὰ τὸ μέτρον, μέτρου)? Or to stick or not to stick to a certain “rule” or “field” (τοῦ κανόνος, κατὰ τὸν κανόνα, ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ κανόνι)? The difficulties are increased by the text’s style. It is characterized by a limited vocabulary and many negations. The result is an argument revolving around one or two basic concepts that are barely explained. The pericope gives the impression of esoteric communication not open to outsiders. Although we must count ourselves among those outsiders, we will try to get closer to the text’s meaning by looking at how Paul develops his ideas. When Paul says, “we do not dare to compare (with rivals in Corinth),” he cannot mean that he shies away from any self-comparison with them.

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Second Corinthians 10–13 is full of self-comparison. Rather, 10:12 seems to indicate that Paul does not approve his rivals’ tendency to boast about themselves over-and-against others. Paul does exactly the same in the “fool’s speech,” but he keeps emphasizing that he does so only because he must and that it is a fool’s behaviour. Not only does he compare himself with and boast against others, but he also recommends himself (4:2, 6:4; cf. 12:11), even though he castigates his opponents for doing so. What is the difference between Paul’s self-recommendation and that of his rivals? It seems as though Paul is attacking the lack of a common standard. His own standard was τὸ μέτρον τοῦ κανόνος οὗ ἐμέρισεν ἡμῖν ὁ θεὸς μέτρου (10:13), “the measured field which God has apportioned to us as (our) measure.” His rivals violate God’s standard; they follow their own, a merely human, standard. The threefold description of the opponents in 10:12 (recommending themselves, measuring themselves by one another, comparing themselves with themselves) is basically reduced to one reproach only: their merely human self-legitimation which cannot seriously be compared to Paul’s divine legitimation. What does Paul allude to when he insists that only his mission, not the competing mission of his rivals, respects the will of God? Perhaps the explanation lies in the agreement about the fields of mission reached among the apostles in Jerusalem: Paul to the uncircumcised and others to the circumcised (Gal. 2:9). This interpretation presupposes that κανών has a geographic connotation here, so that τὸ μέτρον τοῦ κανόνος means “the measured field.” Paul sticks to the Jerusalem agreement when preaching among the Gentiles of Achaia; his rivals break it by preaching there. Although we do not know where the rivals came from, there are several hints that connect them to Jerusalem.3 Second Corinthians 10:13–16 gives us reason to assume that some specific aspect of their mission gave rise to Paul’s argument. We cannot be sure what aspect it was, but it is hard to think of a better background than the mission agreement with Jerusalem. This means that they had or at least pretended to have some relationship with the church there. They saw themselves as part of the mission by James, Cephas, and John (Gal. 2:9). Why they had come to Corinth and how they justified their preaching in this mostly Gentile congregation, we simply do not know. It may be that the agreement itself was not clear enough to prevent such a conflict. Paul bridges to a second argument in 10:14, which justifies Paul’s boasting of himself. The first argument is: You are part of our field of mission according to the will of God. When in 10:14 he underlines, “We have come to you with the gospel of Christ,” this looks back to 10:13 (“by coming to you, we followed the plan of God”), but it also looks

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forward to 10:15 (“we planted the gospel in your field”). In 10:15–16, this second argument is clearly stated: Paul will not interfere where other missionaries have preached. It is the same principle we read in Rom. 15:20: Paul states that he makes it his “ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on another man’s foundation.” He expects the same respect for the missionary field of others from all missionaries. Thus, the rivals in Corinth have not only violated the Jerusalem agreement (10:13–14), but they have also disregarded a basic rule of Christian mission (10:15–16). The second reproach is not as natural as it reads. Looking at 1 Cor. 3:10–15, one might expect that Paul is not opposed to others building upon the foundation he has laid. What looks like a contradiction is easily reconciled, however: As far as we are informed about the opponents in Corinth, they did not intend to carry on Paul’s work but to make it their own. They did not recognize his authority or him as a founder of the congregation, and aimed at a hostile takeover, turning the Corinthian Christians against him and replacing him. This is probably what Paul means by “boasting of others’ efforts” (10:15). His opponents certainly did not boast of his work; rather they tried to run down his achievements. Since they aimed at taking over the congregation, they boasted about their new standing among the Corinthian Christians. Paul can turn to other missionary projects only if and when the Corinthians’ belief increases (i.e., if and when they get rid of the opponents), following the same two guidelines: respecting his own κανών and respecting the work of others (10:15–16). It is possible, but not necessary, that he expects the Corinthian congregation to serve as a starting point and a base for this mission. In any case, 10:15–16 contains an indirect appeal to the Corinthians to change their behaviour in order to allow such a new project in the west to become reality. We have arrived now at 10:17, the verse which my whole contribution concerns. The pericope is clearly coming to its end since Paul chooses two aphorisms that transfer the line of thought to a more general level. The first is a quote from Scripture. Its exact origin is either Jer. 9:24 lxx or 1 Sam. 2:10 lxx . It is not introduced by one of Paul’s quotation formulas, but the Corinthians probably recognized it as a quote from Scripture since Paul had used it in 1 Cor. 1:31 already, introducing it there by the formula “as it is written.” While 10:13–16 contains negative statements about boasting of oneself (one should neither boast beyond one’s κανών nor of the work of others), 10:17 supplies the positive counterpart (one should boast “in the Lord”). By κύριος, Paul normally means God if used in a quotation from Scripture, and Christ if used outside such a quotation. So

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here “the Lord” is probably God, although 10:18, according to the same rule, seems to speak of Christ. Boasting in God is permitted – Paul is not condemning all boasting categorically, but every boast must make clear the source of one’s reason to boast, which is ultimately God. He himself gives an example of the correct way of boasting in 1 Cor. 15:10: “I worked harder than any of them (i.e., the other apostles), though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me.” The second aphorism (10:18) gives more or less the same rule, albeit in Paul’s own words. It is not self-recommendation nor boasting of oneself, but being recommended by the Lord (Christ?), which permits true boasting because it means being accepted (δόκιμος) – that is, having divine legitimation. Looking back, Paul distinguishes between two kinds of legitimation. His opponents, on the one hand, recommend themselves, measure themselves by one another, and compare themselves with one another; they possess a human means of legitimation only. Paul, on the other hand, can point to a Christian congregation in Corinth, which came into existence because he followed God’s rule. He is the one who carries divine legitimation, he is δόκιμος, and he is entitled to boast in the Lord. So far, apart from details, there is not much exegetical dispute about the text. Things change if we look for its theological basis. Many interpreters find it in Pauline theologia crucis. C.K. Barrett, for instance, comments on 10:18: “the true apostle … in life as well as teaching is conformed to the image of the Lord’s death.”4 Similar is the interpretation of 10:17 by Erich Grässer: “‘To boast of the Lord’ means then to boast of the one who has made us rich through his ‘poverty’ (8:9).”5 For both scholars, Paul’s boasting is possible only as boasting of his weaknesses, of his suffering, of his dying, since this conforms him to Christ and serves to mediate Christ’s salvific death to his congregation. This interpretation is surprising. We have worked through the text and we have seen that there is no hint of weakness, suffering, or dying. What is more, there is not even a hint of Christology in the context: Christ is directly mentioned in the expression “the gospel of Christ” (10:14) only, indirectly in 10:18 (if the κύριος really is Christ). In both cases, the hints remain very general and do not intimate Christ’s suffering or death. Why do many interpreters connect 10:17 to theologia crucis? The popularity of this reading is probably attributable to a wellestablished line of interpretation going back to Martin Luther.6 According to Luther’s well-known conviction, at the bottom of Paul’s theology lies the discovery that human beings cannot rely on their own power, but are wholly dependent on God’s power. This divine power is

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different from human expectation. It does not show itself in experiences of success, of prosperity, of health, but it shows itself in situations of suffering and hopelessness. It never becomes part of humans’ own power, but it always stays vis aliena, power not one’s own, upon which humans remain dependent and must rely. Over the centuries and to this day, many Protestant (and other) interpreters of Paul have been convinced that Luther had found the true core of Pauline theology.7 It forms the basic constant, giving unity to Paul’s letters, and it is present not only where it clearly comes to the fore, but also in contexts not explicitly discussing Christology and soteriology. Its ostensive centrality to Paul’s thought is sufficient justification for many to find it even in 2 Cor. 10:17. A relatively recent example of this kind of approach can be found in an article by Calvin J. Roetzel.8 I present his argument to show how strong Luther’s influence remains. Roetzel distinguishes between two forms of Pauline speaking. He calls the first form the “language of war.” In 2 Cor. 10:1–6, Paul declares war on the Corinthians, if they fail to change their behaviour. He uses extremely violent language, not found anywhere else in his letters, to fight his critics in Corinth that judge him as submissive and weak: “Against the scurrilous contempt for him as womanish (‘weak’) voiced by the Super Apostles, he portrays himself as a gibbor or ἀνικήτος, a mighty, invincible warrior in God’s final apocalyptic struggle.”9 According to Roetzel, Paul is not at his best when using this “language of war.” Paul’s real language is the “language of weakness.” He already applies it in 10:1 when he appeals to the addressees “by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.” He returns to it in 10:8 by relativizing what he had said about war against Corinth: his authority was given to him for building up, not for tearing down. And finally, he subverts his “language of war” in the fool’s speech (which Roetzel sees in 2 Cor. 11:21b–12:10): “The irony of this fool’s display would not have escaped Paul’s readers. Paul here appropriates their ‘weakness’ or womanish epithet and conjures another body whose economy is the polar opposite of the warrior body. Like that of his lord Jesus, beaten, shamed, and crucified, the fool’s self-portrait as a humiliated, servile, scar pocked earthen vessel of divine authority (2 Cor. 4:7) clashes dramatically with the character sketch of 10:1–6.”10 Only this “language of weakness” is appropriate to Paul’s Christian creed. It provides a whole new definition of power – what in the eyes of the critics are signs of shame are reinterpreted as signs of strength. This is a new language. Sometimes, however, Paul lapses into his old thinking and speaking, as in 12:16–17, 13:2, and 13:10, where he shames and threatens the Corinthians Christians. This shows that Paul’s conversion had not been complete.

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This distinction between an old and a new, a non-Christian and a Christian attitude is extremely problematic.11 Is Paul’s way of asserting himself against his critics by violent words best interpreted as a pre-Christian attitude, culturally conditioned and later overcome? Does not this idea impose a narrative onto the text, of which the text itself shows no signs? Is it not preferable to accept that Paul had both “manly” and “womanly” traits? Should not his threats of war be taken as seriously as his reinterpretation of shame and honour? Only by answering such questions can we assess christological interpretations of 2 Cor. 10:17. The next section, therefore, deals with a comprehensive theological problem: how are power and weakness related to each other in the two letters to the Corinthians? After discussing this question, we turn back to 2 Cor. 10:17.

we ak n e s s a n d p ow e r in 1 and 2 cori nthi ans Second Corinthians contains many more relevant passages than First Corinthians. The question we are asking does not comprise a single pair of opposites (weakness and power), but also similar pairings: suffering and glory, death and life, cross and might. There are three basic possibilities for how the internal relationship of these pairs can be construed:12 1 “Power and weakness side by side”: The terms do not overlap. Paul experiences power (e.g., successes in mission, victories against opponents), which is perceived not only by him but by others as well. He also experiences weakness (e.g., sufferings), but for him the only connection between the two is their shared connection with the gospel. 2 “Power in weakness”: The terms are intimately related to each other, weakness being the antithesis to power. Paul is often in situations of suffering, which he overcomes only by the power of God. God carries him through and finally saves him. This kind of power, too, can be perceived by others. 3 “Power as weakness”: The terms coincide. Situations of suffering are the (only? preferred?) place where Paul experiences the power of resurrection. This kind of power cannot be perceived by others, since it is present in Paul’s faithful acceptance of his sufferings and in a theological interpretation of them, turning them upside-down and transforming them into power.

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1 Cor. 4:6–2113 Many details of this text are unclear, contributing to its never-ending scholarly discussion. But it is clear that Paul in 4:6 criticizes (some of) the Corinthians because they take sides with one of their missionaries and turn themselves against the others. This means not only increasing the status of the preferred missionary, but also one’s own status – in other words, boasting. According to 4:7, such boasting is unacceptable because every personal advantage is a gift (i.e., from God). Why does this fact make boasting unacceptable? Some interpreters assume that the Corinthians had separated the gift from the giver and had seen it as their own possession.14 Since the text does not provide such information, this assumption probably goes back to Luther: God’s grace is always vis aliena and can never be at the disposal of humans. This, however, is not what 4:7 says. On the contrary, the argument of this verse presupposes the common conviction, shared by Paul and the addressees, that all are dependent on God. The use of rhetorical questions shows that this conviction is not being disputed. While the Corinthians do not seem to have a problem with boasting, such boasting is excluded for Paul – not because the object of their boasting is not their own, but because the godly origin of every gift levels out difference between the recipients. This is the reason why one should not play them against one another. First Corinthians 4:8 and 4:10 generalize the arrogance of the Corinthians: They are “filled, rich, and kings,” they are “wise, strong, and held in honour.” Paul, on the other hand, is “a fool, weak, and held in disrepute.” While the marks of the congregation are certainly ironic, the same cannot be said of the marks of Paul. The characterization of his work in 4:11–13 is pointed, maybe somewhat exaggerated, but he is serious about it (cf. other catalogues of peristaseis [unfavourable circumstances] in 2 Cor. 4:7–12, 6:3–10, 11:22–33, and 12:9–10, which confirm the picture he draws). Paul thus confronts the arrogant attitude of the Corinthians, who are out of touch with reality, with a very different attitude that does not look at all attractive. It is Paul’s attitude which the Corinthians ought to make their own (4:16). They should learn to distinguish between two perspectives: one from the outside and the other from the inside. As seen from the outside, Paul’s life is marked by foolishness, weakness, labour, and suffering. He is “the refuse of the world” (1 Cor. 4:13). In the context of 1:18–2:5 it is clear that this is a life in the shadow of the cross, which opens up the perspective from within. In reality things are totally different. Just as

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God chose the crucified one, so also will he choose the ones who follow Christ to the cross. As Christ is the model for Paul, so also is Paul the model for the Corinthians. But Paul’s experiences extend beyond powerlessness and suffering. There is power, too. Suffering cannot overcome him. “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate.” (4:12–13). Paul’s reaction is not that of a victim, helplessly handed over to his torturers. He is, rather, in control of the situation. He has the power to behave otherwise than expected. Thus, what the Corinthians are meant to learn from the Pauline model is not only humility and self-denial. In him, they can also discover a certain kind of power that they did not know beforehand and that has nothing to do with their imaginary power. This new kind of power can be seen in Paul’s way of dealing with his situation: Like the crucified one, he endures injustice and abstains from (verbally) striking back. He even responds to it in a positive, loving way (4:12–13). But it can also be seen in his resolute resistance to such injustice (4:18–20). The arrogant behaviour of Corinthian Christians, which Paul criticizes, belongs to the abuse and slander he suffers. One way to react to it is to patiently endure it. But there is another way, too: to fight it. During his next visit to Corinth, the Christians there will be tested; Paul will find out their true power. He even opens up a choice for them: “Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” (4:21). If necessary, he will assert his authority in a powerful manner – powerful, not in a paradoxical sense, but in a very straightforward sense: everyone will recognize this power. We can conclude that in 1 Cor. 4:6–21 Paul realizes two of the three possibilities listed above: “power and weakness side by side” and “power in weakness.” 2 Cor. 4:7–1215 The next text we deal with forms part of Paul’s great apology in 2 Cor. 2:14–7:4. The question Paul is answering here is found in 2:16: “Who is sufficient for these things?” “these things” being his task as an apostle. This task has two antithetical aspects. In 3:1–4:6 we read about its bright and radiant aspect. Paul is serving as minister of a new covenant (3:6) the splendour of which surpasses even the ministry of Moses (3:7–11); it has the power to transform everyone who accepts it into the image of Christ (3:12–18). In 4:7–12, however, it becomes clear that the same ministry has a dark side of suffering, too. When preaching the gospel of the death and resurrection of Christ, Paul takes

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part in the content of Christ’s gospel. He becomes included in Christ’s suffering, but he also experiences the power of God which grants life in the midst of death. The metaphor of “earthen vessels” which carry the treasure (4:7a) evokes surprise: there is a certain tension between the great ministry of the new covenant and the weak and fragile human being performing it. This conspicuous relationship “show[s] that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (4:7). It is not Paul’s own power that makes him overcome and survive the situations of suffering listed in 4:8–11, but God’s power. Does this mean that there is a necessary correlation between the power of God and the weakness of humans, so that the first would presuppose the second? We have to look closely at the catalogue of peristaseis to answer this question. The catalogue comprises four parallel antitheses, in which the first section is carried on and corrected by the second (y, but not x). How the two sections relate to each other is a famous problem in biblical studies. One possibility is that every second section expresses an intensification of the first: Paul must experience bad situations (first section), but God spares him the worst (second section). Paul suffers, but he is not destroyed – he survives unexpectedly because of the power of God. The other possibility is that the suffering expressed in both sections is comparable in intensity, but different under certain perspectives. Seen from a merely human point of view they are threatening indeed, but seen from the point of view of a believer they lose their threatening character. Paul is not spared the worst, but in the middle of the worst his suffering is wholly done away with. He suffers, but in reality – seen through the eyes of a believer – he does not suffer at all. Which reading is to be preferred? Does the second section limit the first or does it totally do away with it? Does God prevent suffering from developing its full effect or does he give suffering a new quality, taking away its menacing character? It depends. If, however, we start with 4:7 and read through 4:8–9, the first reading is suggested: the second section limits the first. Seen from a human point of view, the earthen vessel has no chance to stay intact, but God’s power, which is inherent to the treasure, keeps the vessel from breaking. If we read 4:10–12 and turn back to 4:8–9, the second reading seems to be suggested. The first section describes Paul’s participation in the dying of Christ, the second section describes his participation in Christ’s life of resurrection. Since Christ was not spared death, Paul cannot mean that he would be saved from death, but only that in the midst of death he

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experiences new life. Participation in the death and life of Jesus does not mean being saved and freed from situations of suffering, but living right through such situations. Thus, the text does not allow a decision for one of the two readings, nor does it offer a chance to even them out. Elements of the two options are connected to each other in a way that does not follow logic. Paul links the two interpretations of his suffering without alleviating the tensions between them. For others (readers, spectators), it is certainly easier to follow the first one: they perceive that Paul is saved in situations which normally lead to death. The second interpretation is far more difficult to follow: Paul must suffer without being spared anything, but suffering itself turns into an experience of God’s power and God’s life. To accept such an interpretation as plausible and meaningful is only possible for those who share Paul’s christological and soteriological convictions. Thus, the text does not correlate the experience of power with the experience of weakness in such a way that the second were the presupposition of the first. We do not find the idea of “power as weakness.” We do, however, find “power and weakness side by side” and “power in weakness,” depending on whether we read from 4:7 onward or whether we look back to 4:8–10 from 4:10–12.

2 Cor. 10:1–1116 Whether one identifies 2 Cor. 10–13 with the “letter of tears” (2:1–4, 7:8) or not, it is clear that in these chapters Paul tries to induce the Corinthian congregation to dissociate themselves from his opponents. He also prepares another visit to Corinth which will be merciless and will allow him to settle with these rivals. In 10:1–11, he deals with reproaches claiming that his personal appearance was weak and did not fit with his strong letters. He counters such reproaches by presenting a very different image of himself: he shows himself to be a strong warrior, a general of Christ. As such, his appearance during the next visit will compel the Corinthians to show obedience toward Christ. We leave open many questions and focus only on the antithesis of weakness and power. This antithesis is already present in 10:1. The congregation obviously interpreted Paul’s humble appearance as a sign of weakness. He did not meet the usual expectations of “manly,” strong, and honourable behaviour. They probably gained this impression during his second visit, the interim visit (cf. 2 Cor. 12:14, 13:1), when Paul was

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deeply humiliated and embarrassed by a member of the congregation and was unable to effectively defend himself (cf. 2:5, 7:12, 12:21). In 10:1 (“by the meekness and gentleness of Christ”), Paul may hint at a different interpretation of himself when referring to Christ who lowered himself, probably by becoming human, which showed Christ’s power, not his weakness. Presupposing that the argumentation begun in 10:1 remains the same in the following verses, some interpreters do not see the military campaign described in 10:3–6 as the announcement of a new kind of behaviour but as an attempt to bring about a new look at the former behaviour of Paul.17 According to this interpretation, Paul is encouraging the congregation to see his humble appearance through the eyes of God: to see it not as weakness, but as courage and power. But such an interpretation does not do justice to Paul’s argument. He must address the charge that his weak personal appearance does not match his strong letters. He cannot refute this reproach by announcing another humble visit and reinterpreting it so that it becomes a demonstration of power, but only by threatening the addressees with a really new kind of behaviour (as he does in 13:2). The metaphors point in the same direction: Nowhere else in his letters does Paul use such aggressive military images. Obviously, compared to 1 Corinthians, his conflict with the congregation has deepened. When writing 1 Corinthians, Paul limits himself to threatening the application of a rod (1 Cor. 4:21), while in 2 Cor. 10:3–6 the rod becomes a long-range military campaign. Now the Corinthian congregation is an enemy whom Paul, as God’s general, will fight and defeat, unless they change their behaviour and return to obedience toward Christ and his apostle. The apostolic authority that Paul has received from Christ provides him with enough power not to disgrace himself at the next visit. But this authority has as its aim building up, not destroying, the congregation (10:8). The rhetoric of power is therefore used in order to spare Paul and the Corinthians such an appearance (cf. 13:10). The future personal demonstration of power is meant to become unnecessary by the present written demonstration of might. If the letter has this effect, Paul can and will again apply the “meekness and gentleness of Christ” at the next visit. As in 1 Cor. 4:21, the congregation must choose. If we ask which of the three types of correlation between power and weakness (cf. above) is applied here, it is clearly the first type: power and weakness side by side.

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2 Cor. 11:21b–12:1018 This long text, which will be our final test case, forms the main body of the “fool’s speech” (11:16–12:13).19 It consists of narrative sections, lists, and comments. When we take these different genres into account, the text shows the following structure: 11:16–21a: Introduction: Boasting in foolishness 11:21b–33: Boasting I: Comparison with rivals 11:21b: Introduction 11:22: Descent 11:23–29: Service to the gospel (catalogue of peristaseis) 11:30–31: Interpretation and confirmation 11:32–33: Narration of the flight from Damascus 12:1–10: Boasting II: Visions and revelations 12:1: Introduction 12:2–4: Narration of a journey to heaven 12:5–7a: Interpretation and confirmation 12:7b–9a: Narration of a thorn in the flesh 12:9b–10: Generalizing conclusion 12:11–13: Summary The fool’s speech provides us with the clearest picture of competition between Paul and his opponents in 2 Corinthians. The first section (“Boasting I”) is the most relevant because Paul explicitly engages in self-comparison here (11:21b). The interpretation of this text is largely determined by one’s understanding of the opponents. Many interpreters assume their theology was one of glory, power, and success. Such a theological outlook formed their Christology as well as their idea of service to the gospel. Paul would have countered them by proposing a theology of the cross and of weakness. In his view, God’s power was not perceivable in missionary success, but in human powerlessness.20 Does 11:21b–33 back up such an interpretation? In 11:21b–23 Paul matches his strength against that of his opponents with regard to ethnic “descent” and “commitment to the service of Christ.” He illustrates his commitment by a long catalogue of peristaseis. The function of the two following elements – a declaration of belief in the boasting of τὰ τῆς ἀσθενείας (things related to weakness; 11:30) and a story of an unusual flight from Damascus – is not easy to determine.

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Whereas Paul is serious about a real comparison in 11:22 (his Jewish credentials are of the same value as his opponents’), from 11:23 on his attitude is not so clear. Sigurd Grindheim provides a good example of an interpretation of 11:23–33 as a kind of parody. According to Grindheim, the text recalls Greco-Roman lists of deeds and achievements, the most famous example being the text on the Momentum Ancyranum by Augustus. In such texts, rulers and other famous persons listed their performance in a catalogue of successes. By using the first-person plural and by giving numbers (ἅπαξ, τρίς, πεντάκις), Paul makes his readers expect abilities, successes, or honours, but instead he lists difficulties, crises, and shaming punishments. In 11:30 this strategy becomes explicit: unlike his opponents, Paul does not boast of his strengths but of his weaknesses. According to Grindheim, the paradoxical character of his boasting is clearly shown by the story about Damascus in 11:32–33. He sees it as an appendix to the catalogue of peristaseis. Following E.A. Judge, Grindheim assumes as its background the so-called corona muralis, a high decoration of every Roman soldier who was the first to climb the walls of a city under attack. Paul becomes an anti-hero because he describes how he is let down on a rope instead of climbing the wall. Thus, Paul uses a new scale to measure commitment to Christ. Contrary to his rivals, he is a servant of Christ not because of his miracles, successes in mission, or rhetorical ability, but because of his labours, imprisonments, beatings, and dangers. The whole catalogue of peristaseis serves to illustrate true power, which is to be found in weakness. Grindheim and others see Christology as the basis for such a re-evaluation. From the first verse to the final conclusion of 2 Cor. 10–13 (i.e., 10:1, 13:4), Paul refers to the humility and weakness of Christ, who “was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but in dealing with you we shall live with him by the power of God” (13:4). Grindheim’s interpretation can be summarized by the following: “Whereas the opponents boasted in manifestations of power, Paul boasted in Christ, whose power he trusted to be effective in manifestations of weakness. Apparent weakness was the very operative mode of Christ’s power (2 Cor 4:10–11, 8:9, 13:4).”21 In my opinion, Grindheim and other interpreters do not do full justice to the text. Crucial to their interpretation is 11:23, where, as they assume, the real comparison (11:22) turns into a parody. Such a change cannot be seen in the text. To begin, the linguistic evidence does not suggest a change. In 11:23–29, the comparison with rivals simply continues. Read in context, ὑπὲρ ἐγώ (more so I), περισσοτέρως (to a greater degree), and ὑπερβαλλόντως (to a far greater degree) are to be

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judged as true comparative forms, not as absolute superlative forms. They point to the superiority of Paul in the field of commitment to Christ. Without 12:9–10, no one would infer from 11:23 on that weaknesses replace strengths. The decisive argument against Grindheim and others, however, is a structural one. 11:21b–33 has a parallel in 12:1–9a. Consider the following correspondences: Table 1.1 | Structural similarities between 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 and 12:1–9a Introduction

Self-praise A

Confirming comments

Self-praise B

11:21b Readiness for competition in foolishness

11:22–29 Descent and hardships

11:30–31 Self-praise of weakness, no lie

11:32–33 Humiliating experience in Damascus

12:2–4 12:1 Heavenly journey Readiness for self-praise despite its uselessness

12:5–7a Self-praise of weakness, truth

12:7b–9a Thorn as a warning against pride

Each text contains two instances of self-praise. The introductions to the first instance are very similar: “Whatever anyone dares to boast of – I am speaking as a fool – I also dare to boast of that” (11:21b) is very similar to “It is necessary to boast, (although) nothing is to be gained by it” (12:1). The transitions from the first to the second instance are very close, too: In 11:30–31 we read “I will boast of the things that show my weakness,” “I do not lie.” In 12:5–6 Paul writes “on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses” (12:5), “I will be speaking the truth” (12:6). This extremely similar framing suggests that self-praise A and self-praise B have analogous functions. There is no reason to doubt that the heavenly journey is told by Paul as a real honour, as something that allows him to compete with his opponents. If this is the case, then the same must be true of his descent and of his hardships. In other words, if the story of his journey to heaven is no parody, then his catalogue of

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hardships can be no parody either. Even in the eyes of the opponents these hardships must be something which is honourable. The list does not focus on the pain caused by thirty-nine lashes, but on the fact that Paul has courageously taken them on himself and has survived them five times; it does not focus on what bandits could have done to him and maybe have done to him, but on the fact that he carried on with his missionary journeys despite them and despite many other dangers; it does not focus on the lack of sleep, food, and clothing, but on the fact that he willingly underwent such circumstances in order to proclaim the gospel. In both texts, in 11:22–29 as well as in 12:2–4, Paul is competing with his opponents on their terms. It is possible that they composed similar lists of hardships and told similar stories of ecstasies, though we do not know for certain. But they probably regarded both kinds of experience not as weaknesses but as honours: hardships as opportunities to prove their valour, ecstasies as signs of their proximity to heaven. This means that the opponents did not – as Grindheim and others assume – boast of their strengths, while Paul boasted of his weaknesses. The relationship between them is much more complicated. But for the moment we can ascertain that there is no reason to assume a theological antithesis, the opponents holding a theology of glory, Paul a theology of the cross. They did not compete in terms of ethnic descent only, but also in terms of the power of God which both found at work in toils and labours as well as in experiences like heavenly journeys or miracles (cf. 12:12). This does not mean that they shared the same theology, however. Some differences emerge. In 11:22–29 and in its counter-piece 12:2–4, Paul presents facts and experiences which the opponents, too, recognized as strengths (the descent and commitment of a servant of Christ, the dignity of a traveller to heaven and of a recipient of revelation). In both cases, confirming comments (11:30–31, 12:5–7a) lead to stories that entitled Paul, but not his opponents, to boasting (11:32–33: the flight from Damascus; 12:7b–9a: the thorn in the flesh). For Paul, this second boasting is more important than the first, but it does not replace or invalidate it. Self-praise A is oriented toward values accepted by Paul, by the opponents, and by the congregation, while self-praise B is based on values held by Paul but certainly rejected by his opponents. Paul’s aim is to lead the congregation to accept this second set of values, too. He tries to convince them to positively look upon his weakness without questioning his strength. In order to reach this conclusion, he brings the two types of self-praise closer to each other. He presents his weakness in a way that allows it to co-exist with his strength. In

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self-praise A, the missionary commitment and the heavenly journey both disappoint the expectation of the readers to a certain degree (he reports suffering only, no successes; he mentions things he heard in heaven, but he does not relate them). This serves to prepare the following description of his lowliness (self-praise B). Weakness does not all of the sudden replace strength but develops from it. Weakness does not invalidate strength but is a pointed continuation of it, seen from a certain perspective. Looking back, we can say that Paul does not confront the Corinthians with a totally new system of values. The old values – “strength” – and the new values – “weakness” – are not inconsistent, but they are essentially connected. Paul’s great endurance (11:23–29) and his impressive journey to heaven (12:2–4) go back to the same power of God as do his flight from Damascus (11:32–33) and the thorn in his flesh (12:7b–9a). Each part of self-praise A and B touches on Paul’s limits as a human being, but the second part of each is focused on those limits. Here, Paul has arrived at the end of his possibilities; his human power has left him, he is radically weak. If against all expectations this end turns out not to be the end, if his life can go on and bear fruit, it is obvious – even more obvious than in Paul’s superhuman endurance and heavenly journey – that God’s power is at work. Between Paul’s weakness and his claim to authority there is no contradiction, but the latter is legitimized by the former. Thus, the meaning of the aphorism in 12:10b (“When I am weak, then I am strong”) is: the power of God which makes Paul capable of an extraordinary performance in mission and leads him to ecstatic experiences is at work in his weakness, too. It can be perceived even more clearly in weakness, since here it is obviously beyond human capabilities. Verse 12:10b says neither “God’s power is revealed as weakness,” nor “It is revealed in weakness only,” nor “It is revealed every time that I am weak.” In a very condensed form, the aphoristic saying expresses the possibility that Paul experiences the power of Christ as a foreign power particularly in situations when he feels empty, powerless, and troubled. He therefore decides to boast of such experiences without invalidating others. Against the evaluation of many interpreters, we have seen that the text does not present weakness as power. It is not the third, but the second type of relationship we identified above: power and weakness are intimately related to each other but not identical to each other. Paul overcomes situations of suffering by the power of God only. The result of this kind of power can be perceived by others.

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c o n c l u s ion We have travelled a long journey in our quest to understand 2 Cor. 10:17: “Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.” This verse rejects a merely human form of boasting. The only legitimate kind of boasting is the one realized in 1 Cor. 15:10 where Paul emphasizes that the source of his reason to boast is ultimately not his own strength but that of God. Following Martin Luther, many interpreters today relate this Pauline conviction to his theologia crucis: Paul’s boasting is possible only as boasting of his suffering and dying, since in this way he is conformed to Christ and mediates Christ’s salvific death to his congregation. This implies that Paul provides a whole new definition of power which is the contradiction of normal human power. We examined the most prominent discussions of power and weakness in 1 and 2 Corinthians and can conclude that in such texts Paul does not choose theologia crucis as his only theological basis. Sometimes he evokes it, but only as one theological frame among others. He also does not develop a new system of values, turning the old one upside down by re-evaluating weakness as true power. We found “power and weakness side by side” and we found “power in weakness,” but there was no instance of “power as weakness,” not even in 2 Cor. 12:9b–10. Still, there is something disturbing in these texts. The distinction between what one can boast of and what no one would boast of are blurred. How can it be that weakness does not invalidate strength but is a pointed continuation of it? Is this a Pauline strategy which was meant to help him overcome the crisis in Corinth, or is there more to it? Does it have a theological basis? In my view, Christian Strecker has come up with a possible answer, although without fully realizing its implications.22 He starts with recent research into rituals of initiation. There we often find three steps: leaving the original status behind, a phase of transformation, and finally reaching a new status. The intermediate state of transformation is usually called “liminality.” As an example, this concept may be applied to the tradition of a second burial in ancient Judaism: “After a certain interval – which comprises the time needed for the flesh to deteriorate from the bones – the burial of the corpse is followed by a second burial, in which the remaining bones are again buried separately … During this period the deceased is gradually transformed into a member of the invisible ancestral community, which is different from the visible social collective. At the same time, the aforementioned phase provides the survivors with the opportunity to develop as a community without the deceased.”23

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Some aspects of Pauline theology may be clarified by applying this idea of liminality. During the interval between first and second burial, life and death are not clearly separated: the same is true for Paul. The baptized ones are in-between: between dying with Christ and entering new life through baptism on the one hand, and the final overcoming of death on the other. “The present life of believers in Christ has been removed from its old existence under the power of death and is simultaneously still awaiting a totally new status that will emerge only with the resurrection. It is thus part of a vital dynamics of transformation that has begun but has not yet been finished. In this way the apostle locates the present life of believers in Christ in the liminal phase of a universal process of transformation.”24 Strecker tries to apply his approach to the relationship between power and weakness in Pauline thought but ends up with a certain tension which he himself seems to overlook. On the one hand, he claims that the liminal phase is marked by “dissolving everyday normativity,”25 which means questioning and suspending the common value system. On the other hand, he interprets Paul’s theology of life and death as inverting common norms. The participation of the believers in the cross of Christ must necessarily go along with “a comprehensive inversion of the worldly value system with the initiated ones.”26 But suspending and inverting are not the same. Suspension results in an unsecured state. The traditional understanding of power and weakness, shame and honour, is not reliable any more. But it is not turned upside down either, since this would result in a new secured state, just the other way round. If one accepts that liminality suspends the old order, but does not establish a new order, this could serve to explain Paul’s thought. During the liminal phase, power and weakness can appear in surprising ways. It is possible that the embodiment of weakness and shame (i.e., the cross), becomes the embodiment of power and honour, but this is neither a necessary nor a reliable new correlation. During the liminal phase, power and honour can still appear in their conventional forms. No clear new rule has yet been established. Following Leif Vaage’s lead, we found that Paul has indeed been domesticated by scholarship over the centuries, at least as far as boasting and praising are concerned. Paul, living in liminality, subverted the clear-cut set of traditional values, but he did not invert them. The picture which emerges from setting Paul free is far more troubling than the traditional picture of him because there are no certainties left. Weak can still mean weak, but it can also mean powerful. Service to the gospel can still entail “manly,” strong, and honourable behaviour, but it can also mean a humble, suffering, and even despicable appearance. It is rewarding, but it is also challenging, to follow Leif Vaage’s lead.

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no t e s 1 Leif E. Vaage, “Shrove Tuesday,” in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2008, ed. Stephanie Bolster (Toronto: Tightrope, 2008), 117. Originally published as Leif E. Vaage, “Shrove Tuesday,” Fiddlehead 233 (2007): 92. 2 For details of the following interpretation, see Thomas Schmeller, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther, 2 vols, ekk 8 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2015), 2:172–88. 3 See my excursus on “Die Gegner des Paulus im 2. Korintherbrief” in Schmeller, Zweite Brief, 2:149–71. 4 C.K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 4th ed., bntc (London: Black, 1979), 269. 5 Erich Grässer, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther, 2 vols., ötk 8 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 2005), 2:108 (translation is my own). 6 Cf. Thomas Schmeller, Kreuz und Kraft II: Untersuchungen zu Paulus, sbab 66 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2018), 79–80. 7 In the terminology of Zeichmann, “Acts and the Invention,” (present volume), 73, one might say that this conviction is a good example of scholarly doxa. 8 Calvin J. Roetzel, “The Language of War (2 Cor. 10:1–6) and the Language of Weakness (2 Cor. 11:21b–13:10),” BibInt 17 (2009): 77–99. Cf. Schmeller, Kreuz und Kraft II, 80–1. 9 Roetzel, “Language of War,” 89. 10  Ibid., 93. 11 The problem of Paul’s “conversion” is discussed in this volume by Moxnes, “Where Did the Horse” (present volume), 227–30. 12 Cf. Schmeller, Kreuz und Kraft II, 88. 13 For details of the following interpretation, see Schmeller, Kreuz und Kraft II, 88–94. 14 E.g., see Wolfgang Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 2 vols, ekk 7 (Zürich: Neukirchener, 1991), 1:337–8. 15 For details of the following interpretation, see Schmeller, Zweite Brief, 1:250–69; Schmeller, Kreuz und Kraft II, 69–75, 289–92. 16 For details of the following interpretation, see Schmeller, Zweite Brief, 2:120–48; Schmeller, Kreuz und Kraft II, 94–7. 17 E.g., see Timothy B. Savage, Power through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians, sntsms 86 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 98–9. 18 For details of the following interpretation, see Schmeller, Zweite Brief, 2:242–327; Schmeller, Kreuz und Kraft II, 99–100, 180–90, 228–33, 284–6. 19 See also the discussion of this pericope in Limongi and Egger, “Three Times Beaten” (present volume), 94–116.

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20 E.g., see Joachim Gnilka, Paulus von Tarsus: Apostel und Zeuge, ht hknts 6 (Freiburg: Herder, 1996), 151; Grässer, Zweite Brief, 2:126–27. 21 Sigurd Grindheim, The Crux of Election: Paul’s Critique in the Jewish Confidence in the Election of Israel, wunt 202 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 103. See also E.A. Judge, “The Conflict of Educational Aims in the New Testament,” in The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays, ed. J.R. Harrison, wunt 229 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 693–708 (here 706–8). 22 Cf. Christian Strecker, Die liminale Theologie des Paulus. Zugänge zur paulinischen Theologie aus kulturanthropologischer Perspektive, frlant 185 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999); Christian Strecker, “Auf den Tod getauft: Ein Leben im Übergang: Erläuterungen zur lebenstransformierenden Kraft des Todes bei Paulus im Kontext antiker Thanatologien und Thanatopolitiken,” jbt h 19 (2004): 259–95; Schmeller, Kreuz und Kraft II, 84–7. 23 Strecker, “Auf den Tod getauft,” 263 (translation is my own); cf. Strecker, Liminale Theologie, 248–99. 24 Strecker, “Auf den Tod getauft,” 275 (translation is my own). 25 Ibid., 280: “Aufhebung alltäglicher Normativität.” 26 Ibid., 285: “eine umfassende Inversion des weltlichen Wertesystems bei den Initiierten.”

2

Paul the Manual Labourer: Rereading 1 Cor. 9:1–18 Catherine Jones

Despite the recent and significant scholarly developments in the study of the social, economic, and cultural milieu of the first-century Greco-Roman world, Paul’s life as a manual labourer within this world has received only scant attention.1 While scholars recognize that manual labourers in general faced a precarious economic existence, as well as derision from the elite, Paul’s work at a trade has remained entrenched in two limited discussions. First is a debate over whether he was taught a trade in accordance with rabbinic maxim or in a familial context. Second is the nature of Paul’s trade itself, be it tentmaking, weaving, or leatherworking. In short, Paul’s life as a handworker is not treated as a significant autobiographical datum in its own right – a fact that contributes to the dominant scholarly opinion that Paul freely chose manual labour as a means of income, despite his insistence that he was entitled to material support from the Corinthians due to his status as an apostle. Typical are the remarks of Peter Marshall, who contends that “freedom is not the ultimate value for [Paul] as it is for his status-conscious critics. Paul has refused their offer and chosen to work for wages in Corinth.”2 Ronald Hock likewise argues that “by not accepting pay for his preaching [Paul] could even entertain hopes of gaining (κερδαίνειν) more – more converts, that is.”3 Although Paul refers to his manual labour and the accompanying hardships elsewhere (1 Cor. 4:9–13; 2 Cor. 6:3–10, 11:7, 11:23–27; 1 Thess. 2:9), scholars interpret these passages as evidence that Paul endured hardships precisely because of his choice to renounce material support in his promulgation of the gospel.4 This chapter addresses Paul’s manual labour as a significant biographic datum in its own right and focuses especially on the implications for Paul’s claims to apostolic legitimacy and support in 1 Cor. 9:1–18, the

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text that typically serves as the foundation for assessments of Paul’s life as a handworker. I argue that although Paul asserts that he did not make use of his apostolic “right” to the Corinthians’ material support (in effect, choosing to work), this rhetoric has been credulously accepted by scholars as descriptive of historical reality. Rather, because the life of a manual labourer in Greco-Roman culture essentially precluded such a choice, we ought instead to see Paul as making a virtue out of necessity in his rhetorical framing of these issues: Paul, in asserting his “decision” to work rather than accept support, reframes both his contested apostleship and marginal social status as honourable decisions he made to promote the gospel. The pregnant descriptions of Paul’s dishonour as a manual labourer, combined with societal prejudice against those working with their hands, call into question any reading that takes for granted the Corinthians’ recognition of Paul’s status as an apostle. More specifically, this chapter proposes that reading Paul in his concrete socio-economic environment precludes the assertion, so pervasive within scholarship, that Paul had an option to choose manual labour (in significant contrast with occupation-of-choice ideology in the contemporary North Atlantic). Paul was never offered food and drink (i.e., material support) by the Corinthians, and therefore Paul had no ἐξουσία but to work (1 Cor. 9:6). A new reading of 1 Cor. 9:1–18, taking seriously what it meant to be a manual labourer in the Greco-Roman world, shows that although Paul pronounced himself an apostle and thus deserving of material support, this claim of legitimacy was not necessarily accepted by the Corinthians, who probably deemed Paul’s labouring as a scenario of social shame. Paul, therefore, needed to present – despite all evidence to the contrary – his manual labour as an unconventional form of “freedom.” In order to support this contention, this chapter first describes Paul’s various self-representations of his life qua manual labourer. Among the letters of uncontested authenticity,5 Paul mentions manual labour in 1 and 2 Corinthians and in 1 Thessalonians, wherein the apostle accents the abasement and ignominy he bears as a common labourer. For example, Paul uses the hendiadys κόπος καὶ μόχθος (1 Thess. 2:9; cf. 2 Cor. 11:27) to describe his work, and later defines his life as a labourer as akin to περικάθαρμα and περίψημα (scum and garbage; 1 Cor. 4:13). Next, this contribution briefly discusses the representation of manual labour in ancient literary and epigraphic texts, since these shed significant light on Paul’s representation of his own labour. This chapter concludes with a rereading of 1 Cor. 9:1–18; in a world where the economy was embedded in cultural dynamics, where status was embodied,

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where occupations were slotted into a clear social hierarchy (the bottom of which Paul likely occupied), it is far from obvious that Paul was perceived as a legitimate apostle among all Corinthians and therefore eligible for financial support. In fact, 1 Cor. 9:6 seems to indicate that Paul had no “right” to abstain from work, even if this admission is routinely ignored. That is to say, Paul was never offered material support by the Corinthians (1 Cor. 9:6; cf. 1 Cor. 9:1–5, 9:7–12a, 9:13–14) and was forced to claim for his manual labour a freedom and virtue that was not traditionally recognized (1 Cor. 9:12a, 9:15–18). This chapter strives to illuminate the nonsense of Paul’s claims: as one who was subject to hunger and thirst as a handworker, Paul argues that he is entitled to their food and drink. A new reading of 1 Cor. 9:1–18 reveals that this is the discourse of a man essentially without a choice (i.e., not “free”), trying to defend his claim to apostleship precisely by making a virtue out of a necessity.

ma n ua l l a b o u r in t h e letters of paul Paul reveals in 1 Cor. 4:12 that he worked with his own hands (καὶ κοπιῶμεν ἐργαζόμενοι ταῖς ἰδίαις χερσίν), though this autobiographical datum has received scant attention. Only one monograph discusses Paul’s manual labour and even here the apostle’s actual descriptions of his handwork are subsumed under discussions of contemporaneous philosophical debates on the proper means of support, rather than how labourers represented themselves and were represented by others – including Paul’s presentation of his own labour.6 When scholars note Paul’s depictions of his life as a labourer, there is an overwhelming tendency to sanitize the portrait by drawing parallels with peristasis (hardship) catalogues that extol the virtues of suffering, characterize working philosophers, or recount labours performed in the service of the gospel.7 But what happens when we listen carefully to what Paul discloses about his life as a manual labourer? Does Paul paint this work as a source of strength and virtue, or as a scenario of shame and deprivation?

1 Cor. 4:9–13 Of all of Paul’s depictions of his handwork, 1 Cor. 4:9–13 most vividly encapsulates the shame, hardship, and humiliation that accompanied the life of this manual labourer. First Corinthians 4:9–13 is the description of an apostle. Paul does not distinguish between his life as an apostle and his life as a manual labourer, as if the two could somehow be separated from one another; rather, manual labour was part of the life

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of this apostle. The passage begins and ends with a statement of how the apostles are perceived and judged with regard to worldly criteria, with the claim in 1 Cor. 4:9 – δοκῶ γάρ, ὁ θεὸς ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀποστόλους ἐσχάτους ἀπέδειξεν (for I think that God has exhibited us apostles last of all) – functioning as the basic thesis statement for what follows. First Corinthians 4:9–13 thus functions to buttress Paul’s contention that the apostles are ἔσχατοι, utterly insignificant.8 Although some scholars have approached Paul’s accounts of his hardships through the lens of his personal experience,9 there remains an overriding emphasis on their rhetorical-literary form, leading to a dearth of discussion on the realities of Paul’s life as a manual labourer. John Fitzgerald, for instance, describes his study as “an attempt to use Hellenistic material to address literary rather than historical or history-of-religion issues.”10 Fitzgerald offers numerous examples of hardship catalogues in Greek literature in connection with the endurance and indifference of the sage (especially those in the Stoic-Cynic tradition) to worldly suffering. Epictetus, for instance, writes, “Bring on hardships, bring on imprisonment, bring on disrepute, bring on condemnation. This is the proper exhibition” (Diatr. 2.1.35). Boasting in one’s accomplishments is offensive, but self-praise for endurance amid hardship might be extolled. Fitzgerald places 1 Cor. 4:9–13 in this context, arguing that this catalogue arises from Paul’s admonition in 1 Cor. 4:6 and 4:11, as a father responding to the “arrogance” of his children.11 Although the Corinthians imagine themselves wise (1 Cor. 3:18, 4:10), in the eyes of the Stoic-Cynic philosopher, glory in one’s comfort or complacency is improper. Paul therefore boasts in his own lists of trials which are witness to his wisdom, a boasting over-and-above the inappropriate claims of the Corinthians.12 In Fitzgerald’s view, Paul presents his hardships through the lens of the “suffering sage,” and Paul’s rhetoric in 1 Cor. 4:9–13 reflects “the traditions about the sage.”13 Although the first five hardships are commonplace in other contemporaneous hardship catalogues, specific and explicit inclusions of manual labour are not standard elements.14 This point is revealing. Fitzgerald defines the function of peristasis catalogues as “serv[ing] to legitimate the claims made about a person and show[ing] him to be virtuous because peristaseis have a revelatory and probative function in regard to character. Since it is axiomatic in the ancient world that adversity is the litmus test of character, a person’s virtuous attitude and action while under duress furnish the proof that he is a man of genuine worth and/or a true philosopher.”15 Yet, within hardship catalogues, manual labour was never depicted as a hardship that could be overcome. The perfect

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sage may abandon his body to hunger and thirst, and to “hatred, abuse, and reviling,” (Dio Chrysostom Or. 32.19) but never to manual labour. Paul’s inclusion of manual labour as a hardship endured is exceptional and thus notable. He emphasizes the inherent dishonour and shame of this life, not only by including it in the emphatic final position, but also through his other descriptive terminology. Paul describes his handwork as κόπος, which has connotations of being physically beaten (Euripides Tro. 794; Aeschylus Cho. 32), and extreme exertion and fatigue (Hippocrates Vet. Med. 21; Plato Rep. 537b; Josephus A.J. 1.336, 2.257, 3.25, 8.244). In ancient literature, this term is also often paired with μόχθος (toil) or πόνος (labour) to denote extensive labours or hardships.16 Paul’s description of his handwork as κόπος is thus not a virtuous hardship whereby the Corinthians would bear witness to his apostolic valour. Rather, Paul’s manual labour as κόπος points to the physical and bodily hardships endured by Paul, which leave him in a position of shame and dishonour. The hunger and thirst of the apostles (πεινῶμεν καὶ διψῶμεν; 1 Cor. 4:11) stand in direct oppositional contrast to the satiety of the Corinthians (“Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich!” ἤδη κεκορεσμένοι ἐστέ, ἤδη ἐπλουτήσατε; 1 Cor. 4:8).17 Paul’s point in 1 Cor. 4:9–13 is singular: in contrast to the Corinthians, the apostle was despised and rejected. These antitheses are stated most succinctly in 1 Cor. 4:10 where the “foolish,” “weak,” and “dishonourable” apostles are set in contrast with the “wise,” “strong,” and “honourable” Corinthians. With three staccato comparisons, the apostle goes straight to the heart of the matter: from a worldly point of view, one cannot easily boast about Paul. In contrast with the Corinthians’ pride in their own status and success, Paul names his disrepute and dishonour in such a manner as to destroy any thought of him as a figure of social importance or prestige. Cosmic disgrace, brutal treatment, and homelessness hardly describe the situation of an apostle whose authority would be recognized within the Corinthian ekklesia. The implications of manual labour negate any interpretation of Paul as anything other than servile and slavish. Paul’s presentation of his life as a handworker is the exact opposite of what the Corinthians would want to hear, for their apostle is at the very bottom of the social hierarchy.

2 Cor. 6:3–10 Paul’s descriptions of manual labour as humiliation and deprivation continue in 2 Corinthians. The criticisms of Paul become more explicit in 2 Cor. 10–13. It is no longer simply Paul’s character that has come

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under attack, but his entire position as an apostle of Christ (2 Cor. 10:10, 13:3). The Corinthians are reluctant to accept Paul’s authority (2 Cor. 11:1), opting instead to follow his rivals. Whoever these opponents were, doubts were raised concerning Paul’s apostolic authority. Paul attempts to counter these misgivings by drawing upon his manual labour as a scenario of shame, hardship, and suffering. Paul’s hardship list in 2 Cor. 6:4b–10 occurs within an extended discussion concerning the essence and exercise of the apostolic ministry. In 2 Cor. 1:1–9:15, Paul engages in self-commendation and enumerates reasons why the Corinthians should boast in him. Paul boasts not for self-glorification; rather, the goal is to facilitate Corinthian confidence in him. Only then would they be open to hearing his apostolic message. Paul’s integrity is central in 2 Cor. 1:1–9:15, which was written to secure his standing among the Corinthians, and 2 Cor. 6:4b–10 has a definite role within this context. Indeed, Paul’s appeal is a tangible indication that his relationship with the Corinthians is troubled (2 Cor. 6:11–7:4). It is within the context of routine suffering that Paul mentions his manual labour.18 The same triad of κόπος, ἀγρυπνία, and νηστεία is also found in 2 Cor. 11:27, although in the latter case with intervening hardships. There is no indication that Paul has endured his manual labour voluntarily,19 but rather we see Paul including his handwork and the deprivation thus constituted as the final triad of sufferings faced by an apostle afflicted by outward circumstances. That Paul links his κόπος with sleeplessness (ἀγρυπνία) and hunger (νηστεία) should come as no surprise given the arduous nature of handwork in the first century. Indeed, Lucian characterizes the life of the manual labourer as “laborious and barely able to supply them with just enough” (Fug. 12–13). Inclusion of manual labour is not characteristic of peristasis catalogues and the hardships already listed crescendo to this ultimate humiliation. As an ekklesia preoccupied with worldly wisdom and honour, the Corinthians would not have heard heroic exploits in Paul’s admission. Rather, Paul’s comment reveals one who could not protect the boundaries of his own body, was homeless and hungry, and most disgraceful of all, worked with his hands. Although Paul claims he was able to tolerate these various tribulations, what remains constant is that along with beatings, abuse, and imprisonment, all indicators of profound social shame, Paul includes his manual labour. In each of these hardships, and in the eyes of his contemporaries, Paul had lost honour, had displayed weakness, and was one of no account. As Scott Bartchy asks, “how could [Paul] who had already suffered so much dishonour and humiliation

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even become regarded as a leader of men who instinctively respected those who had achieved great honour and had not been shamed in the eyes of anyone?”20 Paul’s life as a handworker had clearly become a matter of contention among the Corinthians (e.g., 2 Cor. 11:7, 11:23, 11:30). Although the apostle presents his labour in a certain light, the Corinthians were still judging him based on more conventional criteria (e.g., 2 Cor. 10:10, 11:6, 12:11–18; cf. 1 Cor. 2:1–5), and Paul was found wanting.

2 Cor. 11:7, 11:23–27; 1 Thess. 2:9 Paul’s descriptions of his manual labour in 2 Cor. 11:7 and 11:23–27 fall within the defence of his apostolic authority (2 Cor. 10–13), with the latter catalogue echoing many of the hardships listed in 2 Cor. 6:4b–10. This section focuses on the questions of Paul’s apostolic authority raised by some among the Corinthians. Others have been recognized as legitimate apostles, a point Paul finds especially troublesome (2 Cor. 11:12– 15), with the Corinthians now showing deference to his more impressive rivals (2 Cor. 11:4, 11:18–20). It is likely that Paul was subject to scrutiny by the Corinthians because in their eyes he did not embody a figure of authority and power. For instance, Paul’s physical presence (2 Cor. 10:10), his speech (2 Cor. 10:10), which he acknowledges is untrained (2 Cor. 11:6), and issues of financial support (2 Cor. 11:5–12, 12:13–18) all seem to have given the Corinthians reason to regard him with disrepute. Paul’s life as a manual labourer also seems to have been a point of criticism. In 2 Cor. 11:7 Paul asks if he abased (ταπεινός) himself by preaching the gospel for nothing (δωρεάν). Paul speaks bitterly: his work was tantamount to humiliation. ταπεινός refers to a person who is of low birth, ignoble, and despised, and held in low esteem.21 As Hock astutely notes, “in the social world of a city like Corinth, Paul would have been a weak figure, without power, prestige, and privilege … To those of wealth and power, the appearance (σχῆμα) of the artisan was that befitting a slave (δουλοπρεπές).”22 Paul’s use of ταπεινός is thus an appropriate description of his manual labour.23 More specifically, this humiliation leads to poverty, which Paul concedes in 2 Cor. 11:9; thus his reference to being in need (ὑστέρημά μου) further defines the phrase ἐμαυτὸν ταπεινῶν in 11:17, indicating that this apostle suffered want on account of his life as a labourer. Although his argument is filled with irony and sarcasm, Paul portrays his handwork accurately as demeaning and ignoble. Paul casts his manual labour in terms of abasement and exaltation: he “abased” himself by preaching the gospel without cost so that he could exalt the

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Corinthians. The contrast is clear: manual labour indicates someone who was ταπεινός and thus barred from the arena of commendation and virtue. When we turn to Paul’s extensive catalogue of weakness in 2 Cor. 11:23–29, we are once again confronted with the hardships and abuse faced by those who worked with their hands. As a general introduction to this hardship catalogue, Paul draws particular attention to his abundant toil (ἐν κόποις περισσοτέρως; 2 Cor. 11:23) and his wearisome labour (κόπος καὶ μόχθος; 2 Cor. 11:27). Paul’s brushes with death are adumbrated by listing five items, each specified by the number of times the hardships were suffered (2 Cor. 11:24–25). These are followed by eight dangers Paul has faced on his journeys (2 Cor. 11:26), culminating in a list of four items associated with his sufferings as a manual labourer (2 Cor. 11:27). This section then concludes with Paul’s reference to his anxiety for the churches (2 Cor. 11:28) and two rhetorical questions encapsulating Paul’s weaknesses. Paul’s manual labour frames the entire catalogue of hardship in 2 Cor. 11:23–29. Paul begins his hardship list by articulating that he has a greater claim to be a “minister of Christ” because of his more numerous labours (ἐν κόποις περισσοτέρως), imprisonments (ἐν φυλακαῖς περισσοτέρως),24 and beatings (ἐν πληγαῖς ὑπερβαλλόντως) that brought him near death (ἐν θανάτοις πολλάκις). This triad is reminiscent of 2 Cor. 6:5. Paul’s κόπος in 2 Cor. 11:23 does not explicitly refer to his manual labour, but given that some of the hardships here are likewise reflected in 2 Cor. 6:5, where manual labour is clearly in mind, it seems likely that Paul is once again referring to his handwork in this latter catalogue. Paul’s inclusion of his κόπος, his manual labour, in 2 Cor. 11:23 occurs in the same sequence as corporeal defencelessness and circumstances of dishonour. As discussed previously, such weakness and the inability to protect the physical boundaries around one’s body encompassed connotations of servility and low social status. That Paul included his manual labour alongside such corporeal vulnerability equates his life as a handworker with humiliation and weakness.25 At the concluding bookend to this catalogue of hardship, Paul again addresses his manual labour (1 Cor. 11:27): the apostle describes his labour as κόπος καὶ μόχθος. These two terms are likely a traditional pairing. Job’s wife, for instance, laments, “In vain I have toiled in misery” (εἰς κενὸν ἐκοπίασα μετὰ μόχθων; T. Job 24.2).26 It may be helpful to consider briefly Paul’s other usage of κόπος καὶ μόχθος in reference to his handwork. Among a group of fellow manual labourers in Thessalonica, Paul describes his own work with the

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hendiadys κόπος καὶ μόχθος (1 Thess. 2:9; cf. 2 Cor. 11:27; 2 Thess. 3:8).27 In 1 Thessalonians, Paul, far from downplaying his manual labour, instead highlights it while establishing his ethos (1 Thess. 1:5) within the ekklesia. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to “work with your hands” (ἐργάζεσθαι ταῖς [ἰδίαις] χερσὶν ὑμῶν; 1 Thess. 4:11), “just as you have learned from us” (1 Thess. 4:1). Paul appeals to his manual labour positively, not disparaging but commending work. Both aspects provide a clear indication where to place the Thessalonians on the GrecoRoman social map. Nevertheless, although Paul appeals to his manual labour among the Thessalonians positively, in 1 Thessalonians and 1 and 2 Corinthians he similarly depicts his own labour in the context of hardship and social shame, as κόπος καὶ μόχθος. Even in Thessalonica, among a group of fellow-workers, workers who shared in Paul’s poverty, Paul describes his work with language that connotes degradation. While Paul refers to his work as a positive experience in 1 Thessalonians, he also draws attention to the exhausting nature of his life as a handworker: νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας ἐργαζόμενοι (1 Thess. 2:9; cf. 2 Cor. 11:27). It is worth observing that in 1 Thessalonians, where Paul writes to fellow manual labourers, he does not have to defend himself or his handwork, but nevertheless speaks of his manual labour as a hardship. Why would Paul, when writing to fellow labourers, characterize his work with the language of dishonour? This question can be answered by noting the social stigma attached to those who worked with their hands, a stigma that would have been known to those within the Thessalonian ekklesia. The following section demonstrates that a hierarchical social order existed in Greco-Roman society, a hierarchy reflected and perpetuated by labourers themselves. As labourers who were poor, whose work was described as κόπος καὶ μόχθος, the Thessalonians would have felt the social stigma from the society surrounding them. Paul can appeal to his work positively among the Thessalonians because they were also manual labourers. At the same time, Paul can describe his labour as a scenario of shame among fellow labourers precisely because this was how he, and they, were perceived within Greco-Roman society. Even among other handworkers (and this point is revealing), Paul places himself, and his work, at the bottom of the social scale. Paul describes his manual labour as κόπος καὶ μόχθος in 1 Thess. 2:9 and he does so again in 2 Cor. 11:27. Returning to this latter reference, Paul not only bookends his catalogue of hardships in 2 Cor. 11:23–27 with mention of his manual labour; he also specifies the nature of the trials faced as one who worked with his hands. Some manuscripts read ἐν (in) before κόπος καὶ μόχος, no doubt because ἐν precedes each of

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the four subsequent items. The most reliable manuscript tradition (P46, ‫א‬, B, D), however, does not attest ἐν. I suggest, therefore, that just as ἐν θανάτοις πολλάκις (2 Cor. 11:23) forms a heading for Paul’s elaboration of the circumstances when he found himself often near death (2 Cor. 11:24–25), and just as “in frequent journeys” (ὁδοιπορίαις πολλάκις; 2 Cor. 11:26) forms a heading for an amplification of what Paul experienced on his frequent journeys, so κόπος καὶ μόχθος functions as a rubric for the rest of 2 Cor. 11:27 in which Paul elaborates on his arduous life as a manual labourer. Paul’s expansion of his hardships as a manual labourer falls into four groups, each of these groups introduced by the particle ἐν. In the first and third pairing (under guard: ἐν ἀγρυπνίαις; without food: ἐν νηστείαις), Paul lists a single hardship, each modified by πολλάκις. In the second and fourth pairing (in hunger and thirst: ἐν λιμῷ καὶ δίψει; in cold and nakedness: ἐν ψύχει καὶ γυμνότητι), each hardship is joined by the conjunction καὶ. Consequently, as a result of Paul’s poverty as a handworker, he was hungry, often went without food, and was poorly clothed. These descriptions of Paul’s life as a manual labourer echo those found in 1 Cor. 4:9–13; thus, there is no need to delve into these descriptions at length. It is worth stressing, however, that in the somatic language of first-century Corinth, Paul’s descriptions of his weakness, of his κόπος καὶ μόχθος, would have been heard as shameful and servile. Paul’s catalogue of hardships in 2 Cor. 11:23–27 is introduced by κόπος and concludes on the same note. Contained within these bookends of shame are numerous other instances of suffering, abuse, and tribulations undergone by Paul. To the Corinthians, Paul would have been perceived as weak and of no account (2 Cor. 10:10). In self-derision and out of desperation, Paul glories in his humiliation and shame, boasting in his weakness (2 Cor. 12:5), but this weakness was precisely what was causing the problem between Paul and the Corinthians.

h o n o u r a n d s o c i al hi erarchy a m o n g m a n ua l labourers Philip F. Venticinque claims that the farther down the social scale one descends, the less applicable hierarchical social structures and status concerns become. Labourers, he suggests, operated semi-autonomously and were divorced from overriding value systems.28 In this section, I argue that the opposite is true. Among the elite, no doubt, all labourers were contemptible, but among the vast field of the non-elite, some trades were ascribed higher status than others. In the arena of social competition,

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those working with precious metals or medicine were accorded a higher status than butchers, litter-bearers, and leatherworkers. This section contends that symbolic capital structured the world of handworkers insofar as there was significant status differentiation among the different types of labour. Despite labourers’ variegated status, it is clear that – regardless of trade – they sought honour in the civic institutions of the polis.

Literary Evidence We can enter the discussion regarding the hierarchy of labour with a quotation from Cicero’s De Officiis which offers a schema, albeit from an elite point of view, of honourable and dishonourable pursuits and the social status associated with each occupation. Now in regard to trades and employments, which are to be considered liberal and which mean, this is the more or less accepted view. First, those employments are condemned which incur ill-will, as those of collectors of harbour taxes and money lenders. Illiberal, too, and mean are the employments of all who work for wages, whom we pay for their labour and not for their art; for in their case their very wages are the warrant of their slavery. We must consider mean those who buy from merchants in order to resell immediately, for they would make no profit without much outright lying … And all craftsmen are engaged in mean trades, for no workshop can have any quality appropriate to a free man. Least worthy of all are those trades which cater to the sensual pleasures: “fishmongers, butchers, cooks, poulterers and fishermen” as Terence says; to whom you may add if you please, perfumers, dancers, and all performers in low grade music halls. But the occupations in which either a higher degree of intelligence is required or from which society derives no small benefit – such as medicine or architecture or teaching – they are respectable for those whose status they befit. Commerce, if it is on a small scale, is to be considered mean; but if it is large scale and extensive, importing much from all over and distributing to many without misrepresentation, is not to be greatly censured. Indeed, it even seems to deserve the highest respect if those who are engaged in it, satiated, or rather, I should say, content with their profits, make their way from the harbour to a landed estate, as they have often made it from the sea to a harbour. But of all things from which one may acquire, none is better than agriculture, none more fruitful, none sweeter, none more fitting for a free man. (1.150–151)

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Cicero’s statement, although prizing agricultural pursuits as the only occupation appropriate for a free man, does not uniformly disparage all trades. Rather, Cicero reveals a hierarchy of labour rating occupations that demanded a greater intelligence above those of a more banal nature. Whereas Cicero evaluates trades via intellectual skill, the third-century jurist Callistratus draws attention to the role of money in the social hierarchy of occupations. It is not proper to ignore as base persons those who deal in and sell objects of daily use (qui utensilia negotiantur et vendunt), even though they are people who may be flogged by the aediles. Indeed, men of this kind are not debarred from seeking the decurionate or some other office in their own patria; for they do not suffer from infamia. Nor indeed are those who have actually been flogged by the aediles excluded from office, even if the aediles were within their right in performing that act. Nonetheless, I think it is dishonourable for people of this kind who have been subjected to flogging to be admitted to the ordo, and especially in those civitates which have plenty of men of standing. For if there is a shortage of those who are bound to perform public munera, it follows that even these may hold local office, if they possess sufficient substance. (Dig. 50.2.12) Although Callistratus does not differentiate as explicitly as Cicero among the trades, referring only to those “who deal in and sell objects of daily use,” the jurist does offer the qualification that it is only those with “sufficient substance” who can be considered worthy to provide civic services. Despite the fact that these labourers may not match up to the prevailing ideology of who is honourable from the perspective of the elite, Callistratus imagines cases where labourers may be called upon to perform civic functions, but not all craftsmen were deemed eligible. Only those who worked in trades where there was the opportunity to accrue moderate financial resources could provide such services. Dio Chrysostom’s Euboean Discourse suggests that a virtuous life was possible for the urban poor (Or. 7.108), but only if they lived in a manner consistent with the attainment of virtue. Dio posits that “investigation of kinds of labour and crafts in general of a life that is fitting or unfitting to decent people has proved to be intrinsically worthy of much exact theory,” and that such a discussion is “relevant to matters essential and suitable to philosophy” (Or. 7.128). Dio summarizes occupations inimical to a virtuous life, but unfortunately the discussion of acceptable occupations for the urban poor immediately following does not survive.

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Included among those occupations deemed utterly incompatible with virtue are those that are sedentary, the result of which is weakness and softness in the body (Or. 7.112) and those that are solely concerned with superfluous and luxury concerns, such as perfumers, decorators, actors, and flute-players (Or. 7.117–119). Unfit occupations “are injurious to the body by impairing its health and by preventing the maintenance of its adequate strength through their inactive or sedentary character … which engender in the soul either turpitude or illiberality” (Or. 7.110). Acceptable forms of work include those that do not cause physical weakness or injury while allowing the practitioner to earn a decent wage.29 From this text, it is clear that although Dio finds most forms of paid employment opposed to the good life, there do exist some occupations more acceptable than others, confirming our position that there existed a moral hierarchy of labour.

Epigraphic Evidence Evidence suggests that these literary and legal tracts do not represent only elite perspectives but were part of broader valuations of labour and social hierarchy. Some craftsmen, for instance, were able to secure positions in lower public offices. Trades were not an amorphous and undifferentiated mass: some trades had sufficient financial resources to differentiate themselves from fellow craftsmen and seek honour and social status in civic positions. Thus, a baker in Korykos held a local councillor position (seg 37.1309) and another baker in Ephesus was a member of the gerousia (IEph 2225). There is evidence of a goldsmith, a purple-dyer, and shipowners who advanced into the lower ranks of the boule.30 There is also the elaborate tomb of the baker Eurysaces, who was no doubt able to achieve financial stability, if not success, precisely because bakers faced an even level of demand for their products.31 We should note, however, that Eurysaces emphasized his official status as a redemptor and apparitor, reminding those who passed by that he was no mere baker, but had successfully converted his relative wealth into symbolic capital. Whereas some trades afforded their practitioners the necessary financial resources to acquire symbolic capital, specifically positions in the civic sphere, other occupations did not accommodate such a path. For example, I have been unable to find evidence of donkey-drivers, sewer-workers, or tanners holding such civic positions. Auctioneers (praecones) were reportedly banned from taking up positions on the local council (Cicero Verr. 2.11–12). Furthermore, a gymnasiarchal law from

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the city of Beroia in Macedonia denies entry into the Macedonian gymnasium to “the ones who practice a craft in the marketplace” (seg 27.261). This last inscription is particularly revelatory when we see the other categories of persons likewise denied entrance to the gymnasium: slaves, freedmen, drunks, and the mentally disturbed. In this case, the ones who practise a craft in the marketplace, presumably those who sell items on a small scale, are functionally equivalent to those of lowest social status. When it comes to holding positions in the civic sphere, clearly some occupations ranked higher on the social hierarchy of acceptable trades. Although some craftsmen used their resources to acquire public positions, other handworkers used their higher position in the hierarchy of trades to withdraw from certain duties. For instance, a report of judicial proceedings from Oxyrhynchus records the hearing of Isidorus Eudaemon’s petition to be granted immunity from the liturgy based on his trade. This particular text differentiates the trades, noting that Isidorus was a perfumer and a relatively wealthy one at that.32 Although the precise reasoning behind Isidorus’s seeking of an exemption is not provided, it is clear that for certain handworkers their trades were not considered a hinderance in service to the state. Even among labourers of the same profession, there could be significant disparities in wealth and social status. Here, we can point to a guild of fishermen and fish dealers in Ephesus. This particular association had a membership of approximately one hundred persons (of which eightynine names are legible in the inscription) who donated monies toward the construction of a fishery toll office in the mid-first century. Those who contributed are listed in order of the amount of the donations, ranging from the four columns donated by Publius Hordeonius Lollianus and his family to those who contributed five denarii or less (IEph 20). As the earlier quote from Cicero confirms, teachers and physicians were also ascribed more honour than those tradesmen who simply worked with their hands and were thought not to use intellectual skill. Although workers in “intellectual” professions were paid for their services, teachers and physicians practised the so-called artes liberales and possessed intellectual capabilities prized by the elite. Cicero does not claim that teaching and medicine are respectable occupations to be taken up by members of the elite, but he does affirm that some professions are deemed more honourable than others. A variety of evidence confirms Cicero’s differentiation. An inscription testifies that some instructors (παίδευται) in Aizanoi were members of the boule (seg 38.1296), as was a certain court physician (ἀρχιατρός) in Pisidian Antioch (seg 32.1302). There is also the inscription for the wealthy benefactress Aba which

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clearly names physicians and teachers as worthy of receiving preferential treatment in comparison with other occupations such as butchers and singers of hymns (IHistria 57). Seating in theatres manifested and reinscribed a fundamentally hierarchical conception of ancient labour. There are only a few theatres and stadia where seating arrangements can be reconstructed in detail, but this limited evidence indicates differences in honour and social status among the varying occupations. Place-inscriptions have been unearthed in the theatre of Termessos in Pisidia which indicate that stonecutters connected with the imperial grain storehouses (ὀρείοι λατύποι) were seated in the front row, a visible location that carried considerable prestige (tam 3.1.872). Goldsmiths, some of whom were able to rise to moderate public positions in the civic community, as discussed above, also had special seats reserved for them. In the theatre of Miletos, the goldsmiths’ association was seated in the first, second, and fourth section on the first level, fairly prominent and visible positions (IMilet 940). Goldsmiths were also seated in relatively noticeable locations in the theatre at Bostra, where they were situated five rows ahead of the butchers, indicating that in the hierarchy of occupations, goldsmiths were regarded more favourably than butchers.33 To refer back to Cicero’s hierarchy of occupations, butcher was perceived to be a less honourable occupation, here visibly made manifest in the public sphere at Bostra through seating arrangements. The seating arrangements reflected the image of a well-ordered society where every person had a fixed place. Even the architectural designs of these structures were aimed at the internalization of social division.34 The general effect, therefore, was to force upon all those in attendance an awareness that a strict hierarchy was the foundation-stone of the Greco-Roman social system, a system where labourers had their assigned place. What about those trades for which erratic employment and poverty were the norm? Evidence for such occupations is not as robust as for those occupations listed above, restricted almost entirely to funerary inscriptions. Although there is always the risk of partiality with epitaphs – specifically that in death the person or commemorator may have taken liberties with the truth, meaning essentially that the dead person became in death what s/he never was in life – epitaphs remain a deliberate memorialization that expressed a certain idea of society. The most common issues addressed in mortuary displays were social status, wealth, and identity, all couched in honorific style. In many epitaphs for craftsmen, for instance, the common use of the formula ἐτείμησαν (“they honoured”), which not only identified the

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deceased as a member of a social group but also implied a strategy for integration, signalled to outsiders that the craftsman, and by extension, the association, were bound by a morality similar to that of the civic community. In this way, handworkers were able to demarcate themselves as honourable within the social hierarchy. Thus, Primus son of Mousaios was honoured by the synodos of leatherworkers (ἡ σύνοδος τῆς σκυτικῆς; seg 29.1183). Further use of such honorific language was also employed by other leatherworkers (ἡ πλατεῖα τῶν σκυτέων) in memorializing others of like occupation (tam 5.1.78–81). We also have examples of funerary inscriptions for axle-makers and litter-bearers, including the funerary inscription of Iucundus, slave of Taurus, litter-bearer (Iucundus Tauri lecticarius). His epitaph records, “as long as he lived, he was a man and he acted on his own behalf and on the behalf of others” (cil 6.6308). Although Iucundus was a slave and spent his days lugging around his master, at death he claimed, or others claimed on his behalf, a place of honour. His funerary inscription claimed the masculinity and honour denied to him as a slave. To whatever extent this epitaph contests the social hierarchy, it nevertheless demonstrates adherence to the elite principles of classification. This may be due to the fact that certain crafts were afflicted with disadvantages that cemented their low regard. For example, tanners, dyers, leatherworkers, and fullers were excluded from the city, and tanneries especially were noted for their noxious smell. Some workshops were placed outside the city confines due to popular demand: “The tannery is bothersome to all. Since the tanner has to handle animal corpses, he has to reside far out of town, and the dreadful smell points him out even when hiding … The vultures are companions to the potters and the tanners since they reside far from towns and the latter handle dead bodies” (Artemidorus Oneir. 1.51; cf. 2.20). The Mishnah also recommends that tanneries should be set up only on the east side of an inhabited area, lest the winds blow the noxious smell into town (m.B.Bat. 2:9). Not surprisingly, tanners and leatherworkers were regarded as among the most banausic crafts. Aristophanes capitalized on Kleon’s connection with these trades, commending Kleon’s “Herculean valour in braving the stench of his trade” (Aristophanes Eq. 892; cf. Vesp. 38). Indeed, so dishonourable were tanners thought to be that for anyone to dream of tanning hides was interpreted as an omen of ill-fortune (Artemidorus Oneir. 1.51). On the hierarchy of occupations, trades such as those in precious metals, those connected with the imperial grain trade, and those involving intellectual skill ranked higher than occupations such as tanners and

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dyers. The former trades were able to convert their financial resources into symbolic capital, an avenue not available to all craftsmen. The latter labourers, however, by drawing upon the language of honour in their epitaphs, signalled to all those who looked upon their memorials that they, too, were bound by a similar morality and that the world of honour likewise structured their lives and occupations.

co n c l u s io n : r e r e a d in g 1 cor. 9:1–18 in l ig h t o f pau l’ s manual labour Scholarship has been virtually unanimous in its interpretation of Paul’s handwork as a matter of choice. This scholarly consensus claims that Paul’s manual labour was a means of self-support which the apostle freely undertook when he refused to exercise his right to receive support from the Corinthians. Thus, 1 Cor. 9:1–18 functions either as Paul’s exemplum to the Corinthians to forego their own rights when the situation demands it or as Paul’s defence against those who question the apostle’s decision to work as a labourer after rejecting or refusing Corinthian offers of material assistance. In this latter interpretation, Paul not only has to defend the practice of his apostleship as such, but also whether his reluctance to take advantage of his “right” to support implied that the right itself was in question, that is, that Paul was not a true “apostle.”35 To arrive at these readings, however, commentators have routinely mistranslated or neglected several features of 1 Cor. 9:1–18. To name but one example, the common denominator among all interpretations is the exclusion or misreading of 1 Cor 9:6 where Paul admits that he has no social power but to work (ἢ μόνος ἐγὼ καὶ Βαρναβᾶς οὐκ ἔχομεν ἐξουσίαν μὴ ἐργάζεσθαι;). This seems to be a crucial confession, yet this verse has received at the most scant attention. Scholars have thus far not been able to explain this admission, and have therefore ignored or misread it, and have constructed their interpretations around this blind spot. The basic problem is that traditional interpretations do not take into account the text as it stands. By contrast, my reading takes it into account and explains the peculiarities of its rhetoric. I offer my own translation of 1 Cor. 9:1–18 (based on the nrsv , but revised at key points). 1 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? 2 If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. 3 My defence to those who are judging me is the following. 4 Is it not the case that we have the social power to eat and drink?

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5 Is it not the case that we have the social power to take about a sister as wife, as also the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 6 Or is it the case that only I and Barnabas do not have the social power not to work? 7 Who soldiers with his own provisions? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat from its fruit? Who shepherds sheep and does not eat from the milk of the sheep? 8 Is it the case that I say these things on the basis of human criteria or is it the case that the law also says these things? 9 For in the law of Moses it is written: “You will not muzzle a threshing ox.” Is it the case that God is concerned for the oxen 10 or is it the case that on our account altogether he speaks? It was written on account of us because the ploughman ought to plough in hope and the thresher in hope of partaking. 11 If we have sown spiritual things among you, how much more if we harvest your material things. 12 If others share in your social power, do we not (share in your social power) even more? We have not used this social power, but we endure all things, in order not to give any hindrance to the gospel of Christ. 13 Do you not know that the ones who work in the temple eat from the temple, the ones who serve at the altar share in the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord commanded the ones who proclaim the gospel to live from the gospel. 15 But I have not used any of these things. Nor am I writing these things in order that they might happen in my case. For it is better for me to die than – my boast no one will make of no account. 16 For if I preach the gospel, it is not my boast. For necessity/distress is imposed upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. 17 For if I do this freely, I have a reward. But if not freely, I am committed with a duty. 18 What then is my reward? In my preaching of the gospel, I offer the gospel without cost so as not to make use of my social power in the gospel. Paul’s proximity to hunger and thirst as one who worked with his hands is missing from most scholarship on this chapter. In a section of the letter occupied with concerns about the right to eat, we cannot fail to remember Paul’s refrain of his own hunger and thirst as a manual labourer (1 Cor. 4:11; 2 Cor. 11:27). It is somewhat ironic that the concerns addressed in 1 Cor. 8:1–11:1 involve when and in what venue it

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is permissible to eat, whereas in 1 Cor. 9:1–18, Paul’s own proximity to hunger and thirst as a manual labourer are factors calling his apostleship into question. I acknowledge the non-sense of Paul’s claims: that as one who is subject to hunger and thirst as a handworker, Paul is entitled to their food and drink. Given what I have already presented with regard to the social context of the Corinthians, such an argument would come have across as absurd, indeed. The usual readings thus fail to ask the following questions: What does Paul mean when he states that he had no right not to work? Why would Paul justify his right to apostolic support at great length, only then to immediately state that this right will, in fact, not be exercised? Clearly, there lies another issue under Paul’s argumentation. As C.K. Barrett recognizes, “Paul would hardly have spent so long on the question of apostolic rights if his own apostolic status had not been questioned in Corinth.”36 In sum, traditional scholarly interpretations fail to adequately consider or misrepresent the following: 1 Paul acknowledges that his perceived lack of freedom (1 Cor. 9:1a) has called his entire apostolic message into question (1 Cor. 9:1b). This initial proclamation of freedom is included because the Corinthians viewed Paul as servile due to his occupation as a manual labourer. 2 Paul endeavours to demonstrate that he is an apostle based on very different criteria from those which the Corinthians would expect or recognize (1 Cor. 9:1c–2). Paul’s (re)definition of apostolic standards makes sense when we recognize that his legitimacy as an apostle fails when measured on conventional criteria. 3 What follows 1 Cor. 9:3 is Paul’s defence against those who are judging him. Against the nrsv translation, this is not a hypothetical defence. 4 Paul’s questions in 1 Cor. 9:4–5 begin with μὴ οὐκ, thus anticipating an affirmative answer. The questions posed in 1 Cor. 9:8–9 likewise begin with μὴ, expecting that the true answer is the opposite. The question in 1 Cor. 9:6, however, is structured differently. It does not expect that the opposite answer is intended, nor is it another example in support of Paul’s right to Corinthian material goods. 5 The idiosyncrasy of Paul’s argument is telling, specifically that Paul first thinks it necessary to establish his ἐξουσία to receive support prior to any explanation of his “refusal.” Paul’s sustained exempla in 1 Cor. 9:7–14 are unnecessary if Paul had already been receiving, or was offered, recompense for his labours.

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6 Paul’s interruption of thought in 1 Cor. 9:12b to append additional reasons to support his contention that as an apostle he is entitled to reap the fruits of his labour is a curious slip that has thus far been ignored by traditional scholarship. Furthermore, Paul begins to explain why he has not made use of the ἐξουσία he has just argued must also be his. Traditional scholarship misreads this verse, arguing that Paul is explaining why he has refused material support. In fact, Paul says no such thing. Rather, Paul only states that he has not made use of his ἐξουσία, but it is the “social power” that he is arguing is his as opposed to that recognized among the Corinthians. 7 In 1 Cor. 9:15–18, Paul claims freedom in his manual labour and, contrary to the prevailing prejudices against those who worked with their hands, presents his handwork as evidence of his divine commission. Each one of the above points is a key feature to an understanding of the dynamics at work within 1 Cor. 9:1–18, yet each has been mistranslated or neglected in scholarly interpretations. 1 Cor. 9:1–18 reveals that Paul was never offered material support by the Corinthians.37 Indeed, if he had been offered such support, why would he argue at length the validity of this “right,” yet immediately claim to have renounced it? Paul’s life as a manual labourer called his apostolic legitimacy into question for some among the Corinthians (1 Cor. 9:1–14), and Paul, out of necessity, presented his weakness as evidence of his divine commission (1 Cor. 9:12b, 9:15–18).38 Manual labour runs like a red thread throughout these eighteen verses. In a text where Paul defends his apostleship, it is imperative to remember that Paul’s apostleship operated inside his work as a manual labourer; the two, in the eyes of the Corinthians, were synonymous. That this entire chapter revolves around issues of material support (1 Cor. 9:12b, 9:15–18) and Paul’s legitimacy as an apostle (1 Cor. 9:1–12a, 9:13–14) suggests that it was Paul’s manual labour, and all of the implications thereof, that called into question the legitimacy of his apostleship. In claiming his right to Corinthian material support, Paul was not only asserting his freedom as an apostle and defending his apostleship, but he was also redefining his menial position.

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no t e s 1 The primary exception is Ronald F. Hock. See especially The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1980). 2 Peter Marshall, Enmity in Corinth: Social Conventions in Paul’s Relations with the Corinthians, wunt 23 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987), 304. 3 Hock, Social Context, 62. 4 A representative sample includes Hock, Social Context, 50–65; Todd D. Still, “Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor? Revisiting the Work of Ronald F. Hock on the Apostle’s Tentmaking and Social Class,” jbl 125 (2006): 781–95; Göran Agrell, Work, Toil and Sustenance: An Examination of the View of Work in the New Testament, Taking into Consideration Views Found in Old Testament, Intertestamental, and Early Rabbinic Writings, trans. Stephen Westerholm and Göran Agrell (Stockholm: Verbum, 1976), 106–12; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, nicnt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 392–400; Harry P. Nasuti, “The Woes of the Prophets and the Rights of the Apostle: The Internal Dynamics of 1 Corinthians 9,” cbq 50 (2006): 246–64; Wendall Willis, “An Apostolic Apologia? The Form and Function of 1 Corinthians 9,” jsnt 24 (2006): 33–48; Peter D. Gooch, Dangerous Food: I Corinthians 8–10 in Its Context, scj 1/5 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1993); Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 138–9. 5 Hence the omission of 2 Thess. 3:7–8 in the following discussion. However, see Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains” (present volume), 334–56, on problems with distinguishing between “authentic” and “inauthentic” letters. 6 Hock, Social Context. 7 See, for instance, Abraham J. Malherbe, “Gentle as a Nurse: The Cynic Background to 1 Thess. 2,” NovT 12 (1970): 203–17; Ronald F. Hock, “Simon the Shoemaker as an Ideal Cynic,” grbs 17 (1976): 41–53; Ronald Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking and the Problem of His Social Class,” jbl 97 (1978): 555– 64; Ronald Hock, “The Workshop as a Social Setting for Paul’s Missionary Preaching,” cbq 41 (1979): 438–50; John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence, sblds 99 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1988); Helen-Ann Hartley, “‘We Worked Night and Day That We Might Not Burden Any of You’ (1 Thessalonians 2:9): Aspects of the Portrayal of Work in the Letters of Paul, Late Second Temple Judaism, the Graeco-Roman World and Early Christianity” (PhD diss., Oxford University, 2004), 167–206; Still, “Did Paul Loathe Manual Labour.” 8 Fitzgerald, Earthen Vessel, 131.

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9 See Colleen Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 10 Fitzgerald, Earthen Vessel, 3. 11 Ibid., 117–18. 12 Ibid., 120–36. 13 Ibid., 205, 207. 14 Ronald F. Hock, “The Working Apostle: An Examination of Paul’s Means of Livelihood” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1974), 120. 15 Fitzgerald, Earthen Vessel, 203. 16 μόχθος: Euripides Phoen. 784; Job 2:9; 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8; 2 Cor. 11:17 (in the nt , μόχθος is always paired with κόπος). πόνος: Ps. 10:7, 10:14, 90:10; Hab. 1:3; Jer. 20:18, 45:3; Sir. 11:1 (in the nt , πόνος occurs only four times: Col. 4:13; Rev. 16:10, 16:11, 21:4). 17 Hunger and thirst were frequently paired to denote poverty; see, e.g., Dio Chrysostom Or. 7.55, 8.16, 55.12; Deut. 28:48; Ps. 106:5; Isa. 5:13; Matt. 5:6, 25:35–37, 25:42–44; John 6:35; Rom. 12:20; 2 Cor. 11:27; Rev. 7:16; Ignatius Smyrn. 6.2. 18 Although κόπος is here in the plural form, context suggests it refers to the wearisome toil endured by Paul the manual labourer, as the singular form clearly does in 2 Cor. 11:27 and where the verb does in 1 Cor. 4:9–13. Cf. Hock, Social Context, 64; Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, ab 32A (New York: Doubleday, 1984), 344; Frank J. Matera, II Corinthians: A Commentary, ntl (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 152; Paul Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, nicnt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 152; Fitzgerald, Earthen Vessel, 193. 19 Voluntary or involuntary cannot be deduced from the context. Contra Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, nigtc (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 473; Matera, II Corinthians, 152; Fitzgerald, Earthen Vessel, 193. 20 S. Scott Bartchy, “‘When I’m Weak, I’m Strong’: A Pauline Paradox in Cultural Context,” in Kontexte der Schrift, ed. Christian Strecker, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005), 2:55. 21 For example, Plato Leg. 744c; Plutarch Cic. 10.5, Cat. Min. 12.5, Dem. 1.1, 1.3; Lucian Cal. 24; Luke 1:48, 1:52; Rom. 12:16; Eph. 4:2; P.Oxy. 79.2. 22 Hock, Social Context, 60. 23 Cf. Lucian of Samasota’s description of his handwork as ταπεινὸς τήν γνώμην (Somn. 9). 24 See Zeichmann, “Acts and the Invention” (present volume), 74–93, on the significance of Paul’s imprisonments.

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25 Limongi and Egger, “Three Times Beaten,” (present volume), 102–4, observe how Paul goes out of his way to employ grammatically passive language in this passage. 26 Cf. Euripides Ion 103; lxx Jer. 20:18; T. Jud. 18.4; Philo Moses 1.284; Hesychius Alphabetical Collection κ.578; Eusebius Praep. ev. 7.1.31. 27 Recent scholars who understand the Thessalonians to be manual labourers include Hock, Social Context, 42–7; Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 64–5; Robert Jewett, The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety, ff (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 120–1; R. Russell, “The Idle in 2 Thess 4.6–12: An Eschatological or a Social Problem?” nts 34 (1988): 111–2; John S. Kloppenborg, “φιλαδελφία, θεοδίδακτος and the Dioscuri: Rhetorical Engagement in 1 Thessalonians 4.9–12,” nts 39 (1993): 267; Jerome MurphyO’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 117; Richard S. Ascough, Paul’s Macedonian Associations: The Social Context of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians, wunt 161 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 82. Jewett, Thessalonian Correspondence, 120 observes that the Thessalonians were identified as manual labourers as early as Gottlieb Lünemann (Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1880], 123). 28 Philip F. Venticinque, “Common Causes: Guilds, Craftsmen and Merchants in the Economy and Society of Roman and Late Roman Egypt” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009), 81. 29 P.A. Brunt suggests that Dio likely had in mind those occupations that took place in the open air, much like the work with which Dio was engaged while he was in exile. See P.A. Brunt, “Aspects of the Social Thought of Dio Chrysostom and the Stoics,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 19 (1973): 15. 30 dfsj 22–23; IHierapJ 156; IEph 1487–88; seg 27.828. 31 For Eurysaces’ tomb, see O. Brandt, “Recent Research on the Tomb of Eurysaces,” ORom 19 (1993): 12–7; cil 1.1203–1205. 32 P.Oxy. 2340: Ἱππίας ῥήτωρ εἶπεν· ὁ Επίμαχος φησιν μὴ εἶναι αὐτὸν λινόυφον ἀλλὰ μυροπώλην εὐσχήμονα ἄνθρωπον. It is interesting that Dio Chrysostom categorized perfumers as those interested only in the superficial, and this was therefore not a trade open to the attainment of virtue (Or. 7.117–119). From the point of view of this elite author, perfumers were practising a base profession, but at “ground level” this profession generated sufficient income to be of service to the state. 33 Charlotte Roueché, Performers and Partisans at Aphrodisias in the Roman and Late Roman Periods: A Study Based on Inscriptions from the Current

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36 37 38

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Excavations at Aphrodisias in Caria, jrs Monographs 8 (London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1993), 112n46.J8 (προταυράτιος), 112n46. J13 (μακελλάριος). Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 147–55, notes how the corridors and stairs were engineered in such a way as to prevent different social groups from interacting when entering and leaving the building. Among others, see Fee, First Epistle, 392–422; Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 218–59; J.K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth, lnts 75 (Sheffield: jsot Press, 1992). Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, bntc , 2nd ed. (London: Continuum, 1994), 200. In this regard, I go a step farther than Ryan S. Schellenberg, “Did Paul Refuse an Offer of Support from the Corinthians?” jsnt 40 (2018): 312–36. We might recall Gerd Theissen’s point: “The theological question of an apostle’s legitimacy is indissolubly linked with the material question of the apostle’s subsistence.” Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth, trans. and ed. John H. Schütz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 54.

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Acts and the Invention of Paul’s “Prison” Letters Christopher B. Zeichmann

Just as there is significant disagreement regarding the historical Jesus, so also there is variation in reconstructions of Paul’s life. Robert Seesengood attributes this dispute to two primary issues: the ambiguous nature of Pauline data and divergences in “the various methodologies that govern how scholars view that evidence.”1 Seesengood continues, “the problem isn’t that we don’t have information, it’s that we have abundant, specific information, but the specifics are often in direct conflict.” The opposing and even contradictory evidence attested in the epistles and Acts evince the problem Seesengood identifies: it is not obvious whether one should lend more credence to the testimony of the epistles or to Acts in this or that regard, not to mention how epistles of disputed authenticity might figure into the conversation. John Knox’s seminal work on Pauline chronology offers a useful starting point for the discussion. Knox introduced his first article on the topic with a methodological declaration: “It does not need to be said that our principal sources for the life of Paul are the letters generally esteemed authentic and the several sections of Luke-Acts that deal with his career. It is equally unnecessary to add that of these the letters are by all odds the more important and in cases of conflict with Acts, whether explicit or implied, are always to be followed.”2 Knox argued against the traditional supposition that Paul’s mission commenced after his meeting with the Jerusalem Pillars, a chronology that was only possible if scholars privileged Acts’ narrative over autobiographical statements in Paul’s own letters. For Knox, the historiographic prioritization of Acts’ testimony over the epistles was indefensible for two reasons.3 First, Acts’ redactional tendencies value narrative coherence at the expense of historical sequencing of events. That is, Acts demonstrably prefers

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developing certain narrative themes over accurate reporting. Second, Paul’s letters are primary sources concerning the apostle’s life, whereas Acts is secondary. Knox follows the rule in historiography that primary sources should be preferred to secondary sources. Many commentators have been dismissive of Knox, attributing to him a far more radical method for Pauline historiography. Steve Walton, for instance, protests Knox’s method because it assumes “Paul’s letters are more ‘objective’ than [Acts].”4 Walton argues that the epistles also evince bias in their representation of Paul’s life; Paul rhetorically frames various events to demonstrate particular points, rendering his letters no more objective than Acts. Walton is surely right in his claim about the epistles’ partiality, though this is a strawman criticism of Knox. Walton attributes to Knox a positivist reliance upon Paul’s letters, even though Knox never claimed to describe Paul’s life wie es eigentlich gewesen (i.e., history to show as it actually happened). Knox’s methodological interest instead concerned the inadequacy of Acts as a starting point, thereby giving the letters a methodological priority in Pauline biography. Knox’s method does not demand that the contents of Paul’s letters be credulously accepted as historical fact or even reliable; he merely contends that they be preferred over Acts for the same reasons that historians otherwise methodologically prefer primary sources over secondary sources. Such misrepresentation of Knox’s work does injustice to his constructive proposal as well, reducing Knox’s insights to another attack on Acts’ historical reliability. Rather, Knox’s article has a programmatic undercurrent, evidenced in a tripartite structure that recurs in some of his other publications. The first section identifies a text of critical importance to the prevailing narrative of Paul’s life; here, something that is widely taken for granted in Paul’s life is identified as having weaker historical evidence than acknowledged. The second section describes and assesses the basis for the standard interpretation of this datum; tensions between Acts and the epistles are explored to excavate other possibilities. The final portion of the essay proposes a new interpretation that reassesses the prevailing narrative of the apostle’s life in favour of a reading that emphatically prefers the epistolary evidence. This final, redescriptive step – overlooked by Walton and other critics – is crucial to Knox’s method. Knox’s method has proven influential, even if his name is not always invoked directly. John Crossan and Jonathan Reed, for example, note the considerable discrepancies between the Paul of Acts and the Paul of the letters: “Luke gives [Paul] an overall interpretation, historical understanding, and theological vision. In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul

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becomes a Christian not of his own time and place, but of Luke’s.”5 From there, they adopt a method that is similar to, albeit looser than, Knox’s: they prefer Paul’s letters over Acts, noting that scholars should be attentive to their divergences, but determine that Acts and the epistles should mutually inform interpretation of each other.6 This moderating middle ground between Acts-skepticism and harmonization of the two Pauls is common in Pauline biography. However, this compartmentalization of the Paul of Acts and the Paul of the epistles is undermined in instances when Acts’ story exerts a hidden force on the interpretation of Pauline epistles. For present purposes, one might consider how Reed and Crossan implicitly harmonize the two Pauls when they claim that “the letters to Philemon and the Philippians come from the same imprisonment at Ephesus, rather than from the later ones at either Caesarea or Rome.”7 The geographic location where Paul composed these epistles is not my present concern. Rather, Crossan and Reed simply take over the extended detentions of Paul in Acts (16:19–40, 23:23–24:27, 28:16–31) without considering their basis in Paul’s letters: Acts’ historicity is assumed without comment. The uncontested epistles never mention any city or province where Paul was detained, let alone the loci where he composed the prison letters; Acts likewise never depicts Paul writing any letters, let alone while incarcerated. Crossan and Reed marshal no evidence for their claim and thus allow Acts to implicitly structure the framework for their life of Paul. One might contrast Crossan and Reed’s (admittedly, popularizing) work with the more methodologically conscientious approach of Richard J. Cassidy in his monograph on Paul’s imprisonment. Cassidy characterizes his own method in a manner nearly identical to Knox: “data from Acts about Paul may be used only after material from Paul’s own letters has been used to construct an outline of Paul’s career as an apostle.”8 Cassidy provenances Paul’s epistles to the Romans and the Philippians on grounds mostly internal to the epistles themselves, citing Paul’s references to the Praetorian Guard (Phil. 1:12–13) and Caesar’s household (4:21–22), among other contextual clues; he concludes that both letters were composed during Paul’s detention in Rome, though Philippians was written later than Romans.9 By ascertaining Philippians’ and Romans’ provenance via evidence internal to the epistles, Cassidy can draw attention to elements that would not be apparent if he had uncritically imposed Acts’ framework on the letters. For instance, Cassidy argues that although Philippians and Romans were written during a single period of imprisonment, Romans reflects a more positive view of “state” authority (13:1–7), whereas Philippians was written later

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and reflects Paul’s increasingly negative thoughts about Rome: Paul was imprisoned for an extended period because the moral exhortations of his letters offended Nero and he was ultimately executed on the grounds of treason for such proclamations. This reading is grounded in a method whereby Cassidy attends to the minute details of these letters, as well as their divergences from Acts’ narrative. Cassidy’s approach, starting with evidence from Paul’s letters before cautiously supplementing that data with material from Acts, is also popular in other recent discussions of Paul’s life. This method is certainly even-handed in its principles, but we will see that Cassidy (like Knox) does not always follow it in practice – sometimes unintentionally projecting Acts’ narrative onto Paul’s letters. I would like to explore one area in which Acts continues to delimit the range of “credible” interpretations of Paul’s life even among scholars who methodologically bracket out Acts, namely the apostle’s “imprisonment.” Few commentators suggest Paul’s letters from captivity were composed anywhere other than locations where Acts narrates his imprisonment – even among scholars who attempt to minimize the role of Acts in their depiction of Paul. The reasons for this are perhaps obvious, since roughly 1900 years of interpreting the letters of Paul through Acts is not easily undone. This has led to a hermeneutical circularity between Acts and Paul’s letters, a circularity that induces interpretations of the letters that make implicit recourse to Acts. Many elements of Acts’ narrative have come to occupy a position that Pierre Bourdieu termed doxa – that which is taken for granted, demarcating the limits of the thinkable/credible and the unthinkable/incredible.10 Within a given doxa, some topics are acceptable matters for debate (e.g., where Paul was imprisoned), but those veering too far outside of it are not given serious consideration (e.g., whether Paul wrote a letter while imprisoned at all). Other contributions to the present volume take aim at various doxa in Pauline studies: Santiago Guijarro on Paul’s “three missionary journeys,” John A. Egger on the “other gospel” that Paul disputes, and Thomas Schmeller on Paul’s boasting of power as weakness – each of which has achieved a degree of consensus despite a conspicuous absence of primary source support.11 Acts, I suggest, continues to be determinative of scholarly doxa of Pauline biography, even among those who disavow Acts as a viable source of data for the apostle’s life. Discussions of Paul’s imprisonment are methodologically instructive, given the divergence between the epistles and Acts on the matter. Despite Acts’ silence on Paul’s letter writing and Paul’s silence on where he wrote his letters, nearly all scholars assume he wrote his prison letters in one of the three jails in which Acts depicts him: Philippi, Caesarea Maritima,

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or Rome. Despite widespread disagreements on Pauline biography, Acts remains authoritative; this authority is found even among commentators rejecting Acts’ historicity. The interpretive inertia of Acts predisposes readers to understand Paul’s letters in continuity with Acts – that is, Acts’ hermeneutical hegemony renders it difficult to imagine Paul’s life occurring in a manner too divergent from Acts, even when the evidence of the letters weighs against its reliability. Whether one believes Acts to be historically suspect or simply an incomplete portrait of Paul’s ministry, it is prudent to be aware of its tensions with the letters of Paul.12 The approach of Knox (followed by Cassidy, among others), wherein one asks how Acts might supplement an epistolary Paul, is an ideal worthy of aspiration, but premature as a method. The interpretive inertia of Acts, conditioning interpreters to understand the letters in its own light, requires further accounting and self-conscious reflection. Thus, as emphatically as Knox and Cassidy reject Acts as the starting point for their discussion of Paul’s letters, they fall short of their own standard. Knox, for example, continued his discussion immediately following the opening quotation by criticizing the role of Acts in credulous reconstructions of Pauline chronology: This is probably obvious enough and yet is often ignored as, for example, when writers still assume that the “imprisonment letters” must have been written from either Caesarea or Rome since Acts tells of Paul’s being held a prisoner in those cities after his final arrest, although Paul himself while still in Ephesus had been able to refer to his “far more imprisonments.” This slighting of the autobiographical material in the letters in tacit reliance upon the accuracy and completeness of Acts is only one stage removed from the confused ascription to Paul of materials actually derived from Acts, as when Paul is represented as referring to his conversion “on the road to Damascus.” It is highly important that evidence of the letters and evidence of Acts be carefully differentiated and that the evidence of the letters be given every preference.13 Knox identifies as gratuitous the assumption that the prison letters were composed in one of three locations attested in Acts; but while Knox criticizes the imposition of Acts’ chronology onto the letters, he himself presumes aspects of Paul’s life mentioned exclusively in Acts’ narrative. I suggest that it is not certain Paul wrote these letters while in a “prison” at all.

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Contrary to the academic doxa, Paul never claims to write while in “prison.” The category “imprisonment” is entirely foreign to Paul’s self-description in letter-writing contexts.14 Paul never claims to compose his letters while in prison (φυλακή, δεσμωτήριον), only while he was in chains (ἐν τοῖς δεσμοίς): the notion of incarceration comes only via harmonization with the Acts of the Apostles. Knox, Crossan and Reed, Cassidy, and others assume that prison and military custody are the only ways to understand Paul’s reference to being “in chains,” but this needlessly excludes other possibilities. The letters’ composition “in prison” is scholarly doxa, a taken-for-granted fact that one safely assumes without controversy: where, when, and why Paul was imprisoned are disputed, but no one doubts that these letters were written in one or another prison. Commentators likewise assume that this prison must have been one of the locations where Acts depicts his captivity. Acts has effectively delimited the parameters of what is imaginable and what is not. I suggest that Paul’s self-descriptions as a man “in chains” need not be read as incarceration and may with equal plausibility be interpreted otherwise. More specifically, these letters provide just as much residual evidence of convict labour as they do imprisonment. This paper is divided into three further parts, following the lead of John Knox. The next section considers descriptions of Acts’ presentation of Paul’s captivity in comparison with other ancient literature and then evidence in the letters of Paul regarding his captivity. First, it argues that Acts’ depiction of Paul’s imprisonments has little value for Pauline biography. Acts’ imprisonments are only comprehensible when the reader assumes biographical details exclusive to Acts that are best understood as literary fictions. The second section demonstrates that Paul gives no indication that his letters were written while in a prison or military custody. This is accomplished by lexical comparisons of Greek and Roman literature. The final section offers a reinterpretation of Paul’s chains in light of biographical data gleaned from Paul’s letters and recent scholarship on punishment in the early Roman Empire. It examines one possible setting for Paul’s captivity that has not been considered, namely convict labour. This chapter makes no pretence of definitively establishing the conditions of Paul’s letters from captivity. Rather, it suggests how one might proceed methodologically in the attempt to write about the life of Paul with a greater awareness of how Acts has shaped our reading of the so-called “prison letters.” To be clear, there is little doubt that Paul was imprisoned multiple times (2 Cor. 6:5, 11:23: ἐν φυλακαῖς). The present objection merely

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addresses the assumption that prison is the only plausible context for his letters from captivity, since the basis for this assumption comes from the Acts of the Apostles. I use the terms “jail,” “prison,” “imprisonment,” and “incarceration” synonymously, while “detention” and “captivity” refer to broader categories of legal and punitive captivity, such as convict labour.

ac t s ’ im p r is o ned paul Paul is subjected to three major imprisonments, a few shorter periods in custody, and various physical punishments in Acts. The first major incarceration was for a single night in Philippi after he was subject to beatings (16:19–40). An earthquake occurred, permitting the prisoners to escape, but Paul and Silas successfully evangelized the distraught jailer in the middle of the night and converted his household. Their guards attempted to release the Christians in secret, but Paul drew attention to his mistreatment as a Roman citizen, eliciting an apology from the magistrates. The second and most notable imprisonment resulted from a conspiracy between the high priest, elders, and Tertullus (24:22–26:32); the plot culminated in Paul’s two-year imprisonment in Caesarea Maritima under the Judaean governor Felix. Felix anticipated that Paul would bribe him for an early release, but because the bribe never materialized, Paul was subjected to an inordinately long period of incarceration. Felix was succeeded by Festus who, upon his first visit to Jerusalem, fell prey to the Jewish leadership’s manipulative request to transfer Paul to Jerusalem. Their intentions were to ambush the apostle during the relocation and assassinate him in the process. Paul, though unaware of this specific plot, astutely invoked his Roman citizenship in order to prevent his own transfer. Festus and King Agrippa listened to Paul’s legal defence and acknowledged that there was no sound basis to hold him as a prisoner in Jerusalem. Were it not for Paul’s request to appear before the emperor, he could have been released. The third captivity commenced upon Paul’s arrival in Rome, a direct result of his request to meet with the emperor. He was placed under house arrest, living with modest freedom for the remainder of the book under watch by a single soldier (28:16). Acts’ prison narratives depend upon several aspects of Paul’s life that are absent from the letters and that commentators increasingly regard as historically dubious. First, the significance of Paul’s Roman citizenship to the resolution of his imprisonments is difficult to overstate, as it

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serves as the entire basis for the odyssey that culminates in his Roman residence. Paul’s Roman citizenship provides the sine qua non of Paul’s prison narratives in Acts, since it is only because Paul has Roman citizenship that he appeals the rulings at Philippi and Caesarea, to the chagrin of provincial leaders. Conversely, Paul’s letters give the strong impression that he did not have Roman citizenship, leading some commentators to infer that the historical Paul’s legal status was peregrinus (i.e., a non-citizen). As Wolfgang Stegemann and others have observed, it is unlikely Paul would have experienced the repeated beatings listed in 1 Cor. 11:24–25 if Roman citizenship provided him legal recourse.15 Second, Paul’s rhetorical acumen is a significant element of Acts’ depiction of his imprisonment in general, but especially at Caesarea, where his speech provides the impetus for his voyage to Rome. With respect to the display of Paul’s rhetorical training in Acts, Stephen Brown compares court reports from Roman Egypt with Acts 24:1–23 and concludes that Acts does not recount the proceedings of an actual trial, but imitates such rhetoric to establish a tone appropriate for “an edifying, novelistic piece of literature.”16 Moreover, in the letters, Paul describes himself as uneducated (ἰδιώτης τῷ λόγῳ; 2 Cor. 11:6) and some recent analyses of his epistles suggest that he lacked rhetorical training.17 If the historical Paul was not rhetorically educated, there is little historical value to Acts’ pericope. One might also point to matters of characterization essential to Acts’ account that are discordant with the apostle’s letters. For instance, Acts treats Paul as a man of means, agency, and influence, not to mention that he can dictate his own movement even while in captivity. The impression from Paul’s own discussion of his time in chains could hardly differ more, especially vis-à-vis his contemplation of suicide to the Philippians (1:21–26).18 One might add that the depiction of the military in how Acts tells these stories fits with the distinctive role of the military in Luke–Acts as a whole: a friendly institution that facilitates the spread of the gospel. In short, whatever historical sources Acts may draw upon for this story, the prison pericopae are constructed within Acts’ narrative framework and assumptions, assumptions that are not easily reconciled with the letters of Paul. Though such objections alone hardly discredit the historical datum of Paul’s imprisonments in a general sense, one may reasonably doubt the historicity of Acts’ narration of individual episodes. Some commentators go farther, suggesting that Acts’ prison pericopae are also fantastical in their narrative and entertaining in their function. Several recent studies suggest a literary link between Paul’s

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imprisonments in Acts and those in the Greek novels.19 At a typological level, Saundra Schwartz observes several tropes in Acts’ prison narratives that are shared with the Greek novels. These include the villainous accuser striking the hero in the face (Acts 23:2; Achilles Tatius Leuc. Clit. 8.1), the devolution of the multicultural hero’s trial into stasis as a result of his complex identity (Acts 23:7–11; Heliodorus Aeth. 10.9–17), the iniquitous priest’s use of a rhetorician to prosecute the hero, thereby highlighting the protagonist’s humble honesty (Acts 24:1; Achilles Tatius Leuc. Clit. 8.7–15), and numerous others, including an unrealistic frequency of prison escape.20 Richard Pervo also highlights the novelistic use of Paul’s Roman citizenship, which functions as a deus ex machina for whatever legal problems the author depicts for Paul.21 Pervo draws attention to the narrative similarities between Acts’ use of Paul’s citizenship and the literary function of status disclosure; the typescene, like Acts’s use of Paul’s citizenship, facilitates deference of those in apparent authority to the protagonist (e.g., Apuleius Metam. 2.26–27; Philostratus Vit. Apoll. 1.4, 4.35, 4.44, 5.10). Pervo summarizes: “After eight chapters (Acts 21–28) focused on Paul’s legal problems, the reader no longer understands why he is under arrest, of what he was really charged, why he appealed in the first place, or why he did not withdraw his appeal later.”22 Suzanne Saïd observes that the novelists try to construct a “plausible” image of settings with which elite readers would have little personal familiarity, and so accords with the author’s prejudices.23 The author of Acts similarly imagines Paul’s prison experience to involve regular conversation with regional elites (24:26). It would seem Acts is interested in Paul’s prison experience only insofar as it advances plot, heightens drama, and develops its themes. For Saïd, Pervo, and Schwartz, Acts’ portrayal of the fantastic evinces the author’s prioritization of entertainment over historicity. But more important than the specifics of the novels’ presentation of their heroes’ imprisonment is that they share with Acts a distinctive conception of captivity. This is most evident in the literary function of the prison as a locale of drama in both novels and Acts, namely, to hinder the protagonist’s explicit goals. In this vein, Matthew Skinner observes how the novelistic trope of imprisonment keeping lovers apart surfaces in Acts’ depiction of Paul’s captivity.24 Places of custody in Acts serve primarily as obstacles for Paul’s destiny of evangelization, obstacles that Paul triumphantly overcomes. Acts gives no indication that Paul’s confinement itself was unpleasant and even encourages supposition of the contrary, with the narrator going so far as to claim that Paul’s imprisonment did not prohibit his well-being (24:23). Typical denizens of the

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Roman Empire, especially impoverished peregrini, did not experience such special treatment, leading some commentators to question the historicity of Paul’s Roman detention as depicted in Acts.25 Papyri from Roman Egypt attest the theft of property by officials (P.Col. 8.209), the use of magical spells to free one’s self from the conditions of prison (pgm 13.294–296), and numerous petitions to administrators to be freed from jail – matters that appear to be of no concern to characters in Acts, for whom prison is at most a temporary obstacle to their goals. Most denizens of the Roman Empire would not have been able to avoid the physical suffering and deprivation of life’s comforts that would have accompanied an experience of prison, but this scenario is entirely sensible within Acts’ entertaining epic of Christian origins and its presentation of Paul as a man of distinction and privilege. This is not to mention other implausibilities in Acts’ depiction of prisons, most especially the duration of such detentions.26 Acts repeatedly exhibits and protects Paul’s status as an honourable man in these narratives. This is a crucial difference between Acts and the epistles: the apostle in Acts is comprehensible only in light of his high status, a status that proves particularly important to the prison narratives. Some differences between Acts’ depictions of Paul’s honour and his own letters were discussed above: Roman citizenship, rhetorical training, mobility in prison, etc. Acts’ apologetic for Paul’s captivity is obvious in the depiction of house arrest in Rome, since that type of detention was reserved for prisoners of the highest social standing: accused kings, magistrates, senators, etc. The matter of Paul’s status is of vital importance in the following section on the uncontested epistles’ testimony regarding Paul’s “chains” as well as the realia of ancient legal discipline.

pau l in c hai ns Remarkably little academic labour has been devoted to the study of prisons in the Roman Empire. The Oxford History of the Prison, for example, devotes a single page to punitive measures during the Roman Principate.27 This lacuna is somewhat surprising, given the influence of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and increased interest in the related concepts of “the carceral state” and “the prison-industrial complex” throughout the academy.28 In lieu of any definitive work in recent years on imprisonment during the early Roman Empire, some New Testament scholars have performed a service by filling in gaps left by classicists on the topic: Craig Wansink, Richard Cassidy, and Brian Rapske have devoted monographs to the social historical significance of

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Roman prisons with a particular focus upon Paul.29 Though the books differ in scope and method, they are unified in using Paul’s “prison letters” as their entry point for discussion of Roman jails. Wansink and Cassidy in particular assert a methodological preference for the letters of Paul over Acts, again recalling that of Knox. What is striking, though, is that they do not account for Paul’s silence on the question of whether these were indeed “prison letters.” At no point does Paul claim to write a letter while in a prison (φυλακή, δεσμωτήριον), even though he twice notes the humiliations of his imprisonments. When he compares his accomplishments with those of the super-apostles, he claims to have endured “far more imprisonments” than his opponents (ἐν φυλακαῖς περισσοτέρως; 2 Cor. 11:23). Likewise, he lists imprisonments (ἐν φυλακαῖς) among the hardships catalogued in 2 Cor. 6:5. The sheer shamefulness of such claims renders their historicity beyond doubt. But even so, Paul claims only that he had been in prisons in the past. The term never describes his present writing situation.30 When Paul describes his present state as a detention, he uses far more ambiguous language than usually appreciated. Paul most commonly mentions his “chains” (δεσμὸς: Phil. 1:7, 1:13, 1:14, 1:17), which commentators interpret as a synecdoche for imprisonment.31 This rendering can be found in many popular bible translations: ceb, gnt, gw , and ncv render it “prison,” while esv, nasb, nlt, nrsv, and rsv prefer “imprisonment,” and msg simply opts for “jail.”32 The ambiguity of Paul’s language and the range of possible meanings are rarely conveyed in translation with the result that English translations often give a misleading impression of specificity. The phrase’s meaning is taken to be sufficiently self-evident that the tdnt devotes only a single page to the term.33 To date, no one has explained why “imprisonment” should be the preferred rendering of the word as opposed to a more literal rendering. Paul shows himself capable of referring to prisons when such specificity is warranted, as we have seen above. Had he meant this specific form of detention in his so-called “prison letters,” there is no obvious reason why Paul would have avoided it. Greco-Roman writers applied the phrase “in chains” (ἐν [τοῖς] δεσμοῖς) to a broad spectrum of detention. The phrase was used for a variety of fettered and shackled punishments: Ixion being chained on the spinning wheel in the underworld (Euripides Herc. fur. 1298), kidnapping by thieves and pirates (Polyaenus Strategems 6.54; Heliodorus Aeth. 1.12), prisoners of war (Diodorus Siculus Bib. Hist. 19.16; Onasander General 10.15), a man on bail who remained in shackles anyway (Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom. 10.8), placing a convict in fetters (Justin 2

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Apol. 2.11), and Zeus’s chaining of the Titans (Plato Crat. 404a.6; Sib. Or. 3.150). In non-punitive instances, the phrase is still used literally: Socrates in his allegory of the cave (Plato Rep. 514a), a common synecdoche for slavery (Wis. 10:14; Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom. 12.9), and the bonds inhibiting Odysseus from the call of the Sirens (Homer Od. 12.54, 12.164, 12.196). Few writers applied the phrase specifically to prisons, with the expression most commonly referring to literal chains or captivity in a general sense.34 The apostle’s occasional description of himself as δέσμιος (Phlm. 1, 9) is also misleadingly specific when rendered “prisoner,” as this term also had a larger range of meaning during antiquity.35 It usually referred to something in the domain of “captive,” but as its representative examples, lsj cites Sophocles’ reference to women captured and beaten by Ajax in his mindless rage (Ajax 299) and Aeneas Tacticus for leashed dogs (31.32). Non-Pauline New Testament uses – references to the ritual of release of a convict to the people in Matthew (27:15; cf. Mark 15:7) and Hebrews’ sympathy for the disenfranchised (10:34, 13:3) – are similarly distant from punitive imprisonment. In fact, Acts is unique in limiting its use of the term δέσμιος to those incarcerated (16:25, 16:27, 23:18, 25:14, 25:27, 28:16, 28:17), which no doubt plays a role in scholarly interpretation of the epistles and the unintended harmonization of their narratives. There is no reason to assume that Paul used the phrase in any sense other than the general notion of “shackled captivity” that it usually meant.36 In summary, Paul’s self-description of his detention is ambiguous. Taken as a whole, there is no lexical reason to infer that any of Paul’s letters were written while in jail. This dearth of evidence proves even more important if one methodologically brackets out the tendentious depiction of prison in Acts. Moreover, Paul’s self-descriptions do not fit well with what scholars have ascertained about ancient prisons. As noted above, there was no such punishment as a “prison sentence” in the Roman Empire. Prisons were instead used as brief detention facilities to hold an accused or convicted individual until their sentence commenced (e.g., beating, execution, forced labour). Thus, a lengthy stay in a prison comprised any period longer than a few days – the interminable imprisonments of Paul in Acts are nearly unprecedented. The ad hoc use of available buildings for such incarceration is also in tension with what little Paul says regarding his specific location, even if we moderate his hyperbolic claim to preach to the entire praetorium (ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ πραιτωρίῳ; Phil. 1:13) and the favourability of Caesar’s household (οἱ ἐκ τῆς Καίσαρος οἰκίας; Phil. 4:22). Since Paul’s humble status renders

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house arrest implausible, commentators sometimes suggest instead that he was incarcerated in a gubernatorial building where he had Christian allies. The scenario is improbable: praetoria rarely jailed non-elite convicts, the notion that Paul would be incarcerated in a building where his captors would be sympathetic to him is hard to believe, and a day or two of imprisonment is scarcely enough time to warrant hyperbolic claims about “the entire praetorium” knowing Paul’s love of Christ. Because Paul does not say anything that clearly links these letters to being in prison, it may be more appropriate to compare his description of his detention with another form of punitive captivity in Roman antiquity. The argument, to be clear, is that while it is plausible that Paul is referring to imprisonment in these letters, it is equally plausible that he referred to something else, namely convict labour.

c o n v ic t l a b o u r a n d paul’s chai ns Fergus Millar has shown that the most common form of long-term punishment in the early Common Era was condemnation to forced labour, a sentence limited to persons of low social rank.37 Convicts laboured in service of various projects ranging from road reconstruction to work in grain mills, to mining, to sewer cleaning, to agricultural labour. These harsh punishments were issued for crimes that at times seem wildly disproportionate by modern standards: theft at night, kidnapping, cattle rustling, and forgery.38 Forced labour was among the most shameful punishments meted out in Roman antiquity, but as though this were not enough, such labour was coupled with loss of property and rights of testament.39 Sentences of hard labour varied in length, but usually lasted one to ten years and were inflicted almost exclusively upon slaves and the impoverished. Like the lacuna regarding Roman prisons, remarkably few academic publications discuss condemnation to the mines (damnatio ad metallum), condemnation to the grain mills (damnatio ad pistrinum), and public labour (opus publicum).40 Condemnation to hard labour is best attested during the Dominate, but there is evidence of its widespread use during the Principate as well: Suetonius reports condemnation to the mines under both Tiberius (Tib. 51) and Gaius (Cal. 27).41 Pliny the Younger, writing shortly after the turn of the second century ce, reveals how common a punishment it was when he mentions a man condemned to metallum without explication (Ep. 10.58). Josephus (J.W. 6.418) mentions that the general Titus sentenced seventy Jews to punitive labour in Egypt (ἔπεμψεν εἰς τὰ κατ᾿ Αἴγυπτον ἔργα), possibly in the province’s many mines.42 As for

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the mills, Apuleius, known for his consistently sympathetic depiction of poor peoples’ lives, depicts with pity those sentenced thus (Metam. 9.12). Cicero likewise mentions an escaped slave sentenced to work at a mill (Quint. fratr. 1.2). Many other examples could be cited. Above all else, convict labour was characterized by its bonds. For instance, of the two punishments to the mines, opus metallum was lighter, even if it differed little on an immediate level; the only known differences with the harsher sentence of metallum were the weight of the shackles and that it did not entail a lifetime sentence.43 Those condemned to opus metallum who attempted escape and failed were given a revised sentence of metallum with its adjustment to the chains and duration. Those condemned to both the farms and mills were also in bonds for the duration of their sentence.44 Forced labour was the only punishment that entailed remaining “in chains” for extended periods of time; such convicts made up the chain gangs of antiquity. This would render them prima facie plausible locations of Paul’s residence while composing his epistles to the Philippians and Philemon. Paul’s letters offer additional evidence suggesting his situation was one of convict labour. First, punitive mines were usually the property of Rome itself.45 Provincial leadership – governors and familia Caesaris in particular – were responsible for the imperial mines and quarries. The familia Caesaris comprised the slaves and freedmen of the emperor, a high-status group that performed “the bulk of Imperial civil service” during the Principate.46 Alfred Hirt has demonstrated that the imperial quarries were no exception to this principle, as members of the familia Caesaris were employed both at high levels of administration (e.g., procuratores marmorum) and in more mundane personnel roles.47 This may explain Paul’s references to “the people of Caesar’s household” (οἱ ἐκ τῆς Καίσαρος οἰκίας; Phil. 4:22), as the phrase may have a technical meaning in Paul’s letters.48 This phrase has often been taken in tandem with Paul’s claim that the gospel has been heard in the entire praetorium (ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ πραιτωρίῳ, Phil. 1:13) as evidence of Paul’s imprisonment in the city of Rome or perhaps Caesarea, as per Acts. This inference is needlessly specific, as administrators overseeing convict labour could be found on site or in provincial capitals throughout the Empire. Second, Paul is preoccupied with his imminent death throughout the “prison” letter fragments present in Philippians; Paul clearly regards his survival as doubtful, though whether his death would be by his own hand or external causes is not certain (Phil. 1:21–26). The mortality rates of forced labour inspire despondency; Roman law regarded the mines as a form of capital punishment, even if many convicts attained release upon

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completion of their sentence. More importantly, though, captive punishments were often a site that facilitated “voluntary death.”49 Choosing death voluntarily (or at least rhetorically positioning oneself as doing so) was most significant when done in the face of injustice, since it was precisely the refusal to submit to such injustice that was understood to transcend or reverse the apparent finality of one’s death. Paul was no exception: he finds the prospect of departing from his present humiliation to be with Christ appealing. Third, there is abundant evidence of epistolary communication at prison-mines: Mons Claudianus in Egypt boasts a famously massive collection of ostraca (896 in the official collection). Mons Porphyrites has a modest collection of ostraca and there is evidence of cultic formations forming in tandem with the prison community: Mons Porphyrites boasted temples of Serapis (sb 5.8320), Isis (sb 1.4383), and Isis Myrionomos (Aelius Aristides Aeg. 67.5–12) in the early second century, for instance.50 This is not to mention cultic presence at other mining sites throughout the Empire (e.g., Alburnus Maior in Dacia, Simitthus in Numidia). Insofar as communities emerged around these isolated places – comprising prisoners, free labourers, soldiers acting as prison guards, and administrators – they were ripe for means of external communication, with requests for money or other forms of help being fairly common. Philemon and prison letter fragments within Philippians fit comfortably alongside the genre of letters emerging in that context. The cult of Paul’s new god, Christos, may have been appealing to other convicts. Finally, convicts were effectively reduced to slave status during their sentence of hard labour. Mine labourers were branded or tattooed and had their heads partially shaved in a peculiar manner to make them easily identifiable should they escape.51 Such branding had long been reserved for slaves, but was used regardless of one’s pre-conviction status in the mines, at the very least suggesting a blurring of boundaries between free and slave in this context. Since the physical presence of such branding – usually on the face – extended after the completion of one’s sentence, a convict would inhabit a slavish body upon return to the free world. Paul’s reference to the “brands of Jesus” would also seem significant in this context (στίγματα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ; Gal. 6:17). One could interpret the phrase as making a virtue of necessity; Paul attempts to reclaim a convicted and slavish body as one acting in service of Christ.52 The scenario proffered here is admittedly speculative, but no more so than the alternatives. I present it as an example of what reading Paul’s letters on their own, apart from Acts’ novelistic tendencies, might look like.

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c o n c l u s i on There is little evidence for extended prison detention in antiquity and supposed evidence for Paul’s composition of letters in prison is plausibly, though not conclusively, interpreted in other contexts. Moreover, the prison accounts in Acts have highly fictionalizing elements that cast suspicion upon their historicity; indeed, there is no basis in corpus paulinum for inferring any sort of detention at Ephesus, Caesarea, or Rome. This point is worth emphasizing, given how this final datum – Paul’s house arrest and eventual death in the city of Rome – is taken for granted and afforded significance within the study of Paul. J.C. Hurd demonstrates that John Knox’s method is characterized foremost by a firm distinction between primary and secondary sources.53 This methodological distinction may be productively pressed further for reasons internal to Knox’s own work; Knox makes clear that since Acts has often drowned out the distinctive voice(s) of the epistles, the relationship between Acts and Paul’s letters is not necessarily one of choral harmony. To continue the musical metaphor, it may be more productive, rather than ruminating on those harmonious moments, to investigate the solo voice(s) of the epistles. Doing so would involve accounting for the ways in which Acts functions as an overpowering voice that attempts to drown out the epistles’ otherwise discordant (even cacophonic!) singing. One method for doing so would be to adapt Knox’s method for Pauline biography in order to account for the scholarly doxa of the unintentional preference for Acts’ depiction of Paul’s life. Foregrounding the divergences between Paul’s testimony and that of Acts can elucidate the inadvertent role Acts plays in the interpretation of Paul’s letters. Acts never depicts Paul writing letters, let alone from prison; Paul’s letters are likewise silent on the location of their composition, including any possible prison sites. Indeed, Paul is first explicitly depicted as writing from prison in the late second-century Acts of Paul (7.2.1–5), a composite text that harmonizes various non-canonical Paul-centric texts by situating them in an invented narrative framework. As a final note, the purpose of this chapter is not to suggest that Paul really “had it easy” in that punitive labour was any less miserable than the horrors of Roman imprisonment. Rather, given recent examples of how the carceral state functions both in service of private capital (e.g., for-profit prisons, prison labour) and outside of prison buildings (e.g., civilian deaths at the hands of the state that led to the Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, and other protests), now is an opportune time to reconsider how wealth disparity, respectability politics, and un(der)

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paid labour form constitutive elements of social life under the carceral state in both contemporary North America and the Roman Empire. Needless to say, the Roman state – to the extent that the res publica can be usefully designated a “state” – differed in its punishment of convicts, but even so, convicts were an unacknowledged, but integral, part of its economy.54 In that Luke-Acts and many subsequent interpreters have deployed Paul’s imprisonment to maintain Paul’s “respectability” through his innocence (in the process, encouraging us to discard the “socially weak and vulnerable” apostle of the authentic letters in favour of the more familiar “strong” man),55 it is worth examining how Paul’s letters illustrate state violence against “undesirable” bodies. I would contend that such violence is both predicated upon and produced by one’s position within hegemonic politics of respectability, a discrepancy that Acts self-servingly minimizes. no t e s

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Thanks to Erin Roberts, Ryan S. Schellenberg, and Michelle Christian for helpful comments and bibliographic suggestions. The present chapter cites the work of Gerhard Kittel and Richard I. Pervo. Though their work remains influential, they are perhaps better remembered for their abhorrent deeds. I find myself frustrated that the present contribution makes recourse to their scholarship, but do not know how to satisfactorily complete this project without doing so. Robert Paul Seesengood, Paul: A Brief History, Blackwell Brief Histories of Religion Series (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 7–8. John Knox, “‘Fourteen Years Later’: A Note on the Pauline Chronology,” jr 16 (1936): 341; cf. John Knox, “On the Pauline Chronology: Buck-Taylor-Hurd Revisited,” in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John, ed. Robert T. Fortna and Beverly R. Gaventa (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 258–9. John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul, rev. ed. (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987), 3–28. Steve Walton, Leadership and Lifestyle: The Portrait of Paul in the Miletus Speech and 1 Thessalonians, sntsms 108 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 47–8. Others claim that while Knox himself did not dismiss Acts as a matter of principle, in practice he almost entirely discarded it in favour of Paul’s letters, e.g., W. Ward Gasque, A History of the Interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles, 3rd ed. (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 197–9. John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 28.

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6 Their methodological reasoning is explicit in their discussion of the Jerusalem collection: “the second major case … when it is absolutely necessary to combine Paul’s letters and Luke’s Acts, and the reason is the same. Our first chapter on the God-worshippers showed how Paul never mentions them, but Luke does so repeatedly. In this present chapter on the collection, we have seen the reverse, Acts never mentions that collection, but Paul does so repeatedly. Still, in both cases, each has material that only makes sense by adding in the other’s data.” Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 398; emphasis in original. 7 Ibid., 272. 8 Richard J. Cassidy, Paul in Chains: Roman Imprisonment and the Letters of St. Paul (New York: Crossroad, 2001), 235–6n7. 9 Ibid., 124–35. 10 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 159–71. 11 Guijarro, “Biblical Cartography” (present volume), 153–68; Egger, “Which Is Not Another” (present volume), 133–52; Schmeller, “Whoever Boasts” (present volume), 25–45. 12 Thus Ryan S. Schellenberg, “The Rest of Paul’s Imprisonments,” jts 69 (2018): 535: “Whatever one’s view of the composition of 2 Corinthians, the letter, or its component parts, was certainly written before any of the events narrated in Acts 21–28. The book of Acts thus supplies us with only one incident – the night spent by Paul and Silas in a Philippian jail (16:16–40) – that predates Paul’s reference to multiple imprisonments.” To be clear, the purpose of this chapter is not to propose one or another method for relating Paul’s letters to Acts (vis-à-vis those of Cassidy, Knox, or Crossan and Reed). The point is to draw attention to how Paul’s letters and Acts are frequently assumed to be continuous without comment or even considering how Acts has significantly shaped the interpretation of the letters. 13 Knox, “Fourteen Years Later,” 341. 14 Discussion will be limited to the so-called “uncontested epistles” for the sake of brevity and convention, relegating the disputed epistles to the footnotes. Even if one invokes the disputed epistles, the present argument remains effectively unchanged. On the problems with distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic epistles, see Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains” (present volume), 334–56. 15 See the classic discussion in Wolfgang Stegemann, “War der Apostel Paulus ein römischer Bürger?” znw 78 (1987): 200–29. More recently, see Karl-Leo Noethlichs, “Der Jude Paulus: Ein Tarser und Römer?” in Rom und das himmlische Jerusalem: Die frühen Christen zwischen Anpassung und Ablehnung, ed. Raban von Haehling (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000),

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67–84; Ekkehard W. Stegemann and Wolfgang Stegemann, The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century, trans. O.C. Dean, Jr (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 297–302. H. Stephen Brown, “Paul’s Hearing at Caesarea: A Preliminary Comparison with Legal Literature of the Roman Period,” in sblsp 1996, 330. He discusses P.Oxy. 37, 237, P.Gurob 2, and P.Hamb. 4, but notes many other examples of such papyri. E.g., Ryan S. Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education: Comparative Rhetoric and 2 Corinthians 10–13, sblecl 10 (Atlanta: sbl, 2013); cf. Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy” (present volume), 277–304. The best treatments of the matter are Craig S. Wansink, Chained in Christ: The Experience and Rhetoric of Paul’s Imprisonments, lnts 130 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 96–125; Ryan S. Schellenberg, Abject Joy: Paul, Prison, and the Art of Making Do (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). E.g., Saundra Schwartz, “The Trial Scene in the Greek Novels and in Acts,” in Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman Discourse, ed. Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele, sblss 20 (Atlanta: sbl , 2003), 105–37; Matthew L. Skinner, Locating Paul: Places of Custody as Narrative Settings in Acts 21–28, AcBib 13 (Atlanta: sbl , 2003), 85–6; Richard I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), passim, esp. 407–15; Richard I. Pervo, “The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles: A Thesis” (ThD diss., Harvard Divinity School, 1979), 62–90; Brown, “Paul’s Hearing at Caesarea.” Cf. Richard I. Pervo, Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987); John B. Weaver, Plots of Epiphany: Prison-Escape in the Acts of the Apostles, bznw 131 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 15–19, 29–91, 219–80; Dennis R. MacDonald, Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 123–45. Schwartz, “Trial Scene,” 127–33; on Acts’ other trial scenes, see pp. 117–27. Cf. Pervo, Profit with Delight, 42–50. Pervo, Profit with Delight, 80–1; Brown, “Paul’s Hearing at Caesarea”; Skinner, Locating Paul, 142n85. Pervo, Profit with Delight, 45–6. Suzanne Saïd, “Rural Society in the Greek Novel, or the Country Seen from the Town,” in Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, ed. Simon Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 83–107. Skinner, Locating Paul, 80–1, citing Achilles Tatius Leuc. Clit. 3, 6; Xenophon of Ephesus Ephesian Tale 2.7–9. E.g., Wansink, Chained in Christ, 23n46; Skinner, Locating Paul, 81–2. Since the middle of the twentieth century, much was made of Marcianus Dig. 48.18.9, the locus classicus on incarceration during Roman antiquity: “Prison

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indeed ought to be employed for confining men, not for punishing them.” This inspired the widespread conclusion that ancient prisons functioned primarily as “holding tanks” and thus skepticism regarding Paul’s two-year incarceration period in Acts. Though adamantly rejecting this conclusion, G.H.C. MacGregor wrote in 1954, “that Paul was kept waiting for a decision in his case for no less than two years has seemed incredible to some recent scholars” (“Introduction and Exegesis of the Acts of the Apostles,” in ib 9:314). It was later recognized that Digest’s statement was just as prescriptive as it was descriptive, which, when combined with modest evidence of “extended imprisonments” during the Principate, provided some corroboration for biblical claims. Presently, there is a significant fault line between those who find Acts’ depiction of Paul’s time in prison so extraordinary as to be untenable and those who think it to have been atypical, but not rare enough to call into question Acts’ narrative. To be sure, long imprisonments undoubtedly occurred on some occasions (see, e.g., Artemidorus’s analysis of dreams that portend extended imprisonment). Brian Rapske (The Book of Acts and Paul in Roman Custody, Book of Acts in Its First-Century Setting 3 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994], 316–20) defends Acts’ narrative by claiming ample evidence of extended imprisonments (i.e., more than a day or two) during the Roman Empire. Rapske, however, builds his case on questionable sources. He cites, for instance, the fantastical Christian martyrologies (e.g., Mart. Mont. Luc. 12.2; Mart. Fruct. Co. 2.1; Eusebius Mart. Pal. 3) and Ptolemaic papyri deriving from a political context where incarceration policies differed markedly from the Romans (e.g., P.Cair. Zen. 59343, 59520, 59639). Craig Wansink (Chained in Christ, 30–1) seeks to demonstrate the same point as Rapske, but his examples are no more compelling: they are either fanciful (e.g., Plutarch Mor. 11a; Josephus J.W. 6.434 [contrast 1 Macc. 12:48]) or polemical narratives that explicitly deviate from Roman legal norms (e.g., Josephus J.W. 2.179–180). Contrast Jens-Uwe Krause, Gefängnisse im römischen Reich, Heidelberger althistorische Beiträge und epigraphische Studien 23 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996), 234, citing P.Lond. 2.354 and P.Oxy. 294; cf. Ari Z. Bryen, “Judging Empire: Courts and Culture in Rome’s Eastern Provinces,” Law and History Review 30 (2012): 771–811. 27 Edward M. Peters, “Prison before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds,” in The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 16–17. 28 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979). Foucault’s monumental work does not address ancient prisons at all. 29 Wansink, Chained in Christ; Cassidy, Paul in Chains; Rapske, Acts and Paul; cf. Schellenberg, Abject Joy. Relatively recent books by classicists on Roman

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prisons include Cécile Bertrand-Dagenbach et al., eds., Carcer: Prison et privation de liberté dans l’antiquité classique, Études d’archéologie et d’histoire ancienne (Paris: de Boccard, 1999); Krause, Gefängnisse; Sofía Torallas Tovar and Inmaculada Pérez Martin, eds, Castigo y Reclusión en el Mundo Antiguo, Manuales y anejos de Emérita 45 (Madrid: csic , 2003). Note also Clement’s statement that Paul was captive seven times during his ministry (ἑπτάκις δεσμὰ φορέσις; 1 Clem. 5.6). On this synecdoche, see Wansink, Chained in Christ, 46. Letters of disputed authorship also refer to Paul’s chains (Col. 4:18; 2 Tim. 2:9; cf. Ep. Lao. 6; 3 Cor. 3.35). Preferable in this instance are asv, kjv, web , and ylt (“bonds”), as well as niv and nkjv (“chains”). Gerhard Kittel, “δεσμός, δέσμιος,” in tdnt 2:43. To be sure, it was occasionally used to denote imprisonment: the frequency with which Andocides was in jail (Lysias Andocides 31), collecting for the poor and captive (Justin 1 Apol. 67.6), and the captivity of righteous men like Socrates (Justin 2 Apol. 7.3). But even when authors use the phrase with reference to imprisonment, these same writers use it in the ways described above. Dionysius of Halicarnassus also uses it when he reports the prison suicide of Appius (Ant. rom. 11.46) and the allegedly capricious punishments of Appius Claudius (6.59) – though Dionysius also uses the phrase more broadly to refer to shackled slaves (12.9) and a man awaiting trial on bail whom some wanted in shackles anyway (10.8). Philo uses the phrase for the imprisonment of the patriarch Joseph, though apparently merely to avoid repetitive vocabulary (Ios. 173, 189, 193, 195; cf. Josephus A.J. 2.69). Likewise, Cassius Dio uses it once for the house arrest of Tigranes the Younger (38.30), but also for the publicly humiliating bondage of the Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix (40.41). Similarly, Josephus does so for Aristobulus I imprisoning his brothers (A.J. 14.354), but also for prisoners of war (Life 241, 319). See also its use in Eph. 3:1, 4:1; 2 Tim. 1:8. Cf. the references to Paul’s chains with a different vocabulary (ἅλυσιν: 2 Tim. 1:16; ἐν ἁλύσει: Eph. 6:20). Col. 4:3 describes Paul more vaguely as “having been bound” (δέδεμαι). Paul’s description of his allies as συναιχμάλωτoς (Rom. 16:7; Phlm. 23; cf. Col. 4:10) does little to clarify the specifics of his situation. The word designated fellow captives of war and had come to take a meaning of “fellow captive under guard” by the classical period (Gerhard Kittel, “αἰχμάλωτος, αἰχμαλωτίζω, αἰχμαλωτεύω, αἰχμαλωσία, συναιχμάλωτός,” in tdnt 1:195–7). συναιχμάλωτoς and related words are rare, though Paul almost certainly used the word in a literal sense (Jean-Marie Salamito, “Συναιχμάλωτοι: Les ‘compagnons de captivité’ de l’apôtre Paul,” in Carcer, ed. BertrandDagenbach, 191–210). On uses of related terms, see Wansink, Chained in

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Christ, 170n76, citing Rom. 7:23; 2 Cor. 10:5; Luke 21:24; Demades Orat. 1.65; Sextus Empiricus Math. 1.295; Pseudo-Lucian Asin. 27. Fergus Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour in the Roman Empire, from the Julio-Claudians to Constantine,” in Rome, the Greek World, and the East: Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire, ed. Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers, Studies in the History of Greece and Rome (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 120–50. Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga and Laurens E. Tacoma, “Contextualizing Condemnation to Hard Labour in the Roman Empire,” in Global Convict Labour, ed. Christian Giuseppe De Vito and Alex Lichtenstein, Studies in Global Social History 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 58; Francesco Salerno, ‘Ad Metalla’: Aspetti giurdici del lavoro in miniera, Diáphora 11 (Naples: Jovene, 2003), 66–71. Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 136. For a recent discussion with a nearly comprehensive bibliography that is astoundingly brief, see Groen-Vallinga and Tacoma, “Contextualizing Condemnation,” 47–8. Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 138; Claire Holleran, “Labour Mobility in the Roman World: A Case Study of Mines in Iberia,” in Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire, ed. Luuk de Ligt and Laurens E. Tacoma, Studies in Global Social History 23 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 95–137. Alfred Michael Hirt, Imperial Mines and Quarries in the Roman World: Organizational Aspects 27 bc – ad 235, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 222. Julia Hillner, Prison, Punishment and Penance in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 199–203; Hirt, Imperial Mines, 223–4; Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 139–40. vincti pedes in Pliny the Elder Nat. 18.21; vinctorum poenali opera in Pliny the Elder Nat. 18.11, respectively. Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World: (31 bc – ad 337) (London: Duckworth, 1977), 183; Hirt, Imperial Mines, 332–6. P.R.C. Weaver, Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emperor’s Freedmen and Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 2. Hirt, Imperial Mines, 107–66. See the extensive overview in Michael A. Flexsenhar III, Christians in Caesar’s Household: The Emperors’ Slaves in the Makings of Early Christianity, Inventing Christianity (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). For arguments to the contrary, see Angela Standhartinger, “Letter from Prison as Hidden Transcript: What It Tells Us about the People at Philippi,” in The People beside Paul: The Philippian Assembly and History from Below, ed. Joseph A. Marchal, sblecl 17 (Atlanta: sbl , 2015), 129–30n90.

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Standhartinger’s article (“Greetings from Prison and Greetings from Caesar’s House [Philippians 4.22]: A Reconsideration of an Enigmatic Greek Expression in the Light of the Context and Setting of Philippians,” jsnt 43 [2021]: 468–84) elaborates on this idea, but was published too late for substantial interaction in the present study; I am not persuaded by the scenario Standhartinger depicts, in large part because it assumes imperial surveillance of Paul’s letter-writing that is untenable (see the criticism of this trope in Laura Robinson, “Hidden Transcripts? The Supposedly Self-Censoring Paul and Rome as Surveillance State in Modern Pauline Scholarship,” nts 67 [2021]: 55–72). A.J. Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992); Wansink, Chained in Christ, 119–25. They cite, e.g., Xenophon Apol. 9; Plato Apol. 38e; Epictetus Diatr. 1.9.22–24; Marcus Aurelius Med. 11.3; Pliny the Younger Ep. 10.96. On cultic groups that formed at mining sites, see Hannah Friedman, “Forced Labour, Mines, and Space: Exploring the Control of Mining Communities,” in Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, ed. M. Driessen et al. (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009), 1–11; Jennifer A. Sheridan and Jonathan P. Roth, “Greek Ostraka from Mons Porphyrites (Gebel ’Abu Dukhan),” basp 29 (1992): 117–26. Thanks to Michelle Christian for drawing these to my attention. On stigmata and haircuts, see Suetonius Cal. 27.3; Cod. theod. 9.40.2; Petronius Sat. 103–111; C.P. Jones, “Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity,” jrs 77 (1987): 148; W. Mark Gustafson, “Inscripta in Fronte: Penal Tattooing in Late Antiquity,” Classical Antiquity 16 (1997): 81. On slavery and penal labour in Roman antiquity, see Joan Burdon, “Slavery as a Punishment in Roman Criminal Law,” in Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour, ed. Léonie Archer (London: Routledge, 1988), 68–85. Paul is abundantly clear that his labour is shameful. Catherine Jones (“Paul the Manual Labourer” (present volume), 46–69) argues that Paul’s inclusion of labour among his hardships is entirely unique among his surviving persistasis catalogues (see, e.g., 1 Cor. 4:9–13; 2 Cor. 6:3–10). Jones demonstrates that not only was Paul’s labour a liability for his apostolic legitimacy, but that his claims of freedom and choice are rhetorical, positioned to create the impression of his own agency where none existed. There is little in Paul’s various discussions of his labour to suggest it could be meaningfully characterized as a matter of “free” volition. J.C. Hurd, Jr, “Pauline Chronology and Pauline Theology,” in Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox, ed. William R.

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Farmer, C.F.D. Moule, and Richard R. Niebuhr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 225–48. 54 Groen-Vallinga and Tacoma, “Contextualizing Condemnation.” 55 I draw here upon the language of Leif E. Vaage, “El cuerpo paulino: Un débil fuerte y el poder debilitante,” ribla 55 (2006): 7–11.

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Three Times Beaten with Rods/Tres veces golpeado con varas: A Reflection on 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 Alcris Limongi and John A. Egger

Abstract: En la primera parte de nuestra contribución al Festschrift en honor a Leif E. Vaage comparamos, en los idiomas originales, el catálogo de tribulaciones de Pablo en 2 Corintios, con la conversación entre los esclavos Libanus y Leonidas en la obra Asinaria, de Plauto. Las nuevas comprensiones obtenidas al observar diferencias y similitudes entre estos dos textos nos sirven de base para la segunda parte donde reflexionamos acerca del impacto del lenguaje en la interpretación, particularmente en la forma en que el lenguaje estructura el pensamiento. Gran parte del aporte académico de Leif Vaage sobre Pablo está escrito en español, por lo que su compromiso con el contexto y cultura Latinoamericana, y su intencionalidad de utilizar su idioma refleja el reconocimiento de que hasta cierto nivel el lenguaje realmente estructura el pensamiento. De aquí el titulo bilingüe inglés-español, y la inclusión de este abstracto en español para resaltar este punto preciso en una obra que es en inglés. This contribution to the festschrift in honour of Leif E. Vaage consists of two parts. In part 1 we offer a brief comparison between Paul’s “catalogue of hardships” that appears in Greek in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 and a similar list that appears in Latin on the lips of the characters Libanus and Leonida in Plautus’s play Asinaria 546–579.1 The simple act of laying these two texts side by side and observing some of the differences and similarities between them yields some useful insights that might otherwise escape notice. The very simplicity of this exercise, which is really just a form of description, belies its usefulness. In part 2, our description

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of the two discourses provides us with observations for a reflection on the impact of language on interpretation, particularly on the ways that language structures thought. Much of Leif Vaage’s scholarship on Paul is written in the Spanish language. This is first of all a reflection of his engagement with the Latin American context and his willingness to use the languages of those cultures. But secondarily it reflects his recognition that at some level language really does shape the way we think. Most biblical scholarship on 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 is oblivious to – and certainly not interested in – this question. Yet this is precisely the issue that this text raises for us, hence the bilingual English-Spanish title and the inclusion of an abstract in Spanish, to draw attention to this point within a volume that is otherwise in English.

pa rt 1 : c o m pa r is o n o f 2 cor. 11:21b–33 a n d a s i n a r i a 546–579 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 Paul’s list of hardships in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 appears in a section of 2 Corinthians where Paul invites his listeners/readers into what he describes as “a little bit of foolishness” (ἀφροσύνη) where he compares himself with “super-apostles” (ὑπερλίαν ἀπόστολοι) who have come into the Corinthian church since his sojourn there.2 The implication seems to be that these super-apostles are fools: and Paul will now show them to be such by outdoing them in foolishness and boasting like someone out of his mind (παραφρονῶν λαλῶ). It seems that in Corinth Paul has been deemed “weak” (ἀσθενής) in his body and “contemptible” (ἐξουθενημένος) in his speech (2 Cor. 10:10).3 Paul seems to accept the truth of these charges while at the same time reclaiming them for his own purposes: in what follows Paul will show the Corinthians just how weak and contemptible he really is. By boasting about his weakness, he will reveal just how much more of a diakonos Christou (“servant of Christ”) he is than his rivals. Paul’s list of hardships begins with a sequence of four items, none of which contain any finite verbs, each embellished with adverbial expressions and introduced with the preposition ἐν: “more abundantly in toils” (ἐν κόποις περισσοτέρως), “more abundantly in prisons” (ἐν φυλακαῖς περισσοτέρως), “surpassingly in blows” (ἐν πληγαῖς ὑπερβαλλόντως), and “many times in the throes of death” (ἐν θανάτοις πολλάκις).4 The first two statements contain a comparative adverbial expression (περισσοτέρως) that explicitly ties the item back to the super-apostles

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with whom Paul is comparing himself, while the third statement makes use of an adverbial expression (ὑπερβαλλόντως) that does so implicitly. By the time Paul reaches the fourth item, however, the comparisons have ceased and the super-apostles have disappeared from the picture (though they remain in the background). Because there are no verbs, the pace of this first sequence moves quickly, an effect that is strengthened by the repeated use of the preposition ἐν in quick succession. Paul then continues with a new sequence, slowing the pace somewhat by including statements with finite verbs and references to frequency. There are five items in this sequence: “Five times I received from the Jews the forty-minus-one lashes” (ὑπὸ Ἰουδαίων πεντάκις τεσσεράκοντα παρὰ μίαν ἔλαβον), “three times I was beaten with rods” (τρὶς ἐραβδίσθην), “once I was stoned” (ἅπαξ ἐλιθάσθην), “three times I was ship-wrecked” (τρὶς ἐναυάγησα), and “for a day and a night I was adrift on the open sea” (νυχθήμερον ἐν τῷ βυθῷ πεποίηκα).5 Although word order in Greek is generally quite flexible, in this case each statement ends with a verb (something lost in English translation). This serves to separate the items from each other, while at the same time drawing attention to them as parallel items on a list. Except for the verb in the fifth statement, which is in the perfect tense, these verbs are in the aorist tense, specifically the iterative aorist because of the inclusion of references here to their frequency. This gives the sequence a sense of concreteness, of events having taken place in specific times and places.6 Paul then picks up the pace with a sequence of statements that again do not contain verbs. He starts off by saying “often on journeys” (ὁδοιπορίαις πολλάκις), but the items that follow are all linked by repetition of the noun κίνδυνος: “dangers on rivers” (κινδύνοις ποταμῶν), “dangers from bandits” (κινδύνοις λῃστῶν), “dangers from my own people” (κινδύνοις ἐκ γένους), “dangers from foreigners” (κινδύνοις ἐξ ἐθνῶν), “dangers in the city” (κινδύνοις ἐν πόλει), “dangers in the wilderness” (κινδύνοις ἐν ἐρημίᾳ), “dangers at sea” (κινδύνοις ἐν θαλάσσῃ), and “dangers from false brothers” (κινδύνοις ἐν ψευδαδέλφοις). There are eight items in quick succession. These seem to provide specificity to his statement about being “often on journeys.” This third sequence is followed by a fourth which is again without verbs, but in a complicated pattern, with three sets of items structured in pairs, separated by statements of elaboration emphasizing their frequency: “in toil and in labour” (κόπῳ καὶ μόχθῳ), “many times with sleepless nights,” (ἐν ἀγρυπνίαις πολλάκις), “in hunger and thirst” (ἐν λιμῷ καὶ δίψει), “many times facing starvation” (ἐν νηστείαις πολλάκις), and “in cold and nakedness” (ἐν ψύχει καὶ γυμνότητι).7 This completes Paul’s “list of hardships”

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in a proper sense, but he continues to describe his experiences of hardship, providing extended commentary in several complete sentences. First, Paul shifts to his mental state: apart from other things not mentioned, there is his ever-present, every-day “anxiety for all my churches.” Then Paul returns to the idea of weakness with two questions: “Who is weak?” he asks rhetorically, and then, as if in reply, asks, “Am I not weak?” He then explicitly returns to the idea of boasting: “If it is necessary to boast, I will boast about things that reveal my weakness” (εἰ καυχᾶσθαι δεῖ τὰ τῆς ἀσθενείας μου καυχήσομαι). This is then followed by one final item of hardship: the concrete example of himself being “lowered” (ἐχαλάσθεν, again in the aorist tense) in a basket through a hole in the wall to escape the Nabataean king Aretas at Damascus.

Asinaria 546–579 The Asinaria (“Comedy of the Asses”) comes to us from the Roman comic playwright Plautus. Although the exact date of the comedy’s first production is unknown, John Henderson concludes from the available evidence that the play “must have been shown, in a temporary auditorium, to the people of Rome at some state festival provided by elected magistrates of the Republic at its zenith in the late third or early second centuries bce ,” after which time it became “classic theatre, revived and eventually edited for reading in and after school from the mid-first century bce onwards.”8 In the play’s prologue, Plautus reports that it is an adaptation of the play Onagus (“The Ass-driver”), written by Greek playwright Demophilus, which is otherwise unknown to us. According to Eduard Fraenkel, however, much of the style and content of the Asinaria is both unique to Plautus and characteristic of his other plays, particularly the central role given to the “clever slave” (servus callistus), as well as the presentation of the schemes of the clever slave as military triumphs.9 The list of hardships that appears in Asinaria 546–579 occurs in the middle of the play, at the beginning of what is now identified as act 3, scene 2. The two slaves, Leonida and Libanus, having just carried out a successful operation of tricking an ass-dealer out of twenty minae, appear on stage with their money bag and begin to banter about their past exploits – exploits that include the facing of torments and other hardships. As Fraenkel notes, the slaves present these experiences as military triumphs. Libanus speaks first, giving his version of their exploits, followed by Leonida, who offers praise to Libanus while giving his own version. This is followed by Libanus’s response, offering praise to Leonida in turn.10

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Libanus: Perfidiae laudes grátiasque habémus merito mágnas, quom nostris sycophantiis, dolis astutiisque, [scapularum confidentia, virtute ulmorum freti] qui advorsum stimulos, lamminas, crucesque compedesque, nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias, indoctoresque acerrumos gnarosque nostri tergi, [qui saepe ante in nostras scapulas cicatrices indiderunt] eae núnc legiones, copiae exercitusque eorum vi pugnando, peiriuriis nostris fugae potiti. id virtute huiius collegae meaque comitate factumst. qui me vir fortior ad sufferundas plagas? Leonida: Edepol virtutes qui tuas non possis conlaudare sic ut ego possim, quae domi duellique male fecisti. ne illa edepol pro merito tuo memorari multa possunt: ubi fidentem fraudaveris, ubi ero infidelis fueris, ubi verbis conceptis sciens libenter periuraris, ubi parietes perfoderis, in furto ubi sis prehensus, ubi saepe caussam dixeris pendens advorsus octo artutos, audacis viros, valentis virgatores. Libanus: Fateor profecto ut praedicas, Leonida, esse vera; verum edepol ne etiam túa quoque malefacta iterari multa et vero possunt: ubi sciens fideli infidus fueris, ubi prensus in furto sies manifesto et verberatus, [ubi periuraris, ubi sacro manus sis admolitus], ubi eris damno, molestiae et dedecori saepe fueris, ubi creditum quod sit tibi datum esse pernegaris, [ubi amicae quám amico tuo fueris magis fidelis,] ubi saepe ad languorem tua duritia dederis octo validos lictores, ulmeis adfectos lentis virgis. num male relata est gratia, ut collegam collaudavi? In Asinaria 546–579, Libanus begins by offering praise and thanks to Perfidia (“trickery”), and then immediately starts recounting the list of what he and Leonida have endured, which Henderson describes as “the worst torturer’s catalogue in Latin.”11 Armed with “deceits, contrivances, and subtleties,” (three nouns here in the instrumental ablative), Libanus and Leonida have stood up against, “goads” (stimulos), “plates” (lamminas), “crosses” (crucesque), “leg-irons” (compedesque), “neckirons” (nervos), “chains” (catenas), “shackles” (carceres), “collars” (numellas), “fetters” (pedicas), and “yokes” (boias). There are no verbs here (nor adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions for that matter), so the focus is on the nouns themselves: ten items in quick succession. Libanus then sums up with the words “and tormentors most fierce and familiar with our backs” (indoctoresque acerrumos gnarosque nostri tergi).12 These “copious legions and armies of theirs” (it is not quite clear who

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“they” are), with valiant fighting, have now “taken possession of flight” (fugae potiti), thanks to our perjuries (periuriis nostriis).13 This victory was accomplished by my colleague’s “bravery” (virtus) and “my kind assistance” (comitas). Libanus then concludes with a question: “Who is a mightier man than me at enduring blows?” (qui me vir fortior ad sufferundas plagas?). This is the one place where this text and Paul’s coincide in terms of their actual vocabulary: the Greek and Latin cognates πληγή/plaga both denote a blow, stroke, calamity, or plague. It can refer to more than just the blows one receives while being physically beaten, but in both cases here, the more restrictive sense is apt. Leonida then responds to Libanus with his own list: “By Pollux, you cannot praise your brave deeds (virtus in the plural) like I can: the nasty things you have done at home and at war. By Pollux, as you rightly deserve, there are many things to be mentioned.”14 He then begins a sequence of five statements introduced by the conjunction ubi: “as in when you defrauded someone who trusted you” (ubi fidentem fraudaveris), “as in when you were unfaithful to your owner” (ubi ero infidelis fueris), “as in when you knowingly and happily perjured yourself when under oath” (ubi verbis conceptis sciens libenter periuraris), “as in when you dug holes in walls when caught in the act of theft” (ubi parietes perfoderis, in furto ubi sis prehensus), culminating in a fifth item not quite like the others: “as in the many times when you pleaded your case while hanging opposite eight hefty men of violence, vigorous rod-wielders” (ubi saepe caussam dixeris pendens advorsus octo artutos, audacis viros, valentis virgatores). Yet, as different as this final item is, it is presented as just another one of Libanus’s nasty deeds. Libanus then responds in turn to Leonida in a similar vein: “I certainly confess that what you say is true, Leonida, but by Pollux, your many wicked deeds also need to be repeated.” This is followed by a similar list of seven items, again all introduced by ubi: “as in when you were knowingly false to someone who trusted you” (ubi sciens fideli infidus fueris), “as in when you were openly caught in the act of theft and beaten” (ubi prensus in furto sies manifesto et verberatus), “as in when you perjured yourself when your hand was placed on something sacred” (ubi periuraris, ubi sacro manus sis admolitus), “as in the many times when you brought injury, trouble or discredit to your owners” (ubi eris damno, molestiae et dedecori saepe fueris), “as in when you denied that you had been given a deposit” (ubi creditum quod sit tibi datum esse pernegaris), “as in when you were more faithful to a girlfriend than to your friend” (ubi amicae quám amico tuo fueris magis fidelis), and again culminating in a reference to being tormented: “as in the many times when, with

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your hardiness (tua duritia), you handed over to exhaustion eight powerful lictors, although they were armed with pliant elm rods” (ubi saepe ad languorem tua duritia dederis octo validos lictores, ulmeis adfectos lentis virgis).15 Libanus again concludes with a question: “Have I now returned the favour nastily enough, so as to praise my colleague?”

Comparing the Two Texts There are numerous similarities and differences between the two passages that could be noted, but some immediately stand out. As emphasized at the outset, the act of comparison in its basic operation is simple, seemingly almost juvenile in its simplicity. At risk of accomplishing nothing more than to state the obvious, here we focus on two simple similarities and two simple differences. In the pithy words of Jonathan Z. Smith, “a comparison is a disciplined exaggeration in the service of knowledge.” Here we are not trying to describe how things are, but using comparison to clarify the issues we feel are at stake. Smith describes this as the process “by which we ‘re-vision’ phenomena as our data in order to solve our theoretical problems.”16 The first similarity is that neither text is a pure “catalogue of hardships,” despite their frequent characterization as such.17 Paul’s list in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 seems to be more about highlighting the differences between himself and the “super-apostles,” with a focus on the things that reveal his weakness. We can see this in the way he introduces the list as comparisons and concludes it with comments about his weakness, as well as in the way he adds embellishments along the way. The list in Asinaria 546–579 is even less clearly a catalogue of hardships. All three speeches mention the torments the slaves have suffered, but each mention is specifically catalogued in conjunction with (other) acts that the slaves have done, as if having to plead one’s case while hanging before eight hefty lictors armed with elm rods is just another exploit like digging a hole in a wall or defrauding one’s owner. As Roberta Stewart notes, the slaves depict their master’s coercive force as “military forces that have been routed by the virtus of the slaves,” thereby appropriating “the language of Roman militarism to assert their pride in surviving the coercive instruments of slavery.”18 This is true as far as it goes, but the slaves’ pride does not consist merely of surviving the instruments of torture, but of being impervious to them. As Libanus says, “Who is a mightier man than me at enduring blows?”19 Yet he also says that the enemy forces have “taken possession of flight” by means of “our perjuries,” implying that it is the slaves’ cleverness that has saved the

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day more than their ability to endure torment.20 Libanus also speaks of Leonida’s duritia (hardiness, insensitivity, ability to endure) when facing the tormentors. It would seem that the rod-wielders have been driven to exhaustion, not so much by the slaves’ physical insensitivity as by the slaves’ refusal to be deterred by the threat of torture. Even after a good beating, these slaves will be back to their shenanigans at the first opportunity.21 A second similarity pertains to the structure. Neither the Pauline nor the Plautine text offers a flat catalogue of items listed one after another in simple sequence. Both texts have complicated structures that contain several sequences with multiple grammatical forms peppered with commentary. This structural complexity allows the list of hardships to be employed for the purposes we just mentioned. But these complicated structures also disguise as much as they disclose. Paul’s list of hardships, for example, contains four distinctive sequences, but only in the second sequence are there any verbs. As noted earlier, this slows down the discourse and draws attention to the five items in the sequence. The first three items refer to the experience of having one’s body violated by the physical acts of others (receiving the forty-minus-one lashes, being beaten with rods, being stoned), while the other two items refer to generalized misfortunes that anyone might experience (being shipwrecked and being adrift for a day and a night). We look at the incongruity between these two types of hardships in a moment, but let us first notice that this puts the experience of being flogged structurally close to the centre of this discourse, even if it is not done explicitly. On its own, this emphasis on beating would seem hardly worth noticing, except that something parallel is also going on within the structure of the Plautine text. The act of being beaten (if we can call it an act) serves structurally as a central idea in the slaves’ discourse as well, though it is dressed up nicely as going into battle against “copious legions and armies,” “pleading one’s case before eight hefty men of violence,” or “handing lictors over to exhaustion.” The pattern is unmistakable because it appears in all three sequences: references to being flogged are presented as just another act of roguery. While the slaves in the Asinaria go out of their way to try to disguise their beatings as military acts of valour, Paul is very matter-of-fact about it, “hiding” his references to being flogged in plain sight along with his other hardships. As we just noted, there is an incongruity in listing a hardship like being beaten in the same breath as a hardship like being shipwrecked, but Paul lists both together without making a distinction. Jennifer A. Glancy finds this puzzling because her research

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into the first-century social context indicates the utter shame of being beaten; yet here and elsewhere Paul “treats his subjection to floggings in the same fashion that he treats his travel escapades and privations of such necessities as food, drink, and shelter.”22 Turning to Plautine comedy, however, and drawing upon the insights of Kathleen McCarthy and Erich Segal regarding the speech of the slaves, Glancy observes that the boasting of the slaves indicates that they refuse to see the physical act of being beaten as depriving them of honour, and she suggests moreover that Paul, by listing his beatings as no different in kind from his other tribulations, may likewise be refusing to be “defined by the whip’s degrading inscription of his skin.”23 We might say that the slaves in the Asinaria protect themselves from shame by presenting their beatings as mighty military exploits; Paul, by contrast, deflects the shame by presenting his beatings as just another expression of what it means to be a diakonos Christou. The complicated structure of both texts allows them to place the reality of being flogged front and centre while downplaying the ignominy, albeit in different ways. This contrast draws attention to a key difference between the two texts. In Paul’s list of hardships, the verbs (what few there are) are either in the passive voice (e.g., ἐραβδίσθην, ἐλιθάσθην, ἐχαλάσθεν; being beaten, being stoned, being lowered) or are verbs in the active or middle voices that nevertheless express to some degree the concept of passivity (e.g., ἔλαβον, ἐναυάγησα, πεποίηκα; I received, I was shipwrecked, I passed time).24 Along the same lines, Paul uses noun phrases in the other sequences that conceptually express being in a state of vulnerability (ἐν φυλακαῖς, ἐν πληγαῖς, ἐν θανάτοις, ἐν λιμῷ καὶ δίψει, ἐν ψύχει καὶ γυμνότητι; in prisons, in plagues, in deaths, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness). All these emphasize that the hardships that Paul has experienced are things that have happened to him, things he has suffered. The verbs in Asinaria 546–579, by contrast, work in entirely the opposite direction. Most of them are in the active voice, thus emphasizing that the slaves are not passive recipients of what has happened to them. In fact, as we noted, the list is presented not so much as a list of hardships as a list of accomplishments: they have defrauded those who trusted them, they have been unfaithful to their owner, they have quite happily committed perjury, they have dug through walls, etc. Even being beaten is presented as an act of “handing over” (dederis, active form of dedo) the tormentors to exhaustion. Moreover, despite the fondness of Latin grammatical structure for ablative absolutes in the passive voice that allow for certain actions to be mentioned without any need to mention the agents who put them into effect, such structures are mostly

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absent from the speeches of the slaves.25 Instead, in those few places where verbs appear in the passive they are accompanied with nouns in the ablative case indicating the instrument or manner with which the action was accomplished. This draws attention to the slaves’ role in bringing it about. For example, Libanus specifically mentions that it is by means of “our perjuries” (peiriuriis nostris) that the enemy forces were taken to flight, and the victory was specifically accomplished by means of Leonida’s virtus and Libanus’s comitas. Finally, there is the obvious difference that the slaves in the Asinaria speak about their hardships as military exploits, whereas Paul does not do so at all. Even on its own, this military vocabulary would draw attention to itself (e.g., quae domi duellique male fecisti; “the nasty things you have done at home and at war”), but it is intensified with the slaves’ brazen attitude (e.g., qui me vir fortior ad sufferundas plagas? “who is a mightier man than me at enduring blows?”).26 Their bravado in the face of the threat of torture is part of the humour of the comedy, but it also expresses their defiance of the master’s “structure of meaning,” to use a term employed by McCarthy.27 As we have already noted, there is an ambiguity as to whether the slaves’ virtus resides more in their ability to endure the punishment of torment or in their cleverness in avoiding it. This is ambiguous because the slaves never actually explain how the “forces” of the enemy (cattle prods, iron-blades, crosses, shackles, neckirons, chains, prisons, collars, fetters, yokes) have been put to flight. The military metaphor is effective (if effective it is) precisely because it glosses over this ambiguity. Paul, however, goes in a very different direction. As Glancy notes, “Paul never labels his own marks battle scars, nor does he use the language of military engagement to describe his subjection to whip and rod.”28 Moreover, even though Paul is boasting, he does not employ the brazen language of the slaves. If anything, Paul goes in the opposite direction with his use of passive language and intensified, exaggerated images like his references to being “many times in deaths” (ἐν θανάτοις πολλάκις) or “in cold and nakedness” (ἐν ψύχει καὶ γυμνότητι). This phrasing is closer to melodrama than bravado. This difference leads to one more observation. Whereas the slaves in the Asinaria are ambiguous about how exactly the forces of the enemy have been put to flight, Paul is ambiguous about what precisely he is boasting about concerning his hardships. Is it because they demonstrate Paul’s commitment? His credentials as a diakonos Christou? His ability to endure hardships? His sheer powerlessness? Paul’s phrasing leaves plenty of room for commentators to fill in the gap and, as we might expect, they often produce wildly divergent interpretations. To give just

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a few examples, Jerry W. McCant characterizes all of 2 Corinthians as “parodic” apology whereby Paul parodies the boasting of his opponents at every turn and nothing is to be taken seriously.29 Scott B. Andrews, conversely, suggests that in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33, Paul is arguing that he has been “burned up” in attempting to face his many challenges and that he has failed; yet it is his very failure in the face of these challenges that qualifies him for leadership; in other words, he is “too weak not to lead.”30 Laurence L. Welborn asserts that Paul is playing upon several literary motifs to construct his fool’s discourse in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 (e.g., the “leading slave,” “the braggart warrior,” “the anxious old man,” “the learned imposter,” and “the runaway”), and by so doing ends up playing the role of “the runaway fool.”31 And in the present volume, we can also add how Thomas Schmeller analyzes the passage in the broader context of 2 Cor. 11:21b–12:10 to show that here Paul subverts, but does not invert, the dynamic between weak and strong, leaving a degree of instability and uncertainty in the wake.32 Resolving the questions raised by these interpretations would require an analysis of the subtextual elements of humour, parody, and irony in both texts, something beyond the limits of mere description, but let us say a few words as we conclude part 1. We have been careful here to limit our description to what we find on the surface of the text and have tried to avoid “reading between the lines” for subtextual meanings. Even so, it is abundantly clear that there are multiple layers of “subtext” between the lines of both texts. Despite the differences in purpose, tone, and content, Paul and the slaves in Asinaria 546–579 both delicately dance around the issue of the shame of being beaten. Behind both texts is the shared experience of flogging: so much so that we might venture to say that they are both speaking the same “language.” For those who have not shared this experience, these subtexts may be difficult to read, but our hunch is that both Paul and the slaves in the Asinaria, if given the opportunity to meet (speaking hypothetically), would probably have been able to understand each other very well.33 Paul’s language lacks the bravado of the slaves in Asinaria 546–579, but what the slaves accomplish by using brazen military language and exaggeratedly “active” grammar, Paul accomplishes by using decidedly passive grammar and exaggerated images. Both texts go out of their way to deflect the ignominy of being flogged, as Glancy suggests. There are many other similarities and differences that we could explore, and we have only scratched the surface here, but merely identifying these two simple similarities and these two simple dissimilarities has revealed a great deal. Along the way, we have also been able to

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observe instances of how the language of the text shapes the way it is presented, which opens the door to our reflection on how language influences interpretation in the next section.

part 2 : l a n g uag e , m e a n in g, and i nterpretati on One important difference between these two texts is that they were originally written in two different languages: 2 Corinthians in Greek and the Asinaria in Latin. Language therefore figured prominently in our comparison in that we identified how distinctive grammatical and syntactical features of each language give shape to the two texts’ distinctive discourses. In part 2 we pick up on this theme and reflect on the impact of language on interpretation, particularly on how language structures thought. In some ways, this is an insight that most of us take for granted, but it seems to be particularly evident at multiple levels in the life and work of Leif Vaage. This is most visible in Leif’s work as a poet, where he takes full advantage of the opportunity to play around with language (which he has been known to do in multiple languages).34 But this just illustrates how he relates to language in general: in his deeper theoretical reflections on language in his biblical scholarship, in how he relates to others in his personal and professional life, even in the way he tells jokes. At the same time, while we want to emphasize the ways in which language structures thought, we do not want to imply that language predetermines thought. This is of course a huge topic, and one that has garnered a great deal of attention since the so-called “linguistic turn” in philosophy. But all we really want to say here is that language, even while limiting us as human beings, also gives us opportunities for expanding our horizons. Again, Leif Vaage is an embodiment of this as well, having placed himself at the intersection of numerous cultural and linguistic environments. Our reflections here are therefore rather personal, drawing upon our recollections of Vaage as a teacher and scholar to help us reflect on our experience of how language shapes the way we think. Before we begin, let us elaborate upon how we came to know him. We were doctoral students in New Testament at Emmanuel College in Toronto between 2006 and 2010 with Professor Vaage as our supervisor, Alcris meeting him earlier as an MDiv student and eventually going on to serve in intercultural ministries in the United Church of Canada General Council Office, and John going on to work with Leif for many years and eventually serving the United Church as overseas mission personnel in South Korea. Leif himself was born in British Columbia, Canada, the son of a Norwegian immigrant father and a mother born in Canada to

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immigrant parents from England. He studied in Oregon, Indiana, Ohio, and California, receiving his PhD from Claremont Graduate School in 1987 under the supervision of James M. Robinson, with a dissertation on the Sayings Gospel Q and the Cynic philosophers: “Q: The Ethos and Ethics of an Itinerant Intelligence.” Vaage visited Peru for the first time in 1985, beginning a relationship that has stood the test of time. At the invitation of the American Lutheran Church, he returned to Peru in 1987 to begin work in pastoral leadership theological training with the Lutheran communities in Lima. In 1991 he returned to North America to start teaching at the University of Toronto, in Emmanuel College, a theological training institution affiliated with the United Church of Canada. During his time at Emmanuel, Leif stayed in close contact with Peru, returning annually to teach as an adjunct professor at the Asociación Educativa Teológica Evangélica in Lima, and has continued to expand his ties with Latin America by serving on the editorial boards of the journals Revista de interpretación biblica latinoamericana (ribla ) and Fragmentos de Cultura, among other endeavours. At the same time, Vaage has also maintained close professional ties over the years with colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic, especially Norway, Spain, and Germany, visiting often for research and lecturing. During his academic career, Vaage has published extensively in English and Spanish, but has also written in Portuguese and German, and is conversant in numerous other languages. As an English-speaking Canadian born in Alberta now living and working in Seoul, and struggling to live and function in the Korean language (John), and an immigrant who arrived in Canada from Venezuela in 1995 without knowing anyone or a word of English and is now serving in an English-speaking congregation in Ottawa (Alcris), we particularly appreciate how Leif has consistently situated himself at the intersection of numerous linguistic environments and fully engaged with the culture of the place in which he finds himself. Perhaps the best place to begin our reflection on the impact of language on interpretation would be to describe what we have experienced as Vaage’s “compartmentalization.” As one of us used to say, “there is a Spanish Leif, an English Leif, a German Leif, even a Norwegian Leif.” This was sometimes a source of frustration. Alcris remarks that when she would go to him as her supervisor with a problem that she had gotten herself into (which was quite often!), “if I could get him speaking Spanish, I knew everything would be okay, and if he insisted in responding to me in English, though I knew it would be strictly business, it was also okay, but if he responded in German, I knew I was in trouble.” And if he responded in Norwegian, “then I knew I was really in for it!”

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Leif tends to keep these linguistic compartments separate, and rarely is there much direct interaction among them. As John recalls observing on more than one occasion, when Leif was discussing a topic in English and he recollected an insight in French, German, Spanish, or from some other context that was directly relevant to the matter at hand, he would reach into that other compartment and place it on the table for consideration, but otherwise Leif tends to keep his compartments quite separate and airtight. Alcris remembers him pausing with a smile and looking for the exact word that would express a whole idea, an argument, a “cosmovision,” or even provoke a “hermeneutical earth shake.” She saw him do this many times when he was searching for the right nuance in the right culture that would express the exact thing he wanted to say. In those times he would say something like “como decimos en Peru …” or “as we say in Canada.” For Vaage, a thought in Spanish really does need to be worked out in Spanish, and a thought in English really does need to be worked out in English, etc., and rarely do the two meet. It is not that an idea cannot be translated from one language to another, but each compartment has its own place and integrity. In the introduction to Borderline Exegesis, which contains English versions of essays he had initially written for publication in Spanish, Vaage reflects on how he found the writing process to be much harder when producing the English renditions than he had experienced when producing them in Spanish in the first place.35 He found this all the more puzzling because the impediments did not seem to arise on the Spanish side – a language he did not begin to speak until he was already an adult – but on the English side, the language he grew up speaking. Here he really does seem to have been working against the grain, trying to express his Spanish thought-processes in intelligible terms for English-speaking readers. His usual tendency, however, is to keep the thought-processes quite separate, letting them have their own place and mode of operation. An examination of Vaage’s publication record reveals, for example, that he seems to find the German language helpful for working out theoretical questions related to the Gospel of Mark, the English language helpful for continuing to work on questions about the relationship between the Cynics and the Sayings Gospel Q, and Latin American Spanish helpful for working through his more provocative ideas about Paul.36 A good example of how Leif thinks in compartmentalized terms appears in “The Excluded One: (Un)popular Christology and the Quest for the Historical Jesus in Europe, North America, and Latin America,” which is his contribution to the 2003 multi-author collection Discovering

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Jesus in Our Place: Contextual Christologies in a Globalised World.37 Here, Vaage recounts that early in his academic career, shortly after he first began to live in Peru, he wrote an article on the historical Jesus for a volume of the journal Foundations and Facets Forum that was published in 1989 in honour of his “Doktorvater,” James M. Robinson. In this 1989 article, while commenting on the saying in Matt. 11:19/ Luke 7:34 where Jesus is charged with being “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners,” Vaage had remarked that here “the man emerges, in current slang, as ‘a real party animal’” and “his behavior in this regard seems not to have conformed to the conventional image of religious seriousness and uprightness.”38 Vaage recounts that the response to this characterization of Jesus from his North American colleagues was “remarkably strong and long-lasting,” and that even his “Doktorvater” went out of his way, on more than one occasion, to “make clear his deep displeasure at the remark (and the line of interpretation to which it belongs).”39 Yet Vaage muses (in a sharp assessment of how historical Jesus scholarship is usually carried out in North America) that “if Jesus really were ‘a glutton and a drunkard,’ in the same way that most scholars assume that he ‘really was’ a friend of tax-collectors and sinners, then, for Robinson, and other ‘responsible’ New Testament scholars, it seems that the quest for the historical Jesus would obviously become not worth the effort.”40 That is, there is a vested interest in Jesus being seen in a particular way and this characterization of Jesus struck a raw nerve. The point Vaage is making here, in his contribution to a volume devoted to contextualized christologies in a globalized world, is that there is an intrinsic relationship “between the kind of Jesus one deems ‘plausible’ or ‘worthwhile’ discovering historically and one’s own specific social location,” something quite apt to the theme of the volume.41 But we are interested here in what these comments reveal about Leif. There are those who like to be provocative for the sake of being provocative. Leif E. Vaage, in our opinion, is not one of them. At the same time, we have never known Leif to shy away from academic controversy, especially when he has discovered that he has pushed a button. In this case, he seems to have been genuinely perplexed by the response that his characterization of Jesus as a “party animal” evoked. In his 2003 reflection, he goes on to comment – and this is very illuminating of our point – that had he been writing in Spanish, he would have spoken of “Jesús-festejero.”42 Roughly translated into English, it means much the same thing as “Jesus the party animal,” but with a rather different resonance. Referring to Jesus as “festejero,” Vaage muses, “would have made simple sense to the people with whom I was engaged both as a

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theological educator and as a pastoral agent.”43 He then goes on to say, “I cannot imagine anyone in Peru finding such a description of Jesus to be problematic, if only because of the semantic correspondence in this place between the opportunity truly to ‘live’ (vivir) – versus the daily struggle to survive (sobrevivir) – and the enjoyment of social revelry (festejar).” This would therefore seem to be one instance, early on in his academic career, when Leif did not manage to keep his compartments sufficiently airtight. Vaage certainly does not characterize it this way, but in the 1989 article, he was attempting to speak a Spanish thought to an English-speaking audience, and he was naïvely unaware at the time of how differently it would resonate. Whether he learned anything from this experience, we do not know, but from the extent of his comments on the experience in 2003, it is clear that it provided fodder for subsequent reflection on the relationship between language and thought (worked out in this case in English). Without him being aware of it, even from the start Peru was beginning to change him. To go on to another point, but to draw further upon Vaage’s reflections just quoted, when he qualifies a statement with a phrase like “in the language of that place,” he is touching upon something important. Leif knows full well, as Alcris’s many heart-felt conversations with him in Spanish bear witness, that one can speak one’s language far from home. That is, there is no intrinsic relationship between a language, strictly speaking, and a place. And yet language as we are thinking of it here refers to so much more than just grammar and syntax. Again, this can be seen in Leif’s engagement with language. Alcris reflects that when she met Leif for the first time, she felt like she was speaking with someone who could not only communicate in Spanish but was immersed in the culture and even spoke with a distinct Peruvian accent. He is that much inside the language: the everyday experience of people, their idiosyncrasies, their humour, and, as we say in Spanish, “conversaciones de sobremesa,” the lingering at the table after a meal, drinking coffee, and talking – in Latin America it sometimes goes on until after 2 am. This too is a manifestation of Leif’s compartmentalization: when he is engaged, he fully immerses himself into a language. For Leif, communicating in a language is so much more than mere “language”: it is also culture and politics and the shared lived experience of people, all wrapped up together. At the same time, this applies even to our attempts here to talk about the ways that language structures thought. To formulate the question in this way seems to imply that thought functions independently of language, which is exactly the opposite of the point we want to make. As a poet, Leif Vaage would be the first to observe that a poem can be

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translated from one language into another but only as a translation: whatever poetic merit it might have in the translated language makes it a different poem entirely, however closely the two poems may be related. In other words, there is really no such thing as thought that is independent of one’s language. To return our reflections to Paul and 2 Cor. 11:21b–33, Vaage himself comments on this precise passage in “Es preciso gloriarse: La palabra extasiada de Pablo – y de ribla ,” which he wrote as a contribution to a special issue of the journal, celebrating ribla ’s contribution to contextual biblical scholarship in Latin America.44 Vaage argues that in these verses, Paul reviews all that he has suffered in his body as an apostle, which Vaage, using an image from contemporary Latin America, describes as in effect the curriculum vitae of the marginalized, “the itinerant life of all those who are displaced or are migrants,” which is the everyday life of “la polilla de la tierra” – the moth of the earth – “as the children and youth who live on the street without a roof are often called in Bolivia.”45 Vaage insists that Paul is not speaking ironically here, even though “the concept of irony is the most common framework within which this text has been interpreted by scholars.”46 Here is a good example of Vaage’s style of brazenly making an empirically indefensible statement that is at the same time essentially sound. Our exploration of 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 in part 1 did not address the question of irony, but we nevertheless detected multiple levels of subtext between the lines of both texts. From that point of view, Vaage could not be more wrong. But from the point of view of where biblical scholarship tends to go with it, Vaage seems to have hit the nail on the head: the tendency among North American biblical scholars to read Paul’s words here as “ironic” does indeed seem to be, as Vaage says, “un desvio,” a diversion, an attempt to avoid what is obvious in the text.47 Biblical scholars are simply uncomfortable with the idea of Paul having what Jennifer Glancy terms a “whippable” body.48 One might immediately wonder to what degree this is a function of language structuring thought. Vaage himself would probably say that it is at least partially a function of biblical scholars wanting to read Paul as a comfortable partner for academic conversation. Paul is turned into a detached mind whose body is being punished for its uncomfortable and stubborn message. It is not that Paul’s hardships are not real, but they are regarded as inconveniences rather than as a way of life. There may be many reasons why Vaage is not inclined to read Paul in this way, but our impression is that Leif’s exposure to Latin America has made a decisive difference. In opening himself to Latin American experience, body, mind, and soul, Leif left himself open to being changed. We are not implying

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that because of Latin America, Leif understands Paul better than he otherwise would have, but we do think he understands Paul differently. Leif’s approach to language – his love of language, his use of language as a way of connecting – also opened him to seeing Paul in this way; a shift from a focus on the mind of the apostle to a focus on his beaten, tortured, tired, cold, hungry, weakened, and vulnerable body. It is not that there is not also intellectual rigour here (to equate intellectual rigour and a focus on the mind). But Vaage also goes beyond just mind here. For some people, language may be merely a matter of mind, a matter of mastering the grammar and syntax, but for Leif, no. For Leif, his use of language allows him to touch other worlds. We conclude our reflections here with a few personal words of tribute to Leif Vaage. He was for us as students a source, simultaneously, of support, stimulation, challenge, fear, and intimidation: as we say in Venezuela (and sometimes also in Alberta), nos mantenía temblando como un flan – he kept us quaking in our boots! Having a mentor who could shift from one language to another with elegance, fluidity, and acuity, specifically capturing the humour and cotidianidad (daily way of living) of the particular group, was an inspiration and opened new ways for us to explore biblical texts. Leif’s engagement with language – whether English, Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Coptic, etc. – was never merely about mastering syntax and grammar in an intellectual way, but about connecting to the day-to-day, bodily experience of people. In particular, the way he talked about Paul was transformative. No longer was Paul simply an authoritative voice or a detached brilliant mind, but a humbler Paul, a more human Paul, passionate and real, who, because of his own fierce suffering, could relate to the marginal experience of the “polillas de la tierra,” those disposable and utterly vulnerable bodies who constituted the majority in the Corinthian church. Our experience of Leif is like this too: someone who allows himself to be transformed by language, who does not use language to raise himself above the fray of life but to enter into the fullness of it. not e s 1 We are using the Greek text of 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 as reconstructed in NestleAland28 (na 28), and the Latin text of Asinaria 546–579 as reconstructed in Frederick Leo, Plauti Comoediae, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), 1:74–5. Neither, of course, is a “pure” text: they are editorially reconstructed texts that have been domesticated for our use. See the varying treatments of the history

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of the biblical text on display in this volume: Williams, “Imperialization of the Remains,” (present volume), 334–56; Brown, “Hidden Wisdom,” (present volume), 169–92; Droge, “Whodunnit” (present volume), 305–33. The list of hardships that Paul recounts in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 appears in the midst of what many scholars refer to as Paul’s Narrenrede, or “fool’s discourse” (2 Cor. 11:16–12:13). See Hans Windisch, Der zweite Korintherbrief, 9th ed., kek 6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1924), 316; Josef Zmijewski, Der Stil der paulinischen ‘Narrenrede’: Analyse der Sprachgestaltung in 2 Kor 11,1—12,10 als Beitrag zur Methodik von Stiluntersuchungen neutestamentischer Texte, bbb 52 (Cologne: Hanstein, 1978), 412–41; Jan Lambrecht, “The Fool’s Speech and Its Context: Paul’s Particular Way of Arguing in 2 Cor 10–13,” Bib 83 (2001): 305–24; Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians, 2nd ed., wbc 40 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 556; B.J. Oropeza, Exploring Second Corinthians 10–13: Death and Life: Hardship and Rivalry, Rhetoric of Religion in Antiquity 3 (Atlanta: sbl , 2016), 631–87. But this is not an uncontested description. See also others who question the use of the term: Ryan S. Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education: Comparative Rhetoric and 2 Corinthians 10–13, sblecl 10 (Atlanta: sbl, 2013), 141–8; Antonio Pitta, “Il ‘discorso del pazzo’ o periautologia immoderata? Analisi retorico-letteraria di 2 Cor 11,1—12,18,” Bib 87 (2006): 493–510. For more on Paul’s desperate situation in Corinth, see Jones, “Paul the Manual Labourer” (present volume), 46–69. The last item on the list (ἐν θανάτοις πολλάκις) is rather peculiar. Martin says, “‘in deaths often,’ suggests a constant exposure to death and its threats” (2 Corinthians, 565). The use of the plural intensifies the image. Frank J. Matera suggests that in the next sequence, Paul specifies five ways in which he came “close to death on numerous occasions.” (II Corinthians: A Commentary, ntl [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003], 268). See also Jones, “Paul the Manual Labourer,” 53–5. The forty-minus-one lashes was Jewish idiom for punishment received at the hands of synagogue authorities: Martin (2 Corinthians, 565) suggests that the form “forty less one” is rabbinic, though “Greek usage of the phrase is attested.” As also noted by Leif E. Vaage in “Es preciso gloriarse: la palabra extasiada de Pablo – y de ribla ,” ribla 50 (2006): 100n4. This point will come up again in part 2. Pauline scholars depict the repetitive structure in various ways, but Matera (II Corinthians, 269, emphasis in original) depicts it as “labor and toil / often in sleepless nights / in hunger and thirst, / often without food, / in the cold and poorly clothed.” Again, see also Jones, “Paul the Manual Labourer,” 52–5.

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8 Plautus, Asinaria: The One about the Asses, trans. John Henderson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), vii. 9 Eduard Fraenkel, Platonisches im Plautus (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), 234. 10 For our purposes, we are treating the dialogue between the two slaves as a single list of hardships, even though it is presented in the play as a dialogue between two people. 11 Henderson, Asinaria, 112. 12 As John Porter notes, indoctores is a Plautian hapax legomenon, a substantive based on the verb induco, “to lead in”: “it is difficult to know what to make of the word, given the fragmentary nature of the passage, but it would seem to be in apposition to the items previously listed – comic personification” (Plautus’ Asinaria: A Grammatical Commentary for Students, 1 Aug 2021 ed. [self-published, 2021], 125; https://www.academia.edu/39572020/Plautus_ Asinaria_A_Grammatical_Commentary_for_Students). 13 Porter paraphrases this as “[The enemy’s great forces,] fighting valiantly, thanks to our dishonest deceptions have achieved … a quick retreat!” He notes that the grandiloquent expression vi pugnando (“by fighting mightily”) is “ironically misleading, since the enemy’s valor is quickly undone by the slaves’ deceptions and concludes with the enemy forces themselves being routed.” Likewise, he takes fugae as an objective genitive with potiti sunt, it being a “comically grand circumlocution with a humorously ironic twist (since soldiers are normally celebrated for the taking of a city or the like, not the achievement of turning tail” (Plautus’ Asinaria, 125). 14 Wolfgang De Melo, at this point in his translation, inserts a parenthetical “(with a sneer)” to indicate that Leonida is speaking sarcastically (Plautus, Amphitryon, The Comedy of Asses, The Pot of Gold, The Two Bacchises, The Captives, trans. Wolfgang De Melo, lcl 60 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011], 203). 15 Porter (Plautus’ Asinaria, 128) identifies lictores as a grandiose term for lorarri – floggers who beat slaves with leather whips. 16 Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, jlcrs 14 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 52; emphasis in original. 17 John T. Fitzgerald explores catalogues of hardship as a technical subcategory of what Rudolf Bultmann identified as Peristasenkatologe (“catalogues of circumstances”), for the purpose of examining the catalogues of hardship that appear in the Corinthian correspondence. See Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence, sblds 99 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1988). Here, however, we are not using the term in quite so technical a way: in these passages both Paul

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and the slaves in the Asinaria provide lists of their hardships, even if the slaves seem to be going out of their way to pretend these are not hardships. Roberta Stewart, Plautus and Roman Slavery (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 111. Although our aim in part 1 is simply to describe what we find in the text itself, not to read between the lines or analyze its “subtexts,” in this passage we are coming up against what feels like humour. A statement like “Who is a mightier man than me at enduring blows?” could be meant by the character, or by the actor delivering the lines, as funny. In fact, this might be precisely where the humour of the play comes in – making a claim that in real life would be utterly laughable. There is some inconsistency in what Libanus says. On the one hand, the slaves have come up to battle against the numerous instruments of torture armed with “deceits, contrivances, and subtleties,” and thanks to the slaves’ “perjuries” the enemy forces have “taken possession of flight,” but at the same time, he asks rhetorically (if only in jest) “who is a mightier man than me at enduring blows?” and praises Leonida for handing over the lictores to exhaustion “with his hardiness.” This ambiguity is important, as we shall see. This instability in the speech of the slaves is not accidental. Amy Richlin draws attention to the element of double entendre in the speech of slaves in Plautine comedies: expressing in humour under the guise of “it’s just a joke” what could not normally be said aloud (“Talking to Slaves in the Plautine Audience,” ClAnt 33 [2014]: 174–226). Something analogous is also happening in 2 Cor. 11 when Paul asks his listeners/readers in advance to bear with him in a little bit of foolishness (ἀφροσύνη) – adding an element of instability to everything that follows. Jennifer A. Glancy, “Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23–25),” jbl 123 (2004): 131. Kathleen McCarthy, Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Erich Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). It is telling that the one exception to this appears only at the very end of the passage, and then not in Paul’s proper list itself but at the end of his description of his escape from Damascus: “and I fled (ἐξέφυγον) out of Aretas’s hands.” Yet even this verb, though active in form, is still somewhat passive in terms of its meaning. The one exception is Libanus’s last line: num male relata est gratia (literally, “The favour having now been returned nastily”). The grammar does not indicate that it is Libanus that has returned the favour: we must infer it from the context.

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26 William Fitzgerald remarks that Libanus’s entrance in Act III of the Asinaria is a speech of thanksgiving “to all the wiles and trickeries by which he has triumphed, as though in a military campaign: relying on his shoulders and his forearms … he has defeated all the instruments of torture ranged against him,” culminating “in a neat parallel between the brave soldier and the clever slave” (Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], 40). Along the same lines, Myles McDonnell (Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 23–4) emphasizes that Libanus’s prayer to Perfidia is full of martial language, including the “official sounding” quae domi duellique male fecisti as a comic substitution for the more usual quae bene fecisti. 27 McCarthy, Slaves, Masters, 27. 28 Glancy, “Boasting of Beatings,” 115. Glancy suggests that one reason why Paul does not explicitly use military language to describe his subjection to whip and rod may be the realization that it would subject him to mockery and likely erode his authority in Corinth even further. 29 Jerry W. McCant, 2 Corinthians, Readings (New York: T&T Clark, 1999). 30 Scott B. Andrews, “Too Weak Not to Lead: The Form and Function of 2 Cor 11.23b–33,” nts 41 (1995): 263–76. 31 Laurence L. Welborn, “The Runaway Paul,” htr (1999): 115–63. 32 Schmeller, “Whoever Boasts” (present volume), 25–45. 33 As characters in a comedy, Libanus and Leonida are of course constructs from the playwright’s imagination and yet, as Amy Richlin emphasizes, Plautus developed his plays for an audience that included slaves and freedpersons and created characters that resonated with his audience’s real experiences. Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 1. 34 See, e.g., Vaage’s book-length poetry collections: Schooled in Salt (Toronto: St Thomas Poetry Series, 2003); Perfect Day (Toronto: Quattro, 2016); Metaphysical Athlete (Toronto: Quattro, 2019). For an example of his Spanish-language poetry, see “Recordar,” Noticias Aliadas (26 July 1990): 3. 35 Vaage, Borderline Exegesis, Signifying (on) Scriptures (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 14. 36 Borderline Exegesis is perhaps the exception to the rule: it is Leif’s attempt to “translate” his engagement with the Christian Bible in Spanish in Latin America into English and North American terms. 37 Leif E. Vaage, “The Excluded One: (Un)popular Christology and the Quest for the Historical Jesus in Europe, North America, and Latin America,” in Discovering Jesus in Our Place: Contextual Christologies in a Globalised World, ed. Sturla J. Stålsett (Delhi: ispck , 2003), 121–44.

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38 Leif E. Vaage, “Q1 and the Historical Jesus: Some Peculiar Sayings (7:33–34; 9:57–58, 59–60; 14:26–27),” Foundations and Facets Forum 5/2 (1989): 165. 39 Vaage, “Excluded One,” 124. 40 Ibid., 124–5. 41 Ibid., 125. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Vaage, “Es preciso gloriarse.” As a matter of note, the title of Vaage’s tribute can be translated as “It Is Necessary to Boast: The Ecstatic Word of Paul – and of ribla .” 45 “Lo que se resume en estos versículos es efectivamente el curriculum vitae de un marginalizado, el itinerario de vida de todo desplazado o imigrante, el diario vivir de la ‘polilla’ de la tierra, como en Bolivia se suele llamar a los niños y jovenes que viven en la calle sin techo” (Vaage, “Es preciso gloriarse,” 100n5). 46 “No está hablando irónicamente aquí, aunque el concepto de la ironía es el marco más común, dentro del cual este texto ha sido interpretado por los estudiosos” (Vaage, “Es preciso gloriarse,” 100). Vaage does however refine his assertion in a footnote by suggesting that in 2 Cor. 11:23 it is not irony, but a “certain bitterness,” or perhaps “exasperation,” which is expressed in the phrase “I am more than them, although when I say this, I am speaking like a crazy person.” This would seem to assume that bitterness and irony are mutually exclusive. There are, however, varieties of irony, as Northrop Frye, for example, points out in his discussion of irony in the third essay of Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). In particular, Frye describes the “fourth phase of irony” as an irony of realism. That Paul is expressing bitterness or exasperation does not prevent him from also expressing it ironically. 47 “En el presente caso, tal uso del concepto es claramente un desvío: un intento de eludir lo obvio del texto.” (Vaage, “Es preciso gloriarse,” 100). 48 Glancy, “Boasting of Beatings,” 107n36.

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Who Saw Any of This Coming? Response to Schmeller, Jones, Zeichmann, and Limongi and Egger Colleen Shantz

In 2017, at the meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston, I was in the midst of one of those reception conversations reviewing the good and bad of sessions attended thus far. “Are there any papers that you’ve really enjoyed?” I asked my interlocutor. They replied, in thrall, that they had heard Leif Vaage present in the inaugural session of the Historical Paul unit.1 By the report of my friend, the paper was captivating and moving, while also enlightening, and the best presentation they had heard all day. I pressed for specifics – because who wouldn’t? – inquiring about what exactly had been said, but my friend could not justify this impression with any coherent account of the argument. They were disoriented by the presentation but happily so, and clearly in a way that would continue to unsettle their thinking, even after the effects of conference fatigue and reception libations had worn off. Who knew what would come of that bit of disorder? This anecdote, with its ambiguous review of the honouree’s contribution, may seem like a strange one to choose for a festschrift. But strangeness – not only with its attendant disorientation and disarray but also its provocation of curiosity and creativity – is very much to the point in a response to the work and teaching of Leif Vaage. When undertaken thoughtfully, such disruption of the standard mapping of terrain of any field deepens our exploration of the territory.2 (Hence, and not surprisingly, the dissertations of three of the authors in this section began in Vaage’s courses in the midst of thoughtful disruption.3) At the same time, Vaage has not avoided explicit questions of meaningfulness

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and how meaning is made, especially by Paul and especially in the face of Paul’s loss of access to its conventional sources. “Meaning” is the organizing theme of this response for a few reasons. First, each essay in this section questions one piece of key evidence in dominant readings of Paul. Second, through their interpretive choices, each author queries the often underexamined means by which scholarship makes meaning – whether through a privileged theological paradigm, ignored details, the unexamined influence of Acts, or the choice of comparanda for Paul’s self-description. Third, the attention to meaning is present in Paul’s letters themselves. As the themes of these essays – social and physical weakness, shameful work, penal confinement, and physical beatings – show, Paul’s life encompassed significant violations of the meaning-structures inherited through his social context. His letters respond to those violations, actively forging new links from the wreckage. Finally, the category of meaning-making cuts across the occasional antipathy between theological and religious studies approaches to the study of Paul, for interpretation of any kind is an investment in meaning. For now, the rough-and-ready definition of “meaning” provided by psychologists Travis Proulx and Michael Inzlicht will suffice: meaning is constituted by all “that allows us to make sense of our experiences” and, in particular, the epistemologically reliable relationships between what is happening and why it is happening.4 Violations of those epistemological relationships – the things we did not see coming – reliably trigger an array of seeking behaviours to compensate for that loss and an accompanying urge to resolve the breach.

d is ru p t e d ac a d e m ic as sumpti ons The four chapters in this section each identify an assumption about Paul’s biography that deserves reconsideration. They share an interest in the indignities, including physical violence, that Paul endured. These abuses constitute the what of the meaning violations in his life. At the same time, they also share an interest in the typical academic landmarks by which these sufferings are mapped onto a coherent picture of the person and life of Paul. Those interpretive assumptions are the why of meaning-making for contemporary scholarship, if not also for Paul. In addition to questioning the interpretive status quo, the authors have identified alternative evidence or gaps in the evidentiary claims regarding the Paul of academic convention. In a general way, the conventional view that is scrutinized in these four chapters can be summarized as the promotion of Paul’s respectable

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Table 5.1 | Scrutiny of scholarly doxa Point of Pauline doxa

Counterargument

Schmeller

Paul has wholly redefined power While Paul speaks promas weakness. inently of weakness, he weaves it together with more ordinary senses of power.

Jones

Paul’s physical labour was his free choice in the mode of a philosopher.

Paul’s labour and attendant conditions were thoroughly shameful and inescapable.

Zeichmann

Paul wrote Philippians from prison where he was held in a significant administrative building.

Paul’s “chains” might more plausibly be understood as forced labour on some occasions.

Limongi and Egger

Paul’s catalogues of hardship belong to the persuasive efforts of admirable men.

Rhetorical conventions of satire and the slaves’ perspectives are equally relevant points of reference.

status or, as Zeichmann puts it in the introduction, “Paul as a man of conventionally identifiable ‘strength.’”5 More specifically, the conventional portrait encompasses claims that he is educated (by important teachers), a Roman citizen, an exemplary philosopher/theologian, and free to exercise agency in a wide swath of decisions, including how to provide for himself. As Zeichmann has also argued in his chapter, the drift toward this portrait is due largely to the magnetic pull of Acts, for Acts provides not only more detail than Paul’s letters but also the emotional and narrative structure that holds those elements in meaningful relationship to one another. Thus, while details in the genre of a letter, with its patchy sense of context and largely single-sided conversation, can seem arbitrary and atomistic, in a narrative like Acts such details are linked by explicit claims about their significance and their causeand-effect relationship to other elements in the account. In narrative,

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meaning holds. So, the structures established in Acts ineluctably map themselves onto the letters and thereby shape the doxa of Pauline scholarship.6 In turn, scholarship on Paul plays an outsized role in structuring meaning within the interpretation of earliest and continuing Christianity, especially interpretation within ensuing religious traditions (particularly those in Luther’s wake), as well as theological study in general. The interpretation of Paul provides several of the landmarks by which these conversations take their bearings.7 As summarized in the table, each chapter in this section treats one of the points of convention about Paul’s biography and all are connected by their interest in complicating a too-easy picture of Paul’s importance or social capital. Not surprisingly, the so-called hardship catalogues figure prominently in these chapters because, in those passages, Paul makes plain the physical and social pain that characterized the latter half of his life. If ever there was a contrast between the “plain sense” of the text and the consensus drift toward apostolic doxa, it will be found in interpretations of this passage. In these sections (1 Cor. 4:6–13; 2 Cor. 4:8–9, 6:4b–10, 11:23–28, 12:10b; Rom. 8:35–39; Phil. 4:11–12),8 Paul displays the ways in which he is not at all the ideal leader of anyone’s strategic plan. His lists include events of social and material debasement that he overcame only by mere survival. While these injuries have not been ignored in Pauline scholarship, the five authors of these chapters examine evidence that undermines or nuances some of the most common interpretations.

t h o m as s c h m e l l e r a n d a s trong paul Our examination of Paul and power begins with Thomas Schmeller’s considerations of Paul’s sustained discourse about weakness. Schmeller places his analysis in conversation with two common interpretive practices: (1) reading Paul in a contest of legitimation with equally matched opponents and, (2) influenced by Luther, finding in the letters a radical theology of weakness. Schmeller takes no issue with the first claim, but shows that the second, which has been taken by many as Paul’s theologia crucis, is largely overstated or misconstrued. Writing from a German context where the influence of Martin Luther casts a particularly long shadow over Pauline scholarship, Schmeller summarizes the theological claim in this way: “At the bottom of Paul’s theology lies the discovery that human beings cannot rely on their own power, but are wholly dependent on God’s power. This divine power is different from human expectation. It does not show itself in experiences of success, of prosperity,

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of health, but it shows itself in situations of suffering and hopelessness. It never becomes part of humans’ own power, but it always stays vis aliena, power not one’s own, upon which humans remain dependent and must rely.”9 According to this interpretation, Paul never boasts of success but only of conditions of weakness that are reflective of the pattern of Christ’s suffering and death. This hermeneutical claim, says Schmeller, is often taken as “the true core of Pauline theology.” This theological interpretation of Paul’s embrace of weakness is overstated, according to Schmeller. It espouses a certain kind of theological genius that is freely able to transcend cultural norms. In that way, it exemplifies the tendency (described in the introduction) to claim Paul as thoroughly revisionist, breaking radically with things as they were.10 Schmeller walks carefully through the Corinthian correspondence to show that Paul’s sense of weakness is not, in fact, a unique break from traditional construals of power; rather, power and weakness exist in complex interrelationship and in multiple manifestations throughout these letters. Among the expressions of power that Schmeller sees complicating the picture are: Paul’s threats of (metaphorical?) violence (1 Cor. 4:21), displays of stamina (1 Cor. 4:11–13), and self-presentation as a soldier who destroys fortresses and wields divine weapons (2 Cor. 10:3–6). At the same time, he notes that these bursts of bravado sometimes sit alongside more conventional claims of weakness, while at other points weakness and power are equated. Schmeller successfully interrupts the easy assumptions of a dichotomous relationship between power and weakness, demonstrating Paul’s more complex performance of strength (whether rhetorical or actual). In so disturbing the force of the conventional argument, Schmeller’s chapter challenges the notion that these spectra of strength and weakness are the best formulation of Paul’s meaning. If Paul were self-consciously generating a new theological alignment between power and weakness, other language would probably serve his purposes better. Foremost, the word ἰσχυρός (usually translated as “strong” or “mighty”), which Paul uses elsewhere, expresses the dichotomy well. Indeed, he employs it 1 Cor. 1:27 where it unequivocally conveys the sense of power/strength – as well as God’s thwarting of such ways for the sake God’s preference for the foolish/disrespected (μωρὰ) and the weak (ἀσθενῆ) as a means of shaming/frustrating (καταισχύνω) the wise and the strong.11 But the key texts used in the conventional argument feature the word δύναμις (“power” or “ability”), which Paul reserves almost exclusively as a characteristic of God or the structuring of the cosmos (which is another way of naming a characteristic of God).12 Correspondingly, the word

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he uses more frequently to describe his own capacity is ἐξουσία (license or authority), which reinforces the necessity of external empowerment. Thus, Paul’s semantic patterns support only one part of the theological claim that Schmeller critiques: Paul consistently indicates that power/ ability flows from God. At the same time, Schmeller shows convincingly that, once a person is divinely empowered, this expression of ability can look a lot like domination. In short, even while Paul is consistent in his sense of innate human weakness, he does not quite manage a thorough reformulation of divine power. There is no fully reformulated theology of power and weakness.

c at h e r in e jo n e s a n d paul’s labour In her chapter, Jones considers the problems of Paul’s manual labour – a problem both for Paul in Corinth and for the history of interpretation. In this case, Acts assists in Paul’s rehabilitation through its project of legitimization, especially through claims that Paul was educated at the feet of the esteemed rabbi Gamaliel (22:3). In turn, that datum allows interpreters to capitalize on examples of early rabbis who practised a trade themselves or at least valued such training for others. Some who would redeem Paul’s labour point to various philosophers who encouraged work in a trade. The classic study of Ronald Hock makes significant use of this connection. Another layer of legitimation includes the statements of various ancient elite writers who see scope for the dignity of a noble labourer (although they are viewing from a safe distance). Jones lists the assorted provisos that these men offer for appropriate kinds of manual labour: the work should not cause weakness, it should provide a decent income, it should be clean, it should produce a product of value, it should require intelligence, etc., etc. Her evidence extends to seating plans in theatres where, for some of these reasons, goldsmiths get better seats than butchers, for example. Of course, given the stench and filth of their labour, tanners and those in adjacent occupations (like leatherworkers) do not fare well in these hierarchies of worker value. As Jones demonstrates, each of these claims only illustrates how far Paul lies outside the reach of these scant hopes for legitimacy. Jones champions an alternative problematic: How could Paul have imagined that his manual labour would ever win the esteem of the Corinthians? As she tugs at the various threads of Paul’s presentation in the Corinthian letters, any sustained argument for the inherent dignity of his status as a manual labourer begins to loosen. For example, Jones suggests that Paul’s statement in 1 Cor. 9:6 contradicts the assumption

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of Pauline scholars that apostolic identity automatically entailed financial support. Even short of that claim, we can easily grant that the tentativeness of his question, mitigated with a double negative, suggests his “social power” (her gloss of ἐξουσία) to be free of work is far from secure. But Jones further supports her claim with other sections of the letter, particularly 1 Cor. 4:9–13, which seems to assume that all apostles, by nature of being apostles, are bodily burdened with work and other forms of humiliation. In Paul’s presentation the two are universally and inextricably intertwined. She points out, furthermore, that debased labour does not appear in other extant lists of hardships because the only way to overcome manual labour is by earning more elevated work. Hence, merely bearing up under those circumstances is not the stuff of virtue. In short, says Jones, suggestions that Paul would improve his reputation by talking about his manual labour ignore the evidence; instead, in her analysis, his argument is both “idiosyncratic” and forced upon him. None of this is to say that Paul is not trying to make a virtue of his necessity. As with most cultural dynamics, the effects of norms are somewhat malleable and open to negotiation. While they continue to be substantial enough to qualify as norms, they are not immutable, and in particular cases those whose work (or other cultural markers) confers a strongly defined status can still manage to parlay those circumstances to some other effect. However, following Jones, we can see that Paul’s attempts to argue for the dignity of his work are an expensive strategy, if not a miscalculation. All of which raises the question of necessity. His persuasive success depends on forging new meaning links among the circumstances of his daily life, his social role, and the conventions of his society. Jones shows how strenuous that labour is, too.

chri s to p h e r b . z e ic h m a nn and paul i n chai ns With Zeichmann’s chapter we shift from Paul’s “voluntary” work to the possibility of his forced labour. Zeichmann begins with a set of incisive methodological observations that centre on the use of Acts. The case of Paul’s incarceration is an apt illustration of the problem of relying on Acts for three interrelated reasons: first, because Paul says tantalizingly little about the material circumstances of his confinements in his letters; second, because Acts says a lot about Paul and confinement; and, third, because the evidence about incarceration that is generally available from the period contradicts the picture we get from Acts. In particular, Zeichmann questions why the claim that Paul was held in some form of official captivity on only three occasions (as in Acts) rather than multiple times

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(as in 2 Cor. 6:5, 11:23–24) has held such sway. He observes further how much the Lukan scenes have shackled the dominant reconstructions by failing to move beyond the picture of lengthy confinements in significant public building despite the range of evidence for other forms of captivity. Zeichmann’s analysis illustrates the power of informed imagination in scholarly work and the value of sources beyond the canon. For instance, he examines Paul’s language of self-description in his so-called prison letters, particularly whether the use of “chains” might be literal. He shows that forced labour was far more common in long periods of detention than was imprisonment, if for no other reason than the cost of holding someone under those conditions. In carceral logic, both then and now, forced labour had the combined advantages of material return on the prisoners’ labour and the punishment it inflicted on them. Further, the chapter weighs the extant records that document detention in prisons. The majority of them show imprisonment for no more than the few days between arrest and hearing or corporal punishment. There are exceptions to this tendency that make the Acts pattern possible; but the point Zeichmann makes repeatedly is that the decision to opt for the depiction in Acts is rarely based on the weight of internal and external evidence. Rather, like the story of Paul’s conversion, the Acts account of his detentions may be a case of providing sense to a life that otherwise seems haphazard and unaccountable. Indeed, a little more exploration of the facts also exposes implausible points in the Acts account. For example, as Zeichmann argues, much of the depiction of Paul’s conflicts with the law depends upon the Lukan claim of his Roman citizenship, which is rendered dubious by details from Paul’s letters (e.g., beatings with rods 2 Cor. 11:25). Likewise, Paul’s contemplation of death in captivity (Phil. 1:20–26) belies the relative ease of his conditions in the Acts imprisonments. Finally, Acts weaves a story around an impressively virtuous man whose powerful-but-honest speeches and personal comportment move the plot forward, both attracting opposition and overcoming it. (Interestingly, the dramatic revelations in Acts of Paul’s purported citizenship illustrate both of these features: advancing the plot in Acts 22:25–30 and establishing Paul’s honour in Acts 16:35–39.) Zeichmann recounts these and other ways that Acts is closer to a Greek novel, the made-for-tv version of Paul’s life based on a true story, than to any other genre in antiquity. The narrative of Acts elevates Paul’s prison circumstances, giving them meaningful force, and simultaneously elevates Paul as an important actor rather than one of the many people whose captivity proved debilitating. Meaning is illusive when the actions of the powerful are arbitrary. Acts solves that problem.

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a l c r is l im o n g i a n d john a. egger o n pau l’ s beati ngs Admittedly, the critique of received Pauline doxa is only implicit in the contribution of Limongi and Egger. Their method is a combination of good, old-fashioned close-reading and comparison. This form of comparison does not stake any genealogical or causal claims nor does it seek to distinguish Paul’s writing from all similar data; rather, their comparison considers what can be seen in a subject by viewing it from the perspective of some other place (even a place seemingly far removed). In short, its purpose is analytical.13 Hence, in choosing the speech from Plautus’s Asinaria they are not claiming that Paul’s speech in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 belongs to a special category of slave discourse, let alone the genre of a play; rather, they are comparing the two passages purely to see what the new angle of approach might bring to light. Nonetheless, in selecting the unusual comparator of the slave dialogue, they destabilize – at least implicitly – the typical assumption that Paul belongs in the category of dignified orator, for most other treatments choose only significant figures and sincere appeals for their comparanda. Of course, the available comparators are already limited by the narrow extent of literacy and cost of the textual production. For that reason, first-person accounts in antiquity are almost always in the voice of Big Men and those men tend to recount their hardships for purposes of building or restoring admirable reputations.14 But that is not to say that no one else in Mediterranean antiquity employed the dynamics of the humble-boast or the complain-brag. Plautus’s fictional exchange between the slave characters Libanus and Leonida stretches the bounds of the usual frame of reference even further by introducing other content and purposes of the form. Reviewing their close reading of the Pauline passage, one is struck by how it reveals the clear signs of effort in its construction while simultaneously highlighting its idiosyncratic content and tone. In other words, this is no random list, hastily composed. It is an account that suggests Paul has thought about these hardships at some length – at least long enough to see connections among them that are nevertheless not conventional. And these links drive the structure of the passage: a set of general nouns plus adverbs of frequency (toils, incarcerations, beatings, deaths in 11:24), a section that is based in quantification (five sets of thirty-nine, three times, three instances, and the duration of an entire day in 11:25), eight kinds of threat that attended his itineracy (11:26), and finally a grammatically complex intensification of his routine austerities (11:27). As Limongi and Egger show, the account is also shaped in such a way

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that it highlights Paul’s passivity. Unlike Plautus’s slaves who farcically claim credit for the severity of their own beatings or the military men who claim honour in their battle scars, Paul explicitly avoids presenting himself as the actor in the drama of his sufferings. Things happen to him. Verbs are either passively constructed or missing altogether. At the same time, the categorization is not conventional or even self-evident, as Limongi and Egger recognize. The available examples highlight the variety of tones that the same form can take without undo effort. In the conventional version of hardship catalogues, the tone is one of honour and personal triumph. Plautus plays with the form to produce irony and either farce or satire. Either option seems easily realized depending on staging and audience. By contrast, Paul’s tone is, as Limongi and Egger put it, “closer to melodrama than bravado.”15 Plautus changes the frame by flipping the role of hero. Paul changes the frame by muting the protagonist. In each case, the performer of the catalogue negotiates the variation in tone and purpose from the standard form, moulding meaning with the tools that lie to hand.

pau l’ s m e a n in g and ours I began this response with reference to meaning-making, especially as it coincides with Vaage’s interest in reading Paul in a different mode. Each of these chapters invites us to consider what we learn by following Vaage’s example. When we read in order to explore a life – Paul’s life – with more of both its ambiguity and open-endedness, how do we make meaning as interpreters? If we refrain from rushing to extend its significance to universal validity or requirement,16 what other kind of meaning might be made in the disarray? These authors have lingered in the unresolved links between the what and the why of Paul’s history. In this mode of engagement, any claim that a biography of Paul might make to universality lies in its witness to the impulse in human beings to integrate the vicissitudes of their particular life into a bios, a story – or at least a set of linkages – that holds sufficient pieces of their experience in meaningful relationship and provides effective mechanisms for those that don’t quite/yet fit. To read Paul in this way is to eschew the question of whether his thoughts are final statements of truth. Instead, to read this way is to foreground the question of how he continued to puzzle over, to tease apart, and to face with some psychic courage the vagaries of his own life, for indeed he encountered more than his fair share of these meaning violations.17 These chapters contribute to that project by troubling the resting places in Paul’s thought. Each, in its own

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way, highlights a locus of disruption to meaning in Paul’s life or troubles standard claims of meaning by demonstrating the nuance and effort of negotiation of meaning at those loci. For example, in reading Paul’s weakness with Schmeller, we would do well to note first the prominence of weakness in Paul’s meaning-making across his letters. The force of Schmeller’s argument should not be cynicism about this theme as a key filter for Paul. The various letters raise it intentionally, in a variety of forms, and at length as the means to understand what happened to him. “Weak” accurately describes Paul’s capacity at numerous and important points in his life. He might have expected that his devotion to God should result in an honourable reputation among other devotees, but the Corinthian (and Galatian) correspondence shows that it did not. Rather than diminishing the significance of weakness, Schmeller’s observations about the continuing role of power, conventionally construed, illustrate tensions in Paul’s process of meaning-making. To some degree, Paul uses the narrative of Christ’s murder and subsequent exaltation to assist in the restoration of some degree of explanation. At the same time, Paul relies on traditional theologies of God as a warrior and ruler. The mix is sometimes dissonant and contradictory and sometimes productively paradoxical. The theologians who champion Paul’s theology of weakness take some of his efforts at meaning-making to their logical and paradigm-shifting conclusions. But in so doing, these theologians exceed the reach of Paul’s reasoning as we have it. Paul continues to work with the pieces available to him, reordering and stretching their links, and thereby bringing new configurations to the surface, but still tangled in the dominant paradigm of power-over. Interpreters would do well to follow those leads to new places without putting the words back into Paul’s mouth. At other points, as in the example discussed by Jones, Paul seems to work with more explicit consciousness of the meaning violations – another disjuncture between his pious (in the root sense of the Latin) comportment and the expectation of honour that should ensue from it. Jones shows that Paul centres or at least accentuates the problem of his shameful work. Some of the very items that violate a tidy account of his bios are those he places right out in the open. Paul also has to make sense of this gap in meaning, and he does so actively, explicitly. The events of his life that do not fit the available patterns necessarily receive more attention because they require the effort of compensation. His manual labour is not just a problem for his negotiations of authority in Corinth; it is a disruption in his personal structures of meaning. Alas, in this case Paul is no ur-Marxist. He does not quite rise to offer a

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philosophy or theology of work. Instead, he exemplifies the negotiation of dignity and its material conditions at a particular point in cultural history. And despite his willingness to do so elsewhere, in the case of work he does not abstract the bodily and material to the spiritual, but remains rooted in the stuff of his life. By reading with attention to these meaning conflicts, we see the urge for dignity and the great difficulty in establishing it where there is no social confirmation. We also have one more example of the many histories of such negotiation. Zeichmann’s hypothesis may be the most speculative of the four due to the scarcity of determinative evidence rather than the implausibility of his argument. Indeed, I find it quite plausible. But, if a final determination of his proposed revision arguably lies outside the reach of certainty, the meaning stakes that he identifies may be the most salient. For, by attending more concretely to the material realities of incarceration, Zeichmann enriches – by a significant degree – the interpreter’s capacity to imagine the ways in which available meaning structures are disrupted through physical pain and the loss of reliable forms of agency, to name but two factors. How different it is to consider Paul conversing with the other members of a chain gang than tucked away in a busy gubernatorial building where his main occupation seems to be persuasion. The latter are the coordinates of a great life; the former lies where less “valuable” lives are typically confined. In Zeichmann’s words, “now is an opportune time to reconsider how wealth disparity, respectability politics, and un(der)paid labour form constitutive elements of social life under the carceral state in both contemporary North America and the Roman Empire.”18 Thus, following Vaage’s lead, he shows the value in lingering amid the unfinished or partially obscured elements in Paul’s biography to see how things look in the view from below or outside of respectability or, indeed, clarity. As Zeichmann argues, the book of Acts, as well as some modern interpretations, often navigates with tunnel vision to restore Paul to a site of more comfortable links between the purported importance of his message and the conditions in and audiences to which he declared it. In so doing, we overlook a rich practice of meaning-making in contexts of disruption and incoherence. In the second part of their essay, Limongi and Egger shift to reflect on the linguistic holism of Vaage’s thinking. They observe how language creates interpretive arrays that congeal as worlds of knowing – not easily or even willingly translated from one to another. Their description illustrates how language, in its conjuring of meaning, is always also feeling, not just sterilized ideas. Words mean through all the attendant experiences of how they have been performed into situations and their

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felt import is as essential as their semantic boundaries. As Limongi and Egger write, “for Leif, communicating in a language is so much more than mere ‘language’: it is also culture and politics and the shared lived experience of people, all wrapped up together.” Those observations also characterize this other way of reading Paul’s meaning in the chemical bonds among the otherwise atomized details. In these various ways, each chapter of this section invites consideration of the common efforts of both Paul and his interpreters to find the links between data and explanations that allow us to take our bearings. And each invites us to set aside Paul as a mover and shaker in order to spend time with Paul, who was moved and shaken. There is much to be learned in the disorientation – with or without reception drinks in hand. not e s 1 A revised version of this paper appears in print as Leif E. Vaage, “The corpus paulinum,” in T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul, ed. Ryan S. Schellenberg and Heidi Wendt, T&T Clark Handbooks (London: T&T Clark, 2022), 9–22. 2 I am, of course, riffing on Jonathan Z. Smith’s Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), which has been enormously productive of thoughtful scholarship, even among those who disagree with him in some way. 3 For Zeichmann, it was “Military-Civilian Interactions in Early Roman Palestine and the Gospel of Mark”; for Jones, it was “Theatre of Shame: The Impact of Paul’s Manual Labour on His Apostleship in Corinth”; and in Egger’s case, “A Most Troublesome Text: Galatians 4:21–5:1 in the History of Interpretation.” 4 Travis Proulx and Michael Inzlicht, “The Five ‘A’s of Meaning Maintenance: Finding Meaning in the Theories of Sense-Making,” Psychological Inquiry 23 (2012): 317–35. Definitional matters are discussed on pp. 318–20. See also Crystal L. Park, “Making Sense of the Meaning Literature: An Integrative Review of Meaning Making and Its Effects on Adjustment to Stressful Life Events,” Psychological Bulletin 136 (2010): 257–301, where much related scholarship is summarized. 5 Zeichmann, introduction (present volume), 15. 6 See Zeichmann, “Acts and the Invention” (present volume), 73–5, which introduces the influence of Acts in shaping the doxa of Pauline scholarship. This use of doxa originates with Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 159–71.

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7 See Stephen L. Young, “‘Let’s Take the Text Seriously’: The Protectionist Doxa of Mainstream New Testament Studies,” mtsr 32 (2019): 328–63, for more generalizable problems with the doxa of New Testament scholarship, especially the tendency toward explanatory reduction. 8 These passages are those identified by John T. Fitzgerald in the classic study of this question: Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence, sblds 99 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1988). 9 Schmeller, “Whoever Boasts” (present volume), 29–30. 10 See Zeichmann, introduction 15–16. 11 In the Corinthian letters, it also appears at 1 Cor. 1:25, 4:10, 10:22; 2 Cor. 10:10. Other obvious contenders to express strength are κράτος (which comes closer to Schmeller’s interest in power-over), σθένος (which, though it is not a common word, is the straightforward antonym of ἀσθένεια). 12 Phil. 4:13 is a prime example of ἰσχύω as a divine endowment that is never an innate characteristic of a person. 13 The comparison is primarily “analytical” in the terms outlined by Victoria E. Bonnell, “The Uses of Theory, Concepts and Comparison in Historical Sociology,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980): 156–73. According to Bonnell, analytical comparison “involves an identification of variables that serve to explain common or contrasting patterns or occurrence” (164–5). By contrast, illustrative comparison “evaluates individual units not in relation to each other but in relation to a basic theory or concept applicable to all of them” (165). I was alerted to her work by John S. Kloppenborg, “Disciplined Exaggeration: The Heuristics of Comparison in Biblical Studies,” NovT 59 (2017): 390–414, who discusses the use of comparison in the study of early Christianity in particular. 14 Limongi and Egger refer to the important work of Jennifer A. Glancy, “Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23–25),” jbl 123 (2004): 99–135, who argues that any hope of a reputation boost on the basis of corporal punishment would be a hard sell. 15 Limongi and Egger, “Three Times Beaten” (present volume), 103. 16 In the introduction to this volume, Zeichmann describes Vaage’s interest in lives like Paul’s as “an opportunity to reflect on our own concerns and gesture toward broader meaning-making practices” (16). 17 My own take on Paul’s efforts to hold things together is Shantz, “‘I Have Learned to Be Content’: Happiness according to St. Paul,” in The Bible and the Pursuit of Happiness, ed. Brent A. Strawn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 187–201. 18 Zeichmann, “Acts and the Invention,” 85–6.

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“Which Is Not Another”: Paul’s Precarious Gospel in Gal. 1:6–7 John A. Egger

Like many other students and colleagues of Leif E. Vaage, I have often heard him express amazement that biblical scholars have so much difficulty conceiving of Paul as “weak,” even when the evidence is right in front of them. On full display in Paul’s letters, according to Vaage, is how precarious Paul’s position in life as an apostle actually was, and more so as time went on. Interpreters of Paul, however, often seem to be oblivious to this. There seems to be a vested interest in viewing Paul’s apostleship as strong, efficacious, and successful. This is an inheritance of the tradition, going back at least as far as Acts, and perhaps even further; but what never ceases to amaze Vaage is the degree to which even modern, supposedly critical, biblical scholars are invested in this image of Paul. To be clear, when Vaage talks this way, he is not referring to Paul’s own rhetoric of “strong” and “weak,” which is a topic unto itself and is full of its own nuances and contradictions (see the treatment of Thomas Schmeller in this volume).1 Rather, Vaage is pointing out that Paul’s own letters consistently reveal how precarious his position in life was. Part of what lies behind this discrepancy is Paul’s presentation of himself in his letters in often inflated or exaggerated terms. But also Paul’s style of expression is often ambiguous and full of gaps (see Ryan S. Schellenberg’s exploration of this theme in this volume).2 This contribution to the festschrift in honour of Vaage examines one small, yet pivotal, phrase at the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Galatians (Gal. 1:6–7), and how it illustrates the insecurity Vaage identifies. Despite the simplicity of Paul’s grammar in this passage, scholars routinely interpret it in such a way that it supports the image of Paul as a “strong” figure.

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t r a n s l at in g “ n o t another” In Gal. 1:6–7, Paul, forgoing his usual thanksgiving, opens his letter by expressing his amazement that the Galatians are so quickly turning away “from the one who called them through the grace of Christ” toward what he identifies as ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον (“a different gospel”), which he then immediately qualifies with a relative clause, ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο (“which is not another”). As Brigitte Kahl has observed, translating this relative clause should not be difficult: “Everyone who knows Greek,” she says, “will easily translate this as a very simple relative clause.”3 Yet this “simple relative clause” seems to present a challenge to many New Testament translators and scholars. They seem to feel a need to replace it with elaborate constructions that express, in one way or another, what they imagine to be Paul’s rejection of the legitimacy of this so-called “other gospel.” The nrsv (following the wording of the rsv in most respects), for example, translates the passage: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.” This dispenses with the relative clause structure in the Greek text and replaces it with a break in Paul’s thought, indicated by the dash. No longer does the clause function to describe the aforementioned “different gospel.” It now becomes a generalized side comment that categorically asserts that there is simply no other gospel at all.4 Other translations accomplish much the same result, albeit with different wording. The niv (2011) translates, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all.” Here again the dash indicates a break in Paul’s thought, but not so much to offer a side comment as to insert a self-correction. While the relative clause structure of the Greek text is maintained (indicating that Paul is still talking about the same subject), all reference to “other” is dropped (and the word “gospel” added), which means that what gets negated is the identity of the “different gospel” as a gospel. This negation is then intensified with the adverbial expressions “really” and “at all.” To give a third example, the nasb , true to form as a word-for-word translation, is much closer to the structure of the original Greek: “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel: which is really not another.” In wording and structure, this is nearly identical to the Greek, and the italics appropriately

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indicate the one place where the translation departs significantly from the original. Yet this seemingly little addition shifts the meaning considerably. Inserting the adverb “really” calls into question Paul’s use of the term “gospel” in the previous clause. Although there is still some ambiguity in meaning here (is Paul saying that the “different gospel” to which the Galatians are defecting is not really a gospel, or merely that it is not really another gospel?), the placement of the adverb where it intensifies the negation pushes the meaning in the direction of the former. Laying out these translations together with the Greek text reveals the differences in nuance:

na28: nrsv/rsv: niv: nasb:

εἰς ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο5 to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all for a different gospel, which is really not another

“ n o t a n o t h e r ” in r e cent commentary Commentators on the passage who provide their own translations in their commentaries display further variations. What is merely an interruption or afterthought in Paul’s train of thought in the nrsv , for example, becomes in Frank J. Matera’s translation a complete thought on its own: “I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away, from the one who called you by [the] grace [of Christ], to a different gospel. There is no other.”6 Douglas J. Moo, on the other hand, conflates ἕτερος and ἄλλος (on the basis of their overlap in meaning, see below), and inserts the word “gospel,” but otherwise translates much like the nasb : “I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ to another gospel, which is really not another gospel.”7 Again, the placing of the adverb “really,” along with the addition of the word “gospel” and the repetition of “another,” makes it clear that what is being negated is the status of the aforementioned “other gospel” as gospel. Finally, Richard Longenecker provides a translation that resembles the niv but takes it one step further: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is not at all the same gospel.”8 As with the niv , the relative structure is maintained, while the reference to “other” is dropped. In its place, however, Longenecker inserts “same,” which (at least on the surface) completely reverses the meaning of the Greek text. Again, this variety can be seen best when laid out together:

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Matera: to a different gospel. There is no other Moo: to another gospel, which is really not another gospel Longenecker: to a different gospel – which is not at all the same gospel Others which will come up in the discussion shortly: Martyn: Schreiner: de Boer: Fung: deSilva:

to a different gospel. Not that there really is another gospel for another gospel. In fact, it is not another gospel to a different gospel, which is not another a different gospel. Not that it is in fact another gospel toward a different message of good news – not that it is another message of good news9

To be sure, these translators know how to translate a relative clause when they see one, and they might have very good reasons for translating Paul’s relative clause with some other structure here. But they seem to have in their sights what they perceive Paul to mean by his words rather than the words themselves. This can be difficult to assess just by looking at a translation, but one of the advantages of the commentary format is that it allows scholars to explain the rationale behind their translations. Indeed, the best translations in commentaries are often those that highlight the specific emphases of the commentator. For this reason, the translations that appear in commentaries are often closer to paraphrases than word-for-word translations, and this is one of their strengths. Longenecker’s commentary is a case in point. His translation of the Greek text carefully illustrates his understanding of the meaning and direction of Paul’s words. To give a rather banal example, in Gal. 1:6, where Paul uses the expression ἀπὸ τοῦ καλέσαντος ὑμᾶς ἐν χάρατι [Χριστοῦ], Longenecker argues that the preposition ἐν with the dative χάρατι highlights the means by which the Galatians were first brought to God, so even though Paul uses the expression ἐν Χριστῷ (“in Christ”) elsewhere with a local significance as a description of the situation of believers before God, here ἐν χάρατι Χριστοῦ should be taken as a dative of means with a possessive genitive. This is reflected in Longenecker’s translation, which has Paul expressing astonishment that the Galatians are so “quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ.” This encapsulates the content of Longenecker’s discussion and clarifies the meaning of the Greek text according to Longenecker’s interpretation of it.10

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It is thus remarkable that when Longenecker comes to Gal. 1:7a, this is precisely what he does not do. One searches in vain for an explanation for how he gets from the Greek text to his translation. In his lineby-line commentary of the passage, Longenecker interacts quite closely with the Greek text. As he does throughout his commentary, he provides the Greek text, followed by the corresponding line of his own translation. He starts off by restating in his own words the main point of Paul’s statement: “The spiritual direction in which Paul’s converts were moving is depicted in the words εἰς ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, which are then qualified with the expression οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο.”11 He then moves on to a discussion of the differences in nuance between ἕτερος and ἄλλος, primarily invoking Ernest Burton’s commentary.12 Longenecker concludes that even though elsewhere Paul does not make a distinction between the two terms, in this case “there seems little doubt that he means to suggest a qualitative difference,” with ἕτερος signalling “another of a different kind” and ἄλλος “another of the same kind.”13 He suggests that in all likelihood Paul’s opponents were claiming that their message was complementary to Paul’s preaching and ministry. This is as close as Longenecker gets to commentary on the Greek text of Gal. 1:7a. He then completes the circle by returning to his translation of Paul’s response: “As Paul viewed matters, however, theirs was ‘a different gospel – which is not at all the same gospel.’”14 Whether or not this is a compelling interpretation is not the point here. As an interpretation of Paul’s meaning it might be very compelling, but what Longenecker has provided is really nothing more than a commentary on his own translation of the text. He does not explain how he gets from the Greek text to his translation. On its own this would hardly be worth noticing, but the pattern appears in other commentaries as well. J. Louis Martyn’s commentary is a particularly strong example of a commentary that contains a translation that reflects the distinctive interpretative perspective of the commentator. When he comes to Paul’s use of the substantive expression “ἀπὸ τοῦ καλέσαντος ὑμᾶς ἐν χάρατι [Χριστοῦ]” (which Martyn translates as “from the God who called you in his grace”) in Gal. 1:6, for example, Martyn argues that Paul is clearly referring not to himself, but to God, and “the Galatians will have known as much.”15 Moreover, Martyn, in contrast to Longenecker, decides that ἐν here is local rather than instrumental: “God’s grace is the space into which he has called the Galatians.”16 These considerations are reflected in Martyn’s translation, which describes the Galatians as “rapidly defecting from the God who called you in his grace.”17 This is in fact closer to a paraphrase than a translation, but it is effective in its role as a translation in a commentary

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precisely because it clarifies the meaning of the Greek text according to the interpretation of the commentator. Again, it is therefore remarkable that when Martyn comes to the next verse, he does not do this. Martyn’s translation of Gal. 1:6–7 is close to the nrsv , except that he inserts a full stop: “I am amazed that you are so rapidly defecting from the God who called you in his grace, and are turning your allegiance to a different gospel. Not that there really is another gospel.”18 Here again one searches in vain for an explanation for how the commentator gets from the Greek text to the translation. Notably, Martyn begins by pointing out that in Gal. 1:7, Paul is identifying the central issue of the letter. He then goes on to describe the difference in nuance between ἕτερος and ἄλλος. He also addresses the issue of how Paul can refer to the message of his opponents as a “gospel.” And he acknowledges that since Paul cannot deny that his opponents (whom Martyn refers to as “the Teachers”) call their message “the gospel,” he initially speaks of it as “a different gospel.” This is all well and good, but then Martyn says that Paul “can and does deny that there is really another gospel.”19 Again, whether or not this is a compelling interpretation is not the question (at the moment). As compelling as it might be as an interpretation on its own terms, Martyn does not explain how he gets from ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο to “not that there really is another gospel.” His commentary on the text starts and ends, not with the Greek text, but with his own translation of the passage. Something similar appears in Thomas R. Schreiner’s commentary. Like Moo, Schreiner translates ἕτερος and ἄλλος with the same word, “another,” but then comes to a full stop before having Paul deny that it is another gospel. This emphasizes the singularity of the point: “I am astonished that you are so quickly turning away from the one who called you into the grace of Christ for another gospel. In fact, it is not another gospel.”20 When Schreiner comes to his commentary on Gal. 1:7a, like Longenecker, he interacts quite closely with the Greek text but, again, without explaining how he gets from the Greek text to his translation. He begins by remarking that with ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο Paul “clarifies that the so-called gospel of the intruders is no gospel at all.”21 He then discusses the issue of the respective meanings of ἕτερος and ἄλλος, concluding in the end that we have no evidence the two terms had different technical meanings in Paul’s time. Hence, he translates both as “another.” He then goes on to say, “Paul simply emphasizes in 1:7 that the so-called good news proclaimed by the intruders is no gospel at all.”22 Again, this just states in similar language the translation Schreiner has already offered at the beginning. He does not give any explanation as to how he arrives at Paul stating, “In fact, it is not another gospel.”

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To give one final example, Martinus C. de Boer’s commentary offers a refined analysis that is illuminating precisely because it is more refined than the others we have looked at. De Boer provides a translation that carefully reflects the structure and wording of the Greek text: “I am astonished that you are so quickly turning from the one who called you into the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another.”23 This is about as unassuming a translation into English of ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο as one can get. In his commentary on 1:7, de Boer starts by observing that it is syntactically tied to 1:6 (which hardly seems to be worth mentioning, except that, as we have seen, many translators do not seem to notice the point). He then observes that “Paul begins by denying that this ‘different [heteron] gospel’ is in fact ‘another [allo]’ gospel (1:7a).”24 Here de Boer is careful to use quotation marks to indicate exactly where he is directly quoting the text (or to be precise, his translation of the text) and where he is merely paraphrasing it. What some other translators do as a matter of course – inserting an adverbial nuance such as “in fact,” for instance, or as in this case, adding an explicit reference to “gospel” – de Boer is careful to do so structurally as part of his commentary on the text, not in his translation proper. Yet the result is the same. He ends up offering what is essentially a commentary on his paraphrase of his translation of the Greek text rather than a commentary on the Greek text itself. Covering the familiar ground outlining the difference between ἕτερος and ἄλλος, he then goes around the usual circle. He comments that the sense of the verse “is that the ‘different gospel’ cannot count as ‘another gospel’ alongside the one Paul himself has preached and still preaches.”25 At this point, he places the word “gospel” inside the quotation marks, showing that he is not using them to directly quote Paul but to bring together “another” and “gospel” as a unit so as to properly provide the sense that it is the different gospel’s status as a gospel that is being negated. As with the other commentators, he is using his paraphrase to illuminate Paul’s meaning. Again, this may be a compelling interpretation on its own terms, but it does not explain how de Boer gets from the Greek text to his paraphrase. Finally, he closes the circle by remarking, “Paul’s self-correction is designed to rob that ‘different gospel’ of the right to the label ‘gospel (of Christ),’” which brings his commentary back to where he started: his own paraphrase of the text.26

n o - g o zone These examples illustrate a pervasive pattern among commentators on this passage. There seems to be a “no-go” zone beyond which they are not willing to venture; yet this does not seem to prevent them from

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knowing (or thinking that they know) exactly what Paul is saying here. This is much more than a question of translation: it is the tip of an iceberg of obscurification. I have used a handful of recent commentaries in English to illustrate the point, but similar patterns can be seen in French and German commentaries as well.27 And going back in time, patristic Latin and Greek commentaries contain this obscurification as well. Jerome, for example, working from a Latin biblical text that translates both ἕτερος and ἄλλος as aliud, declares that the other (aliud) gospel to which the Galatians have turned their allegiance is “not other” (aliud), “for nothing that is false subsists, and what is contrary to truth does not exist.”28 Augustine, much more cautiously, notes that “if a gospel is other (aliud) than that which the Lord gave (whether personally or through someone else), then it cannot rightly be called a gospel.”29 Both Augustine and Jerome are working here with a Latin text that obscures the subtleties that appear in Greek, but even John Chrysostom, working with a Greek text, displays a similar obscurification. On the one hand he remarks that Marcion grabbed on to this passage to argue that there can be only one (written) gospel, saying, “Look, even Paul himself said that there is not a different (ἕτερος) gospel,” but this fails to take into account that “even if there had been a thousand gospels written, but the same things written, the many would be one.”30 This seems to presuppose that Chrysostom reads Paul’s words as negating not the status of the “different gospel” as a gospel but its status as “different.” Yet at the same time Chrysostom also remarks that since Paul’s opponents “were calling their ‘fraud’ (ἀπάτην) a gospel, Paul himself has to fight for the name,” which implies Paul really is rejecting its status as “gospel.” Since even Greek-speaking interpreters like Chrysostom (and Marcion before him) seem to have fallen into obscurification on this point, it is not surprising that it can be found throughout the history of interpretation.

“n o t a n o t h e r ” in n in eteenth-century c o m m e n ta ry The pattern of obscurification manifests itself differently in different times and places, but the effects are much the same. For recent commentators in English, as we have seen, it manifests itself as an apparent unwillingness to explain how they get from the Greek text to their translation or paraphrase. Nineteenth-century interpreters, by contrast, seem to have no such qualms. They may be just as convinced that they know what Paul is trying to say, but they also make valiant attempts to interact with the Greek text to explain how they get there.

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Joseph Barber Lightfoot, for example, in his commentary of 1870, goes to great lengths to distinguish the respective meanings of ἕτερος and ἄλλος in Greek: “ἕτερον implies a difference of kind, which is not involved in ἄλλο. The primary distinction between the words appears to be, that ἄλλος is another as ‘one besides,’ ἕτερος another as ‘one of two.’” From his study of Greek usage, he concludes that “while ἄλλος is generally confined to a negation of identity, ἕτερος sometimes implies the negation of resemblance.”31 When Lightfoot comes to Paul’s reference to a ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον in Gal. 1:6, he therefore cautions that this should not be understood as “an admission in favor of the false teachers, as though they taught the one gospel, however perverted.” Such a concession, he asserts, “would be quite alien to the spirit of this passage.”32 We might question this assessment, but he has at least given us the background explaining how he has arrived at it.33 This can also be seen in C.J. Ellicott’s commentary of 1854. Ellicott translates Paul as saying “which (ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον) is not another (a second) gospel , except (only in this sense, that) there are some who trouble you,” which he then paraphrases as “the Judaists bring you another gospel, but it is really no gospel at all.”34 Up until now we have avoided looking at Paul’s subsequent clause, but this forces us to bring it into view. Ellicott is arguing that Paul introduces “εἰ μή τινές εἰσιν οἱ ταράσσοντες ὑμᾶς καὶ θέλοντες μεταστρέψαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ” (“unless there are some who are troubling you and wanting to pervert the gospel of Christ”) as an exception to the point he is making in the relative clause. As with Lightfoot, it would seem that part of what is driving Ellicott is his concern that Paul not appear to be conceding that his opponents’ teachings can actually be labelled a “gospel.” He argues that Paul intends εὐαγγέλιον to be understood after ἄλλο in “its strictest meaning,” but expressed explicitly after ἕτερον “in one more lax.”35 Hence, “to prevent the words ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον being misconstrued into the admission that there could really be any other gospel than the one preached to them, St. Paul more fully explains himself, using ἄλλος rather than the ambiguous ἕτερος.”36 This contrasts with recent interpreters who seem quite comfortable with Paul’s apparent contradiction (using expressions like “self-correction” as we saw with de Boer); here we have Ellicott characterizing it merely as Paul “more fully explaining himself.” Notice also the wording that eventually makes its way into the niv (“which is really no gospel at all”). Here, at least, we are given some clues as to the reasoning behind it. Other nineteenth-century interpreters deal with the ambiguity that they find in the passage by providing multiple explanations for it. This

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can be seen in Benjamin Jowett’s commentary of 1859. In the first explanation that Jowett proposes, the antecedent of the relative pronoun in Gal. 1:7a is not the ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον of Gal. 1:6 in itself, but the entire clause that has Paul saying the Galatians are turning to a ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον.37 This effectively removes the danger of Paul being seen to contradict himself because now it is the “turning aside” that is not ἄλλο, and not the ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον. Jowett paraphrases this explanation as “which turning aside is nothing else but certain troublers seeking to pervert the Gospel of Christ.”38 (Here again we need to spill into the subsequent clause.) In the other explanation that Jowett proposes, the expression ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον is identified as the antecedent, but (as with Ellicott) the relative clause is qualified by the exception given in the subsequent clause: “which Gospel is not another Gospel (for there cannot be two Gospels), but only certain troublers who pervert it.” Both these explanations are already somewhat confusing, but while arguing for the second one, Jowett makes them even more convoluted: “The last is the more probable explanation,” he says, adding, “It seems to have arisen, however, from a confusion with the former. What the Apostle meant to say was ‘which change of mind,’ or rather ‘which Gospel, is nothing else than the work of certain troublers,’ and a mere perversion of the true Gospel.”39 Jowett acknowledges that this would have required Paul to write “than” (ἤ) rather than “unless” (εἰ μή), but “the similarity of meaning in ἄλλο and ἕτερον caught his mind in the act of framing the sentence, and led him to give a new sense to ἄλλο, which occasioned the further alteration of ἤ into εἰ μή.”40 Again, this convoluted explanation is rather far-fetched, but it at least makes a valiant effort to interact with the Greek text. William Mitchell Ramsay, in his study from 1900, also offers multiple explanations.41 He starts by arguing that Lightfoot’s understanding of the difference between ἕτερος and ἄλλος is mistaken. Using examples from Greek literature that are different from Lightfoot’s, he reverses Lightfoot’s position and argues that when ἕτερος and ἄλλος are pointedly contrasted with each other, “ἕτερος expresses the slighter difference between two examples of the same class, ἄλλος the broader difference between two distinct classes.”42 For all Lightfoot’s “usually accurate and thorough sense for Greek language,” Ramsay charges, he was “here misled by a theological theory: he thought that a certain meaning was necessary, and he proceeded to find arguments in its support.”43 Oblivious to the point that this also seems to be what he himself is doing, Ramsay therefore rejects Lightfoot’s translation. In its place he offers two alternatives. The first is similar to Jowett’s but without

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the convoluted argument that Paul started off by saying one thing and then changed his mind in mid-sentence: “a different gospel which is nothing else save that there are some that … would pervert the Gospel of Christ.”44 The other alternative, which he judges “less probable” but “more vigorous and more characteristic of Paul’s habit of compressing his meaning into the fewest words and sometimes straining the force of words,” follows from his understanding of the difference between ἕτερος and ἄλλος: “I marvel that you are so quickly going over to another gospel, which is not a different gospel (from mine), except in so far as certain persons pervert the Gospel of Christ.”45 Here Ramsay supposes that Paul is talking about the Gospel as announced by the older apostles, which he says is not really any different from Paul’s. Here again, Ramsay makes a valiant effort to engage with the Greek text, even if what he says seems rather dubious. Finally, Ernest DeWitt Burton (whose commentary of 1921, as we have seen, is frequently referenced) argues that Gal. 1:7a should be translated as “which is not another except in the sense that.”46 Reacting directly to Ramsay’s second explanation, he provides a separate section in an appendix examining the difference between ἕτερος and ἄλλος, and concludes that Ramsay does not do justice to the question.47 Examining 1 Cor. 15:39–41 in particular, which is another instance where Paul uses both terms, Ramsay declares, “taken with the other evidence, it leaves no room for doubt that for Paul ἕτερος suggested difference of kind more distinctly than did ἄλλος and that the latter, in contrast with ἕτερος, signified simply numerical non-identity.”48 The only alternative, Burton urges, is not, with Ramsay, “to reverse this distinction between ἕτερος and ἄλλος, but to suppose that the two terms are entirely synonymous, the change being simply for variety of expression.”49 This anticipates where most subsequent commentators go, being content to let Paul contradict himself (or “correct” himself, as they are more inclined to say). Hence they have a tendency to cite Burton even when his position does not actually support the point they are trying to make. With regard to Ramsay’s first explanation, Burton is equally dismissive because it gives οὐκ ἄλλο εἰ μη the sense of “not other than,” which is “unsustained by usage.”50 Examining Burton is useful because in many ways he stands at a crossroads: after him, few commentators seem to be interested in taking up the question in any depth, yet he also provides a good summary of the range of nineteenth-century interpretation of the passage. More than anything else, Burton reveals, along with earlier interpreters from the nineteenth century, that Gal. 1:6–7 is not so cut and dried as recent interpreters might lead us to think.

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These earlier interpreters offer a breath of fresh air compared to more recent interpreters because their engagement with the Greek text of Gal. 1:6–7 is so much richer, even if it sometimes feels like they are grasping at straws. One can at least evaluate how they get from point A to point B. The obscurification seems to “kick in” for nineteenth-century interpreters, however, when they seem to want to avoid two things simultaneously: the appearance of Paul contradicting himself, and the suggestion he recognizes his opponents as having anything that can be described as a “gospel.” To avoid these two possibilities they produce a plethora of rather far-fetched and convoluted interpretations as they “tiptoe through the tulips” to sidestep the meaning of the grammar that they find in the text. This is illustrated beautifully by Lightfoot’s comment noted earlier: “This is not an admission in favor of the false teachers, as though they taught the one gospel, however perverted … Such a concession would be quite alien to the spirit of the passage.” Lightfoot is quite convinced that this cannot be the case, regardless of what Paul actually says.51

an o t h e r r e a d in g o f “not another” Drawing inspiration from the daring of these nineteenth-century commentators, let us bravely enter the no-go zone for ourselves and consider another reading that takes into account the various nuances and peculiarities of the Greek text. Pardon my use of the technical language of traditional Greek grammar, but what we have in Gal. 1:7a is a classic postnominal relative clause, a structure that is common in Koine Greek and appears dozens of times in Paul’s letters. That is to say, Paul has constructed a relative clause that describes in greater detail a noun he has already introduced in the main clause as ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, with the adjective ἕτερος in the attributive position. The relative clause itself consists of a predicate construction, with the singular neuter relative pronoun standing in for the ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον as the subject of the predicate, and ἄλλο as the predicate nominative, here functioning not as an adjective strictly speaking, but as an indefinite pronoun, with the noun εὐαγγέλιον implied. Moreover, the particle οὐκ in front of εἰμί reverses the meaning of the clause, thus negating the quality indicated by the predicate nominative. In other words, the ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, to which the Galatians are in the process of transferring their allegiance, has the quality of not being ἄλλος. But it is the quality of this ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον as ἄλλος that is negated, not its identity as εὐαγγέλιον – this would require, at very least, the explicit mention of the noun. Whatever it may be that Paul is trying to get at here, he is not saying that this “different

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gospel” is “really no gospel at all.” If there is a puzzle, it lies in how Paul can place the two terms ἕτερος and ἄλλος in parallel with each other, negating the one without negating the other. It is precisely when two words nearly identical in meaning are used in close proximity to each other that we might want to question why both are used. Recent interpreters are correct to note that elsewhere Paul uses the two terms interchangeably, but here, with ἄλλος following ἕτερος inside a relative clause, he would seem to be indicating some kind of difference. I therefore suggest that the shift here from ἕτερος to ἄλλος indicates a shift in Paul’s perspective within the sentence. Since Paul is the subject of the verb at the beginning of the sentence (“I am amazed”), he naturally starts out by looking at the situation from his own perspective, but in the second clause (“you are so quickly turning away”) the Galatians are the subject, so it is not surprising that he momentarily adopts their perspective by saying that they have turned to a “different” gospel (i.e., one that they perceive to be different from the one they first received), but it is also not surprising that he reverts back to his own perspective in the relative clause that follows when he again switches to a new subject (“which is not another”) and sets the Galatians straight with his explanatory relative clause. The Galatians, according to Paul, are turning to what they perceive to be a ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον. However, as Paul emphasizes to them, this ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον is in fact not ἄλλο.52 That is, it is not another one: it is the same one. All of Galatians is an all-out effort on the part of Paul to defend his gospel. The commentaries get this part right. However, they underestimate the degree to which Paul is on the defensive here. They quite rightly detect Paul’s hostility to his rivals, but they are wrong when they say that Paul is simply emphasizing that “the so-called gospel of the intruders is no gospel at all” (Schreiner), or when they characterize Paul’s words as “condemnation of the counterfeit gospel” (Fung), or when they say that Paul’s self-correction is “designed to rob that ‘different gospel’ of the right to the label ‘gospel (of Christ)’” (de Boer), or that “as a perversion of the true gospel, the difference disqualifies utterly” (de Silva).53 Paul is not challenging the legitimacy of his rivals’ teachings here; rather, he is desperately scrambling to defend his own gospel. This is not to say that Paul would not want to say these sorts of things if he could, but Paul is simply in no position to do so. The legitimacy of the ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον as a valid expression of the “gospel of Christ” is simply not in question. It is the legitimacy of Paul’s own gospel that is at stake, what Martyn describes as the gospel of Paul’s law-free Gentile mission. Paul does not spell it out in so many words, but the Galatians seem to have

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discarded his version of the gospel precisely because they perceive it to be inferior.54 In response, Paul asserts that this ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον is “not another,” regardless of how “different” the Galatians perceive it to be. In this sense, it is not the rival gospel that Paul is insisting is “not another” with respect to what they first received; it is his own gospel with respect to the one to which they have now gone over. The Galatians are defecting to what they perceive to be a “better” gospel: Paul is telling them that this ain’t so. The next clause – εἰ μή τινές εἰσιν οἱ ταράσσοντες ὑμᾶς καὶ θέλοντες μεταστρέψαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ – has always presented a problem for interpreters. Here Paul’s grammar is anything but simple, and we have already seen nineteenth-century interpreters going into great convolutions as they grapple with the Greek text. The usual interpretation is to treat it as a qualification of what Paul has just said in the relative clause, either by stretching the wording to construe εἰ μή as providing an exception to ἄλλο (e.g., Ramsay: “a different gospel which is nothing else save that there are some that … would pervert the Gospel of Christ”) or by treating εἰ μή somewhat anomalously as introducing an exception to the entire clause (e.g., de Boer: “to a different gospel, which is not another, except that there are some who are unnerving you and wanting to turn the gospel of Christ into its opposite”).55 Either way, it is usually treated as further evidence that Paul is rejecting the gospel of his rivals.56 However, this has Paul in fact walking back his supposed claim that the rival gospel is “no gospel at all,” in that now he is saying merely that his rivals “are wanting to pervert the gospel of Christ” (which is already a rather harsh claim in its own right and should probably be given its due weight). A more promising way of interpreting the syntax of the clause is therefore to treat it as a qualification of the initial clause in the sentence: “I am amazed … except that ….”57 Paul’s amazement, which already resides in the Galatians going over to a ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον that is in fact not ἄλλο, would then be partially assuaged by his observation that there are some among the Galatians troubling them and wanting to pervert the gospel of Christ by presenting their version of the gospel as a ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον. Having asserted that there are some who are troubling them and wanting to pervert the gospel of Christ, Paul moves on to what is essentially a warning to the Galatians in Gal. 1:8–9. This takes the form of a hypothetical curse upon anyone who preaches something different from what the Galatians first received: “But even if (καὶ ἐὰν) we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel at variance from (παρά) the gospel we preached to you (verb in the subjunctive mood), let that person be

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anathema (ἀνάθεμα)!” He then repeats himself, structuring it slightly different. “As we said before and I now say again, ‘If (εἴ) someone preaches to you a gospel at variance (παρά) from the one you received (verb in the indicative mood), let that person be anathema (ἀνάθεμα)!’” The first is what is usually labelled a second-class condition, the latter a first-class condition. There is some doubt here among commentators as to whether Paul is merely paraphrasing what he has just said or referring back to something he may have said previously when he was with the Galatians. His use of the plural suggests that he is remembering a previous time when he was speaking to the Galatians along with others (hence “we”), whereas now he is speaking in the singular (“I now say again”). In any case, the repetition has the effect of reinforcing the seriousness of the warning. Again, although many interpreters take this as further indication of Paul condemning the “counterfeit gospel” of his rivals, strictly speaking Paul is not actually pronouncing a curse on anyone here, either directly or indirectly. Structurally, these are hypothetical statements.58 He is acknowledging in the harshest possible terms the seriousness of preaching a false gospel, and indicating that even he is to be held up to this standard.59 This is not to say that Paul does not see real differences between the content of his own gospel and that of his rivals. One can quibble about this or that feature of Martyn’s reconstruction of the teachings of Paul’s rivals, but Martyn has probably reconstructed the issues at stake reasonably accurately: e.g., “the Law as the good news” and “the necessity of circumcision as the commencement of Law observance,” as two of the features that Martyn sketches.60 However, as we see in Gal. 2:2, Paul can also differentiate between his own version of the gospel and that of the other apostles as equally valid expressions of the gospel of Christ: “I went up to Jerusalem … and I laid before them the εὐαγγέλιον that I proclaim among the Gentiles …” As Vanhoye notes, if this gospel had been identical to theirs, it would not have been necessary to do this.61 Paul’s primary issue with his rivals seems to be that they are presenting their version of the gospel as ἕτερον when in fact it is not ἄλλο, and hence “wanting to pervert the gospel of Christ.” Let me end with a recap: this chapter started out with the observation that many biblical translators seem to have difficulty translating the relative clause that appears in Gal. 1:7a. This turned out to be much more than just a matter of translation, but the tip of an iceberg of obscurification that goes back at least as far as Marcion. Looking at how nineteenth-century interpreters grapple with the passage then paved the way for exploring an interpretation that takes seriously the simplicity

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of Paul’s grammar here. Against most interpreters, who read the relative clause as Paul’s categorical rejection of the legitimacy of the rivals’ counterfeit gospel, I have focused on the relative clause as essentially a statement asserting the legitimacy of Paul’s own gospel. This is not to say that Paul is comfortable with what his rivals are teaching. In fact, he asserts that they are “wanting to pervert the gospel of Christ.” This is a serious charge. But what they are doing is trying to pervert the gospel of Christ by presenting their gospel as “different” from the one that Paul had passed on to the Galatians. In Galatia at least, the legitimacy of this ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον does not seem to have been in question: it is Paul who is fighting for recognition of his own gospel as not ἄλλο.62 In the introduction to this volume, Christopher B. Zeichmann describes Leif Vaage’s work on Paul as destabilizing the conventional depiction of Paul as a fundamentally “strong” figure by “slowly chipping away” at the conventional image of the apostle that has come down to us primarily through Acts. As Vaage himself puts it (in Spanish), Paul serves in Acts (and subsequently in the Western cultural tradition) as a kind of idealized “strong man” (hombre fuerte) who is always “erudite” and “noble,” in contrast to the person we find in the letters, “whose body, even without him wanting to admit it, was a source of shame because it did not correspond to what was considered in the normal way of thinking to be a proper apostolic presence, either in his day or ours.”63 This chapter has picked up on this theme and brings to light the insecurity of Paul’s position in his letter to the Galatian churches. Paul’s gospel is in trouble in Galatia and he knows it. Galatians is an all-out effort on Paul’s part to defend his gospel from the charge that it is inferior and Gal. 1:6–7 is the first volley in this effort. not e s 1 Schmeller, “Whoever Boasts” (present volume), 25–45. 2 Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy” (present volume), 277–304. 3 Brigitte Kahl, “Gender Trouble in Galatia? Paul and the Rethinking of Difference,” in Is There a Future for Feminist Theology? ed. Deborah F. Sawyer and Diane M. Collier, Studies in Theology and Sexuality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999), 57–73 (at 62–3). 4 This essentially treats ὃ as an expletive pronoun introducing a new subject, rather than as a relative pronoun filling in for ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον as the subject.

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5 Note that there are no text variations among our manuscript witnesses. Also, compare these modern translations with the kjv , which is structurally much closer to the Greek: “unto another gospel: Which is not another.” 6 Frank J. Matera, Galatians, SacPag 9, 2nd ed. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007), 44. Bracketed words are in the original. 7 Douglas J. Moo, Galatians, becnt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 76. 8 Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians, wbc 41 (Nashville: Nelson, 1990), 12. 9 J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, ab 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 106; Thomas R. Schreiner, Galatians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 84, 86; Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians: A Commentary, ntl (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 38; Ronald Y.K. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians, nicnt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 43; David A. deSilva, The Letter to the Galatians, nicnt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 122. 10 Longenecker, Galatians, 15. 11 Ibid., 15. 12 Ernest De Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, icc (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1921), 420–2. 13 Longenecker, Galatians, 15. 14 Ibid., 15. 15 Martyn, Galatians, 108. 16 Ibid., 109. 17 Ibid., 106. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 110; cf. p. 106. 20 Schreiner, Galatians, 84, 86. 21 Ibid., 86. 22 Ibid. 23 de Boer, Galatians, 38. 24 Ibid., 41. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 E.g., Franz Mußner, Der Galaterbrief, 5th ed., ht hknt 9 (Freiburg: Herder, 1974), 53–9; Simon Légasse, L’épître de Paul aux Galates, ld 9 (Paris: Cerf, 2000), 59–65. 28 Jerome Comm. Gal. 1.1.6; translation from Thomas P. Scheck, St. Jerome’s Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2010), 64.

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29 Augustine Exp. Gal. 4; translation from Eric Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 128–9. 30 John Chrysostom Hom. Gal. 1.7; translation is my own. 31 J.B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, rev. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1870), 219–20. 32 Ibid., 219. 33 This is not to say that his explanation makes any sense. For example, he provides a paraphrase that captures (what he supposes to be) Paul’s thought process: “‘It is not another gospel’ the apostle says, ‘for there cannot be two gospels, and as it is not the same, it is no gospel at all’” (Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle, 219). Yet these premises are derived entirely from Lightfoot’s head – there is no basis for them in Paul’s text. 34 Charles J. Ellicott, A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians with Revised Translation (London: Parker, 1854), 7. Emphasis in original. 35 Ibid., 7. 36 Ibid., 6–7. Emphasis in original. 37 Benjamin Jowett, The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans, 2nd ed., 2 vols (London: Murray, 1859), 1:261. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 W.M. Ramsay, A Historical Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, 2nd ed. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1900), 260–6. 42 Ibid., 262. 43 Ibid., 261. 44 Ibid., 264. 45 Ibid., 265. 46 Burton, Critical and Exegetical, 22. Strictly speaking, Burton takes us out of the nineteenth century, but his work fits closely with the others. 47 Ibid., 24, 420–2. 48 Ibid., 422. 49 Ibid., 24. 50 Ibid., 23. 51 Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles, 219. 52 This interpretation can therefore be expressed with a paraphrase that uses the same term to translate ἕτερος and ἄλλος and yet also signifies the shift in perspective: that is, the Galatians “are turning to another gospel, which is in fact not another.”

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53 Schreiner, Galatians, 86; Fung, Galatians, 43; de Boer, Galatians, 41; deSilva, Letter, 126. 54 Martyn (Galatians, 110) captures this possibility by imagining the Galatians saying, “The proclamation we are receiving from the Teachers is indeed a different gospel, and we are transferring our allegiance to it because it is far superior to the one we heard from you!” 55 de Boer, Galatians, 38. This is also Ramsay’s first proposal (Historical, 264). Martyn goes one step further, taking it as an adversative and making a complete break: “Not that there really is another gospel; but the point is that there are now among you some persons” (Martyn, Galatians, 106). The problem here, as Albert Vanhoye points out, is that Paul has unexpectedly introduced a new subject in the clause that bears no conceptual relationship with what has gone before. “La définition of de l’‘autre évangile’ en Gal 1,6–7,” Bib 83 (2002): 396. 56 E.g., Longenecker, Galatians, 16: “The idiomatic use of εἰ μή … suggests that no one would ever think of calling the Judaizers’ message a ‘gospel’ except with the intention of confusing the Christians of Galatia.” Emphasis in original. 57 This was proposed by Cornelius Lapide in the seventeenth century and then by Heinrich August Schott in the nineteenth, and more recently by Troy W. Martin, “The Syntax of Surprise, Irony, or Shifting of Blame in Gal 1:6–7,” br 54 (2009): 79–98. 58 Even a first-class condition in the indicative mood functions as a logical assertion of contingencies, not a statement of fact. David J. Armitage (“An Exploration of Conditional Clause Exegesis with Reference to Gal 1, 8–9,” Bib 88 [2007]: 378) specifically challenges Longenecker’s claim that because the protasis in 1:9 is in the indicative mood it is “thereby stressing the reality of the situation” (Longenecker, Galatians, 18). Drawing upon Speech Act theory, Armitage (“Exploration,” 392) suggests that the condition in 1:9 is functioning to invite the Galatians to consider whether the situation alluded to in 1:8 is actually happening. It thus serves as a warning to the Galatians not to follow the false teachers. 59 While Paul’s statements serve primarily to warn the Galatians, they also have the effect of delineating the boundary lines as he sees them and showing that he is clearly within them. 60 Martyn, Galatians, 121, 124. 61 Vanhoye, “Définition,” 397. 62 Note the similarities with Paul’s response to somewhat similar circumstances in his letter to the Philippians: some are proclaiming Christ on account of envy and strife, others on account of goodwill. “What does it matter: with false

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motives or with the truth, Christ is being announced: in this I rejoice” (Phil. 1:15–18). 63 The complete quotation in Spanish is: “De todos modos, hay que prescindir del modelo común y corriente de Pablo como tipo ‘hombre fuerte,’ erudito y noble desde siempre, que es, repito, la imagen de Pablo que promueve el libro de los Hechos y que todavía predomina en la ciencia bíblica. Según Pablo, aunque sea sin querer reconocerlo, su cuerpo era obviamente una vergüenza a nivel sociopolítico, porque no cuadraba, como presencia apostólica, en los esquemas dominantes o normales de liderazgo (tanto en la antigüedad como actualmente).” Leif E. Vaage, “Introducción metodológica a los escritos de Pablo,” ribla 62 (2009): 10; translation is my own.

7

Biblical Cartography and the Master Narrative of Paul’s Mission Santiago Guijarro The truth is … maps are weapons. Denis Wood1

in t ro du cti on “If you had stopped Paul in the streets of Ephesus and said to him, ‘Paul, which of your missionary journeys are you on now?’ he would have looked at you blankly without the remotest idea of what was in your mind.”2 This fictitious encounter was imagined more than half a century ago by John Knox. Inspired by it, we can also imagine another encounter, this time with the author of the Acts of the Apostles: If some years later, in those same streets of Ephesus, we had stopped Luke and asked him: “What missionary journey was Paul on when he was here?” he would have looked at us surprised without really knowing what to answer. These two imaginary conversations can be an appropriate starting point to measure the impact of modern cartography on our understanding (or misunderstanding) of Paul and his missionary activity. For, if you were to ask someone with a primary religious education the same question today, she might respond that Paul was maybe at the end of his second missionary journey or, more likely, on the third. Unlike Paul or Luke, our hypothetical modern conversation partner would have at her disposal an extraordinary resource that they both lacked: she can consult the maps that she will find in any Bible, in any biblical atlas, or even on the internet. In all of these, she will find Paul’s three missionary journeys carefully differentiated.

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If these suppositions are correct, namely, if Paul and Luke would not have understood our question as easily as our modern conversation partner, then we might proffer several questions. From where have these maps taken the information that they convey so confidently? Why do they distinguish three missionary journeys of Paul so neatly? Moreover, what effect does this way of organizing the data about Paul’s missionary activity have on our vision of the apostle? This study aims to answer these questions. However, before doing so, we should confirm the suspicions that have motivated them. Our first step will be reading the letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles to identify the implicit maps of the Pauline mission that these texts presuppose.3

a mi s s io n a ry m a p in t h e letters of paul? To ascertain Paul’s perception of geography, and whether he understood his mission in geographical terms, we must refer to his letters. His worldview has come to us only through these circumstantial texts, wherein we find references to the places he and his co-workers visited, not to mention journeys he planned but could not carry out. We can identify the geographical vision presupposed in Paul’s letters by resorting to cognitive cartography, a field that studies the mechanisms that control the perception of space. That perception can be disclosed by identifying the cognitive maps presupposed by a text or any other discourse. A cognitive map can be defined as “a mental model of spatial relations.”4 In the field of narrative analysis, we often speak of the “implied author” and the “implied reader” to refer to the respective author and reader that a text presupposes. In the same way, we can also speak of an “implied map” to designate the “mental map that the text creates for its readers.”5 This mental map is a construction, conscious or unconscious, that reflects a vision of geography. To reconstruct this vision, we must identify how places are mentioned and how they are related, as well as the cognitive and emotional connotations that the narrative assigns them. The mental map of Paul’s letters reflects a markedly political vision of geography, as it usually identifies territories using the names of the Roman provinces (e.g., Macedonia, Achaia, Galatia, Judea, Arabia, Italia, Hispania). This geographical construction represents the point of view of Roman authorities and those who could think beyond a local perspective.6 The letters also mention the names of some cities when they refer to their recipients (e.g., Rome, Corinth, Thessalonica, Philippi). The movements of the apostolic group are situated on this mental map.

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The letters refer to them in a series of occasional “travel notes,” where we can find some indications of Paul’s geographical vision of his mission.7 Unfortunately, most of these notes refer to trips between two or more cities and do not reflect any broader view of the world. There is only a single piece of relevant information about how Paul understood his missionary activity. It can be found at the end of the Letter to the Romans and reflects a crucial moment in his missionary trajectory. At that point, Paul sums up his previous mission: “For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum I have fully proclaimed the good news of Christ” (Rom. 15:18–19). Shortly afterward, Paul reveals his plans for the future: “But now, with no further place for me in these regions, I desire, as I have for many years, to come to you when I go to Spain. For I do hope to see you on my journey and to be sent on by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a little while” (Rom. 15:22–24). Geography plays a decisive role in these summaries of his previous activity and his plans. The mental map that Paul presupposes is that of the empire. He mentions several provinces (Illyricum, Hispania, Macedonia) and two cities that have both strategic value specific to his personal goals and broader symbolic value (Jerusalem and Rome). On this map, Paul locates two missionary projects. The first, which stretches from Jerusalem to Illyricum, belongs to the past. The second, which stretches from Rome to Hispania, belongs to the future.8 The first missionary project has a perfect geographical definition: “so that from Jerusalem and as far around [in a circle] as Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ” (Rom. 15:19: ὥστε με ἀπὸ Ἰερουσαλὴμ καὶ κύκλῳ μέχρι τοῦ Ἰλλυρικοῦ πεπληρωκέναι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ). Three details reveal that this description reproduces a mental map created by Paul.9 First, although he began his mission from Antioch after a harsh confrontation with Peter (Gal. 1:22), in this passage Paul declares its start in Jerusalem, thus linking it to the metropolis of Judaism. Second, Paul mentions different local travels in his other letters, but when summarizing his first missionary phase in Romans, he represents it as a linear process: in a circle. Finally, the reference to Illyricum is also striking, since nothing in his letters suggests that Paul or his co-workers had gone there. In this passage, Paul creates a mental map for his readers. This map bears no hint of distinct missionary journeys. Paul’s activities to that

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point were part of a single missionary project that was nearing its conclusion. Paul does not treat the trip to Jerusalem to bring the collection (Rom. 15:26) as the end of a supposed missionary journey, since the arrival point of the first mission was Illyricum. That journey to Jerusalem was only a necessary pause to restore communion with the metropolitan church before heading for Rome, where he planned to begin a new missionary phase. The new missionary phase also has its mental map. After visiting Jerusalem, Paul intends to visit Rome and then Hispania: “I will set out by way of you to Spain” (Rom. 15:28: ἀπελεύσομαι δι’ ὑμῶν εἰς Σπανίαν). This second missionary project is particularly vivid in its details, but, as in the first missionary phase, Paul has a clear sense of its beginning and end. Within the framework of his missionary plans, the journey to Hispania was necessary for the gospel to reach all the Gentiles of the oikoumene (Rom. 11:25). Paul’s letters superimpose the mental map of the Empire (which had Rome as its centre) upon a Jewish mental map (centred on Jerusalem): from Jerusalem to Illyricum, and from Rome to Hispania.10 On this map, Paul locates his evangelizing activity on the northern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean that seems to have come to an end when he writes Romans. On this map also, he locates his projected mission from Rome to Spain that he will start after his visit to Jerusalem. Knox was right: Paul would have looked astonished if you had asked him in the streets of Ephesus what missionary journey he was on!

t h e m a p o f pau l’ s mi ssi on i n acts The implicit map of Acts is more complex than the one presupposed by Paul because the geographic information of Acts’ narrative is more detailed. Much of it is devoted to narrating Paul’s journeys (Acts 13–28), which resemble Hellenistic travel novels such as Chariton’s Callirhoe or Xenophon’s Ephesian Tale. In these novels, as in Acts, the narrator constructs a map to aid the reader’s perception of the narrative world. The cognitive map of Acts, like that of the Pauline letters, has a clearly political character. In Luke’s story, the territories are also identified by the name of the Roman provinces (e.g., Judaea, Italia, Macedonia), though some are mentioned by informal regional designations (e.g., Lycia, Pamphylia, Phrygia). The use of local terminology confers a certain “realism” to Acts’ narrative. Being a narrative story (and not incidental letters), the map of Acts is more complex, includes emotional elements, and has a more defined point of view.11

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Modern biblical atlases purportedly reproduce the map implied in Acts (and, to a lesser extent, in Paul’s own letters). However, there are good reasons to think that modern maps determine the reading of Acts and not the other way around. In Luke’s narrative, the first missionary journey begins and ends in Antioch (Acts 13–14). The beginning and the end of this trip are carefully defined in the story, along with the activities of its protagonists. The beginning of the first mission is the direct consequence of the election by the Spirit. As a result of this election, the missionaries are sent by the community of Antioch (Acts 13:1–3). The end of this mission reproduces – almost as mirror-image – its beginning, recounting how the missionaries returned to the community that sent them and how they shared the results of their missionary efforts with the community (Acts 14:24–28). The trip was promoted and encouraged by the Antiochene community. Those responsible for carrying it out were Barnabas, leader of the group of teachers and doctors of Antioch, and Saul, who also belonged to that group. Finally, as the narrative unfolds, it will be revealed that the task (Acts 13:2: τὸ ἔργον) entrusted by the Spirit to them was “to open the door of faith to the Gentiles” (Acts 14:27: ἀνοίγειν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν θύραν πίστεως). In the dispositio of Acts, this trip introduces one of the crucial moments of the story, the council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1–35). This meeting marks a turning point in the narrative. It legitimizes the reception of the Gentiles into the church, thus promoting the mission addressed to them, which becomes the central theme of the following chapters. This new stage, however, will not be carried out by Barnabas and Paul, but only by the latter. Regardless of how Luke explains this fact, one should observe that a new phase of the story begins, in which Paul, who now acts as an independent missionary, emerges as the protagonist.12 In the Lukan story, this independent mission of Paul concludes with the discourse to the elders of Ephesus (Acts 20:17–38). The fact that Paul did not return to Antioch after this meeting, but to Jerusalem, reveals that this was a different phase of his missionary activity. Despite this clear indication, it has been common to argue that the two missionary journeys follow a similar pattern.13 This argument relies on two observations. The first is that the new trip begins like the previous one: “after having entrusted them to the grace of God” (Acts 14:26: παραδεδομένοι τῇ χάριτι τοῦ θεοῦ; Acts 15:40: παραδοθεὶς τῇ χάριτι τοῦ κυρίου). The second observation is that in the course of this new missionary phase Antioch seems to take on a new significance: “When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up [to Jerusalem] and greeted the church, and then

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went down to Antioch. After spending some time there he departed” (Acts 18:22–23a: καὶ κατελθὼν εἰς Καισάρειαν, ἀναβὰς καὶ ἀσπασάμενος τὴν ἐκκλησίαν κατέβη εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν. Καὶ ποιήσας χρόνον τινὰ ἐξῆλθεν). Paul returns to Antioch, which, according to this view, continued to be his headquarters. However, these observations do not support the argument that the two missionary journeys follow a similar pattern. While Luke is indeed interested in showing that Paul’s activity as an independent missionary is in continuity with the trip he carried out together with Barnabas on behalf of the Antiochene community, at the same time it is clear that the allusion to the farewell of the community that legitimizes his mission reflects the narrator’s interest in downplaying conflicts in the early church. On the other hand, although Paul visits Antioch on his way to Jerusalem, it is obvious that nothing ends or starts with this “courtesy visit.” His stay in the community is described in such a generic way (“spending some time”), that it is difficult to see a relationship with the beginning or the end of the first missionary journey. It should come as little surprise, then, that most recent commentators are reluctant to identify two additional missionary trips in these chapters along the pattern of the first, but prefer to speak of an “independent mission” or “Aegean mission,” noting that after the council of Jerusalem, Acts’ geographic centre moves from Syria to the Aegean Sea. Daniel Marguerat’s comments are representative of this view: “It is customary to consider that after the council of Jerusalem begins the ‘second missionary journey of Paul’ (16:36–18:22), to which would follow a ‘third missionary journey’ (Acts 18:23–20:38). However, the author of Acts has not structured his story in this way. Acts 18:24–19:40 chronicles the events that happened in Ephesus, but they belong to the same Pauline mission, open to both Jews and non-Jews after the confirmation in Jerusalem (Acts 15:1–35). Luke narrates two missionary journeys separated by the council of Jerusalem (Acts 13:1–14:28 and 15:36–21:14), and not three.”14 The account of Acts distinguishes between two missions to the Gentiles. In the first one, which was dependent on the Antiochene community, Paul appears as a collaborator with Barnabas, while in the second he is the undisputed protagonist. These two missions presuppose two different maps. In the first, centred in Jerusalem, the Aegean is a distant place. In the second, however, the centre has moved precisely to that remote locale, and Jerusalem is in the distant East.15 This second map is closer to the one presupposed by Paul’s letters, which lacks any reference to the first journey narrated in Acts. Thus, the book of Acts distinguishes between two phases in the missionary work carried out by Paul: it not only assigns a different role

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to the apostle and the community of Antioch in each of them but also places them on two different mental maps. These differences between the Antiochene and the Aegean mission prevent taking the former as a model for the latter. Therefore, the distinction between three missionary journeys that we find in bibles, atlases, and in many commentaries does not come from the Lukan story. If we had met Luke in the streets of Ephesus and asked him what trip Paul was on when he was there, he would have looked at us surprised, without really knowing what to answer.

pau l’ s m is s io n a ry jo u rneys i n the maps Bearing in mind the implicit maps we have identified in Paul’s letters and in the Acts of the Apostles, let us now examine the modern maps that claim to represent the Pauline itinerary. These maps are everywhere: not only in popular bibles and introductory biblical textbooks, but also in critical editions and academic atlases. All of these maps consistently distinguish three missionary journeys. Modern cartographic understandings of the New Testament elaborate a master narrative of Paul’s missionary activity and render this narrative a pervasive paradigm, a paradigm that determines how we read the biblical text. A representative example can be found in recent editions of the NestleAland Greek New Testament. In the endpapers, one finds biblical maps. Lines of different colours identify four trips of Paul: First Journey, Second Journey, Third Journey, and Journey to Rome. The second and third are assigned the same colour but are distinguished by using continuous (second trip) and discontinuous (third) lines. As well, this supposition is continued in the Greek text in the body of Nestle-Aland. Though this widely used critical edition avoids introducing paratextual elements (e.g., titles, divisions), it nevertheless inserts a blank line between Acts 18:22 and 18:23, thus implying Paul’s short visit to Antioch was the end of his second missionary journey. Biblical maps thus not only shape popular versions of the Bible, but also the most prominent critical edition of the New Testament. The influence of this paradigm is also evident in academic biblical atlases. After examining numerous atlases, I mention five of the most recent and prominent, produced in different geographical areas and for different academic contexts: The Macmillan Atlas, in its fifth edition;16 The Sacred Bridge Atlas of Carta;17 the Herder atlas, a reference work in the German language;18 The Oxford Atlas, in its fourth edition;19 and, most recently, that of Edizioni San Paolo.20 Without exception, each of the works identifies three missionary journeys of Paul.

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Figure 7.1 | A typical cartographic depiction of Paul’s “third” missionary journey

The overwhelming tendency to represent Paul’s travels in this manner raises the question: Where does this cartographic dogma come from? This question is crucial because this dogma has determined, and continues to determine, how Acts and the Pauline epistles are read. We will see that the answer to this query is not found in ancient or medieval interpretation of the texts, but in much more recent exegetical traditions.

w h e r e d o e s t h e “ t h r ee journeys ” s c h e m a c o m e from? The outline of Paul’s three missionary journeys, which is present in modern commentaries and dominant in biblical cartography, was unknown to ancient and medieval commentators. Although an in-depth study of ancient commentaries on Acts has yet to be published, there is sufficient evidence to affirm that this tripartite division of Paul’s missionary activity was completely foreign to them. In a brief but thought-provoking article,

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John Townsend approached the question of the origin of the schema of “three missionary journeys.”21 Given the preceding observations on the implicit map presupposed in Paul’s letters and Acts, it might be opportune to revisit Townsend’s arguments in order to clarify the origin and function of this cartographic representation of Paul’s missionary activity. Townsend observes that ancient and medieval commentators were unaware of it. At the end of the second century, for example, Irenaeus gave a detailed description of the itinerary of the Pauline mission. In this description, he does not speak of three journeys, but about a single one with multiple displacements (Haer. 3.14.1). Similarly, in the old commentaries (e.g., Didymus the Blind, Jerome, Hesychius of Jerusalem, Ephrem, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Isho’dad of Merv), as in those of the Renaissance and Reformation (e.g., Erasmus, Calvin, Beza, Cornelius à Lapide), there is no mention of three journeys.22 Townsend finds the earliest mention of the three journeys schema in the first edition of J.A. Bengel’s Gnomon Novi Testamenti, published in 1742. The tripartite division of Paul’s journeys became popular among commentators in the following years, and within a century it had become firmly established in the exegetical tradition. This data is striking for two reasons. First, we have seen that such a schema has no basis in Paul’s letters, Acts, or in the old commentaries; second, this understanding of the Pauline mission became enormously popular, entrenching itself in readers’ imaginations. This prompts the inevitable question: Why did this schema prove so successful precisely at that time? Townsend’s answer is persuasive. He argues that this interpretation of Paul’s missionary activity is a consequence of the rise of European missionary societies. These societies became very popular in the first half of the nineteenth century, among Catholics after the creation of institutions such as the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, founded in 1822, and especially in Protestant circles after the founding of the Church Missionary Society in 1799 and the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804. These societies started a new missionary pattern because, unlike previous missionaries, who used to leave for a trip without return (think, for example, of Saint Francis Xavier and his missionary trip to India and Japan), those sent by these new societies were expected to return to the same place. The missionary pattern promoted by these societies was very similar to that of the first missionary journey of Barnabas and Paul narrated in Acts 13–14. For that reason, it is not surprising that these societies had taken this trip as a model for their missionary journeys: London or Rome was the new Antioch. Their experience, similar to that of Barnabas and Paul,

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turned this first trip into a model for the rest of Paul’s missionary career. Townsend convincingly demonstrates that this pattern reflects a colonial vision. However, it seems that there is much more behind the initial success and subsequent consolidation of the schema of the three journeys. The interest (conscious or not) in linking the two phases of Acts’ Pauline mission reveals the purpose of reinforcing a particular vision of the apostle, a vision that can be found, and continues to be promoted, in biblical maps.

m a p s as in s t ru m e n t s of pers uasi on In order to appreciate the role of biblical maps in promoting a particular image of Paul, it is necessary to understand, in the first place, what a map is. A working group of the International Cartographic Association proposed in 1992 the following general and diplomatic definition: “[A map is] a representation or abstraction of geographical reality: a tool for presenting geographical information in a way that is visual, digital or tactile.” John Harley and others, in their History of Cartography, proposed a more specific definition: “Maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world.”23 These two definitions reflect a common doctrine in the field of cartography that emphasizes the objective nature of maps. Although in both definitions the word “representation” – which easily evokes the idea of “elaboration” – plays a crucial role, both implicitly affirm that this representation accurately reproduces the real world. However, more recent consideration of the function of maps reveals that this view is naïve. Maps are, in fact, powerful instruments of persuasion and power.24 Maps perform three related functions: they objectify, they interpret, and they legitimize. By displaying space in its various aspects, maps objectify it and transmit an intense sense of realism. However, the very act of representing space or geography is an act of interpretation which establishes a distance between reality and its representation. Finally, this representation, which is not objective but an act of interpretation (e.g., what is worth including or excluding, which boundaries are taken as authoritative), often has a legitimizing purpose. Maps do not offer, therefore, the objective representation they promise, but a particular vision of reality that is neither neutral nor innocent. Maps are similar to texts in many ways. Just as there is a distance between the real world and the text that represents it, so also there is a distance between geographic realities and the maps that represent them.

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A story, even if it reports real events, is not a neutral reproduction of those events. The act of composing a narrative necessarily implies an interpretation. Similarly, the elaboration of a map involves a complex process of selection and articulation which interprets reality to produce an effect on its recipients. Maps do not objectively represent the world, but articulate and sometimes conceal hidden interests. Due to their capacity to objectify and their ostensive neutrality, maps enjoy an authority that produces a hypnotic effect on those who use them.25 This authority ascribes to maps a persuasive capacity that makes them a potent instrument of legitimation. Maps fuse and therefore confuse complex and varied spatial realities into a single two-dimensional plane, making it very difficult to distinguish between the reality represented and the worldview reflected by the representation. They convey such a sense of integrity and totality that their hermeneutical nature is obscured.26 One of the most important consequences of the persuasive ability of maps is that they can be used to promote or reinforce a particular vision of geography or history. Biblical cartography is, in fact, an excellent example of this, as Burke Long has shown in his study of biblical maps and American nationalist accounts. Analyzing how these nationalist narratives have influenced the representation of biblical geography, Long concludes that, as cultural constructions, maps “encode hegemonic scenarios of memory and identity … that shape the social experience.”27 Modern maps of Paul’s journeys are also cultural constructions that have shaped our understanding of the apostle and his place in the memory and identity of Christian churches. These maps have an “agenda,” a program, a vision, which is hidden behind their purported objectivity; that ostensive objectivity that has made them resistant even to the results of critical exegesis.

t h e h id d e n ag e n da of pauli ne maps Let us summarize the way travelled so far in this inquiry. We began by observing that neither the implicit map of the Pauline letters nor that of Acts includes three missionary journeys of Paul. In spite of that, biblical maps, even those reproduced in the most prestigious biblical atlases, clearly identify three such journeys. This schema of three trips also appears in some modern commentaries, even though there are no traces of it in biblical commentaries composed before the eighteenth century. Shortly after its initial articulation, the pattern of three missionary journeys became popular. The emergence of this new vision of

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Paul’s missionary journeys coincides with the introduction in Europe of a new model of mission that resembles the first journey narrated by Acts 13–14. Townsend argued that the legitimization of this new missionary practice facilitated the propagation (and ultimate “success”) of the “three journeys” model. Nevertheless, the fact that this outline of Paul’s journeys has persisted so stubbornly in biblical cartography has alerted us to a possible hidden agenda behind this cartographic dogma. To ascertain this hidden agenda, we should determine how this schema affects our understanding of Paul’s mission. To start with, we have noticed that it is entirely alien to the cognitive map of Paul’s letters, since he never even alludes to the first journey. Moreover, in that map Paul’s missionary activity is conceived as a continuum, not as a series of round-trips. The “geography of mission” presupposed by the letters reveals that the schema of three journeys was completely alien to Paul. Nonetheless, Paul’s letters offer other clues to his mission. The most relevant data is in Gal. 2, where he mentions the agreement reached in Jerusalem to continue the mission to the Gentiles without placing any burden on them: “those leaders added nothing to me” (Gal. 2:6: ἐμοὶ γὰρ οἱ δοκοῦντες οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο). In the same context, Paul also mentions his conflict with Peter, which was caused by the change of attitude of the latter on the matter of table-fellowship between Jews and Gentiles: “For until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction (Gal. 2:12: πρὸ τοῦ γὰρ ἐλθεῖν τινας ἀπὸ Ἰακώβου μετὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν συνήσθιεν· ὅτε δὲ ἦλθον, ὑπέστελλεν καὶ ἀφώριζεν ἑαυτὸν φοβούμενος τοὺς ἐκ περιτομῆς). As a consequence of this disagreement, Paul and his co-workers were marginalized among the communities that were under the orbit of the Jerusalem church. This fact coincides with the beginning of a new missionary phase centred on the Aegean. After this conflict, Paul was no longer a missionary fully linked to the mother-church and became an independent apostle, the leader of a minority group of Christ-believers whose missionary work and gospel needed to be legitimized, as the contribution of John A. Egger in this volume shows.28 Although Paul never broke with the Jerusalem church, his letters reveal that during this period he was anxious about reinforcing (restoring?) that communion, as Paul’s constant allusions to the collection for Jerusalem indicate (1 Cor. 16:1–4; 2 Cor. 8–9; Rom. 15:25–28, 15:31). Luke modified this vision of Paul as a marginal missionary. He carefully notes how Barnabas took Paul to the church of Antioch (Acts 11:25–26) and how Paul became a member of the group of doctors and teachers

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there (Acts 13:1). Luke also tells how Paul was chosen by the Spirit to accompany his mentor in the first mission to the Gentiles (Acts 13:2) and mentions Paul’s visit to Jerusalem (Acts 15:1–35), but he contemplates and narrates all these events from a point of view shaped by the experience of an entire generation in which Paul’s mission had begun to bear fruit. Luke’s point of view is particularly apparent when he narrates Paul’s departure from Antioch after the assembly of Jerusalem (Acts 15:36– 41). His story does not mention the disagreement with Peter, nor the real reason for the separation, nor the role that the Jerusalem church played in it. Although he relates a heated discussion, the disagreement is only with Barnabas, and the debate is on whether or not John Mark should accompany them. Luke has softened the conflict to avoid dissociating Paul from the Antiochene church, whose farewell, as we have seen, is very similar to that of the first journey (Acts 14:26, 15:40).

c o n c l u s i on The image of Paul’s mission in Acts differs from that of the apostle’s letters. In the Lukan narrative, Paul is not portrayed as an independent missionary that returned to Jerusalem, fearing that the collection he had gathered with so much effort would not be accepted and, consequently, communion could not be restored. But this is precisely the image reflected in Paul’s request to the Romans when he asks them to pray for him: “So that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my ministry to Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company” (Rom. 15:31). In Acts, by contrast, Paul’s connection with Jerusalem and Antioch is never compromised, although the absence of members of these churches during his trial in Jerusalem and Caesarea suggests something different (Acts 21–25). Luke distinguishes two phases in Paul’s missionary activity, but he does his best to create links between them. Modern cartography of the Pauline mission has gone a step further in this same direction. By distinguishing three successive missionary journeys that follow the pattern of the first, the maps blur the distinction made even by Acts between the first evangelizing period in which Paul appears as a missionary sent by the community of Antioch and the second phase in which he acts as an independent missionary. The alteration is even more drastic vis-à-vis the letters because the scheme of the three missionary trips incorporates elements that are foreign to Paul’s own mental maps, such as the first journey and the distinction of two missionary trips during his activity in the Aegean.

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By shaping the various phases of his mission according to the pattern of the first journey narrated in Acts, the maps make Paul appear as a “central” missionary: a missionary fully related to the Jerusalem church. As a result, the impact of his conflict with that church is diminished, and his understanding of the mission is dramatically changed. He is no longer a marginal missionary, the leader of a minority movement within the nascent church. He becomes a model missionary, “the Apostle.”29 This representation fits perfectly with the central place Paul had and continues to have in the Christian churches, but does no justice to the historical Paul and the innovative character of his missionary work. The portrayal of Paul’s mission is a telling example of the uncritical transfer of exegetical traditions and the role these traditions play in the creation of a master narrative of “the Apostle.” Consequently, any critically informed recovery of the “historical Paul” should include the revision of this received cartography. not e s

1 2 3

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The initial idea of this study came up in a conversation that I had in the summer of 2012 with my friend and colleague Leif E. Vaage. Visiting the region of Extremadura in western Spain, we arrived in the city of Mérida (the ancient Emerita Augusta) and, while sitting on one of the benches of its excellent Roman Museum, we started a conversation about the final chapters of the Letter to the Romans and about Paul’s vision of his own mission. This study, dedicated to him, is a follow-up of that conversation. Denis Wood, “How Maps Work,” Cartographica 29 (1992): 66–74, at 66. John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul, rev. ed. (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987), 41–2. An earlier version of the following paragraphs has been published in Santiago Guijarro, “Biblical Cartography and the (Mis)Representation of Paul’s Missionary Travels,” h vts t 75/3 (2019): 198–203. Marie-Laure Ryan, “Cognitive Maps and the Construction of Narrative Space,” in Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, ed. D. Herman (Stanford: csli , 2003), 214–42, at 215. Loveday Alexander, “Narrative Maps: Reflections on the Toponymy of Acts,” in The Bible in Human Society: Essays in Honour of John Rogerson, ed. D. Carroll et al., lhbots 200 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995), 17–57, at 18. Wayne A. Meeks, “From Jerusalem to Illyricum, Rome to Spain: The World of Paul’s Missionary Imagination,” in The Rise and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries of the Common Era, ed. Claire Rothschild and Jens Schröter, wunt 301 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 167–81, at 171–2.

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7 Alexander, “Narrative Maps,” 20. 8 Meeks, “From Jerusalem to Illyricum,” 169. 9 Commentaries usually draw attention to these details not mentioned in the letters or in Acts, but without identifying the process of construction of a mental map: see, e.g., Leander E. Keck, Romans, antc (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005); Romano Penna, Lettera ai Romani, Scritti delle origini cristiane (Bologna: edb, 2008). For a narrative analysis of the space in Romans, see Alain Gignac, “Espaces géographiques et théologiques en Rm 1:1–15 et 15:14–33: regard narratologique sur la ‘topologie’ paulinienne,” BibInt 14 (2006): 385–409. 10 Meeks, “From Jerusalem to Illyricum,” 173–80. 11 Loveday Alexander, “‘In Journeyings Often’: Voyaging in the Acts of the Apostles and in Greek Romance,” in Luke’s Literary Achievement: Collected Essays, ed. Christopher M. Tuckett, lnts 116 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995), 17–49; see also John S. Kloppenborg, “Luke’s Geography: Knowledge, Ignorance, Sources, and Spatial Conception,” in Luke on Jesus, Paul, and Earliest Christianity: What Did He Really Know? ed. J. Verheyden et al., bts 29 (Peeters: Leuven, 2017), 101–43. 12 Santiago Guijarro, “La articulación literaria del libro de los Hechos,” EstBib 62 (2004): 185–204. 13 The following commentaries distinguish three journeys: Gottfried Schille, Die Apostelgeschichte des Lukas, thknt 5 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1983); Franz Mussner, Apostelgeschichte, Neue Echter Bibel Kommentar 5 (Würzburg: Echter, 1984); Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, ab 31 (New York: Doubleday, 1998); Paul W. Walaskay, Acts, wc (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998). Others identify a section with two trips: C.K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, icc (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994–98); Darrell L. Bock, Acts, becnt (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007); Antonio Rodríguez Carmona, Hechos de los Apóstoles, Comprender la Palabra (Madrid: bac , 2015). 14 Daniel L. Marguerat, Les Actes des apôtres, cnt 2/5b (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2007–15), 111; translation is my own. The same division was proposed already by Alfred F. Loisy, Les actes des apotres (Paris: Nourry, 1920), 707; and later by Jürgen Roloff, Die Apostelgeschichte, ntd 5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981), 237–9; F. Scott Spencer, Acts, Readings (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 130; James D.G. Dunn, The Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 212. See also Luke T. Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, SagPag 5 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992); Gerd Lüdemann, The Acts of the Apostles: What Really Happened in the Earliest Days of the Church (Amherst: Prometheus, 2005); Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015).

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15 Alexander, “In Journeyings Often,” 30–1. 16 Yohannan Aharoni, Anson F. Rainey, and Michael Avi-Yonah, The Carta Bible Atlas, 5th ed. (Jerusalem: Carta, 2011), 188–90. 17 Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley, The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World (Jerusalem: Carta, 2006), 373, 375, 377. 18 Wolfgang Zwickel, Renate Egger-Wenzel, and Michael Ernst, Herders neuer Bibelatlas (Freiburg: Herder, 2013), 304–9. 19 Adrian H.W. Curtis, ed., Oxford Bible Atlas, 4th ed. (Oxford: University Press, 2007), 167–70. 20 Mario Cucca and Giacomo Perego, Nuovo atlante biblico interdisciplinare: scrittura, storia, geografia, archeologia e teologia a confronto (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2012), 97, 99. 21 John T. Townsend, “Missionary Journeys in Acts and European Missionary Societies,” atr 68 (1986): 99–104. 22 According to my colleague and friend Dr. Óscar Lilao, librarian at the University of Salamanca, there is no mention of three trips in the medieval and Renaissance commentaries on the book of Acts catalogued up to the present in the historical library of that university. 23 Both definitions quoted in Wood, “How Maps Work,” 66–7. 24 Ibid., 66. 25 The term “cartohypnosis,” which was coined by S.W. Boggs, has become popular in the field of cartography. “Cartohypnosis,” Scientific Monthly 64 (1947): 469–76. 26 Wood, “How Maps Work,” 72. 27 Burke O. Long, “Bible Maps and America’s Nationalist Narratives,” in Constructions of Space I: Theory, Geography, and Narrative, ed. J.L. Berquist and C.V. Camp, lhbots 481 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 109–25, here 110. 28 Egger, “Which Is Not Another” (present volume), 133–52. 29 On this trend, see Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains” (present volume), 334–56.

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Hidden Wisdom: The “Solid Food” Paul Reserved for “the Mature” (1 Cor. 2:6–3:4) Scott G. Brown As for Paul himself, he has no secrets at all. The “mysteries” that he conveys to his congregations are conveyed openly to all. In Paul’s congregations, including the Corinthian one, there is no special group of ‘mature’ people capable of receiving higher wisdom. Birger A. Pearson1 Since Paul says that he speaks this “wisdom” among “the mature” and that he could not so address them, it is thus often assumed that there are hidden depths of Christian truth that he did indeed possess but kept to himself in Corinth because of their lack of maturity. But the rest of the paragraph makes it clear that this would be a terribly unfortunate reading of Paul. Gordon D. Fee2

If there is one characteristic feature of contemporary scholarship on 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4, it is the great concern that commentators show in delineating how and why Paul did not intend to say what these verses appear to say. At its heart, the issue is esoteric teaching. Paul has just acknowledged in 2:1–5 that when he founded the church in Corinth, his preaching lacked “eloquence” and “persuasive words of wisdom.”3 Then, beginning at 2:6, he indicates that he nevertheless does speak wisdom, but it is a divine and hidden wisdom that “we” (apostles) speak “in a mystery” “among the mature.” This transcendent wisdom has no relation to human wisdom, but instead comes directly from God’s Spirit, who “searches” God’s mind and reveals to us (apostles) “even the deep things of God.” Paul compares this complete knowledge “of the things

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of God” that the Spirit alone possesses to “the things of a human” that are known only to the spirit within a human, which is to say, the things that others could not learn from observing and listening to that person – the private thoughts that a person does not openly disclose. By implication, this knowledge is not the public “testimony of God” that Paul has already preached to the congregation, but a “hidden wisdom” so private and profound that God’s own Spirit needs to search God’s mind in order to discover it. Paul conveys these “spiritual things to spiritual people” in a peculiar manner taught by the Spirit itself, which also enables a spiritual person’s comprehension, for “the things of the Spirit of God” must be “spiritually investigated.” Indeed, to those who have not received the Spirit, these spiritual teachings are incomprehensible and can only be experienced as folly. This, again, differs from Paul’s public proclamation, which only some outsiders experience as “folly” while “those who are called” perceive “the power and wisdom of God” (1:18, 1:23–24). Lest there be any doubt that Paul is referring to advanced teaching that he and other apostles reserve for the spiritually mature, he goes on to explain to the members of this church that they were mere “infants in Christ” when he was with them, whom he could not address as “spiritual persons.” To this point he has given them only his elementary “milk,” and even now they are still not ready to receive “solid food” because, as their quarrelling shows, they have remained in their initial “fleshly” condition. Much in this passage is challenging, but the basic point that Paul possessed a hidden wisdom that the Corinthians had not yet heard because he spoke it only to those who were spiritually mature is as clear and straightforward as anything in Paul’s writings. Yet for contemporary theology, it creates a host of problems. If Paul indeed had two stages of teaching and was insisting that the Corinthians were not yet capable of receiving his “solid food,” that would imply that his earlier preaching to them of “Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (2:2) and the (overt) contents of this letter qualify as the milk he offered fleshly people, whereas his hidden wisdom was something else – something we perhaps know nothing about if it was reserved for a special group. More problematic still is the space it creates for subsequent writers of any period to lay claim to the true esoteric teachings of the church. Christians familiar with the extravagant theological fantasies that emerged in the second century have reason to be concerned by the premise that God’s Spirit reveals “the deep things of God” directly to a subset of “spiritual people” who “fathom all things” and “have the mind of Christ” (2:10, 2:15–16), since these notions constitute a recipe for Gnosticism.

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The scholarship on 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4 reflects an awareness of these theological problems, to the point that it is difficult to find discussions that are not implicitly or explicitly arguing against the basic point that I described. William Baird’s 1959 article on 1 Cor. 2:6 is an interesting example, for unlike most exegetes, Baird remains open to an esoteric reading up until the last three pages of his article, where for theological reasons he decides that Paul’s distinction between his two diets cannot possibly be real: “The distinction is not in the wisdom, but in its recipients … Undoubtedly Paul did offer them ‘solid food’ from the very beginning. Could he possibly refer to his message of the crucified Christ as ‘milk’? … Although he says in 3:2 that they are still unable to receive spiritual diet, is it not obvious that this epistle which deals with matters so profound as the meaning of the Lord’s Supper and the resurrection cannot validly be described as ‘milk’? Certainly the distinction is in the hearers; there is one wisdom of God – Jesus Christ proclaimed as crucified.”4 Baird’s solution is typical. Commentators often combine it with the premise that throughout 2:6–3:4 Paul is adopting the problematic language of the Corinthians themselves and cleverly turning it against them in order to subvert their elitist thinking, as we see in this classic statement by Morna D. Hooker: In his original proclamation of the Gospel to the Corinthians, Paul offered them only Christ crucified; now, in this discussion of wisdom, he offers them an exposition of the same theme! His “meat,” then, differs very little, after all, from the “milk” which he has already fed to them. But this is hardly surprising; he has already preached to them Christ crucified – what else can he offer them? For Christ is the wisdom of God, and nothing else is needed. Why, then, the contrast in 3:3 [between milk and solid food]? The answer must be that Paul is echoing a distinction which has been made by the Corinthians. Yet while he uses their language, the fundamental contrast in Paul’s mind is not between two quite different diets which he has to offer, but between the true food of the Gospel with which he has fed them (whether milk or meat) and the synthetic substitutes which the Corinthians have preferred … It is largely the attitude and understanding of the Corinthians themselves which made Paul’s teaching seem like milk, and not meat. Those who despise the wisdom and strength of God, because they seem foolish and weak, will despise also the teaching which seems to them elementary, but which is in fact profound.5

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The problem with these expositions of what Paul must have meant is that they contradict what he actually wrote: “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet capable. Yet even now you are not capable, for you are still fleshly” (3:2–3). In my view, no coherent reading of 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4 is going to comport with contemporary theology and its ingrained certainty that the good news as first delivered by the apostles contained nothing esoteric. I have a great deal more to say about the nature of Paul’s hidden wisdom and even its actual contents, but to do so would require three times the available space.6 My objective here is to clarify the distinctions involved in these two “diets” and audiences. Through an examination of the terms in 2:6–3:4 that pertain to the speakers of this hidden wisdom and its prescribed hearers, I intend to show that Paul’s “solid food” indeed constituted an advanced stage of teaching that he and other apostles offered in private to select Christians whom they deemed complete in their spiritual development. If my reading of the evidence makes sense, it will serve, albeit indirectly, as a counterpoint to A.J. Droge’s contention in this volume that a second-century interpolator, rather than Paul himself, was responsible for 1 Cor. 2:6–16. Although we agree very significantly on the esoteric character of this passage,7 we disagree just as significantly on the meanings of the terms teleioi, pneumatikoi, psychikoi, archons, and aion, and on whether the passage as a whole makes sense within the larger argument of 1 Cor. 1–4. In order to address these issues more fully and directly, I have added a postscript assessing the identity of the archons, which Droge considers to be “the key to the interpretation of our passage.”8 What follows is my translation of 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4: 2:6 Yet we do speak wisdom among the mature, though a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 Rather, we speak in a mystery the hidden wisdom of God,9 which God preordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had recognized it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What things eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and into the heart of man has not entered, what things God has prepared for those who love him,” 10 to us God has revealed through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who among humans apprehends the things of a human except the spirit of a human that is in that person? Just so, no one apprehends the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we

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have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may apprehend the things that have been graciously bestowed on us by God. 13 And we speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in (words) taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people. 14 The natural person does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand, because it is spiritually investigated. 15 The spiritual person fathoms all things, but himself is fathomed by no one. 16 For, “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who will instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. 3:1 And so, brothers, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual persons, but as fleshy persons, as infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet capable. Yet even now you are not capable, 3 for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and dissension among you, are you not fleshly and walking in the way of a human? 4 For whenever someone says, “I am with Paul,” or another, “I am with Apollos,” are you not humans?

t he f u n c t io n o f 2 : 6 – 3 :4 wi thi n 1 cor. 1–4 Although the ideas expressed in 1 Cor. 2:6–16 may seem very strange, their purpose within the larger context is evident from its apologetic subtext. Beginning at 1:17 and continuing through 2:5, Paul is preoccupied with human wisdom, although he does not explicitly state why. Evidently he believes that the community’s factionalism (1:10–12; 3:3–4) is rooted in undue admiration for impressive teachers, particularly those who are able to persuade with philosophical rigour and rhetorical eloquence. Paul addresses this problem in a direct way through an attack on human wisdom and the elitist ethos it supports. At the same time his arguments contain an apologetic subtext that justifies his own inability to measure up. He concedes in 2:1–5 that his preaching in Corinth lacked eloquence and rational persuasiveness, and that he was among them “in weakness and in fear and with much trembling.” Yet he implies throughout 1:17–31 that his physical and rhetorical shortcomings were deliberate: Christ sent him to preach without recourse to clever speech, so that the cross would not be emptied of its power (1:17) and the Corinthians’ faith would not be based on human wisdom but on Paul’s powerful demonstrations of the Spirit (2:4–5). More importantly, the human kind of wisdom (that Paul lacks) is now irrelevant due to God’s choice “to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching” (1:21). God’s

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own subversive wisdom has destroyed the wisdom of the wise (1:19). What matters now is the wisdom of God that is implicit in Christ crucified, which entails a set of values that Paul himself exemplifies, not only through his physical weakness (compare 2:3 with 1:25, 1:27), but also through the hardships and humiliations that he regularly experiences as an apostle (4:9–13). This divine weakness and not the strength of the elite is what the Corinthians should emulate (4:16). It is in relation to this apologetic subtext that we may perceive the role of 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4, for this section serves as Paul’s claim that, despite his appropriate failings with respect to human wisdom, he actually possesses a far superior wisdom that transcends human reasoning. The Corinthians have not yet experienced his actual wisdom (and therefore have no basis to judge him) because they were not capable of receiving it when he was with them. That is the point of Paul’s distinction between his milk and his solid food in 3:1–4, so I have difficulty following Droge in removing 2:6–16 from Paul’s argument. Without these verses, we would have little indication of what Paul means by the solid food that the Corinthians are not yet able to digest. We know that it must be different from the milk that he has so far fed the community, which he characterizes as his preaching of “Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (2:2). And we know that it cannot be anything that he (openly) reveals elsewhere in this letter, for he insists with evident frustration that the Corinthians are still not ready for it because they remain “fleshly persons” and not “spiritual persons.” We can also rule out some kind of advanced instruction of a rational or philosophical character, since Paul has just finished declaring such wisdom null and void (1:19–20). Presumably, then, Paul’s solid food constitutes a form of religious wisdom that is not rational by human standards yet goes beyond what Paul presented to the Corinthians during the year and a half he was among them (Acts 18:1, 18:11). That of course is precisely the kind of instruction 1 Cor. 2:6–16 describes. The flow of ideas in 1:18–3:4 makes sense when we recognize that Paul is addressing perceived criticisms of his knowledge and eloquence, first by discrediting the worldly standards that some of the Corinthians would now hold him to (1:17–31), and then by explaining his own approach to pedagogy (2:1–3:4) and how it relates to the (more philosophically impressive) ministry of Apollos (3:5–15). I would describe the gist of Paul’s defence as follows: The cross has rendered the wisdom of this world foolish (1:18–31). I therefore deliberately avoided rational and rhetorical means of persuasion when I was with you, and chose to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and him crucified (2:1–5). Yet I do in fact possess wisdom, a divine wisdom that is far superior to the wisdom

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of this world (2:6–12). I speak it among those who are mature and spiritual (2:6, 2:13) because only they possess the discernment required to comprehend it (2:14–16). You were still fleshly, not spiritual, when I was with you (3:1). Hence I could not offer you this solid food (3:2). My labour with you was of necessity preliminary compared to that of Apollos (3:5–9). Nevertheless I did a good job. Like a wise builder, I laid the only foundation possible (Jesus Christ), which others build upon, and those people ought to be more careful how they build upon it (3:10–15).

w e , o u r , a n d u s in 1 cor. 2:6–16 The first issue that confronts us as we try to make sense of the teaching situation described in 1 Cor. 2:6–16 is Paul’s puzzling use of verbs and pronouns in the first-person plural, all of which lack clear antecedents. To start with, Paul uses the first-person plural λαλοῦμεν in 2:6, 2:7, 2:13 in reference to the persons who speak this wisdom. Obviously Paul includes himself, but who else does he intend by this use of “we”? Verses 2:6 and 2:13 indicate that these persons speak this wisdom “among the mature,” who are also “spiritual persons,” and 2:13 clarifies that this speaking consists of teaching: “And we speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in (words) taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people.”10 Paul’s subsequent statement in 3:1–3 that he was not able to speak “to you” (ὑμῖν, the members of the church in Corinth) as spiritual people because they were, and still remain, fleshly people (ἔτι γὰρ σαρκικοί ἐστε) makes it clear that this “we” does not include the general congregation. The knowledge these teachers possess of spiritual things and their status within the community as the teachers of spiritual people imply that Paul’s “we” in 2:6, 2:7, 2:13 not only are themselves spiritual people but also have authority over other such people (cf. 14:37). Paul also implies that his use of “we” in 2:6, 2:7, 2:13 principally concerns himself. His shift at 3:1 back to the first-person singular (“And so, brothers, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual persons”) indicates that what he has just explained in 2:6–16 accounts for why the Corinthians have thus far received from him nothing more substantial than his “milk.” This in turn implies that 2:6–16 describes a more advanced stage of his pedagogy in relation to spiritual people (i.e., how he imparts his “solid food”). So why does Paul use “we” in 2:6–16 at all? I suspect that he chose the plural to underscore that he is able to mediate God’s wisdom in this way because he is an apostle. This inference finds support in the only prior use of the nominative first-person

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plural in this letter, the pronoun ἡμεῖς in 1:22–23: “For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” To some scholars, this contrast between those who preach and two ethnic groups implies that the preachers constitute a similarly broad group, hence that Paul is contrasting the activity of Christians as a whole with the responses of Greeks and Jews,11 but this inference overlooks the fact that most Christians did not engage in preaching. Paul himself describes his preaching as a commission and a responsibility with which he has been entrusted (9:16–17). More importantly, just prior to 1:23 he characterizes his preaching of the gospel as something that Christ sent him to do (1:17), and he opens the letter with a reference to his calling as an apostle (1:1). I am therefore inclined to view his initial use of “we” in 1:23 as referring to those persons commissioned by Christ to preach, a category that roughly corresponds to “we apostles.”12 This prior use of “we” in 1 Cor. 1:23 provides us with an objective basis to establish the identity of the “we” who function as teachers of the spiritual persons: these are preachers who Paul believes were sent by Christ. We should include Apollos in this group, since Paul’s reference to “us apostles” in 4:9 occurs within a discussion of how the Corinthians should view himself and Apollos (4:1, 4:6).13 And considering that in 2 Corinthians Paul includes Silvanus and Timothy as persons with whom he “preached among you” (1:19), Paul’s “we” probably includes these particular co-workers, too. In fact, as Kieren Williams points out in her discussion of Paul’s co-senders, 1 Thess. 1:1 and 2:7 show that Paul could refer to Silvanus and Timothy as “apostles of Christ.”14 Evidently, Paul believed that he could “subcontract” some of the responsibilities of his personal commission.15 The referents for Paul’s other uses of “we” and “us” and “our” in chapter 2 are equally vague. Most scholars take the “us” in 2:10 (“to us God has revealed through the Spirit”) as referring to all believers, but this inference is somewhat problematic given the development of Paul’s argument, which limits the reception of this wisdom to the persons Paul describes as “the mature” and “spiritual people” (2:6, 2:13). Ideally, this “us” would eventually include all believers as converts progress in maturity from fleshly to spiritual, but at present it does not. Similar reasoning applies to the “our” in 2:7 (“the hidden wisdom of God, which God preordained before the ages for our glory”). Ideally, this “our” includes all believers, but there is an element of predestination involved, which is evident in the related passage Rom. 8:28–30. Rather differently, Paul’s statement “Now we have not received the

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spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may apprehend the things that have been graciously bestowed on us by God” (2:12) is a general assertion about the Spirit’s role in clarifying its own peculiar mode of revelation, so in this case the “we” and “us” includes any Christians who have received the Spirit. This assertion functions as a general premise in relation to the next statement, “And we speak these things … in (words) taught by the Spirit” in 2:13, so the inclusive use of “we” and “us” in 2:12 does not broaden the identity of the “we” or the “spiritual people” in the specific application of this premise to the teaching of spiritual people. The final “we” in 2:16 (“But we have the mind of Christ”) likewise does not refer to Christians in general but only to spiritual persons, for reasons I explain under the section “The Pneumatikoi.”

the

teleioi

We turn now to the terms that Paul uses to refer to those to whom he speaks his wisdom. His statement “Yet we do speak wisdom among the teleioi” (ἐν τοῖς τελείοις) has never sat well with commentators, rubbing elbows as it does with two other terms – wisdom and mystery – that evoke the mystery religions.16 It would be hard for the original readers of Paul’s letter not to make this association, given how prominently the concept of perfection featured in the mysteries.17 Hans Jonas explains: “In a certain sense, the mysteries generally were the cradle of the idea of ‘perfection,’ which hence was repeatedly, in antiquity, transferred into ethics and right into the contemplative ideal of philosophy … One need only consider the terminology: the whole sequence of initiations and instructions was called teletai; the initiated, tetelesmenos (the perfected one); the highest grade of the ascending series, telea mysteria (also epoptica); and the aim of it all, teleiosis – perfection or consummation.”18 “Among the perfect” would seem therefore to be the obvious sense of ἐν τοῖς τελείοις in the context of imparting wisdom in a mystery. The matter of whether Paul intended this sense, however, turns out to be rather complicated. His decision in 1 Cor. 3:1 to apply the term “infants” to the Corinthians to explain why he did not treat them as “spiritual persons” (hence as belonging among the teleioi) implies a different meaning for teleioi, namely, “the mature” or “the fully formed.” Some scholars point to Paul’s use of the child-adult analogy in 14:20 as proof that “the mature” is what teleioi actually means: “Brothers, do not be children (παιδία) in your thinking. Instead, be infants (νηπιάζετε) in evil, but in your thinking be mature (τέλειοι).”19

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This argument is certainly cogent, but the situation is still more complicated, for Paul uses the child-adult analogy in 13:11 as well, where he uses the word “man” (ἀνήρ) instead of teleios, but in the previous sentence he uses teleion in the sense of “the perfect”: “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when what is perfect comes (ὅταν δὲ ἔλθῃ τὸ τέλειον), the partial will be set aside. When I was a child (νήπιος), I talked like a child (νήπιος), I thought like a child (νήπιος), I reasoned like a child (νήπιος). But when I became an adult (ἀνήρ), I set aside childish ways (τὰ τοῦ νηπίου)” (1 Cor. 13:9–11).“The perfect” (in the sense of “the complete”) and “adult” are parallel concepts here, as are “the partial” and thinking “like a child.” Moreover, in Phil. 3:12–16 Paul uses the term teleioi to describe those Christians who have “attained to the resurrection from the dead” by sharing in Christ’s sufferings and becoming “like him in his death” (3:10–11). Here the term teleioi denotes an ideal of perfection or completeness which Paul himself is still striving to attain. Maturity is certainly implied by this use of teleioi, but Paul’s use of the verb τελειόω in his prior explanation, “Not that I already attained (this) or have been perfected” (Οὐχ ὅτι ἤδη ἔλαβον ἢ ἤδη τετελείωμαι), denotes completion or perfection, rather than maturity, so “perfect” is a better translation of teleioi in this context. In my view, Paul uses the concepts of being mature and being perfect to express essentially the same idea, so I am inclined to think that the word teleioi in 2:6 has both meanings. The problem is, that is not how language is supposed to work, so I will not press the matter beyond asserting that teleioi has esoteric connotations of initiation within 2:6–7, and will instead translate the term as “the mature.” What does Paul intend by the contrast between infants and the mature? The basic sense is not puzzling. In 3:1–4 Paul reminds the Corinthians that they were still infants in Christ when he was with them and that he therefore offered them milk instead of solid food, for they were not capable of anything more. By implication, the mature are those persons who are capable of digesting Paul’s solid food. As scholars routinely note, what we have here is a standard philosophical trope. A comparison with Philo of Alexandria is instructive. In On the Preliminary Studies Philo distinguishes between his milk and his solid food, associating the former studies with “the encyclical disciplines” (he lists grammar, music, geometry, rhetoric, dialectic science, “and other sciences resembling them”), and the latter less precisely with “the virtues” (Congr. 4.13–19). In That Every Good Person Is Free, he distinguishes three forms of instruction: milk, tender food, and stronger food. In this case his tender food corresponds to the encyclical disciplines, and his stronger food is “such as is prepared by philosophy, by

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which they will be strengthened so as to become manly” (Prob. 22.160). His work On Sobriety clarifies the corresponding child-adult metaphor by drawing an allegorical comparison between Ishmael, who represents the encyclical branches of education, and Isaac who represents true wisdom: “for the same relation which a completely infant child bears to a fullgrown man (νήπιον παιδίον πρὸς ἄνδρα τέλειον), the same does a sophist bear to a wise man (σοφιστὴς πρὸς σοφόν), and the encyclical branches of education to real knowledge in virtue” (Sobr. 2.9). We see from this allegorical comparison of Ishmael and Isaac that for Philo the full-grown man (τέλειος) has wisdom and real knowledge in virtue. Such a person is a class apart from those who have only a preliminary education. Philo borrowed this metaphor from the Stoic school, where it was used to differentiate the (unrealizable) Stoic ideal of the wise man (ὁ σοφός) “who had attained the τέλος of human existence” from “the ‘immature’ person, the one who had perhaps made headway but still far fell short of the goal (Epictetus Diatr. 3.24.53; cf. 1.4.18–32; Ench. 51).”20 Paul’s own use of the childadult trope fits this standard usage: all of his comparisons between types of people (spiritual/natural, spiritual/fleshly, full-grown/infants) and types of instruction (milk/solid food) in 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4 are framed as diametrical oppositions, which implies that “the mature” are as different from immature Christians as infants are from adults, and that the solid food he offers them is qualitatively different from the milk that infants can handle. This way of reading 1 Cor. 3:1–4 also accords with the larger context of 3:1–15, which uses imagery of maturation and development throughout. Paul tells the Corinthians that they are “God’s field, God’s building,” the product of a collaboration between two distinct ministries (3:5, 3:9). Paul planted and Apollos watered, “but God caused it to grow” (3:6–9). Paul laid the foundation, “which is Christ” (cf. 2:2), and Apollos and others build upon it (3:10–11). Given this emphasis on growth and development, it is most natural to read Paul’s statement, “I was not able to speak to you as spiritual persons, but as fleshy persons, as infants in Christ,” as implying that believers undergo a process of maturation from an initial condition comparable to being an infant to a mature condition comparable to being an adult. Paul emphasizes the Corinthians’ lack of maturity in 3:2 when he insists that they are still not ready for his solid food, again in 4:14–15 when he calls them “my dear children” (τέκνα μου ἀγαπητά), and when he refers to the people who have instructed them since his departure as paidagogoi, a term for guardians charged with supervising and educating young children. All these terms – infants, milk, children, paidagogoi – imply that the Corinthians are still a long way from receiving the kind of advanced instruction implied by Paul’s

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use of the child-adult trope. For that reason it makes little sense to propose, as some scholars do, that “the mature” is a status shared by all baptized Christians, and that Paul is criticizing the Corinthians for their failure to live up to a status that they started with.21 Paul could hardly have been clearer in 3:1–4 that the Corinthians have never qualified as mature or spiritual.

the

p n e u m at i ko i

Teleioi is one of two terms Paul uses to describe those to whom he speaks the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery. His alternative description is pneumatikoi, or “spiritual persons.” In order to determine what this term means in the present context, we need to consider the specific qualities he attributes to these persons and the implications of his use of the contrasting terms psychikos anthropos (2:14) and sarkinoi/sarkikoi (3:1, 3:3). Paul’s one specific statement about the pneumatikos occurs in 2:15, a sentence that is challenging to translate: ὁ δὲ πνευματικὸς ἀνακρίνει [τὰ] πάντα, αὐτὸς δὲ ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἀνακρίνεται. The verb ἀνακρίνω normally implies active investigation: to inquire into, ask about, examine, scrutinize, judge, assess. In the previous verse it means to investigate or discern, and there is no reason to think that the meaning has already changed in the next sentence. Hence, “The natural person (ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος) does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand, because it is spiritually investigated (ἀνακρίνεται). But (δέ) the spiritual person investigates (ἀνακρίνει) all things, but himself is investigated (ἀνακρίνεται) by no one.” The conjunction δέ at the start of 2:15 indicates a contrast between the natural person (psychikos anthropos) and the spiritual person (pneumatikos) with respect to the things of the Spirit of God. For the natural person, these things are foolishness and incomprehensible, and this person cannot understand them because they are spiritually investigated. By contrast, the spiritual person does comprehend the things of the Spirit of God, but he himself is incomprehensible, in the same way that the Spirit is incomprehensible to the natural person. In other words, Paul implicitly compares the spiritual person to the Spirit in terms of their ability to investigate and comprehend the things of God. This is also apparent in Paul’s use of “all things” (πάντα) and “the things of the Spirit of God” (τὰ τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ θεοῦ) to designate what the spiritual person investigates, which parallel Paul’s use of “all things” (πάντα) and “the things of God” (τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ) to describe what the Spirit alone is able to

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search and understand (2:10b, 2:11b). In both places Paul uses γινώσκω to describe the accurate knowledge that results. The sense implied by the two occurrences of ἀνακρίνω in 2:15 therefore involves not only active investigation but also correct understanding. It is hard to find a single verb in English that implies both these things and also works as a passive construction, but to fathom comes close enough: “The spiritual person fathoms all things, but himself is fathomed by no one.” The implications of this extraordinary claim are worked out in the final verse of chapter 2, where Paul offers a truncated quotation of two rhetorical questions from Isa. 40:13, followed by an assertion that affirms an unexpected answer: “For, ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who will instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.” Most commentators assume that the final clause equates “the Lord” in the scriptural quotation with Christ, but this assumption might not be correct. In an insightful study of this verse, Richard H. Bell draws attention to Paul’s use of the same quotation from Isaiah in Rom. 11:34, where it functions as commentary on Paul’s statement, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how unfathomable his ways!” In the context of Rom. 11, “the mind of the Lord” is God’s mind, and the point is similar to what Paul is making in 1 Cor. 2, namely, that the depths and wisdom of God’s mind are inaccessible to humans, “Yet through the revelation of his mystery something can be known of God’s mind.”22 In both places the subject matter concerns an aspect of God’s plan for salvation: in the case of 1 Cor. 1–2 it is the wisdom implicit in the cross; in Rom. 11 it is the mystery that “a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in” (11:25). In view of these similarities, Bell reads 1 Cor. 2:16a as a scriptural proof text establishing the validity of the statement made about the spiritual person in 2:15: “[In 2:11] Paul is simply arguing that the essence of the human being can only be known through the spirit of the human being. Likewise the essence of God can only be known through the Spirit of God. Then in v. 15 he says that those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny. This extraordinary idea is then established in v. 16. Just as no one has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him (Isa 40:13c), so no one has known the mind of the spiritual person so as to instruct him either. Paul is speaking of the privilege of the ‘spiritual’ Christians. They literally have the mind of Christ. They have this ‘organ of thought.’”23 I would state the point in a slightly different way. In Paul’s reasoning, the Spirit can know the mind of God (2:10b, 2:11b) but no human can know

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God’s mind (as the quotation from Isaiah implies) except the spiritual person, who has the mind of Christ (2:16). So as scriptural justification for the statement that the spiritual person fathoms all things (just like the Spirit) and is fathomed by no one (also like the Spirit), the quotation from Isaiah effectively equates the mind of the spiritual person with the unfathomable mind of God, since the spiritual person can search God’s innermost thoughts through the Spirit. The important issue, however, is not how Paul ascribes to the spiritual person the mind of Christ, but whether he has in fact taken a new step in his argument. Bell notes that Paul does not actually say what his preceding argument might lead us to expect, namely, that the spiritual person has limited access to the mind of God through the Spirit’s discrete revelations, which the Spirit itself enables the spiritual person to understand (1 Cor. 2:12). Paul does not even say here that the spiritual person knows the mind of God or the mind of Christ, which is what an affirmative response to the question, “Who has known (ἔγνω) the mind of the Lord?” would lead us to expect. Rather, Paul says, “we have the mind of Christ” (ἡμεῖς δὲ νοῦν Χριστοῦ ἔχομεν). As Bell demonstrates very effectively, this assertion does not mean merely that the spiritual person has the same mindset or outlook as Christ, as some commentators prefer to read the statement.24 The focus of 2:10–16 has been on how the inscrutable mind of God is made known to spiritual people like Paul, and the quotation from Isaiah in its original context (in both the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint) is about God’s mind (not his mindset). To have Christ’s mind, then, is to have his very thoughts. Bell himself seems disconcerted by this conclusion, acknowledging that Christians do not have any conscious awareness or experience of the mind of Christ.25 But the fact that (ordinary) Christians do not experience the thoughts of Christ is not a problem if one accepts that Paul’s use of “we” does not refer to ordinary Christians but to persons far more ideal. What this means will become clearer as we consider the terms Paul offers as contrasts to the pneumatikoi.

t he

p n e u m at i ko i ,

the

p s y c h i ko i ,

and the

s a r k i ko i

The uniqueness that Paul ascribes to the pneumatikoi is heightened by his decision in 1 Cor. 2:13–3:4 to contrast three categories of persons strictly in terms of spirit, soul, and flesh. His term sarkikos (“fleshly”) for the quarrelling Corinthians is the least perplexing of the trio, for his basic point that they are materialistic is evident from his complaint that they are “walking in the way of a human” (3:3). Considerably more pecu-

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liar is Paul’s choice of the term “psychikos person” (ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος) to denote those who dismiss the Spirit’s revelations as folly. Presumably Paul’s decision to characterize these persons as “soulish” has something to do with the distinction he is making concerning how the psychikos and the pneumatikos evaluate “the things of the Spirit of God.” For Paul, there are only two options: the natural human way of reasoning (vis-à-vis “words taught by human wisdom”) and a spiritual approach whereby the Spirit imparts knowledge or perception of divine realities (ἵνα εἰδῶμεν, 2:12) to one who is capable of investigating or fathoming such things spiritually (πνευματικῶς ἀνακρίνεται, 2:14b–15a). The terms pneumatikos and psychikos thus underscore two very different modes of cognition: the pneumatikos engages the things of God through the pneuma and the psychikos engages them through the psyche, which in the Hellenistic period was considered “the centre of human intelligence.”26 The underlying premise here, fundamental to esotericism, is that the intellect by itself can neither perceive nor comprehend realities that transcend the human mind and senses (2:9). The “real vision” that constitutes wisdom thus requires divine assistance.27 Yet this is not the entire point of Paul’s contrast or even the basis for his peculiar interest in the word psyche. In order to fully appreciate Paul’s point we must consider his use of the terms psychikos and pneumatikos later on in the same letter. Interpretations of 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4 sometimes take note of the recurrence of these two terms in 1 Cor. 15, but tend to minimize their relevance by construing the latter passage as evidence that Paul is adopting, and somehow correcting, the philosophical language of one of the community’s factions.28 That supposition needlessly complicates the most adequate explanation for the presence of these contrasting terms in 2:13–3:1, which is that Paul is subtly associating these two kinds of persons with the natural and supernatural forms of the human body: “It is the same with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body (σῶμα ψυχικόν), it is raised a spiritual body (σῶμα πνευματικόν). If there is a natural body (σῶμα ψυχικόν), there is also a spiritual body (πνευματικόν)” (1 Cor. 15:42–44). Paul goes on to associate the two forms of human body with the first Adam, who was made of dust but “became a living person” (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν: lit. “a living soul”), and the second Adam, who became a life-giving spirit (πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν), noting, “but the pneumatikos was not first, but the psychikos, then the pneumatikos.” It would appear, then, that these contrasting terms evoke not only two different modes of cognition but also two different modes of embodied existence.

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Significantly, the transition from the first condition to the second is not solely a future physiological transformation. It is also a goal to be realized in the present life: “And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven” (15:49).29 This exhortation is important. If we suppose that Paul’s terms psychikos and pneumatikos in 2:13–3:1 allude to these two states of existence, then we may infer that the term psychikos in 2:14 connotes a person who exists solely in the natural human condition, whereas the term pneumatikos connotes a person who already in some sense exists in the resurrected condition, which is to say, a person who inwardly, through the workings of the “life-giving spirit,” has succeeded in bearing the image of the man of heaven. In that case, Paul would think of “spiritual persons” as inwardly “the heavenly persons” (οἱ ἐπουράνιοι) that God intends human beings to become (15:48). When describing the materiality of the psychikos condition in 15:48, Paul uses the terms “the man of dust” and “those made of dust” (ὁ χοϊκός, οἱ χοϊκοί), which allude to Adam’s creation, but he also calls this body “flesh” (σάρξ in 15:39 [4x], σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα in 15:50), so Paul’s conceptual opposition between natural humans and transformed heavenly humans would also account for his references to the Corinthians as “fleshly.” Paul needed a third term to describe persons who, unlike the psychikoi, do possess the Spirit yet have made little progress toward becoming pneumatikoi. The relationship between acting fleshly and being a natural human is more apparent in the Greek of 3:1–4 than it is in most translations. Paul admonishes the Corinthians not only for acting “fleshly” (sarkikoi), but also for being “fleshy” (sarkinoi, i.e., made of flesh) and “human” (anthropoi).30 This odd focus on the Corinthians’ humanness is significant, for the terms pneumatikos, psychikos, sarkikoi, sarkinoi, and anthropoi are all explicable if he was thinking about people in terms of their creation in the image of Adam and the goal of recreation in the image of the man of heaven. His initial description of the Corinthians “as fleshy persons, as infants in Christ” and his question “Are you not humans?” make little sense unless he is supposing that through a process of maturation a Christian becomes in some sense not fleshy and not human, something more like an angel (cf. Mark 12:25). We may also detect a connection between the pneumatikoi and the perfect resurrection body in occurrences of the counterpart term teleioi in two passages we briefly considered earlier. Recall that in 1 Cor. 13:8–12 the condition of being an adult in Paul’s child-adult analogy is associated with the coming teleion (“when what is perfect comes”), which includes the perfection of the believer’s knowledge of spiritual things.31 Similarly,

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in Phil. 3:12 and 3:15 Paul describes those Christians who qualify as teleioi in terms of the ideal of attaining the resurrection of the dead through a process that involves knowing Christ and experiencing the power of his resurrection by sharing in his sufferings and being like him in his death (3:10–11). This concept of “being perfected” comports well with Paul’s conception in 1 Cor. 15:49 of a Christian’s inward transformation into the image of the man of heaven, which I suggested is a basis for his use of the term pneumatikos. Paul’s vision of the coming perfection involves seeing clearly and knowing fully (esp. 13:12), so if we understand the terms pneumatikos and teleios in this way as denoting the present inward attainment of the future resurrection condition, we can better appreciate how such a person could be said to “have the mind of Christ.” It seems likely, then, that the pneumatikoi are distinguished not only by their capacity to fathom all things, but also by the extent of their inner conformity to the image of the risen Christ.

c o n c l u si ons Paul gives us every indication that the teleioi/pneumatikoi are Christians whose capacity for understanding spiritual matters and for dissociating themselves from fleshy matters has reached its human limit. Contrary to what most commentators argue, these terms do not describe ordinary Christians, as though the pneumatikoi are typical baptized Christians and the immature Corinthians are exceptions to the rule. Rather, by starkly opposing the spiritual and the fleshy, infants and the fully formed, Paul is situating the two groups at opposite ends of the process of spiritual development. What separates them, however, is not an inherent difference in their respective natures but a process of maturation through instruction enabled by the power of the Spirit. We may presume that in time, as individual members of the church mature, he will start feeding those persons “solid food.” In a more extensive version of this paper,32 I endeavour to show that Paul’s wisdom had both an exoteric aspect and an esoteric aspect. Its exoteric form concerns the necessity of the messiah’s crucifixion and the implication that God is overturning the human value system predicated on honour, status, and power; these are the themes that Paul elaborates as “the wisdom of God” in 1 Cor. 1. Its esoteric form concerns the more fundamental and paradoxical truth “which God preordained before the ages for our glory,” namely, that glory and immortality come through dishonour, suffering, and death. By sharing in Christ’s passion in the present, the believer is progressively transforming into the glorious image of the risen

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Christ. Paul elaborates these insights in a deliberately enigmatic way in 2 Cor. 3–4. Significantly, these notions were not confined to Paul’s theology, for the same wisdom, described as “the mystery of the kingdom of God,” appears in the same exoteric form in the Gospel of Mark, and in the same esoteric form in the mystic version commonly known as the Secret Gospel of Mark.33 These findings suggest that an esoteric tradition already existed at the earliest documented stage of Christianity.

p os t s c r ip t : t h e a rc h o ns of thi s aeon – a r e s p o n s e to a.j. droge By this point my reasons for disagreeing with Droge on the meaning and translation of the terms teleioi, pneumatikoi, and psychikoi should be apparent.34 Here I wish to defend the translation “rulers of this age” as preferable to Droge’s “archons of this aeon” and argue that this phrase finds its proper meaning within the context of 1 Cor. 1–4. If one treats the identity of the archons as an exegetical matter, which has been my general approach, it becomes apparent that the author of 2:6–16 uses the archons to elaborate the same opposition that Paul constructs in 1:18–2:5 between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of this age/world. This opposition occurs in the two places where the verb “we speak” is followed by a “not … but …” construction: Yet we do speak (λαλοῦμεν) wisdom … though a wisdom not (οὐ) of this aion, nor of the archons of this aion … Rather (ἀλλά), we speak … the hidden wisdom of God. (2:6–7) And we speak (λαλοῦμεν) these things, not (οὐκ) in words taught by human wisdom (ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας), but (ἀλλά) in (words) taught by the Spirit. (2:13) The parallel form of these statements suggests that the wisdom associated with the archons and “this aion” is human wisdom. Read in its larger context, this would be the same “wisdom of the world” that Paul contrasts to “the wisdom of God” in 1:20–21. Indeed, the phrase “archons of this aion” in 2:6 and 2:8 resembles the phrase Paul uses in 1:20 to characterize a conventional proponent of this wisdom, “the debater of this aion.” In that instance the phrase “of this aion” means “of this age,” since it is used interchangeably with “of this world,” as is also the case in 3:18–19. Similarly, the phrase “not in words taught by human

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wisdom” that the author of 2:6–16 applies to his own speech resembles Paul’s four prior descriptions of the rhetorical and philosophical sort of persuasion that he did not use in Corinth.35 The assertion in 2:6 that the archons are “coming to nothing” further connects these archons to the human wisdom repudiated in 1:18–2:5, for Paul uses the same verb (καταργέω) in 1:28 to describe the demise of a specific segment of human society that he associates with wisdom, privilege, and strength: “Think about the circumstances of your call, brothers. Not many were wise (σοφοί) by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were born to a privileged position. But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise (τοὺς σοφούς), and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, what is (regarded as) nothing, to bring to nothing (καταργήσῃ) what is (regarded as) something, so that no one can boast in his presence” (1:26–29). These statements divide society into two categories: the aristocracy, who are respected somebodies (those who are “the strong,” “regarded as something,” “wise by human standards,” “powerful,” and “born to a privileged position”), and the despised nobodies from whom God called many in the church. Paul is concerned that the Corinthians, with their boasting and rivalry, are adopting the wisdom and values of the aristocracy (4:6–8), and he responds to this situation by reminding them of their place within that system: the world deems them foolish and weak. By human standards, the Corinthians amount to nothing, but with God their situation is reversed: God actually chose “the foolish things of the world” (τὰ μωρὰ τοῦ κόσμου) and “the weak things of the world” (τὰ ἀσθενῆ τοῦ κόσμου) in order to shame the wise and strong. Ultimately, God’s choice of “the low things of the world” (τὰ ἀγενῆ τοῦ κόσμου) and “the despised things” (τὰ ἐξουθενημένα), which to the world amount to “the things that are not (existing)” (τὰ μὴ ὄντα), will reduce the great to nothing. These statements focus on the people whom God chose, but Paul’s odd neuter constructions imply a broader generalization that includes the essence of his gospel, which he had described a few verses earlier using the same words that he applies to the Corinthians: “But we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness (μωρίαν) to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ [i.e., Christ crucified] is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God (τὸ μωρὸν τοῦ θεοῦ) is wiser than human (wisdom), and the weakness of God (τὸ ἀσθενὲς τοῦ θεοῦ) is stronger than human (strength)” (1:23–25). God’s choosing of the riffraff was part and parcel of his decision to save those who believe through the foolishness of

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preaching Christ crucified (1:21). Human weakness and foolishness as exemplified by the Corinthians and a crucified messiah are God’s power and wisdom and strength, and his choice to intervene in this way is destined to bring the elite to nothing. This prior use of καταργέω has exegetical implications for the archons. A reader of 2:6–16, having just encountered these statements about the aristocracy, would probably infer from the modifier “who are coming to nothing” (τῶν καταργουμένων) that the archons are a case in point. In other words, these archons are the actual rulers within the aristocracy, the pinnacle of the wise and strong, whose ranks included the individuals whose intrigues resulted in Christ’s crucifixion. The theme in 1:26–29 that the wise and powerful are coming to nothing elaborates the premise of 1:18–20 that the people of this age who are esteemed for their human wisdom are becoming irrelevant now that “the message about the cross” has rendered that wisdom foolish. This thesis can account for all of the details about the archons presented in 2:6 and 2:8. First, they are “of this aion” and share its wisdom. Paul uses this exact phrase in 1:20 and the variant “in this aion” in 3:18–19 when describing this world’s wisdom and its main representatives as obsolete. Second, the archons are “coming to nothing.” This is what we would expect if they represent the apex of human wisdom and strength. Third, the archons “would not have crucified the Lord of glory” had they understood God’s hidden wisdom. If that wisdom is the same “wisdom of God” (1:21, 1:24; cf. 1:30) elaborated in 1 Cor. 1, then this statement follows logically, for had the human rulers understood God’s plan to use what is weak and foolish in the world (the cross, the word of the cross, and the nobodies) to bring the great to nothing, they would not have crucified Jesus. These exegetical considerations support the standard translation “the rulers of this age” and the integrity of 2:6–16 within 1 Cor. 1–4. no t e s I wish to thank Roy Kotansky for his incisive critique, which helped me produce a much better argument. 1 Birger A. Pearson, “Mystery and Secrecy in Paul,” in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices. Studies for Einar Thomassen at Sixty, ed. Christian H. Bull et al., Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 76 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 300. 2 Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, nicnt , rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 109.

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3 Except where noted, the biblical quotations in this paper are from the net version, which I have occasionally modified. Translations of Philo are from C.D. Yonge, trans., The Works of Philo Judaeus, The Contemporary of Josephus, 4 vols, Bohn’s Classical Library (London: Bohn, 1854–90). 4 William Baird, “Among the Mature: The Idea of Wisdom in 1 Corinthians 2:6,” Int 13 (1959): 425–32 (at 431). 5 Morna D. Hooker, “Hard Sayings: 1 Corinthians 3:2,” Theology 69 (1966): 19–22 (at 21). Cf. J. Francis, “‘As Babes in Christ’: Some Proposals Regarding 1 Corinthians 3:1–3,” jsnt 7 (1980): 55–6; Duane Litfin, St. Paul’s Theology of Proclamation: 1 Corinthians 1–4 and Greco-Roman Rhetoric, sntsms 79 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 222–3; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, nigtc (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 291–2; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, ab 32 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 187; Benjamin L. Gladd, Revealing the Mysterion: The Use of Mystery in Daniel and Second Temple Judaism with Its Bearing on First Corinthians, bznw 160 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 117–19, 126; Fee, First Epistle, 133–4. 6 See the fuller version published in Italian as Scott G. Brown, “L’esoterismo in Paolo: La sapienza nascosta di 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4,” Mondi 3 (2020): 3–42; 4 (2021): 3–50. 7 Droge occasionally uses the terms esoteric and esotericism (“Whodunnit” (present volume), 305–33) but prefers the terms gnostic and Gnosticism. The more general term gnosis seems more appropriate to me, in the sense of “direct experiential knowledge [of ultimate reality] … attained through ‘ecstatic’ states of mind” (Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012], 372). 8 Droge, “Whodunnit,” 314. 9 On the syntax of this verse, see T.J. Lang, “We Speak in a Mystery: Neglected Greek Evidence for the Syntax and Sense of 1 Corinthians 2:7,” cbq 78 (2016): 68–89. Lang shows that “in a mystery” modifies “we speak.” 10 For discussion of the translation options for the phrase πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκρίνοντες in 1 Cor. 2:13, see Alfred Plummer and Archibald Robertson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians, icc (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 47–8; John Paul Heil, The Rhetorical Role of Scripture in 1 Corinthians, StBibLit 15 (Atlanta: sbl , 2005), 64–5n28. 11 E.g., Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 153, 159. 12 Similarly, Jonathan D.H. Norton, Contours in the Text: Textual Variation in the Writings of Paul, Josephus and the Yah∙ad (London: T&T Clark, 2011),

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165n131. Augustus Nicodemus G. Lopes arrives at this conclusion through an exhaustive study. See his “Paul as a Charismatic Interpreter of Scripture: Revelation and Interpretation in 1 Cor 2:6–16” (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1995), 130–56. Andrew Wilson, “Apostle Apollos?” jets 56 (2013): 325–35. In addition to Wilson’s arguments, note the phrase “stewards of the mysteries of God,” which appears to include Apollos (1 Cor. 4:1 taken with 4:6). Stewards are entrusted, not self-selected, so this function sounds like a commission that would require the same authorization accorded an apostle and the special knowledge described in 2:6–16, although 15:8 would imply that this commission to Apollos did not happen in the form of a resurrection appearance. Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains” (present volume), 346–9. It is less clear whether we should include Sosthenes, the co-sender of 1 Corinthians, in this group (1:1), since Paul addresses the congregation in the first-person singular as soon as the thanksgiving (“I always thank my God”), and no other mention of Sosthenes occurs in the Pauline corpus. On the mystery religion context of this vocabulary, see L.L. Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1 Corinthians 1–4 in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition, lnts 293 (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), 206–7; Charles Andrew Ballard, “To Know All Mysteries: The Mystagogue Figure in Classical Antiquity and in Saint Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians” (PhD diss., Fordham University, 2016), 348–57. So, Ballard, “To Know All Mysteries,” 349–50. Hans Jonas, “Myth and Mysticism: A Study of Objectification and Interiorization in Religious Thought,” jr 49 (1969): 320. E.g., Fee, First Epistle, 109. Timothy A. Brookins, Corinthian Wisdom, Stoic Philosophy, and the Ancient Economy, sntsms 159 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 168–9. Plummer and Robertson, First Epistle, 36; Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. James W. Leitch, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 59; Francis, “As Babes in Christ,” 47; Fee, First Epistle, 109–10, 133–4; Lopes, “Charismatic Interpreter,” 119; Sigurd Grindheim, “Wisdom for the Perfect: Paul’s Challenge to the Corinthian Church (1 Corinthians 2:6–16),” jbl 121 (2002): 689–709 (at 708); Heil, Rhetorical Role, 73. Cf. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 174–5, who reasons that all Christians qualify as mature because “those who hear the revealed word thereby become teleioi.” Richard H. Bell, “But We Have the Mind of Christ: Some Theological and Anthropological Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:16,” in Horizons in

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Hermeneutics: A Festschrift in Honor of Anthony C. Thiselton, ed. Stanley C. Porter and Matthew Malcolm (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 178–9. Bell, “Mind of Christ,” 184–5, emphasis in original. E.g., Wendell Lee Willis, “The ‘Mind of Christ’ in 1 Corinthians 2,16,” Bib 70 (1989): 110–22; Thiselton, First Epistle, 275–6; Heil, Rhetorical Role, 74 (God’s “way of thinking” as manifested in the cross, which would allow the Corinthians to become “united in the same ‘mind’”); Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 186 (“an ethical outlook formed by the message of the cross”); Norton, Contours, 166, 174 (“unity in the same νοῦς,” as in 1 Cor. 1:10). Bell, “Mind of Christ,” 192–5. Frederick S. Tappenden, “Embodiment, Folk Dualism, and the Convergence of Cosmology and Anthropology in Paul’s Resurrection Ideals,” BibInt 23 (2015): 443. I owe this explanation to Francesco Coniglione, who wrote to me, “for [Paul] the psyche is the organ of reasoning, of argument, in short, of what is human knowledge, while the pneuma belongs to metaphysical intuition, which allows the vision of what is ineffable.” Francesco Coniglione, “Some Remarks on the Meaning of Esotericism and Plato’s Unwritten Doctrines,” Mondi 1 (2018): 26–8. E.g., Richard A. Horsley, “‘How Can Some of You Say That There Is No Resurrection of the Dead?’ Spiritual Elitism in Corinth,” NovT 20 (1978): 203–31; James A. Davis, Wisdom and Spirit: An Investigation of 1 Corinthians 1.18–3.20 against the Background of Jewish Sapiential Traditions in the Greco-Roman Period (Lanham: University Press of America, 1984), 113–31; Gregory E. Sterling, “Wisdom among the Perfect: Creation Traditions in Alexandrian Judaism and Corinthian Christianity,” NovT 37 (1995): 355–84; Brookins, Corinthian Wisdom, 169–71 (alleging a Stoic influence on the Corinthians). In most manuscripts the verb φορέω is in the aorist subjunctive (φορέσωμεν: “let us bear”); a few witnesses have it in the future indicative (φορέσομεν: “we will bear”). The choice between these two readings is straightforward. Since Paul has been arguing for the logical necessity of a spiritual body in order to explain how the resurrection of the dead is possible, most readers would expect the future tense at this point, so the occasional scribal revision of the subjunctive to the future tense would be expected, whereas a widespread revision of “we will bear” into an exhortation makes little sense. See Fee, First Epistle, 871n324, 879. As noted by Fee (First Epistle, 129n313), the terms σάρκινος (fleshy) in 3:1 and σαρκικός (fleshly) in 3:3 (2x) are not quite synonymous. The former means “composed of flesh” and is the word Paul chose in 2 Cor. 3:3 to describe the actual fleshy nature of the Corinthians’ hearts as writing tablets in contrast to

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the stone tablets on which the Decalogue was inscribed (ἐν πλαξὶν καρδίαις σαρκίναις). Lopes, “Charismatic Interpreter,” 116. See note 6 above. This is the gospel that I had the good fortune to study under Dr Vaage. This work was eventually published as Scott G. Brown, Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s Controversial Discovery, scj 1/15 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005). See Droge, “Whodunnit.” The precise wording of 2:13, “not in words taught by human wisdom” (οὐκ ἐν διδακτοῖς ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας λόγοις), recalls Paul’s remark in 1:17 that Christ sent him to preach the gospel “not in wisdom of word” (οὐκ ἐν σοφίᾳ λόγου), and his remarks in 2:1, 2:4–5 that when he came to them he “came not with superior eloquence or wisdom” (ἦλθον οὐ καθ᾿ ὑπεροχὴν λόγου ἢ σοφίας) and that his “conversation and … preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom” (οὐκ ἐν πειθοῖ[ς] σοφίας λόγοις), “so that [their] faith would not be based in human wisdom” (μὴ ᾖ ἐν σοφίᾳ ἀνθρώπων). Like 2:13, both 2:4 and 2:5 use a “not … but …” construction to oppose human wisdom with the activity of the Spirit.

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“Assembled with One Accord in Jerusalem”: Response to Egger, Guijarro, and Brown Terence L. Donaldson

In one strand of its manuscript tradition, the Didascalia Apostolorum, a third-century manual of church order, begins with a preface that contains this quaintly fanciful account of its own origins: “We … the twelve apostles of the only son, the eternal Word of God, our Lord, our God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, were assembled with one accord in Jerusalem, the city of the great King, and with us was our brother Paul, the apostle to the nations, and James, bishop of the said city, and we confirmed this Didascalia, in which the confession of the faith is incorporated, and have named all the ordinances like the ordinances of heaven, and also the ordinances of the holy church.”1 While the purported apostolic origin of the Didascalia eventually becomes apparent as the document unfolds, the later addition of this preface places it within a more explicit framework from the outset. By rooting the creeds, offices, liturgy, ethics, and disciplinary structures of the church in a document jointly written by Paul, James, and the twelve apostles “with one accord in Jerusalem” (cf. Acts 15, Gal. 2), this later version of the Didascalia represents a fanciful construction of Christian origins in their entirety. Even so, while this concern for documentary exactitude sets the Didascalia apart, it is by no means without precedent. In addition to the primary version of the Didascalia itself, many other early Christian writers give voice to similar basic themes: a united apostolic front, Paul himself included; an orthodox faith that was fully present from the beginning; a coordinated world-wide mission jointly initiated by the apostles; non-orthodox forms of Christianity as heretical corruptions of the faith in its pure and original form; and so on.2 Together, these

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themes formed part of the established orthodoxy that functioned as a homogenizing channel or filter, shaping the subsequent construction of Christianity in its dominant forms. In its full-blown form, this fanciful reconstruction does not call for any substantial “chipping away”; the edifice was unstable to begin with and toppled rather quickly with the first blows of critical investigation into Christian origins. In more specific aspects, however, some of its elements continue to appear in modern conceptions of Christian origins and, in particular, to shape contemporary images of Paul. In the preceding chapters, John A. Egger, Santiago Guijarro, and Scott Brown chip away at several aspects of contemporary Pauline interpretation, revealing the ongoing influence of assumptions about Paul’s gospel and mission that have been in play since the early period. I have found their essays to be incisive and stimulating, and I wish to express my appreciation to each of them for this opportunity to look at contemporary portraits of Paul from fresh angles. In what follows, I look at each essay in turn, identifying what I take to be their primary contributions and reflecting on their implications for our engagement with Paul in our own day. The focus of Egger’s essay is a single sentence (Gal. 1:6–7) in the vehement first section of Paul’s letter to the “churches of Galatia,” but in his analysis it serves as a case study of the way in which a conventional image of Paul – in this case the tendency to depict his apostleship as “strong, efficacious, and successful” – is allowed to shape scholarly interpretation of Paul’s letters, even to the point (as in this case) of overriding the straightforward grammatical meaning of a sentence. The nrsv renders the sentence as follows: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.” In this rendering, the clause “not that there is another gospel” functions as an independent clause, a general statement denying the existence of any gospel other than the one Paul preaches. As Egger points out, however, the clause in Greek is neither independent in form nor general in substance. Rather, it is a relative clause, modifying the noun “gospel”: “you are … turning to a different gospel (ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον), which is not other (ἄλλο).” To be sure, the sentence presents significant challenges for any interpreter or translator. How is it that the message preached by the rival teachers in Galatia can be both a “gospel” that is “different” – presumably from “the gospel that was proclaimed by” Paul (cf. 1:11) – and yet is not an “other” one? This is not the place to explore the problem any further

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or to engage with Egger in the suggested rereading that he provides near the end of the essay.3 But two aspects of his discussion of the problem are significant. The first is his demonstration of the almost instinctual unwillingness of interpreters to give the relative clause its full force. Pointing out that the clause reads “which is not other” (οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο),” not “which is not gospel” (οὐκ ἔστιν εὐαγγέλιον), he argues that what is negated in the relative clause is not that the message of the rival teachers is “gospel” but that it is “other.” In other words, although Paul accuses these teachers of perverting or changing the gospel, he stops short of claiming that they are not preaching the gospel at all; he does not say that what they teach is something “other” than the gospel itself. While I find this argument persuasive, my observation here has to do not so much with Egger’s conclusion as with his extensive survey of translations and commentaries. The approach taken in much of this material is similar to what we find in the nrsv . By turning the relative clause (“which is not other”) into an independent statement (“not that there is another gospel”), the nrsv reads the clause as a denial that this rival teaching qualifies as gospel. And even in translations where the relative clause is retained, the addition of qualifiers (e.g., “really,” “at all,” “in fact”) has the same effect. Admittedly, the Greek sentence is difficult and this approach is not impossible. The thing to note, however, is the general assumption that this is the only possibility, even if it requires some translational brute force to make it work. But how are we to account for this widespread approach to the text? This leads to the second aspect of Egger’s essay that I would like to highlight. In his view, this approach is based on the assumption that, in addressing the challenge to his gospel that has emerged in Galatia, Paul is operating from a position of strength. That is, in reading his letter, modern interpreters tend to take it for granted that his understanding of the gospel would have been recognized as authoritative, that his assessment of the Galatian situation can be seen as reliable and, with respect to the sentence in question, that he was fully and securely in a position to pass judgment on the preaching of the rival teachers. Egger puts this more strongly: many modern interpreters have a “vested interest” in seeing him in this way. From one angle, this way of viewing Paul is not difficult to understand; as Egger observes, it is “an inheritance of the tradition.” The influence of the tradition (reflected in an extreme form by the Didascalia) is reinforced by a number of subsidiary factors: the preponderance of Pauline material in the canon (thirteen letters bearing his name, together

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with a major section of Acts); the centrality of Paul in post-Reformation tradition and scholarship; the forcefulness of Paul’s rhetoric; and the self-assurance with which he presents and defends his position. From another angle, however, Paul’s position can be seen as much more precarious, something that would have been readily apparent to the Galatians. Unlike “those who were already apostles before [him]” (Gal. 1:17), he had not known Jesus before his crucifixion. His claim to apostolic status was based on an experience that was both later and not directly connected to that of the generally recognized apostles. Despite his claim that the other apostles affirmed “the truth of the gospel” as he understood it (Gal. 2:7–9; cf. 2:14), it is apparent that Peter and Barnabas – not to mention James – were hesitant to fully endorse his version of the gospel truth (Gal. 2:11–14). It is telling that, while in this passage he provides a vigorous account of his confrontation with Peter, he has nothing to say about Peter’s response, which gives us reason to believe that his own views did not carry the day. And, to touch on something that will come into view as we move to the essay by Guijarro, it appears that after the crisis in Galatia, Paul’s relationship with the Antioch church and its leaders was increasingly strained, with the result that his mission became more independent of “those who were already apostles before [him].” All of this is to suggest that Egger has good grounds to question the assumption underlying the common reading of Gal. 1:6–7 – i.e., that Paul was prepared to dismiss the message of the rival preachers as “really no gospel at all” (niv ) – and to suggest that interpreters need to take the precariousness of his position more fully into account. The nature of Paul’s status with respect to “those who were apostles before [him]” is a significant aspect of the chapter by Guijarro as well, though from the angle of geography rather than syntax. His angle of vision might be described as bifocal, in that what he chips away at is both a popular reading of the Acts of the Apostles and a conventional portrait of Paul. In both cases, what he is looking at (or through) is the widespread belief that Paul’s travels through the Greco-Roman world are to be understood as “missionary journeys” – that is, as journeys demarcated from each other by a return to a home base (Antioch or Jerusalem), each of which is then followed by a departure for mission work in new territory. This belief takes pictorial form in the maps of Paul’s journeys found ubiquitously in study Bibles, Bible dictionaries, online resources, and so on. At first glance, such maps might be seen simply as straightforward cartographical depictions of Paul’s itineraries as narrated in Acts. Guijarro points out, however (following an observation first made by John

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Townsend), that the depiction of Paul’s travels as “missionary journeys” was unknown prior to the eighteenth century, becoming common only in the nineteenth century in conjunction with the development of the modern missionary movement and thus with the emergence of European colonial empires. From this he argues further that maps need to be seen not as neutral depictions of geographical reality but as “powerful instruments of persuasion and power.” In his essay as a whole, however, he is interested in the maps of Paul’s journeys not primarily for the ways in which they have been used to undergird modern projects of mission and colonialization, but for the ways in which they obscure our view of Paul in his own first-century context. Although he does not use the term “precarious,” his point is similar to that of Egger. Taken on their own terms, Paul’s letters present us with the portrait of a “marginal missionary, the leader of a minority movement within the nascent church.” However, when his letters, together with the accounts of his travels in Acts, are read under the controlling influence of the maps and the master narrative they represent, what emerges is the portrait of a “model missionary,” the leading figure in a coordinated apostolic mission that lays the groundwork for a worldwide Christian church. In this transformation of Paul from marginal missionary to model apostle, the Acts of the Apostles plays a mediating role. At the more general level, Guijarro draws our attention to the way in which Acts has helped to foster the traditional portrait of Paul. As is widely recognized, Luke tends to downplay conflict and division in the early Christian movement, presenting readers with a smooth process of geographical expansion from Jerusalem to Rome, a process initiated by the Holy Spirit and supervised by the Jerusalem church. In comparison with Paul’s own accounts of his often-conflictual relationships with “those who were apostles before [him],” Luke presents instead a story of minor disagreements readily resolved, rather than more significant conflicts resulting in ongoing divisions. While this does not in itself give credence to the “missionary journey” reading of Acts, it at least has contributed to the traditional conception of a unified and coordinated mission, with Paul as a model missionary, a kind of apostolic primus inter pares. With respect to the more particular issue of Paul’s travels, Guijarro recognizes that Acts also provides a certain measure of support for the idea of missionary journeys, especially in the account of Paul’s so-called first missionary journey in Acts 14–15. As this account unfolds, Barnabas and Paul are commissioned by the church in Antioch “for the work to which [God had] called them” (13:2); after mission travels through Cyprus, Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Lycaonia, they return to Antioch, where

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they provide the church with a report on “the work that they had completed” (14:26). In other words, the pattern of a “missionary journey” (i.e., commissioning, departure, missionary travel, return, report) is not entirely foreign to Acts. At the same time, however, Guijarro argues convincingly that Luke’s account of Paul’s subsequent travels cannot be made to fit this pattern. Rather, Luke’s narrative unfolds according to a two-stage pattern, one in which the account of the Jerusalem council (Acts 15) represents a fundamental turning point. The story up to Acts 15 is one in which Paul was a junior partner in a Jerusalem-centred initiative involving Barnabas and the church in Antioch; after this point, his relationship with Barnabas and the church in Antioch largely a thing of the past, Paul worked as an independent evangelist in the Aegean area. Although Guijarro recognizes that the second half of the narrative is punctuated by two trips back to Syria (18:18–23a) and Jerusalem (18:22, 21:15–17), he points out that neither trip conforms to the missionary-journey pattern. Luke has little to say about Paul’s visit to Antioch in the first one (18:22–23a); in the second, Paul did not pass through Antioch at all. In short, the Acts narrative operates with an implicit map that differs substantially from the maps of Paul’s missionary journeys that have captured more recent Christian imagination. Despite Luke’s tendency to present a smoothly developing narrative, then, his account still allows readers to catch some glimpses of more hard-edged conflicts and divisions, especially when read in conjunction with Paul’s first-person accounts. In particular, it becomes apparent that the reason Paul and Barnabas went their separate ways was not simply a disagreement over a personnel issue – whether John Mark deserved a second chance – but instead had to do with more fundamental differences over the terms on which a mission to Gentiles was to be carried out. As a result of this disagreement, Guijarro argues, Paul “became an independent apostle, the leader of a minority group of Christ-believers” that existed on the margins of the communities that were “under the orbit of the Jerusalem church.” But what of Paul’s own implicit map? After raising the question of whether Paul “understood his mission in geographical terms,” Guijarro points to several aspects of his discourse – his tendency to locate his churches with respect to Roman provinces, his gravitation toward politically significant cities – to conclude that Paul carried out his mission in accordance with “a markedly political vision of geography,” specifically the geopolitical map of the Roman empire. Not surprisingly, Guijarro pays particular attention to Rom. 15, where Paul

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reflects on his mission in geographical terms – his proclamation of “the gospel of Christ” in the past (“from Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum”; 15:19) and his plans for the future (“to come to you” in Rome and then to “set out by way of you to Spain”; 15:23, 15:28). In Guijarro’s reading, Paul can be compared to Acts in that he too conceives of his mission activity as progressing in two territorial stages rather than three sequential missionary journeys. They differ, however, in how these two geo-temporal stages are demarcated: for Luke, a stage centred on Antioch, followed by an independent mission in the Aegean; for Paul, a completed mission from Jerusalem to Illyricum, followed by a projected mission from Rome to Spain. For the purposes of his essay, this is perhaps all that Guijarro needed to say about Paul. Nevertheless, in a volume dealing with Paul, the question of whether Paul “understood his mission in geographical terms” is an intriguing one.4 I make the following (brief) comments not as criticisms of the essay but as aspects worthy of further investigation. I begin with Paul’s retrospective summary of his mission to date: “from Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum I have fully proclaimed (πεπληρωκέναι: I have fulfilled) the gospel of Christ.” On what basis did Paul make this claim? In between these two terminal points there were vast tracts of Roman territory, including major cities and whole provinces, where Paul had not set foot. How was it that he could consider his work “in these regions” to be completed? One common answer – that he saw his task as planting churches in central locations, which would then evangelize the surrounding territory – founders on the virtual absence from his letters of any concern for such second-order evangelization. On what sort of mental map, then, did Paul locate his mission itinerary from Jerusalem to Illyricum, onwards to Rome, and then to Spain? Another question concerns the terms in which Paul describes his task: to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the ethne (ἔθνη: nations, Gentiles) “so that the offering of the ethne may be acceptable” (Rom. 15:16). In Jewish parlance, the term ethne could, of course, refer to non-Jewish individuals rather than to non-Jewish nations (the basic sense of the term). But given the geopolitical terms in which Paul conceived of his mission, together with the important place of the “nations” (gentes, ἔθνη) in Roman imperial ideology, one can at least wonder whether there was some connection between Paul’s sense of being the apostle to the ethne and his preference for Roman provincial terminology. In this connection, it is also worth noting that, in his complex wrestling with the question of Israel’s place in God’s purposes (Rom. 9–11), it is precisely the “fullness (πλήρωμα) of the ethne” that will precipitate

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the coming of “the Deliverer” “out of Zion” (i.e., Jerusalem) and the salvation of “all Israel” (11:25–26). The appearance of “fullness” language both in this anticipation of end-time redemption and in his own mission plans – “I have fully proclaimed [the verb πληρόω] the gospel of Christ” – is suggestive. Did Paul perhaps anticipate that the completion of his mission to Spain would somehow bring the “fullness of the Gentiles/nations” to completion? In any case, Paul’s journeys to Jerusalem play an important part in his apostolic self-conception (Gal. 1:18–24, 2:1–10; Rom. 15:25–28) and we should imagine that, even as he considered future activity in Rome and beyond, Jerusalem continued to occupy an important place in his mental map. As was the case with Egger’s chapter, Brown’s essay also deals with a situation where many interpreters shy away from what seems to be the evident sense of a passage – in this case, Paul’s discourse on “secret and hidden wisdom” in 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4. Here, in the course of defending himself in response to unflattering comparisons with other apostles who taught in more sophisticated and polished ways, Paul declares that he too could engage in higher-level teaching and the discourse of wisdom – “God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the age for our glory” (2:7) – but that he chose to withhold it from the Corinthians because they were still too immature to receive it. Both the idea of an esoteric body of teaching reserved for a selective few and the terms in which Paul describes it (τέλειος, together with the anthropological terms σαρκικός, ψυχικός, πνευματικός) resonate strongly with the gnosticizing forms of the Christian movement that were vehemently opposed by the proto-orthodox church. In his lengthy treatise Against Heresies, for example, Irenaeus reports that Valentinus used this Pauline passage (along with others) to support his division of humankind into three anthropological groups – the spiritual (πνευματικός), the animal (ψυχικός), and the material (χοϊκός, using Paul’s term in 1 Cor. 15:48 in place of σαρκικός).5 In his argument “against” the gnosticizing “heresies,” Irenaeus sets forth the idea of a unified apostolic front, Paul in concert with the other apostles teaching a unified gospel that was received and preserved by the worldwide church. The reluctance of contemporary interpreters to recognize the clear sense of Paul’s statements in this passage, then, needs to be understood with reference to the traditional portrait of Paul and the ongoing influence of what Brown describes as an “ingrained certainty that the good news as first delivered by the apostles contained nothing esoteric.” Brown’s argument for the presence of an esoteric element in Paul is detailed and meticulous, and here I can only mention what I see as the most important elements. First, noting the prominence of the first-person

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plural in 1 Cor. 2:6–16, he argues that Paul uses it here not with reference to “ordinary Christians” (which would include the Corinthians) but to a “far more ideal” group of people – i.e., himself and other teachers with similar insights and status. To put it in linguistic terms, this is an exclusive first-person plural – “us” but not “you.” A second element has to do with Paul’s use of τέλειος (“perfect,” “mature”; Brown sees both senses as present here) and πνευματικός (spiritual), which he sees as referring (more or less synonymously) to this exclusive group (“Christians whose capacity for understanding spiritual matters and for dissociating themselves from fleshy matters has reached its human limit”). Finally, although in 2:13–16 Paul uses ψυχικός to refer to ordinary “human wisdom” in contrast to wisdom “taught by the Spirit,” when he turns to address the Corinthians directly, he chooses a different term – σαρκικός (“of the flesh”). Brown interprets this choice of a “third term” as a means of assigning an inferior status; while the Corinthians may be “brothers and sisters” rather than outsiders, they nevertheless remain as people whom he could not yet address as spiritual (πνευματικός). Based on these elements, Brown identifies the wisdom that Paul reserves for “spiritual” persons as something that might be described as participatory transformation: “the deeper insight that the Spirit is presently transforming believers into the glory of the risen Christ as they imitate Christ’s death and suffering.” All of this strikes me as exactly right. This “deeper insight,” it seems to me, is what Paul has in mind when he speaks of the wisdom of God that was “decreed before the ages for our glory”; and Paul presents this wisdom as esoteric, that is, as reserved only for those who are spiritually mature. But what are we to make of the more general claim made on the basis of these observations – “that an esoteric tradition already existed at the earliest documented stage of Christianity”? Here my response is a little more nuanced. First, it is surely not without significance that Brown carries out the reconstruction of this “deeper insight” on the basis of material from 1 Corinthians. That is, the content of this secret wisdom can apparently be discerned from what Paul has to say to these “people of the flesh” who are “still not ready” to receive it. If this is esoteric teaching, Paul apparently does not guard access to it all that carefully. Further, in a subsequent letter, written after several intervening encounters with the Corinthians that would not necessarily have led him to believe that they were now “ready for solid food,”6 he sets out at length a description of Christian experience that corresponds very closely to this deeper insight as Brown describes it. While much of 2 Cor. 3–5 is pertinent here, several passages can be cited as particularly striking examples:

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And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (3:18) Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. (4:16) Here Paul presents the spiritual transformation into the image of Christ as something that is already taking place in the present age. Further, looking at Paul’s letters as a whole, I am not aware of other passages where he makes analogous distinctions between “fleshly” and “spiritual” believers, while also speaking of a body of esoteric knowledge reserved for the latter. Absent this sort of corroborating evidence, I am more inclined to read 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4 as a rhetorical move made in a particular situation, rather than as an indication of a programmatic esotericism that was a fixed part of Paul’s missionary modus operandi.7 I realize that this reading of the passage might be seen as just another attempt to avoid the plain sense of what Paul is saying here. Perhaps it is, though I prefer that my response be read as a request for further investigation rather than as another case of special pleading driven by unexamined presuppositions. Indeed, one of the things I take away from my engagement with Brown’s paper is an increased awareness of the extent to which some interpreters are prepared to dismiss, peremptorily, readings that can quite plausibly claim support from the text itself. Taken together, then, these three chapters draw our attention to the way in which traditional portraits of Paul, and of his place in the emergence of orthodox Christianity, continue to shape and constrain the way his letters are read. Even though the fanciful Didascalia version of the tradition is a relic of antiquity, unexamined aspects of the tradition itself continue to be in play in the interpretive process. There is a need, then, for the kind of chipping away that is found in these essays, carried out with the hope that a clearer portrait of Paul, in his own context and on his own terms, might emerge. But perhaps the largest block that needs to be chipped away at is the outsized place Paul has come to occupy in conventional perceptions of Christian origins, both sociologically and with respect to theological conceptualization. Only as we are able to see Paul as something of an outlier will we be in a position both to see him more clearly and to understand the emergence of the various Christ groups more properly.

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no t e s 1 For the translation, see Alistair Stewart-Sykes, ed., The Didascalia Apostolorum: An English Version, Studia Traditionis Theologiae 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 261–2. 2 The point is well known, requiring little by way of documentation; the themes feature prominently in much of the early apologetic and anti-heretical literature, such as Irenaeus Haer. (e.g., 1.10.1–2, 2.9.1), Tertullian Praescr. (e.g., 20.2–4), and Eusebius Hist. eccl. (e.g., 3.3.1, 3.22.8). 3 While there is no clear semantic distinction between ἕτερος and ἄλλος, Egger recognizes that Paul’s shift from one to the other within the same sentence seems to indicate that some contextual distinction is intended. His suggestion – that with the phrase “a different gospel” Paul is adopting the language and the perspective of the Galatians – strikes me as overly subtle, even though it has the virtue of opening up different angles of perception on the problem. 4 For my own attempt to explore this question, including more substantial discussion of the comments made in the following paragraphs, see my chapter in a volume of essays edited by Prof. Vaage: “‘The Field God Has Assigned’: Geography and Mission in Paul,” in Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity, ed. Leif E. Vaage, scj 1/18 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 109–37. The volume emerged from an ongoing seminar within the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (1995–2000) for which Leif and I were co-chairs. My collegial friendship with Leif began during this period and entered a new stage when I took up a position within the Toronto School of Theology in 1999. I have learned much from his sometimes contrarian, often provocative, and always highly stimulating approach to things, and I wish him well as he enters retirement. 5 Irenaeus Haer. 1.8.3. 6 From 2 Cor. 2:1–11 it is apparent that after sending the letter that we know as 1 Corinthians, he made an urgent visit to Corinth that led to a painful confrontation (2:1–2, 2:5–8), followed by an anguished letter (2:3–4, 2:9). Admittedly, by the time he wrote 2 Corinthians (chaps. 1–7 at least), Titus had returned from Corinth with more positive news. Still, there is no reason to believe that Paul now considered them to have arrived at a more elite spiritual status. 7 To be sure, the early Christian movement did exhibit the kind of esoteric strands that were found in apocalyptic traditions more generally – that is, the belief that the author and his readers had been granted special inside knowledge of the state of the world, the course of history, the coming establishment of God’s purposes, and their own privileged place in all of this. See,

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e.g., Matt. 11:25–27 or much of John 17; also pertinent is the Johannine idea that after Jesus’s departure the Spirit would provide the disciples with further revelatory truth (John 16:12–15). Seen from this perspective, Paul’s rhetorical move in 1 Cor. 2:6–3:4 can be understood as a polemical variation of this in-group esotericism, in which he works to exclude the Corinthians from the place of privilege that they, as members of the new movement, might have come to take for granted.

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Paul on Matters “Domestic”: Gender and Bodies

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The Devolution of Paul’s Relationship with the Corinthian Women: The Incongruence between Paul’s Apostolic Defence and His Instructions to Women Lee A. Johnson

Many of Leif Vaage’s comments have stayed with me from my graduate studies at the Toronto School of Theology, including, “you have to take Paul, warts and all.” Uncertain at first what unsightly outgrowths he was referring to, I have made it a research quest to uncover and examine Paul’s metaphoric deformis tubera. Two such “warts” are the subject of this essay – Paul’s dogged defence of his apostolic authority and his directives concerning women. I argue that in the Corinthian letters these two issues are intertwined, and thus are productively interpreted together; Paul’s understanding of himself as an apostle was closely tied to the emancipation of women in the Corinthian church. His initial message, therefore, encouraged women’s participation and leadership in the church, but his letters chip away at their freedom by denigrating or delimiting their sources of power.

pau l’ s u n o rt h o d ox c l ai ms to authori ty According to Paul’s own curriculum vitae, he lived much of his life defined by his heritage and scribal accomplishments: a “Hebrew born of Hebrews” and “a Pharisee” (Phil. 3:5), “advanced in Judaism” and “far more zealous” about the traditions than others (Gal. 1:13). As a self-identified Pharisee, Paul’s sense of purpose seems to have been rooted in his

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connection to and expertise in the law.1 This sense of purpose appears to have driven his campaign to persecute (διώκω) the early followers of Jesus, as described in Gal. 1:13–14, 1:21–23, and 1 Cor. 15:9. These details are confirmed by information that can be found in Acts. Although Christopher B. Zeichmann cautions against inadvertently using Acts to frame one’s inquiry, it can nevertheless be fruitfully used as a source to provide collaboration and elaboration on details from Paul’s letters.2 This certainly applies to Paul’s role as a persecutor. Despite its novelesque portrayal, Acts provides details that supplement Paul’s self-description in Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Corinthians. In Acts, Paul travels to seek out followers of Jesus (Acts 8:3, 9:1–3), he appears to be a leader of a purity movement in Judaism (Acts 22:3–5), and his perspective on this endeavour changed following his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9, 22, 26). Before his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul’s authority was confirmed through his expertise in the Torah and his recognition by Jewish authorities.3 However, after his vision, his credentials as a Pharisee did little to confirm his place as an apostle of Christ. In an ironic reversal of fortune, Paul was now compelled to establish credibility within the community he had formerly sought to extinguish (Gal. 1:22–23; Acts 9:26). The recognized leaders were those with proximity to and knowledge of Jesus’s teachings, deeds and mission, and they would not have been inclined to embrace Paul with open arms. Paul’s claims to authority are examined by John Schütz, who places “weakness” (ἀσθένεια) at the heart of Paul’s apostolic authority: “references to power visible in Paul’s ministry serve to authenticate his work as truly effective and originating in the power of God … Together they are understood by Paul as inextricably bound up with his own weakness.”4 Schütz lists the numerous ways that Paul embraces his weakness in his letters to the Corinthians: he boasts of his limitations (2 Cor. 1:12), he subordinates his apostolic rights to the demands of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:3–12), he adopts the language of servitude (διάκονος; 2 Cor. 6:3–10), and he boasts of his sufferings (2 Cor. 11:21b–29).5 It must have been apparent to Paul that as things stood he could never claim apostolic authority akin to that ascribed to Peter and James after Jesus’s death. He therefore shifts the power paradigm, as is evident in his letter to the Galatians, where Paul establishes his independence from the Jerusalem church (1:16b–18, 2:1–2). Paul seeks to define his authority in contradistinction to the nascent power structure which seems to have been based on direct authorization by the earthly Jesus.6 Paul

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acknowledges Peter and James, who were eyewitnesses to the earthly mission of Jesus (Gal. 1:1, 1:12, 2:7–9), as “pillars” of the church, but claims his authority is independent from theirs. First Corinthians reveals that Paul’s unorthodox credentials as apostle caused friction after his departure from Corinth. Paul reports that Chloe’s people brought him news of developing dissension in the church, with factions claiming association with various leaders in the Jesus movement (1 Cor. 1:12). We can infer from this that some members of the Corinthian ekklesia deemed Paul’s apostolic credentials inferior to the likes of Cephas, eyewitness to Jesus’s ministry, or Apollos,7 whose authority arose from his eloquence.8

pau l’ s au t h o r it y clai ms and wo m e n ’ s is s u e s i n cori nth Paul seems aware that he cannot compete with the rhetorical skill of Apollos or the firsthand knowledge of Peter.9 He builds his case for apostolicity by embracing his own idiosyncrasies, that is, by laying claim to prowess with which others either could not or would not want to associate themselves. This essay looks at the numerous ways that Paul’s claims to authority intersect with the situation of women in Corinth. Three legs of Paul’s defence – his reliance upon ecstatic experience and pneumatic gifts, his embrace of suffering and denigration, and his rejection of social traditions such as marriage and procreation – bring him into potential conflict with the Corinthian women as he pushes his claims.

Paul’s Pneumatic Authority Paul’s vision of the risen Christ on the Damascus Road became the cornerstone of his apostolic identity.10 He appeals to this experience to rebuke his skeptics in Corinth (1 Cor. 15:5–11) and Galatia (Gal. 1:11– 12). As he recalls this momentous event, Paul further validates the vision with ongoing evidence of his charism. Paul’s divine encounter brought charismatic displays that his communities witnessed for themselves, displays that gave him an authority that was not derived from oratorical brilliance, but demonstrated in “spirit and power” (1 Cor. 2:1–5).11 Colleen Shantz convincingly argues that Paul’s vision on the road to the Damascus was not a one-time event.12 Using cognitive neurological analysis, she interprets the ascent of Paul into the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:1–4) as an intense ecstatic experience that was but one example of Paul’s pneumatic existence.13 Further evidence of his spiritual

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prowess appears in the discussion of “the gifts of the spirit” (περὶ τῶν πνευματικῶν) in 1 Corinthians in which Paul claims to “speak in tongues more than all of you” (14:18) and implies that this charism was part of what initially drew them to him (14:22). Paul encourages the Galatians to remember the pneumatic evidence that initially compelled them to believe his message. The same argument appears in Paul’s opening paraenesis to the Thessalonians, which mentions the proliferation of pneumatic gifts upon their reception of his preaching (1 Thess. 1:5–6) and again in Paul’s conclusion of his letter to the Romans where he boasts of his mission to bring the Gentiles into sanctification by means of “signs and wonders” and “the Spirit of God” (Rom. 15:19).14 In nearly every correspondence, Paul affirms his authority under the aegis of the Holy Spirit, made evident in his pneumatic gifts. The frequency with which Paul references the activity and effects of the Spirit confirms, as Shantz notes, that “for Paul and these first communities, religious ecstasy helped to make the world meaningful and to orient them in the midst of change and contingency.”15 His fledgling churches were populated with people who were initially impressed by Paul’s spiritual gifts and they continued in the church because those same gifts became manifest in them as well.16

Paul’s Authority through Suffering and Degradation Victor Turner’s anthropological study on status reversal describes the traumatic pressure on people who leave behind traditional norms and customs and enter a liminal state where ordinary social structure is lacking.17 Turner describes the defining features of such existence: “Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention and ceremonial. As such, their ambiguous and indeterminate attributes are expressed by a rich variety of symbols in the many societies that ritualize social and cultural transition. Thus, liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun or moon.”18 The characteristics of this liminal existence read like a biography of Paul: “absence of property and status, sexual continence, minimization of sex distinctions, absence of rank, and humility.”19 It is noteworthy that several contributors to this volume also elaborate on Paul’s embrace of suffering and degradation. Thomas Schmeller describes Paul’s characterization of his life post-Damascus Road as a

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liminal existence in which prior definitions of power and authority prove inadequate.20 Alcris Limongi and John A. Egger draw attention to the passive language with which Paul describes his experiences of being “beaten with rods” on multiple occasions.21 Halvor Moxnes, although looking at Paul from a much later era, analyzes Caravaggio’s portrayal of Paul’s “conversion” as a sexually receptive posture, a portrayal that resonates with Paul’s claim of weakness as a sign of authenticity.22 Selfabasement is also evident in Paul’s insistence upon manual labour as a means for him to deliver the “gospel free of charge” (1 Cor. 9:18), as outlined by Catherine Jones.23 Although Jones argues that Paul’s adoption of the distasteful existence of a manual labourer in Corinth does not appear to have been voluntary, Paul’s status as a manual labourer proved to be a source of suspicion and resentment in Corinth (2 Cor. 11:7–12, 12:13–18).24 In another passage in the Corinthian correspondence, Paul goes further along the path of self-degradation in his inverted claim to apostolic authority. He reminds the Corinthians of Christ’s post-resurrection appearances to numerous people (1 Cor. 15:3–7), then to Paul himself: “Last of all he appeared to me, the ektromati [ἐκτρώματι].”25 The word ἔκτρωμα evokes a repugnant image that is often blunted in translation. Most English versions use such phrases “untimely birth” or “born out of due time” to account for the appearance of ἔκτρωμα in Paul’s description of his apostleship.26 These translations imply that Paul’s detriment was the unfortunate timing of his birth – perhaps just a bit too late or too early to encounter the earthly Jesus. There are a few other translations that come closer to the grotesque nature of ἔκτρωμα: “abnormally born” (niv ), “abortion” (Darby), and “dead born child” (Wycliffe). The noun ἔκτρωμα appears three times in the Septuagint, and each intends to provoke revulsion in its readers, rather than indicating “bad timing.” In Num. 12:12, Miriam is afflicted with white, leprous skin. Aaron pleads with God not to let her be looked upon as an ἔκτρωμα whose “flesh is half-eaten.” The narrator in Ecc. 6:3 posits that the wealthy man who is unable to enjoy the pleasures of life is worse off than an ἔκτρωμα that “has not seen or known anything.” And in his agony, Job follows a three-staged lamentation that incrementally increases his self-loathing: first, he curses the day of his birth (3:3); second, he wishes that he had died at birth (3:11); and third, he laments that he was not an ἔκτρωμα (3:16). In each instance, ἔκτρωμα is employed to provoke disgust. Furthermore, ἔκτρωμα does not refer to an action; rather, it refers to the embryonic discharge of either an unwanted process (“miscarriage”) or a planned interruption of birth (“abortion”).27 Miriam and Job are

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to be pitied because others look upon them as they would an aborted fetus. Paul employs the same language of ἔκτρωμα to describe his place in the apostolic order of the followers of Jesus and to confirm his strange authority.28 That revolting image must have had its greatest impact upon the women of the Corinthian church who would have experienced the horror of an unsuccessful or aborted pregnancy and would have had to dispose of the fetus. An ἔκτρωμα evokes memories of the most painful and shameful moments of women’s lives. Paul suggests that women associate that moment with his apostleship. Paul as ἔκτρωμα is consistent with Paul as the abused apostle and self-sufficient tentmaker.

Paul’s Authority through Repudiation of Marriage and Procreation A third means by which Paul defends his apostolic authority is through rejection of societal expectations regarding marriage and child-rearing. He boasts in 1 Cor. 9 that he renounces his apostolic right to support from an accompanying spouse.29 Paul’s responses to questions posed by the Corinthians about sexual relations and marriage reveal his preference of celibacy for everyone, while recognizing the improbability of that wish.30 Nevertheless, Paul encourages the Corinthians to emulate his austere practices, concluding, “I wish that all were as I myself am” (1 Cor. 7:7) and “I think that I too have the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 7:40). Paul’s motivation for an ascetic lifestyle is revealed in his expression “devoted to the Lord without distraction” (εὐπρόσεδρον τῷ κυρίῳ ἀπερισπάστως) in 1 Cor. 7:35b.31 According to Richard Valantasis, following his baptism, Paul operated within a “new corporate subjectivity” that is reflected in the creed in Gal. 3:28. The most significant impact of this new subjectivity is freedom from traditional social relationships.32 This freedom encouraged Paul to turn aside from traditional cultural expectations and to imagine an identity that is in “conflict with a dominant perspective.”33 Therefore, Paul’s new life, despite its austere impression, represents freedom from the demands and designs of traditional societal expectations.34 Most scholars postulate that prior to his call, Paul would have followed a more traditional path within Judaism, as implied by Phil. 3:4–6.35 If this is accurate, Paul was probably married, as per societal expectations and legal teachings.36 However, by the time he reached Corinth, Paul’s marriage could no longer be described as “traditional.” It had either dissolved with the death of his wife or a bill of divorce, or he remained married but had left his wife behind. Either way, Paul was flouting societal expectations by not having a wife with him.

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Paul references his sexual abstinence as further confirmation of his apostolic legitimacy. His comments in 1 Cor. 9:5–6 imply that preachers of the gospel normally included their wives in their mission. Because Paul was in the minority who practised sexual continence, he argues his ability for sexual continence is a χάρισμα, a gift from God, and thus further evidence of his apostolic identity (1 Cor. 7:7). Paul’s “gift” also allows him to claim the virtues enumerated further in the letter – one who is “firm in resolve,” has “his desire under control,” is “determined in his own mind,” and “does better” than someone with a spouse (1 Cor. 7:37–38). As one “with the spirit of God” (7:40), Paul finds grounds for boasting in his renunciation of his apostolic rights (1 Cor. 9:18). Unable to compete on traditional grounds, Paul again cites his idiosyncrasies as evidence of his apostolic authenticity. He uses his unorthodoxy to confirm his legitimacy.

pau l’ s a p o s to l ic challenge a n d t h e c o r in t h i an women As Paul corresponds with the Corinthians, he simultaneously addresses two major issues. First, his authority has eroded since his departure from Corinth, so he must defend his apostolic credentials. Second, questions have arisen as to how church members should behave regarding marriage, sexual relations, the use of glossolalia, and the role of women in worship. Paul therefore instructs the Corinthians on matters of church practice. Paul’s letters reveal that the first issue, his apostolic credentials, was a source of contention throughout his ministry. In fact, Terence Mullins has suggested that Paul’s notorious “thorn in the flesh” (σκόλοψ τῇ σαρκί, 2 Cor. 12:7) was his ongoing battle with opponents who rejected Paul’s mission to the Gentiles and his lack of credentials as an apostle.37 Paul’s most vigorous instances of self-defence appear in Gal. 1:1–2:14, 1 Cor. 9:1–27, and 2 Cor. 10–13. Not coincidentally, the churches in both Galatia and Corinth were influenced by subsequent preachers whose message differed from Paul’s, either in content or style, or both.38 Paul’s vulnerability as an apostle with unorthodox credentials seems to have been exploited by opponents who behaved differently from him when they visited his churches. If preachers were intent on disparaging Paul’s message of Gentile inclusion apart from the law, then an attack on Paul’s credentials also discredited Paul’s gospel. As Schütz observes, “In Paul’s terms this recognition of his gospel for what it really is constitutes simultaneously a recognition of himself as an apostle.”39 As offensive as Paul’s message and apostolic style may have been to some people, his preaching must have resonated with others. It is

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reasonable to assume that those who were not powerful in society may have been the most accepting of Paul’s peculiar missionary style. Later opponents of the church certainly characterize those early enthusiastic converts as “women” and “slaves.” In the third century, Origen records Celsus’s snide dismissal of Christian converts as mindlessly following those who labour, are servile, and are female, and he employs such descriptors as “rustic,” “foolish and stupid,” “workers in wool and leather, and fullers” to describe early Christian teachers.40 The Corinthian letters supply ample evidence of Paul’s preaching to the unwise, impotent, ignoble, foolish, low, and despised, as summed up in the phrase “the ones who are not” (τὰ μὴ ὄντα; 1 Cor. 1:26–29).41 As Paul sought to convert Corinthian Gentiles, aspects of his message must have appealed to “the ones who are not.” Paul’s mission based on pneumatic authority and his vision of a community that overturns social norms intersect with the issues relating to women in the Corinthian letters. However, their understanding of Paul’s message produced behaviour that Paul later sought to modify or curtail. For women in particular, Paul’s gospel message seems to have been attractive, and his vision of the community seems to have inspired them to flourish in directions that made Paul uncomfortable. The Corinthian women’s inspiration began with their baptismal rite, which` included recitation of the creed: “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female (οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ); for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).42 In some respects, Paul’s letters to the Corinthians reveal egalitarian ideals in practice, such as the status elevation of celibate members of the Corinthian church.43 Paul encourages both women and men to avoid marriage and devote themselves fully to the matters of the Lord (1 Cor. 7:32–35). Both sexes faced significant social pressure to procreate, so wholesale encouragement to abstain from sex and marriage was a drastic departure from familial and cultural expectations in the first century ce . This social norm was more acutely challenged when applied to women, whose main source of identity and connection to honour was tied to their fathers, husbands, and sons.44 Paul goes beyond allowing celibacy; he elevates those who successfully carry out this life and describes their circumstances as “better” than those who “do not sin” if they marry (1 Cor. 7:28, 7:38). For women in Corinth, Paul had prescribed a path for unmarried women to be honourable apart from the roles of daughter, wife, and mother.45 Peter Brown describes the appeal of the continent life for women in the early church who “could achieve reputations for sexual abstinence as stunning as those achieved by any cultivated male.”46

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Paul had also initiated the Corinthian women’s participation in the worship gatherings. His instructions in 1 Cor. 11–14 assume that women and men were in the same venue at the same time. Paul prefaces his instructions about women in worship (1 Cor. 11:2–16) with the phrase, “any woman who prays or prophesies” (11:5), implying that women were currently actively involved in these activities. Except for 11:4, this pericope pertains only to women. The lengthy, gendered discourse on the optics of women in the worship service implies that women prophets were numerous, powerful, and respected in the Corinthian church.47 Antoinette Clark Wire’s ground-breaking work on the Corinthian community reconstructs the women’s point of view and how it conflicted with Paul’s vision for the church. Although Wire confirms that the foundational notions of women’s participation and leadership in Corinth arose from Paul’s teachings, she argues that the women’s extrapolations and interpretations led them in directions that Paul had not foreseen.48 The Corinthian women would have had to look no farther than Paul’s defence of his apostolic authority to find their own credentials for authority. In his effort to persuade the Corinthians of his divinely sanctioned mission, Paul relied upon the visible evidence of God’s spirit within him. He had impressed the Corinthians with “the Spirit and power” rather than with eloquence when he first arrived (1 Cor. 2:1–5). Primary evidence of that pneumatic power was his virtuosity in glossolalia. Paul’s gift of tongues was on display to the extent that he claims to surpass all of them in its use (1 Cor. 14:18). Tensions over speaking in tongues had erupted in Corinth after Paul’s departure. In order to settle their disagreements, the Corinthians sent a letter to Paul requesting his response to various issues that were causing dissension among them, including speaking in tongues. The formulaic περὶ δὲ (“now concerning”) appears at the beginning of 1 Cor. 12, as also in 1 Cor. 7:1, 7:25, 8:1, 16:1, and 16:12, putting the concern about speaking in tongues on par with others such as marriage, dining and idolatry, and the collection for Jerusalem. The letter-writers had assumed that Paul would side with their position that speaking in tongues was the defining feature of the indwelling of the Spirit in believers. Paul’s response is lengthy and wide-ranging, spanning three chapters of 1 Corinthians, covering issues of the timing of usage, physical comportment when engaged in tongues-speaking, and the value of the gift. He ultimately confirms the validity of glossolalia but diminishes its overall significance. One argument that Paul puts forth to downplay this charism is that tongues “are a sign not for believers

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but for unbelievers” (1 Cor. 14:22). Glossolalia had been a hallmark of Paul’s apostolic integrity in Corinth, but Paul discourages the practice in his letter to the Corinthians.49 The impact of Paul’s directives to limit speaking in tongues had a disproportionate effect on women in the Corinthian church. Wire and others have argued that women dominated the tongues-speaking contingent of the Corinthian assembly.50 Emboldened by the concept that male hierarchy had been erased by their baptism in Christ, the Corinthian women who were prolific at tongues-speaking and empowered with pneumatic authority were respected leaders of the church. The radical vision of a society that had “put on Christ” was coming to pass in Corinth.51 This phenomenon of greater female participation in tongues-speaking churches has also been observed in twentieth-century anthropological studies. Felicitas Goodman chronicled tongues-speaking communities in Mexico, Brazil, and parts of the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.52 She concluded that women were more receptive to altered states of consciousness than men and that once the gift of tongues-speaking was manifest in women, they more often became “habitual glossolalists.”53 Goodman studied communities where patriarchy was the rule, but noted that women who were prolific at glossolalia were more likely to be held in high esteem by the other members and to hold positions of authority in their congregations.54 A similar phenomenon was observed by feminist theologian Mary McClintock Fulkerson, who investigated charismatic women in the Pentecostal churches in Appalachia.55 Fulkerson discovered the dominance of glossolalic women in these communities as well; they outnumbered the male tongues-speakers by more than two to one.56 The connection between tongues-speaking and authority is also borne out in the Pentecostal churches. Women are legitimized by the visible manifestation of the presence of the Spirit when they speak in tongues in the churches. Fulkerson describes the value of glossolalia for women in Appalachia as “a status leveler” that advances the social status of women who exist within a rigid patriarchal structure.57 In another context, Elaine Lawless documented Pentecostal women in Missouri churches who were compelled to demonstrate their proficiency at tongues-speaking in order to become preachers before their congregations.58 These women struggled to reconcile their claims to authority within congregations that were highly patriarchal; without their recognized gift of the Holy Spirit as manifest in their glossolalic expertise, the women would have had no grounds to claim the authority of the pulpit.59

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pau l c au g h t b e t w e e n authori ty and li berty Paul’s defence of his apostolic authority was based on his ecstatic experiences and pneumatic gifts, his embrace of suffering and denigration, and his challenge to societal norms such as his ascetic lifestyle. These same characteristics attracted women to Paul’s Corinthian community and inspired them in the practice of their spiritual gifts as they extrapolated the ecclesiological and theological implications of the baptismal creed, οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ. However, following Paul’s departure from Corinth, differences of opinion arose over various issues, many of which involved women. Some of these rifts are revealed in the Corinthians’ letter to Paul, which in turn prompted his responses in 1 Corinthians. Chapters 7–16 contain the repeated phrase περὶ δὲ often followed by a slogan, supposedly echoing a point of view of some of the Corinthians.60 One such slogan is “it is well for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Cor. 7:1). Paul’s encouragement for everyone to practice celibacy as he does (1 Cor. 7:7, 7:40) implies that this slogan originated with him. Similarly, the Corinthians’ affinity for glossolalia may have been grounded in Paul’s “demonstration of the Spirit and power” (1 Cor. 2:4) and his own penchant for tongues-speaking (1 Cor. 14:18). I find Peter Brown’s remarks particularly apropos regarding Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians: “In his letters to the churches, we meet a man hurriedly placing sandbags along the bank of a potentially devastating torrent whose impetus, he knew only too well, owed much to his own previous message and example.”61 Many have theorized why Paul felt the need to curtail women’s authority in Corinth. Some scholars imagine that Paul was worried about the success of Gentile inclusion if his churches started to look too socially radical. Others claim that Paul saw the baptismal formula’s radical vision as an ideal that would only be achieved at the parousia, but which the Corinthians had taken too literally.62 I argue that Paul had not anticipated that his own unorthodox apostleship – based upon pneumatic gifts, authenticated by suffering and shame, and enacted through rejecting traditional social boundaries – would inspire a radical social vision at Corinth that embraced glossolalic women prophets as leaders. Wire’s study argues persuasively that powerful women were the target of Paul’s restrictions in much of 1 Corinthians. His introduction to the subject exposes his intention – “before I say anything on this subject, I want to make it clear that men are the head/source of women” – and sets the stage for restrictive instructions to follow.63 The command that women must be attentive to their heads while praying and prophesying

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both accentuates the differences between men and women and curtails the spontaneity that is a hallmark of ecstatic activity. Women alone must display a symbol of authority upon their heads (1 Cor. 11:10).64 If Paul required a head covering for women to display their subjection to males, as is argued by Karen Torjesen, then his instructions were primarily about signalling gender hierarchy.65 Paul’s instructions in 1 Cor. 7, although less apparently focused upon women than the remarks in 1 Cor. 11:2–16, similarly constrain the Corinthian women. Paul’s wish for everyone to emulate him in celibacy (1 Cor. 7:7) resulted in a contingent of ascetic women who were ascribed honour apart from association with males. Paul’s remarks are addressed to both sexes; however, it is the women who had the most to lose by Paul limiting their celibacy.66 Rossing describes Paul’s rein on women’s roles as a pragmatic choice to “trade off his own egalitarian teaching on gender (compare Gal. 3:28) for the sake of building up an alternative community movement to Roman imperial society.”67 Paul’s notable omission of the “not male and female” phrasing of the baptismal creed in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:13, compare with Gal. 3:28) is an obvious clue to his audience: Paul deliberately avoids the phrase “not male and female” because of its significance for them.68 Finally, Paul denigrates in his letter to the Corinthians the defining aspect of his apostolic authority – the pneumatic evidence of tongues-speaking. He lists it as the least of the gifts (1 Cor. 12:28–30), equating glossolalia with the “shameful” parts of the body that need extra covering (12:22–23). He describes speaking in tongues as “building up” oneself rather than other people (1 Cor. 14:4); as akin to “lifeless instruments” (1 Cor. 14:7); if uninterpreted, as though “speaking into the air” (1 Cor. 14:9); and as the product of an “unproductive mind” (1 Cor. 14:14). Glossolalia as a gift is to remain dormant if an interpreter is not available (1 Cor. 14:27–28); and if interpreters are available, limits of “two or at most three” speakers are set for each gathering (1 Cor. 14:27). Other gifts superior to tongues should be pursued with the expectation that those will supplant the importance and use of glossolalia in Corinth (1 Cor. 12:31, 14:1).69

c o n c l u s ion Paul was fighting a rhetorical battle on two fronts when he was corresponding with the Corinthians. He felt compelled to defend his apostolic authority as well as to prescribe behaviour for the Corinthian gathering. His rhetoric relative to his own authority stands in sharp contradiction

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to his comments concerning the Corinthian women. When Paul became an apostle, he laid claim to apostolic authority in defiance of traditional views of authority, community, and honour. He challenged the significance of apostolic leadership that was centred in Peter and James in Jerusalem, professing that his vision of the risen Lord was independent of their authority. Paul relied upon his prolific displays of the Spirit – including his glossolalic prowess – to persuade the Corinthians that he was as much an apostle as any of those who had come before him. Paul also inverted the notion of honour, claiming to be the best at suffering, daring his rivals to outdo him in humiliation, even evoking an image of an aborted fetus in his defence. The Corinthians adopted Paul’s inverted vision of community and lived it out to degrees that he had not imagined. Through their propensity for glossolalia, women found honour; through their celibacy, women were elevated. Before Paul’s letter correspondence, it appears that women were emboldened by Paul’s teachings and their ascendance was accepted by many of the Corinthians. The relationship eroded when Paul’s instructions in his letters began to curtail the liberty and authority that the women had claimed as “new creatures.” When Paul laid claim to apostolic authority following his Damascus Road experience, he began down a road toward an egalitarian, pneumatic-centric church where the capricious activity of the Spirit drew women into the prophetic midst of the community. However, the radical vision upon which he based his apostolic authority was not maintained when it came to the Corinthian women. Paul’s warts are most apparent in his dealings with the Corinthian women. His gospel of liberty, where the boundaries of gender, race, and society are erased and the shameful and foolish are regarded as honourable and wise, introduced the women of Corinth to a new social order where they enjoyed authority and honour. They embraced Paul’s unique apostolic authority and assumed that their own was confirmed by the presence of the Spirit within them. How disenchanted they must have been when Paul steadfastly insisted upon his own inverted authority even as he demanded they curtail their leadership in the worship gatherings. The correspondence after 1 Corinthians reveals the devolution of the relationship between Paul and this community. If the women in Corinth had to relinquish the authority accrued to them from living out their baptismal creed, how could they trust that Paul, the self-proclaimed ἔκτρωμα, was truly an apostle?

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no t e s 1 Defining the Pharisees and Pharisaism in Paul’s era has proven historically difficult, as the contributors to the volume Jacob Neusner and Bruce D. Chilton, eds, In Quest of the Historical Pharisees (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007) attest. A common thread in the representation of this group is their association with interpretation of the law, as authorities in the eyes of the Jewish people. See especially remarks by Steve Mason (29–31) and Martin Pickup (108–12). 2 Zeichmann, “Acts and the Invention” (present volume), 70–5. 3 See Jacob Neusner’s survey “The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70 ce : An Overview,” in Neusner and Chilton, In Quest of the Historical Pharisees, 297–311. 4 John Howard Schütz, Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 240. I find Thomas Schmeller’s discussion in this volume much in line with the distinctions that Schütz has made (“Whoever Boasts” (present volume), 25–45). Schmeller claims that Paul views his work as unfolding during a liminal phase, wherein the old order has been suspended and the new order has not yet been established: this paves the way for power and weakness to be embodied in new and surprising ways. 5 Schütz, Apostolic Authority, 234–8. Although Catherine Jones’s reading of 1 Cor. 9:12 in this volume argues that Paul’s subordination of his rights as an apostle was not voluntary, this still illustrates the point: Paul, in making a virtue out of necessity, was embracing his weakness. See Jones, “Paul the Manual Labourer” (present volume), 65. 6 Paul’s dearth of direct or indirect references to Jesus’s teaching and deeds is well documented. See Victor Paul Furnish, Jesus according to Paul, Understanding Jesus Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1–18. 7 References to Apollos in the New Testament are numerous and appear both in Paul’s letters and in Acts: 1 Cor. 1:12, 3:4, 3:5, 3:6, 3:33, 4:6, 16:12; Acts 18:24, 19:1, with a potential reference in Tit. 3:13. The Acts accounts are the source of the description of Apollos’s gifts of scriptural expertise and oratorical grace. Whether the Acts portrayal is accurate, as always, is in question; however, the Corinthian references reveal that the Corinthians reacted favourably to Apollos in general (1 Cor. 16:12) and some preferred him over Paul (1 Cor. 1:12, 3:4, 3:22). 8 The Corinthian factions have been widely discussed; key figures in the discussion include E.A. Judge, The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century (London: Tyndale, 1960); J.C. Hurd, The Origin of 1 Corinthians (London: spck , 1965); Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth, ed. and trans. John H. Schütz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982).

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9 Some scholars argue that Paul had fine oratorical skills, that his remarks in 1 Cor. 2:1–5 and 2 Cor. 10:10 display a rhetorical conceit that uses selfdenigration to highlight a larger point. E.g., Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995); L.L. Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1 Corinthians 1–4 in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition, lnts 293 (London: T&T Clark, 2005). Note, however, that Margaret Mitchell suggests that Paul might well have opted to avoid further personal contact with the Corinthians because of his lack of rhetorical prowess (“New Testament Envoys in the Context of Greco-Roman Diplomatic and Epistolary Conventions: The Example of Timothy and Titus,” jbl 111 [1992]: 641–62). 10 Perhaps most famously, Alan Segal described Paul this way in Paul, the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 11 As stated in note 9 above, commentators debate whether Paul is to be taken at face value in his phrasing “I did not come in lofty words or wisdom” (ἦλθον οὐ καθ’ ὑπεροχὴν λόγου ἢ σοφίας) in 1 Cor. 2:1 and “my speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom” (τὸ κήρυγμά μου οὐκ ἐν πειθοῖς σοφίας λόγοις) in 2:4. That discussion aside, Paul clearly claims his demonstration of the “spirit and power” as the defining attribute of his apostolic authority. See also Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy” (present volume), 277–304, who discusses Paul’s obfuscatory language. 12 Colleen Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 46–63. 13 Ibid., 93–109. 14 Christopher N. Mount, “Religious Experience, the Religion of Paul, and Women in the Pauline Churches,” in Women and Gender in Ancient Religions, ed. Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, Paul A. Holloway, and James A. Kelhoffer, wunt 263 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 323–37 (at 341). See also my comments in “Women and Glossolalia in Pauline Communities: The Relationship between Pneumatic Gifts and Authority,” BibInt 21 (2013): 196–214. 15 Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy, 204. 16 Barbara R. Rossing, “Prophets, Prophetic Movements, and the Voices of Women,” in A People’s History of Christianity, Vol 1: Christian Origins, ed. Richard Horsley (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 268–9. 17 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969). 18 Turner, Ritual Process, 95. Gil Arbiol, “Pauline ekklesia as Third Space” (present volume), 245–60, explores the notion of boundaries, body, and sexuality in 1 Cor. 6. His claim that Paul views risks of bodily behaviour as applicable to the larger body of the church parallels Turner’s view of liminality.

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19 I am indebted to Carolyn Osiek for this insight. Her article “The Social Function of Female Imagery in Second Century Prophecy,” Vetera Christianorum 29 (1992): 55–74 (at 68) applies Turner’s model to prophetic women in the second century. Her insights appear to be equally applicable to Paul. See Turner, Ritual Process, 106. 20 At the same time, Schmeller also detects in Paul’s discourse on power and weakness in 2 Corinthians an ambivalence that is similar to the incongruence between Paul’s claims to authority and his instructions to women in 1 Corinthians. Schmeller, “Whoever Boasts.” 21 Limongi and Egger, “Three Times Beaten” (present volume), 102–5. 22 Moxnes, “Where Did the Horse” (present volume), 233–6. Although Moxnes does not explicitly state it, in Paul’s time to be depicted as sexually passive would have been seen as a sign of emasculation and weakness. 23 Jones, “Paul the Manual Labourer.” See also Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1980). 24 What is missing in Jones’s analysis (“Paul the Manual Labourer”) is a discussion of how class and gender differences among the Corinthians might have affected their specific responses to Paul as a manual labourer. 25 1 Cor. 15:8: ἔσχατον δὲ πάντων ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι ὤφθη κἀμοί. 26 The most popular English versions employ translations related to unfortunate birth-timing: kjv, asv, esv, nrsv . 27 The language of ἔκτρωμα occurs in similar fashion in extra-biblical writings, including Aristotle Gen. an. 773b.18. 28 Schütz suggests a more theological reading in which Paul opts for ἔκτρωμα to describe his utter reliance upon the grace of God, as helpless as a pre-mature infant (Apostolic Authority, 105). Johannes Munch offers an antiquated and offensive interpretation that Paul equates ἔκτρωμα with his former life in Judaism: “Paulus tanquam abortivus (1 Cor. 15:8),” in New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of T.W. Manson 1893–1958, ed. A.J.B. Higgins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 180–93. 29 Calvin J. Roetzel, “Sex and the Single God: Celibacy as Social Deviancy in the Roman Period,” in Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson, ed. Stephen G. Wilson and Michel Desjardins, scj 1/9 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2000), 231–48. 30 Although Paul thinks that “it is good for a man not to touch a woman” (καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ γυναικὸς μὴ ἅπτεσθαι), he concedes, “because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and each woman have her own husband” (1 Cor. 7:1–2). 31 Some scholars read the instructions on sex and marriage as a reaction to the “impending crisis” (1 Cor. 7:26) and the waning form of the world (7:31).

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33 34 35

36 37 38

39 40 41

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See William Klassen, “The Ascetic Way: Reflections on Peace, Justice, and Vengeance in the Apocalypse of John,” in Asceticism and the New Testament, ed. Leif E. Vaage and Vincent L. Wimbush (New York: Routledge, 1999), 393–410 (at 395–7); Pheme Perkins, First Corinthians, Paideia (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 112–13. Peter Brown, however, argues that Paul’s instructions aim “to deter his correspondents from so radical a remedy for their ills … Much of the letter, therefore, consisted of blocking moves” (Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity [New York: Columbia University Press, 1988], 54–5). Richard Valantasis, “Competing Ascetic Subjectivities in the Letter to the Galatians,” in Vaage and Wimbush, Asceticism and the New Testament, 211–33 (at 217–20). Ibid., 223. Ibid., 213. However, Daniel Boyarin argues that Paul was part of a Jewish ascetic movement in first-century Judaism, so would have had this tendency prior to Damascus: “Body Politic among the Brides of Christ: Paul and the Origins of Christian Sexual Renunciation,” in Asceticism, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 459–78 (at 459). See Peter Brown’s discussion on this topic, Body and Society, 33–64. Terence Y. Mullins, “Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh,” jbl 76 (1957): 299–303. Apollos was one of those preachers in Corinth. Paul’s remarks do not indicate his quarrel with the content of Apollos’s gospel, but his style undoubtedly differed from Paul’s and the Corinthians appear to prefer Apollos (1 Cor. 16:12). In Galatia, the opposition to Paul is more focused upon the issue of the need for circumcision for Gentile inclusion. Paul’s lengthy defence in Gal. 1–2 implies that his credentials were under attack as well as his message. See also Egger, “Which Is Not Another” (present volume), 133–52, who discusses the “other gospel” that was ostensively preached at Galatia. Schütz, Apostolic Authority, 137. Origen Cels. 3.44, 3.55, 3.59; cf. Porphyry quoted in Jerome Tract. Ps. 81; Hierocles quoted in Eusebius Hier. 2; Lucian Peregr. 11–13. The influential writings of E.A. Judge (Social Pattern) and Gerd Theissen (Social Setting) went a long way in dispelling the dominant notion put forth by Adolf Deissmann of Christianity as a movement “unimpaired and strengthened by the Divine Presence, from the lower class” (Light from the Ancient Near East, 2nd English ed. [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927], 144). However, the notion persists that the ranks of the first-century followers of Jesus were dominated by the lower classes of society. See David G. Horrell and Edward Adams, “The Scholarly Quest for Paul’s Church at Corinth: A Critical Survey,” in Christianity at Corinth: The Quest for the

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Pauline Church, ed. Edward Adams and David G. Horrell (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 1–43. The notion of the baptismal creedal formulation was first developed by Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and is based upon the repetition of the formula in Gal. 3:28, partially in 1 Cor. 12:13, and with some alterations in Col. 3:11: Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983); Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 149–73. Cf. Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Reading Real Women through the Undisputed Letters of Paul,” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 199–220. So Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 2. Bruce Malina, The New Testament World (London: scm , 1983), 42–8. Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 219–28. Ibid., 61. So Martin, Corinthian Body, 242–9; Lucy Peppiatt, Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians (Eugene: Cascade, 2015), 21–43; Rossing, “Prophets,” 271–3; Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 144–5. Antoinette Clark Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 47–62. Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy, 157. See also David Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 23–8; Luise Schottroff, “1 Corinthians,” in Feminist Biblical Interpretation, ed. Luise Schottroff and Marie-Theres Wacker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 731–9; Daniel Boyarin, “Paul and Genealogy of Gender,” in A Feminist Companion to Paul, ed. Amy-Jill Levine (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2004), 13–41. Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Women Holy in Body and Spirit: The Social Setting of 1 Corinthians 7,” in Christianity at Corinth: The Quest for the Pauline Church, ed. Edward Adams and David G. Horrell (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 161–72 (at 166). See also Dennis R. MacDonald, There Is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 113–26. Jill Marshall observes the ambivalence in Paul’s instructions toward women as replicated in the comments of Livy, Philo, and Plutarch, all of whom struggle to balance ritual activities, speech, and women’s proper domain: Women Praying and Prophesying in Corinth:

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53 54 55 56

57 58 59

60

61 62 63 64

65 66 67

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Gender and Inspired Speech in First Corinthians, wunt 448 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), especially 73–108. Felicitas D. Goodman, Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia (Chicago: University Press, 1972). For the role of women within charismatic religious groups in the Greco-Roman world, see Susan M. Elliott, Cutting Too Close for Comfort: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in Its Anatolian Cultic Context, lnts 248 (London: T&T Clark, 2003). Goodman, Speaking in Tongues, 10. Ibid., 27, 36–7. Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). Ibid., 245. See also Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (London: Cassell, 1996), 131. Fulkerson, Changing the Subject, 266. Elaine Lawless, Handmaidens of the Lord: Pentecostal Women Preachers and Traditional Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988). Ibid., 41–2. See also Troy Abell, Better Felt than Said: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in Southern Appalachia (Waco: Markham, 1982); Johnson, “Women and Glossolalia.” The origin of the Corinthian slogans such as “it is well for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Cor. 7:1) is debated; in this instance, I concur with others who associate this saying with Paul. For a more extensive discussion on slogans, see Robin Scroggs, “Paul and the Eschatological Woman,” jaar 40 (1972): 295–6. See also the discussion in note 35 above. Brown, Body and Society, 55. For a recent summary on this topic, see Peppiatt, Women and Worship at Corinth, 1–20. Wire, Women Prophets, 116–34. See also Boyarin, “Genealogy of Gender,” 13–41. The discussion on this passage is wide-ranging. Some key works include William O. Walker, Jr, “1 Corinthians 11:2–16 and Paul’s Views Regarding Women,” jbl 94 (1975): 94–110; Martin, Corinthian Body, 229–49; Carolyn Osiek, “Women in House Churches,” in Common Life in the Early Church: Essays Honoring Graydon F. Snyder, ed. Julian V. Hills (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998), 300–15; Torjesen, When Women Were Priests, 41–2; Rossing, “Prophets,” 261–86. Torjesen, When Women Were Priests, 41–2, 144–5. See also Rossing, “Prophets,” 271–2. Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 88–93. Rossing, “Prophets,” 273.

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68 Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 137. 69 The limits of this essay do not permit an extensive discussion about the controversial passage 1 Cor. 14:33–36. I have argued that the passage is an interpolation: “In Search of the Voice of Women in the Churches: Revisiting the Command to Silence Women in 1 Cor. 14:34–35,” in Women in the Biblical World: A Survey of Old and New Testament Perspectives, ed. Elizabeth McCabe (Lanham: University Press of America, 2009), 135–54. One’s perspective on this passage influences the reading of the other passages relative to women in 1 Corinthians. Some voices who accept 1 Cor. 14:33–36 as authentic are Wire, Women Prophets, 116–35, 149–58; L. Ann Jervis, “But I Want You to Know…: Paul’s Midrashic Intertextual Response to the Corinthian Worshipers (1 Cor 11:2–16),” jbl 112 (1993): 231–46; William E. Richardson, “Liturgical Order and Glossolalia in 1 Corinthians 14:26c–33a,” nts 32 (1986): 144–53; Robert W. Allison, “Let Women Be Silent in the Churches (1 Cor. 14:33b–36): What Did Paul Really Say, and What Did It Mean,” jbl 32 (1988): 27–60; Walter A. Meier, “An Exegetical Study of 1 Corinthians 14:33b–38,” ctq 55 (1991): 81–104. Those who argue that 1 Cor. 14:33–36 is not authentically Paul include Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), 246; Hans Dieter Betz, “Spirit, Freedom and Law: Paul’s Message to the Galatian Churches,” seå 39 (1974): 145–60; Jouette M. Bassler, “1 Corinthians,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon Ringe (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 327; Charles H. Talbert, Reading Corinthians: A Literary and Theological Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 90–3; Daniel C. Arichea, Jr, “The Silence of Women in the Church: Theology and Translation in 1 Corinthians 14.33b–36,” bt 46 (1995): 101–12; Michel Gourgues, “Who Is Misogynist: Paul or Certain Corinthians?” in Women Also Journeyed with Him, ed. Gérald Caron et al. (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2000), 117–24. I am intrigued that the trend is toward female biblical scholars accepting this passage as authentic and male biblical scholars rejecting Pauline authorship.

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Where Did the Horse Come From? Caravaggio and Paul’s Conversion as a Bodily Experience Halvor Moxnes

The editors of this festschrift have a wonderful characterization of Leif Vaage and his mode of working: “a slow chipping away that unsettles the conventional image of Paul … as a fundamentally ‘strong’ figure.”1 I think this is a fitting description not only of Leif’s work on Paul but also of how he works in all areas of life and research. On nearly any topic that comes up in conversation, Leif has a long list of titles, quotations, reflections, and ideas that are insightful, in dialogue with dominant positions, and based on readings of relevant sources. Only after a while do you realize what he is doing: he is taking you out of your comfort zone of accepted knowledge and unravelling a conventional viewpoint. I know this, for Leif Vaage has been my most important conversation partner for twenty-five years. He has helped me write and complete two books, the most inspiring and challenging processes in my intellectual life. He is a better reader of me and my texts than I am myself. Therefore, for his festschrift, I can do no better than start with a “conventional image of Paul,” viz. the Lukan narrative of his conversion in Acts 9:1–19. I explore how biographical conventions are shaped so that they become part of the given facts of a situation and then taken for granted. Regarding figures from the New Testament, this shaping process is especially interesting in those cases where the biblical texts provide little detailed information and biographers fill out the details from their own experiences in daily life. This can result in an interpretation that seems obvious on the surface, but in fact bears scant resemblance to the original biblical text. It seems to be obvious because it is based on culturally determined conventions.

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Such conventions can underlie textual interpretations, but they are more striking and revealing in visual representations, since in paintings of biblical scenes the cultural presuppositions are literally made visible. This is striking in the period of Caravaggio and the Counter-Reformation, when biblical motifs were painted as stories, as biographical narratives. Caravaggio is a representative of this narrative style; many of his paintings of New Testament scenes focus on a dramatic moment in a narrative (e.g., The Calling of Matthew, The Supper at Emmaus). In these paintings, Caravaggio builds on cultural possibilities and, in turn, his paintings provide the basis for future readings of the story. Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus (1601), based on portions of Luke 24:13–35, is a good example.2 When the risen Jesus’s two fellow travellers invite him to spend the evening, there is no mention in the text of where they had their supper. Was Emmaus their hometown, so that they had a house to take Jesus to? Alternatively, did they have friends or relatives with whom they could stay? Painters before Caravaggio opted for another possibility: where the text says only, “He was at the table with them” (Luke 24:30), they placed the scene at an inn. Caravaggio continues in the same tradition: Jesus and the disciples take their meal at an inn with the innkeeper, who is not mentioned in Luke’s version of the story.3 In a similar way, when Luke describes how Paul was journeying toward Damascus in Acts 9:3, he does not tell us how he was travelling, whether by foot or on a draught animal.4 There is no mention of an animal in any of the narratives of Paul’s journey in Acts 9:1– 9, 22:6–11, 26:6–12, nor in later textual retellings of the story (e.g., Augustine, the Golden Legend).5 In visual representations, however, starting from the fourteenth century, Paul is depicted falling from his horse or having already landed on the ground. So how can we explain this sudden appearance of the horse? Massimo Leone suggests that it is due to the difference between a written source and figurative art. “When a verbal text does not mention an object, this does not mean that the object is not there. It means, trivially, that the object has not been described or mentioned. On the contrary, when an image does not show an object, this always means that the object is not there. This self-evident truth is connected to the main semiotic difference between images and verbal texts.”6 Leone concludes his argument: “From this point of view, when images transpose a verbal text into a mainly iconic language, they always provide a sort of commentary on it, wherein many of the implicit elements of the word are made explicit because of the different way in which visual language works.”7 The horse in many

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paintings of Paul’s conversion represents such a commentary. How the commentary took this specific form, however, is a result of contexts and conventions (not to mention breaks from conventions). This essay starts with a brief review of scholarship on Paul’s conversion, a review that shows that the focus has usually been on literary studies of the texts. As an alternative, this study explores presentations of Paul’s conversion in terms of bodily experiences. It starts with the medieval saint plays in which the progression of Paul’s conversion is presented in transition between various physical settings (e.g., in front of a church or in a market square). The study then moves to the artistic representation of Paul’s conversion in Caravaggio’s iconic work The Conversion of St Paul. The study then shifts to how English poet Thom Gunn picks up on Caravaggio’s focus on the physical experience of Paul’s conversion. In his poem “In Santa Maria del Popolo,” Gunn reflects on his own experience of encountering Caravaggio’s painting. This focus on the physical aspects of Paul’s conversion is brought to completion in yet another reflection on Caravaggio’s painting, Luis Menéndez-Antuña’s theological interpretation of Paul’s conversion as an experience of both religious ecstasy and sexual penetration. While this essay may appear at times to recount the history of interpretation of Paul’s conversion as it appears in Acts, this methodology does not in fact govern the paper: rather it is a sustained reflection on the various traditions of interpretation set into motion by Caravaggio’s interpretation in The Conversion of St Paul. Taken together, the medieval saint plays, Caravaggio’s painting, and later interpretations of Caravaggio’s painting based on bodily experiences, all represent an alternative to what I will describe as the conventional “cognicentric” approach to Paul’s conversion.

was t h e r e a pau l ine convers i on? One of the burning issues in Pauline studies over the last two generations has been the question of whether Paul should be called a “convert.” When I use scare quotes, it is because the question very much revolves around how one understands “conversion.” A viable starting point for this discussion is Krister Stendahl’s famous essay “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.”8 He argued that the image of Paul as a convert from Judaism was based on an anachronistic reading of Paul in light of Lutheran “introspective conscience,” imagining the apostle’s conscience as dominated by guilt. Stendahl’s essay is often regarded

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as the beginning of the New Perspective on Paul, which holds that Paul continued to be a Jew, and he was therefore no convert. Instead, one might say that he got a new calling from God to be an apostle to the Gentiles, such that “call not conversion” has become a popular slogan. It is impossible here to do justice to this discussion; however, I am reminded of the observation of Colleen Shantz that “conversion” is “a notoriously imprecise term” that needs qualification.9 For instance, Stendahl operated with a very specific notion of “conversion” that did not consider other possibilities; his only model was the Lutheran conversion resulting from guilt. When the Jewish scholar Alan Segal wrote his monograph Paul the Convert, he was able to stand at a critical distance from the “New Perspective on Paul” approach and its theological baggage, producing a careful study of theories of conversion.10 Conversion is an etic (i.e., insider) category, he argued, and not a term arising from Paul’s own context. There are many different definitions of conversion, but what Segal finds common to them all is that “conversion does involve a radical change in a person’s experience.”11 Conversion therefore need not be from one religion to another; a radical change may include a transition from one group or sect within a religion. Consequently, Paul’s transition from being a Jew who persecuted Christ-followers to a Jew who worshipped Christ might reasonably be considered a type of conversion. Segal does not draw upon the stories in Acts, but on Paul’s own descriptions in his letters, saying, “My purpose is to show that Paul’s writing, thought, and theology are shaped by his personal, religious experience.”12 This experience was not just cognitive: it was an emphatically bodily experience as well. Segal observes that Paul spoke of his experience as “ecstatic conversion.”13 That Paul’s expressions of his theology are based on experiences in his body, even ecstasy, is often not recognized. In Paul in Ecstasy, Colleen Shantz argues that biblical scholars have not been able to find ways to understand and study Paul’s experiences, particularly his religious ecstasy.14 The readings produced by biblical scholars therefore tend to be cognicentric, focusing on Paul’s writings as a collection of cognitive ideas.15

c o n v e rs io n e m b odi ed i n m e d ie va l sa int plays The visual representation of Paul’s conversion took various forms during the late Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation. Two particularly noteworthy forms were medieval saint plays and pictorial presentations, especially paintings. The plays of The Conversion of St Paul presented

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the apostle’s conversion as a “bodily” experience and engaged “the body politic” of an audience such that they became participants in his experience. From a modern perspective, there is a great difference between saint plays and paintings of the conversion of Paul, especially paintings by famous artists like Michelangelo, Raphael, Dürer, Rubens, and Caravaggio. Their paintings hang in prestigious art museums and are regarded as “high culture,” while the medieval saint plays are regarded more as “lowbrow” culture, originally performed for ordinary people in market squares or outside churches. However, such distinctions were not as important in premodern times, especially when it came to representations of the sacred. Leone suggests that “drama was seen as analogous to the painting or sculpture of religious or moral subjects. The two mediums, artistic and dramatic, were mimetic and hence essentially similar.”16 The saint plays thus give us greater context for understanding the paintings. The plays, with their often-detailed scenic depictions, presented the symbols and metaphors of Paul’s conversion to their audiences. Several plays of The Conversion of St Paul have been preserved in France and in East Anglia in England, and we also know of plays from other parts of Europe.17 The manuscripts of these plays date to about the same period as the most famous paintings of the conversion of St Paul (i.e., the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries). The East Anglia play of The Conversion of St Paul is well documented.18 It was performed in an open space, the platea, which had several scaffolds, architectural structures, houses, etc., with symbolic meanings. Jerusalem was on one side, Damascus was on the opposite side, and the platea in between was (so to speak) neutral ground where conversion happened. The play had three acts. In the first, Paul receives letters from the high priests in Jerusalem authorizing him to persecute Christians, whom he shall bring to Damascus. The second act depicts the conversion itself and Paul’s arrival at the house of Ananias. The final act presents a stark contrast from the depiction of Paul in the first: after his conversion, he is now a follower of Christ and delivers a sermon. The story of Paul’s conversion was performed in the context of the Christian worldview that dominated medieval drama; it was binary and divided the world into sin and righteousness, God and Satan.19 The conversion plays depicted moral change as an actual spatial movement from one side of the binary to the other. In the English version of The Conversion of St Paul, the protagonist rides a horse across the platea from his position in Jerusalem, secure in his authority to arrest the Christ-followers. His conversion is swift, without any preparation. This is a dramatic and very vulnerable moment, occurring immediately

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before he enters his new moral world. Most likely, the audience took part in a procession by following Paul from station to station, so that they themselves would figuratively undergo conversion and experience the spiritual movement of Paul.

c o n v e n t io n a l im ages of horses as sy m b o l iz in g h o n o ur and superbi a The plays of The Conversion of St Paul in England, France, and Spain in the late Middle Ages all present Paul as a knight in armour, travelling to Damascus on horseback, accompanied by other knights and servants. Is it possible to say something of the background for this portrait? It appears that this picture first became popular in the Western Church in the late Middle Ages. The earliest images of Paul’s journey, from the sixth century, show him on foot, an image popular in the Byzantine church.20 The earliest examples of Paul on horseback date to the fourteenth century.21 An ornamental carving in the cloisters of Norwich Cathedral (1297–1430) shows Paul falling from a horse. Another early example of Paul’s conversion, showing him falling with his horse, is found in Livre d’Heures d’Étienne Chevalier (c. 1450–1460) by Jean Fouquet. The emergence of this iconographic tradition was supported by liturgy and cult. In the late Middle Ages, knights adopted Paul as their patron saint. In Rationale divinorum officiorum, a handbook on the liturgy of the Western Church from the late thirteenth century, the well-connected bishop and liturgist Guillaume Durand writes that when letters of Paul were read in the liturgy, knights stood up “because he was a knight.”22 Massimo Leone suggests that pictures represented a commentary on the text, making visible presuppositions in reading the texts. In paintings from the Middle Ages and Counter-Reformation, figures in biblical scenes were typically dressed in contemporary costume. It is therefore not surprising that Paul was represented as a soldier in armour on horseback. Since he was sent on an official mission from the authorities in Jerusalem, it was easy to imagine him as a knight, pragmatically riding a horse. Leone, however, argues that the horse serves not only a pragmatic function but also a dramatic and symbolic function.23 He finds a strong relationship between the horse and the theatrical dimension of The Conversion of St Paul plays, particularly in their French and Spanish versions. The horse appears at the dramatic peaks of the plays and becomes a symbol of Paul’s activity as persecutor of the Christians before his conversion.

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Leone suggests that the conflict between good and evil, central to the worldview that dominated medieval conceptions of conversion, was also embodied in the horse. In the narrative structure of Greek mythology, we find that falling from a horse typically represents a turning point in the story.24 The most direct influence on the medieval presentation of Paul may have been the fight between Superbia (Pride) and Humilitas (Humility) in Prudentius’s Psychomachia. Prudentius composed this piece in the early fifth century ce , narrating the fight between vices and virtues over people’s souls. Psychomachia was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and afterward. An illustrated manuscript from the eleventh century, now in the British Library, has a series of illustrations that provides an archetypal form for The Conversion of St Paul: 1) Superbia rides a horse, 2) Suberbia tries to trample down Spes (Hope) and Humilitas, 3) Superbia falls from the horse, and 4) Humilitas stands over Superbia.25 Against this background we can say that the presentation of Paul on horseback in the conversion plays not only conforms with the conventions of contemporary military practices, but also represents Paul as a late antique paradigm of human moral struggle.

ca r avag g io ’ s t h e c o n v e r s i o n o f s t u n s e t t l in g c o nventi ons

pa u l

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The conversion of Paul was a popular motif for painters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While the medieval saint plays have a tripartite structure (i.e., Paul the persecutor, the conversion scene, and Paul the converted preacher), the paintings focus on the central topic, the conversion itself. This was regarded as the most dramatic moment in the story and the motif that gave painters the most varied opportunities. The narrative in Acts 26:12–14 seems to provide the basis for most paintings. This version of the conversion has the most detailed description of how the light engulfed Paul and his company of followers, and how they all fell to the ground. This provided an opportunity for a dramatic scene that included not only Paul but a large company of knights on horseback. Moreover, the light from heaven and the heavenly voice that are mentioned in the text in Acts could be depicted with images of Jesus Christ speaking from the sky, surrounded by angels. Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Dürer, and Raphael produced famous paintings of Paul’s conversion along these lines. Caravaggio must have known at least Michelangelo’s The Conversion of St Paul in the Vatican’s Pauline Chapel when he started his own work, if not the others. Caravaggio painted two different versions of The

Figure 11.1 | The Conversion of St Paul (1601) by Caravaggio

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Conversion of St Paul. The first one, from 1600 in the Odescalchi Balbi Collection of Rome, followed the convention and depicted the scene with Christ together with an angel. In addition, an old, armed soldier is present. The main difference from earlier paintings of this scene is that in Caravaggio’s version the figures and a large horse are cramped into a small space.26 According to received tradition, this painting was commissioned for the Cerasi Chapel in the church of St Maria del Popolo in Rome; however, it was rejected. Whatever the reason, Caravaggio was given the opportunity to make a new version. In the new version of The Conversion of St Paul (figure 11.1), Caravaggio made a clean break with conventional presentations of the scene. The new painting displays many of Caravaggio’s characteristic techniques for rendering religious motives. The scene is much more “realistic” and “down to earth” than previous renderings.27 The heavenly visitors, Christ and the angels, have disappeared; instead, there is a light falling from above on the horse and on Paul, who is lying on the ground. The scene is dominated by the horse, which is enormous. It is not the steed of a knight but an old workhorse, rather ordinary looking. An elderly stable hand, not a soldier, looks down uncomprehending upon Paul. Paul seems to be as mundane as his horse; he is blinded and the only “religious” element in the picture is that he raises his hands toward the light. One might say that Caravaggio offers a “demythologized” depiction of Paul’s conversion as an event happening inside a stable.28 Caravaggio shows the spectators what they might have seen if they had been present at the event as it happened. However, Caravaggio’s break with earlier convention does not mean that he closes the door to a religious interpretation, even if the event is moved from heaven to a stable, so to speak. The sheer physicality of the painting is significant: Caravaggio brings the enormous horse and Paul’s fallen body almost into physical contact with the spectator. The physicality of the painting and the foreshortened perspective of Paul raise the question of the position of the spectator relative to the painting. The Cerasi Chapel is a small room, dominated by the painting of the Assumption of the Virgin by Annibale Caracci over the altar, with Carvaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul and The Crucifixion of Peter on the sidewalls.29 These paintings are placed so that they almost force the spectator to view them from a kneeling position in front of the painting. Thus, not only is the body of Paul affected by the light that struck him down, but so also the body of the spectator. The physical position of the beholder in front of the painting places him or her in a position similar to Paul and induces the beholder to imitate Paul’s bodily and spiritual

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movements.30 Here, the symbolic significance of the fall from the horse comes into play. In the classical tradition, the horse, especially with a knight on horseback, symbolized pride.31 Therefore, the fall from the horse was a strong symbol of humiliation, which Paul suffered, and which the beholder accepted by kneeling down in front of the painting. Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul thus invites viewers to consider its meaning not just through their eyes but through their bodies as well. Add to this that the painting is unconventional in that it places Paul’s conversion in an ordinary, everyday, “demythologized” context. In this way, Caravaggio creates space for later interpreters to develop their own interpretations, focusing on a scene where a human being faces an extreme experience.

a g ay n o n - b e l i ever i n sa n ta m a r ia d el popolo In the 1950s, a young British poet described his encounter with Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul in the poem “In Santa Maria del Popolo.”32 This young British poet was Thom Gunn (1929–2004), who was a non-believer and at that time a closeted gay man. He later became a highly respected poet, living in San Francisco for most of his life.33 The poem reflects his sometimes-confusing impressions of the body of Paul and the horse, and how he encountered them through the experiences of his own body when he visited the church. His poem reminds us that this and many of Caravaggio’s other paintings were situated in a particular religious context where the physical location itself provides an interpretation of the motif. Gunn describes his impression of the painting in the narrative context of his visit to the church, waiting for a time when the light was right to see Caravaggio’s painting, with its typical chiarosciuro. The first stanza describes this waiting period, and the effect of the dimming of the light: I see how shadow in the painting brims With a real shadow, drowning all shapes out But a dim horse’s haunch and various limbs, Until the very subject is in doubt. In the dim light, it is difficult to make out who is who between the horse and the man on the ground, so “the very subject is in doubt.” In the second stanza, Gunn expresses a clearer idea of the picture. Here Gunn refers to the moment of conversion, speaking of “Where he has

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fallen, Saul becoming Paul.” However, Gunn does not seem to have a clear sense of the implications, but stops at the figure of Saul and his “convulsion.” Is this a seizure or spasm: “what is it you mean / In that wide gesture of the lifting arms?” Readers expecting the third stanza to give an answer to the question at the end of the second stanza are offered a rather surprising one. Gunn, who obviously knows the story of Paul’s conversion in Acts, does not go back to this story to find Paul reacting to the voice from heaven. Gunn instead refers to the following story of Ananias, who was sent to Paul to tell him that he was commissioned by God to proclaim Christ to the Gentiles. In Acts 22:12–16, Ananias commands Saul to be baptized, so that his sins may be forgiven. The context suggests that this refers to Saul’s sins when he persecuted the Christ-followers. However, Gunn takes the interpretation in another direction. He speaks of “casting the pain out under the name of sin.” In order to identify this sin, Gunn looks for possible parallels in the life of Caravaggio and speaks of “an alternate candor and secrecy inside the skin.” Gunn refers to Caravaggio’s paintings of young male prostitutes and to the (unreliable) rumour that Caravaggio was killed by a young man he had picked up. Does this reference to Caravaggio’s attraction to young men imply that Gunn finds sexual overtones in Paul’s outstretched body position? If so, Gunn does not follow up on this suggestion in the last stanza. In the last stanza Gunn returns from the chapel that contains Caravaggio’s painting to the church, where he finds a group of mostly old women kneeling in prayer and holding their heads with “tiny fists” to find comfort. This prompts him to reflect on the meaning of Saul’s “large gesture”: Their poor arms are too tired for more than this – For the large gesture of solitary man, Resisting, by embracing, nothingness. The time he had spent contemplating before The Conversion of St Paul has not convinced Gunn of a religious meaning behind the painting. Paul is still a “solitary man” and Gunn concludes that Paul is “Resisting, by embracing, nothingness.” This seems to be a tragic outcome; his conversion leads to nothingness. Gunn was obviously fascinated by Caravaggio’s painting and especially by Paul’s dramatic gestures; however, he does not seem to suggest a homoerotic interpretation of that image. Others have tried to develop an interpretation of Gunn’s poem in that direction. George Klawitter

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suggests that with the gesture of the lifting arms, “Saul invites the ecstasy of the moment.”34 Klawitter points to what he sees as the paradox of resisting and embracing in the painting and suggests that with his outstretched arms, Caravaggio’s Paul “awaits his own lover, unable to see him but grateful for the experience of incipient rapture.”35 This interpretation is merely a suggestion; Klawitter does not develop it at any length. “His own lover” may ambiguously refer to either heavenly or erotic love, or to a combination of the two. Moreover, the emphasis on Paul’s gestures lifts up conversion as a bodily experience that encompasses both ecstasy and gay sexuality. In Klawitter’s interpretation, these aspects are not fully developed; however, he is pointing in the direction of a full exposure in the study of Luis Menéndez-Antuña.

a q u e e r r e a d in g o f caravaggi o’s t h e c o n v e r s i o n o f s t pa u l

Thom Gunn was a young man when he wrote In Santa Maria del Popolo, and the gay perspectives in his poems seem as closeted as he himself was at the time. It took sixty years from Gunn’s poem until a fully developed queer interpretation of Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul emerged in Luis Menéndez-Antuña’s “Is Caravaggio a Queer Theologian? Paul’s Conversion on the Way to Damascus.”36 The very first sentence in Menéndez-Antuña’s essay states that “Theology has reflected on the parallels between lovemaking – as intimacy among people – and divine love – but explorations on the practices and experiences of ‘fucking’ is lacking.”37 Menéndez-Antuña’s point is that intimacy is an expression of relationship and that queer relationality “mirrors present queer practices in their awkwardness.”38 To speak of queer practices “in their awkwardness” indicates that Menéndez-Antuña is aware that some readers may find queer sexual practices unconventional. However, he finds in these practices a relationality that is ethically valuable; it is this queer relationality that Menéndez-Antuña applies to the disciple/Lord relationship in Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul. By the “awkwardness” of queer sexual practice, Menéndez-Antuña refers to cruising and barebacking (i.e., anal intercourse without condoms). In light of the danger of transmitting hiv or other sexually transmitted infections, many regard this form of sexual activity as irresponsible. However, Menéndez-Antuña uses a perspective developed by Tim Dean in a study of the subculture of men who practice barebacking. Dean’s findings are summed up in the title of his book, Unlimited Intimacy.39 He does not make moral judgments in advance;

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rather, according to Menéndez-Antuña, his study offers “unique, insightful ethical conclusions on queer relationality, community, transcendence and spirituality.”40 Dean concludes that these queer practices “exemplify a distinctive ethic of openness to alterity, focused on the primacy of the other.”41 The submissive partner is the one who submits himself to “being penetrated as an act of total openness.” The other partner, “the top” (i.e., the one who penetrates), is understood “as gift giver or gifter. The gifter, religiously put, is the one who does the conversion, the subject who inaugurates a new identity in whoever desires to convert.”42 Based on these ethical reflections, Menéndez-Antuña approaches Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul as an expression of divine and human love from the perspective of queer relationality. Menéndez-Antuña focuses on the body of Paul, stretched out in a submissive position in front of the spectator. Paul’s eyes are closed, he is blind, and therefore he cannot see who penetrates him. The situation can be read in at least two ways. Read from the point of view of the narrative in Acts 9:1–9 and the conventional title of Caravaggio’s painting, the body reflects the submission of Paul to the Lord Jesus. From the perspective of queer practices of “unlimited hospitality,” however, the bodily position of Paul suggests the sexual act of being penetrated.43 Thus, this image of Paul’s “ecstatic queer and spiritual passivity” is an example of how “sexual and religious desire coalesce.” Menéndez-Antuña points out that the “carnal dimensions of the religious experience are a well-known trope in Christian mysticism.”44 This was especially so in the Baroque period, which coincided with the Counter-Reformation. Menéndez-Antuña compares Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul to Bernini’s sculpture Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, both pieces reflecting “a transcendental experience of a-sexual jouissance beyond the phallus.”45 Other scholars as well have emphasized the connection between the religious context of Caravaggio and that of the mystics and spiritual masters like Ignatius Loyola.46 Caravaggio produced several representations that parallel the description of ecstasy found in the writings of these mystics, for example, The Stigmatization of St Francis and Magdalen in Ecstasy. This last painting is characteristic of how Caravaggio “takes down” mythological descriptions and places them in the ordinary world. According to legend, Mary Magdalene left Galilee for Southern France, where she experienced heavenly journeys. In Magdalen in Ecstasy, Caravaggio turned these heavenly journeys into an entirely interior experience. Magdalen is portrayed as a woman in an ambiguous position between mystical and erotic love.47 Menéndez-Antuña points out that scholars have discussed the female “jouissance” of Theresa and of Magdalene, but not Paul’s “semiecstatic

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disposition.”48 The reason may be that it requires a queer gaze to imagine such a parallel between ecstasy and male submissive sexual practice. Menéndez-Antuña draws on Foucault and other queer theoreticians when he finds in “the image of a man on his back prostrated on the ground, legs and arms raised in an ambiguous ecstasy” nothing less than the centrepiece of Caravaggio’s “theology of sex.”49 Paul’s ecstasy, with his closed or blind eyes, is situated at the border between consciousness and unconsciousness, between pleasure and pain. This is ecstasy after a rapture, when he was struck down by divine power; the expression can also be that of an openness to the Other, as the bottom in a sexual act. However, in The Conversion of St Paul, the Other is absent. Interpreters of the biblical text know that this absence points to a presence, which previous painters had depicted as Christ looking down from heaven. In Caravaggio’s image, this absence signals anonymity; the blinded Paul does not know who penetrates him. Here the enormous horse that looms over the body of Paul and dominates him may play a role. The horse’s hoof points directly at Paul’s groin and the white, lighted pattern on the side of the horse can be read (with a queer gaze) as the profile of a man with his organ ready to penetrate Paul. Paul’s experience is one of loss of masculinity, indicated in Caravaggio’s painting by symbolic elements. Paul’s sword, which is at his side but out of reach, signifies that “Paul, in his submission to the Other, loses the phallic power that constitutes him as man.”50 The helmet placed at a distance represents military armour and Paul’s status as a warrior; now it signifies his loss of masculinity. Thus, the image presents a picture of a shattering experience that results in a loss of identity. The blurring of the boundaries between pleasure and pain, between a religious and sexual experience, suggests “the similarities between the subjectivity of the barebacker and the mystic.”51 A similarity between a barebacker and a mystic may at first glance seem unconventional, to some maybe even at second glance. However, with his highly original and provocative interpretation, MenéndezAntuña brings Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul out of its “comfort zone” in religious art and places it in a contemporary context of queer sexuality, desire, and violence. This is quite an unconventional place for a painting with iconic status in religious art. However, Menéndez-Antuña’s interpretation is decidedly theological, in that it is an incarnational theology inspired by Caravaggio’s demythologization of Paul’s conversion.

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t h e b o dy of paul I started by asking, “Where did the horse come from?” I think that at the time of Caravaggio it was a conventional cultural prop. What at first glance appeared to be an unconventional addition to the story of Paul’s Damascus experience in Acts turned out to be part of a conventional description of Paul as an armoured knight on horseback. Instead of asking where the horse came from, it may be more fruitful to ask what the horse contributes to Caravaggio’s depiction of The Conversion of St Paul. First, the horse serves as a symbol of the pride of its owner. Thus, the fall from the horse is a perfect illustration of loss of pride, power, and authority on the one hand, and the experience of humility and weakness on the other. More significantly, however, the main message of the painting lies in the contrast between the bodily power of the horse and Paul’s bodily weakness. The Conversion of St Paul makes a total break with conventional, cognicentric readings of the story that exclude the experiences of the body. Colleen Shantz claims that if “we consider the whole picture of what is produced in Pauline scholarship … it is the body that tends to remain absent and partial.”52 With this painting Caravaggio draws attention to Paul’s body as the site of his conversion: conversion is more than just a new intellectual conviction. However, what does the body of Paul in Caravaggio’s painting mean? This seems to be the question Thom Gunn is struggling with when he asks, “what is it you mean / In that wide gesture of the lifting arms?” Caravaggio’s painting makes visible the potential for understanding Paul’s outstretched body. He shows Saul/Paul falling on his back, with his arms stretched out – in a position that can indicate rapture, spasms, ecstasy, orgasm – or all of these. With the queer gaze that MenéndezAntuña has introduced, we may see and recognize the overlap between religious and sexual ecstasy in Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul. Thus, Menéndez-Antuña has introduced the possibility of a more complex view of Paul’s body; his apostolic body is also a sexual body. Paul’s experience opens up a possible understanding of Paul’s body as penetrated and submissive. With this tentative conclusion, I hope I have contributed to Leif Vaage’s “slow chipping away that unsettles the conventional image of Paul … as a fundamentally ‘strong’ figure.”53

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no t e s 1 Zeichmann, introduction (present volume), 12. 2 This and other paintings referred to in this chapter can be found at https:// www.caravaggio-foundation.org. 3 Lorenzo Pericolo, “Visualizing Appearance and Disappearance: On Caravaggio’s London Supper at Emmaus,” The Art Bulletin 89 (2007): 519–39. 4 A horse was probably out of the question; horses were status symbols, used in the cavalry units in the army, or owned by the upper strata of society; Catherine Hezser, Jewish Travel in Antiquity, tsaj 144 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 149. 5 For Augustine, see, e.g., Div. quaest. Simpl. 1.22; Conf. 8. See Golden Legend 28. 6 Massimo Leone, Religious Conversion and Identity: The Semiotic Analysis of Texts, Routledge Studies in Religion (London: Routledge, 2004), 156. 7 Leone, Religious Conversion, 156. 8 Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” htr 56 (1963): 199–215. 9 Colleen Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 46–56, at 46. 10 Alan Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 284–300. 11 Ibid., 6. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 70. 14 Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy, 27–33. 15 In this regard, Carlos Gil Arbiol, “Pauline ekklesia as Third Space” (present volume), 245–60, offers something refreshing. Gil Arbiol argues that although Paul uses the term “body” in 1 Corinthians in multifaceted ways, they are all based on the physical experience of the “body.” 16 Leone, Religious Conversion, 163. 17 For the French rendition, see “La convercion Saint Pol,” in Le Cycle de mystères des premiers martyrs: du manuscrit 1131 de la Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève, ed. Graham A. Runnalls, Textes Littéraires Français (Geneva: Droz, 1976), 86–102. For the English version, see Victor I. Scherb, Staging Faith: East Anglian Drama in the Later Middle Ages (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001). For a rendition in Spanish, see Four autos sacramentales of 1590: Sacramento de la eucaristía, La conbersión de sant Pablo, El castillo de la fee, El testamento de Christo, ed. Vera Helen Buck (Iowa City: State University of Iowa, 1937).

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18 Scherb, Staging Faith, 94–105. 19 John W. Velz, “From Jerusalem to Damascus: Bilocal Dramaturgy in Medieval and Shakespearian Conversion Plays,” Comparative Drama 15 (1981–82): 312–13. 20 Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art Chrétien (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), 3.3:1041. 21 Clifford Davidson, “The Middle English Saint Play and Its Iconography,” in The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, ed. Clifford Davidson, Medieval Institute Publications (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1986), 100–1. 22 Réau, Iconographie, 1037. 23 Leone, Religious Conversion, 155–62. 24 Ibid., 161. 25 Cotton ms Cleopatra C VIII, British Library. 26 Richard Walsh, “‘Realizing’ Paul’s Visions: The New Testament, Caravaggio, and Paxton’s Frailty,” BibInt 18 (2010): 28–51, at 33–5. 27 Ibid., 36. 28 Ibid. 29 Leo Steinberg, “Observations in the Cerasi Chapel,” The Art Bulletin 41 (1959): 183–90. 30 Christopher Braider, “The Fountain of Narcissus: The Invention of Subjectivity and the Pauline Ontology of Art in Caravaggio and Rembrandt,” Comparative Literature 50 (1998): 294–5. 31 Leone, Religious Conversion, 155–62. 32 Thom Gunn, “In Santa Maria del Popolo,” in Collected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 93–4; Jeffrey Meyers, “Thom Gunn and Caravaggio’s Conversion of St. Paul,” Style 44 (2010): 586–90. 33 See the webpage of the American Academy of Poets, https://poets.org/poet/ thom-gunn. 34 George Klawitter, “Piety and the Agnostic Gay Poet,” Journal of Homosexuality 33 (2008): 207–32, at 223. 35 Ibid. 36 Luis Menéndez-Antuña, “Is Caravaggio a Queer Theologian? Paul’s Conversion on the Way to Damascus,” Critical Research on Religion 6 (2018): 132–50. 37 Ibid., 132. 38 Ibid., 133. 39 Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 40 Menéndez-Antuña, “Caravaggio,” 135. 41 Ibid., 136. 42 Ibid., 137.

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Ibid., 139. Ibid. Ibid., 140. Joseph F. Chorpenning, “Another Look at Caravaggio and Religion,” Artibus et Historiae 8/16 (1987): 149–58. Ibid., 156. Menéndez-Antuña, “Caravaggio,” 141. Ibid. Ibid., 142. Ibid. Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy, 3. Zeichmann, introduction, 12.

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The Pauline ekklesia as Third Space Carlos Gil Arbiol

in t ro du cti on Recent studies in the field of human geography have developed new insights into the value and function of space in social interaction. Scholars such as Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja, and David Harvey have proposed the concept of third space (using various names) to designate how a person or a group can (re)imagine spaces with new values, images, or meanings. Both those who function as agents of control and those who are marginalized can conceive of certain spaces as enclosing specific values and meanings, either to retain control or to challenge the status quo. This process occurs by means of discourses, rituals, practices, social ceremonies, performances, etc. Individuals or groups can challenge the social order and the power dynamics in a society either by imagining spaces where it is possible to execute new routines or by acting differently in those places. The corpus paulinum has plenty of allusions to spaces that are (re)imagined such that hegemonic values are replaced with new ones. References to the physical or social body (σῶμα), the temple (ναός), the household (οἶκος), the ekklesia (ἐκκλησία), etc., frequently evoke this third dimension of space because Paul imagines them in new ways. This contribution investigates the relationships that Paul establishes between the concepts of σῶμα, ναός, and ἐκκλησία in 1 Cor. 1–6 to create a new understanding of the believers as a group. Exploiting the double sense of “body” (physical and social), Paul seems to conceive the ekklesia as a temple where believers worship God through their ethical behaviour in the way they treat the social body. In doing so, these believers are also challenging the broader society that maintains its values and structure by means of civic worship.

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“ b o dy ” in 1 cor. 6 It is well known that the word σῶμα has different meanings in Paul. On the one hand, the term indicates the physical body of the believer (e.g., 1 Cor. 5:3, referring to Paul’s physical presence: “For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present I have already pronounced judgment”); on the other hand, it alludes to the social group the believers create when they gather (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:17: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”).1 Sometimes, however, it is difficult to discern the meaning.2 Out of forty-six occurrences of the word σῶμα in 1 Corinthians, nine occur in the first six chapters of the letter (5:3; 6:13 x2; 6:15–16 x2; 6:18–20 x4).3 Eight of those nine occasions appear in a single pericope (1 Cor. 6:12–20) where Paul admonishes the addressees to avoid consorting with prostitutes. By the end of his argument, Paul enjoins, “Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body (ἐκτὸς τοῦ σώματός); but the fornicator sins against the body itself (εἰς τὸ ἴδιον σῶμα; 6:18).” The adjective ἴδιος in this sentence can be understood in two different ways.4 On the one hand, it can be understood as the individual property of the subject, namely, his/her own physical and individual body (“his own body”).5 On the other hand, it can be understood as the place or group from which someone comes or to which someone belongs, here the body of Christ (“the body itself”), as has been stated earlier in 6:15.6 What does Paul think of consorting with prostitutes? Is it something that affects the “fornicator” (“his own body”) or the ekklesia, “the body itself” of Christ? Or both? To make things more complicated (or maybe clearer), Paul closes his argument by appealing to another metaphor, that of the temple: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple (ναός) of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (6:19). Again, is Paul speaking here of the individual body or the group of believers as a whole? What is the “temple” of the Spirit, every believer or ekklesia? Or both? Commentators usually prefer the first option as the most probable meaning: according to them, Paul speaks here of the body of the believer (i.e., the person and not the ekklesia).7 However, the wording is ambiguous, so it is imperative we understand all these references within the strategy of the letter, not driven by our own theological suppositions. There are four particular reasons to conclude that Paul has the second meaning in mind here, that the body affected by the sexual behaviour is the body of Christ, the ekklesia. First, the change from the plural (σώματα) to the singular (σώμα) in this section suggests that this is not

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a matter of various individuals, but of a single specific body. Second, since he concludes his argument with the statements that “you are not your own” (οὐκ ἐστὲ ἑαυτῶν) and “you have been bought” (ἠγοράσθητε γὰρ τιμῆς; 6:19), which function in parallel to the beginning of the paragraph (6:15), this further clarifies that they are part of a larger corporate “body.” Third, the meaning of ναός in the authentic letters of Paul always refers to the ekklesia. Fourth, the use of “housing,” “building,” and the image of a house occurs in parallel with σῶμα. Let us examine these points one at a time. First, in order for the addressees to understand and accept his argument, in 1 Cor. 6:16 the apostle recalls Gen. 2:24 to convey the idea that consorting with prostitutes entails becoming a unified body with them (“a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh”). Paul insists that those believers who consort with prostitutes are using their singular “bodies” (τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν) wrongly because each of those “bodies” is not one singular body unto itself, but merely a “limb” of another body that belongs to the Messiah: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ (μέλη Χριστοῦ ἐστίν)? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!” (6:15). By doing this, Paul dispenses with the idea that every believer is an individual whose body belongs only to one’s self, and creates a new picture where everyone is a limb of an entirely different body identified with Christ, as he does in 1 Cor. 12:12 and 12:27 (“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ … Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”). For this reason, he first uses the word “body” in the plural (σώματα in 6:15) to call attention to the individuals, but immediately he changes to the singular (σῶμα in 6:18) to convey the notion of belonging to one body which is someone else’s. Therefore, the Pauline argument runs as follows. Believers no longer have individual bodies but are limbs of the body of Christ (6:15) because Christ has bought them (6:19): they eat the same bread (10:17) and the Spirit has made them one body through baptism (12:13). Thus, consorting with prostitutes affects their (personal) bodies because they become members of a prostitute’s body, but, because they are also limbs of Christ’s body, that behaviour affects “the body itself,” Christ (6:18), and every limb of that body, the entire ekklesia. We will return to the meaning of this idea later. Second, Paul concludes his argument in 6:19–20 with the suggestions “that you are not your own” (οὐκ ἐστὲ ἑαυτῶν) and “you have been bought” (ἠγοράσθητε γὰρ τιμῆς), which highlight his main idea of being

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part of another entity larger and more important than oneself individually. Paul makes this argument with the metaphor of slaves being manumitted.8 Again, Paul creates a sequence in which he exchanges one concept (slavery) for another one (freedom). The Corinthians were slaves before belonging to Christ, but now Christ has bought them: “For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord … You were bought with a price” (7:22–23); “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). The act of buying them was a single action (implied by the aorist tense: ἠγοράσθητε) that freed all believers, not to become isolated individuals disconnected from each other, but to be slaves of another master to whom they now belong (i.e., Christ). There is no owner possible other than the Messiah, as stated at the beginning (6:15); one is owned neither by a former master, nor by oneself (“you are not your own”). The argument finishes as it started: every “body,” in its individuality, is now part of another body, Christ. The topic arises one final time in 6:20, exhorting readers to “glorify God in your body (δοξάσατε δὴ τὸν θεὸν ἐν τῷ σώματι ὑμῶν)”; this should be understood as the new body to which all the singular bodies (σώματα) now belong: they should glorify God in the body of Christ, in the ekklesia, which includes glorifying God in the individual bodies constituting it as well (hence, e.g., not consorting with prostitutes). Therefore, Paul’s argument attempts to revise the meaning of the word “body,” dispensing with its individualistic sense and instead conveying a collective group that represents Christ in everyday life. Third, there are only four occurrences of the word ναός within First Corinthians, all within those same first six chapters of the letter (1 Cor. 3:16–17 x3; 6:19 x1).9 The only other occurrences of this word in Paul’s authentic letters are in 2 Cor. 6:16. This verse sheds some light on Paul’s use of the word “temple”: “What agreement has the temple (ναός) of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God (ἡμεῖς γὰρ ναὸς θεοῦ ἐσμεν ζῶντος); as God said, ‘I will live in them and walk among them and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’” Paul here speaks of the group, as the passage’s combination of Lev. 26:11–12 and Ezek. 43:7–9 clearly shows (cf. Zech. 2:10–11).10 He is addressing the group of believers as a unified entity, as a body of people who collectively constitute the “we” that Paul refers to: the addressees and the authors of the letter (including probably “all the saints” of 2 Cor. 1:1, namely, all the believers) together. The other use of ναός (apart from 6:19) occurs in 1 Cor. 3:16–17: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple (ναὸς θεοῦ ἐστε) and that

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God’s Spirit dwells in you (οἰκεῖ ἐν ὑμῖν)? If anyone destroys God’s temple (ναός), God will destroy that person. For God’s temple (ναός) is holy, and you are that temple.” The “you” in the text (italicized) is plural in all three cases; this can indicate either every addressee individually or the entire ekklesia as a whole. The temple would then be, accordingly, the single body of each believer, as in Rom. 8:11 (“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies [σώματα] also through his Spirit that dwells in you”) or the body of Christ, the ekklesia, as in 1 Cor. 12:27 (“you [ὑμεῖς] are the body of Christ [σῶμα Χριστοῦ] and individually members of it”). However, the literary context of 1 Cor. 1–4 points to a conflict within the ekklesia: the rise of parties who appeal to different leaders, threatening the integrity of the group. Paul sees the work of all these leaders and his followers as part of God’s “field” (γεώργιον) or “building” (οἰκοδομή). His main concern is that some Corinthians have accepted divisions within the ekklesia, and his main purpose is to avert that and create a sense of unity. The ideas in 3:16–17 are the conclusion of his strategy, which tries to construct that building, that group. Accordingly, we may conclude that here Paul is addressing the group as a temple.11 This means that out of three occasions where Paul uses ναός, two (1 Cor. 3:16–17 x3, and 2 Cor. 6:17 x2) refer clearly to the ekklesia, the body of the believers as a group (socially and theologically). And this is also most probably the case for the use of ναός in the third text, 1 Cor. 6:19, as we have seen above. Accordingly, when the apostle asks the “fornicators” the question, “Do you not know that your body is a temple (τὸ σῶμα ὑμῶν ναὸς) of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” he uses the word σῶμα in the singular with the collective meaning of the body of Christ. To clarify this change, Paul equates the “body” with the “temple,” which has for him and the addressees the same collective meaning as had been stated in 3:16. With this parallelism, he concludes that the “body” affected by the sexual behaviour of the Corinthians is that of Christ, the ekklesia, inhabited by the Spirit. Paul uses both metaphors (body and temple) to represent the entire group of the believers, the collective body composed of every limb, the collective temple inhabited by the Spirit. Fourth, throughout 1 Cor. 1–6 Paul uses the image of a building or a house to refer to the group of believers in Corinth. The verb οἰκέω and οἰκοδομέω (and derivatives) are used six times within 1 Cor. 1–6, all of them in 1 Cor. 3:9–16 with the same meaning of “temple.” Paul speaks of the group of believers in Corinth as a building (οἰκοδομή) that was

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built by different skilled masters, including himself: he laid the foundation of that construction and some others built on it with different materials (gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw), but on the same foundation. The work of all produced the same house, which is now inhabited by the Spirit of God. In other words, Paul is using here the idea of a building to speak of the ekklesia, the group of the believers as a unity. We can sum up what have been said so far with the following points: 1 In 1 Cor. 6:15–20, Paul uses the word “body” with three different meanings to respond to those who consort with prostitutes. First, he uses “bodies” in the plural (σώματα) to refer to the individual persons within the group of believers. Second, he uses “body” in the singular (σῶμα) to refer to the ekklesia as a social body, as an assembly. This is the collective group of believers which is made up of every single person who is a “limb” of that “body.” Third, he uses “body” in a spiritual sense to refer to the ekklesia as the body of Christ, dead and resurrected. 2 Paul seems to be intentionally playing with the semantic ambiguity of σῶμα to provoke reflection. 3 Paul’s use of the third meaning (i.e., the ekklesia as the body of Christ) presupposes the second meaning of “body” (i.e., the ekklesia as a social body), but goes beyond it to give a new dimension to the social assembly that highlights the theological significance of the group (i.e., the ekklesia as not just any assembled body, but the body of the dead and resurrected Christ). 4 Paul revises the believer’s identity from one of individuality (or total freedom over his/her own body) to another of being a member of an assembly, a limb of another body, which is Christ’s. Consequently, believers do not have absolute control over their own physical bodies, which is why they cannot consort with prostitutes (6:15) or eat certain foods (6:12). In other words, they do not have independent control over their intercourse with others or the orifices of their bodies because those openings are not their own limits/borders but the limits of another (i.e., the ekklesia).12 Therefore, the behaviour of every member is subject to control by the ekklesia, because the action of one can affect the identity and integrity of the entire group. The actions of the individual believers either protect or threaten the borders of the ekklesia. 5 Paul applies the image of the “temple” to the ekklesia, conceived as both the social body and the body of Christ, highlighting the idea of a close relationship between the two.

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6 Everybody has experience with regard to their own personal body and Paul uses that familiarity as a laboratory whereby the believer can experience this new idea of community. Everybody has limbs and must take care of all of them, and knows of the consequences for the whole body if a single limb suffers; it is the same with the ekklesia. These points suggest that Paul’s main purpose in this section is to reimagine both the individual believer and the group of followers using various metaphors.

“ b o dy ” as t erri tory One implication of this analysis is that the “body” has a spatial dimension here that is like that of the temple. Both body and temple give spatiality to the ekklesia as well as an ambiguous private and public character.13 This idea of spatiality comes from studies on the sociology of the city that contend that people as well as animals carve free territories out of the space they have at their disposal in order to provide opportunities for idiosyncrasy and the development of novel identities.14 We might think of territories as spaces designated for different kinds of practices, delimited by means of boundaries (physical or symbolic), with distinctive commands to control access. Those limited spaces offer different settings to non-normative activities, creating grades of freedom and control.15 According to Stanford Lyman and Marvin Scott, there are four types of territories: public territories, home territories, interactional territories, and body territories.16 The first one (public) refers to those spaces where there is, normally, “freedom of access but not necessarily of action.” Those territories create some expectations regarding appropriate behaviour and put limits on the type of people who have access them; however, there can also be some ambiguity about those limits and expectations as well as about the authorities who can exert power within them. The second one (home) concerns those spaces where there is a “relative freedom of behaviour and a sense of intimacy and control over the area,” but the differences between the public and the home territories can be obscure. One can transform a public territory into a home territory by sponsorship or by colonization (and vice versa). The third one (interactional) “refer[s] to any area where a social gathering may occur,” and it “makes a claim of boundary maintenance for the duration of the interaction.” Finally, the body territory “include[s] the space encompassed by the human body and the anatomical space of the body”; it is, obviously, “the most private and inviolate of territories,” because it includes “the sacred rights to view and touch the body.” However, it can

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become home territory by means of marriage, for instance, and it can also be subject to violation when someone exerts control over the body territory of another person without permission. According to Lyman and Scott, there are three types of territorial encroachment: violation (an unwarranted use of the territory by means of breaking boundaries or misuse), invasion (entering without permission and taking over or changing the social meaning of a territory), and contamination (rendering impure with respect to its definition or usage, which in fact is similar to invasion). In addition, there are three types of reaction to that intrusion as well: turf defence (aggression or expelling), insulation (through idioms or appearance), and linguistic collusion (the intruder is labelled as an outsider). When a group or person is denied free public territory, their tendency is to create and affirm their rights on home territory so as “to maximize the situations in which one can exercise liberty and license, the times one can be cause rather than effect.”17 When even this is denied, the last resource of control is body territory, where one can exercise freedom by means of three different forms: manipulation (body language, hidden transcripts,18 etc.), adornment (robes or nudity, rings, tattoos, etc.), and penetration (changing one’s internal environment, a vicarious sense of being away, transporting the self out of its existential environment,19 etc.). Returning to Corinth, there are some hints in 1 Corinthians that the group of believers had been denied or given limited access to public territory. According to the letter, the Corinthians have been scrutinized by outsiders (14:23), their homes are small and serve as specialized areas of work (1:26),20 and they share a home with people who do not belong to the assembly (7:12); furthermore, they have been challenged for behaving differently from the rest of society (7:36, 10:21–22), and have lost public presence (8:10–13, 10:27–28). Since their access to both public and home territories seems to have been limited, they might have been tempted to maximize the few remaining areas of freedom to which they had access, territories where they could be cause rather than effect.21 There are some indications of this in the behaviour of some of the addressees: for instance, those who dominate their spouse’s body and decide when and how to have marital intercourse, if any (7:1–4); the man who lives with his father’s wife or ex-wife (5:1); those who consort with prostitutes (6:15); men who dress as women and vice versa (11:4–5); those who display their wealth in front of the poor to humiliate them (11:21–22) or sue others to defraud them (6:7–8); those who think of themselves as virtually incorruptible or indestructible and can eat everything, disregarding others’ dietary practices (6:12, 10:23); and

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so on. These behaviours seem to reproduce the strategy identified by Lyman and Scott for exercising freedom over the body territory when public or home territory is limited or denied. Paul has a different response to this situation; actually, the opposite one: he tries to create a new home territory that has aspiration to be a public territory. Instead of folding up into the body territory (opting out of the public sphere), he imagines new spaces where the members can live the lives they desire and, in addition, he proposes alternative behaviours for everyone in society, publicly and openly. He does this by exploiting the ambiguity of the “body” not only as body territory but also as home and public territories as well, and by means of proposing a third space: imagining the social group as the “body of Christ.”

“ b o dy ” as t h i rd s pace Since the colonization of the “Orient” by western empires, some scholars have highlighted the social function of spaces in the processes of controlling the subordinated peoples (or resisting the colonizers). Edward Said showed that “the invention of tradition was a practice very much used by authorities as an instrument of rule in mass societies when the bonds of small social units like village and family were dissolving and authorities needed to find other ways of connecting a large number of people to each other.”22 One of the strategies in this process is attributing certain meanings to specific spaces through tales, narratives, discourses, and so on. His most famous book (Orientalism)23 develops the idea that the “Orient” is a mental construction that tries to substitute for the real thing (peoples, cultures, values, rites, etc.). After Said, Homi Bhabha advanced some of those ideas, highlighting the fact that identities are created not by limiting and separating groups and territories but mainly by the flow and intercourse that occurs through the borders and limits of peoples and territories, in what he called ambiguous spaces or “third space”: It is significant that the productive capacities of this Third Space have a colonial or postcolonial provenance. For a willingness to descend into that alien territory – where I have led you – may reveal that the theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is the “inter” – the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the inbetween space – that carries the burden

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of the meaning of culture. It makes it possible to begin envisaging national, anti-nationalist histories of the “people.” And by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves.24 This idea of the “third space” was also developed by the urban geographer Edward Soja,25 who condensed a growing consensus stating that spaces have, first, a physical or material dimension (first space). For instance, the total square kilometres within one country, the number of other nation-states with which it shares a border, the quantity of inhabitants, the distribution of cities in the territory, etc., all these give a measurable or material sense of that country. Furthermore, spaces have a more symbolic or representative dimension (second space); for instance, that country described above can be represented in a flag, anthem, or a map, symbolically converting that data into drawings (maps, graphs, etc.). This move is political in that such representation can designate one piece of that territory to be the centre and another piece to be the periphery. And, finally, spaces have a creative and imaginative dimension, which affects the way people experiment, feel, and relate to the space, creating new possibilities of meanings. David Harvey defines this third dimension as “mental inventions (codes, signs, ‘spatial discourses,’ utopian plans, imaginary landscapes, and even material constructs such as symbolic spaces, particular built environments, paintings, museums, and the like) that imagine new meanings or possibilities for spatial practices.”26 The history of “the arts” is a good example of this third dimension; a painting, a narrative, or a ritual, for instance, can give the inhabitants of a given territory a specific meaning, values, and emotions linked to it, affecting the way they understand themselves and the environment. The idea of the “kingdom of God,” “citizenship of heaven,” or “the heavenly Jerusalem” are examples of those imagined spaces that try to create new meanings, values, and identities in the readers. Back to the Pauline letter, it seems that Paul’s use of the term “body” has these three dimensions. According to what has been said, “body” has a known and experienced meaning to all of the addressees of the letter, namely their physical body; this corresponds to what Soja calls “first space.” However, Paul amplifies this basic notion of the body with a more complex and symbolic one, namely the social group; this is the “second space” in Soja’s theory. This was actually a fairly common motif of the period.27 The apostle, however, also creates a totally new dimension for the body, namely the theological body of Christ. This is a completely new idea, because Christ was dead and resurrected by God to new life

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and therefore strictly speaking he did not have a physical or social body. His “body” was imagined, created in the imagination of the believers by giving a known space (either the physical or social body) new meaning and possibilities; this is what Soja calls “third space.”28 This third dimension of the body is reinforced by identifying the social body with a temple, a place where the Holy Spirit inhabits, a place to glorify God, and a place that the individuals cannot possess or control because it is not their own; it is property of Christ. Neither the physical nor the social body (i.e., neither individuals nor the ekklesia conceived merely as an assembly) exist any longer unto themselves; they are superseded by a spiritual body, the temple. Every action done with the body-temple must cohere with its holy identity; nothing can be done with or in the temple that defiles, alters, or obscures the identity of the body-temple. Paul creates a new territory in which the believers should live, projecting this sacred image onto the group and every member of it. As we have seen, the Corinthians had probably withdrawn from some of their previous cultic practices, they had lost public space, and they had been banned from some gatherings; they had no temple, no public sacrificial offerings, no agents or brokers for rituals, etc. They had only themselves as a group. But Paul took that apparent disadvantage and rendered it an advantage. Instead of collapsing into their inner body territories and acting as if they were disconnected individuals (as they had done by consorting with prostitutes), they are now being exhorted to reclaim their home and public territories. Paul is taking their body territory and creating from it a home territory with aspirations of public territory. Paul does this by means of two arguments. First, he uses the ambiguity of the word “body” to blur the borders between the person and the group to which they belong and transfer the weight from the former to the latter: the real body is the group of which they are merely the limbs. By doing so, he achieves two goals. On the one hand, he removes the temptation of disappearing from the public sphere by receding entirely into the body territory. On the other hand, he builds an alternative, a home territory where they not only receive contentment and care but also control of their own identity as a group (home territory). Second, exploiting a bit more of that ambiguity, Paul gives a theological meaning to that social body, creating a territory that has greater significance and public character: they are the body of Christ and a temple. This strategy gives a public dimension to the home territory of the group and, accordingly, establishes expectations and limits within its borders. Foremost, this entails care for the whole body to whom they belong, including every limb of that body. The corollary of this is a high standard

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of ethical behaviour because each of the believers is a representative of that same body of Christ; in other words, they are the body of Christ acting in history, and in no way can they abuse or exert power over the body of a vulnerable person like a prostitute.29 Being believers of Christ means that every single act of their lives (including eating, having sex, attending meetings, socializing, and so on) is performed collectively by the body of Christ, as if they were in a temple glorifying God. Consequently, all their actions have a sacred dimension; the whole life of every believer is a mirror of the image of Christ acting in the world; every action must glorify God. All of life and history become sacred space for believers; nothing is apart from Christ.

c o n c l u s io ns Leif Vaage has exploited the idea of the body as a space of resistance and transgression through ascetic practices.30 In a recent contribution to a multi-author volume, he recognises, “Sexual renunciation was, first of all, a political issue and, only after, was it an individual issue. The point was the future of the ancient city, the hope of the collective body to which every man and woman had belonged.”31 This chapter has developed the same idea from a different point of view, which however confirms his main ideas. We have found that Paul seems to intentionally exploit the ambiguity of the word “body” in order to change not only the behaviour of the addressees but also their identity. The situation and influence of the Corinthians in their context, according to the data we have in the letter, was diminishing because they were retreating from the public space, missing opportunities for social promotion, losing honour and prestige by worshipping a crucified person, etc. The reaction of the Corinthians seems to have been to collapse into the territory of their bodies, abusing others with whom they shared their private spheres. Paul encourages them to change this tendency with an elaborate argument. Paul begins by erasing the idea of the individual as a home territory, replacing it with the notion of belonging to the group, as a limb to a body. This strategy creates a sense of identity and develops an ethics that starts with the new social identity and ends with the personal behaviour of every believer. Paul highlights that the source of this new identity and behaviour is not the inner self (the individual body), but the ekklesia, of which they are limbs. Furthermore, he gives this group a theological identity (the body of Christ) that conveys a public dimension to the social group, on par with a temple (a public territory). Everything they

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do is an act of the body of Christ, acting in history. The ethical behaviour of the believers, along with their identity, is of paramount importance since they belong to the body of Christ. This newly ascribed identity also has political consequences. The little group of Corinthian believers, who are marginal in their social context because they are losing influence, can reverse this withdrawal by channelling it into a challenge to the power dynamics of the Empire. Imagining they are not a simple group of foolish, weak, and despised people, but the sacred limbs of the body of Christ, a temple which the Holy Spirit inhabits, they can regain honour, prestige, and public presence. Paul is not creating a marginal group to be peripheral and irrelevant, where individual behaviour is a matter of personal conscience, but a group to shine in the Empire through the behaviour of every member who represents the whole body. While the imperial cult creates and maintains certain values, the ethical behaviour of every believer in Christ embodies the new values and identity of Christ, which have a public and political purpose. no t e s 1 Cf. Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Alistair Scott May, The Body for the Lord: Sex and Identity in 1 Corinthians 5–7, lnts 278 (London: T&T Clark International, 2004); Yung Suk Kim, Christ’s Body in Corinth: The Politics of a Metaphor (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008). 2 Cf. Jerome H. Neyrey, “Body Language in 1 Corinthians: The Use of Anthropological Models for Understanding Paul and His Opponents,” Semeia 35 (1986): 129–70. Cf. Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy” (present volume), 281–2, on Paul’s use of σῶμα. 3 There are eighteen more occurrences in chapter 12, nine more in chapter 15, and an additional ten more occurrences scattered throughout chapters 7, 9, 10, 11, and 13. 4 According to lsj 818, ἴδιος has different connotations; in addition to a sense of property (which is the meaning of the translation “against his own body”), there is also a sense of belonging or being attached to something greater than oneself, as in the family or the place of origin. 5 This is the translation in rsv, kjv, asv , and some others: “against his own body.” In 1 Cor. 7:4, the same phrase occurs with this meaning: “For the wife does not have authority over her own body (τοῦ ἰδίου σώματος), but the husband does; the husband likewise does not have authority over his own body (τοῦ ἰδίου σώματος), but the wife does.”

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6 1 Cor. 6:15: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!” Paul uses this sense in Rom. 11:24: “For if you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree (οἱ κατὰ φύσιν ἐγκεντρισθήσονται τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἐλαίᾳ).” 7 Cf. Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, nicnt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 160, 288–9; Wolfgang Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 2 vols., ekk 7 (Zürich: Benziger Verlag, 1991), 2:31; Álvaro Pereira Delgado, Primera carta a los Corintios, Comprender la Palabra (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2017), 151. Thiselton is more cautious: Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, nigtc (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 316. Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 112n37, tries to combine both dimensions: “In this statement the facts are not adequately grasped. We must ask how this transfer from the collective body to the individual is rendered possible by the understanding of faith and the idea of the church (the relation of the church to the individual).” 8 Cf. Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, 2nd English ed., trans. Lionel R.M. Strachan (New York: Doran, 1927), 319–30; Laura S. Nasrallah, “‘You Were Bought with a Price’: Freedpersons and Things in 1 Corinthians,” in Corinth in Contrast: Studies in Inequality, ed. Steven J. Friesen, Sarah A. James, and Daniel N. Schowalter, NovTSup 155 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 54–73. 9 “While ἱερόν denotes the holy area of the temple as a whole, ναός denotes the temple building itself.” Thiselton, First Epistle, 315. 10 Cf. Paul Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, nicnt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 349. 11 Most commentators agree that Paul uses ναός to indicate the ekklesia; cf. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 78; Fee, First Epistle, 159–60; Thiselton, First Epistle, 316. 12 Cf. James A. Aho, The Orifice as Sacrificial Site: Culture, Organization, and the Body, Sociological Imagination and Structural Change (New York: De Gruyter, 2002). 13 Cf. Carlos Gil Arbiol, “De la casa a la ciudad: criterios para comprender la relevancia de las asambleas paulinas en 1Cor,” Didaskalia 38 (2008): 17–50. 14 Cf. Robert Ezra Park, E.W. Burgess, and Roderick Duncan McKenzie, The City, University of Chicago Studies in Urban Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925).

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15 Cf. Stanford M. Lyman and Marvin B. Scott, “Territoriality: A Neglected Sociological Dimension,” Social Problems 15 (1967): 236–49. 16 Ibid., 237. 17 Ibid., 247. 18 Cf. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Richard A. Horsley, Hidden Transcripts and the Arts of Resistance: Applying the Work of James C. Scott to Jesus and Paul, Semeia Studies 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 19 Cf. Erving Goffman, Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings (New York: Free Press, 1963), 69–75. 20 Cf. Carlos Gil Arbiol, “Conflictos entre el espacio doméstico y público de la ἐκκλησία en Corinto,” EstBib 64 (2006): 517–26. 21 Lyman and Scott (“Territoriality,” 247) point to some examples of New York City, albeit using outdated language: “One outstanding example is that of lower-class urban Negro youth. Their homes are small, cramped, and cluttered and also serve as specialized areas of action for adults; their meeting places are constantly under surveillance by the agents of law enforcement and social workers; and when in clusters on the street, they are often stopped for questioning and booked ‘on suspicion’ by the seemingly ever-present police.” 22 Edward W. Said, “Invention, Memory, and Place,” Critical Inquiry 26 (2000): 175–92, at 179. 23 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978). 24 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 56. Emphasis in original. 25 Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-andImagined Places (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). 26 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 218–19. 27 The best-known use of this motif is that of Menenius Agrippa (as described in Livy Ab urbe condita 2.32; Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. Rom. 6.86), but it is also deployed elsewhere (e.g., Quintus Curtius Rufus Historia Alexandri 10.6.8, 10.9.2; Josephus J.W. 4.406). 28 These three dimensions of the body as “place” have a close connection with what Mary Douglas said from an anthological perspective: “I now advance the hypothesis that bodily control is an expression of social control – abandonment of bodily control in ritual responds to the requirements of a social experience which is being expressed. Furthermore, there is little prospect of successfully imposing bodily control without the corresponding social forms. And lastly, the same drive that seeks harmoniously to relate the experience of physical and social, must affect ideology. Consequently, when once the correspondence between bodily and social controls is traced, the basis

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will be laid for considering co-varying attitudes in political thought and in theology,” Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1978), 74–5. 29 The idea of intercourse in the twenty-first century differs greatly from that of the first century, where sexual intercourse was a display of social position, power, or honour. Cf. Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); David Fredrick, “Mapping Penetrability in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome,” in The Roman Gaze: Vision, Power, and the Body, ed. David Fredrick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 236–62; Jonathan Walters, “Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought,” in Roman Sexualities, ed. Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 29–43; Carlos Gil Arbiol, “Comida y sexo en el naciente cristianismo,” in El alimento de los dioses: Sacrificio y consumo de alimentos en las religiones antiguas, ed. Francisco J. García Fernández, Fernando Lozano Gómez, and Álvaro Pereira Delgado (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2015), 213–27. 30 Cf. Leif E. Vaage and Vincent L. Wimbush, eds, Asceticism and the New Testament (New York: Routledge, 1999). 31 Leif E. Vaage, “El ascetismo en el cristianismo naciente,” in Así vivían los primeros cristianos, ed. Rafael Aguirre, Agora 40 (Estella: Verbo Divino, 2017), 261–304. Translation is my own.

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The Body as Space of Resistance: Response to Johnson, Moxnes, and Gil Arbiol Margaret Y. MacDonald

Responding to the fine essays by Lee A. Johnson, Halvor Moxnes, and Carlos Gil Arbiol has served to highlight the feature of Leif’s Vaage’s work which I have most appreciated and which is so aptly characterized in the introduction to this volume as a “slow chipping away that unsettles the conventional image of Paul.” As I learned in working on an article with him on 1 Cor. 7:14c, this “unsettling” of the conventional image is closely related to another tendency in his work that is also identified by Christopher B. Zeichmann: Vaage destabilizes Paul’s “status as a fundamentally ‘strong’ figure.”1 In our joint work, Vaage and I considered the interaction between an ascetic apostle and the familial setting of the Corinthian community. Focusing on a reference to children that we found both contradictory and surprising, we discovered features of the text that challenged not only the conventional image of Paul but also conventional notions of the Corinthian ekklesia. Rather than articulating a “strongly” consistent and sophisticated theological and ethical stance to the bewildering circumstances of children of mixed marriage who are both “holy” and “unclean,” Paul emerged for us as someone who was shaping his responses in the face of unpredictable complexity. The three essays to which I respond consider many of the same themes that Vaage and I treated in our article: asceticism, the body, space, and interaction among ascetic community members – a significant number of whom were women. To varying degrees, the three essays deal with “strong” assertions of authority and, conversely, elements of vulnerability (especially with respect to sexuality) and weakness. If Paul’s body can be characterized as problematic in terms of the dominant society of the day, these essays invite consideration of how that marginal and

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problematic quality imposed itself on the concepts of community that Paul articulated in his letters and that have continued to shape the interpretive imagination through image and text down through the centuries. In her essay, Johnson argues that Paul’s initial message provided the basis for women’s participation and leadership in Corinth, but his letters undermined this grounding with an effort to reduce their influence. The essay begins with a discussion of Paul’s “unorthodox claims to authority,” which became a source of tension after Paul departed from Corinth. Three aspects of Paul’s defence are identified as central to women’s issues in Corinth and at the heart of their conflict with him: “his reliance upon ecstatic experience and pneumatic gifts, his embrace of suffering and denigration, and his rejection of social traditions such as marriage and procreation.”2 With reference to the work of Colleen Shantz, who emphasizes Paul’s ongoing pneumatic existence, Johnson draws attention to how people in the churches that Paul founded were impressed by Paul’s pneumatic gifts, with ecstatic experiences taking root in the communities themselves. References to suffering and self-denigration, sometimes with shocking and dramatic imagery, become inverted claims to apostolic authority in Paul’s discourse. Particularly noteworthy for the Corinthian women, Paul expressed his own apostolic authority through repudiation of marriage and procreation. According to Johnson, these elements found fertile ground among the Corinthians: “those who were not powerful in society may have been the most accepting of Paul’s peculiar missionary style.”3 Women may have found status elevation through celibacy and pneumatic gifts (she attaches weight to Paul’s response to glossolalia, citing cross-cultural anthropological studies with a focus on gender). Pointing to the social consequences of the baptismal creed in Gal. 3:28 and 1 Cor. 12:13, as well as the evidence of the influence and authority of women prophets in 1 Corinthians (citing the pivotal work of Antoinette Clark Wire), Johnson argues that “Paul’s gospel message seems to have been attractive, and his vision of the community seems to have inspired them to flourish in directions that made Paul uncomfortable.”4 Paul had not anticipated that his own radical apostleship “would inspire a radical social vision at Corinth that embraced glossolalic women prophets as leaders.”5 In the face of such developments, and as revealed especially in his treatment of celibacy in 1 Cor. 7, head covering in 1 Cor. 11:2–16, and glossolalia in 1 Cor. 14, Paul sought to the curtail liberty and erode their authority through his correspondence. Ultimately, Johnson identifies a contradiction between Paul’s own expressions of authority and his discourse concerning the Corinthian women.

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Johnson convincingly illustrates how Paul both moderates and modulates his expressions of authority in relation to women by departing from his own position of strength in “weakness” and increasing his reliance on conventional methods of control that were both hierarchical and patriarchal. I agree with Johnson that it is the ascetic women, potentially inspired by the “neither male nor female” creed (cf. Gal. 3:28), who had the most to lose when Paul put limits on their efforts, despite his preference for celibacy and his recognition of gifts of the Spirit. He seems to do this, for example, in the convoluted text of 1 Cor. 7:36–38 (issues of translation are notorious), which one way or another seems to give discretion to men on the question of marriage but leaves women no choice but to give up the privileges of virginity. Her analysis invites further reflection upon how Paul’s instructions to women in his Corinthian correspondence should be read in relation to his acceptance of the leadership of Phoebe as a woman leader and patron from Cenchreae, the seaport of Corinth (Rom. 16:1–2), and possibly also his recognition of the influence of Chloe (1 Cor. 1:11).6 Like Moxnes, Johnson pays careful attention to the often-neglected element of ecstatic experience for understanding Paul’s identity and authority. She rightly views 1 Cor. 7:40 as an expression of Paul’s authority, but more direct attention to the argumentative function of the text (“I think that I too have the Spirit of God”) would strengthen her case. On this reading, the widows are committed to ascetic lifestyles and probably encouraging other women (perhaps young women: cf. 1 Tim. 5:3–16) to choose asceticism based on ecstatic manifestations of the Spirit. Paul prefers celibacy but accepts marriage for those widows so inclined. His “spiritual” authority is launched directly in response to that of the ascetic widows with a retort: “I too –”7 Johnson and other interpreters have linked the ecstatic experience of the Corinthian women prophets directly to glossolalia, which seems to be of concern more generally in Corinth and key to the apostle’s ecstatic experiences (1 Cor. 14:18). Yet, the varying terms used by Paul to instill order in Corinthian worship, such as “interpretation,” “ revelation,” “miracles,” and “teaching”; his preference for those who prophesy (1 Cor. 14:1, 14:5, 14:39); and his general support for women who prophesy (albeit with covered heads), raise the possibility of other types of ecstatic phenomena and rituals also lying behind Paul’s response in 1 Cor. 11:2–16. The heart of the conflict seems to be teaching concerning bodily adornment, deportment, and control (probably including ascetic practices) involving the transcendence of gender boundaries that flow from the women’s ecstatic and ritual experiences. Paul’s convoluted response,

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drawing upon Genesis, in 1 Cor. 11:2–16 suggests that the women are pressing hard on authoritative theological grounds, sanctioned by the same type of authority that Paul claims for himself. First Corinthians 14:37 leaves no doubt that his authority trumps their authority (or that of any other community prophet or leader claiming spiritual powers; cf. 1 Cor. 12:28) as he appeals to a command of the Lord to obey what he is writing to them. It is helpful here to take account of the work of Jorunn Økland, who examines 1 Cor. 11:2–16 with reference to ritual roles and ritual clothing within the broader textual unit of 1 Cor. 11–14. Økland argues that Paul’s discourse on gender is intended to create sanctuary space (as opposed to home space), which is at odds with the aspirations of the women themselves.8 Indeed, the delineation of the lines of sanctuary space is central to Paul’s position that his own unsurpassed talent for speaking in tongues pales in comparison to the small number of words spoken with his mind amid the ekklesia (1 Cor. 14:18–19). Delineation of spatial boundaries (including the boundaries of the body as space) is one of the ways through which Paul asserts his authority (see the essay by Gil Arbiol). But the apostle’s sometimes awkward attempts (consider his retort in 1 Cor. 11:16 where he relies on church practice) in establishing these also demonstrate his “weakness.” Despite Paul’s own determination to lead an ascetic life, he is brought back to the blur of family life (and cultural patterns of marriage, child-rearing, and relations with slaves) where the sanctuary space of ekklesia frequently merged with domestic spaces of gathering in house churches. The sequestered world of women is not a possibility that Paul can entertain in the open atmosphere of first-century housing (and workshops) that he frequented, demonstrating his awareness of the tragedies of birth in the gruesome description of his identity (1 Cor. 15:8) as one “untimely born” (i.e., aborted). His reference to the children of mixed marriage in 1 Cor. 7:14 also reminds us that the boundaries that Paul seeks to establish remain porous and may have had consequences for women that are not obvious in the first instance.9 In drawing our attention to the important ways in which Paul’s treatment of women in Corinth undermines his vision of his own authority, Johnson invites us to build upon her findings by considering how the exercise of authority by women more broadly in Roman society may contribute to the further unsettling of the dominant image of Paul. Even more than Johnson, Moxnes concentrates on Paul’s liminal existence with a more direct focus on sexuality. Moxnes juxtaposes this liminal existence against the backdrop of one aspect of the conventional

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image of Paul: the dominant understanding of the conversion of Paul based on the accounts from Acts. By examining dramatic narratives, paintings, and insights from contemporary theology, Moxnes illuminates and critically evaluates conventional cultural presuppositions. He highlights the fact that no animal is mentioned by Luke in the description of Paul’s journey to Damascus (Acts 9:3–4). However, going back to the fourteenth century, the “liminal” moment of Paul’s dramatic conversion has been depicted as Paul either falling from his horse or already being on the ground. Through his analysis of these moments in the history of interpretation, Moxnes invites us to think in new ways about this moment of transformation as one of sexual vulnerability. Influenced by the insights of Massimo Leone, Moxnes concentrates on how visual representations offer commentaries on the written text. He begins with a brief examination of the concept of “conversion” in New Testament scholarship about Paul, followed by consideration of popular notions that emerged in medieval saint plays and that were eventually subject to interpretation by illustrious painters such as Caravaggio. Being particularly interested in the physical aspect of Paul’s conversion, Moxnes turns to Luis Menéndez-Antuña’s theological interpretation of Paul’s conversion as a means of tying together various critical questions and interpretative elements, ultimately unsettling the dominant cultural understanding of Paul’s “religious” conversion. A brief discussion of contemporary perspectives on Paul’s conversion leads Moxnes, like Johnson, to draw upon the insights of Colleen Shantz on ecstasy and ultimately to distance himself from the tendency to view conversion as purely cognitive and to instead emphasize the physical manifestations of conversion. The medieval saint plays, with roots in popular culture, draw sharp lines between the worlds of God and Satan, depicting “moral change as an actual spatial movement from one side of the binary to the other” and the conversion of Paul as “a dramatic and very vulnerable moment, occurring immediately before he enters his new moral world.”10 Moxnes argues that the medieval saint plays, which include the depiction of Paul as a knight on a horse to reinforce his image as a persecutor, provide the context for understanding the iconographic renderings. In addition, he points to the influence of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, written in the early fifth century ce , which featured the fight between personifications of pride (Superbia) and humility (Humilitas) and functioned as a key to the paradigm of human moral struggle. This discussion sets the stage for a focus on the painting which is in the Church of St Maria del Popolo in Rome. Departing from convention, Caravaggio offers a realistic rendering with an enormous workhorse

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(which replaces the usual knight’s steed), a stable hand (which places the scene in a humble setting), and a blinding light as the only obvious religious symbol. Moxnes points to the experience of the beholder in the chapel setting: “the fall from the horse was a strong symbol of humiliation, which Paul suffered, and which the beholder accepted by kneeling down in front of the painting.”11 Moxnes carries his history of interpretation into the modern era by considering the work of British poet Thom Gunn, who described his encounter with the painting while a closeted gay man. Gunn’s poem raises many interesting questions, especially about the meaning of the grand gesture of outstretched arms. While Gunn himself does not seem to suggest a homoerotic interpretation of the painting, Moxnes highlights the fact that others have moved in that direction, noting the comments of George Klawitter, who reads the gesture of lifting of arms as an invitation to “the ecstasy of the moment,” as if awaiting the arrival of a lover. These notions, which might refer to either heavenly or erotic love (or both), are not fully developed by Klawitter, but Moxnes nevertheless concludes that the reading “lifts up conversion as a bodily experience that encompasses both ecstasy and gay sexuality.”12 The ground has been laid for an exploration of the work of Luis Menéndez-Antuña, who offers “a fully developed” queer reading of Caravaggio’s Conversion of St Paul. Menéndez-Antuña highlights queer practices “in their awkwardness,” drawing attention to the fact that many readers would label them as unconventional; cruising and barebacking (i.e., anal intercourse without condoms) are offered as examples. Moxnes notes that MenéndezAntuña, influenced by the thinking of Tim Dean, draws attention to elements of queer relationality, especially where the submissive partner allows himself to be penetrated in total openness. In Caravaggio’s painting of the submission of Paul to the Lord Jesus, where the bodily position of Paul suggests the sexual act of being penetrated, ecstatic queer and spiritual passivity are brought together. Paul is blind and does not know the identity of the penetrator, but the horse’s hoof pointing at Paul’s groin and the pattern on the horse appear to be that of a man with his organ ready to penetrate Paul. In his interpretation, MenéndezAntuña discusses the erotic experiences of the mystics, the blurring of pain and pleasure in ecstasy. Moxnes offers the following summary: “Menéndez-Antuña brings Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St Paul out of its ‘comfort zone’ in religious art and places it in a contemporary context of queer sexuality, desire, and violence.”13 The parallel between heterosexual lovemaking and expressions of divine love is a well-accepted aspect of biblical theology, drawing from

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a recurring motif in ancient Near Eastern literature, the hieros gamos or “sacred marriage.” Some descriptions contain vivid physical images with sexual overtones even as they speak about divine/human relationships. We might consider, for example, the reference to the purification of the bride/ekklesia by the bridegroom Christ in Eph. 5:25b–27, which is reminiscent of the preparation of the virgin bride for her husband with a pre-nuptial bath that also serves as a type of purity inspection.14 Unification with the bride who is penetrated in order to create one body is framed as a great mystery (Eph. 5:32) – a reflection of the pinnacle of human encounter with the divine. Moxnes has broadened our perspective on the physical experiences of encounter with the divine by means of the queer gaze. He provides new insight into Paul’s vulnerability as we contemplate the relationship between ecstasy and male submissive sexual practice. I would suggest that his conclusions can be pushed in new directions, inviting us to think more about the relationship between Paul’s male vulnerability, humility, and weakness and his own celibacy/sexuality, and to develop new conceptions of relationships and gender boundaries as reflected in the eclectic list of female missionary partners (or male leaders without references to female partners) in Rom. 16 and elsewhere.15 Like Johnson and Gil Arbiol, Moxnes illuminates the significance of the body for understanding Paul and his letters, but he concentrates more specifically on the body and conversion: “With this painting Caravaggio draws attention to Paul’s body as the site of his conversion: conversion is more than just a new intellectual conviction.”16 Paul drew from his liminal/ecstatic experience significant conclusions for the comportment and containment of his body (and the bodies of others); he rooted his authority in those experiences, seeking to articulate apostolic authority through rejection of societal expectations of marriage and child-rearing, as Johnson indicates. But the place of Paul’s sexuality and asceticism in framing his authority and self-understanding remains little understood and needs further analysis with respect to conventional notions of “masculinity,” both in the ancient world and throughout the history of interpretation. Because it so fundamentally represents Paul’s reorientation through conversion, as highlighted by Moxnes, the vulnerable position of Paul in Caravaggio’s painting, with the horse’s shorn hoof placed precariously above his groin, also invites further reflection on Paul’s treatment of circumcision as a defining feature of his theology and as an aspect of his vulnerability.17 Moxnes is no doubt correct in seeing power and pride in the image of the horse and viewing Paul’s body through the eyes of Caravaggio as penetrated and submissive.

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In the end, Moxnes’ essay illustrates the importance of examining culturally determined conventions in text and iconography that have shaped our understanding so as to unsettle our dominant images of Paul. The essay encourages us to recognize what is glaringly absent but has been filled in by the interpretative past; but more importantly, to be open to the discovery of something new. Broadening the scope of interpretative possibilities is also key to Gil Arbiol’s essay. He draws upon theories of human geographers on the multifaceted functions of space in social interaction. He focuses especially on the concept of “third space” (called different things by different theorists) and its value for understanding the nature of the Pauline ekklesia, especially in the imaging of new communal possibilities and the outlining of new (and alternative) parameters. Terms referring to the “body,” the “temple,” and the “ekklesia” emerge as key, and Gil Arbiol considers the relationships between these concepts in depth. Gil Arbiol challenges the scholarly consensus by, for example, reading Paul’s statement that “your body is a temple” (τὸ σῶμα ὑμῶν ναὸς) in 1 Cor. 6:19 not as implying sexual ethics for individual bodies but rather as indicating that the sexual behaviour in question affects the ekklesia as the body of Christ. He concludes, “Paul’s argument attempts to revise the meaning of the word ‘body,’ dispensing with its individualistic sense and instead conveying a collective group that represents Christ in everyday life.”18 Paying particular attention to Paul’s other uses of temple language (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 2 Cor. 6:16), Gil Arbiol suggests that Paul is leading his audience in the direction of a concept of the body as the corporal space of the assembly in 1 Cor. 6:19. Paul does this by means of the body/temple parallelism, where “the ‘body’ affected by the sexual behaviour of the Corinthians is that of Christ, the ekklesia, inhabited by the Spirit.”19 Paul’s metaphorical language calls attention to the entire group, a collective body holding together every limb. Gil Arbiol finds further support in “building” terminology (the verbs “to dwell” [οἰκέω], “to build” [οἰκοδομέω], and derivatives) in 1 Cor. 1–6, which highlights how the ambiguity of body concepts in the text helps stimulate reflection. Ultimately, he argues that Paul shows how the behaviour of each believer needs to be “subject to control by the ekklesia.” From here, Gil Arbiol turns more explicitly to theories of spatiality. He points to the work of Stanford Lyman and Marvin Scott, who identify four different “territories” – public, home, interactional, and body; three types of “territorial encroachment” – violation, invasion, and contamination; and three types of reaction to encroachment – turf defence, insulation, and linguistic collusion. When the defence of body territory

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becomes a last resort, there are attempts to exercise freedom in three ways – manipulation, adornment, and penetration. While it is impossible to review here the subtleties of Gil Arbiol’s adoption of this analysis, he argues in essence that 1 Corinthians provides evidence that “the group of believers had been denied or given limited access to public territory.” Pointing to sexual behaviours and challenges to gender boundaries (e.g., 1 Cor. 5:1, 7:1–4, 11:4–5), he posits that in a context where both home and public territories seem to be limited, there may well have been a tendency “to maximize the few remaining areas of freedom to which they had access, territories where they can be cause rather than effect.” Paul responds by seeking “to create a new home territory that has aspiration to be a public territory.” It is here that Paul maximizes the ambiguity of the concept of body, proposing “a third space”: the social group as the body of Christ.20 The final section of the essay examines this notion in depth, drawing especially on the theories of Edward Soja that associate this “third space” with new creative possibilities. From Soja’s perspective, Paul moves from the physical body as first space to the symbolic notion of the assembly/body as second space to the new dimension of the third space created in the imagination of the believers: the theological idea of the body of Christ, bolstered by the image of a temple where the Holy Spirit dwells. This idea is reinforced in its newness by a moral imperative created by the fact that believers do not ultimately control their individual bodies, nor do they own the social body of “assembly” (ἐκκλησία), which all belong to Christ. According to Gil Arbiol, this third space is an “alternative” home territory, which Paul presents by exploiting the body territory. Paul does this by blurring the boundaries between individual and group, playing on the ambiguity of the term “body.” Moreover, he builds upon this ambiguity to give the third space a theological meaning that takes on public dimensions as the body of Christ and a temple where the actions of believers mirror a sacred character and the autonomy of individuals is collapsed into a corporal entity with interdependent limbs. Gil Arbiol has advanced our understanding of the dynamics at play in 1 Corinthians, illustrating the value of theories of human geography as a heuristic tool. While he does not share the same direct focus on authority as Johnson, in many ways his essay offers insight into how Paul asserts influence over the Corinthians by means of the multilayered application of the concept of the body of Christ, embedded as it is with various elements of spatiality. He also sheds light upon the ambiguous situation of the Corinthians themselves, their location in “inbetween space – that carries the burden of the meaning of culture” – to draw upon the words

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of Homi Bhabha quoted by Gil Arbiol.21 He rightly draws attention to the fact that the Corinthians “had no temple, no public sacrificial offerings, no agents or brokers for rituals, etc. They had only themselves as a group. But Paul took that apparent disadvantage and rendered it an advantage.”22 This partial dislocation in the “inbetween space” is one of the most fascinating aspects of the life of these communities, and yet it is little understood. More work drawing upon insights from human geography is called for. Gil Arbiol aptly illustrates the relevance of this context for Paul’s theological project. Building upon Gil Arbiol’s scholarship, I would suggest a few areas that call for further exploration. When we consider the situation of the Corinthians specifically, it is somewhat unclear whether their partial dislocation was experienced as significant alienation by community members. Despite his reading of some texts that appear to indicate that the Corinthians were being scrutinized and challenged by outsiders, in comparison to the Thessalonians, where suffering at the hands of outsiders is much more explicit in the correspondence, the Corinthians seem to have been fairly well integrated into the broader society, given their behaviours with respect to food, sex, dining, legal transactions, etc.23 The Corinthians had seemingly created their own “inbetween” space with parameters that were more permeable than Paul would allow; instead, Paul’s concept of the body would require some firmly closed boundaries (e.g., 1 Cor. 5–6; incest, sex with prostitutes) and other gateways that remained partially open (e.g., 1 Cor. 7:12–16, marriage to nonbelievers; 1 Cor. 10:23–30, dining with outsiders). There is no question, however, that notions of a “third space” are of tremendous value for understanding Paul’s letters. Gil Arbiol locates this third space at the crossroads between the home territory and the public territory: “Instead of collapsing into their inner body territories and acting as if they were disconnected individuals (as they had done by consorting with prostitutes), they are now being exhorted to reclaim their home and public territories. Paul is taking their body territory and creating from it a home territory with aspirations of public territory.”24 Beyond the significant debate about where community members met (note recent challenges to the dominant view of house churches), there is more scholarly work required on the “aspirations of public territory.”25 As highlighted above in relation to Paul’s treatment of women prophets, the work of Jorunn Økland is very much in keeping with Gil Arbiol’s view that Paul’s theological position aspires to public territory, seeking to create sanctuary space potentially at odds with the theologies and spiritual experiences of the women themselves. But if we also allow

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Johnson’s work to inform us at this point, and bear in mind the broader interests of this volume in the “weakness” of Paul, we must remain alert to the fact that the Apostle is sometimes weakened at the crossroads between home territory and public territory – inconsistent, contradictory, struggling to hold on to the very experiences that sometimes led him to call for the complete reversal of a past modus operandi. Gil Arbiol illustrates the power of the body in Paul’s thought to define communal and sacred space, and the significance of “third space” as a product of Paul’s mission. In one sense, his analysis is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Moxnes’ essay, which focuses intently on experiences of the individual physical body. The dialectic between the physical body and the communal body, both in Paul’s thought and in the history of interpretation of his leadership, calls for more scholarly conversation. However, these three essays remind us that physicality is never far removed from Paul’s sphere of influence. When he seeks to articulate the meaning of life in Christ, Paul frequently turns to his experiences in his body, whether we are talking about ecstatic experience, sickness and weakness, or asceticism. All three essays take seriously the impact of Paul’s person and direction on real lives, and, especially in the case of Moxnes, what is missed when perspectives, such as queer readings of New Testament texts, are left out. Likewise, Johnson reminds us of the cracks in Paul’s framework of authority, where his encounters with women who remain largely nameless in the text expose his weakness and compliance with hierarchical, patriarchal culture by means of directives that are at the expense of his own example and principles. This in turn becomes “scriptural guidance” that has also excluded voices and perspectives down through the ages. In focusing his attention on Paul’s vision of the ekklesia as “third space,” and its imaginative potential to ascribe new values in ancient imperial society, Gil Arbiol points to features of Paul’s thought that might be viewed as more theologically hopeful and positive; but like Moxnes and Johnson, he is aware of the political consequences of Paul’s legacy. At the end of his essay, Gil Arbiol returns to Vaage’s focus on “the body as a space of resistance and transgression” in Paul’s letters. In fact, all three essays build upon this aspect of Vaage’s work. I am grateful to these four scholars for expanding our horizons with theoretically sophisticated discussions that challenge the status quo and unsettle many conventional images of Paul and the communities associated with him.

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no t e s 1 Zeichmann, introduction (present volume), 12. See Margaret Y. MacDonald and Leif E. Vaage, “Unclean but Holy Children: Paul’s Everyday Quandary in 1 Corinthians 7:14c,” cbq 73 (2011): 526–46. 2 Johnson, “Devolution of Paul’s Relationship” (present volume), 209. 3 Ibid., 214. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 217. 6 Johnson recognizes the importance of the report from “the people belonging to Chloe” for understanding the context of 1 Corinthians, but the reference to Chloe raises numerous questions, including whether she is a Christian. For the interpretative issues and discussion of women patrons in Paul’s letters, see Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Women in the Pauline Churches,” in The Blackwell Companion to Paul, ed. Stephen Westerholm (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 268–84. 7 See Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Women Holy in Body and Spirit: The Social Setting of 1 Corinthians 7,” nts 36 (1990): 221–34. 8 Jorunn Økland, Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space, lnts 269 (London: T&T Clark, 2004). She attaches weight to 1 Cor. 11:22 and 14:32–34 (Johnson considers the latter to be an interpolation; see Økland, Women in their Place, 151, 178). Gender boundaries and spheres have also figured in the recent work of Tatha Wiley, who draws attention to the consequences for women of the scriptural debate concerning circumcision: “The acceptance of circumcision would have had a certain and radical effect on the social reality of these assemblies, first by restricting women from full membership, and second, by separating members by gender into unequal spheres.” See Tatha Wiley, Paul and the Gentile Women: Reframing Galatians (New York: Continuum, 2005), 102. Wiley’s work also raises important questions about the absence of the male/female pair in 1 Cor. 12:12–13. 9 Along similar lines, Wiley observes about Galatians, “Paul’s silence about women is striking for its positive significance. This was a conflict over membership and he says nothing that could be remotely construed to differentiate between women and men members. He does not go beyond the Torah to find a new foundation for male privilege.” Wiley, Paul and the Gentile Women, 117–18. 10 Moxnes, “Where Did the Horse” (present volume), 231–2. 11 Ibid., 236. 12 Ibid., 238. 13 Ibid., 240.

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14 On the sexual nuances within Eph. 5:22–33, see Carolyn Osiek, “The Bride of Christ (Eph 5.22–33): A Problematic Wedding,” btb 32 (2002): 29–39. 15 See Mary Rose D’Angelo, “Women Partners in the New Testament,” jfsr 6 (1990): 65–86. 16 Moxnes, “Where Did the Horse,” 241. 17 See Wiley, Paul and the Gentile Women. 18 Gil Arbiol, “Pauline ekklesia as Third Space” (present volume), 248. 19 Ibid., 249. 20 Ibid., 253. 21 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 56; emphasis in original. 22 Gil Arbiol, “Pauline ekklesia as Third Space,” 255. 23 See especially John M.G. Barclay, “Thessalonica and Corinth: Social Contrasts in Pauline Christianity,” jsnt 15 (1992): 49–74. 24 Carlos Gil Arbiol, “Pauline ekklesia as Third Space,” 255. 25 See Richard Last, The Pauline Church and the Corinthian Ekkle¯ sia: Greco-Roman Associations in Comparative Context, sntsms 164 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Edward Adams, The Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? lnts 450 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

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On Pauline Indeterminacy Ryan S. Schellenberg The Epistles of St Paul are so sublime, it is often difficult to understand them. Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

It is an open secret that Paul does not communicate very clearly. Earlier scholars were rather forthright: “He puts together words in his own characteristic way,” wrote Benjamin Jowett, “which are full of meaning, though often scattered in confusion over the page.”1 In contrast, current scholarship tends to acknowledge Paul’s unclarity only implicitly – that is, by continuing to debate the syntax or the sense of nearly every sentence he wrote. Just open a commentary, to nearly any page: Does βλέπετε τοὺς κύνας in Phil. 3:2 really mean “look at the dogs,” a rendering lexically appropriate but unsuited to the polemical context? Or is Paul trying to say “watch out” or “beware” – that is, to issue the sort of warning that is normally expressed by βλέπετε ἀπό or βλέπετε μή?2 Does the clipped phrase μᾶλλον χρῆσαι in 1 Cor. 7:21 suggest that faithful slaves who have an opportunity to gain their freedom should jump at it, or rather that they should stay where they are and be useful?3 Wherever one turns, uncertainty abounds – uncertainty that pertains, in the first place, not to the finer matters of Paul’s theology but simply to his syntax. Indeed, if the perpetual glut of exegetical literature on Paul attests to anything, it is surely to the stubborn indeterminacy of his prose, which provides for the commentator nearly endless fodder for disputatious elucidation. Yet even as it furnishes the exegete’s basic working conditions, the unclarity of Paul’s prose now generally goes unremarked as such. Given the prevailing orientation of the guild, this should perhaps be no surprise; for where the goal is to determine the contours of what is customarily

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called Paul’s “thought,” the difficult manner of its expression is of little interest, except, perhaps, as an obstacle to be overcome. In other words, the conventional approach to Paul’s letters, which treats them primarily as a repository of ideas, is unable to integrate into its analysis one of these letters’ most basic properties. This essay seeks to reclaim Paul’s indeterminate prose as a historical datum in its own right, a telling indicator of both the social location of his activity and the nature of his theological discourse. This entails dispensing with idealist approaches to Paul’s letters, which take them as a contextually determined representation of a conceptual apparatus variously described as Paul’s thought or Paul’s theology, and reading them instead as artifacts of social interaction – a realm wherein, as Marshall McLuhan famously put it, “the medium is the message.” Viewed in this light, the nature of Paul’s prose undercuts the prevailing modern conception of the apostle as an intellectual – a “thinker” of some sort, if not a Christian theologian avant la lettre, one whose discourse is aptly taken to represent his “thought” – and sponsors instead a portrait of Paul as a Christ-possessed purveyor of divine and ancient mysteries, which he reveals in a manner that befits their ultimate inscrutability. It is with deep gratitude that I offer this essay to Leif Vaage, who has insistently prodded me to read Paul’s letters as human artifacts. As he once put it, “Attested by a (biblical) text is, minimally, some body’s (or bodies’) erstwhile effort to exist and desire to be explicitly alive.”4 As anyone who has read Vaage’s own texts knows, he has given us a fitting case in point.

Ἰδιώτης τῷ λόγῳ In 2 Cor. 11:6, Paul acknowledges that he is “unrefined in speech” (ἰδιώτης τῷ λόγῳ).5 The context suggests that his verbal prowess has been compared unfavourably with that of his rival apostles in Corinth. Evidently, he is in no position to dispute the point: “I think I lack nothing in comparison with the super-apostles,” he insists. “Even if I am unrefined in speech (λόγος), I certainly am not in knowledge (γνῶσις)” (11:5–6). This distinction between λόγος, mastery over which Paul concedes to his rivals, and γνῶσις, a domain he claims for himself, is not an absolute one, for of course the conveyance or manifestation of γνῶσις ordinarily involves the use of some λόγος or another. Paul proclaims the mystery of God in inelegant words, yes (οὐ καθ᾿ ὑπεροχὴν λόγου), in words accompanied by pneumatic display, yes (ἐν ἀποδείξει πνεύματος καὶ δυνάμεως), but in words nevertheless (ὁ λόγος μου καὶ τὸ κήρυγμά μου, 1 Cor. 2:1–4).6 What sort of words are these, then, which convey

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Paul’s divine γνῶσις, disclose the mystery of God, provoke eruptions of holy πνεῦμα (“spirit”), and yet invite also the derision of the eloquent? Recent scholars have been reluctant to accept Paul’s concession in 2 Cor. 11:6 as an accurate description of his prose: Perhaps this is merely ironic self-deprecation – asteismos, as the rhetorical theorists call it.7 Or perhaps ἰδιώτης means not that Paul was untrained or unrefined, but simply that he was no professional rhetor.8 Or perhaps we should restrict this characterization to Paul’s spoken language, his rhetorical delivery, since even his detractors in Corinth apparently conceded that his letters (ἐπιστολαί) were forcefully written (βαρεῖαι καὶ ἰσχυραί, 2 Cor. 10:10).9 Only this final objection has any possible credence, since, as I have argued elsewhere, the second half of the antithesis (ἀλλ᾿ οὐ τῇ γνώσει) is offered earnestly indeed, and hardly designates Paul as a professional γνῶσις dispenser.10 And yet this last reading too, which takes 2 Cor. 10:10 as a favourable stylistic verdict on Paul’s letters, quickly runs aground. Neither βαρύς nor ἰσχυρός is a technical literary-critical term, as is sometimes claimed, nor in fact is it his letters’ style as such that is at issue in Corinth, as the immediate context makes clear.11 Paul has been accused of arrogating to himself in his letters more authority than he is able to exercise in person – of writing threatening letters from afar, then conducting himself feebly when he arrives (2 Cor. 10:1–2, 10:8–11, 13:2, 13:10). Consequently, when he counters this charge of inconsistency, he says not that he will remedy a stylistic discrepancy between his ἐπιστολαί and his λόγος, but rather that his deeds in person will align with the words he has written while absent (10:11). In short, the passage does not distinguish between Paul’s written and oral style, but rather between his bark and his bite.12 Tellingly, Paul’s earliest readers had no qualms about applying his concession in 2 Cor. 11:6 to his written prose, nor were they in any doubt regarding what ἰδιώτης meant.13 Origen, for example, prefaces his commentary on Romans by acknowledging the difficulty of interpreting the letter, a difficulty that results, he says, in part from Paul’s tendency to express himself in language “confused and insufficiently explicit.” When in Rom. 6:16 Paul speaks awkwardly of his addressees becoming slaves of obedience by virtue of obeying it, Origen dismisses potential criticism with an allusion to 2 Cor. 11:6: “I think it superfluous to expect skillful construction of words in a man who freely admits his own lack of training in speech.”14 Patristic readers found a certain eloquence in Paul’s letters, to be sure. But that eloquence always sat cheek to jowl with the sort of difficult and disjointed prose for which they knew their cultured despisers could have only scorn.

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Still, obscurity had its own rewards. Augustine, faced with dismissive evaluations of the style and thus the wisdom of his sacred writers (cf. Doct. chr. 4.7.14, 4.7.16), responds by attributing to them an eloquence all their own, and purposively veiled: “When I understand these authors, not only can I conceive of nothing wiser; I can conceive of nothing more eloquent … They spoke in their own particular style … and the humbler it seems, the more thoroughly it transcends the others, not in grandiloquence, but in substance. When I fail to understand them, their eloquence is less clear, but I have no doubt that it is of the same standard as that which appears clearly when I do understand them.”15 Augustine has no doubt that the text is a font of divine wisdom, wondrously expressed. Accordingly, when he confronts opacity of expression – a text he cannot understand – he transfers the fault from the text to its reader. Its unintelligibility is no stylistic defect but rather a mark of the distance between the merely human reader and the divine profundity of the text.16 Indeed, if something in the scriptures is difficult to understand, God made it that way on purpose: “The fusion of obscurity with such eloquence in the salutary words of God was necessary in order that our minds could develop not just by making discoveries but also by undergoing exertion.”17 For Augustine, then, the obscurities of scripture are not failures to communicate but mysteries veiled; their indeterminacy is not obfuscatory but productive, provoking in the correctly disposed reader humility, awe, and unparalleled depth of insight. For Augustine’s Christian readers, this approach to the difficult language of scripture was compelling indeed, for it fit hand in glove with what Averil Cameron has called the figurality of early Christian discourse, its tendency to view language not referentially but rather symbolically, with words at once veiling and unveiling “a hidden and higher reality.”18 For others, though, including the self-appointed guardians of elite culture, such valourization of shoddy prose was simply further proof that Augustine and his ilk were slumming it, entrapping the poor and illiterate with displays of faux profundity. In Celsus’s view, Christian teaching netted only the unschooled, consisting as it did of ignorant words with no real force.19 “He calls us sorcerers [γόητας],” Origen writes, “and says that we flee headlong from cultured people because they are not prepared to be deceived; but we trap illiterate folk.” Origen himself, of course, sees things rather differently. When it comes to the divine writings, “each individual according to his capacity can ascend to the hidden truths in the words which seem to have a mean style.”20

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“s t r a n g e n a m e s a n d ba r barous utterances” As the writer of 2 Peter anticipated (3:16–17), the indeterminacy of Paul’s prose has proven remarkably generative, with various readers discovering in its obscure depths hidden truths, many and diverse. Consider the second-century Valentinians, for whom Paul’s letters, rightly read, revealed spiritual knowledge to those who were spiritual; the sixteenth-century Luther and his followers, for whom the heart of it all was the δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ (“the righteousness of God”) given as a gift through the πίστις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (“faith of Jesus Christ”) – two phrases that Luther, at least, was confident he understood; the mid-twentieth-century Bultmann, for whom Paul’s “faith” named the possibility of authentic human being in relation to God; and the late modern philosophers of universalism, for whom Paul is a revolutionary witness to a truly human and historical subjectivity.21 What sort of words are these in which apparently lie the seeds of such complex and divergent ways of thought? They are, for one thing, words that gesture rather than name. Take, for example, the term σάρξ (“flesh”), one of many words in Paul that sometimes reads almost like a technical term, a building block in a coherent system of thought, and yet which subtly shifts its meaning, sometimes in the middle of an argument, thus resisting any attempt at precise definition. Σάρξ can refer to ordinary relations of kinship and ancestry (Rom. 1:3, 4:1, 9:3, 9:5, 11:14; Phlm. 16), to persons or things merely earthly and thus unspiritual (Rom. 6:19; 1 Cor. 1:26; 2 Cor. 1:17), to the material substance of the mortal body (1 Cor. 15:39, 15:50; 2 Cor. 4:11), to the seat of base desires (Rom. 7:5, 7:25, 13:14; Gal. 5:13, 5:16–17, 5:19, 5:24), and to the ([un]circumcised) penis (Rom. 2:28; Gal. 3:3, 6:13). Of course, words mean different things in different contexts. What is striking about Paul’s usage is how heavily freighted the term is, and how these various senses bleed into one another, with πνεῦμα (“spirit”) functioning as the oppositional counterpart to each. “Having begun πνεύματι, are you now ending σαρκί?” Paul writes in Gal. 3:3, evoking the ontological and moral inferiority of flesh as opposed to spirit but also the memory of pneumatic experience, this cluster of connotations together throwing shade on the literally and euphemistically “fleshy” matter of circumcision.22 As Peter Brown put it, reflecting on the shifting polarities of Rom. 7, “Paul crammed into the notion of the flesh a superabundance of overlapping notions. The charged opacity of his language faced all later ages like a Rorschach test: it is possible to measure, in the repeated exegesis of a mere hundred words of Paul’s letters, the future course of Christian thought on the human person.”23 Precision could hardly have had the same effect.

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Paul’s words also bear a decidedly foreign and esoteric aura. Adolf Deissmann was right, of course, that the New Testament was written not in “Biblical Greek,” as though in a distinct dialect, but simply in Koine.24 Still, I do not think recent scholarship has adequately appreciated how bewildering – or, perhaps, beguilingly exotic – Paul’s gentile audiences would have found his lexical quirks. Any number of ordinary words become quasi-technical terms in Paul – σάρξ, πνεῦμα, δικαιοσύνη, πίστις, χάρις, ὀργή, ἔργα νόμου, οἰ ἅγιοι, etc.25 Since we lack contemporaneous witnesses, it is not easy to determine the extent to which this terminology is shared with other early Christ adherents. Certainly some of his peculiar usages were simply those of a Judean: εὐδοκία, χάρισμα, δόξα, προσευχή.26 On the lips of anyone else in town, δικαιόω τινά would have meant to punish or condemn, to bring someone to justice; presumably those who heard Paul use the word eventually figured out that what he meant was quite the opposite.27 In any case, Paul was evidently writing – and, one presumes, speaking – something decidedly distinct from the ordinary language of the marketplace. Just look at his self-introduction: Παῦλος δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, κλητὸς ἀπόστολος ἀφωρισμένος εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ (“Paul, slave of Christ Jesus, called apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,” Rom. 1:1). There is hardly a word here that would have been fully intelligible to the uninitiated. Even leaving aside the odd honorific Χριστός, what would a gentile hearer have made, we might ask, of κλητὸς ἀπόστολος (cf. 1 Cor. 1:1), both adjective and noun appearing in an unexpected context and freighted with peculiar solemnity?28 Especially for one unacquainted with its use in the lxx to mean “consecrate,” the verb ἀφορίζω would have been no less perplexing (cf. Gal. 1:15). The net effect of all this, one suspects, would have been to cement the impression that this Paul spoke an exotic argot, a language befitting the revelation of an ancient and Eastern wisdom – or else, perhaps, just gibberish. He even had a special term for his program as a whole: τὸ εὐαγγέλιον (“the gospel”). This is, as has long been recognized, a very unusual construction – a neologism, essentially, that results from the creative misuse of a common lexeme. For Margaret Mitchell, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον functions in Paul as striking and effective “rhetorical shorthand,” the sort of abbreviated and thus forceful construction commended by the ancient literary theorists.29 But this reading fails adequately to convey the peculiarity of Paul’s usage. Brachylogy this surely is, and forceful in its own way, too, but to construe τὸ εὐαγγέλιον as “elegant economy of expression” is to miss, I would suggest, its linguistic and thus social register.30 The anarthrous feminine singular form εὐαγγελία occurs

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occasionally in the lxx , denoting either good tidings or the reward given for delivering them; the neuter with the same sense is somewhat more widely attested, but usually anarthrous, and most often in the plural. There is only one independent attestation of the articular neuter singular phrase that predominates in Paul.31 As Steve Mason has argued, it looks very much like this was Paul’s own idiosyncratic designation for his own proprietary religious offering, a designation Mark’s Gospel later picked up and which thus eventually became mainstream.32 Even if it was not Paul himself who coined the term, it is nevertheless a peculiar usage. Mason provides a helpful analogy: “We all know the English word ‘message’ and we send messages constantly; there is nothing odd about the word. But if … [a colleague] began to talk about The Message, how she aimed to study The Message intently and help to disseminate it, I would quickly realize that she had in mind something very specific, unusual, and possibly a little weird. It is this oddity that Paul’s first audiences heard when he began to use the unprecedented τὸ εὐαγγέλιον as something like a technical term.”33 It is surely telling that Luke, the most elegant writer among the evangelists, found the term off-putting: he omits the noun almost entirely from his two volumes, even where he found it in Mark, preferring instead the more standard verbal form εὐαγγελίζομαι.34 We would do well also to ponder the cumulative impression of Paul’s lexicon, to consider τὸ εὐαγγέλιον not in isolation but alongside the other unusual usages noted above, κλητὸς ἀπόστολος, εὐδοκία, and the like, words not so much elegant as mysterious, or indeed mystifying. Relevant too, I suggest, is the one mode of speech in which Paul does claim unrivalled expertise, namely, glossolalia (1 Cor. 14:18). Although Paul himself may conceptualize this as a means of verbal expression quite distinct from his ordinary, edifying speech, the uninitiated outsider whom he envisions overhearing the phenomenon may not be so sure, for she has walked into a room, it seems, where the appropriate response to a prayer of thanks, even an ordinary Greek one, is the untranslated Hebrew ἀμήν (“amen,” 14:16). What is more, the prayer itself, even if not glossolalia as such, may well be a pastiche of idiosyncratic Greek and a strange Eastern tongue, sprinkled with words like ἀββα (“Abba,” Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6) and μαράνα θά (“maranatha,” 1 Cor. 16:22) and an occasional reference to that foreign daemon Σατανᾶς (“Satan,” e.g., 1 Cor. 16:22). We need not hypothesize what a well-born and pious observer would have made of all this. “We deem it fitting,” writes Plutarch, “to pray to the gods with mouth straight and true, and not to dishonour and

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transgress the divine and ancestral dignity of piety by distorting and defiling our own tongue with strange names and barbarous utterances, even while we look to ensure that the tongue of the sacrificial victim is pure and straight” (Superst. 3 [166b]). And yet, as Plutarch well knew, some folks – superstitious fools, to his mind – regarded foreign tongues as particularly fitting vehicles for conveying knowledge of the gods (not least their secret names), and so held in awe those who commanded them.35 As Lucian tells it, the appeal of Alexander of Abonoteichus derived in part from his faux mastery of ancient Eastern languages: “Uttering a few meaningless words like Hebrew or Phoenician,” we are told, “he dazed [his audience], who did not know what he was saying save that he everywhere brought in Apollo and Asclepius.”36 In his study of foreign and nonsense words in charms and spells, H.S. Versnel speaks of a “drive to alienation” in the poetics of the magical formula, a preference for foreign and aberrant forms that activate “the expectancy of a marvelous potential in another world outside the cultural centre of everyday life.”37 Paul’s prose is of course very different from the incantations that are preserved in the Greek Magical Papyri. Still, Versnel’s basic observation applies: other words bespeak another realm. Some divine messengers simply made up their own. Alexander, for example, appears to have been given to neologism, christening his proprietary ointments κυτμίδες (Lucian Alex. 22) and calling the oracles ostensibly spoken in his serpent-god’s own voice αὐτόφωνοι (“selfuttered,” Alex. 26). Like brachylogy, word coinage can be considered from the perspective of rhetorical theory.38 For our purposes, though, a more illuminating context is furnished by the lexical innovations of other freelance religious experts (to use Heidi Wendt’s usefully broad category).39 Here the use of a specialized vocabulary of the divine, whether it consists of new coinages or familiar terms repurposed, signalled the possession of esoteric knowledge comprehended only by initiates. There is, so far as I am aware, no full-length study to cite here. But it is worth noting that A.D. Nock’s classic essay on the topic was provoked by the self-consciously momentous style of the Hermetica, a corpus replete with quasi-technical novelties like ἡλικιάζομαι and θεοπτική.40 One might think here too of the term θεουργός (“divine worker”), a self-designation coined, it appears, by the shadowy second-century “theurgist” behind the Chaldean Oracles, presumably with the intent of distinguishing himself from the mere θεολόγοι (“divine talkers”).41 The adjective θεοπαράδοτος (“divinely taught”) emerged among subsequent devotees convinced of these oracles’ divine

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origin.42 Like “eco-” today, perhaps, θεο- could apparently be prefaced to nearly anything – including, of course, διδακτός (cf. 1 Thess. 4:9: “God taught”).43 I draw attention to just one more word. In his insightful study of ἀποκάλυψις (“revelation”) and related terms, Morton Smith observed that, prior to Paul, the noun is extremely rare, occurring just three times in the lxx and once in Philodemus; closer to Paul’s own time, it shows up a few times in Plutarch.44 In none of these instances does it refer to revelation of things divine. It rather signifies either the uncovering of some physical object or the disclosure of hidden deeds or character traits. The verb ἀποκαλύπτω is somewhat more common, especially in the lxx , where it refers, usually, to the literal removal of a cover, often a garment, and sometimes to the disclosure of a secret. In one cluster of texts, the verb pertains to prophetic knowledge of the divine, but its meaning is still simply “uncover,” for what it describes is the mystical unveiling of one’s eyes while in a dream (Num. 22:31, 24:4, 24:16). In a very few instances – texts downplayed by Smith – it is God himself who is uncovered (1 Kgdms. 2:27, 3:21), or, alternately, a previously hidden divine word (1 Kgdms. 3:7; Amos 3:7). Presumably this latter usage provided a bridge to what we find in Paul. Still, it is quite a surprise to find the noun used ten times in Paul’s undisputed letters, and in two distinct but related senses, both previously unattested.45 In one set of texts, ἀποκάλυψις refers to eschatological disclosure – the revelation of God’s wrath (Rom. 2:5) or of God’s Christ (1 Cor. 1:7) or of God’s elect children (Rom. 8:19). In another, it refers to knowledge or instruction received directly from God, either communicable, like the sort of prophetic “revelation” that occurs alongside hymns and teachings in the assembly (1 Cor. 14:6, 14:26; cf. Gal. 2:2), or transcendently incommunicable, like the ἄρρητα ῥήματα (“unutterable utterances”) of Paul’s own super-revelation (2 Cor. 12:1–7). A special instance, communicable only in part, is the ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (“revelation of Jesus Christ”) that was the source of Paul’s gospel (Gal. 1:12).46 Our evidence is too fragmentary to allow us much confidence, but it looks very much like the use of the noun to denote divine revelation, be it prophetic or eschatological, was an innovation generated within Paul’s particular language community, if not by Paul himself. Whatever the case, the consonance of form and substance here is striking, the word’s solemnizing novelty and its semantic force gesturing together beyond the human realm: This Paul was a steward of God mysteries, now revealed (1 Cor. 2:7–10, 4:1). And he spoke like one too.

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“ c h a r g e d o paci ty” In the novel Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner tells the story of Adam Gordon, a young American poet who, having memorized a native speaker’s composition for a qualifying language exam, finds himself on a Fulbright fellowship in Madrid with only a few words of Spanish. Gordon fantasizes about learning the language by reading Don Quixote, mesmerizing the madrileños with his subtle and fluid display of their own language in all its former glory. In fact, he can speak only in fragments; yet these, to his surprise, have an almost equally captivating effect, implying the profundity of his insight precisely by what they lack. This, at least, is how his local lover Isabel takes them: Our conversation largely consisted of my gesturing toward something I was powerless to express … Isabel assigned profound meaning, assigned a plurality of possible profound meanings, to my fragmentary speech, intuiting from those fragments depths of insight and latent eloquence … As we walked through the Reina Sofía I would offer up unconjugated sentences or sentence fragments in response to paintings that she then expanded and concatenated into penetrating observations about line and color, art and institutions, old world and new … Our most intense and ostensibly intimate interactions were the effect of her imbuing my silences, the gaps out of which my Spanish was primarily composed, with tremendous intellectual and aesthetic force.47 To be clear, my claim is not that Paul was writing in a second language.48 Native speakers too possess varying degrees of communicative competence; many are quite capable of unintelligible prose.49 What I find suggestive in Lerner’s account is his vivid feel for the generativity of the indeterminate and then also his recognition that such generative obscurity is as often the product of blunder or bluster as of a deliberate rhetorical strategy. Ancient critics also recognized that indeterminate prose could be productive, projecting an aura of profundity, deserved or not. It was widely agreed that the chief stylistic virtue in letters, as in the rhetoric of the law-court, was clarity.50 In other contexts, though, where the point was to arouse awe or create an air of mystery, veiled hints and allusions were valuable tools. “Any darkly-hinting expression is more terror-striking, and its import is variously conjectured by different hearers,” observed Pseudo-Demetrius. “Hence the Mysteries are revealed in an allegorical

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form in order to inspire such shuddering and awe as are associated with darkness and night” (Eloc. 2.100–101 [trans. Roberts]). Indeed, the gods themselves spoke in riddles, ambiguous oracles that veiled the very truths they revealed. The effect, in general, was to arouse wonder: here was insight from beyond the realm of ordinary language. But there were skeptics too, for ambiguity can as easily mask ignorance as veil the truth; and the style of the gods, some complained, was all too easily aped.51 Lucian alleges that while serving as the mouthpiece of his serpent-god Glycon, Alexander “gave responses that were sometimes obscure and ambiguous, sometimes downright unintelligible, for that seemed to him in the oracular manner.”52 Not only could a clear and simple answer have been falsified more decisively; it would not have been nearly so impressive. Alexander’s veiled language, then, like the dim lighting in Glycon’s sanctuary (Alex. 16), augmented the oracles’ mystique and, Lucian suggests, kept the daylight of good sense from exposing his fraud. Paul, so far as we know, did not utter oracles in this mould. I see no reason to believe that he cultivated an intentionally obscure style.53 Nor do I take the indeterminacy of his prose as evidence of its essential vacuity. My point is rather that its indeterminacy, like that of Alexander or Adam Gordon, could provoke – indeed, still can provoke – two very different responses: To a devoted reader, it can, as the history of interpretation amply attests, convey the impression of singular profundity, for when one peers into its “charged opacity” (to return to Peter Brown’s phrase), what one sees is often enough a peculiarly vivid refraction of one’s own conviction or insight. To an unsympathetic reader, though, Paul can sound rather like those Eastern prophets derided by Celsus, who, after warning of impending divine wrath, “go on to add incomprehensible, incoherent, and utterly obscure utterances, the meaning of which no intelligent person could discover; for they are meaningless and nonsensical, and give a chance for any fool or sorcerer to take the words in whatever sense he likes.”54 Take 2 Cor. 3:6: “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” A recent volume of essays on the Nachleben of Paul’s phrase treats its reception in Origen, Augustine, Luther, Schleiermacher, and Derrida; Ward Blanton highlights its significance in Kant and Hegel; Ole Jakob Løland treats its place in Lacan and Žižek.55 Each of these writers elaborates on the statement in ways that are at once clearer and more probing than Paul’s own explanation, which contrasts his διακονία (“ministry”) with that of Moses in an effort to contain the fallout from his inability to produce letters of recommendation – an explanation that grows increasingly complex, if not indeed confused, as he proceeds.56 Only in retrospect, in

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the hands of the architects of Western thought and theology, do Paul’s words become a dictum. From Paul’s suggestive imprecision arose a remarkable excess of meaning. One could perhaps place the blame here – if indeed it is blame that is warranted – on the historical and contextual distance between Paul and his interpreters. This seems to be the line taken by Margaret Mitchell, who chalks up at least some of Paul’s obscurity to his use of “rhetorical shorthand”: “That we (modern scholars who never heard Paul deliver the ‘longhand’ version to which he is making reference) cannot [understand him] easily does not mean that Paul is not in control of his language, but that he is using it subtly and carefully, at times even cryptically.”57 And yet, so far as we can tell, Paul’s earliest readers also struggled to understand him. As Mitchell herself has shown, the Corinthian correspondence provides significant evidence to this effect, with each subsequent missive an attempt to resolve his addressees’ misperception of the one before.58 We have no comparable evidence for the initial reception of Paul’s letter to the Romans, but the second-century material we do possess is not reassuring. As John Marshall summarizes: “Paul’s rhetorical strategy in Romans seems to have been a failure in the sense that his later readers give no evidence of grasping the complex interplay of voices with which Paul constructs his argument. It’s as if Paul delights in leading his readers at high speed towards a logical precipice, stepping aside and interjecting μὴ γένοιτο (“by no means”) with the expectation that they will not sail over the precipice but merely experience a pedagogically productive whiplash. In practice, it seems that they usually sailed over the precipice.”59 Perhaps all of Paul’s readers have been either too dense or too interested to appreciate his subtle argumentation. Or perhaps he was not quite able to communicate what he wished.

“ s c r iba l a m e l io rati on” In a remarkable lecture series published as Paul, the Corinthians, and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics, Mitchell depicted the Paul of the Corinthian correspondence as a man poised, like the textual tradition of 1 Cor. 2:1, between τὸ μαρτύριον (“the testimony”) and τὸ μυστήριον (“the mystery”), “wishing to claim both obscurantist proficiency and oratorical transparency.” Hence, she speaks of Paul’s “veil scale,” his “careful strategic calibration between the utterly clear and the utterly obscure, depending upon the skopos of a given argument.” As Mitchell artfully demonstrates, Paul’s language of veiling and unveiling went on

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to shape not only the reception of his letters, but the discourse of early Christian hermeneutics more generally: “Paul’s patristic readers will return the favor,” she explains, “and use his words to do it.”60 Another avenue into the early reception of Paul’s letters is the history of the text. Here, too, we have evidence that readers found Paul alternatingly clear and obscure, but little sign of careful strategic calibration, for the instances of Paul’s unclarity that have left their mark on the textual tradition are on the whole too banal to be explained as intentional veiling. I know of no systematic survey here, and I have not undertaken one; what follows is only anecdotal evidence. Readers who would like additional examples need only page through Metzger’s Textual Commentary, where references to “scribal amelioration” of grammatical or stylistic deficits are common.61 What I seek to point to out here is that the syntactical awkwardness or unclarity these scribes sought to resolve could have served no conceivable rhetorical purpose. It is simply a matter of imprecise composition.62 As J.B. Lightfoot put it, the thanksgiving that begins Paul’s letter to the Philippians is “more than usually earnest”; it is perhaps not incidental that “the arrangement of the clauses in these verses is doubtful.”63 The difficulty begins with the preposition ἐπί, which, coming after εὐχαριστέω, primes the reader to expect that what follows will be the grounds of Paul’s thanksgiving (1:3).64 But here Paul uses ἐπί temporally, referring to the occasions on which he gives thanks – namely, whenever he remembers the Philippians in prayer (ἐπὶ πάσῃ τῇ μνείᾳ ὑμῶν). This misdirection has led to some confusion regarding the meaning of τῇ μνείᾳ ὑμῶν, which many readers have taken as a subjective genitive that expresses the reason for Paul’s gratitude, that is, the Philippians’ active recollection of him, even in chains.65 The syntax gets still more uncertain in 1:4, which consists of one adverb, three consecutive prepositional phrases, and a participle. To what, exactly, does each phrase connect? Most commentators now take the last of the prepositional phrases (μετὰ χαρᾶς, “with joy”) with the participial construction that follows (τὴν δέησιν ποιούμενος, “the making of prayer”), then construe the ἐπί phrase that begins 1:5 as the long-delayed grounds of Paul’s initial εὐχαριστῶ. Presumably sensing that readers would struggle, one early scribe carved up the sentence differently, inserting καί (“and”) between μετὰ χαρᾶς and τὴν δέησιν ποιούμενος and thereby attempting to clarify, it would seem, that μετὰ χαρᾶς should be taken instead with what precedes.66 There is nothing exceptional about any of this: the awkward construction, the exegetical confusion, the scribal attempt at amelioration. This is all part and parcel of reading Paul.

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“He wrote this whole section vaguely (ἀσαφῶς),” noted Theodoret of Paul’s self-comparison with his rivals in 2 Cor. 10:12, “being unwilling to censure those responsible by name.”67 Theodoret’s explanation does not adequately account for the phenomenon he observed. The sentence begins by specifying what Paul does not dare to do (οὐ … τολμῶμεν) – namely, compare himself with his rivals. The ἀλλά (“but”) that begins the next clause is where the difficulty begins. Since Paul has just offered a negative statement that specifies what he will not do, it would be reasonable to expect this ἀλλά to introduce the corresponding positive statement – that is, what he will do instead.68 The pronoun αὐτοί (“them”) that comes next does not dispel this misapprehension: since τολμῶμεν was also plural, αὐτοί could serve as a somewhat redundant reference to Paul himself, who would then remain the subject of the sentence, the one who measures himself by himself and compares himself with himself. Only when readers arrive at the third-person plural verb that ends the verse (οὐ συνιᾶσιν, “they do not understand”) – and ends it rather anticlimactically, it must be said – does it become clear that αὐτοί must instead have referred to Paul’s rivals.69 The manuscripts attest to a variety of attempts to clear up the difficulty, and also some confusion regarding whether Paul really meant to write συνιᾶσιν. The most radical solution was to omit οὐ συνιᾶσιν entirely, together with the ἡμεῖς δέ (“but we”) that begins the following sentence, thus retaining Paul as the subject throughout 10:12–13.70 As for Theodoret, he had the full, unamended text. Instead of trying to improve it, he did what countless commentators have done ever since – he offered a more lucid paraphrase: λέγει δὲ τοῦτο (“Now this says”).71 We return, finally, to 2 Cor. 11:6, where Paul first concedes his lack of verbal prowess and then goes on to display it.72 “Even if I am unrefined in speech, I certainly am not in knowledge,” Paul insists. The clause that follows is, as Bultmann put it, “scarcely intelligible”: ἀλλ᾽ ἐν παντὶ φανερώσαντες ἐν πᾶσιν εἰς ὑμᾶς.73 And so the scribes improved it.74 One used the singular participle in place of the plural, which smooths an otherwise jarring transition from the singular subject implied by ἰδιώτης to the plural participle φανερώσαντες and then back to the singular with the verb ἐποίησα (“I did”) in 11:7 (as witnessed in manuscript D). Another omitted the seemingly redundant ἐν πᾶσιν (as in manuscripts F G vg). The most confounding feature of the clause, though, was the lack of an object. Just what was it that Paul had manifested? One solution was to convert the active φανερώσαντες into the passive φανερωθέντες, thus rendering Paul himself the object of manifestation (as in P34 ‫א‬2 D2 K L P ѱ). Adding ἑαυτούς (“themselves”) to the active

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participle had the same effect (as in 0121 0243 630 1739 1881). Despite the trouble the scribes had here, it seems rather clear that the implicit object of the participle is the knowledge to which Paul lays claim in the previous clause (τῇ γνώσει).75 Still, if this is Paul’s train of thought, it is not well expressed by his syntax.76 As we have now seen repeatedly, his reasoning does not lie on the surface of the text, but lurks somewhere behind it.77 This is a characteristic feature of Paul’s prose, and, I think, a telling one. The syntactical irregularities it engenders are far too pervasive to be explained away as intentional clumsiness or ironic self-mockery.78 They are too pedestrian to be intentional cloaking of his meaning. And certainly the problem is not, as Baur suggested, that he is trying to articulate an insight too profound for human speech.79 Here is he just trying to say that the Corinthians have often seen him display the riches of his knowledge.

l e x ic o g r a p h ic a l ameli orati on If ancient scribes softened the rough edges of Paul’s prose by changing his words, modern lexicographers have sometimes achieved the same end by fudging on their meaning. A single example must suffice.80 The nrsv translates Phil. 3:1b as follows: “To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me (ἐμοὶ μὲν οὐκ ὀκνηρόν), and for you it is a safeguard (ὑμῖν δὲ ἀσφαλές).” Neither adjective is translated in accordance with established usage: ὀκνηρός does not ordinarily mean “troublesome” or “burdensome” but rather “hesitant” or “lazy”; ἀσφαλής means, simply, “safe.” In fact, to arrive at the nrsv reading, which is very widely shared, one must take each adjective in an all but unattested sense – “causing hesitancy,” in the case of ὀκνηρός, and “causing safety,” for ἀσφαλής.81 In this exegetical sleight of hand, translators and commentators are abetted by their lexicons. For ὀκνηρός, bdag ventures (in addition to the well-attested “lazy, idle, indolent”) the sense “causing hesitation,” though the texts it adduces here do not in fact contain the adjective, but rather the verb ὀκνέω.82 The trail of bdag ’s secondary sources leads to a 1930 article by Anton Fridrichsen which, appealing to a parallel turn of phrase in Dio Chrysostom (Or. 31.36), argues that Paul is invoking a formulaic construction that expresses or disclaims hesitancy of speech or writing.83 In this Fridrichsen is almost certainly correct, for, as Jeffrey Reed has shown, similar expressions appear in any number of ancient letters.84 But while such parallels may settle the question of Paul’s meaning, they do not account for his peculiar use of the adjective, which does not appear in this sense in any of the texts Reed or Fridrichsen cite. In the end, Reed reverts to the suggestion that in Phil. 3:1 ὀκνηρός is

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functioning as a substantive (“cause of hesitation”).85 This is precisely how “troublesome” arose as a lexical supposition – and is just the sort of usage for which we lack attestation elsewhere. It is always somewhat presumptuous to make pronouncements regarding usage in a language not one’s own. Still, this looks very much like a solecism – and one disguised as such by a sort of circular lexicography that obscures the gap between what Paul meant to say and the words he used to say it. In short, the same idiosyncratic use of words that shapes what Mitchell aptly terms Paul’s religious poetics also exposes the limits of his communicative competence, at least as such competence is conventionally conceived.

“t he w is d o m o f g o d , v ei led i n mys tery” In the end, almost no one would claim that Paul wrote clearly. At issue is rather what to make of his obscurity. For Mitchell, his letters are the work of a master wordsmith, a skilled verbal illusionist expertly playing with light and shadow. She offers a compelling portrait. What it elides, however, is the sort of banal awkwardness noted above. When one gets down to the nitty-gritty, the notion of strategic veiling seldom accounts for the data. Responding to Marius Reiser’s discussion of Paul’s lack of clarity, Mitchell asks, “is the lack of σαφήνεια [“clarity”] in Paul’s letters (something that was remarked upon even by his earliest readers!) an index of his stylistic deficiency or his educational poverty, or is it an inherent element of his poetics and his religious strategies?”86 Surely this is a false dichotomy. Here I would again emphasize the importance of taking the evidence cumulatively, of considering the generative indeterminacy of Paul’s use of a term like σάρξ, for example, alongside the more pedestrian syntactical imprecision of a verse like 2 Cor. 11:6, while keeping in mind also the conceptual slippage that is characteristic of his use of (scriptural) analogy.87 I suggest that the same conceptual slack, as it were, that creates the gap between Paul’s train of thought and his syntax also contributes to the remarkably evocative openness of his language. This is why, to an uncharitable critic, it all looks hopelessly incoherent, even as those more reverently disposed find in his words the very “wisdom of God, veiled in mystery” (1 Cor. 2:7). Neither judgment is altogether wrong. Something similar holds for Paul’s lexical peculiarities, which, taken together, provide an important clue regarding the nature of his appeal even as they help to account for the derision he also faced. Here one must evaluate strikingly unusual usages like τὸ εὐαγγέλιον alongside exotic and

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esoteric-sounding terms like ἀποκάλυψις, and then recall too Paul’s pervasive use of a quasi-technical terminology derived from ordinary speech (some of which seems to have been ordinary only among Ioudiaoi). Evidently, as with the alluring and awe-inducing language of Alexander of Abonoteichus, some heard in Paul’s words the voice of the divine, while others heard only barbarism and empty pretence, the sort of language to which the astrologer Cleomedes insultingly compared the neologismridden prose of Epicurus. (Epicurus’s faux-technical gibberish, Cleomedes complained hyperbolically, is as bad as the Ἰουδαϊκά that one hears in and around the synagogue, the fraudulent and debased language of those who, loitering in its courtyard, will pass on a divine message in their Jew-talk in exchange for a few coins.)88 Was Paul’s the language of the god, or the language of the frauds? It depended on who was listening. A final analogy may illustrate the point. A Russian immigrant to New York and a leading theosophist, H.P. Blavatsky gained both acclaim and notoriety for her 1877 Isis Unveiled, a massive compendium of occult lore that was, she claimed, entrusted to her by the Secret Masters, custodians of an ancient wisdom with which she was now to renew the spiritually arid West.89 The book is, by most accounts, basically unreadable, its esoterica clothed in “difficult and obtuse language” – an incongruous blend of scientific, philosophical, and religious terminology, not to mention heavy doses of transliterated Greek and Sanskrit. The volume’s obscure style was widely scorned; it was also essential to its remarkable success. Reviews ranged from the dismissive and disdainful (“a large dish of hash”) to the rhapsodic (“one of the most remarkable productions of the century”), with much depending on what a reader made of its abstruse style. Was such mysterious and difficult language a sign of Blavatsky’s remarkable “mystic power,” or was it just a façade? She was not exactly doing it on purpose. Blavatsky herself acknowledged her lack of literary ability: “I could understand [English] when I read it, but could hardly speak the language”; “I had never been at any college”; “I had not the least idea of literary rules.” But the ancient and ineffable knowledge she did possess was, she insisted, immeasurably more valuable: “The little which I had studied and learned [of Western philosophy and sciences] disgusted me with its materialism, its limitations, its narrow cut-and-dried spirit of dogmatism, and its air of superiority over the philosophies and sciences of antiquity.”90 I may be untrained in speech, but not in knowledge; of this I have surely given sufficient display. In any case, the true spiritual wisdom in which she traded could not adequately be expressed in any human language; at most, the truth could be evoked, summoned: “The attempt to render in a European tongue the

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grand panorama of the ever periodically recurring Law … is daring, for no human language, save the Sanskrit – which is that of the Gods – can do so with any degree of accuracy.”91 And so we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual. I hope it goes without saying that I am not equating Paul with Blavatsky. Still, limited though it is, the analogy is illuminating. It problematizes the assumption, endemic in recent scholarship, that Paul’s style resulted from calculated and deliberate choice. Perhaps Blavatsky learned to lean into the abstruse style that had made her famous, just as Lerner’s character Adam Gordon quickly learned to capitalize on and sometimes even exaggerate his accidental predilection for aphoristic pronouncements in Spanish. Still, these were verbal styles or poetics born in the first place not of choice but of necessity – necessity of which Blavatsky, at least, was quick to make a virtue.

c o n c l u s ion In scholarly discussion of Paul’s uneven and indeterminate prose, one cannot help but notice the consistent, almost reflexive preference among interpreters for explanations that make Paul write this way on purpose: Paul could have used elaborate rhetoric if he had wanted, we are told, but he chose to stick with the language of the cross.92 Paul’s clumsiness in 2 Cor. 11:6 was no blunder, one reader suggests, but a brilliant piece of sardonic self-mockery, indeed the “master-stroke of Paul’s ironic wit.”93 Paul’s obscurity, Mitchell argues, is no stylistic deficiency but a key feature of his “religious strategies.” What each of these explanations has in common, of course, is that it preserves an image of Paul as a man in full control. His words do just what he intends them to do – or, if they do not, it is only because of the obtuseness or obstinacy of his readers. Such a conception of Paul as an author(ity) accords well with his apostolic legacy and his reputation as a sovereign subject. But it does not account for the evidence we have seen. “Reasoning is the one thing the mature Paul was particularly good at,” writes N.T. Wright, “even if the density of his arguments can still challenge his readers.”94 Although Wright may be more effusive than most, this conception of Paul as a man of ideas – “the patron-saint of thought,” as Schweitzer had it – is very seldom questioned.95 It is a conception implicit, after all, in what is still generally presumed to be the chief project of Pauline studies, namely, the systematic elucidation of his thought. “Thought” here, of course, has a sense rather more

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specific than just cognitive activity; it suggests a conceptual apparatus, a reasoned system, the fruit of intellectual labour. To speak of Paul’s “thought,” then, is already to have decided what sort of figure this Paul was and what sort of discourse it was that he produced. And it is just here, I submit, that the challenging “density of his arguments” is instructive – the fact that, as Schweitzer himself saw, “the Apostle always becomes unintelligible just at the moment when he begins to explain something.”96 This is not because Paul was a poor thinker, as Voltaire wryly implied in this essay’s epigraph. It is because he was a different sort of figure altogether. His letters, I have suggested, were written in a different discursive register and address a different social milieu than the history of their interpretation would suggest. Paul was not articulating a conceptual system; he was not in the first place working out ideas. Paul was disclosing divine mysteries, his indeterminate prose gesturing pregnantly toward the ineffable. not e s 1 Benjamin Jowett, The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans, 2nd ed., 2 vols (London: Murray, 1859), 1:352–3. Cf. bdf §458: “Anacoluthon … can even be allowed in epistolary style provided that it does not impair understanding. The latter is a limit which Paul, it seems, quite often violated.” For similar evaluations, from Calvin, Baur, Renan, Deissmann, and Knox, to name a few, see Ryan S. Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education: Comparative Rhetoric and 2 Corinthians 10–13, sblecl 10 (Atlanta: sbl , 2013), 256–8. And see also Jean-Michel Rey, Paul ou les ambiguïtés (Paris: L’Olivier, 2008), 54–5, 61–77. 2 For a recent discussion, see John Reumann, Philippians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, ab 33B (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 460. 3 See the lengthy discussion in J. Albert Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity, hut 32 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 74–108; and now Harrill, “Revisiting the Problem of 1 Corinthians 7:21,” br (2020): 77–94. If Harrill is correct that it is only the self-interested misreading of later interpreters that has rendered the phrase unclear, one need only turn back to 1 Cor. 7:17 to find an instance of ambiguous ellipsis (εἰ μή …). 4 Leif E. Vaage, Borderline Exegesis, Signifying (on) Scriptures (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 5. 5 On the sense of ἰδιώτης here, see Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education, 290–3; Andrew W. Pitts, “Paul in Tarsus: Historical Factors in Assessing Paul’s Early Education,” in Paul and Ancient Rhetoric: Theory and

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Practice in the Hellenistic Context, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Bryan R. Dyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 61–4. Cf. 1 Thess. 1:5; Gal. 3:1–5; Rom. 15:18–19. E.A. Judge, “Paul’s Boasting in Relation to Contemporary Professional Practice,” abr 16 (1968): 37–8. Bruce W. Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a Julio-Claudian Movement, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 224–8; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 48–9. Winter, Philo and Paul, 204–23; L.L. Welborn, An End to Enmity: Paul and the “Wrongdoer” of Second Corinthians, bznw 185 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 101–21, 129–32; Margaret M. Mitchell, “Le style, c’est l’homme: Aesthetics and Apologetics in the Stylistic Analysis of the New Testament,” NovT 51 (2009): 382. Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education, 286–94. The terms βαρός and ἰσχυρός are occasionally used by Dionysius of Halicarnassus to characterize style, but his descriptive vocabulary is patently non-technical, involving the scattershot use of ordinary adjectives rather than literary or rhetorical jargon. See especially Comp. 21–22. See already Theodoret, who summarizes the accusation against Paul thus: “When absent he talks big [μεγαλορρημονεί], but when present he commands no respect [ἐστιν εὐτελής] and is completely unlearned [λίαν ἀπαίδευτος].” And Paul’s response: “We are able to make plain the greatness of apostolic dignity, and exhibit deeds in keeping with our words” (Int. Paul. [pg 82:436]). Translation from Theodoret of Cyrus: Commentary on the Letters of St Paul, trans. Robert C. Hill, 2 vols. (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001). See, similarly, John Chrysostom Hom. 2 Cor. 22.1. For what follows, see further Ryan S. Schellenberg, “τὸ ἐν λόγῳ ἰδιωτικὸν τοῦ Ἀποστόλου: Revisiting Patristic Testimony on Paul’s Rhetorical Education,” NovT 54 (2012): 354–68. For a partial exception, see Augustine Doctr. chr. 4.7.11, 4.7.15. Origen Comm. Rom. praef., 6.3.2; trans. Thomas P. Scheck, fc 104 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2001–2). For more on the church fathers’ domestication of Paul, see Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains” (present volume), 339–51. Augustine Doct. chr. 4.6.9. Cf. Origen Cels. 6.1–2. See similarly Origen Cels. 3.20, 3.45, 6.18, 7.10–11. For a similar move in relation to the stylistic defects of pagan oracles, see Plutarch Pyth. orac. 5 (396d). Augustine Doct. chr. 4.6.9; translation from R.P.H. Green, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995). Cf. 2.6.7, 4.8.22.

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18 Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 47–88. For a broader history of this approach to language and the reading practices it sponsored, see Peter T. Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 19 Origen Cels. 1.27: διὰ τὸ ἰδιωτικὸν, καὶ οὐδαμῶς ἐν λόγοις δυνατὸν, ἰδιωτῶν μόνων κρατήσασαν. 20 Origen Cels. 6.14, 6.2; translation from Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 21 Elaine H. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975); Martin Luther, “Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans,” in Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger, trans. Bertram Lee Woolf (Garden City: Anchor, 1961 [1552]), 19–41; Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel, 2 vols (New York: Scribner, 1951–55), 1:185–355; Ward Blanton and Hent de Vries, eds., Paul and the Philosophers (Fordham University Press, 2013). For more on Valentinian interpretation of Paul’s letters, see Droge, “Whodunnit” (present volume), 305–33. 22 See Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), especially 77–81, 125–6. 23 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Lectures on the History of Religions 13 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 48. Cf. Rey, Paul ou les ambiguïtés, 97–8. 24 Adolf Deissmann, Bible Studies, trans. Alexander Grieve, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1909), 61–85. 25 These words are often translated without regard for nuances in meaning as follows: “flesh,” “spirit,” “righteousness,” “faith,” “grace,” “wrath,” “work,” “law,” “the saints.” 26 Again, these words are often translated without nuance as follows: “good will,” “gift,” “glory,” “prayer.” See further R. Dean Anderson, “Grappling with Paul’s Language: How a Greek Might Struggle,” in The Language and Literature of the New Testament: Essays in Honor of Stanley E. Porter’s 60th Birthday, ed. Lois K. Fuller Dow, Craig A. Evans, and Andrew W. Pitts, BibInt 150 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 244–56. 27 James B. Prothro, “The Strange Case of δικαιόω in the Septuagint and Paul: The Oddity and Origins of Paul’s Talk of ‘Justification,’” znw 107 (2016): 48–69. 28 On the difficulties caused by Χριστός in non-Jewish contexts, see Matthew V. Novenson, The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 224–43. Neither bdag nor lsj nor mm provides any real analogues to Pauline usage of κλητός.

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And it is notoriously difficult to find meaningful precedent for Christian usage of ἀπόστολος. See Francis H. Agnew, “The Origin of the nt Apostle-Concept: A Review of Research,” jbl 105 (1986): 75–96. Margaret M. Mitchell, “Rhetorical Shorthand in Pauline Argumentation: The Functions of ‘the Gospel’ in the Corinthian Correspondence,” in Gospel in Paul: Studies on Corinthians, Galatians and Romans for Richard N. Longenecker, ed. L. Ann Jervis and Peter Richardson, lnts 108 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 63–88. The phrase is from Mitchell, “Rhetorical Shorthand,” 88. Plutarch Demetr. 17.6, where it refers to an expected reward for an announcement of good news. For a survey of pre-Christian occurrences, see Steve Mason, Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2009), 285–6. A second possibly independent attestation not noted by Mason is a papyrus letter that refers to τοῦ εὐανγελ[ίο]υ περὶ τοῦ ἀνηγορεῦσθαι Καίσαρα (sb 1.421), though the relevant word is not fully legible, and the text dates from the mid-third century ce . See NewDocs 3 (1983): 12–14. Mason, Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins; and see now Joshua D. Garroway, The Beginning of the Gospel: Paul, Philippi, and the Origins of Christianity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 105–7. Cf. Gerd Theissen, “‘Evangelium’ im Markusevangelium: Zum traditionsgeschichtlichen Ort des ältesten Evangeliums,” in Mark and Paul: Comparative Essays Part II, For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark, ed. Eve-Marie Becker, Troels EngbergPedersen, and Mogens Müller, bznw 199 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 63–86. Mason, Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins, 287. For an alternate explanation of Luke’s usage, which I find less than compelling, see Garroway, Beginning of the Gospel, 147–8. Cf. Pliny the Elder Nat. 28.4.30; Lucian Men. 9; Iamblichus Myst. 7.4–5; Corp. herm. 16.1–2 (“For the Greeks, O king, have words devoid of demonstrable power [λόγους ἔχουσι κενοὺς ἀποδείξεων ἐνεργητικούς], and this is the philosophy of the Greeks – the sound of words. We, though, do not use words [λόγοις], but utterances pregnant with works [φωναῖς μεσταῖς τῶν ἔργων]; cf. 1 Cor. 2:1– 5, 4:19–20). See further H.S. Versnel, “The Poetics of the Magical Charm: An Essay in the Power of Words,” in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer, rgrw 141 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 105–58. Lucian, Alex. 13 (trans. Harmon, lcl ). The implication, in Lucian and elsewhere, that some of the would-be experts who employed it had no sound knowledge of the language would seem to be verified by the garbled Hebrew of the Greek Magical Papyri. See Morton Smith, “The Jewish Elements in the Magical Papyri,” in Studies in the Cult of Yahweh, ed. Shaye J.D. Cohen,

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2 vols, rgrw 130 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 2:248–9. But there is no reliable evidence – Lucian’s bile certainly is not such – that Alexander himself was anything but sincere. Versnel, “Poetics,” 155. A.D. Nock, “Word-Coinage in Greek,” in Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed. Zeph Stewart, 2 vols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 2:645–7, 2:650–1; John S. Kloppenborg, “φιλαδελφία, θεοδίδακτος and the Dioscuri: Rhetorical Engagement in 1 Thessalonians 4.9–12,” nts 39 (1993): 281–2. As Nock observed, word coinage was common across the full spectrum of linguistic and rhetorical competence, and although well-executed coinages could lend to a text an air of solemnity, less graceful offerings were apt to be met with ridicule. Of course, not everyone drew the same line between the lofty and the laughable or shared the refined taste of the self-designated arbiters of good style. See especially Lucian Rhet. praec. 17; Pseudo-Demetrius Eloc. 2.91–98. Heidi Wendt, At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Nock, “Word-Coinage.” ἡλικιάζομαι: Corp. herm. fr. 26.24; θεοπτική: fr. 2a.6, fr. 7.3 (A.D. Nock and A.J. Festugière, Corpus Hermeticum, 4 vols [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1945–1954]). E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 283–4. Marinus Vit. Procl. 26; Proclus Crat. 109. For recent lists of additional apparent neologisms in Paul, see Anderson, “Grappling with Paul’s Language,” 242–4; Carl Joachim Classen, Rhetorical Criticism of the New Testament, wunt 128 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 43–4 n. 82. 1 Kgdms. 20:30; Sir. 11:27, 22:22; Philodemus Vit. 22.15; Plutarch Sull. 30.5; Cat. Maj. 20.5; Aem. 14.2. Morton Smith, “On the History of ἀποκαλύπτω and ἀποκάλυψις,” in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East, ed. David Hellholm (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983), 9–20. And see already Jerome Comm. Gal. 1.11–12. There are eight additional occurrences in the nt , three in the deutero-Pauline letters (Eph. 1:17, 3:3; 2 Thess. 1:7), three in 1 Peter (1:7, 1:13, 4:13), one in Luke (2:32), and the first word of Revelation (1:1). See too Rom. 16:25, though this text is likely post-Pauline. For discussion, see Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 998–1002. Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station (Minneapolis: Coffee House, 2011), 46.

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48 Pace Anderson, “Grappling with Paul’s Language,” 243; Jowett, Epistles, 1:352. Paul’s citations of scripture provide little indication that he engaged these texts in any language other than Greek. See Dietrich-Alex Koch, Die Schrift als Zeuge des Evangeliums: Untersuchungen zur Verwendung und zum Verständnis der Schrift bei Paulus, bht 69 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986), 48–88. 49 See especially Dell Hymes, “On Communicative Competence,” in Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, ed. Alessandro Duranti, 2nd ed. (Malden: Blackwell, 2001), 53–73. 50 See especially Pseudo-Libanius 48; Pseudo-Demetrius Eloc. 4.231; Gregory of Nazianzus Ep. 51.4; Quintilian 8.2.22–24. 51 See especially Oenomaus of Gadara apud Eusebius Praep. ev. 5.20–26. For context and discussion, see Dorothee Elm von der Osten, “Die Inszenierung des Betruges und seiner Entlarvung: Divination und ihre Kritiker in Lukians Schrift ‘Alexandros oder der Lügenprophet,’” in Texte als Medium und Reflexion von Religion im römischen Reich, ed. Dorothee Elm von der Osten, Jörg Rüpke, and Katharina Waldner, Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge 14 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2006), 141–58. 52 Lucian Alex. 22 (Harmon, lcl ); cf. 10, 25, 33, 48–54. 53 Contra Robert G. Hall, “Paul, Classical Rhetoric, and Oracular Fullness of Meaning in Romans 1:16–17,” in Paul and Ancient Rhetoric: Theory and Practice in the Hellenistic Context, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Bryan R. Dyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 163–85; Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 54 Quoted in Origen Cels. 7.9; trans. Chadwick. 55 Paul S. Fiddes and Günter Bader, eds, The Spirit and the Letter: A Tradition and a Reversal (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013); Ward Blanton, Displacing Christian Origins: Philosophy, Secularity, and the New Testament, Religion and Postmodernism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 25–66; Ole Jakob Løland, The Reception of Paul the Apostle in the Works of Slavoj Žižek, Radical Theologies and Philosophies (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 114–19. See also Mitchell, Birth of Christian Hermeneutics, 58–78. 56 A convenient introduction to the exegetical challenges here is Paul B. Duff, Moses in Corinth: The Apologetic Context of 2 Corinthians 3, NovTSup 159 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1–6. 57 Mitchell, “Le style,” 384. 58 Mitchell, The Birth of Christian Hermeneutics, 5–10, 18–20, 27–9, 67–72, 98–106. This theme is also taken up by Johnson, “Devolution of Paul’s Relationship” (present volume), 207–26.

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59 John W. Marshall, “Misunderstanding the New Paul: Marcion’s Transformation of the Sonderzeit Paul,” jecs 20 (2012): 6. 60 Mitchell, The Birth of Christian Hermeneutics, 13–14, 67, 59. In his contribution to this volume (“Hidden Wisdom”), which also treats the language of mystery and veiling in the Corinthian correspondence, Scott Brown argues that, in addition to what Paul taught clearly and openly in Corinth – namely, “the word of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18; cf. 2:2) – he also offered esoteric knowledge (“the hidden wisdom of God” [3:7]) to those who were adequately mature. In other words, Brown would divide Pauline discourse into the exoteric and the esoteric, with most of what we find in his letters belonging to the former category. Although I welcome Brown’s attempt to unseat apologetic dismissals of Paul’s mystery-language, still I do not find his account persuasive. Specifically, I do not see evidence in Paul’s letters of a “public teaching” separable from the mysteries of God he otherwise proclaims (4:1). Certainly Paul perceives in his own discourse gradation in depth, from milk to solid food (3:2); but Paul’s milk is not well described as publicly accessible teaching, for what Paul says of his elementary “word of the cross” is just what he says too of his secret, spiritual wisdom – namely, that it is foolishness to the uninitiated (1:18–25, 2:6–16). Paul may hold something in reserve, awaiting the Corinthians’ maturity, but what he offers in the meantime is hardly exoteric; it is a message of power and wisdom comprehended only by the elect (1:23–24). 61 The phrase is from Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 509. In Romans, for example, I count twelve variant units explained by Metzger et al. as resulting from attempts to improve problematic grammar or style (2:17, 5:6, 6:4, 7:18, 8:23, 8:38, 10:1, 11:17, 11:21, 11:25, 15:19, 15:31). See too Eberhard W. Güting and David L. Mealand, Asyndeton in Paul: A Text-Critical and Statistical Enquiry into Pauline Style, Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 39 (Lewiston: Mellen, 1998), 12. 62 For a similar argument, with a different set of examples, see Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education, 263–77. 63 J.B. Lightfoot, St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1869), 80. For more recent discussion, see Ulrich B. Müller, Der Brief des Paulus an die Philipper, 2 vols, 2nd ed., thknt 11 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), 1:41; Moisés Silva, Philippians, 2nd ed., becnt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 54–5. 64 For numerous examples, including a number of epistolary thanksgivings, see bdag s.v. εὐχαριστέω 2. And see Paul Holloway, “Thanks for the Memories: On the Translation of Phil 1.3,” nts 52 (2006): 420–1. I am not persuaded by Holloway’s suggestion that Paul does in fact intend ἐπί causally here, since the close conformity of the language of Paul’s thanksgiving with the remembrance

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motif attested in other ancient letters demands that μνεία mean “remembrance in prayer” (viz., “mention”), rather than recollection as such, despite the absence of ποιούμενος. See especially Peter Arzt-Grabner, “Paul’s Letter Thanksgiving,” in Paul and the Ancient Letter Form, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Sean A. Adams, Pauline Studies 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 129–58. Paul Schubert, Form and Function of the Pauline Thanksgivings, bznw 20 (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1939), 60, 73–82; G.W. Peterman, Paul’s Gift from Philippi: Conventions of Gift-Exchange and Christian Giving, sntsms 92 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 93–6; Reumann, Philippians, 102–3, 149. This is surely incorrect. See Holloway, “Thanks for the Memories,” 422; Arzt-Grabner, “Paul’s Letter Thanksgiving,” 150n65; and already Erich Haupt, Die Gefangenschaftsbriefe, 6th ed., kek 8–9 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897), 4–6. F G Ψ 2495 vgmss; cf. John Chrysostom Hom. Phil. 2.9. Theodoret Int. Paul; trans. Hill. Hans Windisch, Der zweite Korintherbrief, 9th ed., kek 6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1924), 309; Rudolf Bultmann, The Second Letter to the Corinthians, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), 192. On the odd blandness of οὐ συνιᾶσιν, see, e.g., Bultmann, Second Corinthians, 193; Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 2 vols., icc (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 2:638. D F G ar b. For especially thorough discussion, see C.F. Georg Heinrici, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther: Mit einem Anhang, Zum Hellenismus des Paulus, 8th ed., kek 6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1900), 332–5; Thrall, Second Epistle, 2:636–9; Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, icc (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1915), 284–5. Bultmann takes the shorter reading as original, for just those reasons specified above. Bultmann, Second Corinthians, 192–3. Cf. John Chrysostom Hom. 2 Cor. 21.1, 24.2, with Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education, 267. See further Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul’s Rhetorical Education, 287–9. This is usually translated as something like, “in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.” See Bultmann, Second Corinthians, 204. Ibid.; Plummer, Second Epistle, 300; Thrall, Second Epistle, 2:678n147. So Windisch, Der zweite Korintherbrief, 332–3; Bultmann, Second Corinthians, 204; Plummer, Second Epistle, 300. One might contrast Plummer’s lucid paraphrase: “Though I lack eloquence, I do not lack knowledge; on the contrary, I was always able to impart knowledge publicly to you.” Plummer, Second Epistle, 300.

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77 Cf. Günther Bornkamm, Das Ende des Gesetzes: Paulusstudien, 5th ed., be vt 16 (Munich: Kaiser, 1966), 76: “Die [Paulinische] Anakoluthe dokumentieren vielmehr einen Hiatus zwischen Sache und Ausdruck, Gedanken und Sprache.” (“The anacolutha [in Paul] rather attest a gap between matter and expression, thought and language.”) 78 Welborn, End to Enmity, 131. 79 F.C. Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Work, His Epistles and His Doctrine, trans. A. Menzies, 2nd ed., 2 vols (London: Williams & Norgate, 1876), 2:280–1: “the peculiar stamp of the apostle’s language … marked by a harshness and roughness which suggest that the thought is far too weighty for the language, and can scarcely find fit forms for the superabundant matter it would fain express.” See too Bornkamm, “Paulinische Anakoluthe,” for whom the fractures in Pauline diction are an apt expression of the apocalyptic inbreaking of the gospel into human history. 80 For assorted additional examples of nonstandard usage, see Anderson, “Grappling with Paul’s Language,” 241n16, 242–3; Marius Reiser, “Paulus als Stilist,” seå 66 (2001): 156. 81 See, typically, Michael F. Bird and Nijay K. Gupta, Philippians, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 111. 82 For its part, lsj offers “causing fear, vexatious, troublesome” as a possible sense for ὀκνηρός on the strength of a single reference: Sophocles Oed. tyr. 834 (ἡμῖν μέν, ὦναξ, ταῦτ᾽ ὀκνήρ᾽). 83 Anton Fridrichsen, “Exegetisches zu den Paulusbriefen,” tsk 102 (1930): 300–1. 84 Jeffrey T. Reed, “Philippians 3:1 and the Epistolary Hesitation Formulas: The Literary Integrity of Philippians, Again,” jbl 115 (1996): 65–76. For a few of the many epistolary examples, see P.Mich. 8.491.14 (οὐ μὴ ὀκνήσω σοι γράφειν); P.Mich. 8.482.21 (καὶ μὴ ὀκ[νή]σῃς γράφων ἐπιστολάς); P.Harr. 1.107.15. 85 Reed, “Philippians 3:1,” 73–5. 86 Mitchell, “Le style,” 386–7. Cf. Marius Reiser, Sprache und literarische Formen des Neuen Testaments: Eine Einführung, utb 2197 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2001), 72–4. 87 On this latter point, which I refrain from developing here, see e.g., Rom. 7:1–6; 2 Cor. 3, 13:1–2; Gal. 4:21–5:1. The trick to appreciating a Pauline analogy, I would suggest, is to hang on and enjoy the ride, and not to look too closely at the details. 88 Cleomedes Cael. 2.1.493–502: τὰ δὲ ἀπὸ μέσης τῆς προσευχῆς καὶ τῶν ἐπ’

αὐλαῖς προσαιτούντων, Ἰουδαϊκὰ καὶ παρακεχαραγμένα καὶ κατὰ πολὺ τῶν ἑρπετῶν ταπεινότερα. The text is Todd’s with Ziegler’s emendation of αὐλαῖς

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90 91 92

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for αὐταίς. For the demeaning censure of such figures as “beggars,” see Juvenal Sat. 6.542–547; cf. Artemidorus Oneir. 1 praef. For such “freelance” activity on the periphery of established institutions, see Dio Chrysostom Or. 32.9, and, more generally, Wendt, At the Temple Gates. For what follows, see Joshua Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 56–78. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 75. Emblematic here is A. Duane Litfin, St. Paul’s Theology of Proclamation: 1 Corinthians 1–4 and Greco-Roman Rhetoric, sntsms 79 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 204–9 and passim. Welborn, End to Enmity, 131. N.T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018), 15. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, trans. William Montgomery (London: Black, 1931), 377. Albert Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History, trans. William Montgomery (London: Black, 1912), 37.

15

Whodunnit? Paul’s Peculiar Passion and Its Implications A.J. Droge

in t ro du cti on Amid the bluster and banality so characteristic of the letters attributed to Paul, there are also remarkable flashes of extraordinary mythmaking. Yet because these passages occur in such scattered and tantalizingly small clusters, they present a challenge to readers interested in developing a coherent religious vision, or Pauline myth, based upon them. The problem is compounded by the fact that time and again these passages are themselves contradicted by others. Too often, the attempt to make Paul make sense feels rather like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle of which most of the pieces have gone missing, while many of the existing pieces seem to belong to other puzzles. Paul’s disclosure of “secret wisdom” regarding the crucifixion of Jesus at 1 Cor. 2:6–16 is one such case, where, paradoxically, we are told too much and too little. It demands full quotation.1 2:6 (There is) a wisdom [σοφία], however, (that) we speak [λαλοῦμεν] about among the Perfect Ones [τέλειοι], though (it is) a wisdom not of this Aeon, nor of the Archons of this Aeon [οἱ ἄρχοντες τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου], who are being abolished. 7 But we speak about God’s wisdom, which is hidden in a mystery, which God ordained before (the creation of) the Aeons [πρὸ τῶν αἰώνων] for our glory, 8 which none of the Archons of this Aeon knew. For if they had known (it), they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory [ὁ κύριος τῆς δόξης]. 9 But as it is written,

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“(The) things that eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and (that) have not arisen in the human heart, (all the) things that God has prepared for those who love him” — 10 to us (Perfect Ones), however, God has revealed (these things) through the Spirit. For the Spirit fathoms all things, even the deep things of God [τὰ βάθη τοῦ θεοῦ]. 11 For who among humans knows the (deep) things of the human except the spirit of the human [τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου] that is in him? So, too, the (deep) things of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. 12 We (Perfect Ones), however, have received not the Spirit of the Cosmos [τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ κόσμου], but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may know the (deep) things given to us by God, 13 things that we also speak about, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in (words) taught [διδακτοί] by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things in spiritual (words). 14 A (mere) physical human [ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος], however, does not receive the (deep) things of the Spirit,2 for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot know (them), because they are (only) spiritually [πνευματικῶς] discerned. 15 The Spirit Being [πνευματικός], however, discerns all things, though he himself is discerned by no one. 16 For “who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him?” We (Spirit Beings), however, possess the Mind [νοῦς] of Christ. Our passage bristles with peculiarities and problems. Not only does it stand out from its context in language, style, and theme,3 it also appears to contradict what Paul had just written about the exclusive categories of the “saved” and “lost” at 1 Cor. 1:184 by abruptly introducing two more groups, now comprising the “Perfect Ones” (τέλειοι), whom Paul also calls “Spirit Beings” (πνευματικοί), in contrast to mere “Physical Beings” (ψυχικοί). No attempt is made in our passage, or anywhere else in 1 Corinthians, to reconcile these two classification schemes. They remain juxtaposed and in unresolved tension. Along with the sudden appearance of the Perfect Ones, there is an equally sudden shift in voice, from the first-person singular (κἀγώ) at 2:1 and 2:3, to the first-person plural (λαλοῦμεν) at 2:6, accompanied by a switch from aorist to present tense. The “we” perspective is maintained throughout 2:6–16, but then just as suddenly shifts back again to the first-person singular (κἀγώ) at 3:1, accompanied once more by a switch in tense, this time from the present back to the past.5 The use of οἱ τέλειοι as a substantive here (and only here in Paul) sounds like a gnostic technical term,6 as does the unprecedented contrast

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between the πνευματικός and ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος.7 Indeed, I can find no parallel to the use of these terms prior to the second century ce . One is tempted, then, to gloss the τέλειοι as something like “true gnostics,” or “those who possess the true gnosis,” and to construe πνευματικός and ψυχικός as “Pneumatic” and “Psychic” in a gnostic sense, if for no other reason than to defamiliarize the terms. But to go any further with that strategy means immediately facing the problem of having to explain the presence of a second-century vocabulary in a text ostensibly written in the mid-first. Scholars have long struggled to explain away the gnostic terminology of our passage. Some try to downplay it,8 a few simply ignore it,9 but most contend that Paul is here “borrowing” the language of his Corinthian “opponents,” variously described as “enthusiasts,” “pneumatics,” “proto-gnostics,” or “Gnostics” tout court, in order to criticize them.10 Yet I can detect no criticism of the τέλειοι/πνευματικοί or their σοφία in our passage, or anywhere else in 1 Corinthians, and I remain skeptical that the views of Paul’s so-called “opponents” can be so easily extracted from his letters. Even so, we would still have roughly the same problem on our hands, namely, how to explain a second-century vocabulary now being deployed by Paul’s mid-first-century opponents. I find more persuasive a suggestion by E. Earle Ellis, who proposes that 2:6–16 may have been a set piece “created within a (Pauline) group of pneumatics prior to its use in 1 Cor 2.”11 If he is right, then we might think of 2:6–16 as a Pauline interpolation, though Ellis prefers the designation “Pauline tradition.” Bolder, and more intriguing still, is Martin Widmann’s contention that 2:6–16 was originally “a longer gloss,” composed by a “pneumatic group” of “Corinthian enthusiasts” as a response to what they saw as Paul’s distortion of their position, which only became part of 1 Corinthians when the letter was later copied.12 While both Ellis and Widmann provide considerable insights, neither takes seriously enough how unprecedented and unparalleled (in a word, late) the vocabulary and ideas of 2:6–16 truly are.13 Nor have they, or anyone else, given sufficient attention to what is the most peculiar feature of our passage, namely, the astonishing claim that the crucifixion was a crime perpetrated by the “Archons of this Aeon.” My objections hardly detract from the contributions of Ellis and Widmann, so it is all the more regrettable that their arguments have had little impact. This is not surprising, given the conservative state of Pauline studies, but it is unfortunate because their work has implications that go far beyond an otherwise very small piece of the 1 Corinthians puzzle. There have been exceptions, like Richard Reitzenstein, who considered Paul a “capital G” Gnostic because he wrote 2:6–16,14 but nearly all scholars since

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have insisted that this passage was written by Paul and that Paul was no Gnostic. In my view, it cannot be had both ways; one side will have to go. In what follows, I shall urge that we jettison the idea that 2:6–16 was written by Paul, and deal with the consequences.

t he p e r f e c t o n e s a n d o ther gnos ti c cant Because the “Perfect Ones” (τέλειοι) and “Spirit Beings” (πνευματικοί) make such a sudden appearance in our passage, it is not clear who they are. One would presume that Paul is to be included among them, but the identity of the others behind the “we” and “us” remains a mystery.15 In fact, there is no apparent reason for the shift from singular to plural. Paul could just as easily have written, “But I speak about God’s wisdom” and have had the same effect.16 As it stands, the first-person plural comes off as stilted, and the terms Perfect Ones and Spirit Beings have a theoretical ring to them, but it is not clear to what rhetorical purpose. As we shall see, the aim is not polemical or pedagogical. Nor is the identity of their counterparts, the ψυχικοί, evident. One is tempted to say that they are the Corinthians, at least implicitly so. But were this the case, then they would have been placed beyond the pale in the new taxonomy. That is, the Corinthians would no longer rank among the σωζόμενοι mentioned at 1:18, but now among the ψυχικοί, mere physical beings devoid of the divine πνεῦμα. Yet that seems unlikely in a letter in which they are otherwise referred to as “brothers.”17 The designation ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος, which, like τέλειοι, occurs only here in Paul, also sounds theoretical. One has only to compare the πνευματικός and ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος to Paul’s distinction between the σῶμα ψυχικόν and σῶμα πνευματικόν at 15:44–46 to see how different their use in our passage is. At 15:44–46 these terms apply to an unspecified future (i.e., to the transformation of the dead “physical body” into a resurrected “spirit body”). In 2:6–16, however, πνευματικός and ψυχικός designate two separate categories of being in the present, without the possibility of movement, or even communication, between them.18 Whereas the former usage is eschatological, the latter is strikingly gnostic. By now our passage is beginning to read more like a treatise than an actual letter. The shift in language and style is so abrupt that modern readers might feel they have wandered into another text, or alternative world, scarcely able to remember what the letter was originally about.19 In any case, the previous distinction between the “saved” and “lost” (1:18) has now been eclipsed by a new binary opposition between an elite cadre of insiders, called Perfect

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Ones and Spirit Beings, who possess a σοφία heretofore unknown, and an ignorant group of outsiders, who are dismissed as merely physical (i.e., pneuma-less) creatures.20 Not even that distinction, however, holds for very long, since the πνευματικοί/ψυχικοί binary is in turn superseded by yet another in the passage immediately following 2:6–16. And, once again, it is accompanied by another abrupt shift in voice, this time from the first-person plural back to the first-person singular (the κἀγώ at 3:1 linking up with the κἀγώ at 2:1–3), as well as by another reversal in tense, from the present back to the past. Now the contrast involves πνευματικοί and σάρκινοι (“fleshly ones”), not ψυχικοί.21 Furthermore, the meaning of the terms seems to have shifted. Rather than designating two mutually exclusive ontological states, there is now the possibility of movement from one category to the other, metaphorized as growth from infancy (the σάρκινοι are merely νήπιοι ἐν Χριστῷ) to adulthood. This is an entirely different understanding from the one expressed in 2:6–16, where πνευματικός and ψυχικός remain discrete categories. The whole tone of this new section sounds dissimilar as well – conversational and almost folksy – in contrast to the heavy ontotheological discourse of the previous one, which has now entirely faded away. Put simply, it feels like we are reading a real letter again, not a treatise. The return to the first-person singular makes it seem as if we are hearing a real Paul behind the “I,” addressing real Corinthians, whom he calls “brothers,” in contrast to the stilted, almost pontificating, voice of the anonymous “we” of 2:6–16. In other words, 3:1–4 resumes the kind of style and tone characteristic of 1:10– 2:5, which 2:6–16 had interrupted. The use of σάρκινοι, instead of ψυχικοί, at 3:1 is worth lingering over, since it comes as a surprise. A reader of the previous section would have anticipated a different contrast to πνευματικοί, considering the distinction drawn there between the πνευματικός and ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος (2:14–15). One would have expected ψυχικοί to be the opposite of πνευματικοί at 3:1, not σάρκινοι. And yet, the latter contrast sounds again much more like the Paul we read elsewhere, given his typical distinction between flesh (σάρξ) and spirit (πνεῦμα).22 Indeed, we can almost hear Paul thinking at 3:1–3, casting about for the right word to contrast with πνευματικοί, initially choosing σάρκινοι before realizing that σαρκικοί sounded a little better. But my question is, why? Why did Paul have to give any thought to finding the right word as a contrast to πνευματικοί, when he had already used ψυχικός a mere three verses earlier at 2:14? Recall that ψυχικός occurs only in our passage. It is distinctive enough that it should have stood out to Paul. It should still have been in his mind and ready

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to use only three verses later. How then do we explain the surprising appearance of σάρκινοι at 3:1, and then of σαρκικοί at 3:3, instead of the expected ψυχικοί? The answer, I contend, is that ψυχικός was simply not to be found there. The surprising (to us) occurrences of σάρκινοι and σαρκικοί can be attributed to the fact that there was no ψυχικός at 2:14, since the entire passage was not originally present. Now, it is much too soon to make a final determination, but in light of the differences already noted, 2:6–16 appears suspect. It looks like an interpolation.

w h at is a n in t e r polati on? By interpolation I simply mean a retrospective change in an older text, usually introduced with the intention of “improving” it by bringing out what is thought to be its “real” meaning. The change may have taken place when a work was copied and perhaps re-edited at some point after its original composition. While the identification of interpolations is unremarkable in other disciplines whose canons likewise derive from manuscripts, scholars of the New Testament look down upon it. At least over the last century the tendency has been to underestimate their extent and importance on the assumption that we have as pure a text of the New Testament as we are ever likely to get.23 Consequently, for most New Testament scholars, text-critical evidence is the only basis for an interpolation hypothesis. Anything less, they say, is mere conjecture. Yet this supposition smacks of hubris, insofar as the first and second centuries are a textual dark age. In the case of the letters to the Corinthians, there is at least a century and a half between their putative date of composition until their first appearance in a collection of letters known as P46. How and when and under what circumstances that collection came to be, and what alterations were made in Paul’s letters prior to, and in the process of, their collection and transmission, are matters about which it is better to confess our ignorance than feign knowledge. Given the efforts beginning in the second century to construct and contest the figure of “Paul, the Messenger of God,” one can only imagine how far interpolations and other textual strategies might have gone for the sake of “improving” his letters. Or consider the issue another way. No text-critical evidence exists that letters like Ephesians or Colossians are Pauline fakes. Nevertheless, most scholars judge them to be “deutero-Pauline” (a more polite term), even though both appear in the earliest extant collections of Paul’s letters. There is no necessity, therefore, to find a text-critical basis for an interpolation hypothesis. Everything depends on argument and evidence, but there is no extra

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burden of proof that an interpolation hypothesis must bear. Overall, I think it would be good for the field if there were more of a fight between conservative and skeptical critics when it comes to hypotheses of interpolation, conjectural emendations, and the like. If nothing else, this paper aspires to incite such a quarrel.24 For a passage to be judged an interpolation, two criteria must be met. First, it must show significant differences in language, style, and subject matter. We have already noticed a considerable number of these differences in our first pass through 2:6–16, and there will be more to follow as the analysis proceeds, but just to provide an initial reckoning of how numerous and striking these differences are, it is useful here simply to list the words and expressions occurring in our passage that are found nowhere else in Paul: οἱ τέλειοι (2:6, 2:8), οἱ ἄρχοντες τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου (2:6, 2:8), πρὸ τῶν αἰώνων (2:7), ὁ κύριος τῆς δόξης (2:8), τὰ βάθη τοῦ θεοῦ (2:10), τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου (2:11), τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ κόσμου (2:12), τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ (2:12), διδακτοί (2:13), ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος (2:14), πνευματικῶς (2:14), and νοῦς Χριστοῦ (2:16).25 All these words and phrases occur in the span of a mere eleven verses, comprising a total of only 201 words. What is more, with just two exceptions, none of them occurs anywhere else in the entire New Testament.26 Still, we are dealing with much more than just a distinctive vocabulary; we also encounter an entirely different religious imaginary from the one typically found in Paul. We may have to search for the right word to label it – esoteric, anti-cosmic, gnostic, perhaps all the above – but one thing is clear: like the vocabulary it is built upon, it is an imaginary that flourishes in the mid-second century rather than in the mid-first. But there is still more. We shall also discover that even those words that do occur elsewhere in Paul (e.g., αἰών, ἄρχοντες, πνευματικός, σοφία) have radically different meanings when they are deployed in our passage. The anomalies will continue to pile up, but the differences in language, style, and subject matter gathered so far point in the direction of an interpolation. The second criterion is that the removal of the suspect passage must make the resultant rejoining of the surrounding material more cogent, smoother, and better integrated. The evidence again suggests an interpolation. If we remove 2:6–16, the linkage at 2:5 and 3:1 is secure, and certainly reads more smoothly than the abrupt transitions from 2:5 to 2:6 and from 2:16 to 3:1. In fact, what is left after 2:6–16 is removed is a “real” letter about Paul and Apollos that now runs coherently from 1:10 to 4:21. Furthermore, what better place than between 2:5 and 3:1, with their respective references to σοφία and πνευματικοί, could one find to introduce an extended reflection on the cosmic background of σοφία

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and the true nature of the πνευματικός? But notice that I asked, what better place? For as good as 3:1 is, it is not the perfect location for our passage – no place ever is for an interpolation – simply because it makes utter nonsense of Paul’s statement at 3:1. When Paul writes, “And I, brothers, I could not speak to you as πνευματικοί, etc.” – well, excuse me, but that is precisely what “Paul” had been doing in the previous eleven verses, with their sonorous reflections on σοφία and the πνευματικοί who possess it.27 No one, I wager, who had just written 2:6–16 could then write 3:1.28 Remove 2:6–16, however, and 3:1 (and following) makes perfect sense in continuing the discussion begun about Paul and Apollos in 1:10–2:5.29

a s e c r e t w i sdom We are now in a better position to make a second pass through 2:6–16. Let us begin this time by considering the important theme of “wisdom.” Although σοφία at 2:6 is taken up as a catchword that had already appeared in the previous section, it is used differently in our passage. This is reflected even at the syntactical level, with the emphatic positioning of σοφία twice in the accusative at the beginning of clauses (2:6), and twice as the direct object of λαλοῦμεν (2:6, 2:7). This is not typical of Pauline style. Moreover, wisdom’s cause is now being championed, whereas “worldly wisdom” is denigrated at 1:20 and 3:19. Although there is a slightly confusing reference to the “wisdom of God” at 1:21,30 and Christ is called “God’s wisdom”  at 1:24, σοφία at 2:6–8 is different still. It is a σοφία “not of this Aeon, nor of the Archons of this Aeon.” It is also a secret σοφία, “hidden in a mystery,” a σοφία “which God ordained before (the creation of) the Aeons for our glory.” This is a strikingly different conception of wisdom than one would have anticipated from the surrounding context.31 To distinguish it from the “worldly wisdom” he mentions in 1:20 and 3:19, for example, Paul could have simply written, “It is not a wisdom of this world.” Instead, the discourse on σοφία is given a cosmic inflection, antithetical to all other uses of the word in 1 Cor. 1–3. This discourse is much closer, in fact, to the language and ideas of the so-called deutero-Pauline letters than to the so-called authentic ones.32 Possession of this secret wisdom is one of the distinguishing marks of the Perfect Ones. It is theirs, however, not because of what they have been taught, but because of who they are. This idea, too, differs from what Paul will say immediately following our passage, with his milk/solid food metaphor (3:1–4), suggesting that the Corinthian σάρκινοι are “children” who can progress toward “maturity” and become πνευματικοί through

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instruction. That this is not the understanding of our passage is made clear at 2:11–16 in a series of dualisms, or antitheses, drawn between “human wisdom” and “spirit(ual) wisdom,” and between the “spirit of the human/cosmos” and the “Spirit of God,” as well as by the emphatic pronouncement that “the ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος cannot know” [οὐ δύναται γνῶναι] the (deep) things of the Spirit (2:14).33 The Perfect Ones, by contrast, are able to “fathom” (ἐραυνάω) these depths (2:10, 2:12) precisely because of their status as Spirit Beings. Moreover, the content and manner of their speech is expressed “in (words) taught by the Spirit” (2:13), and thus they have the capacity to “interpret spiritual things in spiritual (words).”34 They are also autonomous beings, who need no instructor or pedagogue, because they are already capable of “discerning all things, while not being discerned by anyone” (2:15). Whereas the physical qua physical is utterly incapable of grasping “the (deep) things of the Spirit” or “of God,” the Perfect Ones are privy to all manner of knowledge and able to apprehend “things that eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and (that) have not arisen in the human heart.”35 This is not conventional wisdom or knowledge; it is neither Pauline kerygma nor didache. It is glossed at 2:10 as “the deep things of God” (τὰ βάθη τοῦ θεοῦ), which must mean something like the “ideas in the mind of God.” This expression occurs only here in the letters and is once again evocative of later gnostic language and thought.36 In order to gauge just how distinctive it is, consider how differently the “depth (βάθος) of God’s wisdom and knowledge” is understood at Rom. 11:33. There the emphasis is placed on God’s inscrutability. No one can fathom his ways. Not so in our passage. The emphatic positioning of “to us, however” (ἡμῖν δέ) at 2:10 (cf. 2:12, 2:16) makes it patently clear that it is the Perfect Ones – neither believers in general nor the Corinthians in particular – who have unique access to the “deep things of God.” It turns out, then, that there is after all a “superior discourse and wisdom,” despite what Paul had previously disclaimed at 2:1.37 But only the Perfect Ones – only those who possess the “Mind of Christ” (νοῦς Χριστοῦ) – are able to comprehend it and engage in discourse about it. Insofar as νοῦς and πνεῦμα are used interchangeably, one can only conclude that the Perfect Ones have access to the very thoughts of God. In other words, the question posed by the quotation of Isa. 40:13, “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” is answered with an unqualified, “We, the πνευματικοί, do, because we possess the νοῦς Χριστοῦ” (2:16). Notice once again how sharply this contradicts Paul’s use of the same quotation at Rom. 11:34, where the implied answer is that no one knows the mind of the Lord.

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In general, the secret σοφία of our passage remains just that, a secret whose existence is asserted but whose content is never fully revealed. Still, whether by chance or by design, the reader catches the briefest glimpse of one astonishing element of it. It is a secret that concerns the crucifixion of Jesus, which was the key episode in a plot devised by God primordially, or as our passage describes it, ordained “before (the creation of) the Aeons” (πρὸ τῶν αἰώνων).38 God had deliberately kept this plot “hidden in a mystery,” we are told, not only from mere mortals (ψυχικοί), but more importantly from entities referred to as the “Archons of this Aeon.” For had these Archons known about it, our passage declares, “they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” But just who or what are the Archons? How, when, and where did they crucify Jesus? And, above all, why?

w h o c ru c if ie d t h e lord of glory? It is important to stress at the outset that this mystery of the crucifixion is not something Paul claimed he had received from others before him and then passed on to the Corinthians. That is, it is not based on any report Paul had heard, say, from the supposed eyewitnesses of the crucifixion.39 Quite the contrary. This esoteric knowledge is described as the unveiling of a mystery; it came exclusively by means of the Spirit (2:10).40 Notice that there is no sense in which it is “scandalous” or “foolish,” as Paul conceded his simple message of “Christ crucified” was at 1:18–2:5. In fact, there we learned that God had intended Paul’s proclamation to be “foolishness” and “weakness” (1:27). In our passage, by contrast, it is “foolishness”41 only insofar as a mere ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος cannot begin to grasp it. It is not even a question of volition – of choosing or refusing to receive it – rather, it is simply beyond such a person’s ken, and therefore it appears as “folly.”42 The key to the interpretation of our passage, and ultimately to the determination that it is an interpolation, depends on who the “Archons of this Aeon” are. Do they designate mundane political authorities, supernatural powers, or perhaps some combination of the two?43 The problem is compounded by the fact that the expression, “Archons of this Aeon,” occurs only twice in all the letters attributed to Paul, and both instances fall in our passage. Otherwise, the plural ἄρχοντες (“rulers”) is found only at Rom. 13:1–7, where Paul admonishes his readers to obey all civil authorities, whom, he says, God appointed for their benefit, because such “rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad” (13:3). Many commentators, especially those of a conservative

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bent, choose to read the Archons of 2:6–8 through the lens of Rom. 13:3. For example, Joseph Fitzmyer takes Paul to be saying that “God’s wisdom, hidden in a mystery, was incomprehensible to rulers such as Pilate, Herod Antipas, or Caiaphas.”44 Nowhere, however, does Paul, or the tradition Paul alleged he received, ever claim that Jesus was crucified under Pilate, Herod Antipas, or Caiaphas. Furthermore, even if Paul had meant such earthly rulers, he had no need to use cosmological language to express this; he could have simply written something like, “a wisdom that Pilate (or Herod or Caiaphas) did not know, for if he had known, he would not have crucified the Lord.” There would be no need to say anything about its being “hidden in a mystery” or to refer to Jesus as the “Lord of Glory.”45 In any case, how could mere civil authorities have been expected to comprehend such mysterious wisdom in the first place? What could they possibly have made of it? And even if they had understood it, how would that have changed anything? Earthly rulers simply make no sense in our passage, quite apart from the question whether 2:6–16 is an interpolation. Not only is the important qualifier “of this Aeon” (τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου) missing at Rom. 13:3, so is any hint that these authorities are in the process of “being abolished” (καταργούμενοι), as stated at 2:6. In fact, it is crucial to Paul’s point at Rom. 13:3 that they not be. No, the “Archons of this Aeon” can only refer to an order of supernatural beings, to the only entities who had anything to lose by the crucifixion, and who were tricked into acting in accord with God’s secret plot. Simply put, the Archons must designate the hostile powers of the sublunary world. They were the ones who crucified the Lord of Glory.46 According to our passage, then, the crucifixion of Jesus was not a crime committed by the usual suspects (the Romans and/or Judaeans), but an act perpetrated by hostile cosmic powers, the “Archons of this Aeon.” This peculiar passion account, which, if it were Pauline, would be the earliest extant, is imagined not as a historical event at all, but as the key episode in a cosmic drama, and as such it differs fundamentally from the more familiar (i.e., historicized) crucifixion stories of the New Testament Gospels. Hence the perceived need on the part of many scholars (like Fitzmyer, above), to read 2:6–8 in light of those later accounts. But such a conflation of the evidence is anachronistic, quite apart from whether 2:6–16 is an interpolation or not, since there would be no canonical story of the crucifixion for a very long time. Even a casual sampling of texts from the Christian archive makes clear that there was no consensus about who crucified Jesus, or about when, where, how, or why Jesus was crucified. Indeed, as we shall see, there was not even a consensus about

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whether Jesus was crucified. Each of these questions was a point of conflict and contestation for centuries before the Christians finally managed to get their story (more or less) straight.47 Seen in this light, then, there is nothing odd about our crucifixion account. It is only when one looks for contemporary parallels to it that it stands out as peculiar. Only then does it become clear that 2:6–16 could not have been written by Paul, or anyone else in the first century, simply because there is nothing in the first century like it. All the parallels derive from a century later, among a family of texts usually labelled “gnostic.” And this is the most puzzling anomaly of all in our passage: Why are there no contemporary parallels to its account of the crucifixion? The answer is not that Paul was a century ahead of his time; rather, it is that our passage is an interpolation of the second century, and its crucifixion myth can only be understood as such. My concern now is to locate this myth, describe it more fully, and try to determine the date of the interpolation.

c ru c i- f ic t ions: ki l l in g j e s u s in t h e second century Whoever was responsible for our passage assumed that a reader would be familiar enough with its crucifixion myth that it need not be repeated in detail. It could be invoked simply by referring to its distinguishing feature, namely, that it was the hostile “Archons of this Aeon” who had crucified the “Lord of Glory.” This, in turn, means that the myth was already in wide enough circulation that it could be called upon by mere allusion. This fits a mid-second century context, but not one in the midfirst, and certainly not one in which Paul was the original mythmaker. Partial confirmation for this can be found in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, composed around 150 ce . Justin refers to a version of the myth when he describes the “Archons in Heaven” (οἱ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἄρχοντες) who failed to recognize Christ when he descended into the cosmos. Admittedly, Justin says nothing about their crucifixion of Jesus. These Archons were appointed by God and were commanded to open the gates of heaven when Christ ascended, but they nevertheless appear to be morally ambiguous insofar as they failed to recognize Christ at his descent.48 This version of the myth was based on a rather clever reading of Ps. 24, though it is unlikely that Justin was the original exegete or mythmaker. As part of his “proof” that the central plank of the Christian story was prefigured in Trypho’s own scriptures, Justin claims that Christ’s ascent into heaven was detailed in advance in Ps. 24, which was originally a royal entrance liturgy, describing the personified “Gates” of Jerusalem

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being raised to receive a human “King of Glory,” as he ascended victorious to “the holy sanctuary on the Mountain of yhwh .” Of course, Justin was reading the lxx version of the Psalm (23:7, 23:9), which renders the Hebrew line, “Lift up your heads, O Gates,” as “Lift up your gates, O Rulers” (οἱ ἄρχοντες). For Justin, this was a Davidic “prophecy” in which Christ, the real “King of Glory” (ὁ βασιλεὺς τῆς δόξης), is the one who will ascend victorious to God’s heavenly sanctuary. The “Rulers,” therefore, must be ἐν οὐρανῷ as well; that is, they must be cosmic powers. Justin’s version of the myth presents a number of features that parallel the reading of 1 Cor. 2:6–8 offered above, and begins to fill in some of its features: (1) the reference to οἱ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἄρχοντες, which are clearly supernatural powers, not earthy rulers; (2) the ignorance of these powers, understood as their initial failure to recognize Christ; (3) the use of the title “King of Glory,” which is a close analogue to the reference to Christ as the “Lord of Glory”; and (4) the exegetical derivation of the myth.49 The major difference between Justin’s version and the account in 2:6–8 is the latter’s reference to hostile Archons who unwittingly work their own defeat by actually crucifying the Lord of Glory. And this presents us with a conundrum. If Christ was disguised or in some way hidden at his descent, such that the Archons failed to recognize him, then why did they crucify him? Did they know that he was the redeemer, but not that their crucifixion of him would be the very means of their own undoing? That is, did they know something, but not enough? Here the older part of the Ascension of Isaiah provides a significant parallel to our passage and will help us to fill in even more details. The second half of the Ascension of Isaiah describes a journey of the eighth-century prophet through the seven heavens, accompanied by an angel who acts as his personal guide and interpreter.50 Once they have reached the seventh and highest heaven, the angel tells Isaiah what is going to happen in the distant future: The Lord will indeed descend into the world in the last days, (he) who is to be called Christ after he has descended and become like you [Isaiah] in form, and they will think that he is flesh and a man. And the God of that world will stretch out his hand against the Son, and they will lay their hands upon him and hang him on a tree, not knowing who he is. And thus his descent, as you will see, will be concealed even from the heavens, so that it will not be known who he is. And … he will rise on the third day and will remain in that world for 545 days [i.e., one and a half years]. And then many of the righteous will ascend with him.51

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Christ’s descent through the cosmos will be concealed from the mostly benevolent angelic powers of the higher heavens, evidently because otherwise his identity could not be kept a secret from the evil powers below them. But once Christ reaches the lowest or sublunary region – called the “Firmament” – his disguise will change again, and this time he will assume the outward appearance of a human. Although the “God of that world” and his evil hosts will think that Christ is merely “flesh,”52 they will nevertheless lay hold of the Son and crucify him, despite their ignorance of his true identity and the implications of their actions. This is a striking parallel to, and explanation of, the claim at 1 Cor. 2:6–8 that it was the Archons of this Aeon who crucified the Lord of Glory in ignorance. Next, Isaiah’s angel-guide tells him to watch as Christ begins to transform himself and descend through the seven heavens and finally into the Firmament. Now it is Isaiah who reports what he sees: “And then I saw that … he descended into the Firmament where the Archon53 of this world dwells … and his form (was) like theirs, and they did not praise him there; but in evil and envying they were fighting one another, for there is there a power of evil and envying … And … they were plundering and doing violence to one another.”54 At this point we would expect Isaiah to proceed by describing the crucifixion of Christ by the “Archon of this world” and his minions in fulfillment of what had been previously foreshadowed at Ascen. Isa. 9.14–15. Instead, this report has been removed and several paragraphs have been interpolated in its place that give a summary of Christ’s painless birth, his miracles, and his equally painless crucifixion.55 Yet, if Christ’s true identity was hidden from the “Archon of this world,” how did the Archon know who Christ was in order to lay hands on him? The interpolated material implies that it was the many “signs and wonders” performed by Christ that caused the hostile powers of the Firmament to envy him, though still not comprehending who he truly was: “The Adversary envied him, and roused the Children of Israel against him, not knowing who he was. And they handed him to the Ruler [Pilate?] and crucified him.”56 Isaiah then adds, “In Jerusalem, indeed, I saw how they crucified him on a tree, and likewise (how) after the third day he rose and remained (many) days.”57 Christ then ascends in glory (i.e., no longer in disguise) through the cosmos to the seventh heaven, where he is enthroned at the right hand of God.58 It is not entirely clear in the interpolated material who was responsible for the actual crucifixion. The “Adversary”? The “Children of Israel”? The “Ruler”? Or did they all conspire together? In any event, the interpolation looks like a later attempt to historicize what had once been a

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cosmic version of the crucifixion, one in which the archontic powers of the lower world crucified Christ “in the Firmament,” not “in Jerusalem.” Even so, the parallels with 1 Cor. 2:6–8 remain striking, for it is still these powers of the Firmament – in so many words, the “Archons of this Aeon” – who bear ultimate responsibility for the crucifixion. The theme of their ignorance is also strikingly similar. They did not really know who Christ was and would not realize what they had done until they witnessed his ascent in glory.59 This comes very close to the view of our passage, where the Archons are likewise ignorant of what they had done. Indeed, we are told that had they known better, they would not have been so foolish as to “crucify the Lord of Glory” and thereby seal their own doom. The reference at 1 Cor. 2:6 to the Archons “being abolished” (καταργούμενοι) signals their subjection and the loss of their former powers. The same is presumed at Ascen. Isa. 11.23, when Satan and his angels worship Christ in glory.60 Now, it is hard to imagine that Paul, or anyone else in the mid-first century, could have drawn on the Ascension of Isaiah as inspiration for what we find at 1 Cor. 2:6–8. Its second-century date presents an insurmountable chronological problem. Nor is there any indication that the author or compiler of the Ascension of Isaiah was dependent on our passage. Nowhere is Paul’s authority invoked, and, despite the striking conceptual similarities with our passage, the different vocabulary used for the sublunary powers is equally striking. It is much more likely that we are dealing with two independent applications of a crucifixion myth that was circulating in gnostic circles in the mid-second century. Insofar as this myth is conceived of as a cosmic, rather than historical, drama, it was probably deployed as a counterpoint to its historicized version, namely, the story of Christ’s physical passion in Jerusalem. We see this clearly at Ascen. Isa. 9.13, where the malevolent powers of the Firmament “think that he is flesh and a man.”61 Yet Christ was not actually human, his appearance was merely a disguise by which the powers of the Firmament were tricked, and even in the interpolated material there is no indication that Christ suffered any pain during his crucifixion. It is almost certain that the crucifixion myth of 1 Cor. 2:6–8 is similarly docetic.62 The motif of the Archons’ ignorance would be explored in other iterations of the myth, and these allow us to fill in still more details. Perhaps the most startling of these is the report found across a range of second-century texts that Jesus was not crucified and did not die.63 Like the more familiar passion account, it is an exegetical tradition based again on a clever, albeit exceedingly literalistic, reading of the passion narrative at Mark 15:20–24: “Then they led him [Jesus] out to crucify him.

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They compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene … to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means ‘Place of a Skull’). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. And they crucified him.” If one followed the ordinary grammatical rules for determining the antecedent of the pronoun, then the “him” and the “he” refer to Simon, not Jesus. It was Simon who carried the cross; it was Simon who was brought to Golgotha; it was Simon who was offered the wine; and it was Simon who was crucified. That this was an early alt-reading of Mark is indicated by the attempts of Mark’s epigones, Matthew (27:32–37) and Luke (23:26–33), to correct Mark’s ambiguous grammar at this point.64 This version of the crucifixion myth emerges into the full light of day in the teachings of the second-century Alexandrian Gnostic Basilides. Although his own account no longer survives, the heresy-hunter Irenaeus described it in detail: The Father without birth and without name … sent his own firstborn Nous, he who is called Christ, to bestow deliverance on those who believe in him from the power of those who fashioned the cosmos. He appeared, then, on earth as a man … and performed miracles. For that reason he did not himself suffer death, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene, being compelled, carried the cross in his place, with the result that the latter [Simon], being transfigured by him [Jesus] … was crucified through ignorance and error, while Jesus himself received the form of Simon, and, standing by, laughed at them. For since he was an incorporeal power, and the Nous of the unborn Father, he transfigured himself as he pleased, and thus ascended to him who had sent him, deriding them, since he could not be laid hold of and was invisible to all. Those, then, who know these things have been freed from the Rulers who fashioned the cosmos.65 We can detect a number of key parallels with 1 Cor. 2:6–8, even though Christ is not actually crucified: (1) the theme of the ignorance of the powers in failing to recognize Christ, or to realize what they were actually doing; (2) their attempt to crucify him being the very means by which their control over the lower world was broken; and (3) that it is knowledge of this that constitutes redemption from enslavement to them. Another example of this version of the myth is found in the Second Treatise of the Great Seth of the Nag Hammadi library, probably dating from some time in the early third century. It offers yet another parallel to the Archons’ role in the crucifixion. Here Jesus himself declares:

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And the plan which [the Archons] devised about me to release their error and senselessness – I did not succumb to them as they had planned. But I was not afflicted at all … And I did not die in reality but in appearance … For my death which they think happened, (happened) to them in their error and blindness, since they nailed their man unto their death … Yes, they saw me; they punished me. It was another, their father, who drank the gall and vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. It was another on whom they placed the crown of thorns. But I was up above rejoicing over all the wealth of the Archons and the offspring of their error, of their empty glory. And I was laughing at their ignorance. And I subjected all their powers.66 Still another variant of the myth is found in the second-century Apocalypse of Peter, also part of the Nag Hammadi library, which has Peter seeing Jesus seized and crucified in a vision, but above the cross he sees one who is happy and laughing: “The Savior said to me, ‘He whom you see above the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. Only look at him and at me (and compare)!’”67 These examples provide a good indication of just how popular and widespread the gnostic myth of the crucifixion was. Much like its historicized counterpart, the gnostic myth, too, seems to have been generated exegetically. For example, the recurring motif of “laughter” and “derision,” appearing for the first time with Basilides, is likely based on a gnostic interpretation of Ps. 2:2–4, lines originally pertaining to God’s son, the Davidic king: The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers [lxx , ἄρχοντες] take counsel together, against yhwh [lxx , ὁ κύριος] and his Anointed [lxx , Χριστός], saying, “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; yhwh [lxx, ὁ κύριος] has them in derision.68 In its lxx rendering, Ps. 2:2–4 reads like a version of the gnostic crucifixion myth in nuce. With only a slight shift, the earthly “kings and rulers” become the hostile powers of the cosmos, who conspire against God and

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his Christ to establish their control over the lower world once and for all. Yet, in the very act of doing so, they manifest their ignorance and bring about their own demise. Not only are these powers no longer worthy of fear, but they have also become the objects of ridicule. Meanwhile, Christ has been enthroned in heaven (Ps. 2:6–7). In all these variations of the myth, including the one alluded to at 1 Cor. 2:6–8, the crucifixion is imagined as a cosmic drama, one in which neither the Romans nor the Judaeans (nor any other human actors) have a significant role to play. Since we can find only second- and third-century parallels to the crucifixion myth alluded to at 1 Cor. 2:6–8, it strains credulity to suppose that Paul could have written these lines. Our passage must be a non-Pauline intervention of the second century. Martin Widmann was right to regard it as non-Pauline, but he was wrong to attribute it to a “pneumatic group” of “Corinthian enthusiasts” who corrected what they saw as Paul’s distortion of their position. Our passage simply cannot be that early, no matter who is responsible for it. Moreover, there is nothing “pneumatic” or “enthusiast” about our passage; rather it is an example of Christian Gnosticism, of the sort we first encounter in the second century.69 What Widmann also failed to see is that there is nothing especially polemical (or ad Paulum) about our passage; it reads much more like commentary than a piece of ad hominem rhetoric.70 Whatever the conflict between Paul and the Corinthians – and this is crucial – our passage was not a part of it, but part of something quite different and far removed. This was not merely Widmann’s failing; it holds true for nearly all interpreters who intuitively recognize the thoroughly gnostic vocabulary and ideas of 1 Cor. 2:6–16, but feel compelled to conclude that they simply cannot be gnostic because, as everyone knows, Paul was anti-gnostic, and all the parallels are a century or more too late. Hence the construction of such odd and slippery terms as “enthusiasts,” “pneumatics,” and “proto-gnostics” to describe Paul’s Corinthian opponents, in order to distance Paul from such language and ideas, as well as their unflagging efforts to mine the writings of Philo and the wisdom literature of Hellenistic Judaism in an effort to find more suitable (read “Jewish”) parallels to our passage.71 That modern exegetical move (or scholarly legerdemain) only sets the problem in sharper relief, simply because the πνευματικός/ψυχικός distinction, like so much else in our passage, cannot be found anywhere in Philo, Wisdom, or any other Hellenistic Jewish text. Indeed, it cannot be found anywhere prior to its articulation among second-century Christian Gnostics. My approach has simply

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been to accept that the only meaningful comparanda for our passage are a century or more later than the putative date of 1 Corinthians, and then proceed to read 2:6–16 in light of them. But now it is time to face the consequences.

fac in g t h e c o ns equences On the basis of internal evidence and the profusion of later gnostic technical terms, I have argued that 1 Cor. 2:6–16 is a non-Pauline interpolation of the second century. One result of this reading is that Paul turns out not to be a Gnostic, pace Reitzenstein, but that is not the same thing as saying that Paul is “anti-gnostic.” Both propositions are anachronistic and ultimately beside the point. The more interesting and important consequence is the recognition that our passage was a second-century attempt to ventriloquize Paul, to make him say what he should have said – indeed, must have said – and to do so in a fashion not dissimilar to the way in which the modern guild of scholars continues to carry on the time-honoured task of Pauline commentary. This is not to say that there is not a good deal more Gnosticism lurking in 1 Corinthians, or a Gnostic Paul haunting the corpus paulinum, but, as was the case with our passage, these too are an imposition from a later period. And we do not have far to look to find its probable source: those Valentinian scholars of the second century, for whom Paul’s letters were a major focus of their commentarial endeavours, who succeeded in creating a Paul in their own image, and then who esteemed him as the chief architect of their mythmaking.72 Our passage is one small piece of that enterprise, which has managed by historical accident to survive as a page in the archive or dossier that only later would be called “1 Corinthians.” Finally, what can be said about the date of our passage? At a minimum, it must postdate 1 Clement (c. 100–140 ce ),73 whose author claims to know of a single letter of Paul to the Corinthians (1 Clem. 47.1–3), but who, curiously enough, seems unaware that Paul’s letter contained the very same “scripture” quotation (1 Cor. 2:9) that the author of 1 Clement also happened to cite, yet cited differently (1 Clem. 34.8).74 This omission is all the more puzzling considering the information the author supplies about Paul and Apollos at 1 Clem. 47.1–3, which makes certain that he had read 1 Cor. 1–4, and so should have known that Paul had cited the same “scripture” at 1 Cor. 2:9. That he cites the same “scripture” independently and differently suggests strongly that 1 Cor. 2:6–16

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was not in the edition of the letter known to the author of 1 Clement. In light of this, I am inclined to fix the date of the interpolation at some time around 140 ce , which also accords with most of the other comparanda we have found. All this casts a different light on the question of the “authenticity” of 1 Corinthians, and of the corpus paulinum more generally. None, save the most earnest of our colleagues, accepts the genuineness of any of the letters, acts, gospels, or apocalypses associated with allegedly first-century figures such as Peter, James, John, Thomas, Barnabas, Mark, Matthew, Luke, et al. On what basis, then, would one presume that (some of) the letters associated with the name “Paul” are authentic? Put differently, why should we suppose that we have genuine letters from Paul, but from no one else in the first century? What are the “criteria of authenticity” when it comes to Paul and his letters?75 This chapter has tried to address these questions, albeit indirectly. By recognizing that 1 Cor. 2:6–16 is an interpolation of the second century, we can see that individual letters were still under construction well into that century, and we can begin to discern how that building process worked. Already at a pre-collection stage, Paul’s “letters” were far from static or inert data, moving through time under the guardianship of vigilant Christian scribes.76 Rather, the materials out of which individual letters would later be constituted were still in flux, and provided occasions for innovative and improvisational interventions from a variety of sources, with a variety of interests, and in a variety of forms (e.g., emendations, deletions, glosses, interpolations, commentary, short narratives, and so on). As I have suggested, it would be better to think of “1 Corinthians” at the pre-collection stage as an active site or open file, more along the lines of an archive or dossier, and certainly not a unified, much less actual, letter.77 So conceived, the process that yielded the letter known as “1 Corinthians,” as well as the collection known as the corpus paulinum, would be analogous to the process of the composition of the gospels. At some point in the second century, materials of heterogeneous origin, date, and provenance began to be fashioned into a loose epistolary form and attributed to a figure from the first century. What would such a scenario imply about the authenticity of the very texts upon which Pauline scholarship is based? At a minimum it would challenge the current scholarly consensus that presumes it is in possession of six or seven of Paul’s authentic letters. It would also require greater circumspection on the part of scholars who would presume to read these letters as if they provided a gateway to the first century, as well as access to a “real” (viz., historical) first-century figure whose biography can be recovered.

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It would mean, in other words, that the corpus paulinum will no more yield a historical Paul than the gospels have yielded a historical Jesus. But we would surely be none the worse for that. no t e s 1 My translation is based on the Greek text of na 28, with one exception at 1 Cor. 2:14 (see following note). Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. 2 na 28 reads τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ θεοῦ (“of the Spirit of God”), but τοῦ θεοῦ (“of God”) is probably a later gloss. 3 “The section 2:6–16 … is a contradiction of [Paul’s] previous statements”; the transition to 3:1 is “forced” and “a break in the train of thought”; “the content of 2:6–16 is in substance not Christian” [!]; so Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Hermeneia, trans. James W. Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 57, 59n22. This passage, however, is only one of many inconcinnities in 1 Corinthians (cf., e.g., 10:1–22 [23]; 11:3–16; 12:31b–14:1a), which reads more like a dossier than an actual letter. More on this at the conclusion of the chapter. 4 οἱ σωζόμενοι and οἱ ἀπολλύμενοι (literally, “those who are being saved” and “those who are perishing”). 5 The concentration of first-person plural forms in 2:6–16 is striking. Notice the following sequence of verbs and pronouns: λαλοῦμεν (2:6), λαλοῦμεν (2:7), εἰς δόξαν ἡμῶν (2:7), ἡμῖν δέ (2:10), ἡμεῖς δέ … ἐλάβομεν … ἵνα εἰδῶμεν … ἡμῖν (2:12), λαλοῦμεν (2:13), ἡμεῖς δέ … ἔχομεν (2:16). Pace Brown, “Hidden Wisdom” (present volume), 186, this is not at all typical of Pauline diction. 6 Cf. e.g., Naasene Sermon (apud Hippolytus Haer. 5.8.21, 5.8.26); Justin the Gnostic (apud Hippolytus Haer. 5.24.2); Irenaeus Haer. 1.6.3; Gos. Truth 18.11–18; Gos. Phil. 60.15–25, 76.22–32. 7 The distinction between πνευματικός and ψυχικός, and the description of the former as τέλειος, is especially typical of Valentinian Gnosticism (see, e.g., Irenaeus Haer. 1.6.1–4, 1.7.5; Tertullian Val. 29; Clement Exc. 54.1, 56.3; Origen Cels. 5.61.17–18; Hyp. Arch. 87.15–20. 8 See, e.g., Judith L. Kovacs, “The Archons, the Spirit and the Death of Christ: Do We Need the Hypothesis of Gnostic Opponents to Explain 1 Corinthians 2.6–16?” in Apocalyptic and the New Testament: Essays in Honor of J. Louis Martyn, ed. Joel Marcus and Marion Soards, lnts 24 (Sheffield: jsot Press, 1989), 217–36. Her attempt to explain the language and ideas of 2:6–16 entirely in terms of Jewish apocalypticism is unpersuasive. 9 See, e.g., Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991).

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10 See, e.g., Ulrich Wilckens, Weisheit und Torheit: Ein exegetisch-religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu 1. Kor. 1 und 2, bht 26 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1959), 52–96; Dieter Lührmann, Das Offenbarungsverständnis bei Paulus und in paulinischen Gemeinden, wmant 16 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1964), 113–17; Walter Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth: An Investigation of the Letters to the Corinthians, trans. John E. Seely (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), 151–5; Birger A. Pearson, The PneumatikosPsychikos Terminology in 1 Corinthians: A Study in the Theology of Paul’s Corinthian Opponents, sblds 12 (Missoula: Scholars, 1973), 38, 82; Richard A. Horsley, “Pneumatikos vs. Psychikos: Distinctions of Spiritual Status among the Corinthians,” htr 69 (1976): 269–88; Todd E. Klutz, “Re-Reading 1 Corinthians after Rethinking Gnosticism,” jsnt 26 (2003): 193–216; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed., nicnt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014) 104–7, 125–7; and the survey in Oh-Young Kwon, “A Critical Review of Recent Scholarship on the Pauline Opposition and the Nature of Its Wisdom (σοφία) in 1 Corinthians 1–4,” c urbr 8 (2010): 386–427, esp. 392–400; see also Brown, “Hidden Wisdom,”169–92. 11 E. Earle Ellis, “‘Spiritual’ Gifts in the Pauline Community,” nts 20 (1974): 130; cf. E. Earle Ellis, “Traditions in 1 Corinthians,” nts 32 (1986): 481–502, esp. 490. 12 Martin Widmann, “1 Kor 2 6–16: Ein Einspruch gegen Paulus,” znw 70 (1979): 44–53, esp. 46, 50–3. Widmann refrains from calling Paul’s opponents “Gnostiker,” but believes that his analysis “has unburdened [Paul] of the ‘strange’ [fremdartige] statements of 2:6–16” (53). Alas, there is no accounting for theological taste. William O. Walker, Jr, Interpolations in the Pauline Letters, lnts 213 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 127–46, mounts a solid defence of Widmann’s case (absent the value judgment) over the objections of Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Interpolations in 1 Corinthians,” cbq 48 (1986): 81–94, esp. 81–4. 13 Walker, Interpolations, 140, misses an opportunity when he observes that “much of the terminology (as well as ideational content) in 2.6–16 is remarkably similar to what is found in later Gnosticism,” but then fails to pursue the implications of this. 14 Richard Reitzenstein, Die hellenistische Mysterienreligionen nach ihren Grundgedanken und Wirkungen, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1927), 348: “Paulus ist Gnostiker.” Appendix 16 (“Paulus als Pneumatiker,” 333–93) is an extended commentary on 2:6–16. 15 The first-person plural is neither an instance of the pluralis maiestatis nor a reference back to “Paul and Sosthenes,” mentioned at 1:1 (notice the following singular εὐχαριστῶ and παρακαλῶ at 1:4, 1:10).

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16 Pace the sermonizing of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, ab 32 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 169–70: Paul “simply means ‘we Christians.’ He is summoning … the Corinthian community (and modern readers) to reflect on … their common calling and conduct, which should be properly oriented to God’s saving wisdom.” Of one thing we may be certain: Paul was not summoning modern readers. 17 The Corinthians are addressed as ἀδελφοί both shortly before (2:1) and immediately after (3:1) 2:6–16. 18 Pace Brown, “Hidden Wisdom.” 19 Ellis, “‘Spiritual’ Gifts,” 130n5, comments on “the unity of [2:6–16] independent of its context.” 20 Cf. the similar understanding of the term at Jude 19: ψυχικοί, πνεῦμα μὴ ἔχοντες. This fausse lettre is usually dated to c. 150 ce. 21 σάρκινοι is immediately followed by σαρκικοί at 3:3, with little difference in meaning. Paul must have realized that the -ικοί form of the adjective sounded better than σάρκινοι as a contrast to πνευματικοί. But then why not simply have used ψυχικοί? 22 See Rom. 8:4–6, 8:9, 8:13; 1 Cor. 5:5; 2 Cor. 7:1; Gal. 3:3, 4:29, 5:17; cf. the discussion of these terms in Ryan S. Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy” (present volume), 281–5. 23 See Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains” (present volume), 334–56. 24 Notice that many of my conclusions are at odds with those of Brown, “Hidden Wisdom” and Williams, “Imperialization of the Remains” in this volume. See now Brown’s postscript to his chapter. In the initial version Brown failed to consider whether 1 Cor. 2:6–16 might be an interpolation, even though several scholars had cast doubt on its authenticity. 25 I reproduce the list compiled by Walker, Interpolations, 137–8, who in turn draws on Ellis, “‘Spiritual’ Gifts,” 130n5 and “Traditions in 1 Corinthians,” 499n69. 26 διδακτοί occurs at John 6:45 (quoting Isa. 54:13); πνευματικῶς is found at Rev. 11:8. Commentators often cite Jas. 2:1 as a parallel to ὁ κύριος τῆς δόξης, but it is inexact. 27 Cf. οὐκ ἠδυνήθην λαλῆσαι at 3:1 with λαλοῦμεν at 2:6, 2:7, 2:13. 28 Pace Brown, “Hidden Wisdom.” 29 Pace Walker, Interpolations, 136: “It is just possible that 3.1 in its entirety represents a scribe’s attempt (or even that of the actual interpolator) to link the interpolation (2.6–16) both to what precedes (2.1–5) and to what follows (3.2–4).” On the view I am offering, the reference to πνευματικοί at 3:1 would have been its first occurrence in 1 Cor. Apart from its use in our passage (twice, along with the exceptional πνευματικῶς), it is otherwise found only at 1 Cor.

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14:37 (sing.) and Gal. 6:1 (plur.), which suggests that it was not an important word in Paul’s vocabulary as a substantive. Roy Kotansky proposes to me that 1:21 would make better sense if emended to “wisdom of the world”: “For since, by the wisdom , the world did not know God through its wisdom, God was pleased through the foolishness of the kerygma to save those who believe.” Schellenberg (“On Pauline Indeterminacy”) might see this polyvalence in light of Paul’s “indeterminacy,” but the clustering of radically different meanings into distinct pericopae of (ostensibly) the same letter suggests something else is afoot. See esp. Col. 1:25–28, 2:2–3; Eph. 3:2–6; and the non-Pauline interpolation at Rom. 16:25–26. “Because they are (only) spiritually discerned.” This is the only instance in Paul of a causal ὅτι after γνῶναι (contrast Rom. 6:6; 1 Cor. 3:20; 2 Cor. 8:9, 13:6; Gal. 3:7; Phil. 1:12, 2:2). Or “explain spiritual things to spiritual people.” It is not clear whether πνευματικοῖς at 2:13 refers to λόγοις or is a substantive referring to “spiritual people.” In either case, each is based on the principle that “like is known by like,” and thus underscores the cosmic and anthropological dualism of our passage. Despite being introduced by the formula typical for such quotations (“as it is written [in the Scriptures]”), 1 Cor. 2:9 is the only instance in Paul for which no corresponding passage can be found in any canonical or apocryphal writing. Origen (Comm. Matt. 27.9) attributed the quotation to the “Secrets of Elijah the Prophet,” which some scholars presume is a reference to the Apocalypse of Elijah, a composite work surviving in two Coptic recensions from the fourth or fifth century ce . However, the quotation is nowhere to be found there. A version of the quotation appears in the mid-second century at Pseudo-Philo Bib. Ant. 26.13, but without the third line, “(all the) things that God has prepared for those who love him.” Otherwise, it appears exclusively in Christian texts of the second and third centuries. Curiously, however, none of them has the quotation exact, and none refers to Paul. Of these, 1 Clem. 34.8 comes the closest, attributing the quotation to “the Scripture” (ἡ γραφή at 34.6), yet it cites the third line differently: “as many things as the Lord has prepared for those who wait for him” (cf. 2 Clem. 11.7, 14.5; Mart. Pol. 2.3). This discrepancy is more than a little odd, since the author of 1 Clem. knew 1 Corinthians (47.1–3). Other versions of the quotation (without attribution and without the third line) find their way into the mouths of Jesus (Gos. Thom. 17; Gos. Jud. 47.10–13), Thomas (Acts Thom. 36), and Justin the Gnostic (apud Hippolytus Haer. 5.19.1). At the end of the Ascension of Isaiah, an angel tells the prophet that “you have seen what no one born of flesh has seen” (11.34), and in one Latin version the angel

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continues, “what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, how great are the things God has prepared for all those who love him” (see M.A. Knibb, “Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth, 2 vols. [New York: Doubleday, 1985], 2:176n.b2, slightly altered; cf. Clement Protr. 10.94.4). Could the Ascension of Isaiah be the “scripture” to which 1 Cor. 2:9 refers? Whatever the actual source of the quotation, it is safe to assume that it did not circulate before the second century; that is, at a date considerably later than the putative date of 1 Corinthians. Hippolytus Haer. 5.6.4, reports that those who “called themselves Gnostics say that they alone knew the depths” (τὰ βάθη); cf. Irenaeus Haer. 1.21.2, 2.22.1, 2.22.3. God himself is called “depth” (βάθος) at Act. Thom. 143; Hippolytus Haer. 6.30.7 (Valentinians). The reference to τὰ βαθέα τοῦ Σατανᾶ at Rev. 2:24 mocks these claims to esoteric knowledge by sarcastically substituting Satan for God. “And I, when I came to you, brothers, came not with superiority of speech or wisdom (οὐ καθ᾽ ὑπεροχὴν λόγου ἢ σοφίας), proclaiming to you the testimony of God.” The well-supported alternative reading μαρτύριον (“testimony”; cf. 1.6) is to be preferred to μυστήριον (“mystery”), which is a later assimilation to 2:7. This is the only occurrence of this phrase in Paul. Here the “Aeons” are not temporal periods (i.e., “this age” and “the age to come”), as at 1:20 and 3:18; rather they are a spatial-ontological reference to a multi-storied cosmos. The closest parallels are again to be found in the deutero-Pauline letters (see Col. 1:26; Eph. 2:2, 3:9; 1 Tim. 1:17; and the non-Pauline interpolation at Rom. 16:25; cf. Heb. 1:2, 11:3; Rev. 15:3 [v.l.]). As, for instance, the quasi-creedal information Paul relates at 1 Cor. 15:3–7 purports to be (“For I handed on to you … what I in turn had received: that Christ died,” etc.). The contrast between revelation and tradition could not be sharper. The esotericism expressed here is once again more typical of the deutero-Pauline letters than the authentic ones (see Col. 1:26; Eph. 3:5, 3:9; 2 Tim. 1:9–10; Tit. 1:2–3; and the non-Pauline interpolation at Rom. 16:25–26). Notice that there is no mention of “weakness” along with “foolishness” here, as there was at 1:25–27. See 2:14–16, once again based on the principle that “like is known by like.” Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 175, lists fourteen scholars who support the first option (including himself), twelve for the second, and seven for the third. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 176. Otherwise, Paul never refers to Christ’s “glory” before his resurrection. That means that here “Lord of Glory” may be akin to “Lord of glorious Light,” rather than to “glorified Lord” in a post-resurrection sense.

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46 This was also the view of Tertullian Marc. 5.6 and Origen Princ. 3.2.1. To the best of my knowledge, the designation “Archons of this Aeon” occurs only in our passage. The closest parallel is found at Pistis Sophia 1.20, 1.31 (early third century ce ), where “Archons of the Aeons” (plural) refer to supernatural powers stationed at the gates of the twelve levels of the cosmos. For ἄρχοντες in this spatial-ontological sense, see, e.g., Ignatius Smyrn. 6.1; Acts of John 114; Acts Thom. 10, 143. Such entities, however, are referred to by various monikers (“Authorities,” “Celestials,” “Evil Spirits,” “Principalities,” “Powers,” “World-Rulers,” et al.); see further David E. Aune, “Archon,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn et al., 2nd rev. ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 82–5, esp. 84–5, for a concise summary of their role in gnostic cosmologies. It is likely that the “Archons of this Aeon” are to be understood as the subordinates of the one who is called “the God of this Aeon” at 2 Cor. 4:4, almost certainly referring to Satan. Once again, the only parallels occur in significantly later texts. See, e.g., Eph. 2:2 (“Archon of the power of the air”); John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11 (“Archon of this/the Cosmos”); Ignatius Eph. 17.1, 19.1; Magn. 1.3; Trall. 4.2; Rom. 7.1; Phld. 6.2 (“Archon of this Aeon”), and Acts Thom. 143 (“the Archon”). 47 I must emphasize that I am referring only to the wildly imaginative, yet infinitesimally small, world of texts, not to what was actually happening, or not happening, on the ground. Given the near total absence of cross iconography prior to the Constantinian era, there was an overwhelming consensus about the crucifixion of Jesus: for most Christians it was a non-event and consequently did not matter. On this, see esp. Graydon F. Snyder, Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine, rev. ed. (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003), 60 et passim. The silence of the archaeological record in this case is a stark warning about extrapolating from texts ideas widely shared by the rank and file, or by the so-called “communities” supposedly lurking behind the texts we read. 48 Justin Dial. 36.5–6. 49 What I mean by the fourth point is that the cosmicized version of the crucifixion myth was just as much driven (or fabricated) by exegesis as its historicized counterpart (on the latter, see Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1990], 220–30). 50 The composition, language, and date of the Ascension of Isaiah are still much debated. In my view, it comprises two, originally independent, sections: the “martyrdom” of Isaiah (chs 1–5) and the “ascension” or “vision” of Isaiah (chs 6–11). The latter cannot be earlier than the mid-second century ce and was likely the product of Gnostic Christian circles (see Andrew K. Helmbold, “Gnostic Elements in the ‘Ascension of Isaiah,’” nts 18 [1972]: 222–7, esp.

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227; cf. Markus Vinzent, “Give and Take amongst Second Century Authors: The Ascension of Isaiah, the Epistle of the Apostles, and Marcion of Sinope,” StPatr 50 [2011]: 105–29). These chapters were originally composed in Greek, but survive complete only in Ethiopic. There are also two recensions of a Latin version and a Slavonic version, as well as some Greek and Coptic fragments. With slight alterations, I follow the translation of Knibb, “Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah,” 156–76, which is based on the Ethiopic text. Ascen. Isa. 9.13–17. On the gnostic motif of Christ’s hidden descent through successive transformations, see Irenaeus Haer. 1.23.3 (Simon Magus and Menander); 1.24.5–6 (Basilides); 1.30.12 (Ophites and Sethians); Treat. Seth 56.21–57.6; Trim. Prot. 49.2–20; cf. Ep. Apos. 13. See Ascen. Isa. 10.11: “None of the angels of that world shall know that you (are) the Lord with me in the seven heavens,” and 11.16: Christ’s advent “was hidden from all the heavens and all the princes and all the gods of this world.” Ascen. Isa. 7.9, 7.11 make clear that the “God of that world” refers to “Satan,” who is also called “Samael.” He is elsewhere called the “Archon of this world” (10.29; cf. 2.4, 4.2, 4.4) and the “Adversary” (11.19), whose minions are referred to as the “angels of the air” (10.30) or the “angels of the Firmament” (11.23). The Greek word ἄρχων (τοῦ κόσμου τούτου) almost certainly lies behind the Ethiopic ነጉሥ and Latin princeps. Ascen. Isa. 10.27–31. Ascen. Isa., 11.2–22. Not only does this interpolated material differ in style and content, but it is also found in only one branch of the manuscript tradition, the one represented by the Ethiopic translation. Both the Latin and Slavonic versions omit the whole of 11.2–22, and replace them with a short summary of the earthly appearance of “one like a son of man,” who dwelt on the earth unrecognized. Ascen. Isa. 11.19. Ascen. Isa. 11.20–21. Ascen. Isa., 11.23–33. Upon Christ’s ascent, Isaiah reports, “all the angels of the Firmament, and Satan, saw him and worshipped.” Christ’s “glory” is a pronounced theme, see esp. Ascen. Isa. 9.27, 9.38, 10.14, 11.29. The conception of a multi-storied cosmos is also the one presupposed in our passage with its references to the “Aeons” and “this Aeon” (1 Cor. 2:6–8). Notice as well that the unknown “scripture” cited at 1 Cor. 2:9 appears at Ascen. Isa. 11.34 (see note 35 above). For this idea, see the roughly contemporary 1 Pet. 3:22. See Ascen. Isa. 11.7–9, 11.17 on the birth and infancy of Christ, who “sucked the breast like an infant … that he might not be recognized.” Cf. Ignatius Eph. 19.1: “the virginity of Mary and her giving birth were hidden from the Archon of this Aeon, as was also the death of the Lord.”

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62 See already Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols, trans. Gerhard Krodel (New York: Scribners, 1951), 1:175: “The Gnostic idea that Christ’s earthly garment of flesh was the disguise in consequence of which the world-rulers failed to recognize him … lurks behind 1 Cor. 2.8.” 63 Ignatius’s polemic (Smyrn. 2.1–2; Trall. 10.1) against this claim indicates that it was widespread in the textual world of the mid-second century. For the date of Ignatius’s letters, see now T.D. Barnes, “The Date of Ignatius,” ExpT 120 (2008): 119–30. 64 John (19:17) sidesteps the problem completely by having Jesus carry his cross all by himself. 65 Irenaeus Haer. 1.24.4. 66 Treat. Seth 55.10–56.20 (trans. Roger A. Bullard and Joseph A. Gibbons, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson, rev. ed. [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988], 365, slightly altered); cf. 51.24–31 for the “disturbance” among the Archons at Christ’s descent, indicating that they knew something was afoot, but not enough to prevent them from collaborating unwittingly in their own subjugation. 67 Apoc. Pet. 81.16–24 (trans. James Brashler and Roger A. Bullard, in Nag Hammadi Library, 377, slightly altered). Various other Nag Hammadi texts reflect a similar perspective, see 2 Apoc. Jas. 31.15–22; Great Pow. 41.14–42.3; Ep. Pet. Phil. 81.3–21, but it is not limited to Nag Hammadi; cf., e.g., Acts of John 97–99. 68 See Robert M. Grant, “Gnostic Origins and the Basilideans of Irenaeus,” vc 13 (1959): 121–5; cf. Guy G. Stroumsa, “Christ’s Laughter: Docetic Origins Reconsidered,” jecs 12 (2004): 267–88, who traces this motif to the sacrifice of Isaac, whose name means “he will laugh.” The two explanations are not mutually exclusive. 69 As a matter of fact, we do not have any primary textual evidence for Christian Gnosticism earlier than the second century, despite the artificial lineages created by both the heresy-hunters and the Gnostics themselves to link up with first-century figures like Simon Magus or Paul. These genealogies, too, are second-century fabrications. 70 Widmann referred to it as “a longer gloss” rather than an interpolation, but it is much too long to be a “gloss,” by any definition of the term. In any case, Widmann is rather vague about how 2:6–16 wound up as part of 1 Corinthians. 71 See note 10 above; cf. Widmann, “1 Kor 2 6–16,” 53. 72 To be clear, my point is not that 1 Cor. 2:6–16 influenced the Valentinians, but that the Valentinians “influenced” Paul. Yet this was not only true of the Valentinians. “Paul” (or better, “Pauls”) was (were) a literary fabrication of the second century, and in general assumed three separate generic forms: epistolary, commentarial, and narratival. Cf. the similar second-century creations of

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“Peters,” “Johns,” “Thomases,” “Jameses,” et al. Whether a historical Paul can be disentangled from any of this is a question to which I return shortly. Although 1 Clement has customarily been dated to 95–96 ce , it was almost certainly written later. See now Clare K. Rothschild, New Essays on the Apostolic Fathers, wunt 375 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 46, 55, 65, 82, 94–6, who proposes “100–140 ce ,” based on 1 Clements’ awareness not only of 1 Corinthians and other parts of the corpus paulinum (including Hebrews), but also of Marcion. “As many things as the Lord has prepared for those who wait for him,” instead of “(all the) things that God has prepared for those who love him (see note 35 above). Earlier I referred to some passages in 1 Corinthians that sounded as if they belonged to a “real” letter written by a “real” Paul to “real” Corinthians. But such a just-folks approach simply does not wash. That some of the letters (or parts of letters) attributed to Paul “sound authentic” is not an argument. Need it be said that authenticity is the goal of every forger? Williams (“Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains”) describes part of the process whereby earlier letter collections were standardized into the corpus paulinum. 1 Corinthians is a hotchpotch that not even the most generous reading can rectify (see Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 2–4, though in the end he predictably comes down on the side of unity. His explanation, however, that “the existing breaks can be explained from the circumstances of [1 Corinthians’] composition,” is merely asserted and unpersuasive). Doubts have been raised repeatedly about the unity and integrity of each of the so-called authentic letters (with the exception of Philemon), although this has not been the case with any of the so-called deutero-Pauline letters. That alone implies that the so-called authentic letters are not unified documents in their present form and did not become “letters” until they were fashioned as such in the second century. The deutero-Pauline letters are parasitic on that literary process. To label 1 Cor. 2:6–16 an interpolation, then, may be a misnomer. For it to be such would require that 1 Corinthians have actually been a real letter, or at least unified and stable enough to admit of being interpolated. I no longer think that a likely scenario. I even doubt whether it is correct to refer to 1 Corinthians as a collection of letters from which real letters might be disarticulated. At least scholars have not achieved a consensus on this question. On the other hand, to think of 1 Corinthians as a dossier would allow us to imagine how a passage like 2:6–16 could have wound up a piece of it. Rather than being the work of an interpolator, it is more likely that a collector or redactor, who was assembling the dossier into the loose form of a letter, was the one responsible for both the inclusion of our passage and its present location in 1 Corinthians.

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Imperialization of the Remains: How Church Fathers Standardized the Pauline Corpus Kieren Williams

None of the extant manuscripts containing fragments or substantial portions of what we now refer to as the Pauline corpus provides us with an original set of letters. How many letters were written or dictated by Paul, from whom and to whom letters were written, the various reasons for creating letter collections, and the subsequent changes made in their organization and content, all lie hidden within centuries of rubble left behind by scribal and editorial activity. When we restrict ourselves to the earliest evidence, all that we have is (a) a handful of fragmentary and damaged manuscripts that are dated, at the earliest, to the late second or early third century; and (b) a handful of comments made by early Church Fathers about the Pauline letters collection, as reported by later ecclesiastical writers found in even later manuscripts. A significant change, however, occurs in the fourth century – a change that would appear to address the dearth, damage, and differences found in the earlier fragmentary evidence. Codex Sinaiticus (360 ce), which contains a more extensive letter collection than any found in the second and third century manuscripts, appears. Along with other fourth- and fifth-century manuscripts that also contain a similar fourteen letter collection, these later manuscripts form the basis for the Pauline letters found in the modern critical text of the New Testament, considered the “more original text.” Pauline biographers rely on this text, but when confronted with obvious differences in form, content, and theology between the individual letters, they create a subset of letters: the authentic letters of Paul. The modern critical text of the New Testament claims to provide its reader with the one text and its variants, and the set of authentic letters provides the Pauline biographer

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with what “Paul really wrote” in contrast to the text of pseudonymous and non-Pauline letters. The use of this subset of authentic letters as the “data” source for constructing a Pauline biography is problematic because reliance on later manuscripts obstructs our view of the uniqueness of earlier sources, sidelines changes that may have occurred over the centuries, invites us to subscribe to the existence of the supposedly “more original” text, and leads us to value a set of unvarnished letters written by Paul over the differences that existed earlier. Reliance on later manuscripts allows us to claim more certainty in our interpretations and biographical pictures, but that certainty is the outcome of privileging later uniformity over earlier difference, and “curing” the vulnerability of the evidence (fragments, tears, and missing pages) by emphasizing later manuscripts. What would I find, I wondered, if I attempted to read differently, by (a) prioritizing individual pre-fourth-century manuscripts and comments of early Church Fathers; (b) comparing these sources with post-third-century sources; and (c) examining possible reasons for the changes in the letter collections that occurred? What collections of letters would I find? As is evident in the title of this chapter, I have concluded that the ecclesiastical writers, beginning with Tertullian (and likely even earlier) responded to differences in the shape of various collections of letters they encountered by putting the letters into an organizational shape that stood in line with their imperialist vision, in the words of Irenaeus, the supremacy of a “Catholic Church [which] possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world.”1 A Church that imagines that uniform universality is the foundation of supremacy needs its churches, apostles, and texts to speak with one voice. When the letters in collections they encountered included more differences than their vision allowed, they corrected such differences and created a standardized Pauline corpus, organized in such a way that it was an icon of the Church’s universality. Given that the Pauline letters of the modern critical text and the subset known as the “authentic letters of Paul” are both derived from this standardized corpus, the authentic letters we use to create Pauline biographies cannot help us construct the “real” Paul because they are based on imperialized remains.2 The practice of Pauline biography that I learned from Leif Vaage focuses on unsettling the narrative about the life of Paul. In the words of Adolf Deissmann, that narrative has wrongfully rendered him “a parchment saint, unacquainted with the world,” by making him “disappear behind the [theological] system.”3 Because that (academic) theological system is grounded in the values of the dominant class (including

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strength over vulnerability, mind over body, certainty over uncertainty, uniformity over difference, and unity over diversity), it has traditionally churned out versions of the historical life of Paul that reflect these values. Many of Leif’s students and colleagues, as Christopher B. Zeichmann has noted, have challenged such constructions.4 I offer this chapter as a contribution to this valuable project, proposing that it is important to examine how these values affect not only our interpretations but also our methodologies. The study upon which this chapter is based originated in an unanswered question that has haunted me. Why do we construct biographies of the “real” Paul from a set of authentic letters that is both (a) unattested in any manuscript and (b) derived not from the earliest evidence but from the modern critical text that relies heavily on relatively later manuscripts? To answer these questions, I describe what I encountered when I examined the earliest manuscripts alongside the texts of ecclesiastical writers, searching for any clues about early collections of letters. First, I describe two of the earliest collections of letters. Based on my comparison of these collections with the collection that Tertullian described and aligned with the “true tradition of the Church,” I became curious about the ecclesiastical writers’ (not just Tertullian) investment in (a) a set of letters written to only seven churches and (b) a set of letters that Tertullian claims were intended for “ecclesiastical discipline.” The inclusion of these letters, I demonstrate, created a multi-category corpus of thirteen letters, a number that seems to have concerned later ecclesiastical writers, given the (re)introduction of the Letter to the Hebrews, these ecclesiastical writers’ investment in the symbolism of the number fourteen, and the standardization of a Pauline corpus of fourteen letters.

t wo o f t h e e a r l ie s t collecti ons Tertullian attributed one of the earliest collections of letters to Marcion, the collection he referenced and described in book 5 of his apologetic work Adversus Marcionem (207–209 ce ). According to the information provided by Tertullian, this collection contained letters to eight addressees, arranged in this order: Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, Thessalonians, Laodiceans, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon.5 From Tertullian’s discussion of the content of these letters, it can be inferred that these letters corresponded more or less with the letters that we find in extant manuscripts (with the exception of Laodiceans, which corresponds to the letter that is otherwise known as Ephesians).6 This point reveals that the collection (with the exception of Galatians) was ordered

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stichometrically (i.e., according to decreasing length).7 This formally neutral way of ordering the letters suggests that all the letters were equally important, except for Galatians, which stands out in front. Although Tertullian refers to these letters as epistuli Pauli, there is nothing about the arrangement of Marcion’s collection itself that emphasizes Pauline authorship.8 Whatever title the collection may have had (Tertullian does not mention one), the consistent pattern of the titles of the letters and their neutral arrangement in a single category make this a collection of “letters to churches” (church understood here as an ekklesia, an assembly of Christ-followers). I say more about Philemon, which has the title of a person rather than a church, later. A similar collection of letters appears in the codex manuscript P46, which is dated 200–225 ce .9 Like Marcion’s collection, it includes letters to eight different addressees. Apart from Romans, which is missing its title, the titles identify the intended recipients of the letters, and follow a consistent pattern: “To the Hebrews,” “To the Corinthians A,” “To the Corinthians B,” “To the Ephesians,” “To the Galatians,” “To the Colossians,” “To the Philippians,” and “To the Thessalonians.”10 These titles, according to Edgar Battad Ebojo, were “part of the main hand’s” work and “not added later,” indicating that the titles attached to the letters were an integral part of the collection at the point of transcription.11 The letters in this collection also seem to have been ordered stichometrically, though the order is slightly different from the one in Adversus Marcionem.12 Again, on the basis of the arrangement of the letters in the extant portions of the manuscript, as well as the consistent pattern of the titles, we can infer that the collection constituting P46 also contained only one category of letters – letters to eight assemblies of Christ-followers. It is estimated that, at one time, P46 consisted of 104 sheets, but only 86 now survive. It is generally accepted that six or seven leaves at the beginning and the ending are lost: everything before Rom. 5:17 and after 1 Thess. 5:8.13 On the basis of what remains, it is reasonable to infer that the beginning of the manuscript contained the first portion of Romans, but it is unclear what would have followed 1 Thessalonians. Some scholars have attempted to fill in the lacunae by recourse to later manuscripts. For example, although there would not have been enough space on the seven missing leaves at the end of the codex to contain all of 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Jeremy Duff, noting that the scribe started compressing the text in the final third of the extant manuscript, argues that the scribe always intended to include all fourteen letters now contained in the modern critical text.14 Ebojo

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has persuasively challenged Duff concerning the number of missing pages, and his ascription of the scribe’s intentions from the compression of text.15 Not only is the pattern of compression inconsistent, he argued, but even with the compression there would still not have been enough space for all five of the missing letters. Furthermore, his thorough examination of an ink residue and other characteristics of the manuscript lead him to conclude that there are only six missing pages at the beginning and end of the manuscript, and that the title ΠΡΟC ΘΕCCΑΛΟΝΕΙΚΕΙC B had been present in this codex. This suggests that the “pages at the back contained the text of 2 Thess. 1.9b–3.18” and there was insufficient room for 1–2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.16 In other words, the most reasonable inference is that the manuscript contained only 2 Thessalonians among the ostensibly “missing” letters. In summary, these two early letter collections both consisted of only one category of letters: letters addressed to eight different assemblies of Christ-followers (i.e., churches), arranged primarily in stichometric order. Although the two collections are similar, there are also a number of differences between them. These similarities and differences are highlighted below (addressees shared in common between the two collections are in italics). The Collection That Tertullian Attributes to Marcion: Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, Thessalonians, Laodiceans, Colossians, Philippians, Philemon The Collection That Appears in P46: Romans, Hebrews, Corinthians (two letters), Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians (likely two letters). In the following sections, I demonstrate how the differences were addressed, how the letter addressed to the Laodiceans became the letter “to the Ephesians,” and how Philemon and Hebrews were given new positions in the standardized Pauline corpus, at least in part, as a result of ecclesiastical investments.

e ccl e sias t ic a l in v e s t m e n t i n s even churches A collection of letters to eight churches, such as we find in the two collections above, is at odds with the views of many of the ecclesiastical writers from the third and fourth centuries. They are fixated on seven churches.

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According to the twelfth-century commentator Dionysius Bar-Salibi, for example, Hippolytus, in his commentary on Revelation (early third century ce ), stated that Paul, like John of Patmos, wrote to seven churches: “Hippolytus says that in writing to seven Churches, [John] writes just as Paul wrote thirteen letters, but wrote them to seven Churches. That to the Hebrews he does not judge to be Paul’s, but perhaps Clement’s.”17 Hippolytus gives a nod to Pauline authorship, but Cyprian, in the first book of his Testimony against the Jews (250 ce ), focuses on the prevalence and symbolism of the number seven in the scriptures: “Paul wrote to seven churches; and the Apocalypse sets forth seven churches, that the number seven may be preserved; as in the seven days in which God made the world; as the seven angels who stand and go in and out before the face of God, as Raphael the angel says in Tobit; and the sevenfold lamp in the tabernacle of witness; and the seven eyes of God, which keep watch over the world; and the stone with seven eyes, as Zechariah says; and the seven spirits; and the seven candlesticks in the Apocalypse; and the seven pillars upon which Wisdom hath builded her house in Solomon.”18 Victorinus of Pettau (d. 306 ce ), in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, mentions that not only did Paul write to seven churches, but he wrote to only seven, specifically limiting communication to only seven churches (even though others existed) so that the number seven could be preserved. Any other letters Paul may have written, says Victorinus, were letters to individuals: And he called each of the seven churches expressly by name and wrote an epistle to each, not because they were the only churches around nor because they were the most important, but because what he says to one, he says to all. Indeed, it makes no difference at all whether someone addresses a detachment of only a few soldiers or whether he addresses all directly, for through the detachment he speaks to the entire army. Accordingly, whether in Asia or whether throughout the whole world, Paul instructed all seven named churches, and the seven churches are the one catholic church. First indeed, in order that he might preserve that very number, he addressed seven of the churches and no more, but wrote to the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, and Colossians. Afterwards, he wrote to individuals, so as not to exceed the number of seven churches.19 According to Victorinus of Pettau, Paul restricted himself to writing to seven churches because the number seven symbolized the whole church. In a similar line of reasoning, the Muratorian Fragment (unknown

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date)20 also states that Paul wrote to only seven churches because seven is needed for proof that there is only one Church that covers the whole earth: “The blessed apostle himself, following the example of his predecessor John, writes by name to only seven churches in the following sequence: to the Corinthians first, to the Ephesians second, to the Philippians third, to the Colossians fourth, to the Galatians fifth, to the Thessalonians sixth, to the Romans seventh. It is true that once more to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians for the sake of admonition, yet it is clearly recognizable that there is one Church spread throughout the extent of the earth. For John also in the Apocalypse, though he writes to seven churches, nevertheless speaks to all.”21 For these writers, the number seven symbolizes the unity, completeness, universality, and supremacy of the Church that spreads across the whole earth. Paul, by writing to specifically seven churches, was writing to the Church throughout the whole world. There were, of course, more than seven churches (as Victorinus of Pettau indicated) and the ecclesiastical writers knew of additional letters. The Muratorian Fragment, for instance, states that “there is current also [an epistle] to the Laodiceans, [and] another to the Alexandrians, [both] forged in Paul’s name to [further] the heresy of Marcion, and several others which cannot be received into the catholic church – for it is not fitting that gall be mixed with honey.”22 According to Nils Alstrup Dahl, the notion of letters to seven churches even found its way into prefaces to the Pauline letters in the Vulgate.23 Tertullian found a Letter to the Laodiceans in Marcion’s collection. The Muratorian Fragment also knew of such a letter and described it as a forgery. Codex Fuldensis (sixth century), based on the Latin Vulgate, also included a version of a Letter to the Laodiceans among a set of letters to eight churches. Whatever the history of this letter might have been, we know that Tertullian, when confronted with a collection containing letters to eight churches (including Laodiceans), claimed that the letter was actually written to the Ephesians. Tertullian charges that Marcion deliberately changed its title: “We have it on the true tradition of the Church, that this epistle was sent to the Ephesians, not to the Laodiceans. Marcion, however, was very desirous of giving it the new title (of Laodiceans), as if he were extremely accurate in investigating such a point.”24 Tertullian’s appeal to the “true tradition of the Church” over his observation of Marcion’s attempt to be “extremely accurate” suggests that there was nothing in the text itself that indicated to whom the letter was addressed.25 However, by asserting that Marcion was responsible for introducing the title “to the Laodiceans,” Tertullian was able to arbitrarily label his own collection more original,

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cast doubt on the letter’s existence, and remove one of the differences between his preferred collection of letters and Marcion’s. Furthermore, should his readers disagree with his change, he claimed that titles didn’t matter: “But of what consequence are the titles, since in writing to a certain church the apostle did in fact write to all?”26 Although the presence of a letter either to the Laodiceans or the Ephesians does not alter the number of letters in Marcion’s collection, Tertullian’s statements open the door to the thought that ecclesiastical writers might have been more interested in the “true tradition of the Church” than in the features of a given text. Marcion, according to Tertullian, had also included a letter to Philemon in his collection of letters to churches. This surprised Tertullian because the letter was written “to one individual” (ad unum hominem) and belonged instead in a set of letters to individuals that “treat of ecclesiastical discipline.”27 Most scholars have agreed with Tertullian’s assessment of Philemon, but the letter was appropriately placed among the letters to churches. Despite Tertullian’s claim, the letter is not addressed to one individual, but to many: Philemon, Apphia, Archippus, and the ekklesia that is hosted by one of these Christ-workers (Phlm. 1–2). Because the most important addressee of a letter was usually (though not always) listed first,28 and the voice of the letter speaks to the singular “you,” “the brother,” it is not surprising that Tertullian characterized the letters as he did. However, Sara B.C. Winter offers a compelling argument that the inclusion of multiple addressees indicates the public nature of the letter, and therefore concludes that the ekklesia is the recipient of the letter. Even though Tertullian did not explicitly appeal to the symbolism of the number seven, his re-characterization of Philemon removed the letter from among the letters to churches and ensured that Marcion’s distinct collection now resembled his: a collection of letters to seven churches.29 This brings us to the question of the letter to the Hebrews. In De pudicitia 20.1–5 (210 ce ), Tertullian indicates that he knows of the letter but thinks it was written by Barnabas.30 He also makes no mention of it in Adversus Marcionem, so it is reasonable to infer that Hebrews was also not present in Marcion’s collection. Nor is it mentioned in the Muratorian Fragment. Eusebius of Caesarea (early fourth century ce), however, states that there were some who rejected the letter to the Hebrews, “saying that it is disputed by the Church of Rome, on the ground that it was not written by Paul.”31 In other words, there were mixed opinions about its status. As stated earlier, the letter to the Hebrews is positioned between Romans and 1 Corinthians in P46 – one of the earliest collections. In P13 (225–250 ce ), it most likely followed Romans.32 In the exemplar of Codex Vaticanus it was positioned between Galatians

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and Ephesians.33 William H.P. Hatch also notes that a Syrian canon list composed around the year 400 ce also placed Hebrews among the letters to churches, as did later Syriac and Coptic manuscripts, and also the Syriac version of Athanasius’s thirty-ninth paschal letter (367 ce ).34 Despite its earlier and repeated appearance among the set of letters to churches, fourth-century Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus placed the Letter to the Hebrews after 2 Thessalonians, at the end of the letters to churches rather than among them. Though the letter is addressed to an assembly of Christ-followers and is included, its position at the end (and outside the category) seems to suggest that the letter was still considered important, but not among the letters to churches. In other collections, including the modern critical text of the New Testament, Hebrews stands at the end of the collection, after Philemon. If Pauline authorship was really the sticking point, why did the Letter to the Hebrews appear anywhere in the Pauline corpus? Perhaps Jerome (400 ce ) provides a clue in this statement: “The apostle Paul writes to seven churches (for the eighth epistle – that to the Hebrews – is not generally counted in with the others).”35 Jerome does not say that Hebrews does not appear at all – just that it is not counted with the letters to the seven churches. In other words, Paul writes to only seven churches when Hebrews is not included. The placements of Hebrews among the letters to churches, and later between the category of letters to seven churches and the category of letters to individuals seems to indicate that Pauline authorship was not the issue so much as the inclusion of only seven “letters to churches.”36

a s e t o f f o u r l e t t e rs o f eccles i as ti cal di s ci p l in e in a c o r p u s o f multi ple categori es Tertullian not only disagreed with Marcion’s inclusion of Philemon in a set of letters to churches, but he went on to say that Marcion had also rejected the two epistles to Timothy and the one to Titus, which, according to Tertullian, were intended for “ecclesiastical discipline.” The Muratorian Fragment concurred, claiming that in addition to writing to seven churches, Paul also wrote “out of affection and love: one to Philemon, one to Titus, and two to Timothy; and these are held sacred in the esteem of the Church catholic for the regulation of ecclesiastical discipline.”37 Although Marcion’s collection and the collection appearing in codex P46 contain only one category of letters, Tertullian made it clear that such a collection was incomplete. Codex Sinaiticus also contains a collection of letters with two categories: a set of letters to seven churches and a set of four letters to individuals. This is also what we find in manuscripts of

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the fourth and later centuries, and in the modern critical text. Hatch claims that this thirteen-letter collection was the first canonical Pauline corpus in the West.38 Trobisch states that “the canonical edition of fourteen letters of Paul as it is in the New Testament today goes back to one single copy of thirteen letters of Paul.”39 And yet, there were two earlier collections that did not contain a second category. The ecclesiastical language found especially in 1–2 Timothy and the lack of early evidence for a distinct collection of four letters to individuals make it a point of curiosity that the one-category collection does not find its way into later manuscripts. It is perhaps not surprising that some scholars insist that the missing pages of P46 must have contained 1–2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Tertullian had conjectured that the absence of these letters in Marcion’s collection confirmed that his aim was “to carry out his interpolating process even to the number of (St Paul’s) epistles.”40 In other words, Tertullian reduced Marcion’s number of churches to seven, and added a category of letters. He also implicitly reconceptualized the letter collection, not as a collection of letters to churches, but as a corpus of thirteen letters divided into two subcategories. He replaced the emphasis on churches with an emphasis on letters, and that change was more in line with understanding it as a distinctively Pauline corpus, a collection of letters written by Paul. This is also what Athanasius explicitly described as a collection of “fourteen Epistles of Paul.”41

t h e s ta n da r d iz e d pauli ne corpus o f f o u rt e e n letters As it turns out, however, a thirteen-letter corpus did not hold permanent sway. At some point, the ecclesiastical writers started placing an emphasis on the number fourteen as the proper number of letters. Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium in the fourth century, for example, asserted that Paul wrote two times seven letters.42 The comments of Pope Gregory the Great (540–604 ce ) also illustrate the investment in an arbitrary number of fourteen letters. Even while acknowledging that Paul wrote more than fourteen letters, he asserts that fourteen were needed to show the supremacy and completeness of Church teaching: “Though the Apostle Paul wrote fifteen Epistles, yet [the] Holy Church does not retain more than fourteen, in order that the illustrious teacher might shew by the very number of his Epistles, that he had searched out the secrets of the Law and of the Gospel.”43 Already in the third century Origen had provided the imperialist rationale for a collection of fourteen letters in his

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description of the writer: “And now that last one comes, the one who said, ‘I think God displays us apostles last,’ and in fourteen of his epistles, thundering with trumpets, he casts down the walls of Jericho and all the devices of idolatry and dogmas of philosophers, all the way to the foundations.”44 In other words, the fourteen letters symbolized not only the supremacy and completeness of the Church’s teaching but also its desire, backed with power, to cast out all forms of difference. Such is the project of cultural imperialism. At the end of the fourth century, Epiphanius observed that the placement of Hebrews varied among the manuscripts with which he was familiar: “in some copies” Philemon is “placed thirteenth before Hebrews, which is fourteenth, but other copies have the Epistle to the Hebrews tenth, before the two Epistles to Timothy, the Epistle to Titus, and the Epistle to Philemon.”45 After the fourth century, this situation changed: Augustine, most copies of the Vulgate, the Canons of the Councils at Hippo and Carthage (393 and 397 ce ), the Peshitta, Codex Claromontanus (sixth century ce ), most Greek minuscules, and finally the Council of Trent (1546 ce) all place Hebrews after the letter to Philemon.46 Hebrews’ earlier placement securely among a set of letters to churches gave way to a more variable placement within the New Testament, suggesting uncertainty about its role in the collection. This ambiguity is expressed by the canon list of the Council of Carthage: when listing the books of the New Testament it mentions “thirteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul,” and then adds, “one Epistle of the same [writer] to the Hebrews.”47 Whatever its intended role, its inclusion in the collection created a fourteen-letter corpus.

e f f e c t s o f t h e r e m ova l of di fference The Pauline Letters of the standardized Pauline corpus, with its two sets of letters – letters addressed to seven churches and letters for ecclesiastical discipline, with Hebrews either sitting awkwardly between the two collections or dangling at the end – is the product of various ecclesiastical investments in imperialist values: uniformity of teaching, as well as completeness and universality of authority. These values have not only sidelined the differences between the earliest collections and later collections; they were also concretized into a standardized fourteen-letter collection that also impacted the ways in which the letters – even the so-called authentic letters – are read. Differences are again downplayed in terms of theologies and practices, the variety and number of ekklesia, and the importance of the many different Christ-workers. Tertullian had early declared that the apostles had gone forth into the world and

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“preached the same doctrine of the same faith to the nations,” establishing churches in every city, with the result that these churches, “although they are so many and so great, comprise but the one primitive church, (founded) by the apostles, from which they all (spring).”48 Sameness of doctrine, faith, and the tradition of the Church for all nations precludes attention to difference. Even before Tertullian, Irenaeus (174–189 ce ) had made a similar declaration: As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it … and she proclaims [these points of doctrine], and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world.49 These statements make explicit the logic behind the structure of the corpus. Any differences between the churches that can be discerned within the letters are to be understood as expressions of an underlying unity. Although vast differences can be discerned within the letters regarding the situations of each ekklesia, they are arranged in such a way as to minimize these differences. The following paragraphs provide a glimpse into aspects of the life of churches and its member-workers that rarely make their way into biographies of Paul.

o n e c h u rc h instead of a m u lt ip l ic it y o f churches One of the effects of equating seven churches with the One Church and its One Faith is that our attention is drawn away from the multiplicity of churches and the diversity of workers and leaders who were involved. Within the fourteen letters, we find: assemblies in Laodicea and in Hierapolis, the assembly that gathered in Nympha’s house (Col. 4:13–16); the community addressed in the letter to the Hebrews (Heb. 13:22–25); the assembly associated with the Christ-workers Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus (Phlm. 1–2); the assembly of the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 1:2; 2 Thess. 1:2); the assemblies of Galatia (Gal. 1:2); the household of

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Onesiphorus (2 Tim. 1:16, 4:19); the assembly of God that is in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:1; 2 Cor. 1:1); the household of Stephanus (1 Cor. 16:15); Chloe’s people (1 Cor. 1:11); the assembly that met in the house of Prisca and Aquila in Corinth (Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:19); the household of Aristobulus (Rom. 16:10); the assembly hosted by Gaius (Rom. 16:23); the assemblies that are in Christ in Judaea (Gal. 1:22); and the assembly at Cenchreae under the leadership of Phoebe (Rom. 16:1–2).50 Clearly, Paul is one leader among many, and the seven churches of the Pauline corpus are only a few of the many that existed. The letters, however, are not viewed as letters about disparate concerns among distinctive groups, but the program of a single apostle in the service of a unified Church.51 It is especially worth noticing the impact on the communities that are memorialized in the letters “to the Hebrews” and “to Philemon.” As noted earlier, the stichometric ordering of the letter collection that Tertullian attributes to Marcion and the collection appearing in P46 gives each of the letters equal importance: the letter to the Hebrews has the same status as other “letters to churches” in P46; similarly, Philemon has the same status as other “letters to churches” in Marcion’s collection. This also applies to the communities to whom they are addressed: none of the ekklesia are singled out as any more or less important than the others. However, when Hebrews is repositioned outside the collection of letters to seven churches in the later codices, the community to whom the letter is addressed is rendered invisible. The uniqueness of this community and its differences are no longer a concern for many Pauline biographers because it does not meet the authorship requirement – as if that should be the primary evaluation of its value. Something similar happens to the ekklesia that is associated with the Christ-workers Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus when Philemon is recategorized as a letter written “to one individual.” The standardization of the Pauline corpus thus involves not just the exclusion of letters but the exclusion of entire communities.

o n e a p o s t l e in place of m u lt ip l e l e t t e r-s enders The move toward a distinctively Pauline corpus also obscures the wide array of Christ-workers and co-workers who are involved in the life of the communities, as well as the production, sending, and delivering of letters. Within the letters, the labour of co-senders, secretaries, letter-carriers, writers, apostoloi, hosts, benefactors, helpers of various kinds, and money-collectors is acknowledged, and the workers are often

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memorialized by name. The letters, for example, provide the names of many who are explicitly referred to as ἀπόστολοι (a term that in its ordinary sense means “messengers” or “envoys”): Andronicus and Junia(s) (Rom. 16:7), Jesus (Heb. 3:1), James, the brother of Jesus (Gal. 1:19), Timothy and Silvanus (1 Thess. 2:7), Apollos (1 Cor. 1:12, 3:22), Barnabas (1 Cor. 9:5), Cephas (1 Cor. 9:5), and Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25). The letters also memorialize an apostle who calls himself Paul and who preaches and writes in the company of others. In the letters to the Thessalonians, it is Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy who are described as having “proclaimed the gospel of God” (1 Thess. 1:1, 2:1). The letter to the Philippians (1:1; cf. 1 Tim. 3:1–2, 3:8, 3:11–12; Titus 1:5–9) acknowledges the leadership of those who are identified as ἐπίσκοποι (“overseers”) as well as those identified as διάκονοι (“servants”); Phoebe (Rom. 16:1), Tychikos (Eph. 6:21), and Epaphras (Col. 1:7) are individually identified as διάκονοι. The letter to the Hebrews is also written primarily in the first-person plural, perhaps placing the voice of its unknown Christworker among other members of the Christ-assembly, and in the company of Timothy and the saints in Italy who send their greetings (Heb. 13:23–24). Though there are passages in the Corinthian correspondence in which Paul speaks and argues on his own, the letter also memorializes diverse voices: Chloe’s people identify conflicts (1 Cor. 1:11) and Apollos and Cephas work alongside Paul with a “common purpose” (1 Cor. 1:12, 3:4–9). Communication also flowed in both directions. The Corinthians sent a letter with questions about sexual morality (1 Cor. 7:1), Chloe’s people brought oral reports (1 Cor. 1:11), Titus expressed the Corinthians’ regret and sorrow (2 Cor. 7:6), and the Philippians sent financial aid through Epaphroditus (Phil. 4:18). The standardized corpus of letters, structured as a distinctly “Pauline corpus,” also draws attention away from the phenomenon and importance of “co-senders.” Most of the letters are not sent by Paul alone, but by groups of co-senders: Paul and Sosthenes (1 Cor. 1:1), Paul and Timothy (2 Cor. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:1; Phlm. 1), Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy (1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:1), and “Paul and all the brothers (ἀδελφοί) who are with me” (Gal. 1:2). Karen Elaine Fulton notes that the letters of the Pauline corpus stand out in their preference for co-senders: only about one-fifth of surviving ancient Greek letters have multiple senders.52 Although “senders are generally named in a hierarchical order with the most important sender named first,” Fulton notes that it is important “to recognise that the senior sender need not be the composer of the letter.”53 In the extra-biblical letters she examined, named co-senders were most often co-workers (as are Paul, Timothy, and Silvanus).54 Fulton observes,

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“Those who are engaged on a joint enterprise together, whether it is a family business or affairs of state, send letters together.”55 In the case of the Thessalonian correspondence, “from the viewpoint of the recipients of the letters” all the co-senders were the “voice” of the letters since all “were part of the team who founded the community.”56 Letters were delivered by couriers, and such couriers included the Christ-assembly leader Phoebe (Rom. 16:1–2),57 Timothy (1 Cor. 4:17; Heb. 13:22–25), Titus, and “the brother” famous among all the Christassemblies (2 Cor. 8:23, 12:18), Tertius (Eph. 6:21), Tychicus (Col. 4:7), the apostolos Epaphroditus (Phil. 4:18), and other unnamed “brothers” (2 Cor. 8:23).58 Messengers also performed other tasks. For instance, “the brother” sent to the Corinthians was appointed to travel with Titus and Paul while administering their gift (2 Cor. 8:16–20). Tychicus was sent to share the news about Paul and his fellow prisoners (Col. 4:8). Lee Johnson has persuasively argued that, unlike the mail-carriers of today who simply place a letter in the mailbox, ancient carriers also performed the letter, carried additional information about its content, and were the voice of the letter on the ground.59 Even though interpreters have paid most attention to the words allegedly written by Paul in the letters, she has argued that the writer would not have “vocalized the contents” of a letter apart from the “process of composition.” In other words, Titus would have been the voice of Paul’s Letter of Tears and Tychicus would have orally delivered the letter to the Colossians. The messenger was the voice of the letter,60 making the authority of authorship more complicated. In contrast, the Pauline corpus standardized by the ecclesiastical writers invites its readers to focus on the singular, authoritative, apostolic voice of Paul.61 Letters written to churches were considered legitimate if they were written by an apostle, and a man was given the authority of an apostle, according to Tertullian, if he was the writer of letters to churches.62 Tertullian admits that Paul’s name is not “mentioned in the Gospel in the catalogue of the apostles,” but he finds a creative way to give him this status. Since Paul, he noted, “cursorily touches on his own conversion from a persecutor to an apostle” in his letter to the Galatians, and this account, according to Tertullian, agrees with what is written in “the Acts of the Apostles,” he names Paul an apostle.63 Although the writer of Luke-Acts does not refer to Paul as an apostolos, Tertullian still concludes that he deserves the title. Paul the apostolos (in its ordinary sense as messenger), with the help of the ecclesiastical writers, became an Apostle (as the Church understood the term) and eventually named the Church’s “most holy Apostle.”64 The impact of this focus on the singular,

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authoritative voice of “the Apostle” is the occlusion of the voices of other apostles and letter carriers who communicated with many community voices, the introduction of Paul above all others, and the tendency to make the differences between them conform to the Pauline voice in scholarly interpretations.

o n e au t h o r a n d h is body of work Tertullian was the first ecclesiastical writer to directly name the collection “Letters of Paul,” taking for granted that Paul was the writer of letters to seven churches and the letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. He was interested in examining Paul’s letters to show “from the epistles of St Paul himself” (ex ipsius utique epistulis Pauli) that Marcion was wrong to base his doctrine on Paul’s teaching and claim that Paul proclaimed another God.65 By contrast, the earliest collections present us with letters that memorialize communication sent from an assortment of senders (including Paul) and leaders to a diverse assortment of churches. What we might see in Tertullian’s writings, therefore, are the early stages of a process whereby earlier letter collections in which Paul has a prominent voice among others were transformed into a body of work of a single author, a standardized Pauline corpus in which Paul is the only voice.66 This process was then carried on into the modern era when the corpus implied by the comments of Tertullian and other ecclesiastical writers is given concrete expression in the modern critical text. Such a move is possible only with the removal of differences.

i mp l ic at io n s f o r t h e m odern cri ti cal text a n d t h e au t h e n t ic letters of paul These effects of the standardized Pauline corpus as it appears in the manuscript tradition are perpetuated by the modern critical text. Recent editions, for example, purport to provide “an eclectic text reconstructed from the tradition by means of a combination of external and internal criteria,”67 but this is a reconstructed text of the individual writings; no attempt is made to reconstruct their supposed original arrangement. That is, the twenty-seven books of the New Testament with their reconstructed texts are presented in their traditional canonical order, as if there existed, once upon a time, an original New Testament of twenty-seven books, organized precisely in this way. The modern critical text thus reproduces the standardized Pauline corpus of later manuscripts, along with all the effects we mentioned above: the downplaying of differences, the diversion

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of attention away from the diversity of communities, and the promotion of the singular authoritative apostolic voice. At the same time, by claiming to offer a reconstructed text that is even more original than what is found in the manuscripts, the modern critical text intensifies the investments of the ecclesiastical writers. The singular authoritative apostolic voice now comes to us in a singular, authoritative, apostolic, original text. The traditional discipline of Pauline theology (as it has developed since the Reformation) read the standardized Pauline corpus and ignored the various differences between Christ-assemblies or sided with Paul in order to create Paul’s theology, thus diminishing the diversity to be found in the letters. Proponents of a set of authentic letters (to be distinguished from pseudonymous letters) took this one step further. They cut out much of the diversity that remained within the letters by categorizing letters as “authentic” and “inauthentic,” removing (among other effects) the diversity of several assemblies as memorialized in Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, and Hebrews. Pauline biographers rarely contextualize Paul as one voice among many, or as one Christ-worker in connection with many assemblies who have their own leaders. In cases of differences in belief or practice, using a set of authentic letters conceptualizes Paul according to the same logic as the ecclesiastical writers employed: as the authoritative voice that defeats the demonized others. The proponents of the authentic letters of Paul do not use this language and instead present the authentic letters as doing something different, but it is in fact a continuation of the imperialist project envisioned by Tertullian, Irenaeus, Origen, and others. A set of authentic letters has its attractions. When Hebrews, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians are removed from the Pauline “canon,” the patriarchal “clobber texts” of 1–2 Timothy and Titus are no longer present, the seeming strangeness of Hebrews is pushed to the side, 2 Thessalonians’ pseudonymity alleviates tensions with 1 Thessalonians, and the explicit sexism of the Haustafeln in Ephesians and Colossians is safely removed from the apostle’s oeuvre.68 All tensions are suitably excommunicated in the production of the authentic letters of Paul. The impact is purportedly good – the lives of women in the church, for instance, are improved. However, this strategy participates in imperialist values in that a dominant culture is rendered “pure” by eliminating the impurities and hybrids (differences) that make up every culture. We no longer need to choose which difference we support, since the Apostle Paul chooses for us. Furthermore, the reality that Paul’s voice has been, to some degree, constructed by the collectors and scribes of the letters gets lost, as it is instead afforded a degree of certainty that the evidence does not support.

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c o n c l u s i on The historical Paul is just a ghost in the shadows of messy remains, memorialized in the letters as one apostolos among others, working, competing, travelling, making meaning of his life through the lens of Christ, and memorialized in the fourteen-letter collections as the Apostle that speaks “the one and the same faith” of “the Catholic Church throughout the whole world.” Given the eagerness of the ecclesiastical writers to mould the letters into a multi-category corpus of fourteen letters, to search for Paul merely in an edition of his letters among his churches, instead of searching for him among an array of corpora, in letters both included and excluded, among other Christ-workers connected to a diverse array of Christ-assemblies, is to wrap that ghost in the garments of religious imperialism. This imperialism entails the marginalization and obliteration of difference so that the Apostle speaks with one authoritative apostolic voice. Even when that voice is constructed by proponents of the authentic letters of Paul as a liberatory and postcolonial voice that challenges the oppression of variously racialized, gendered, and sexualized folks, if it is constructed according to the imperialist logic of the standardized Pauline corpus, its liberatory power stands on “shifting sand.”69 no t e s 1 Irenaeus Haer. 1.10.3 (anf 1:331–2): τῆς οὔσης Ἐκκλσίας πάσης μίαν καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν πίστιν ἐχούσης εἰς πάντα τὸν κόσμον; quae est Ecclesia universa, unam et eandem fidem habeat in universe mundo. 2 This is true whether the number of “authentic” letters is construed as a set of four letters, as in the case of F.C. Baur’s Hauptbriefe or David Trobisch’s more recent authorized recension of four letters, or a set of seven letters, as is more usually the case. F.C. Baur, Paul, The Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Work, His Epistles and Doctrine, trans. Eduard Zeller, 2nd ed. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1876); David Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 55–96. 3 Adolf Deissmann, St. Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History, 2nd English ed., trans. Lionel R.M. Strachan (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1927), 57. 4 Zeichmann, “Introduction” (present volume), 12–13. 5 Tertullian seems to deal with the letters in the same order in which they appeared in Marcion’s collection. He also indicates that the titles of the letters followed a uniform pattern: “My preliminary remarks on the preceding epistle

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called me away from treating of its superscription (titulus), for I was sure that another opportunity would occur for considering the matter, it being of constant recurrence, and in the same form too, in every epistle” (Marc. 5.5; anf 3:438). Tertullian’s discussion reveals that Romans chapters 15 and 16 were not present, and there may have been other relatively minor differences. Benjamin W. Bacon, “The Doxology at the End of Romans,” jbl 8 (1899): 167–76; Harry Gamble, “The Redaction of the Pauline Letters and the Formation of the Pauline Corpus,” jbl 94 (1975): 418n33: “For Tertullian it is not only a matter of his failure to make citations from these chapters but also of a clear implication that his own text ended with Ch. 14: in Marc 5.14 he refers to Romans 14:10 as standing ‘in clausula,’ i.e. in the closing section of the letter, a very unlikely wording if two and a half chapters remained.” It is not clear from Tertullian’s comments whether 1 and 2 Corinthians, as well as 1 and 2 Thessalonians, appeared as separate letters. Nevertheless, when it comes to calculating length, 1 and 2 Corinthians appear to have been counted together as a unit (making them longer than Romans), as were 1 and 2 Thessalonians (making them longer than Laodiceans/Ephesians). Although Paul is named in each of the letters as one of the senders, there is nothing in what Tertullian relates about the text itself to indicate that this was a distinctively Pauline corpus. It is not until two centuries later that Epiphanius (Pan. 1.42) claimed Marcion’s letter collection bore the title Apostolikon; translation from The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book I, trans. Frank Williams, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Frederic G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri Fasciculus III: Pauline Epistles and Revelation (London: Walker, 1934), xiv, dates it to the first half of the third century ce . Pasquale Orsini and Willy Claryssi, “Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography,” etl 88 (2012): 470, date it to 200–225 ce . na 28 (p. 794) dates it to circa 200 ce . ΠΡΟC ΕΒΡΑΙΥC, ΠΡΟC ΚΟΡΙΝΘΙΟΥC Α, ΠΡΟC ΚΟΡΙΝΘΙΟΥC Β, ΠΡΟC ΕΦΕCΙΟΥC, ΠΡΟC ΓΑΛΑΤΑC, ΠΡΟC ΦΙΛΙΠΠΗCΙΟΥC, ΠΡΟC ΚΟΛΑCCΑΕΙC, ΠΡΟC ΘΕCCΑΛΟΝΕΙΚΕΙC [Α?]. Edgar Battad Ebojo, “A Scribe and His Manuscript: An Investigation into the Scribal Habits of Papyrus 46 (P. Chester Beatty II – P. Mich. Inv. 6238),” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2014), 179. Jack Finegan, “The Original Form of the Pauline Collection,” htr 49 (1956): 102, argues that since stichoi were often calculated in different ways, minor variations in the order of the letters are to be expected. According to the “Euthalian” calculation, for example, Galatians has 293 stichoi, while Ephesians has 321; hence Galatians would follow Ephesians in stichometric

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order. The one exception to the rule is Hebrews, which (at 703 stichoi) is shorter than 1 Corinthians (at 870) but longer than 2 Corinthians (at 590). The best explanation seems to be that Hebrews has been shifted forward to allow the two Corinthian letters to appear together. Ebojo, “Scribe and His Manuscript,” 228–35. Jeremy Duff, “P46 and the Pastorals: A Misleading Consensus?” nts 44 (1998): 578–90. Ebojo, “Scribe and His Manuscript,” 204–35. Ibid., 235. For a detailed discussion about the missing pages of P46, see “Scribe and His Manuscript,” 204–35. Translation from Theodore H. Robinson, “The Authorship of the Muratorian Canon,” The Expositor [7th series] 1 (1906): 488. Cyprian, Test. 1.20 (anf 5:513). Victorinus Comm. in Apoc. 1.7; translation from Jonathan J. Armstrong, “Victorinus of Pettau as the Author of the Canon Muratori,” vc 62 (2008): 16. The Muratorian Fragment is difficult to date: it is dated anywhere from the mid-second century to the late fourth century ce . Armstrong, “Victorinus,” 32n102, attributing it to Victorinus of Pettau, dates it to 258 ce . Mur. Frag. 48–58; translation from Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 306–7. Mur. Frag. 63–67; translation from Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 307. Nils Alstrup Dahl, “The Particularity of the Pauline Epistles as a Problem in the Ancient Church,” in Neotestamentica et Patristica, ed. W.C. van Unnik, NovTSup 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1962), 263. Marc. 5.17 (anf 3:464–5): ecclesiae quidem veritate epistulam istam ad Ephesios habemus emissam, non ad Laodicenos; sed Marcion ei titulum aliquando interpolare gestiit, quasi et in isto diligentissimus explorator. Some manuscripts contain the words “in Ephesus” in Eph. 1:1; others do not (notably, P46). Marc. 5.17 (anf 3:465): nihil autem de titulis interest, cum ad omnes apostolus scripserit dum ad quosdam. Marc. 5.21 (anf 3:473): miror tamen, cum ad unum hominem litteras factas receperit, quod ad Timotheum duas et unam ad Titum de ecclesiastico statu compositas recusaverit. Karen Elaine Fulton, “The Phenomenon of Co-Senders in Ancient Greek Letters and the Pauline Epistles” (PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 2011), 50. Sara B.C. Winter, “Methodological Observations on a New Interpretation of Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” usqr 35 (1984): 203–12. Unfortunately, Tertullian does not provide information about where Hebrews is located in manuscripts with which he is familiar. See also E.A. de Boer,

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“Tertullian on ‘Barnabas’ Letter to the Hebrews’ in De pudicitia 20.1–5,” vc 68 (2014): 243–63. Hist. eccl. 3.3.5. James R. Royse, “The Early Text of Paul (and Hebrews),” in The Early Text of the New Testament, ed. Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 175–203. The exemplar manuscript contained consecutive numbering of its chapters throughout the letter collection as if the various letters constituted a single entity. This numbering is reproduced in Vaticanus with one major disruption: in Romans through to the end of Galatians, the chapters are numbered from 1 to 58, then from Ephesians to the end of 2 Thessalonians, the chapters are numbered 70 to 93, while in the extant portion of Hebrews the chapters are numbered 59 to 64. We can therefore infer that the letter to the Hebrews had stood in the exemplar between Galatians and Ephesians, whereas in Vaticanus it now stands after 2 Thessalonians. See Greg Goswell, “An Early Commentary on the Pauline Corpus: The Capitulation of Codex Vaticanus,” jgrc hj 8 (2011–12): 52–3. William H.P. Hatch, “The Position of Hebrews in the Canon of the New Testament,” htr 29 (1936): 133. Jerome Epist. 53.9 (npnf 2 6:101). Emphasis added. One might wonder whether letters to other churches that did not make it into the standardized Pauline corpus were excluded because including them would interfere with the symbolic number seven: the Muratorian Fragment mentions a letter of Paul to the Alexandrians which is otherwise unknown; a letter of Paul to the Laodiceans appears in over a hundred Latin manuscripts, the oldest dated 541–546 ce ; and a third letter of Paul to the Corinthians appears in P.Bodmer X (175 ce ), as well as in more than a dozen Armenian manuscripts and half a dozen Latin manuscripts. None of these letters appear in what would become the standardized Pauline corpus. Mur. Frag. 62–64; translation from Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 307, lightly revised for clarity. Hatch, “Position of Hebrews,” 144. Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection, 24. Marc. 5.21 (anf 3:473–4): affectavit, opinor, etiam numerum epistularum interpolare. Athanasius, Ep. fest. 39.5 (npnf 2 4:552): “There are fourteen Epistles of Paul (Παύλου ἀποστόλου εἰσὶν ἐπιστολαὶ δεκατέσσαρες), written in this order. The first, to the Romans; then two to the Corinthians; after these, to the Galatians; next, to the Ephesians, then, to the Philippians; then to the Colossians; after these, two to the Thessalonians; and that to the Hebrews; and again, two to Timothy; one to Titus; and lastly, that to Philemon.”

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42 Amphilochius Iamb. ad Sel. 300–301. 43 Gregory the Great Moral. 35.20.48; translation from Morals on the Book of Job, trans. James Bliss (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1850), 3:698. 44 Hom. Jos. 7.1; translation from Origen, Homilies on Joshua, trans. Barbara J. Bruce, fc 105 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 74–5. 45 Epiphanius Pan. 1.4.11; translation from Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, 360. 46 Hatch, “Position of Hebrews,” 143–4. 47 Translation from Brooke Foss Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament, 6th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1889), 439, 542: epistolae Pauli Apostoli xiii, ejusdem ad Hebraeos una. 48 Tertullian Praescr. 20 (anf 3:252): eamdem doctrinam eiusdem fidei nationibus promulgauerunt. … itaque tot ac tantae ecclesiae una est illa ab apostolis prima, ex qua omnes. 49 Irenaeus Haer. 1.10.2 (anf 1:331). 50 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Missionaries, Apostles, Coworkers: Romans 16 and the Reconstruction of Women’s Early Christian History,” ww 6 (1986): 420–33. 51 See Johnson, “Devolution of Paul’s Relationship” (present volume), 207–26. 52 Fulton, “Phenomenon of Co-Senders,” 151–2. 53 Ibid., 162. 54 Ibid., 180. 55 Ibid., 162. 56 Ibid., 174: See also Richard Last, “Communities That Write: Christ-Groups, Associations, and Gospel Communities,” nts 58 (2012): 194–5. Last notes that “it is unlikely that Silvanus and Timothy were included in the greeting as a matter of courtesy, as is commonly assumed, because there is no evidence that awarding authorship to non-authors was done out of courtesy by ancient letter writers.” Fulton, by contrast, refuses to equate senders with authors. 57 For a discussion of Phoebe’s role, see Allan H. Cadwallader, “Phoebe in and around Romans: The Weight of Marginal Reception,” in Romans and the Legacy of St. Paul: Social, Theological, and Pastoral Perspectives, ed. Peter G. Bolt and James R. Harrison (Macquarie Park: Sydney College of Divinity, 2019), 429–52. 58 Margaret M. Mitchell, “New Testament Envoys in the Context of GrecoRoman Diplomatic and Epistolary Conventions: The Example of Timothy and Titus,” jbl 111 (1992): 641–62. 59 See Lee A. Johnson, “Paul’s Letters Reheard: A Performance-Critical Examination of the Preparation, Transportation, and Delivery of Paul’s Correspondence,” cbq 79 (2017): 60–76. 60 Mitchell, “New Testament Envoys,” 649–51. 61 Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre and Laura S. Nasrallah, “Beyond the Heroic Paul: Toward a Feminist and Decolonizing Approach to the Letters of Paul,” in

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The Colonized Apostle: Paul through Postcolonial Eyes, ed. Christopher D. Stanley, Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 161–74. Tertullian Praescr. 21. Tertullian was not unique in this regard: many thirdand fourth-century documents of church order, liturgy, and theology claim legitimacy with the assertion that they were written by an apostle. See Everett Ferguson, “The Appeal to Apostolic Authority in the Early Centuries,” ResQ 50 (2008): 49–62. Marc. 5.1–2 (anf 3:429, 432): is mihi affirmatur apostolus quem in albo apostolorum apud evangelium non deprehendo … exinde decurrens ordinem conversionis suae de persecutore in apostolum scripturam Apostolicorum confirmat. Tertullian Bapt. 17.2. See also Benjamin L. White, Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 7–9, who provides a list of “epithets for Paul in the second century” that characterize Paul as the Apostle. Marc. 5.1 (anf 3:431). We have fragmentary evidence that this process actually predates Tertullian. The Scillitan Martyrs who were put on trial in Carthage in 180 ce , for example, reportedly carried around what they described as some “books and letters of Paul” (libri et epistulae Pauli; Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs 19). See also 2 Pet. 3:15 and Ignatius Eph. 2.12 for other early mentions of Paul’s letters. However, with Tertullian we see this process made explicit. na28 p. 54*. This can be pressed even further with the same logic on the matter of interpolations. First Thessalonians 2:14–16, for example, is often identified as later anti-Jewish polemic inserted into the text. Identifying it as an interpolation simply removes the problem of Paul seeming to be anti-Jewish. Likewise, see the observation of Johnson, “Devolution of Paul’s Relationship,” 226n69, that it is primarily male scholars who suppose that Paul could not have made the sexist comments of 1 Cor. 14:33–36 and it must be an interpolation. This approach is on full display in Droge, “Whodunnit” (present volume), 305–33. See the assessment of Wimbush, “Denouement” (present volume), 393–7, who makes much the same point.

17

A Useless Apostle: Response to Schellenberg, Droge, and Williams William E. Arnal

in t ro du cti on Paul – or “Paul” – is a mess. So argue, collectively, the three preceding chapters. In many and various ways, each chapter makes the point that what we encounter in the canonical letters associated with Paul does not represent a single or coherent intellectual position or authorial voice. Rather, other actions at the margins of our corpus, other voices, other ways of reading, shape and refract earlier material – itself always already shaped and refracted – in ways that illustrate how “Paul,” the supposed univocal voice at the origins of it all, is actually a plural cacophony, a testimony more to the complexity of history than to its simplicity. Part of the force and persuasiveness of this argument is its temporal variety. Each chapter focuses on a different stage in the flow of our Pauline archive: the compositional process (Schellenberg), the redaction of the letters (Droge), and the collection of the letters into a more or less authoritative canon with an ideologically loaded organizational shape (Williams). By showing the indeterminacy, or multivocality, present at each stage of this process, the authors together make a profoundly strong case that Paul – or, again, “Paul” – is not and never has been one thing: “He” is assembled as much from lost voices as he is from his own.1

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s c h e l l e n b e r g ’ s in d etermi nacy a n d t h e f irs t century The first chapter in this section, by Ryan S. Schellenberg, goes after the earliest stage in the unfolding of the Pauline tradition, namely, the compositional, authorial voice itself. It argues that Paul, as a first-century purveyor of religion, in the surviving material that he himself wrote, does not speak as an intellectual, does not convey some set philosophical content, does not have a unified or consistent “theology” or “thought.” Thus, the problem with interpreting Paul is not our (or anyone else’s) failure to understand Paul’s intellectual program. The problem, rather, is the absence of a consistent intellectual program in the first place. This absence is reflected in the notorious difficulty of Paul’s prose, as noted by interpreters ancient and modern alike. The point, however, is not that Paul was a poor intellectual, or that his views were incoherent. Rather, it is that Paul was not trying to be an intellectual at all. As a purveyor of exotic mysteries, Paul uses language that reflects the esoteric inscrutability of divine things, things gestured to but perhaps not precisely specifiable: “Paul was not articulating a conceptual system; he was not in the first place working out ideas. Paul was disclosing divine mysteries, his indeterminate prose gesturing pregnantly toward the ineffable.”2 Schellenberg is not content to simply cite instances of Paul’s “difficult and disjointed prose.” He analyzes, rather, the sources of some of Paul’s peculiarities of language, the effects of some of his usages, and even Paul’s characterization of his own language. The latter is particularly important. In 2 Cor. 11:6, for instance, Paul rejects the idea that there is an inconsistency between his letters and his person. Many commentators have assumed that this contrast revolves around a stylistic discrepancy between his speech (which is unskilled [ἰδιώτης]) and the composition of his letters (which are characterized as weighty [βαρύς] and powerful [ἰσχυρός]). But as Schellenberg explains, neither βαρύς nor ἰσχυρός are terms of literary criticism, and Paul’s response in any case does not propose to rectify a discrepancy of style, but asserts that his behaviour will match his epistolary threats. “In short,” Schellenberg shows, “the passage does not distinguish between Paul’s written and oral style, but rather between his bark and his bite.”3 A locus classicus for contrasting Paul’s style of speech – as ἰδιώτης – with the rhetoric of his letters in fact fails to make any such point, and actually reinforces the idea that in Paul’s mind, his letters, too, suffer from stylistic awkwardness. Elsewhere, Schellenberg offers specific examples of the kind of “syntactical awkwardness … [that] could have served no conceivable rhetorical

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purpose,”4 such as the thanksgiving section of Philippians, in which, for instance, in Phil. 1:4, we get an adverb, a set of three prepositional phrases, and a participle, none of whose grammatical connection to the context is clear. In this case, the manuscript tradition witnesses to scribal attempts to ameliorate the language, something encountered in other Pauline passages as well. Other examples, however, indicate that these syntactical and stylistic failings are not simply a matter of lack of training, rhetorical incompetence, or lack of capacity with the Greek language; nor likewise are they indications of a lack of substance. Rather, they are manifestations of Paul’s efforts to communicate something at the margins of the ineffable, to elucidate connections felt but not entirely capable of systematic exposition. They are, in Schellenberg’s characterization, “words that gesture rather than name.”5 Take, for instance, the cascade of different, albeit related, meanings imputed to the word “flesh,” σάρξ, a word that in Paul can refer variously to ancestry, to things unspiritual, to the material that makes up the human body, and to the penis, all of these various senses “bleed[ing] into one another” and “heavily freighted,” all of them in some way contrasting with the language of spirit [πνεῦμα]. A more precise, more determinate use of terminology would have had the effect of limiting this gestural, allusive quality. So also with Paul’s use of unusual word forms, such as the articular neuter singular noun τὸ εὐαγγέλιον (the good news); or the use of ἀποκάλυψις (uncovering) in the unusual sense of a divine revelation; or his use of δικαιόω τινά (to punish or condemn, to bring someone to justice) to mean exactly the opposite of what it would have meant in normal speech; or the interspersing of his texts (and presumably, utterances) with foreign words like ἀμήν (amen), ἀββα (abba), μαράνα θά (maranatha), and Σατανᾶς (Satan). Schellenberg observes, amusingly, of Paul’s own self-description in Rom. 1:1 – Paul slave of Christ Jesus, called apostle, set apart for the good news of God (Παῦλος δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, κλητὸς ἀπόστολος ἀφωρισμένος εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ) – that “there is hardly a word here that would have been fully intelligible to the uninitiated.”6 The core reasons for these linguistic peculiarities cannot be disentangled from the genuine limitations of Paul’s ability to command language. But at the same time, they are equally genuinely a result of Paul’s characteristic idiom, a space or gap of indeterminacy between his words and his train of thought. It is not a question of “either-or,” but of “both-and,” an expressive limitation side by side with a striking hermeneutical fecundity, a wide range of possible or potential meaning. Like the glossolalia of which Paul is so fond, language expressive of the divine is different

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language, it is unusual language, of necessity: “other words bespeak another realm.” The same duality is reflected in the effects of Paul’s language: “some heard in Paul’s words the voice of the divine, while others heard only barbarism and empty pretence.”7 Importantly, there are analogues to this kind of linguistic obscurity – an obscurity that lends itself to hermeneutical open-endedness at the same time as it invites charges of illogic and imprecision – among other religious figures, including both Paul’s contemporaries (such as Alexander of Abonoteichus, per Plutarch) and more recent figures (such as H.P. Blavatsky).8 Like the other authors in this section, Schellenberg places the interpretive “centre” of Paul outside of Paul, or, to put it more clearly, he privileges “other voices.” For Schellenberg, this is an effect of Paul’s own prose. Any determinative reading or interpretation of Paul, especially when it is systematic and coherent, is the product of the reader, who imposes this vision on Paul. Such an imposition is not a methodological lapse; it is an actual necessity, a necessity created by the very nature of Paul’s words. Paul’s language is an effect of religious practice (what Schellenberg refers to as “artifacts of social interaction”), not the systematic, coherent voice of a masterful intellectual. The argument of this chapter, and its characterization of the issues arising from Paul’s language, is incisive and compelling. Schellenberg’s focus on language as practice, and his critique of the idealist enterprise of (re) articulating “Paul’s thought,” is certainly well placed (and a fine contribution to a collection honouring Leif Vaage’s scholarship). I find myself, however, hesitant about the essay’s contrast between Paul as a religious practitioner and Paul as an intellectual, the claim that the disclosure of divine mysteries was something other than an intellectual project. There is just a hint here – a hint that I am sure Schellenberg would be quick to disclaim – that Paul is a mere purveyor of something that he has received, as opposed to someone who has a more active role, someone who has made discoveries and has been creative, both quintessentially intellectual activities. I am in any case suspicious of efforts to erect a fence around religion or religious behaviour as somehow distinct in its essence from other forms of human activity. None of this is by any means to say that I think Schellenberg is wrong about Paul’s voice and its peculiar characteristics. It is just that I wonder whether we might not complement it by explaining these characteristics in slightly different terms. One of the ways those different terms might be imagined is suggested by the anthropologist David Graeber in a fascinating article on the concept of the fetish – a concept that has proved both fecund and confounding for the field of religious studies.9 Graeber critiques a tendency in

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the Marxist tradition to treat material production as a self-consciously creative act, while treating social production as if it seemingly unfolds of its own accord. Instead, he suggests that people have always created new social forms in a fashion more or less similar to their creation of new physical objects – with the caveat that, as Marx suggests, we have a tendency to misrecognize the products of our own creation as entities in themselves, invested with some mysterious force that, demystified, is actually our own creative labour. The nexus between the two types of creation is illustrated by, precisely, the fetish: that is, the actual west African physical, manufactured creations that Portuguese merchants in the fifteenth century claimed were worshipped as gods. Drawing from ethnographic analyses of more recent west African cultures such as the Tiv and BaKongo, Graeber argues that these fetish objects were created by west Africans to enforce and represent (in an almost Durkheimian fashion) new social realities, specifically, new commercial relationships between themselves and Portuguese traders. They are literally new gods under construction, made by human work, to express and endorse a new set of social relations brought about by new circumstances. The applicability to Paul is clear. He is fabricating, in a sense, a new and hybrid deity – the spirit of Christ, or some such thing – to express and guarantee a new and hybrid social identity, the fusion of mixed ethnicities in the new social forms he describes as ekklesiai. The letters are among the fabricated physical objects that reflect the construction – by both Paul and his audience – of this new deity and with it this new relationship or social form. In short, Paul and the participants in his ekklesiai are engaged in the project of creating something new; they are, in the lucid expression of Giovanni Bazzana, “dealing with a phenomenon that we can describe as ‘emergent.’”10 The indeterminacy we encounter in Paul’s language may perhaps be a function of its being very precisely “under construction,” in the sense that it is representing both a social and a supernatural reality that is in the process of being created.

drog e ’ s w h o du n n it a n d the s econd century A.J. Droge’s chapter carries the observation of Paul’s multivocality and indeterminacy forward in time, moving from the first-century compositional stage to the second-century transmission and – especially – redaction of the letters. Like Schellenberg, Droge has difficulty making sense of the “Paul” we encounter in the canon: “the attempt to make Paul make sense feels rather like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle of which most of the pieces have gone missing, while many of the existing

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pieces seem to belong to other puzzles.”11 At least part of the explanation for this difficulty, says Droge, is the literal multivocality of the Pauline corpus, in that the form of the letters as we now have them is in fact a collection of different voices, materials added by people who were not Paul, and indeed, not of Paul’s time. In support of this general (and consequential) point, Droge analyzes 1 Cor. 2:6–16 as an example of a text that must be considered a later, non-Pauline interpolation, indeed, a mid-second-century “gnostic” reinterpretation of Jesus’s passion as a cosmic event. Droge characterizes 1 Corinthians at the pre-collection stage as “an active site or open file, more along the lines of an archive or dossier” to which the text in question has been added.12 Droge’s argument for the secondary – and second-century – status of 1 Cor. 2:6–16 is persuasive and powerful. While there may not be direct textual evidence that the passage is an interpolation (i.e., ancient manuscript evidence of the text’s omission or dislocation), Droge correctly notes that the entire second century is a “textual dark age” and over a century intervenes between the composition of 1 Corinthians and our earliest manuscript copy, P46. The New Testament guild, in fact, is rather out of step with the approach of other fields, in which interpolations are more or less taken for granted, and no artificial burden of proof (nor especially any requirement for direct manuscript evidence) is placed on those who propose them. As Droge notes, even within the field of New Testament studies, manuscript evidence is not required for the claim that, say, Ephesians is a pseudonymous letter. Why, then, require it for claims that portions of the “authentic” letters are also pseudonymous? According to Droge, we can identify interpolations, absent manuscript evidence, (1) when a given passage is at odds with Paul’s normal usage, especially when it is at odds with its immediate context; and (2) when the excision of such a text makes the remaining material flow more smoothly and seem more sensible and coherent. In the case of 1 Cor. 2:6–16, both criteria apply. In particular, the surrounding (both preceding and following) material in 1 Corinthians speaks in the first-person singular and the past tense, whereas the intervening verses 6–16 speak in the first-person plural and the present tense. In addition, there is a pattern in 1 Cor. 2:1–5 and 3:1, of repeating κἀγώ (at 2:1, 2:3, and 3:1), interrupted by the (ex hypothesi) interpolation.13 Droge also notes important terminological and conceptual differences between 2:6–16 and the epistolary context. He cites, for instance, the idea, in 2:1–5 and especially (if implicitly) in 3:1–3, that Paul’s auditors are currently “physical,” but that this is a function of time and training: they are “infants” needing milk at the moment, but will eventually become more pneumatic people, capable

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of solid food. This temporal cast given to the recipients’ status stands in stark contrast to the ontological difference imagined in 2:6–16 between the “perfect” and those who are by nature incapable of receiving divine truths. Here the opposition is quite specifically between the πνευματικοί and the ψυχικοί, rather than, as in 3:1–3, between the πνευματικοί and the σάρκινοι or σαρκικοί. Other unique usages, such as reference to “the deep things of God” (τὰ βάθη τοῦ θεοῦ) and the “mind of Christ” (νοῦν Χριστοῦ), force the conclusion that 1 Cor. 2:6–16 is simply non-Pauline. According to Droge, the interpolated material promotes non-Pauline and in fact distinctively “gnostic” ideas. The distinction between ontologically distinct “spiritual people” and “psychic people,” for instance, is a staple of second-century Valentinianism, in addition to being at odds with Paul’s own characterization of the members of his ekklesiai. Even more distinctively, the interpolated passage, according to Droge, testifies to a very specific kind of crucifixion myth, one in which a disguised cosmic Christ is killed by supernatural entities (archons) who fail to recognize what they are doing. Scholars have attempted to avoid this conclusion by treating the ἄρχοντες of 2:6 and 2:8 as a reference to worldly rulers and even to individual characters such as Antipas or Pontius Pilate, but this is special pleading14 – the clear sense of 2:6–16 is that a cosmic being (the “Lord of Glory”) was crucified by ignorant supernatural entities (the “Archons of this Aeon”).15 As Droge indicates, the closest analogues we have for such a view come from accounts in Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 36.5–6, the Ascension of Isaiah, and Irenaeus’s description of Basilides’ views. Other parallels appear in the Second Treatise of the Great Seth and in the Apocalypse of Peter, both Nag Hammadi writings. These parallels, all of them mid-second century or later, as well as the fact that 1 Clement seems to know a version of 1 Corinthians without the additional material,16 suggest to Droge that this interpolation must be dated to about 140 ce .17 While I am a little hesitant about Droge’s use of “gnostic” as an analytic category with clear implications as to the date and authorship of material so designated,18 the evidence he accumulates here for treating 1 Cor. 2:6–16 as non-Pauline, and specifically as a second-century, likely Valentinian, interpolation is pretty persuasive.19 Better still, the argument, if accepted, not only adds to our understanding of Paul (by removing non-Pauline material from our “database”) and the redactional processes behind “his” canonical letters; it also provides us with new and precious information about competing Christian understandings of the Passion in the second century. Best of all, Droge really grasps the nettle, and takes the passage seriously and on its own terms, in contrast to

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many scholarly efforts to explain it away. As he notes, “nearly all interpreters … intuitively recognize the thoroughly gnostic vocabulary and ideas of 1 Cor. 2:6–16, but feel compelled to conclude that they simply cannot be gnostic because, as everyone knows, Paul was anti-gnostic, and all the parallels are a century or more too late. Hence the construction of such odd and slippery terms as ‘enthusiasts,’ ‘pneumatics,’ and ‘proto-gnostics’ to describe Paul’s Corinthian opponents, in order to distance Paul from such language and ideas.”20 Behind this meticulous and detailed argument, in other words, is a sound critique of Pauline scholarship, and specifically of its tendency to treat the extant Pauline canon as indisputably Pauline in all (or nearly all) respects – indeed, he says explicitly that he hopes the paper will help “incite … a quarrel” over the integrity of the Pauline letters in their current form. Shining a powerful light on this single passage as evidence of second-century redaction of Paul’s letters thus has the effect of highlighting once again that (1) “Paul” as we have him is a constructed product, indeterminate, an artificially agglomerated mass of different and sometimes competing voices; (2) “authenticity” can be disputed for portions of letters, and not just wholly pseudonymous works; and (3) in short, that “Paul” is a complicated mess: “By recognizing that 1 Cor. 2:6–16 is an interpolation of the second century, we can see that individual letters were still under construction well into that century, and we can begin to discern how that building process worked. Already at a pre-collection stage, Paul’s ‘letters’ were far from static or inert data … The materials out of which individual letters would later be constituted were still in flux … It would be better to think of ‘1 Corinthians’ at the pre-collection stage as an active site or open file, more along the lines of an archive or dossier, and certainly not a unified, much less actual, letter.”21 As Schellenberg argues, one of the reasons for the difficulty of Paul is to be found in his own modality of speech. As Droge shows, it is also a function of the way that what appear as unified letters in our canon are in fact the products of a gradually evolving archive or dossier of desultory materials. And in the end, therefore, we cannot really know Paul at all: “the corpus paulinum will no more yield a historical Paul than the gospels have yielded a historical Jesus. But we would surely be none the worse for that.”22 A final thought. Droge aptly characterizes the interpolated passage as an “attempt to ventriloquize Paul,” undertaken by second-century authors who had their own, quite distinct, agenda. Indeed, if Droge’s broader point is accepted – that the Pauline letters in general, and not just one interpolation in 1 Corinthians, are the product of extensive later redaction – then what we are looking at in the Pauline corpus is a

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second-century appropriation, and thorough repurposing, of a first-century figure who was only tangentially and retroactively related to the uses to which he was later put. Droge hints at such a general conclusion in a remarkable quotation buried in his notes: “‘Paul’ (or better, ‘Pauls’) was (were) a literary fabrication of the second century, and in general assumed three separate generic forms: epistolary, commentarial, and narratival. [Compare this with] the similar second-century creations of ‘Peters,’ ‘Johns,’ ‘Thomases,’ ‘Jameses’ et al.”23 Willi Braun has referred to this kind of activity among the fabricators of early Christian identity as the “retroactive confiscation” of earlier materials.24 It is obvious enough that this is happening when Christians of the second century and later appropriate the Hebrew Scriptures to their own purposes. It is even obvious to most scholars in our field that this is happening when we speak of “gnostic” (or more precisely, Valentinian) arrogation of texts (such as 1 Corinthians) that are not in fact genuinely Valentinian. But what is less obvious, but perhaps more consequential, is that the act of retroactive confiscation was undertaken by (non-Valentinian) Christianity as a whole, a point I believe Droge would agree with. We need not assume an automatic continuity between the fragments or remnants of first-century figures and their second-century identification (and re-construction) as Christian products. Paul was no more a Christian than he was a Valentinian, and so the adoption, use, and manipulation of (the authentic parts of) his letters by anyone – not just Valentinians – is as much an act of transformation as it was an act of transmission. The Paul that emerges from this insight is not simply a weak apostle;25 he is, in all his Christian forms, an appropriated one.

w il l ia m s ’ s im p e r ia l i zati on and the t h ir d c e n t u ry a nd beyond If Schellenberg focuses on the reasons for Pauline indeterminacy in the first century, and Droge on its evolving multivocality in the second, Williams’s chapter takes us to the third century and beyond. Indeed, it takes us far beyond, as she focuses on the constructive activity not only of third- and fourth-century ecclesiastical writers and other collectors of Pauline materials, but also on the fabricating efforts of modern scholars with their modern critical text of Paul and their own distinct collection of seven “authentic” letters. Like Droge, albeit for rather different reasons,26 she rejects the idea that the texts we normally use to make sense of Paul, that is, printed versions of the “original” in publications like the Nestle-Aland 28th edition, offer us unmediated access to a Paul, or

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even a literary corpus, as it actually was in antiquity. For Williams, the Pauline corpus as we have it today, which in turn evolved from a tendentious corpus manufactured by a sequence of different collectors and ecclesiastical commentators on collections, is not simply a transformation or appropriation of a particular person, Paul. It is a deliberate act of discipline, a drawn-out effort to impose a very particular kind of Paul, and very particular kind of order, on the unruly material traces of letters associated with Paul: Reliance on later manuscripts allows us to claim more certainty in our interpretations and biographical pictures, but that certainty is the outcome of privileging later uniformity over earlier difference, and “curing” the vulnerability of the evidence (fragments, tears, and missing pages) by emphasizing later manuscripts. What would I find, I wondered, if I attempted to read differently, by (a) prioritizing individual pre-fourth-century manuscripts and comments of early Church Fathers; (b) comparing these sources with post-third-century sources; and (c) examining possible reasons for the changes in the letter collections that occurred? What collections of letters would I find?27 Williams tracks the operations of power, the erasures, involved in the transformations and variations of different collections of Pauline materials, as well as in the modern invention and privileging of the kinds of collections favoured by more recent interpreters. Attention to titles, order, contents, and lacunae of the earliest attested collections of Pauline materials will offer us a window into a diversity and plurality of voices not only of early Christian conceptions about these letters, but also within the letters themselves – a diversity and plurality which the evolving ecclesiastical canon and the principles of its ordering deliberately aimed to obscure and replace with a single authoritative apostolic voice. Accordingly, Williams begins with two of the earliest collections of Paul-related texts known to us (namely, Marcion’s collection attested by Tertullian in Adversus Marcionem and the codex manuscript P46) and compares them with the rather different shape of the Pauline collection promoted by Tertullian and apparent in later manuscripts (particularly Codex Sinaiticus). The treatment of letters associated with Paul in these distinct collections is not identical. The collections include different works, different titles, different groupings of works, and different orders, all of which have divergent implications. Much of the chapter is devoted to describing these differences and how (and why)

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they matter. For instance, Williams notes, one of the earliest attested collections, that of Marcion, includes, in order, the following letters: Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, Thessalonians, Laodiceans, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon. Letters that now appear separate in our New Testaments (1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians) are here treated as single units. Other notable differences from later collections include the designation of (apparently) Ephesians as instead addressed to the Laodiceans,28 and the absence of Rom. 15–16. Some key characteristics of later collections are absent here. Among the more notable are the absence of any clear symbolic significance attached to the number of churches addressed in the letters; and the lack of any separate subclass of letters written to individuals (Philemon is rightly treated as addressed to an ekklesia, of which Philemon is simply a prominent member). Aside from Galatians (which is placed first, presumably because of its import to Marcion), the remaining letters are organized neutrally, that is, in stichometric order of decreasing length. This earliest collection, in its arrangement and identification of the letters in a single, mostly neutral category, implies that the principle behind their collection was not so much, as we might tend to assume, Pauline authorship. After all, the letters of Paul to individuals are not included, and a variety of other potentially “Pauline” (pseudonymous) texts are likewise excluded. Nor is there any privileging of letters authored exclusively by Paul, such as Romans, over co-authored letters, such as Corinthians. Rather, the principle of association behind the collection is letters to churches. This places a series of churches, with no particular privilege being granted to any one of them (Galatians is not first because of the pre-eminence of the Galatian churches!), at the centre of the “Pauline” corpus, rather than Paul himself. Williams argues convincingly that such an orientation is also found in our earliest extant manuscript containing a collection of letters, P46, datable to 200–225 ce . This manuscript contains, in order, Romans, Hebrews, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 Thessalonians, identified (with the exception of Romans which is missing its title) by their addressees, not their author. While it is unknown what followed 1 Thessalonians in the damaged manuscript, Williams thinks it makes sense to conclude that it may have contained 2 Thessalonians. Also notable is the fact that the superscription of each letter in P46 takes the form “To the Ephesians,” “To the Colossians,” etc., and, strikingly, includes Hebrews, a text lacking reference to Paul, and whose authorship is not indicated. Like Marcion’s collection, the letters are arranged in stichometric order,

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and both collections have but a single category: letters to churches. Again, what all this indicates is that Paul himself (and his authority) is not what anchors or motivates this collection. Williams notes some additional differences between P46 and Marcion’s collection: Ephesians takes the place of Laodiceans (though perhaps they are the same letter), Hebrews is present, Philemon is absent. These differences indicate the fluidity of Christian letter collections in the late second and early third centuries. Once we move, says Williams, to ecclesiastical writers such as Tertullian and to later manuscripts, however, things are rather different. Here there is clearly an effort to impose order, and the principles of collection shift to focus on the authoritative person of Paul, and the catholic (i.e., universal, ecumenical) intent and applicability of “his” letters. A major and consequential step in this process was Tertullian’s treatment of Philemon as a letter not to a church but to an individual, akin to 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. The effects of this shift, reflected in the organization of the letter collection in Athanasius and the Codex Sinaiticus, are twofold. First, while the principle of stichometric decreasing length is still used for the collection, it is applied twice, that is, applied to two different subcollections. We now have a subcollection of letters to churches (Romans through 2 Thessalonians) in order of decreasing length, followed by a subcollection of letters to individuals pertaining to church discipline (1 Timothy to Philemon) in decreasing length. In the context of these two subcollections, the status of Hebrews becomes ambiguous, along with its ambiguous authorship – it is sometimes placed between the letters to churches and the ones to individuals, but is sometimes placed after both. Second, a new focus emerges on the significance of the number of churches Paul wrote to, which comes to be fixed at seven (Roman, Corinthian, Galatian, Ephesian, Philippian, Colossian, Thessalonian) once Philemon has been excluded from this category. Indeed, this impulse to fix the churches addressed at the number seven may be behind the generation of a separate subset of letters to individuals, and indeed the (dubious) placement of Philemon in this category. The symbolism of seven is emphasized by ecclesiastical authors such as Hippolytus, Cyprian, the author of the Muratorian fragment, and others. The point, Williams argues, was to present the letters as ecumenical, as, in their contents, directed to the universal church as a whole, rather than particular groups. As she notes, the commitment to a collection addressed to seven churches may have resulted in the exclusion of other purportedly Pauline letters that we know of (e.g.,

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Alexandrians, Laodiceans, 3 Corinthians). Hebrews was included when the total number of letters in the collection needed to be fourteen (i.e., twice seven), but was otherwise marginal, as reflected in its eventually being placed last, after Philemon. The effect of placing Paul and his authority front and centre, and treating the letters as ecumenical in their applicability, is to erase the multiple voices, authors, community structures, and practices of the different ekklesiai. As a collection of snapshots of different churches, the letters include a whole raft of names, including named members of the churches themselves – Stephanus, Phoebe, Junia(s), Apphia, Prisca, Aquila, etc. – as well as various co-authors of the letters – Timothy, Silvanus, Sosthenes, etc. The use of Paul-as-author as the organizing principle of the letters obscures the role of these other leaders in the various communities. The particularities of church arrangements are also glossed over (e.g., the plurality of the Galatian and Corinthian churches, the ambiguous status of Paul as founder of the Corinthian church[es]). We see in ecclesiastical authors like Irenaeus and Tertullian “a process whereby earlier letter collections in which Paul has a prominent voice among others were transformed into a body of work of a single author, a standardized Pauline corpus in which Paul is the only voice.”29 Moreover, the modern scholarly study of Paul simultaneously accepts this characterization of the corpus as Paul’s letters, and constrains diversity even more insofar as it removes diversity as it pares down the corpus to seven (!) authentic Pauline letters. Williams states: The traditional discipline of Pauline theology … read[s] the standardized Pauline corpus and ignored the various differences between Christ-assemblies or sided with Paul in order to create Paul’s theology, thus diminishing the diversity to be found in the letters. Proponents of a set of authentic letters (to be distinguished from pseudonymous letters) took this one step further. They cut out much of the diversity that remained within the letters by categorizing letters as “authentic” and “inauthentic,” removing (among other effects) the diversity of several assemblies as memorialized in Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, and Hebrews. Pauline biographers rarely contextualize Paul as one voice among many, or as one Christ-worker in connection with many assemblies who have their own leaders.30 The modern critical endeavour to produce a Pauline theology and a Pauline biography are in effect continuations of the imperializing project of the ecclesiastical appropriation of Paul, insofar as it centres on an

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authoritative individual at the expense of the diversity of the activities attested in the letters, and the diversity of the letters thereby excluded from consideration as “inauthentic.” These letters, after all, are only “inauthentic” if the criterion for authenticity is – arbitrarily – actual authorship by Paul.31 Williams again: “The historical Paul is just a ghost in the shadows of messy remains … To search for Paul merely in an edition of his letters among his churches, instead of searching for him among an array of corpora, in letters both included and excluded, among other Christ-workers connected to a diverse array of Christ-assemblies, is to wrap that ghost in the garments of religious imperialism.”32 In my view, at the core of this casual adoption by much modern scholarship of the ecclesiastical version of Paul is not only, as Williams identifies, an imperializing religious view that sacrifices diversity for the sake of authority and domination, though there is surely that. But in addition, there is an obsolete and discredited view here of history as the story of heroes or great men. According to such a view, we have more or less explained what happened, how things came to be, when we have tracked as accurately as possible the actions and motives of the people – the men – who authored those events. This vision of history drives the perennial (and pointless) “quests” for the historical Jesus – as if, should we only be able to determine what Jesus really did or said, then we would have explained the origins of Christianity. Williams has highlighted this same tendency, and its deep roots, in the projects of reconstructing Paul’s theology and/or biography. Precisely as with the historical Jesus, such an approach takes the form not of using the evidence available to us about shifting and variegated groups, structures, and processes but of removing or deleting all of the data that cannot be connected confidently to the individual person of the great man who somehow “caused” the events or institutions in question. Without in any way being credulous about the first-century origins of everything in the earliest collections associated with Paul, we could perhaps adopt a more sophisticated approach to history, one which takes more seriously the whole range of evidence – and voices – available to us.

pau l as au t h o r a n d authori ty These three contributions share, above all else, a conviction that at whatever temporal stage we attempt to listen to “Paul,” what we actually hear is a plurality of voices. For Schellenberg, the multivocality is embedded within the language of Paul himself, as he encounters limitations on his ability to describe matters divine, limitations that stem both from the

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subject matter and from Paul’s own capacities. The effect is that Paul, in his writing, deliberately or not, left a gap or space for the hearers, including the initial and intended hearers, to connect the dots, to fill in the gaps Paul has left open. For Droge, the other voices are more literal: inserted foreign bodies in the texts of the “authentic” letters, as well as acts of redaction – collecting, editing, augmenting – to produce those letters. For Williams, finally, there are the voices that emerge when we think of the letters as artifacts of church activity, rather than the utterances of the great apostle, as well as the voices of those who collected this material with that principle in mind. If the theses of these three papers are accepted, then when we look at the “Paul” who confronts us from our critical editions, we are actually faced with a veritable cacophony: the gaps and blanks left by the man himself, and, implicitly, the voices of the first auditors of the letters as they struggled to make sense of this open-ended material; the voices of later “ventriloquizers” of Paul whose additions appear scattered throughout the letters; and the voices of those – including second- and third-century collectors of the letters, ecclesiastical writers, and even modern creators of the “authentic” corpus and critical editions – who have imposed their own order on these desultory fragments. This is more than a simple refutation of the “strong” Paul, the intellectual, the coherent thinker, the theologian, the apostle. It is a denial, in fact, of Paul as an author. Very closely related to the absence of a singular authorial voice, then, is an absence, or at least a diffusion, of authority.33 Since there is no single author to control the meaning of his work (and, per Schellenberg, since even Paul-as-author is unable to control the meaning of his speech), it is capable of containing contradictory and inconsistent messages. Any effort to force a singular voice on the whole is an imposition, and is ultimately defeated in any case by the presence of material at odds with that voice. If we wish to find in Paul, or to appeal to Paul’s authority for, a justification for patriarchal social relations, the material with which to do so is surely there: 1 Cor. 14:33–36; Eph. 5:22–33; 1 Tim. 2:8–15. If we wish to contest such a view, the means to do so is also available: 1 Cor. 11:11–12; Gal. 3:26–28; and all the named women who operate as co-workers of Paul and leaders of ekklesiai. Likewise for an anti-imperial Paul, or a politically conservative Paul. The point is not so much that one can find support for almost any view in this corpus, but rather that the assertion of any single view is ultimately undermined by the intrinsic multivocality of every phase in the corpus’s development, right up to its construction and reconstruction in the present day, as Williams points out. In one sense, this makes the Pauline archive (to adopt Droge’s helpful

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terminology) an even greater historical wealth than would any clearer or more direct access to Paul’s own mind, thought, or subjectivity – if only we approach it correctly, as, precisely, an archive. Its multiplicity, its lack of a strong and singular controlling perspective, means that it provides a snapshot of the social mechanics (or at least some of them) of a selection of ancient actors as they sought to work out something new – in the form of new ideas, or new symbols, or new social relations, or new senses of identity. The absence of a strong author, and hence the absence of a strong sense of authority, also promotes an open-endedness of interpretation. The Pauline corpus has, after all, inspired numerous strong interpretations, from Marcion and Valentinus in the second century to Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben in the twenty-first,34 the variety of which, and the temporal range of which, is an indication of its failure to contain any one of them. The useless, broken, appropriated apostle gestures toward an almost-infinite richness of reference. As Schellenberg states, “From Paul’s suggestive imprecision arose a remarkable excess of meaning.”35 This centuries-spanning reconstruction of an anarchic apostle and the anarchic body of “his” writings is, it seems to me, a perfectly appropriate homage to Leif Vaage’s pedagogy, scholarship, and commitments. no t e s 1 The use of “multivocality” and “voices,” here and elsewhere, is metaphoric, indicating a multiplicity of perspectives. It is not in any way intended to suggest orality, as opposed to writing. 2 Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy” (present volume), 279. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 289. 5 Ibid., 281. 6 Ibid., 282. 7 Ibid., 293. One is reminded of the discussion of Johannine language in Wayne A. Meeks, “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” jbl  91 (1972): 44–72.

8 I have also used the analogy of Madame Blavatsky to make sense of the peculiar language of the Gospel of Thomas. See William E. Arnal, “How the Gospel of Thomas Works,” in Scribal Practices and Social Structures among Jesus Adherents: Essays in Honour of John S. Kloppenborg, ed. William E. Arnal et al., betl 285 (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 261–80. 9 David Graeber, “Fetishism as Social Creativity: Or, Fetishes Are Gods in the Process of Construction,” Anthropological Theory 5 (2005): 407–38.

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10 Giovanni B. Bazzana, Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in the Early Christ Groups (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 182. 11 Droge, “Whodunnit” (present volume), 305. 12 Ibid., 324. 13 It seems to me that this pattern – a coherent and thematically unified block interrupted in the middle with an apparently unmotivated and disconnected digression – occurs elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, for example at chapters 12–14 (with chapter 13 constituting the digression) and at 1 Cor. 14:26–40 (with 14:33b–36 constituting the digression). Notably, both texts have been considered as possible interpolated or otherwise edited material. 14 And anachronistic to boot, as the Gospel narratives of the Passion post-date Paul by decades. 15 On this point, I am completely in agreement with Droge. 16 1 Clement refers to 1 Corinthians, and specifically shows knowledge of the discussion of Paul and Apollos in chapters 1–4. However, as Droge notes, 1 Clem. 34.8 quotes the same “scripture” (sort-of, but not quite, Isa. 64:4) quoted in 1 Cor. 2:9, but in a different form and to completely different ends. This suggests that the author of 1 Clement, composed c. 100–140 ce, knew 1 Cor. 1–4, but without (at least) 2:9. 17 It is worth noting in passing that Droge offers fascinating explanations for some of the concepts that appear in this “mini-Passion” (and similar texts) as originating in exegetical practices. In particular, he links the idea in Justin that Christ ascended through supernatural archons to the lxx reading of Ps. 23: 7–9; the various docetic presentations of the Christ laughing as the powers failed to destroy him to the lxx of Ps. 2:2–4; and the docetic claim that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in place of Jesus to the ambiguous grammar (specifically, the antecedent of “him” [αὐτόν] in 15:22–24) at Mark 15:20–24. 18 Having been influenced by, among others, Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) and Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), argues that the terminology of “Gnostics” (but not “gnosticism”) may be retained, but only in connection with Sethian Gnostics, and this particular passage is, if anything, Valentinian. 19 An additional datum that might be worth considering: the peculiar “quotation” of Isa. 64:4 in 1 Cor. 2:9 that quite considerably modifies the original text. As Droge notes, a variant of this modified quotation appears in 1 Clem. 34.8. Another variant, quite close to the wording in 1 Corinthians, also appears in saying 17 of the Gospel of Thomas. This has sometimes been

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taken as evidence that Thomas is dependent on or aware of 1 Corinthians. However, just as its use in 1 Clement is taken by Droge as evidence of a second-century date for the interpolation, its appearance in Thomas could be cited as further evidence of a post-Pauline date. Droge, “Whodunnit,” 322; emphasis in original. Ibid., 323; emphasis in original. Ibid., 325. Ibid., 332n72. See in particular his discussion of the second-century uses of the Gospel of Mark in his 2018 Canadian Society of Biblical Studies presidential address, now published as “Christian Origins and the Gospel of Mark: Fragments of a Story,” in Jesus and the Addiction to Origins: Toward an Anthropocentric Study of Religion, Russell T. McCutcheon, ed., naasr Working Papers (London: Equinox, 2020), 59–75. Cf. Zeichmann, introduction (present volume), 14. Williams’s argument here, while sharing considerable affinity with Droge’s insofar as both claim that the “Pauline” corpus as we have it is complex and multiple, is at the same time in considerable tension with Droge’s perspective. Unlike Droge, Williams argues that the very quest for an “original” (whether original version of a letter, original arrangement of letter collections, etc.) is itself a hegemonic move. Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains” (present volume), 335. The explicit reference to the addressees as “in Ephesus” in Eph. 1:1 is textually questionable: P46 and the original hand of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, among others, omit it. It may indeed have been added to end the dispute over the original intended recipients of this letter. Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains,” 349. Ibid., 350; emphasis in original. And again, even this is inconsistent: as Williams shows, there is good enough reason to think that the named co-authors of Paul’s “authentic” letters were as likely to be the composers as was Paul himself. Being named first as author in ancient letters reflects social status, not actual composition. Williams, “Imperialization of the Apostolic Remains,” 351; emphasis in original. I am grateful to Darlene Juschka for emphasizing the connections between the ideas of authorship (and authorial meaning) and authority. She, in turn, has developed the connection under the influence of Foucault. Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, trans. Patricia Dailey, Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy,” 288.

pa rt s ix

Concluding Remarks

c o n c l u s i on

Recovering Paul, the Undomesticated Apostle John A. Egger

In “How I Stopped Being a Q-Scholar,” an essay that appeared in a 2016 festschrift honouring John S. Kloppenborg, Leif Vaage tells the story of “why I decided to become a Q-scholar once upon a time and why, then, I eventually stopped wanting to be one.”1 At one time Q was interesting to Vaage because it pointed to “a truly different kind of early Christianity,” one that looked quite different from the “apocalyptic” or “eschatological” Christianity that had been “business as usual” for scholars of early Christianity since Albert Schweitzer and Johannes Weiss had made it the hallmark of the historical Jesus and his followers at the end of the nineteenth century. During the 1980s and 90s, however, a close literary examination of what we know about the Q document by Kloppenborg and others, including Vaage, began to reveal that something more like sapiential instruction lay at the heart of the earliest layer of Q. This point was brought home personally for Vaage through comparing the mission instructions in Q with the practices of ancient Cynics, which forms the heart of his doctoral dissertation and then his book on the subject, Galilean Upstarts: Jesus’ First Followers according to Q.2 Describing the wager in his own words, he notes, “Fundamentally at stake, therefore, in such a comparative pursuit was the possibility of discerning – via Q, via Cynicism – a larger, more heterogeneous, still expansive, decidedly ex-centric, ideally less flatly hegemonic historical reality, in which more than the usual historical suspects would come into view.”3 Moreover, “It was not ancient Cynicism as such that made comparing Q with these traditions compelling, but the reiterated resistance by modern biblical scholars to taking seriously their own observations of a certain similarity. In this regard, however, they merely did again what previous scholarship

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had done with the topic of Q generally for the better part of a century, namely, to affirm it ‘with the left hand’ while denying it any import ‘with the right hand.’”4 It was this double interest that made investigating Q compelling for Vaage: the opportunity for discovering something new and surprising, coupled with resistance on the part of otherwise critical scholars to admit what should have been patently obvious. Vaage’s interest in Paul predates his divesting in Q, probably even his arrival in Latin America, but what is important here is not so much his reasons for investing in Q in the first place and then deciding to refocus his attentions elsewhere, but what it says about the kind of scholarship that Vaage was already engaging in at the outset of his career. This festschrift aspires to be everything that Q ultimately failed to be for Vaage. On paper, this is a book about Paul, but ultimately it is not really about Paul at all, but about using Paul as a site for discovering something new or surprising or unsettling of what we thought we already knew. As a festschrift honouring Leif E. Vaage, however, this volume is subject to two specific limitations. First, it is “untimely born,” even grotesquely born, to draw upon Lee A. Johnson’s unpacking of the term ἔκτρωμα in chapter 10.5 Vaage still has a great deal to contribute to Pauline scholarship, so it feels premature to eulogize him while his most important contributions have yet to be felt. Second, although it includes a number of global voices, reflecting Vaage’s connections in many countries, it is naturally weighted toward a Canadian perspective, with former students in Canada and Canadian colleagues offering the bulk of the contributions. However, as Rene Baergen and Lucio Rubén Blanco Arellano make clear in their prelude, Vaage’s scholarship is grounded as much in Latin America as it is in Canada.6 In spite of these or any other limitations, we offer this festschrift to Leif Vaage in honour of his contributions to New Testament studies over the past thirty-five or so years and in anticipation of his further contributions in years to come. The contributions to this volume are not unified with respect to either their content or their methodology. Much like Vaage’s scholarship, they employ a variety of methods and frameworks, begin at differing starting points, come at their tasks in distinctive ways, and reach different conclusions, not all of them compatible. Rather, to pick up on a concept employed by Christopher B. Zeichmann in the introduction (and run with it in a somewhat different direction), these essays are characterized by a common “posture” or “stance” toward the apostle Paul, one that recognizes the degree to which traditions of interpretation tend to absorb Paul into themselves and “domesticate” him for their own

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convenient ends. Recognizing that even critical Pauline scholarship often slips into this pattern, these contributions “chip away” at some aspect of the received wisdom on Paul to see where doing so might take them and if anything new might be learned through the exercise. This approach does not, as Zeichmann notes, provide us with a “radical new vision of the apostle Paul,” but rather disrupts “business as usual” and opens up possibilities for noticing something new about the apostle Paul that is different from what we thought we already knew. One way to apprehend this idea of a common “posture” or “stance” would of course be to describe common themes that emerge in the essays and their points of convergence – much like the respondents do at the close of each section: Colleen Shantz focusing on how the essays explore various aspects of Paul’s precarious life, Terence L. Donaldson focusing on how the essays attempt to describe Paul in his own context and on his own terms, Margaret Y. MacDonald focusing on how the essays play with the idea of body as space of resistance, and William E. Arnal focusing on how the essays, each in their own way, trace the disintegration of “Paul” as a singular, authoritative voice. Yet where these essays really get interesting is not in their common themes but in their divergent directions. It is precisely in their individual “quirkiness” as they bounce off against each other that they most fully reveal their shared “posture.” In the next section, I work through some of the ways in which the essays bump up against each other and go off in divergent directions. Then in the following section, I focus on how these essays, quirky though some of them may be, reflect in turn the distinctive posture of Leif E. Vaage.

d iv e r g e n t d irecti ons The most obvious place where contributions are at odds with each other is the divergence between Scott Brown and A.J. Droge over whether 1 Cor. 2:6–16 was originally part of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Both share the same posture in that they “chip away” at the conventional image of Paul, but what the one “chips away” entirely, the other makes central to his analysis, with the result that they end up with conclusions that are mutually exclusive. Brown argues that in this section Paul is indicating that he has two types of teaching, an exoteric teaching for the spiritually immature, and an esoteric teaching for those who are mature. This may sound strange to us because we are accustomed to reading Paul in conventionalized ways that downplay this element in his thinking. According to Brown, however, and contrary to the claims of most scholars (who go to great lengths to show “how and why Paul did not

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intend to say what these verses appear to express”), Paul’s words here fit well within the overall apologetic pattern of this section of 1 Corinthians, and are therefore not only original to Paul but also central to his thought.7 Droge, on the other hand, noticing that 1 Cor. 2:6–16 contains language and ideas that are inconsistent with the rest of the letter, as well as that it contains what would later become the technical language of second-century Gnosticism, argues that the passage was not written by Paul but is a second-century interpolation into the text. These conclusions are irreconcilable – yet one can imagine Vaage egging on both authors as they pick up their respective arguments and pursue them with gusto through to their logical conclusions, wherever they might lead. Another divergence among the contributors emerges in the fourth section of the book with regard to methodology. Here we have the contributions of Ryan S. Schellenberg, Kieren Williams, and A.J. Droge. Arnal, in his response to these contributions, concludes that Paul, or rather “Paul,” is a mess, whether we are looking at Paul’s letters at the stage of their composition (Schellenberg), the stage of their redaction (Droge), or the stage of their collection into what we now refer to as the Pauline corpus (Williams).8 This characterization, as accurate as it is, sidesteps the degree to which the three contributions are methodologically incompatible. If we take Schellenberg’s description of Paul’s discourse seriously, and we read Paul not as the ancient equivalent of a modern intellectual in control of his discourse as he works out his ideas, but as a “purveyor of divine and ancient mysteries,” whose indeterminate prose gestures “pregnantly toward the ineffable,” then Droge’s methodological procedure of carefully detecting an interpolation at 1 Cor. 2:6–16 on the basis of the stability of Paul’s discourse elsewhere, would scarcely be possible.9 Likewise, Schellenberg and Droge are merely chasing after shadows if we take seriously Williams’s observation that our oldest manuscripts bearing witness to the life of Paul date back to the late second century at the earliest – a point she takes so seriously in fact that for her we do not even have a first-century Paul, but only a Paul that stems from second-century memory and is just one voice among many co-workers. (Even her simple observation that many of these co-workers are named as co-senders of some of the letters in the manuscripts blows any attempt to read the letters as the product of a singular authorial “voice” out of the water.) Moreover, even to be obsessed with “Paul” as an authoritative voice worth pursuing is already to have succumbed, hook, line, and sinker, to the second-century ideological construction, as Arnal readily admits. Schellenberg’s contribution is also interesting because of how it raises the issue of discourse.10 One of the methodological challenges for

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Pauline biography is the question of how to correlate what one finds in the text with what one imagines to have been going on “out there” historically in the world behind the text. I return to this question shortly, but for the moment I want to note that Schellenberg criticizes conventional approaches to Paul’s letters that take them as the representation of a “conceptual apparatus variously described as Paul’s thought or Paul’s theology.”11 Yet this is precisely the starting point for Thomas Schmeller in his contribution.12 (Actually, it is also the starting point for Schellenberg, but he immediately observes the discrepancy between the discourse that he finds in the text and the idealized mind that is supposed to have produced it, making this the focus of his inquiry.) Schmeller, on the other hand, operates comfortably within a framework where there is no such discrepancy. Without differentiating between the “voice” of Paul within the text and the “mind” of Paul imagined to be behind it, he enters into a kind of conversation with this voice, inquiring what Paul means when he says, “Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord” (2 Cor. 10:17), and continuing to question the voice until it yields up the answers to his questions. Schmeller, readily claiming to be following an approach inspired by Vaage, disrupts the conventional reading of Paul by paying close attention to the words on the page and discovers that Paul really has been domesticated over the centuries. Returning to the difficulty of correlating what one finds in the text with how one imagines what was going on historically, it is surprising that so many of the contributions to this book on Pauline biography never get much further than swimming around inside the Pauline text. Not that there is anything wrong with focusing exclusively on the text! As Schellenberg notes, and Arnal amplifies, Paul’s indeterminate prose leaves wide scope for exploring Paul’s discourse in its own right.13 But what is surprising about this volume on Pauline biography is how few of the contributions move beyond consideration of the discourse in the text to consideration of the flesh-and-blood Paul who was supposedly responsible for the discourse in the first place. For some of the contributors, Schmeller, for instance, or Schellenberg, this is because they are employing methodologies that do not require them to differentiate between the two. When they talk about “Paul,” they are in fact referring only to the discourse that they find in the text, even though this discourse also has implications for how they understand the historical Paul. For others, limiting their analysis to textual matters seems to be more a function of having other fish to fry first. Droge, for example, is eager to talk about Pauline mythmaking, but his chapter shows no interest in what Paul’s message, excised of 1 Cor. 2:6–16, indicates

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about what the historical Paul was trying to communicate. Among the contributors that I have mentioned thus far, only Brown makes explicit inferences about the historical Paul and the Christ-following communities he was associated with when he suggests that Paul possessed an esoteric wisdom that he had not yet shared with the Corinthians at the time of the letter. Another contributor who remains strictly focused on the text is Carlos Gil Arbiol, who uses the concept of “third space” to describe how Paul’s discourse functions in 1 Corinthians. Although Gil Arbiol picks up on clues in the text that give some indication of what was actually going on in Corinth, his is not an inquiry into the historical situation behind the text, but rather an attempt to illuminate the discourse within the text. According to Gil Arbiol, Paul uses the ambiguity of the word “body” to bring about a change in the addressees by shifting their focus from “body” as first space (their physical bodies) to second space (body as representing the social group) to third space, that creative and imaginative dimension where new possibilities are created (in this case, the body of Christ imagined as sacred territory). Whether Paul’s discourse was actually successful in this quest as it played itself out in Corinth is an entirely different question. Along the same lines in terms of being strictly text-focused, but quite different in terms of framework, my joint contribution with Alcris Limongi compares the “catalogue of hardships” that appears in 2 Cor. 11:21b–33 with a similar listing of hardships that appears in a passage from Plautus’s Asinaria. In the first part of the essay, we focus on the voice of Paul within the text as he talks about his tribulations. By limiting ourselves to a description of what we hear within the text, we forgo any attempt to go beyond the discourse itself to the lived experience behind it. In the second part, where we reflect on how Vaage’s engagement with language makes a connection with lived experience, we do much the same thing again, meticulously avoiding making any historical inferences about the flesh-and-blood Paul who might have actually lived those experiences, leaving this task to others. Of all the contributions to this collection, Catherine Jones’s chapter on Paul’s life as a manual labourer comes closest to what would normally be considered biographical historiography. Analyzing the text of 1 Cor. 9:1–18 in light of ancient attitudes concerning manual labour, Jones examines Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian church and concludes that the reason why Paul never received material support from the Corinthians is not that he refused such support (which is what most scholars assume), but that he was never offered it.14 To reach

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this conclusion, Jones weighs idiosyncrasies in Paul’s argument against each other, exploiting incoherences in the text so as to “crack open” what might have actually been going on historically. Other contributors do something analogous. Lee A. Johnson, for example, who traces the devolution of Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian women, confronts the incongruence in Paul’s discourse between his apostolic self-defence and his instructions to the women, which essentially amounts to “Do as I say, not as I do.” Imagining how the actual flesh-and-blood Corinthians might have responded to Paul’s rhetoric (in contrast to Gil Arbiol, who stays strictly within the text of 1 Corinthians on this matter), she pries open the conflict to show us the apostle, as she says, “warts and all.”15 Zeichmann, by contrast, in his contribution on Acts and the invention of Paul’s “prison” letters, picks up on a mere ambiguity in Paul’s terminology that appears in his letters to the Philippians and Philemon. Examining how the phrase “in chains” (ἐν τοῖς δεσμοίς) was used in other ancient texts and bringing in what is known about practices of incarceration in the Roman Empire, Zeichmann assembles evidence indicating that an equally plausible setting for these so-called “prison” letters is a situation of convict labour. All three contributors come into the historical question by exploiting incoherences that they have stumbled upon in their reading of the text; in pursuing this line of inquiry they uncover something new about Paul that they might not otherwise have discovered. Zeichmann’s contribution is also interesting because of the light that it sheds on the subtle but persistent influence that Acts exerts on how Paul continues to be interpreted, even by scholars who have supposedly disavowed Acts as a source for the apostle’s life (what he refers to as “the tyranny of Acts”). If Vaage complains about Q scholars taking away with the one hand what they just put on the table with the other, he says the converse of Pauline scholars: they keep trying to put back on the table with the one hand what they just took off with the other. As Zeichmann notes, Acts delimits “the parameters of what is imaginable and what is not.”16 Santiago Guijarro’s contribution on biblical cartography, however, brings the opposite to light. A comparison of the implicit maps presupposed in Paul’s letters and the Acts of the Apostles with how modern atlases depict Paul’s three distinct missionary journeys reveals that modern conceptualizations do not correspond with what is found in either the letters or Acts. Terence L. Donaldson, in his response to this contribution, nuances this by observing that the relationship is even more complex: Acts plays a mediating role in presenting Paul “as a model missionary, a kind of apostolic primus inter

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pares,” so even if modern conceptualizations diverge from Acts, it is Acts that has sent them on this trajectory in the first place.17 Halvor Moxnes’s contribution on Caravaggio and Paul’s conversion, on the other hand, takes this notion to the extreme by inquiring where the horse comes from. Starting with the observation that Acts’ narration of Paul’s conversion never mentions a horse, Moxnes traces lines of interpretation that lead from Acts, to medieval saint plays, to Caravaggio’s painting of the scene from the turn of the seventeenth century, to a poem by Thom Gunn from the 1950s that meditates on the painting, to a theological essay by Luis Menéndez-Antuña from 2018 that takes Caravaggio’s treatment of Paul’s conversion “out of its ‘comfort zone’ in religious art and places it in a contemporary context of queer sexuality, desire, and violence,” revealing that Acts does not in fact control the agenda – other details not found in the text of Acts get added along the way.18 Another reason why some of the contributors never get around to swimming in the ocean of historical inquiry per se is that they have their hands full trying to chip away at the layers of tradition in which Paul is embedded. Guijarro, as just noted, compares the mental map of Paul’s mission conceptualized in the letters of Paul with the implicit map of Paul’s mission to be found in Acts, and then with modern maps that purport to represent Paul’s itinerary, finding that neither Acts nor the modern maps accurately depict what the historical Paul represented in his letters. Yet aside from this comparison, Guijarro says remarkably little about what Paul himself thought about his mission: the weight of Guijarro’s inquiry is set on alerting us to the danger of the hidden agenda of modern Pauline maps, and how such maps are “cultural constructions” that have “shaped our understanding of the apostle and his place in the memory and identity of Christian churches.”19 Likewise, my own contribution on Paul’s reference to “a different gospel which is not another” in Gal. 1:6–7 is all about exploring how traditions of interpretation consistently “misread” Paul’s words to make his position out to be much stronger than it actually was, even when Paul’s grammar, if not the precise meaning behind it, is quite unmistakable.20 Again, the weight of the inquiry is not on what the apostle himself said or did, but on how the history of interpretation consistently manages to misunderstand him. To return to Moxnes, while most of the other contributors in this volume approach their task by chipping away at the traditions of domestication in which Paul is embedded to get at the apostle “as he really was,” or rather, “as we conceive him to have been,” Moxnes seems to

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be doing something else entirely. He shows no interest in the historical Paul: having traced the lines of interpretation that lead from Acts all the way to Menéndez-Antuña via Caravaggio, Moxnes never returns to the question of what the pattern of bodily vulnerability revealed in these interpretations might tell us about how Paul is depicted in Acts, let alone what this might say about the Paul of the letters or ultimately about the historical Paul himself. Just as Williams’s observation that the inclusion of Hebrews in the supposedly Pauline letter collection in P46 calls into question whether it really is a “Pauline” letter collection in the first place, so also the inclusion of Moxnes’ piece in this volume reveals that this festschrift is about more than just “recovering an undomesticated apostle,” in the sense of retrieving history. Like other contributors to this volume, Moxnes “chips away” at the layers of domestication, but what he is getting at is not history as such, but something more elusive – call it ideology or ethics or even theology perhaps. Moxnes himself refers to it merely as the vulnerability of Paul’s body; it’s just that it is not the body of the historical Paul, strictly speaking, to which he refers. But what Moxnes does openly is carried out more subtly by some of the other contributors, even those who are digging deep for the historical Paul. Lee A. Johnson, for example, in drawing attention to how Paul invokes traditional patterns of authority in clamping down on the freedom of the women in the Corinthian ekklesia, shows that the process of domestication identified by Zeichmann in the introduction as going back even into the canon (e.g., interpolations, pseudonymous letters written in Paul’s name), can in fact be taken even further back to the historical Paul himself in his interactions with the women in Corinth. In other words, Paul himself seems to have gotten caught up in his own domestication. Whereas Moxnes expresses great interest in Paul’s body, but paradoxically no interest in the historical Paul, Johnson has great interest in the historical Paul, and then is stuck with the body that she finds, which Vaage has told her she has to take “warts and all.” Neither Moxnes nor Johnson manages to put their finger on it, but Margaret Y. MacDonald seems to come close when she responds to the disparate contributions of Johnson, Moxnes, and Gil Arbiol by commenting, “If Paul’s body can be characterized as problematic in terms of the dominant society of the day, these essays invite consideration of how that marginal and problematic quality imposed itself on the concepts of community that Paul articulated in his letters and that have continued to shape the interpretive imagination through image and text down through the centuries.”21

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t h e d is t in c t iv e p os ture of l e if e . va ag e as a b ibli cal scholar In the previous section, I illustrated how the contributions to this volume exemplify a shared “posture” toward Paul and the traditions that have brought him to us, even while diverging greatly from each other in terms of their conclusions, methods, starting points, frameworks, and directions. That a volume in honour of Leif E. Vaage would show such diversity should not come as a surprise. In many ways, Vaage himself displays such diversity, as can be seen at the front of this essay with Vaage’s description of his engagement with Q in the early stages of his academic career. Although the contributions to this volume go in quite different directions from Vaage’s own scholarship, they nevertheless, to one degree or another, individually and collectively, reflect his distinctive posture. Before concluding, therefore, let me identify what I see as the most important features of Vaage’s New Testament scholarship. First, speaking for myself, I have always found it a little surprising that Vaage is so traditional a biblical scholar, one who operates in full nineteenth-century historisch-kritische mode, integrally committed to rigorous, critical historical inquiry. When Vaage qualifies his historical work on Paul with the disclaimer that he is not imagining that he has described history according to the nineteenth-century dictum wie es eigenlich gewesen (“as it actually was”), this is not a repudiation of the possibility of doing rigorous historical inquiry but only of the arrogance of naïvely claiming that one has described reality as it really was. Yet at the same time – and this is why I find him surprising – Vaage also shows a highly developed awareness of the ramifications of engaging in such scholarship in terms of the shaky ground on which it rests, as well as the imperial pretensions embedded in North Atlantic ways of doing scholarship, to say nothing of the investments that are already embedded in the western way of knowing reality as “history.” Second, not only is Vaage’s historical sensibility “laser focused,” but he also has highly developed “peripheral vision.” As Vincent L. Wimbush aptly enunciates in his tribute to Vaage as “Last Man Leif” in the denouement of this volume, one of the ways in which Vaage stands out as a biblical scholar is in “registering hyper-consciousness about where he and his contemporaries stand in relation to the End associated with ‘Paul,’ as taken up in christian myth-work.”22 My own way of saying this is that Vaage exercises, not just with respect to Paul but also in his bearing as a scholar, a highly developed form of what is called 눈치 (nunchi) in Korea, awareness of power dynamics and needs in one’s social

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interactions with others. In Korea, as I have experienced it, nunchi is most obviously observed in people who are lower in the social hierarchy, quickly and quietly observing the needs of the situation and smoothly paving the way for their elders, but it is also practised more discreetly by the elders themselves, who make great show of their obliviousness to it, but in their very act of seeming to avoid it, reveal (at least to those who are observing with the right nunchi) how completely in tune they are to the demands of the social situation. In the case of Vaage’s scholarship, it is not so much a question of being in tune with the demands of hierarchical social interaction, as displaying in his work the widest possible breadth of vision with regard to the implications of his interpretational manoeuvres, arrayed across numerous layers and contexts. Take as an example the essays in his book Columbus, Q, and Rome, which, taken collectively, are particularly illuminating of the wide angle of Vaage’s “peripheral vision” without compromising his “laser focus.”23 My third, and probably most important, point is that Vaage’s preferred way of doing history is as biography. Or rather, when it comes to dealing with Paul, Vaage’s preferred approach is through biography, precisely because biography is the most rigorously historical approach. One can approach Paul in a literary, rhetorical, or scriptural register, and these can all be insightful, but it is only historical biography that pulls them all together. This is because biography, at least as practised by Vaage, insists on an innate connection between body and discourse. In Vaage’s own words, There is no discourse, or scripture, or rhetoric, without a human body to enact it … Thus every instance of human language is, in discursive practice, always deeply conditioned by the singular human body that uses it, utters it, and articulates itself through it. Every instance of language thus requires – at least for the sake of historical description and understanding – a “biography” within which to hear and comprehend what exactly a given instance of speech “means.” Without such a “biography,” all literary, rhetorical, scriptural interpretation swiftly becomes patently ahistorical, pretending to read a disembodied and therefore ideal or transcendent form of “language” as if the human speech in question had no hands and feet attached to it, no voice, no mouth, no nerves and other connective tissue literally in-forming the vital purpose of its erstwhile and transient declamation and inscription.24 Biography as practised by Vaage is therefore historically disciplined and deeply tied to material remains. Yet Vaage has no illusions about the dis-

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tance that exists between the remains and the life they supposedly represent, especially in the case of Paul. Again, as Williams emphasizes, the oldest manuscripts we have date from the late second century. Nevertheless, for all the methodological and theoretical uncertainties that attend the biographical project, Vaage wagers his stakes on the viability of biography as an approach, musing that recent declarations on “the death of biography” will prove premature, even if they are not, as he says, “wildly exaggerated.”25 These are the three most important features of Vaage’s biblical scholarship – that it is rigorously historical, that it has a keen awareness of what we are actually doing when we are approaching Paul in this way, and that it uses biography as a way of maintaining a close connection between body and discourse. I would add one further point. To go back to the beginning of the essay, recall Vaage’s comment that what made comparing Q with ancient Cynicism compelling to him was not “ancient Cynicism as such” but “the reiterated resistance by modern biblical scholars to taking seriously their own observations of a certain similarity.” In other words, the similarity between Q and Cynicism was worth pursuing for Vaage as much for what it told him about the sensitivities of modern scholars as for what it told him about the earliest followers of Jesus, if not more so. Applying this to Paul, Vaage’s “slow chipping away” of the conventional image of the apostle (to go back to Zeichmann’s characterization in the introduction) requires paying as much attention to what has been “chipped away” as to what we are “chipping away at.” As I noted in my own study of Gal. 1:6–7, scholarship seems to have a vested interest in viewing Paul’s apostleship as “strong, efficacious, and successful.”26 Such an observation tells us precious little about Paul himself, but a great deal about the stakes that we as a culture have in viewing Paul in particular ways. In other words, biography is ultimately as much about us as it is about the individual we are looking at, even if all the attention is on the person in question. For Vaage, as important as it is to get the historical Paul right, it is equally important, to get ourselves right in the process; in fact, in Vaage’s thinking, there can be no getting the historical Paul right without our doing so.27

a cou p l e o f l o o s e t h r e a ds to leave dangli ng By way of conclusion, let me draw out a couple of loose threads that have been left dangling, without attempting to fully resolve them. This volume is all about recovering Paul, the undomesticated apostle. As important as this is to the theme of the book, I cannot help but think

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that this way of putting it does not get it quite right. The “domestication” of Paul is what has kept him in business for nearly two thousand years. That Paul (or should I follow Arnal and say “Paul”?) can be contextualized wherever he finds himself, is a tribute to his versatility, not a sign of his weakness. The ease with which this “misunderstood” apostle can be misunderstood again and again and again is one of his strengths, even if the indeterminate prose that makes this possible was manufactured originally for some other purpose (à la Schellenberg). Or, to put it another way, to use Zeichmann’s formulation in the introduction, what is it about Paul that makes him a biographical “site” worth exploring? Or, to make it even more specific, to go back to where we began, why would Vaage let go of being a Q-scholar because of diminishing returns in order to start investing in Paul? Let me venture a guess. As I mentioned at the outset, Vaage’s interest in Paul predates his divestment in Q, probably even predates his arrival in Latin America, but as Baergen and Blanco Arellano suggest in the prelude, Latin America and Paul seem to have been a good fit for Vaage, whether it was Latin America that helped open up Vaage to Paul, or Paul that helped open up Vaage to Latin American experience. In any case, Vaage went to Lima and found “Gott im Müll” (God in trash), to use German theologian Dorothee Sölle’s way of putting it. Vaage’s poem by this name, which Sölle gave a title to and included in her book by the same name, begins (in the Spanish version), Me preguntan / por la fuente / que alimenta mi esperanza (I was asked what source feeds my hope). The speaker then answers, Es la gente, / la que vive de añoranza / … el que quiere y nunca alcanza (It is the people, those who live off their yearning … those who want and never reach).28 It was in this environment, “off the grid” of the typical concerns of North Atlantic biblical scholarship as Baergen and Blanco Arellano put it, that Vaage’s insistence on the connection between body and discourse was honed. Baergen and Blanco Arellano draw upon Vaage’s own expressions to describe his enterprise of “borderline exegesis” as a mode of reading intentionally and self-consciously “in concert with,” “in service of,” and “as a resource for” the search “for a more abundant life.”29 At first glance this might seem to contradict Zeichmann’s assertion that Vaage’s scholarship is willing to imagine Paul as an “emphatically useless figure.” But it is precisely because Vaage is able to imagine a Paul that is not at the mercy of any particular theological or political agenda that the apostle is then freed up to be a resource for the search for “a more abundant life,” or as Baergen and Blanco Arellano paraphrase the students in Lima, Este Pablo sí que ayuda al pueblo (this is a Paul who helps our people).30

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The essays in this volume attest to the multitude of ways in which Paul (and here I will not make a distinction between Paul and “Paul”) is constantly being domesticated. As Zeichmann emphasizes in the introduction, the history of interpretation of the apostle Paul is littered with efforts to “domesticate” a problematic apostle and “render him both appealing and safe.”31 Paul through the centuries has in fact functioned as an unstable, even destabilizing, force that needs to be tamed, rendered safe, made harmless, stabilized, or as Zeichmann emphasizes, “domesticated.” Hence the “radical, but not that radical” type of scholarship that claims to have “rediscovered” the true meaning of the apostle once and for all, and then having neutralized the threat that this destabilizing force represents, harnesses it to its own advantage, enlisting Paul into the service of this or that theological or political project. Zeichmann specifically mentions the endorsement or criticism of empire, but as Arnal observes, the possibilities are endless.32 Paul, infinitely pliable, can be harnessed for practically any agenda. But he never quite complies. Each radical “rediscovery” of Paul lasts only long enough for the next one to come along. Paul may at times be successfully transmuted into something else, but every attempt to tie him down once and for all ends up perpetuating his role as a destabilizing force. Again, this endlessly recurrent domestication of Paul is what keeps him in business. In the end, domestication and “radical but not that radical,” as Zeichmann suggests, are just flip sides of the same coin. Vaage’s “slow chipping away” at the conventional image of the apostle, again to use Zeichmann’s formulation, is not an attempt to stabilize this force but to engage with it. For Vaage, as crucially important as it is to attend to the historical Paul in all his complexity, this is only part of the work: as I suggest above, biography is ultimately about “getting ourselves right.” We look forward to Vaage’s contribution. no t e s 1 Leif E. Vaage, “How I Stopped Being a Q-Scholar,” in Scribal Practices and Social Structures among Jesus Adherents: Essays in Honour of John S. Kloppenborg, ed. William E. Arnal et al. betl 285 ( Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 213–31, here 220. 2 Leif E. Vaage, “Q: The Ethos and Ethics of an Itinerant Intelligence” (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1987); Leif E. Vaage, Galilean Upstarts: Jesus’ First Followers according to Q (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994). 3 Vaage, “How I Stopped,” 228.

Conclusion 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13

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Ibid. Johnson, “Devolution of Paul’s Relationship” (present volume), 211–12. Baergen and Blanco Arellano, “Prelude” (present volume), 3–9. Brown, “Hidden Wisdom” (present volume), 169. Arnal, “Useless Apostle” (present volume), 370–2. Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy” (present volume), 278, 295. I am using the term discourse here in a generic sense to refer to the specific use of written language that we find in the texts attributed to Paul. Schellenberg uses the term in much the same way to describe Paul’s indeterminate prose within his letters. Vaage uses the term to describe how texts, as the material remains of a previous life, presuppose a “biography” in which there is an inherent connection between body and language. Schellenberg, “On Pauline Indeterminacy,” 278. Schmeller, “Whoever Boasts” (present volume), 25–45. Moreover, as Zeichmann points out in the introduction (present volume), 11, such inquiries of limited scope are often more effective precisely because they limit themselves to addressing a single issue and concentrate all their energies thereupon. Jones, “Paul the Manual Labourer” (present volume), 46–69. Johnson, “Devolution of Paul’s Relationship” (present volume), 207. Zeichmann, “Acts and the Invention” (present volume), 75. Donaldson, “Assembled with One Accord” (present volume), 197. Moxnes, “Where Did the Horse” (present volume), 240. Guijarro, “Biblical Cartography” (present volume), 163. Donaldson, in his response to Guijarro’s chapter, takes advantage of the opportunity to elaborate on the question of whether the historical Paul understood his mission in geographical terms (“Assembled with One Accord,” 198–200). Egger, “Which Is Not Another” (present volume), 133–52. MacDonald, “Body as a Space” (present volume), 261–2. Wimbush, “Denouement” (present volume), 394. Leif E. Vaage, Columbus, Q, and Rome: Reframing Interpretation of the Christian Bible, sbab 52 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2011). Leif E. Vaage, “Where’s Waldo? Finding the Historical Paul in the corpus paulinum” (paper presented at the sbl annual meeting, Boston, 19 November 2017). Vaage says much the same thing in “The corpus paulinum,” in T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul, ed. Ryan S. Schellenberg and Heidi Wendt, T&T Clark Handbooks (London: T&T Clark, 2022), 21–2. Incidentally, this is the mysterious presentation that Colleen Shantz refers to in her opening paragraph; “Who Saw” (present volume), 117. Vaage, “corpus paulinum,” 21. Egger, “Which Is Not Another.”

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27 Such a conviction is also at the heart of Williams’s longer study, “Paul-Making History: In Search of a Sartrean Biographical Method” (PhD diss., University of St Michael’s College, 2014). 28 Dorothee Sölle, Gott im Müll: Eine andere Entdeckung Lateinamerikas (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1992), 164–5; the Spanish version appears in Dios en la basura: Otro “descubrimiento” de América Latina, trans. Dionisio Minguz (Navarra: Verbo Divino, 1993), 148–9. 29 Baergen and Blanco Arellano, “Prelude,” 5. 30 Ibid., 6. 31 Zeichmann, introduction, 12. 32 Ibid., 10–11; Arnal, “Useless Apostle,” 370–2.

d e n o u e m ent

Last Man Leif Vincent L. Wimbush

The academic field (and its discourses and practices), the institutional affiliation (and its orders and operations), the ethnic tribe (and its filiations), the religious denomination (and its rituals, soundings, and gestures), the colonial North Atlantic worlds (and their economies, political orientations, and histories of conquest) – these and other circles in which Leif Vaage is encapsulated, by which he has been defined, and in which he remains complexly mired – represent certain syndromes, sociopsycho-patho-logics, and politics that beg fathoming in specific relationship to Vaage. Vaage is keenly aware of such and continues to negotiate them, thereby inviting and facilitating inquiry of a sort that belies the typical collection of tribute essays. Some of the essays in this collection touch on this awareness and these gestures of negotiation; I should like to press the matter more forcefully. I define the syndromes, logics, and politics that I associate most with Vaage’s circles as (orientation to) “End of World.” Of course, Vaage is not singular in occupying this position. We have all been taught in so many respects that we are (always) at the End of World, so how could Vaage not have come to a point of wrestling with, roiling over, and playing (with) “Paul”? Did not “Paul” make (if not also win, for the circles in which Leif is trapped like the rest of us) the argument that the time was at hand? Did “Paul” not – with both rhetorical-emotional and socialpolitical formations – press the compelling case for reality as the End, the End as (the only) reality? Given where he was, who he was, and how he was in the world, how could Leif not have been a certain sort of student of “Paul”? Even more at issue – what happens, what has happened, after the social-cultural-affective case is made, through all sorts of violent means,

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when the proclamation and sentiment about the End is no longer deemed absurd or radical? When there are few if any naysayers, when deniers and skeptics are vanquished? What ensues when the world is built upon, organized around, indeed, is rationalized in relation to, the End? What formations and subjectivities, what politics and power dynamics, what ideologies and constitutions, are constructed, named, and reformed over and over again in light of such developments? And what about the layeredness, sedimentation, and canonization of such over time? Just how long can or should the End last? This collection of essays in tribute to, and as a reflection of/on, the work of Leif Vaage as (among other things) a scholar of “Paul,” is poignant and freighted, disturbing, and provocative. “Paul” is still being read? “Paul” must still be read? Read by whom? Read for whom? Read for what purpose? How and what does “Paul” signify? To be sure, “Paul,” for good and ill, with the steady sharp reviews of critical (and not so critical) history, mostly through the operations of exegesis, is made to keep company with some of the most compelling and charismatic magicians, seers, wizards, diviners, prophets, and ideologists of the world, including End of World. Vaage’s work on its own terms, as can be seen in the work of his students, protégées, and conversation partners from different ports and through different portals – as this collection shows – throws windows open wide to cast light on the complexity of the psycho-logics and politics of the End of World as part of (and sometimes even beyond) an obsession with the myth of christian origins. And as far as the latter goes, “Paul” must be engaged. But in my view Leif Vaage is, or at least seems to show himself, rather odd in registering hyper-consciousness about where he and his contemporaries stand in relation to the End associated with “Paul,” as taken up in christian myth-work. What is the nature of that consciousness? It has to do with the End of the (long-enduring) End – the End that has motored, been the impetus behind, and helped construct, the modern christian west. I assert that Vaage is among the last persons, certainly among the last of those highly trained as clerical men at/in the End of this world. How or why is this so? What is this End of the End that has to do with Vaage’s work and orientation as (biblical/New Testament/christian origins) scholar? Western theology-oriented and philologically grounded academic biblical studies is nothing if not a reflection (to whatever degree clean and clear) and legitimating force (to whatever degree compelling) of western colonial orders and their ongoing modern and contemporary political effects. Whether in the guise of the foundational field for the

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western Catholic and Protestant theological paradigms or as odd and insecure representations of the philological/historicist/scientistic paradigm of the humanities – whatever has been the placement of early modern/modern-world biblical studies, it has almost always understood itself (even if not always sharply self-reflexively) to contribute to the formation and maintenance of white/western/male dominance. Forged in the modern era at the height of colonial empire-building and consolidation, positioning itself inside and at times complexly just outside religious/denominational formations, deeply and firmly within the bowels of graduate professional theological education (from the office of self-styled church historian of symbolics and exegete Philip Schaff), biblical scholarship made itself into a modern professional club/association in the late nineteenth century with what is now known as the Society of Biblical Literature.1 This was the era of the Congo Conference, where “Africa” as we know it was invented; it was also the height of the era of colonialist sensibilities conducive to the production of F. Max Mueller’s enormous and profound undertaking that became the encyclopedic multiple volume Sacred Texts of the East (not “of the West,” whose texts did not need to be discovered, collected, translated, and classified). Such a project, as Jonathan Z. Smith, Tomoko Matsuzawa, and others have argued, was essentially the consolidation and establishment (if not invention) of “world religion(s)” as now known and taken for granted today. But to go back to the sbl : in the period of its initial establishment, it left the teaching of the Bible in the undergraduate setting (i.e., nontheological college-level departments and programs in “religion”) to those who were perceived to be “minor league” colleagues. This notion and its politics reflected what the sbl thought about itself, its orientation, its consumers/audience, its purpose: it was a circle of highly educated scholar-clerics responsive to, addressing, and shaping clerics and clerics-to-be, and (indirectly) their charges, domains, and cultures. This orientation was a significant part of the western translatio imperii et studii (transfer of power and knowledge), a register of empire’s agenda and method of control. Notwithstanding the breakup/breakdown of the West into denominational polities and states, what was shared was the sense of the imperative of control. A great part, if not the most effective part, of continued control was the manipulation of discourse, including its use as a kind of violence (as Michel Foucault argued). Therewith – that is to say, through scriptural manipulation – the world was controlled. And within such a scheme of violence nothing worked quite like the ideology of End of World for control of the world. That the sbl was from the beginning and remains invested in this ideolization (indeed,

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assumed the role of the major or metonymic media of this ideologization), is in my reckoning without question. And that is why “Paul” registers so strongly – even if complexly so – within the circle of exegetes as tradents of empire, including modern colonial world empires. The main agenda: hold steady the line of transference of power from ancient seers and prophets to modern colonial dominants/dominance. Among other strategies and politics, to be sure, what enabled such stability was making the End the perduring norm. Who ranks with “Paul” in this arena? I see in Leif Vaage not only personal, social-cultural (European/North American), formal educational-ideological, and professional (theological/religious studies) formation, but also de-formative orientation, practices, and gestures. Again, I do not claim that Vaage is in this mixture altogether unique; but he is certainly a rara avis: he knows things – he realizes his world has been constructed as the End; and he also knows that the politics and arrangements of such are at their end, at least in terms of retaining the power that lies in masquerade and obfuscation. That the End can go limping along, forcing its way, doing real violence for a long time, must no longer surprise. Leif Vaage’s professional career work – his teaching, publications, and mentoring – but also his extra-academic life, commitments, and meanderings (extending into Latin America), show evidence of one who works and lives at “borderlines.” The latter I take to be expressive of realization of end points – the end of the legitimate and legitimizing project of European-North American empires. The extent to which theological/religious/biblical studies helped advance or simply obfuscate such a project – he has in so many words argued as much – such discursive practices are at their end, in terms of occupying commanding or relevant space. Yes, Leif knows we are at End, the End of the Unity, the End of the Reality. Created long before his time, performed earnestly and made to be as relevant, entertaining, and urgent as possible by his teachers and his teachers’ teachers, the jig – of un-self-reflexively mining christian origins as the foundation of white western/christian world – is up. But this is part of what makes Leif and his work most interesting – as model for compelling teaching: his example helps guide us out of and beyond the superficial performative mode and sensibility of denial in which we remain mostly stuck. As long as I have known Leif – going back to the near end of his graduate school days and the beginning of my teaching career (which means he knew much more than I about negotiating the place we had in common, as well as the personalities and institutional challenges we had to negotiate) – he has struck me as a man eerily at ease. I now suspect that being at ease had, and still has,

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to do with his keen awareness that the playground in which we were playing was at end. This did not mean he was less earnest, less sincere, or other such things; no, it meant for him being less sold on the claims, the presumptions and assumptions, the challenges and pressures, less invested in the shiny rewards dangled before contestants; he tended to “see through” this thing – in his case, see through to the end and what it was about. Indeed, his strange seeing seemed to have had the effect of freeing him to do what needed to be done in that psycho-social register that “Paul” (who else?!) articulated with the expression ὡς μή (“as if not”; 1 Cor. 7:29–31). The last man is Leif, not on account of the year of his birth, nor because of the reading of the clock. It is because he is oriented ὡς μὴ that he is Last Man Leif. not e 1 The Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis was founded in Schaff’s Union Theological Seminary office in January 1880. This organization would go on to become the sbl .

Contributors

william e. arnal digs that funky music. He is professor in the Department of Gender, Religion, and Critical Studies at the University of Regina (Saskatchewan, Canada). His recent publications have focused mainly on the Gospel of Thomas. His books include The Symbolic Jesus (Equinox, 2005) and with Russell McCutcheon The Sacred Is the Profane (Oxford University Press, 2012), and his articles have appeared in Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Harvard Theological Review. rene baergen completed his PhD in New Testament at Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto in 2013 with the dissertation “Re-Placing the Galilean Jesus: Local Geography, Mark, Miracle, and the Quest for the Jesus of Capernaum.” He has taught at seminaries in Toronto, Peru, Uruguay, and Cuba. He started ministering at First Mennonite Church of Kitchener in 2011 and continues to do so today. lucio rubén blanco arellano is a popular biblical animator in the Equipo Nacional de Coordinación de Lectura Pastoral de la Biblia in Peru. He regularly publishes his research in Revista de interpretación bíblica latinoamericana on topics ranging from the masculinity of Boaz to the historical Paul. scott g. brown studied Christian origins at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, where, under Leif Vaage’s supervision, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Secret Gospel of Mark (1999). He has since published twenty academic articles and the books Mark’s Other Gospel (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005);

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Contributors

A Guide to Writing Academic Essays in Religious Studies (Continuum, 2008); and L’esoterismo in Paolo di Tarso (Tipheret, 2022). He is presently writing a book on the Pauline origins of Christian esotericism.

terence l. donaldson is the Lord and Lady Coggan Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology. He also has a status-only appointment with the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. His work on Paul includes Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World (Fortress, 1997). His most recent book is Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine: The Nations, the Parting of the Ways and Roman Imperial Ideology (Eerdmans, 2020). a.j. droge is a student of religion whose research criss-crosses the ancient Mediterranean and West Asian/Near Eastern worlds. Within these broad landscapes, however, he has an abiding fascination with the intertwining and interacting histories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Prior to his retirement, Droge held professorships at the University of Chicago, the University of California, and the University of Toronto. The author of numerous books and articles, his most recent publication is The Qur’a¯n: Translated with a New Introduction (Equinox, 2022). john a. egger lives in Seoul, South Korea, where he serves in the General Assembly Office of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea on behalf of the United Church of Canada. From 2005 to 2015 he studied with Leif Vaage at Emmanuel College, receiving his doctoral degree with the dissertation “A Most Troublesome Text: Galatians 4:21–5:1 in the History of Interpretation.” His continuing academic interests include the reception history of the biblical text and contextual biblical interpretation, especially the Bible in Asian and Asian-American biblical interpretation and the Bible in light of children’s experience. carlos gil arbiol is senior lecturer (associate professor) in biblical studies in the University of Deusto, Bilbao (Spain). He is a member of a research group on Christian origins that has produced several works recently (www.origenesdelcristianismo.com). His areas of research include the connections between Paul and Mark, the place of Paul within Judaism, and the concepts of “marginality” and “third space” to understand Paul and his mission.

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santiago guijarro is professor of New Testament studies at the Pontifical University of Salamanca (Spain). He has recently published several books, including The Gospel of Mark in Context: A SocialScientific Reading of the First Gospel (Wipf & Stock, 2022); Los cuatro evangelios, 4th ed. (Ediciones Sígueme, 2021); Metodología exegética del Nuevo Testamento (Ediciones Sígueme, 2021); El cristianismo como forma de vida: Los primeros seguidores de Jesús en Ponto y Bitinia (Ediciones Sígueme, 2018); and La primera evangelización en los orígenes del cristianismo, 2nd ed. (Ediciones Sígueme, 2016). lee a. johnson is associate professor of religious studies at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina. She has served as chair of the Performance Criticism of the Bible and other Ancient Texts section of sbl and is the author of numerous articles related to the interface between written texts and oral culture published in the Oral History Journal of South Africa, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, and Biblical Theology Bulletin. She is currently completing a monograph on Paul’s letters as performed correspondence, Presenting Paul: Success and Failure of a Letter-Writer in a Non-Literate Culture. catherine jones completed her PhD at the University of St Michael’s College at the University of Toronto in 2013. Her thesis is entitled “Theatre of Shame: The Impact of Paul’s Manual Labour on His Apostleship in Corinth.” She now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she works in an executive role with the Government of Yukon. alcris limongi (she/her) was born in Venezuela and arrived in Canada in 1996 with a Licenciatura en Teologia. After completing her MDiv at Emmanuel College, supplemented with courses offered by Latino/a faculty at various theology schools in the United States, she was called from the academic world in 2009 to serve at the General Council Office of the United Church of Canada to lead in the areas of racial justice, gender justice, and sexual minorities. She presently serves as an educator at the Centre for Christian Studies in Winnipeg, Canada. margaret y. macdonald is professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. Her publications include The Power of Children: The Construction of Christian Families in the Greco-Roman World (Baylor University Press, 2014);

402

Contributors

Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald with Janet Tulloch,  A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Fortress, 2006); Colossians and Ephesians for the Sacra Pagina commentary series (Liturgical, 2000); Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (Cambridge University Press, 1996); and The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings  (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

halvor moxnes served as professor of New Testament at the University of Oslo over the period 1984 to 2014. He has published extensively, including the following books: The Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conflict and Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel (Augsburg Fortress, 1988); Putting Jesus in His Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom (Westminster John Knox, 2003); Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism: A New Quest for the Nineteenth-Century Historical Jesus (Tauris, 2012); and A Short History of the New Testament (Tauris, 2014). ryan s. schellenberg is associate professor of New Testament at Methodist Theological School in Ohio. He is author, most recently, of Abject Joy: Paul, Prison, and the Art of Making Do (Oxford University Press, 2021); and co-editor (with Heidi Wendt) of T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul (T&T Clark, 2022). thomas schmeller holds a PhD as well as a Habilitation from Munich University. From 1993 to 2004, he was professor of biblical theology at Dresden Technical University. From 2004 until his retirement in 2022, he held the chair for theology and hermeneutics of the New Testament at Goethe University, Frankfurt a.M. His research interests are focused on Pauline literature, social history, and rhetoric. His books include Paulus und die “Diatribe” (Aschendorff, 1987); Das Recht der Anderen (Aschendorff, 1994); Schulen im Neuen Testament? (Herder, 2001); Der zweite Brief an die Korinther (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010/2015); and Kreuz und Kraft (Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2016/2018).  colleen shantz is associate professor in the Faculty of Theology of St Michael’s College and cross-listed to the Department for the Study of Religion in the University of Toronto. Her teaching and research attend to embodied aspects in the period of Christian origins – ritual,

Contributors

403

emotion, religious experience – and their significance in the development of the Christ groups, especially in the letters of Paul. She is among the early adopters of cognitive approaches to the historical study of religion and her current research explores Christian origins as a case of cultural niche construction. 

kieren williams received her PhD in New Testament studies from the University of St Michael’s College after teaching at Emmanuel College and working as a community minister for the United Church in the Davenport neighbourhood in Toronto. Her dissertation is called “Paul-Making History: In Search of a Sartrean Biographical Method,” and she is presently writing a memoir entitled Apples Sometimes Fall Far from the Tree. vincent l. wimbush is an internationally recognized scholar of religion. He is author/editor of several books, and scores of articles and essays. His most recently published book is Black Flesh Matters: Essays on Runagate Interpretation (Fortress Academic/Lexington, 2022), a collection of essays marking turns and constants in his scholarly career. He has taught at Claremont School of Theology, Claremont Graduate University, Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, Harvard Divinity School, and Williams College. He is founding director of The Institute for Signifying Scriptures and served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2010.

christopher b. zeichmann (he/they) lectures at Toronto Metropolitan University in both the Department of History and the Department of Religious Studies. His research focuses on the military in early Roman Palestine, as well as the sexual politics of early Christianity. These interests have converged in his recent book Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum: Their History and Politics (sbl Press, 2022). His first book, The Roman Army and the New Testament, was published in 2018 by Fortress Academic/Lexington.

Index

su b jec t i nde x Acts of the Apostles, influence of, 5–6, 14–18, 70–9, 85–6, 118–24, 153–66, 196–9, 227–30, 233, 237–41, 348, 383–6 Antioch, 155, 157–9, 161, 164, 165, 196–9 Apollos (apostle), 173–6, 179, 209, 311–12, 323, 347 Archons of this Aeon (ἄρχοντες τῶν αἰὼν τούτων), 172, 186–8, 305–33, 361–5 Arnal, William E., 11, 20, 357–75, 379–81, 389–90 assembly (ἐκκλησία), 245–60, 272, 337–8, 342, 345–51, 369–70 Baergen, Rene, 3–9, 16, 20, 378, 389 Baird, William, 171 baptism, 43, 214–19, 247, 262 Barnabas (apostle), 63, 157–8, 161, 164–5, 196–8, 325, 341, 347 Barrett, C.K., 29, 64 beatings, 17, 30, 38, 50, 53, 76–7, 81, 96, 102–4, 118, 124–6, 211 See also punishments in antiquity biographical methodology, 73–4, 85–6, 118–20, 324, 334–6, 345–51, 369–70, 380–2, 387–92 bios, 126–7 Blanco Arellano, Lucio Rubén, 3–9, 16, 20, 378, 389

Blavatsky, H.P., 293–4, 360 bones of ancestors, 15–16 Bourdieu, Pierre, 73, 87, 129 bravado, 103–4, 121, 126 Brown, Peter, 214, 217, 281, 287 Brown, Scott G., 14, 18, 169–92, 200–2, 379–80 Burton, Ernest De Witt, 137, 143 Caravaggio, 228–41, 265–7 cartography biblical cartography, 159–62 cognitive cartography, 154–9 as means of persuasion, 162–5 Cassidy, Richard J., 72–3, 75 categories for the study of Paul cartography, 153–68 See also cartography doxa (Pierre Bourdieu), 44, 73–5, 85, 118–20, 125 Gnosticism, 170, 200, 306–23, 361–5 liminality, 42–3, 210–11 third space, 245–60, 268–71 Cephas (apostle), 27, 63, 155, 164–5, 196, 208–9, 219, 347 See also assembly; Jerusalem church clever slave (servus callistus), 97, 100, 103, 105 Corinthian church, 26–41, 46–55, 62–5, 95–7, 122–3, 127, 169–87,

406

Index

207–19, 245–57, 261–4, 268–71, 278–9, 288, 291, 309, 313, 346–8, 369, 383, 385 crucifixion, 185, 188, 196, 305, 307, 314–22, 362–3 de Boer, Martinus C., 136, 139, 141, 145–6 Deissmann, Adolf, 14, 223, 282, 335–6 depictions of Paul conversion of, 227–44 homoerotic, 237–41, 264–7 as a knight, 232–6 in medieval saint plays, 230–2 as racialized, 3–9, 85–6, 105–11, 393–7 “domestic” matters and Paul on “the body” (σῶμα), 17–19, 48–53, 110–11, 183–4, 245–57, 261–73 ethics, 207–26, 245–60 glossolalia, 213–19, 262–3, 283, 359–60 women, 207–26, 261–4, 350 Donaldson, Terence L., xi, 13, 18, 193–205, 379, 383 Droge, A.J., 19, 172, 174, 186–8, 305–33, 357, 361–5, 371, 379–81 ecstasy, religious, 210, 229–30, 238–41, 265–7 Egger, John A., 17–18, 20, 73, 94–116, 119, 125–6, 128–9, 133–52, 164, 194–7, 200, 211, 377–92 Ellis, E. Earle, 307 Epaphroditus (apostle), 347–8 esotericism in modernity, 170, 292–4 in non-biblical texts, 178–9, 283–4 See also Paul: as constructed by the text Fitzgerald, John T., 49 forced labour, 81–3, 92, 119, 124 See also punishments in antiquity

Foucault, Michel, 79, 240, 395 Fraenkel, Eduard, 97 Fredriksen, Paula, 10–11 Galatian church, 134–48, 194–6, 210, 213, 345 Gil Arbiol, Carlos, 19, 245–60, 264, 267–71, 382–3 Glancy, Jennifer, 12, 101–4, 110 “Gott Im Müll,” poem, 389 See also Vaage, Leif E. Graeber, David, 360–1 Grindheim, Sigurd, 38–40 Guijarro, Santiago, 18, 73, 153–68, 196–9, 384 Gunn, Thom, 236–41, 266 Harvey, David, 245, 254 Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords, 283–4 Hebrews, letter to, 81, 336, 337, 339, 341–7, 350, 367–9, 385 historical Jesus, 70, 107–8, 325, 364, 370, 377 historical Paul method regarding Acts, 15, 70–5, 383 missionary travels of, 153–68, 196– 200, 248 as non-citizen, 6, 12, 76–9, 124 See also undomesticated Paul Hock, Ronald, 12, 46, 52, 122 hombre fuerte (“strong man”), 148 Hooker, Morna D., 171–2 Hurd, J.C., 85 ideology, 47, 57, 199, 259, 357, 380, 385, 395–6 irony, 30, 52, 104, 110, 126, 151 James (apostle), 164, 193, 196, 208–9, 219, 324, 347, 365 See also Jerusalem church Jerusalem, Paul’s journey to, 76, 147, 155–9, 164–6, 197–200

Index Jerusalem church, 27, 70, 157–9, 164–6, 193, 197–200, 208, 219 Johnson, Lee A., 14, 18–19, 207–26, 262–5, 267, 269, 271, 348, 378, 383, 385 Jones, Catherine, 14, 17, 46–69, 119, 122–3, 127, 211, 382–3 Jowett, Benjamin, 142–3, 277 Kahl, Brigitte, 134 Knox, John, 70–6, 85–6, 153, 156 Laodiceans, letter to, 328, 336, 340–1, 345, 367–8 Lerner, Ben, 286, 294 letter collections, 334–51 Lightfoot, Joseph Barber, 141–2, 144, 289 Limongi, Alcris, 17, 94–116, 119, 125–6, 128–9, 211, 382 Longenecker, Richard, 135–8 Lord of Glory, 172, 188, 305, 314–19, 363 See also crucifixion Luke, as author of Acts, 71–2, 153–9, 164–5, 197–9 Luther, Martin, 29–30, 32, 42, 120, 281, 287 Lutheran theology/church, 3, 229–30, 281 MacDonald, Margaret Y., 13, 19, 261–75, 379, 385 Marcion of Sinope, 336–8, 340, 349, 140, 147 letter collection of, 336–8, 340–3, 346, 366–8 Marguerat, Daniel, 13, 158 Martyn, J. Louis, 136–8, 145, 147 Matera, Frank J., 135–6 meaning-making, structures of, 16, 118, 126–8 melodrama, 103, 126 Menéndez-Antuña, Luis, 238–41, 265–6, 384–5

407

milk and solid food (γάλα … βρῶμα), 25, 63, 170–9, 301, 312, 362 missionary journeys, 153–66 Mitchell, Margaret, 282, 288, 292, 294, Moo, Douglas J., 135–6, 138 Moxnes, Halvor, 19, 211, 227–44, 263–8, 271, 384–5 Muratorian Fragment, 339–41 mystery/mysteries, 169, 177, 180–1, 186–7, 278–80, 285–92, 312–15, 329, 358–60 myth/mythmaking, 233, 305, 316–23, 363, 381, 386, 394 North Atlantic biblical scholarship, 3–5, 386, 389, 393–7 opponents of Paul in Corinth, 26–40, 80, 104, 120 in Galatia, 18, 137–44, 213–14, 307 P46, 310, 337–8, 341, 343, 346, 362, 366–8 Paul as “author” “authenticity” of Paul’s undisputed letters, 12, 324–5, 334–56, 364, 369–70 by interpolations, 12–13, 19, 186–8, 226, 272, 305–33, 356, 361–5, 374, 380 letter-senders and other coauthors, 176, 190, 346–9, 352–5, 380 as structured by biblical manuscripts, 54–5, 191, 289–1, 310–12, 334–54, 362, 365–70 as structured by na28, 111, 159, 365 as constructed by the text authority of, 133–52, 207–26 boasting, 25–45, 49–51, 95–7, 102–4, 114–16, 120–2, 130, 187, 213

408

Index

difficulty for interpreters, 133–52, 277–304, 358–61 esotericism of, 26, 169–92, 200–4, 277–304, 314–15, 358, 382 use of “we,” 175–80, 308–10, 347–8 precarious life of hardship catalogue (περιστάσεις), 32–40, 46–51, 113 manual labour, 6, 12, 32, 46–69, 82–6, 122–4, 211 physical punishment, 70–105 toil and misery (κόπος καὶ μόχθος), 40, 50–5 See also categories for the study of Paul; depictions of Paul; “domestic” matters and Paul; historical Paul; opponents of Paul; self-representation of Paul; undomesticated Paul Pauline corpus (corpus paulinum) 14, 85, 190, 245, 323–5, 334–8, 343–51, 362, 364, 366–72 See also letter collections Pentecostal churches, 216 Peter (apostle). See Cephas (apostle) punishments in antiquity, 35–42, 52–5, 70–105, 123–6 See also Paul: precarious life of Ramsay, W.M., 142–3, 146, 151 Reed, Jonathan, 71–2, 75 relative clause, 134–6, 141–2, 144–8, 194–5 revelation(s), 37, 40, 124, 177, 181–3, 263, 282, 285, 329, 359 Revista de interpretación biblica latinoamericana (ribla), 3–9, 106, 110 Robinson, James M., 106–8 Roetzel, Calvin J., 30 Sayings Gospel Q, 3, 106–7, 377–8, 383, 386–91

Schellenberg, Ryan S., 14, 19, 133, 277–304, 357–61, 364–5, 370–2, 380–1, 389 Schmeller, Thomas, 17, 25–45, 104, 119–22, 127, 133, 210–11, 381 Schreiner, Thomas R., 136, 138, 145 self-representation of Paul as aborted fetus (ἔκτρωμα), 211–12, 219, 222, 278 as apostle, 133–52, 194–6, 282, 348 as foolish, 27, 30, 37, 95, 121, 173–4, 187–8, 314 as purveyor of divine mysteries, 169–92, 277–304 as slave of Christ, 282, 359 See also slaves/slavery as uneducated (ἰδιώτης τῷ λόγῳ), 77, 277–80 seven churches, significance of, 336, 338–42, 345, 349, 351 Shantz, Colleen, 12, 15, 18, 117–31, 209–10, 230, 241, 262, 265, 379 “Shrove Tuesday,” poem, 25 See also Vaage, Leif E. Silvanus (apostle), 176, 347, 369 slaves/slavery, 52, 56, 59, 61, 81, 82–4, 97–105, 119, 125–6, 248, 264, 277, 282, 359 Smith, Jonathan Z., 11, 100, 117, 395 Smith, Morton, 285 Society of Biblical Literature (sbl), 118, 395 Soja, Edward, 245, 254–5, 269 Sölle, Dorothee, 389, 392 Sosthenes (apostle), 347, 369 super-apostles, 80, 95–6, 100, 278 theologia crucis, 29, 42, 120 See also Luther, Martin Timothy (apostle), 176, 347–8, 369 Torjesen, Karen, 218 Trobisch, David, 13, 343

Index undomesticated Paul “chipping” to arrive at, 3–4, 12, 148, 194, 202, 227, 241, 261, 384, 388, 390 scholarly posture toward, 6, 12–13, 16, 20, 379, 386 See also historical Paul United Church of Canada, 105–6, 400–3 Vaage, Leif E. approaches to the nt borderline exegesis, 3–9, 107, 396 Cynicism, xi, 49, 106–9, 377, 388 End of World, 393–7 Jesús-festejero (“Jesus the party animal”), 108–9 Latin America, 3–9, 16, 95, 106–11, 378, 389, 396 poetry, 5, 25–6, 109–10, 115, 236– 40, 266, 389 use of language, 3–9, 105–11 See also undomesticated Paul Valentinians, 200, 281, 297, 323, 325, 329, 332, 363, 365, 372–3 Walton, Steve, 71 Wansink, Craig S., 13, 79–80 weakness, 26, 30–43, 53–8, 65, 95, 97, 100, 118–27, 173–4, 183–8, 208, 211, 241, 263–4, 267, 314, 389 Widmann, Martin, 307, 322 Williams, Kieren, 14, 19–20, 176, 334–57, 365–71, 380, 385, 388 Wimbush, Vincent L., 13, 16, 20, 386, 393–7 Wright, N.T., 10–11, 294–5 Zeichmann, Christopher B., 10–23, 70–93, 119, 123–4, 128, 148, 208, 261, 336, 378–9, 383, 385, 388–90

i n d e x o f an ci e n t t e xt s Hebrew Bible/Septuagint Genesis 2:24, 247 Leviticus 26:11–12, 248 Numbers 12:12 (lxx), 211 22:31 (lxx), 285 24:4 (lxx), 285 24:16 (lxx), 285 Deuteronomy 28:48, 67n17 1 Samuel (1 Kingdoms lxx) 2:10 (lxx), 28 2:27 (lxx), 285 3:7 (lxx), 285 3:21 (lxx), 285 20:30 (lxx), 299n44 Job 2:9 (lxx), 67n16 3:3 (lxx), 211 3:11 (lxx), 211 3:16 (lxx), 211 Psalms 2:2–4 (lxx), 321, 373n17 2:6–7, 322 10:7 (lxx), 67n16 10:14 (lxx), 67n16 23:7 (lxx), 317 23:7–9 (lxx), 373n17 23:9 (lxx), 24, 316 90:10 (lxx), 67n16 106:5, 67n17 Ecclesiastes 6:3 (lxx), 211 Isaiah 5:13, 67n17 40:13, 181, 313 54:13, 327n26 64:4, 373n16, 373n19

409

410 Jeremiah 9:24 (lxx), 28 20:18 (lxx), 67n16, 68n26 45:3 (lxx), 67n16 Ezekiel 43:7–9, 248 Amos 3:7 (lxx), 285 Habakkuk 1:3 (lxx), 67n16 Zechariah 2:10–11, 248 Deuterocanonical Literature Wisdom of Solomon 10:14, 81 Sirach 11:1, 67n16 11:27, 299n44 22:22, 299n44 1 Maccabees 12:48, 89n26 Ancient Jewish Literature Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.336, 50 2.69, 90n34 2.257, 50 3.25, 50 8.244, 50 14.354, 90n34 Josephus, Jewish War 2.179–180, 89n26 4.406, 259n27 6.418, 82–3 6.434, 89n26 Josephus, Life 241, 90n34 319, 90n34 Mishnah, Bava Batra 2:9, 61 Philo, Every Good Person Is Free 22.160, 178–9 Philo, On Sobriety

Index 2.9, 179 Philo, On the Life of Joseph 173, 90n34 189, 90n34 193, 90n34 195, 90n34 Philo, On the Life of Moses 1.284, 68n26 Philo, On the Preliminary Studies 4.13–19, 178 Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 26.13, 328n35 Sibylline Oracles 3.150, 81 Testament of Job 24.2, 53 Testament of Judah 18.4, 68n26 New Testament Matthew 5:6, 67n17 11:19, 108–9 11:25–27, 204n7 25:35–37, 67n17 25:42–44, 67n17 27:15, 81 27:32–37, 320 Mark 12:25, 184 15:7, 81 15:20–24, 319–20, 373n17 15:22–24, 373n17 Luke 1:48, 67n21 1:52, 67n21 2:32, 299n45 7:34, 108–9 21:24, 91n36 23:26–33, 320 24:13–35, 228 24:30, 228 John 6:35, 67n17

Index 6:45, 327n26 12:31, 330n46 14:30, 330n46 16:11, 330n46 16:12–15, 204n7 17, 204n7 19:17, 332n64 Acts 8:3, 208 9, 208 9:1–3, 208 9:1–9, 6, 228 9:1–19, 227 9:3, 228 9:3–4, 265 9:26, 208 11:25–26, 164 13–14, 157, 158, 161, 164 13–28, 156 13:1, 164–5 13:1–3, 15713:2, 157, 165, 197 14–15, 197 14:24–28, 157 14:26, 157, 165, 198 14:27, 157 15, 193, 198 15:1–35, 157, 158, 165 15:36–41, 265 15:36–21:14, 158, 165 15:40, 157, 165 16:16–40, 87n12 16:19–40, 72, 76 16:25, 81 16:27, 81 16:35–39, 124 16:36–18:22, 158 16:37, 6 17:18–31, 6 18:1, 174 18:11, 174 18:18–23a, 198 18:22, 198 18:22–23a, 157–8, 198 18:23–20:38, 158, 160

18:24, 220n7 18:24–19:40, 158 19:1, 220n7 20:9–12, 6 20:17–38, 157 21–25, 165 21–28, 78, 87n12 21:15–17, 198 22, 208 22:1–21, 6 22:3, 6, 122 22:3–5, 208 22:6–11, 228 22:12–16, 237 22:25–30, 124 22:38, 6 23:2, 78 23:6, 6 23:7–11, 78 23:18, 81 23:23–24:27, 72 24:1, 78 24:1–23, 77 24:10–21, 6 24:22–26:32, 76 24:23, 78 24:26, 78 25:14, 81 25:27, 81 26, 208 26:2–23, 6 26:6–12, 228 26:12–14, 233 28:3–5, 6 28:16, 76, 81 28:16–31, 72 28:17, 81 Romans 1:1, 282 1:3, 281 2:5, 285 2:17, 301n61 2:28, 281 4:1, 281

411

412 5:6, 301n61 5:17, 337 6:4, 301n61 6:6, 328n33 6:16, 279 6:19, 281 7, 281 7:1–6, 303n87 7:5, 281 7:18, 301n61 7:23, 91n36 7:25, 281 8:4–6, 327n22 8:9, 327n22 8:11, 249 8:13, 327n22 8:15, 283 8:19, 285 8:23, 301n61 8:28–30, 176 8:35–39, 120 8:38, 301n61 9–11, 199 9:3, 281 9:5, 281 10:1, 301n61 11, 181 11:14, 281 11:17, 301n61 11:21, 301n61 11:24, 258n6 11:25, 156, 181, 301n61 11:25–26, 200 11:33, 313 11:34, 181, 313 12:16, 67n21 12:20, 67n17 13:1–7, 72, 314 13:3, 314, 315 13:14, 281 15, 198–9, 15–16, 352n6, 367 15:16, 199 15:18–19, 155, 296n6

Index 15:19, 155, 199, 210, 301n61 15:20, 28 15:22–24, 155 15:23, 199 15:25–28, 164, 200 15:26, 156 15:28, 156, 199 15:31, 164, 165, 301n61 16, 267 16:1, 347 16:1–2, 263, 346, 348 16:5, 346 16:7, 90n36, 347 16:10, 346 16:20, 283 16:23, 346 16:25, 299n46, 329n40 16:25–26, 328n32 1 Corinthians 1, 185, 188 1–2, 181 1–3, 312 1–4, 172, 173–5, 186, 188, 249, 323, 373n16 1–6, 245, 249, 268 1:1, 176, 190n13, 282, 326n15, 346, 347 1:4, 326n15 1:6, 329n37 1:7, 285 1:10, 191n24, 326n15 1:10–12, 173 1:10–2:5, 309, 312 1:10–4:21, 311 1:11, 263, 346, 347 1:12, 209, 220n7, 347 1:17, 173, 176, 192n35 1:17–31, 173, 174 1:17–2:5, 173 1:18, 170, 301n60, 306, 308 1:18–20, 188 1:18–25, 301n60 1:18–31, 174 1:18–2:5, 32, 186–8, 314

Index 1:18–3:4, 174 1:19, 174, 176 1:19–20, 174 1:20, 186, 188, 312, 329n38 1:20–21, 186 1:21, 173, 188, 312, 328n30 1:22–23, 176 1:23, 176 1:23–24, 170, 301n60 1:23–25, 187 1:24, 188, 312 1:25, 130n11, 174 1:25–27, 329n41 1:26, 252, 281 1:26–29, 187, 188, 214 1:27, 121, 174, 314 1:28, 187 1:30, 188 1:31, 28 2, 181, 306 2:1, 192n35, 221n11, 288, 306, 327n17, 362 2:1–3, 309 2:1–4, 278 2:1–5, 52, 169, 173, 174, 209, 215, 221n9, 298n35, 327n29, 362 2:1–3:4, 174 2:2, 170, 174, 179, 301n60 2:3, 174, 306, 362 2:4, 192n35, 217, 221n11 2:4–5, 173, 192n35 2:5, 192n35, 311 2:6, 169, 171, 175, 176, 178, 186, 187, 188, 311, 312, 325n5, 327n27, 363 2:6–7, 186 2:6–8, 312, 315, 317, 318, 319, 320, 322, 331n59 2:6–12, 175 2:6–16, 19, 172, 173, 174, 175–7, 186–8, 190n13, 201, 301n60, 305–33, 361–5, 379–80 2:6–3:4, 18, 169–92, 200–2, 204n7

413 2:7, 175, 176, 200, 292, 311, 312, 325n5, 327n27, 329n37 2:7–10, 285 2:8, 186, 188, 311, 332n62, 363 2:9, 183, 323, 328n35, 329n35, 331n59, 373n16, 373n19 2:10, 170, 176, 311, 313, 314, 325n5 2:10b, 181 2:10–16, 182 2:11, 181, 311 2:11–16, 313 2:11b, 181 2:12, 177, 182, 183, 311, 313, 325n5 2:13, 175, 176, 177, 186, 189n10, 192n35, 325n5, 327n27, 328n34 2:13–16, 201 2:13–3:1, 183, 184 2:13–3:4, 182 2:14, 180, 309, 310, 311, 313, 325n1, 325n2 2:14–15, 309 2:14–16, 175, 329n42 2:14b–15a, 183 2:15, 181, 313 2:15–26, 170 2:16, 177, 181, 182, 311, 313, 325n5 2:16a, 181 3:1, 175, 177, 180, 191n30, 309, 310, 311, 312, 325n3, 327n17, 327n27, 327n29, 362 3:1–3, 175, 309, 362–3 3:1–4, 174, 178, 179, 180, 184, 309, 312 3:1–15, 179 3:2, 171, 175, 179, 301n60 3:2–3, 172, 191n30 3:2–4, 327n29 3:3, 171, 180, 182, 310, 327n21 3:3–4, 173 3:4, 220n7 3:4–9, 347 3:5, 179, 220n7 3:5–9, 175 3:5–15, 174

414 3:6, 220n7 3:6–9, 179 3:7, 301n60 3:9, 179 3:9–16, 249 3:10–11, 179 3:10–15, 28, 175 3:16–17, 248, 249, 268 3:18, 49, 329n38 3:18–19, 186, 188 3:19, 312 3:20, 328n33 3:22, 220n7 3:33, 220n7 4:1, 176, 190n13, 285, 301n60 4:6, 32, 49, 176, 190n13, 220n7 4:6–8, 187 4:6–13, 120 4:6–21, 32–3 4:7, 32 4:8, 32, 50 4:9, 49, 176 4:9–13, 46, 48–50, 55, 67n18, 92n52, 123, 174 4:10, 32, 49, 50, 130n11 4:11, 49, 50, 63 4:11–13, 32, 33, 121 4:12, 48 4:12–13, 33 4:13, 32, 47 4:14–15, 179 4:16, 32, 174 4:17, 348 4:18–20, 33 4:19–20, 298n35 4:21, 33, 36, 121 5–6, 270 5:1, 252, 279 5:3, 246 5:5, 327n22 6, 221n18, 246–51 6:7–8, 252 6:12, 250, 252 6:12–20, 246

Index 6:13, 246 6:15, 246, 247, 248, 250, 252, 258n6 6:15–16, 246 6:15–20, 250 6:16, 247, 248 6:18, 246, 247 6:18–20, 246 6:19, 246, 247, 248, 249, 268 6:19–20, 247 6:20, 248 7, 218, 257n3, 262 7–16, 217 7:1, 215, 217, 225n60, 347 7:1–2, 222n30 7:1–4, 252, 269 7:4, 257n5 7:7, 212, 213, 217, 218 7:12, 252 7:12–16, 270 7:14, 264 7:14c, 261 7:17, 295n3 7:21, 277 7:22–23, 248 7:25, 215 7:26, 222n31 7:28, 214 7:29–31, 397 7:31, 222n31 7:32–35, 214 7:35b, 212 7:36, 252 7:36–38, 263 7:37–38, 213 7:38, 214 7:40, 212, 213, 217, 263 8:1, 215 8:1–11:1, 63 8:10–13, 252 9, 212, 257n3 9:1–5, 48 9:1–12a, 65 9:1–14, 65 9:1–18, 17, 46–69, 122–3, 382

Index 9:1–27, 213 9:1a, 64 9:1b, 64 9:1c–2, 64 9:3, 64 9:3–12, 208 9:4–5, 64 9:5, 347 9:5–6, 213 9:6, 47, 48, 62, 64, 121–2 9:7–12a, 48 9:7–14, 64 9:8–9, 64 9:12, 220n5 9:12a, 48 9:12b, 65 9:13–14, 48, 65 9:15–18, 48, 65 9:16–17, 176 9:18, 211, 213 10, 257n3 10:1–22, 325n3 10:17, 246, 247 10:21–22, 252 10:22, 130n11 10:23, 252, 325n3 10:23–30, 270 10:27–28, 252 11, 257n3 11–14, 215, 264 11:2–16, 215, 218, 262, 263, 264 11:3–16, 325n3 11:4, 215 11:4–5, 252, 269 11:5, 215 11:10, 218 11:11–12, 371 11:16, 264 11:21–22, 252 11:22, 272n8 11:24–25, 77 12, 215, 257n3 12–14, 373n13 12:12, 246

415 12:12–13, 272n8 12:13, 218, 224n42, 247, 262 12:22–23, 218 12:27, 247, 249 12:28, 264 12:28–30, 218 12:31, 218 12:31b–14:1a, 325n3 13, 373n13 13:8–12, 184 13:9–11, 178 13:11, 178 13:12, 185 14, 262 14:1, 218, 263 14:4, 218 14:5, 263 14:6, 285 14:7, 218 14:9, 218 14:14, 218 14:16, 283 14:18, 210, 215, 217, 263, 283 14:18–19, 264 14:20, 177 14:22, 210, 215–16 14:23, 252 14:26, 285 14:26–40, 373n13 14:27, 218 14:27–28, 218 14:32–34, 272n8 14:33–36, 226n69, 356n68, 371, 373n13 14:37, 175, 264, 327–8n29 14:39, 263 15, 183, 257n3 15:3–7, 211, 329n39 15:5–11, 209 15:8, 190n13, 222n25, 264 15:9, 208 15:10, 29, 42 15:39, 184, 281 15:42–44, 183

416 15:44–46, 308 15:48, 184, 200 15:49, 184, 185 15:50, 184, 281 16:1, 215 16:1–4, 164 16:12, 215, 220n7, 223n38 16:15, 346 16:19, 346 16:22, 283 2 Corinthians 1–7, 203n6 1:1, 248, 346, 347 1:1–9:15, 51 1:12, 208 1:17, 281 2:1–2, 203n6 2:1–4, 35 2:1–11, 203n6 2:3–4, 203n6 2:5, 36 2:5–8, 203n6 2:9, 203n6 2:14–7:4, 33 2:16, 33 3, 303n87 3–4, 186 3–5, 201–2 3:1–4:6, 33 3:3, 191n30 3:6, 33, 287 3:7–11, 33 3:12–18, 33 3:18, 202 4:2, 27 4:4, 330n46 4:7, 30, 34 4:7–12, 32, 33–5 4:8–9, 34, 120 4:8–10, 35 4:8–11, 34 4:10–11, 38 4:10–12, 34, 35 4:11, 281

Index 4:16, 202 6:3–10, 32, 46, 50–2, 92n52, 208 6:4, 27 6:4b–10, 51, 52, 120 6:5, 53, 75, 80, 124 6:11–7:4, 51 6:16, 268 6:17, 249 7:1, 327n22 7:6, 347 7:8, 35 7:12, 36 8–9, 164 8:9, 29, 38, 328n33 8:16–20, 348 8:23, 348 10–13, 27, 35, 38, 50, 52, 213 10:1, 36, 38 10:1–2, 279 10:1–6, 30 10:1–11, 26, 35–6 10:3–6, 36, 121 10:5, 91n36 10:8, 36 10:8–11, 279 10:10, 51, 52, 55, 95, 130n11, 221n9, 279 10:11, 279 10:12, 27, 290 10:12–13, 290 10:12–18, 26 10:13, 27 10:13–14, 28 10:13–16, 28 10:14, 27, 29 10:15, 27, 28 10:15–16, 27, 28 10:17, 25–45, 120–2 10:18, 29 11:1, 51 11:4, 52 11:5–6, 278 11:5–12, 52 11:6, 52, 77, 278–80, 290, 292

Index 11:7, 46, 52–5, 290 11:7–12, 211 11:9, 52 11:12–15, 52 11:16–21a, 37 11:16–12:13, 37, 112n2 11:17, 52, 67n16 11:18–20, 52 11:21b, 37, 3911:21b–29, 208 11:21b–33, 17, 37, 39, 94–116, 125–6, 382 11:21b–12:10, 30, 37–41, 104 11:22, 37, 38 11:22–29, 39, 40 11:22–33, 32, 37, 38 11:23, 39, 52, 53, 55, 75, 80 11:23–24, 124, 125 11:23–27, 46, 52–5 11:23–28, 120 11:23–29, 37, 38, 41, 53 11:24, 125 11:24–25, 55 11:25, 124, 125 11:26, 55, 125 11:27, 47, 51, 53, 54, 55, 63, 67n17, 67n18, 125 11:28, 53 11:30, 37, 38, 52 11:30–31, 37, 39, 40 11:32–33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 12:1, 37, 39 12:1–4, 209 12:1–7, 285 12:1–9a, 39 12:1–10, 37 12:2–4, 37, 39, 40, 41 12:5, 39, 55 12:5–6, 39 12:5–7a, 37, 39, 40 12:6, 39 12:7, 213 12:7b–9a, 37, 39, 40, 41 12:9–10, 32, 39 12:9b–10, 37, 42

417

12:10b, 41 12:11, 27 12:11–13, 37 12:11–18, 52 12:12, 40 12:13–18, 52, 211 12:14, 35 12:16–17, 30 12:18, 348 12:21, 36 13:1, 35 13:1–2, 303n87 13:2, 30, 36, 279 13:3, 51 13:4, 38 13:6, 328n33 13:10, 30, 36, 279 Galatians 1:1, 209 1:1–2:14, 213, 223n38 1:2, 345, 347 1:6, 139, 141, 142 1:6–7, 18, 133–52, 194–6, 384, 388 1:7, 138, 139 1:7a, 139, 142, 143, 144, 147 1:8, 151n58 1:8–9, 146–7 1:9, 151n58 1:11, 194 1:11–12, 209 1:12, 209, 285 1:13, 207 1:13–14, 208 1:15, 282 1:16b–18, 208 1:17, 296 1:18–24, 200 1:19, 347 1:21–23, 208 1:22, 155, 346 1:22–23, 208 2, 164, 193 2:1–2, 208 2:1–10, 200

418 2:2, 147, 285 2:6, 164 2:7–9, 196, 209 2:9, 27 2:11–14, 196 2:12, 164 2:14, 196 3:1–5, 296n6 3:3, 281, 327n22 3:7, 328n33 3:26–28, 371 3:28, 212, 214, 218, 224n42, 262, 263 4:6, 283 4:21–5:1, 303n87 4:29, 327n22 5:1, 248 5:13, 281 5:16–17, 281 5:17, 327n22 5:19, 281 5:24, 281 6:1, 327–8n29 6:13, 281 6:17, 84 Ephesians 1:1, 353n25, 374n28 1:17, 299n45 2:2, 329n38, 330n46 3:1, 90n35 3:2–6, 328n32 3:3, 299n45 3:5, 329n40 3:9, 329n40 4:1, 90n35 4:2, 67n21 5:22–33, 273n14, 371 5:25b–27, 267 5:32, 267 6:20, 90n35 6:21, 347, 348 Philippians 1:1, 347 1:3, 289, 301–2n64

Index 1:4, 289 1:5, 289 1:7, 80 1:12–13, 72, 328n33 1:13, 80, 81, 83 1:14, 80 1:15–18, 151–2n62 1:17, 80 1:20–26, 124 1:21–26, 77, 83 2:2, 328n33 2:25, 347 3:1, 291–2 3:1b, 291 3:2, 277 3:4–6, 212 3:5, 207 3:10–11, 178, 185 3:12, 185 3:12–16, 178 3:15, 185 4:11–12, 120 4:13, 130n12 4:18, 347, 348 4:21–22, 72 4:22, 81, 83 Colossians 1:1, 347 1:7, 347 1:25–28, 328n32 1:26, 329n38, 329n40 2:2–3, 328n32 3:11, 224n42 4:3, 90n35 4:7, 348 4:8, 348 4:10, 90n36 4:13, 67n16 4:13–16, 345 4:18, 90n31 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 176, 347 1:2, 345 1:5, 54, 296n6

Index 1:5–6, 210 2:1, 347 2:7, 176, 347 2:9, 46, 47, 52–5, 67n16 2:14–16, 356n68 4:1, 54 4:9, 285 4:11, 54 5:8, 337 2 Thessalonians 1:1, 347 1:2, 345 1:7, 299n45 1:9–3:18, 338 3:7–8, 66n5 3:8, 54, 67n16 1 Timothy 1:17, 329n38 2:8–15, 371 3:1–2, 347 3:8, 347 3:11–12, 347 5:3–16, 263 2 Timothy 1:8, 90n35 1:9–10, 329n40 1:16, 90n35, 345–6 2:9, 90n31 4:19, 345–6 Titus 1:2–3, 329n40 1:5–9, 347 3:13, 220n7 Philemon 1, 81, 347 1–2, 345 9, 81 16, 281 23, 90n36 Hebrews 1:2, 329n38 3:1, 347 10:34, 81 11:3, 329n38

13:3, 81 13:22–25, 345, 348 13:23–24, 347 James 2:1, 327n26 1 Peter 1:7, 299n45 1:13, 299n45 3:22, 331n60 4:13, 299n45 2 Peter 3:15, 356n66 3:16, 12 3:16–17, 281 Jude 19, 327n20 Revelation 1:1, 299n45 2:24, 329n36 7:16, 67n17 11:8, 327n26 15:3, 329n38 16:10, 67n16 16:11, 67n16 21:4, 67n16 Ancient Christian Literature Acts of John 97–99, 332n67 114, 330n46 Acts of Paul 7.2.1–5, 85 Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs 19, 356n66 Acts of Thomas 10, 330n46 36, 328n35 143, 329n36, 330n46 Amphilochius, Epistula Iambica ad Seleucum 300–301, 355n42 2 Apocalypse of James 31.15–22, 332n67 Apocalypse of Peter

419

420

Index

81.16–24, 321, 332n67 Ascension of Isaiah 1–5, 330n50 2.4, 331n52 4.2, 331n52 4.4, 331n52 6–11, 330n50 7.9, 331n52 7.11, 331n52 9.13, 319 9.13–17, 317–19, 331n51 9.14–15, 318 9.27, 331n59 9.38, 331n59 10.11, 331n52 10.14, 331n59 10.27–31, 318, 331n54 10.29, 331n52 10.30, 331n52 11.2–22, 331n53 11.7–9, 331n61 11.16, 331n52 11.17, 331n61 11.19, 318, 331n52, 331n56 11.20–21, 331n57 11.23, 331n52 11.23–33, 318, 331n58 11.29, 331n59 11.34, 328–9n35, 331n59 Athanasius, Festal Letters 39.5, 343, 354n41 Augustine, Confessionum libri XIII 8, 242n5 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum 1.22, 242n5 Augustine, De doctrina christiana 2.6.7, 296n17 4.6.9, 280, 296n15, 296n17 4.7.11, 296n13 4.7.14, 280 4.7.15, 296n13 4.7.16, 280 4.8.22, 296n17

Augustine, Expositio in epistulam ad Galatas 4, 150n29 1 Clement 5.6, 90n30 34.6, 328n35 34.8, 323, 328n35, 373n16, 373n19 47.1–3, 323, 328n35 2 Clement 11.7, 328n35 14.5, 328n35 Clement of Alexandria, Excerpts from Theodotus 54.1, 325n7 56.3, 325n7 Concept of Our Great Power 41.14–42.3 Cyprian, Ad Quirinium testimonia adversus Judaeos 1.20, 353n18 Didascalia Apostolorum passim, 193, 195, 202 Epiphanius, Panarion 1.4.11, 344, 355n42 1.42, 352n8 Epistula Apostolorum 13, 331n51 Eusebius, Against Hierocles 2, 223n40 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.3.1, 203n2 3.3.5, 341, 354n31 3.22.8, 203n2 Eusebius, Martyrs of Palestine 3, 89n26 Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 5.20–25, 300n51 7.1.31, 68n26 Golden Legend 28, 242n5 Gospel of Judas 47.10–13, 328n35 Gospel of Philip 60.15–25, 325n6

Index 76.22–32, 325n6 Gospel of Thomas 17, 328n35, 373–4n19 Gospel of Truth 18.11–18, 325n6 Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistles 51.4, 300n50 Gregory the Great, Moralia 35.20.48, 343, 355n43 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.4, 329n36 5.8.21, 325n6 5.8.26, 325n6 5.19.1, 328n35 5.24.2, 325n6 6.30.7, 329n36 Hypostasis of the Archons 87.15–20, 325n7 Ignatius, To the Ephesians 2.12, 356n66 17.1, 330n46 19.1, 330n46, 331n61 Ignatius, To the Magnesians 1.3, 330n46 Ignatius, To the Philadelphians 6.2, 330n46 Ignatius, To the Romans 7.1, 330n46 Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 2.1–2, 332n63 6.1, 330n46 6.2, 67n17 Ignatius, To the Trallians 4.2, 330n46 10.1, 332n63 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.6.1–4, 325n7 1.6.3, 325n6 1.7.5, 325n7 1.8.3, 203n5 1.10.1–2, 203n2 1.10.2, 345, 355n49 1.10.3, 351n1 1.21.2, 329n36

421

1.23.3, 331n51 1.24.4, 320, 332n65 1.24.5–6, 331n51 1.30.12, 331n51 2.9.1, 203n2 2.22.1, 329n36 2.22.3, 329n36 3.14.1, 161 5.5, 351–2n5 Jerome, Commentariorum in Epistulam ad Galatas libri III 1.1.6, 149n28 1.11–12, 299n44 Jerome, Epistulae 53.9, 342, 354n35 Jerome, Tractatus in Psalmos 81, 223n40 Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology 3.13.44, xi John Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ii ad Corinthios 22.1, 296n12, 302n71 24.2, 302n71 John Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ad Galatas commentarius 1.7, 150n30 John Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ad Philippenses 2.9, 302n66 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 36.5–6, 316–17, 330n48, 363 Justin, First Apology 67.6, 90n34 Justin, Second Apology 2.11, 80–1 7.3, 90n34 Letter of Peter to Philip 81.3–21, 332n67 Martyrdom of Bishop Fructuosus and His Deacons, Augurius and Eulogius 2.1, 89n26 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 12.2, 89n26 Martyrdom of Polycarp

422 2.3, 328n35 Muratorian Fragment 48–58, 340 62–64, 342, 354n37 63–67, 340, 353n22 Origen, Commentary on Romans praef., 296n14 6.3.2, 296n14 Origen, Commentary on Matthew 27.9, 328n35 Origen, Contra Celsum 1.27, 280, 297n19 3.20, 296n16 3.44, 223n40 3.45, 296n16 3.55, 223n40 3.59, 223n40 5.61.17–18, 325n7 6.1–2, 296n15 6.2, 280 6.14, 280 6.18, 296n16 7.9, 300n54 7.10–11, 296n16 Origen, Homily on Joshua 7.1, 343–4, 355n44 Origen, On the First Principles 3.2.1, 330n46 Pistis Sophia 1.20, 330n46 1.31, 330n46 Pseudo-Paul, 3 Corinthians 2.36, 90n31 Pseudo-Paul, To the Laodiceans 6, 90n31 Prudentius, Psychomachia passim, 233 Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 5.1, 349, 356n66 5.1–2, 356n63 5.5, 352n5 5.6, 330n46 5.14, 352n6 5.17, 340, 341, 353n24, 353n26

Index 5.21, 341, 343, 353n27, 354n40 Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos 29, 325n7 Tertullian, De Baptismo 17.2, 356n64 Tertullian, De Praescriptione haereticorum 20, 345, 355n48 20.2–4, 203n2 21, 356n62 Tertullian, De pudicitia 20.1–5, 341 Theodoret, Interpretation of Paul passim, 296n12, 302n66 Treatise of the Great Seth 51.24–31, 332n66 55.10–56.20, 320–1, 332n66 56.21–57.6, 331n51 Trimorphic Protennoia 49.2–20, 331n51 Victorinus, Commentary on the Apocalypse 1.7, 339, 353n19 Graeco-Roman Literature Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon 3, 88n24 6, 88n24 8.1, 78 8.7–15, 78 Aelius Aristides, Aegyptios 67.5–12, 84 Aeneas Tacticus 31.32, 81 Aeschylus, Choephori 32, 50 Apuleius, Metamorphoses 2.26–27, 78 9.12, 83 Aristophanes, Knights 892, 61 Aristophanes, Wasps 38, 61 Aristotle, Generation of Animals

Index 733b.18, 222n27 Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 1.praef., 304n88 1.51, 61 2.20, 61 Cassius Dio 38.30, 90n34 40.41, 90n34 Chaldaean Oracles passim, 284–5 Cicero, De Officiis 1.150–151, 56–7 Cicero, Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem 1.2, 83 Cicero, In Verrum 2.11–12, 58 Cleomedes, Lectures on Astronomy 2.1.493–502, 293, 303–4n88 Codex Theodosianus 9.40.2, 92n51 Corpus hermeticum 16.1–2, 298n35 fr. 2a.6, 284, 299n40 fr. 7.3, 284, 299n40 fr. 26.24, 284, 299n40 Demades, Orationes 1.65, 91n36 Digesta 48.18.9 (Marcianus), 88–9n26 50.2.12 (Callistratus), 57 Dio Chrysostom, Orationes 7.55, 67n17 7.108, 57 7.110, 58 7.112, 58 7.117–119, 58, 68n32 7.128, 57 8.16, 67n17 31.36, 291 32.9, 304n88 32.19, 50 55.12, 67n17 Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 19.16, 80

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates romanae 6.59, 90n34 6.86, 259n27 10.8, 80, 90n34 11.46, 90n34 12.9, 81, 90n34 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De compositione verborum 21–22, 296n11 Epictetus, Diatribai 1.4.18–32, 179 1.9.22–24, 92n49 2.1.35, 49 3.24.53, 179 Epictetus, Enchidrion 51, 179 Euripides, Daughters of Troy 794, 50 Euripides, Ion 103, 68n26 Euripides, Madness of Hercules 1298, 80 Euripides, Phoenician Maidens 784, 67n16 Heliodorus, An Ethiopian Tale 1.12, 80 10.9–17, 78 Hesychius, Alphabetical Collection κ.578, 68n26 Hippocrates, Ancient Medicine 21, 50 Homer, Odyssey 12.54, 81 12.164, 81 12.196, 81 Iamblichus, On the Mysteries 7.4–5, 298n35 Juvenal, Satirae 6.542–547, 304n88 Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.32, 259n27 Lucian, Alexander 10, 300n52

423

424 13, 284, 298–9n36 16, 287 22, 284, 300n52 25, 300n52 26, 284 33, 300n52 48–54, 300n52 Lucian, Calumnae non temere credendum 24, 67n21 Lucian, De morte Peregrini 11–13, 223n40 Lucian, Fugitivi 12–13, 51 Lucian, Menippus 9, 298n35 Lucian, Rhetorum praeceptor 17, 299n38 Lucian, Somnium 9, 67n23 Lysias, Andocides 31, 90n34 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.3, 92n49 Marinus, Proclus 26, 299n41 Onasander, General 10.15, 80 Petronius, Satyricon 103–111, 92n51 Philodemus, De vitiis X 22.15, 299n44 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.4, 78 4.35, 78 4.44, 78 5.10, 78 Plato, Apology 38e, 92n49 Plato, Cratylus 404a.6, 81 Plato, Laws 744c, 67n21 Plato, Republic

Index 514a, 81 537b, 50 Plautus, Asinaria 546–579, 94, 97–105, 113–15, 125–6 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 18.11, 91n44 18.21, 91n44 28.4.30, 298n35 Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 10.58, 82 10.96, 92n49 Plutarch, Aemilius 14.2, 299n44 Plutarch, Cato Major 20.5, 67n21, 299n44 Plutarch, Cato Minor 12.5, 67n21 Plutarch, Cicero 10.5, 67n21 Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis 5 (396d), 296n16 Plutarch, De Superstitione 3 (166b), 283–4 Plutarch, Demetrius 17.6, 298n31 Plutarch, Demosthenes 1.1, 67n21 1.3, 67n21 Plutarch, Moralia 11a, 89n26 Plutarch, Sulla 30.5, 299n44 Polyaenus, Strategems 6.54, 80 Proclus, Cratylus 109, 299n41 Pseudo-Demetrius, De Elocutione 2.91–98, 299n38 2.100–101, 286–7 4.231, 300n50 Pseudo-Libanius 48, 300n50 Pseudo-Lucian, Asinaria

Index 27, 91n36 Quintilian 8.2.22–24, 300n50 Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historia Alexandri 10.6.8, 259n27 10.9.2, 259n27 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos 1.295, 91n36 Sophocles, Ajax 299, 81 Sophocles, Oedipus tyrannus 834, 303n82 Suetonius, Gaius Caligula 27, 82 27.3, 92n51 Suetonius, Tiberius 51, 82 Xenophon, Apology 9, 92n49 Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale 2.7–9, 88n24 Papyri and Inscriptions cil

1.1203–1205, 68n31 6.6308, 61 dfsj 22–23, 68n30 IEph 20, 59 1487–88, 68n30 2225, 58 IHierapJ 156, 68n30 IHistria 57, 59–60 IMilet 940, 60 P.Cair.Zen. 59343, 89n26 59520, 89n26 59639, 89n26

425

P.Col. 8.209, 79 pgm

passim, 284, 298–9n36 13.294–296, 79 P.Gurob 2, 88n16 P.Hamb. 4, 88n16 P.Harr. 1.107.15, 303n84 P.Lond. 2.354, 89n26 P.Mich. 8.482.21, 303n84 8.491.14, 404n84 P.Oxy. 37, 88n16 79.2, 67n21 237, 88n16 294, 89n26 2340, 68n32 sb

1.421, 298n31 1.4383, 84 5.8320, 84 seg

27.261, 59 27.828, 68n30 29.1183, 61 32.1302, 59 37.1309, 58 38.1296, 59 tam

3.1.872, 60 5.1.78–81, 61