Read The Jewish Annotated New Testament Online
Authors: Amy-Jill Levine
Arriving in Corinth ca. 50, Paul spent over a year organizing several house-assemblies (Acts 18). His letter, written from Ephesus within a few years, responds to problems facing these nascent congregations. The second letter Paul wrote to this church (1 Cor 5.9–12) mentions earlier correspondence. Paul will again write to this church (2 Cor), but the factionalism Paul seeks to mend continued to plague the congregation, as attested by the late first-century Christian letter
1 Clem
. (47.3).
According to 12.2 (cf. Rom 16.4) and Acts 18.4, the Corinthian congregants were mostly Gentile, with a few Jews, including some who relocated to Corinth after their expulsion from Rome toward the end of the Emperor Claudius’s reign (Rom 16.3–4; Suetonius,
Claud
. 25.4). The letter addresses issues concerning Gentile rather than Jewish congregants, such as eating meat offered to idols in pagan temples. It mentions “Jews” (
Ioudaioi
) only four times (1.22–24; 9.20; 10.32; 12.13), each time in relation to the gospel’s universal import. The letter also frequently references the Scriptures of Israel without explanation, such as the paschal offering (5.7) and the Sabbath (16.2); for the Gentile Corinthians, Israel’s Scriptures are theirs as well.
LITERARY HISTORY
Corinthian Gentiles participated in the cultic activities of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Eastern deities, either in public, citywide festivals or in private assemblies. Even private dinner parties could involve religious rites, such as libation offerings. Many Jews considered such activities idolatrous, and some saw idolatry along with sexual immorality as quintessentially Gentile practices (Wis 14.11–31;
Sib. Or
. 3.694, 751–52;
Jub
. 1.8;
T. Moses
10). Accordingly, Paul singles out idolatry as the principal feature his Corinthian converts had abandoned (12.2).
First Corinthians is an authentic letter. Only 14.34–35 (perhaps also v. 36), has attracted attention as a possible post-Pauline interpolation, largely because its content—the silencing of women in the
ekklēsia
—contradicts 11.5. Since the later Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim 2.11–12; Titus 2.5) advocate women’s subordination, the same group responsible for the Pastorals may have inserted the passage in this epistle.
Paul inhabits an apocalyptic Jewish world known from Second Temple texts (e.g., Dan 7–12;
1 En
.; 1QM). For this former Pharisee (Phil 3.5), the Messiah has redeemed his followers from Satan’s authority and death’s power. The “saints” (Gk
hagioi
, lit., “holy ones”; Paul’s term for church members) have been
justified
—made righteous in relation to God—because of their participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection through baptism (6.11; cf.
1 En
. 48–51). They anticipate the near arrival of the messianic kingdom, when their mortal bodies will be transformed (15.53–55).
INTERPRETATION
Paul instructs his churches to bear witness to the power and authority of the Christ by the way they live. Although God’s Spirit dwells in them, the Corinthians’ moral failings and organizational chaos belie the gospel message. Paul instructs the congregation to let God’s Spirit goad them to repentance, because only those who are reconciled with God and neighbor and who manifest love (Gk
agapē
) can remain in the unified
ekklēsia
.
Shira Lander
1
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
2
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord
*
and ours:
3
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4
I give thanks to my
*
God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus,
5
for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—
6
just as the testimony of
*
Christ has been strengthened among you—
7
so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
8
He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9
God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
10
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters,
*
by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.
11
For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.
*
12
What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.”
13
Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
14
I thank God
*
that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,
15
so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name.
16
(I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)
17
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.
18
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19
For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
21
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.
22
For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom,
23
but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
24
but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
26
Consider your own call, brothers and sisters:
*
not many of you were wise by human standards,
*
not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
27
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
28
God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are,
29
so that no one
*
might boast in the presence of God.
30
He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
31
in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in
*
the Lord.”
2
When I came to you, brothers and sisters,
*
I did not come proclaiming the mystery
*
of God to you in lofty words or wisdom.
2
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
3
And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.
4
My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom,
*
but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5
so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
6
Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish.
7
But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.
8
None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9
But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love
him”—
10
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
11
For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God.
12
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.
13
And 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.
*
14
Those who are unspiritual
*
do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
15
Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
16
“For who has known the mind of the
Lord
so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.