First Corinthians (Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament)

Pheme Perkins, Parsons, Mikeal C., Talbert, Charles, Mikeal C. Parsons, Charles Talbert

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780801033902
• eBook ISBN: 9781441240293
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

2013 Catholic Press Award Winner

In this addition to the well-received Paideia series, a respected New Testament scholar examines cultural context and theological meaning in First Corinthians. Paideia commentaries explore how New Testament texts form Christian readers by

• attending to the ancient narrative and rhetorical strategies the text employs
• showing how the text shapes theological convictions and moral habits
• commenting on the final, canonical form of each New Testament book
• focusing on the cultural, literary, and theological settings of the text
• making judicious use of maps, photos, and sidebars in a reader-friendly format

Students, pastors, and other readers will appreciate the historical, literary, and theological insight Pheme Perkins offers in interpreting First Corinthians.

First
Corinthians

Introduction

Christianity in an Urban Setting

Much of Jesus’s ministry took place in the small villages and towns of rural Galilee. The movement he founded established itself in cities (Furnish 1988). Peter and the other disciples had moved to Jerusalem before Paul’s conversion from foe to apostle in about AD 34 (Gal. 1:13–17). By that time believers could be found in the Jewish communities of Damascus and Antioch in Syria. Several years later disturbances over a certain “Chrestus” in the synagogues of Rome led Emperor Claudius (41–54) to expel those responsible from the city. Some scholars associate the expulsion with the emperor’s attempt to pacify the Jewish community during the first year of his reign. If so, the gospel had reached Rome by 41 (Murphy-O’Connor 1996). Most scholars credit a tradition found in later church historians that places the expulsion in 49 (Lampe 2003). The statement in Acts 18:2 that Claudius banned all Jews from Rome is hardly credible. Banishing persons held responsible for civic disturbances was routine practice.

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Claudius Takes Action

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“He expelled from Rome Jews who were rioting repeatedly at the instigation of Chrestus.” (Suetonius, Claudius 25.4 AT)

“. . . a certain Jew named Aquila of Pontus and his wife Priscilla, who had recently arrived from Italy on account of Claudius’s order to expel all the Jews from Rome.” (Acts 18:2 AT)

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Consequently Aquila and Prisca must have been preaching the gospel in Roman synagogues to have been exiled from the city. Like Paul, they were skēnopoioi (“tent or awning makers”), and had transported their trade to Corinth (Acts 18:3). Some scholars assume that one should consider them to have been leatherworkers, making anything from tents to harnesses to sandal thongs, but there is no reason not to employ the traditional meaning of the Greek word. Inscriptions provide evidence for an association of tent makers (collegium tabernaclariorum) in Rome (Barrett 1998, 863). In addition to the routine use of tents or awnings for shade and shelter in theaters and arenas and by travelers, the biannual Isthmian Games, which took place outside Corinth, provided plenty of opportunity for such artisans.

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Inscriptions Honoring Female Artisans

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“I worked with my hands; I was a thrifty woman, I, Nicarete, who lie here.”

“Sellia Epyre, dressmaker in gold in the Via Sacra, (wife of) Q. Futus Olympicus.”

“In this tomb lies Aemmone, a bar-maid known [beyond the boundaries] of her own country, [on account of whom] many people used to frequent Tibur. [Now the supreme] god has taken [fragile life] from her, and a kindly light receives her spirit [in the aether]. I, . . . nus, [put up this inscription] to my holy wife. [It is right that her name] remain forever.”

(Lefkowitz and Fant 2005, 219–20)

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Workshops excavated along the north market area of Corinth are only eight to thirteen feet wide. Stone stairs and a ladder lead up to a loft, where an unglazed window with wood shutters provided the only light except what came in through the doorway. As their lodger, Paul would have had to sleep among the shop tools on the ground floor (Murphy-O’Connor 1996, 263). Apostolic hardships such as relentless toil, sleepless nights, cold, hunger, and lack of sufficient clothing (2 Cor. 11:27) represent daily life for workers. Men and women, free persons and slaves often toiled side by side. Women are mentioned in trades associated with textiles and food shops or as lessees of inherited pottery shops, vineyards, or other agricultural facilities (Rowlandson 1998, 218–79). Though the educated elite considered the slave-like conditions of laborers demeaning, tombstone inscriptions refer to an artisan’s trade with pride (Thomas 2005). Prisca would have worked alongside her husband and Paul making and repairing the tents and awnings out of coarsely woven cloth or leather.

This social setting is the urban equivalent to that of Jesus’s original followers—a movement that took hold among those who worked at trades. Scholars use such slender hints about occupation, travel, and background to assess the economic and social position of the earliest Christians (Horrell 2006). Had they drawn from the most destitute rural or urban poor, Christians would not have had the means to carry their message between cities and to engage in the network of communication between churches that is so evident in the Pauline letters (M. Thompson 1998). One should not, however, imagine that these first believers belonged to a comfortable middle class, assured of sufficient food, some leisure, and future well-being. At best some 3–4 percent of the total population comprised the wealthy elite classes, the imperial household, senatorial families, regional kings, members of the equestrian class, and provincial and municipal elite families. Some freedmen, wealthy merchants, and retired military commanders might have joined their ranks. An additional 7 percent—merchants, veterans, those able to employ others in larger workshops—could be considered comfortable, that is, able to provide their families with more than the basic needs for food and shelter. If the destitute comprised about 28 percent of the population, that leaves the remaining 65 percent at or near subsistence level. Such folk comprised the overwhelming majority in Pauline churches. The few individuals who had sufficient wealth to be patrons of the apostle or the community as a whole belonged either to the 7 percent just below the elite or to a higher end of the “above subsistence” group (Friesen 2005).

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The Social Standing of Artisans

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“While we delight in the work, we despise the workman . . . for it does not of necessity follow that, if the work delights you with its graces, the one who wrought it is worthy of your esteem.” (Plutarch, Pericles 1.4–2.2, trans. LCL)

“Their trades, however, were petty, laborious, and barely able to provide them with just enough.” (Lucian, Fugitivi 12, trans. LCL)

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Paul’s participation in the manual labor at local workshops created a bond of solidarity with believers in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 2:9). Like a loving father, the apostle had their interests at heart (Ascough 2003; Bartchy 2003). But such labor drew persistently harsh criticism from some Christians in Corinth (1 Cor. 4:10–12; 9:8–18; 2 Cor. 11:7; Marshall 1987). Apparently the apostle could have been supported by wealthier Christians in Corinth. There was no need for him to engage in such socially demeaning activities. Paul even agrees with the status judgments behind this criticism. His labors put him among the masses who are considered beneath notice by the 10–15 percent of the population considered elite or at least well off. Many of the problems he faces in Corinth involve the clash between such human criteria and God’s perspective revealed on the cross (Theissen 1982; Marcus 2006). He must persuade his audience that those who live in Christ no longer live by the routine standards of their culture.

Why is the situation much more divisive in Corinth than in the less prosperous churches of Macedonia (2 Cor. 8:1–6)? Paul’s sarcastic description of their pretensions (1 Cor. 4:6–13; Du Toit 1994) suggests that the Corinthians identify with the values of the civic elite even though few could claim membership in the upper classes by either birth or wealth (1:26–31). Scholars attribute this impulse to the economic and social dynamism of first-century AD Corinth. After lying in near ruin for almost a century, the city had been refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC. Veterans and other colonists from Rome settled there. Some new inhabitants may have been from Rome’s Jewish population, descendants of those brought to Rome as slaves by Roman armies. Others may have arrived when Emperor Tiberius expelled Jews and Egyptians from Rome (Tacitus, Annales 2.45.4; Josephus, Antiquitates judaicae 18.65–84). Prisca and Aquila might have known Jewish immigrants in Corinth. With harbors on both the eastern (Cenchreae) and western (Lechaion) side of the isthmus, Corinth served as a transit point for goods being shipped across the Mediterranean. It was safer to haul a ship’s cargo on the track between the two ports, the Diolkos, than risk a sea voyage around the Peloponnesus. By the first century AD the city was a major economic hub in the eastern Mediterranean, owing its considerable wealth to the goods and services it supplied to merchants and other visitors (Engels 1990). It served as the capital of the Roman province of Achaia.

Figure 1. The Diolkos at Corinth. This track for hauling cargo across the isthmus from Cenchreae to Lechaion made it possible to transport wares from the Aegean Sea to the Adriatic without circumnavigating the Peloponnesus.
Dan Diffendale. Wikimedia Commons

A city that was rebuilding and expanding had room for ambitious merchants and artisans to push forward into that 7 percent of comfortable means. Since Corinth did not have a long-established group of aristocratic families as its “first citizens,” some recent arrivals might even aspire to join the ranks of the “municipal elite” with the help of newly acquired wealth and marriage into a prominent family. History preserves a tantalizing bit of evidence that one such individual could have belonged to the church. Paul sends greetings to those in Rome from a certain Erastus, a steward or financial officer (oikonomos) of Corinth (Rom. 16:23). East of the theater, an area of paved limestone included an inscription identifying its donor, Erastus, as an aedile. The aediles were responsible for supervising the city’s markets and other commercial functions. If this Erastus is the same man, he has moved up to a higher civil office. Several factors favor the identification. Erastus is not a common name. Since no formal patronymic is given, the person in question was probably a wealthy freedman. Some scholars wonder how a Christian could serve in a public office that required participation in civic religious activities (Bookidis 2005; Turcan 2000). But some believers had few scruples in that regard (1 Cor. 10). Therefore it is quite likely that the Erastus of Rom. 16:23 became an aedile in Corinth (Jewett 2007, 980–83).

Figure 2. Erastus Inscription. A paved limestone area east of the theater at Corinth included this inscription: “Erastus paved this at his own expense in return for the aedileship.”
John McRay

The workshop setting provides more than clues about the socioeconomic demography of Pauline churches. Evangelization probably occurred in that context as well (Hock 1980). Jewish synagogues provided instruction in the law and ancestral traditions. Roman inscriptions refer to individuals as “teacher of the law” (nomodidask...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• First Corinthians
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Scripture and Ancient Sources
• Back Cover