In Search of the Early Christians by Meeks Wayne A. Hilton Allen R. Snyder H. Gregory & Allen R. Hilton & H. Gregory Snyder

Author:Meeks, Wayne A.,Hilton, Allen R.,Snyder, H. Gregory & Allen R. Hilton & H. Gregory Snyder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2002-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

“AND ROSE UP TO PLAY”

Midrash and Parenesis in 1 Corinthians 10:1–22

The logic of Paul’s counsel to the Corinthian Christians about “meat offered to idols” has long troubled interpreters. A particularly difficult problem has been the relation of 1 Corinthians 10:1–22 to the rest of chapters 8–10. In these verses Paul appears to adopt an absolute prohibition of contact with pagan cults, but that accords ill with his more lenient stand in chapter 8 and in 10:23–31. Moreover, the sequence of thought in 10:1–22 has not been completely clear, either. How are the scriptural examples connected with the paraenetic warnings? How is the consoling statement about temptation in verse 13 to be squared with the general warnings that precede it and the specific warning against idolatry that follows? What is the connection between the example of the wilderness experience of Israel and the dangers of pagan society in the city of Corinth?

Several modern commentators have sought a key to the exegetical problems by supposing that Paul depended on Jewish aggadic traditions and that he used interpretative techniques like those found in rabbinic midrash. Johannes Weiss called verses 1–5 “a midrash,”1 and he has been followed by many subsequent interpreters. Attempts to describe this “midrash”, however, have focused mostly on the intriguing matters of the first four verses: the following Rock, the meaning of “spiritual food” and “spiritual drink,” and the “Wisdom Christology” suggested to many by the fact that Philo had treated both manna and rock as symbols of the divine wisdom.2 As a result, the scriptural texts alluded to in verses 1–4 and the Jewish targums and interpretations of those texts have been repeatedly examined, while little attention has been paid to the allusions in verses 6–10, including the one explicitly cited quotation in verse 7.3 Consequently the unity of verses 1–13 has often been overlooked or ignored. In fact verses 1–13 are a literary unit, very carefully composed prior to its use in its present context. For convenience’s sake I shall call it a homily, without wishing to beg the question of its pre-epistolary Sitz im Leben. By analyzing its construction, we will be able both to understand its own meaning better and to see more clearly how Paul has adapted it to his epistolary admonition.

The passage is divided neatly in half by a simple contrast between “all” of the Israelites, who enjoyed God’s salvation at the Sea of Reeds and his protection in the wilderness, and “some [most] of them,” who rebelled against God and were punished for it. To the five parallel clauses signalled by the repeated (“all”) in verses 1–4 correspond five statements about “some of them” in verses 6–10.4 The five positive and the five negative exempla are both punctuated and linked with the paraenetic conclusion in verses 12–13 by means of an inclusio, verses 6 and 11;

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