The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament by Craig S. Keener

Author:Craig S. Keener [Keener, Craig S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Christian Books & Bibles, Bible Study & Reference, Commentaries, New Testament, Education & Reference, Religion & Spirituality, Bible & Other Sacred Texts, Bible, Christianity, Reference
Amazon: B00B4OXVPW
Publisher: IVP Academic
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Authorship. All scholars accept 1 Corinthians as Pauline.

Corinth. Corinth was one of the major urban centers of the ancient Mediterranean and one of the most culturally diverse cities in the empire. A Greek city by location, the capital of Achaea (which made up most of ancient Greece), Corinth had been a Roman *colony for about a century, resettled by Romans after its destruction, and Greek and Latin cultures coexisted and sometimes clashed here. Its location on the isthmus of Corinth, a short land route across Greece that spared seafarers the more treacherous voyage around the south of Greece, made it a prosperous mercantile community. Its mercantile character contributed to the presence of foreign religions and may have accelerated the level of sexual promiscuity, although promiscuity was characteristic of Greek male culture in general. Corinth was known for its prosperity, and the proverbial sexual looseness of ancient Greek Corinth seems to have continued in Roman Corinth as well.

Language. Although Latin was used for official business, most people spoke Greek, especially most of the people who made up the Corinthian *church.

Situation. Roles were determined by social status in antiquity, and those with wealth and power preferred religious, philosophical and political ideologies that supported their base of power. A simple reading of 1 Corinthians in terms of a conflict of status ideals cuts through much of the speculation of older commentaries; although theological errors were involved, the biggest issue was that people were not getting along. The Corinthian Christians were basically like most Christians today. They had their own social interests, which seemed natural from their own perspective, but Paul summoned them to think instead as servants.

Thus higher-status members of the community seem to have preferred a more *rhetorically skilled speaker like Apollos; and, sharing the values of their peers they hoped to reach with the *gospel, they rejected manual labor as a suitable occupation for a moral teacher. Manual laborers in the *church, however, appreciated a voluntarily lower-status, working teacher like Paul, even if his personal delivery in speeches left something to be desired (chaps. 1-4). Philosophical ideals held by some higher-status members may have justified sexual offenses (chaps. 5-7); conflicts also arose over higher- and lower-status views of meat and communal meals (chaps. 8-11), high- and low-status views of head coverings (11:2-16), and possibly higher-status susceptibility to philosophical mystical currents (chaps. 12-14) and views of the body and immortality (chap. 15). In other words, the conflicting values of diverse groups in the broader society had been carried over into the church as divisive issues.

Commentaries. The best commentary is Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987); C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, HNTC (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), is also helpful. More focused works on specific texts or themes, such as Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), or Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven, Conn.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.