The Body Now and Not Yet: An Exegetical Study of the Apostle Paul’s Anthropology, Eschatology, and Ethics in First Corinthians By Jeromey Q. Martini New College, Edinburgh Thesis submitted for the degree, PhD University of Edinburgh 2009 Declaration I acknowledge that this thesis is entirely my own work. I have not submitted it in whole or in part for any other degree or professional qualification. Jeromey Q. Martini 23 July 2009 i Abstract My study is a first step toward understanding the lived experience of the earliest followers of Christ. Restricting my study to Paul’s portrayal of believers in 1 Corinthians, I focus where Paul’s anthropology, eschatology, and ethics converge, asking: How does Paul propose believers live as bodies in the eschatological tension that comprises Christ’s resurrection and return – believers belonging still to the κόσμος, already to Christ? My primary aim is to establish the premises that in 1 Corinthians believers are indistinguishable from bodies: believers are bodies. I establish my premiss by closely examining Paul’s concept of death as he argues it in 1 Corinthians 15. I argue that there Paul portrays believers consistently as bodies: whether bodies dead or bodies alive, believers are bodies. My aim, secondarily, is to relate that premiss to the believer’s lived experience as Paul portrays it. If Paul portrays believers always as bodies, how does he expect believers-as-bodies to live in the world as he conceives it? I apply my premiss to Paul’s contention in 1 Corinthians 6 that πορνεία uniquely violates the body. Before unpacking Paul’s argument about πορνεία and the body, however, I first address the question: What is πορνεία? After reviewing competing proposals on πορνεία’s meaning, I examine primary Second Temple sources on πορνεία before proposing that πορνεία functions in the Second Temple period chiefly as an othering term, distinguishing the faithful from ‘Others’. I then turn to 1 Corinthians 6.12-20 and Paul’s argument concerning believers-as-bodies and πορνεία. I conclude that Paul there presents believers as bodies that belong already materially to the Lord, though they belong still to the κόσμος that contests the Lord. Believers are bodies ‘in Christ’, in the κόσμος, constituent of each. I approach Paul exegetically and ideationally. I read Paul’s arguments and their inherent logics as they present themselves to me and I defend my reading of them. I make no claims about the social reality Paul’s arguments represent, nor do I claim either a foundational or a final reading of 1 Corinthians, Paul, or Paul’s followers. I offer in the end the barest beginning of an examination of the lived experience of the earliest recorded followers of Christ – a platform from which to consider more broadly lived experiences in Christian origins. I achieve a perspective from which to assess Paul’s followers, concluding with some ideas for further study. ii Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge that I could not have completed this project without help, spiritual, emotional and financial. I thank New College, University of Edinburgh, for three years of maintenance scholarships, as well as opportunities to tutor. I thank the Panacea Society for a scholarship funding my research into Paul’s eschatology, and Prof. Christopher Rowland and Dr Jane Shaw for selecting my project for the scholarship. I thank Fondation Catholique Ecossaise for two summers’ study at L’Institut Catholique, Paris, and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Toronto who sponsored me for a year’s research at the UofT – and then extended me an additional six months when I needed it. I particularly thank Mr John and Mrs Sheena Purves, Purves Funeral Directors, who provided my family two years’ free accommodation in Edinburgh. There is a sense of poetry that I lived above a funeral home while writing about death. I am blessed to have received tremendous financial and emotional support from family and colleagues and friends – too many to name, which disservices them. As they know, this project became increasingly tough-slugging for me. I could truly not have finished without them. I want especially to acknowledge Prof. Larry Hurtado, who supervised this project from its unwieldy and impossibly ambitious origins to its present, focused form. Prof. Hurtado both encouraged and cajoled me to keep going when I didn’t think I could. Dr Paul A. Holloway (Glasgow) and Dr Paul Foster (Edinburgh) gave the thesis a rigorous, if ultimately a favourable, final examination. Although Dr Foster did not at all supervise my project, he encouraged me greatly during my time in Edinburgh. I both thank and am thankful for my children, Caelan and Kara – neither of whom existed before this project. They are my joy. But it is above all my wife, Nicole, whom I thank for seeing this project to completion. Only because of her sacrifices, prayers, encouragements, and constancy through hopelessly difficult times can we echo Christ, however imperfectly: ‘It is finished.’ Nicole, I wholeheartedly dedicate this work to you. iii Table of Contents Declaration i Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv Note on Abbreviations ix PART ONE: INTRODUCTION Introduction Introduction 2 0.1 Guiding Question, Purpose, and Thesis of This Study 3 0.2 The Anthropological Premiss: ‘Believers Are Bodies’ 5 0.3 Defending the Premiss ‘Believers Are Bodies’ 7 0.4 Study Aims and Limitations 12 0.5 Procedure and Contributions 14 Chapter One A Problem of Anthropology, Eschatology, Ethics Introduction 17 1.1 Paul’s σῶμα, Eschatology, and Ethics in Bultmann 1.1.1 Eschatology and Ethics 18 1.1.2 Ethics and the Body 22 1.2 Reactions to Bultmann’s σῶμα: Favourable and Unfavourable 1.2.1 Favourable: The Persönlichkeit Hypothesis 25 1.2.2 Unfavourable: σῶμα and ‘Communication’ 28 1.2.3 Unfavourable: σῶμα as the Body 31 1.3 Conclusion and Procedure 35 iv PART ONE: THE BODY NOT YET 37 Chapter Two The Body Not Yet: The Argument for the Resurrection of the Dead, Part One – Establishing the Premiss Introduction 38 2.1 Introduction and Procedure 39 2.2 Exegesis 2.2.1 Introducing the Posited Premiss (1 Cor 15.1‐11) 48 2.2.2 Expounding the Posited Premiss – A Sorites (1 Cor 15.12‐19) 52 2.2.3 An Apocalyptic Narrative (1 Cor 15.20‐28) 2.2.3.1 Concluding the Argument (1 Cor 15.20a) 56 2.2.3.2 Introducing the Narrative 58 2.2.3.3 First Movement: The Origin of Death (1 Cor 15.20‐22) 59 2.2.3.4 Second Movement: The Order of the Escape (1 Cor 15.23‐24a) 65 2.2.3.5 Third Movement: The End (1 Cor 15.24b‐28) 68 2.2.4 Ad Hominem Exhortation (1 Cor 15.29‐34) 74 Chapter Three The Body Not Yet: The Argument for the Resurrection of the Dead, Part Two – Defending the Premiss Introduction 77 3.1 The Objection (1 Cor 15.35) 78 3.2 The Protasis of Paul’s Response: Introducing the Illustrations (1 Cor 15.36‐41) 82 3.3 The Protasis of Paul’s Response: Examining the Illustrations (1 Cor 15.36‐41) 85 3.4 The Apodosis of Paul’s Response: The First Series of Contrasts (1 Cor 15.42‐44a) 3.4.1 Introducing the First Series of Contrasts 89 3.4.2 Examining the First Three Sets within the First Series of Contrasts 91 3.4.3 Summarizing the First Three Sets within the First Series of Contrasts 95 v 3.4.4 The Concluding Contrast of the First Series: ψυχικός and πνευματικός 96 3.5 The Second Series of Contrasts: (Re)Defining ψυχικός and πνευματικός (1 Cor 15.44b‐46) 3.5.1 The σῶμα πνευματικόν: A Provisional Understanding 98 3.5.2 The ψυχικόν and the ψυχή 100 3.5.3 (Re)Defining ψυχικός and πνευματικός: The Genesis Citation 101 3.5.4 Christ and the πνεῦμα: Function, Not Ontology 103 3.5.5 ψυχικός and πνευματικός (Re)Defined 104 3.6 The Third Series of Contrasts: The Two Adams (1 Cor 15.47‐49) 3.6.1 Taking Leave of the Body 106 3.6.2 Contrasting the Two Adams 107 3.6.3 The Exhortation (1 Cor 15.49) 3.6.3.1 Defence of the Subjunctive Reading 109 3.6.3.2 Examining the Exhortation 112 3.7 The Concluding Series of Contrasts: Inheriting God’s Kingdom (1 Cor 15.50‐54a) 3.7.1 Introducing the Concluding Series of Contrasts 114 3.7.2 ‘Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God’ 117 3.7.3 The Eschatological ‘Change’ 119 3.7.4 The Necessity of the ‘Change’ 121 3.8 Paul’s Paean (1 Cor 15.54b‐55, 57) 123 3.9 The Exhortation (15.58) 125 3.10 1 Corinthians 15.56: An ‘Interpolation’ 126 3.11 Conclusion 127 PART TWO: THE BODY Now 128 Chapter Four Paul and the Problem of πορνεία Introduction 129 vi 4.1 The Problem of πορνεία 4.1.1 Introduction 130 4.1.2 πορνεία: A Jewish Problem 131 4.1.3 πορνεία: An Overview of Proposals 132 4.1.4 πορνεία: A Modest Proposal 138 Biblical Usage to the Post‐Exile 140 :זנות-πορνεία 4.2 4.3 Strange Women 147 Sex out of Bounds – Second Temple Sources :זנות-πορνεία 4.4 4.4.1 Introduction 154 4.4.2 The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 10.9; 8.2) 154 4.4.3 Tobit 4.12; 8.7 157 4.4.4 Ben Sira Regular Usage 160 :זנות-πορνεία 4.4.4.1 4.4.4.2 The πόρνη and the Stranger 161 4.4.4.3 The πόρνος‐Man 163 4.4.5 Philo, Josephus, and the πόρνη 167 169 זנות-Other Second Temple References to πορνεία 4.4.6 4.5 Conclusion 170 Chapter Five Paul, πορνεία, and the Body Introduction 173 5.1 1 Corinthians 6.12‐20: A Problem of Sex? 174 5.2 1 Corinthians 6.12‐20: The Argument 176 5.3 The Appeal from Ethos (1 Cor 6.12‐14) 5.3.1 Introduction and ‘Background’ 177 5.3.2 The First Dialogue (1 Cor 6.12) 181 5.3.3 The Second Dialogue (1 Cor 6.13‐14) vii 5.3.3.1 Foods and Stomach ‘Destroyed’ (1 Cor 6.13a) 184 5.3.3.2 πορνεία, the Body, and the Lord (1 Cor 6.13b‐14) 189 5.4 The Appeal from Pathos (1 Cor 6.15‐20) 5.4.1 Overview 193 5.4.2 The First οὐκ οἴδατε (1 Cor 6.15) 194 5.4.3 The Second οὐκ οἴδατε (1 Cor 6.16‐18) 197 5.4.4 The Final οὐκ οἴδατε (1 Cor 6.19‐20a) 201 5.5 Conclusion 203 Conclusion 204 Appendix I Eschatology and Ethics in Paul’s Interpreters Introduction 206 A.1 Eschatology and Ethics: Some Formative Figures A.1.1 Johannes Weiß 206 A.1.2 Albert Schweitzer 207 A.1.3 Martin Dibelius 211 A.2 Eschatology and Ethics: Some Contemporary Figures A.2.1 Rudolf Schnackenberg 214 A.2.2 Robert Tannehill 215 A.2.3 Victor Paul Furnish 216 A.2.4 T.J.