The Body Now and Not Yet: An Exegetical Study of the Apostle Paul's Anthropology, Eschatology ...

266 Pages·2009·1.78 MB·English

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
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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.
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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.
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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 
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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 
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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 
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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 
4.2 πορνεία-תונז: Biblical Usage to the Post‐Exile                                                           140 
4.3 Strange Women                                                                                                             147 
4.4 πορνεία-תונז: Sex out of Bounds – Second Temple Sources 
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 
4.4.4.1 πορνεία-תונז: Regular Usage                                                               160 
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 
4.4.6 Other Second Temple References to πορνεία-תונז                                       169 
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) 
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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. Diedun                                                                                                          218 
A.2.5 Wolfgang Schrage                                                                                              219 
A.2.6 J. Paul Sampley                                                                                                   220 
A.2.7 Richard B. Hays                                                                                                  222 
Appendix II 
‐נז to πορν‐ in the LXX                                                                                                         225 
Bibliography                                                                                                                         226 
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Note on Abbreviations 
For abbreviations of primary and secondary biblical and related literature, I
generally follow the abbreviations listed in Patrick H. Alexander, John F. Kutsko,
James D. Ernest, Shirley A. Decker-Lucke, and David L. Petersen, eds, The SBL
Handbook of Style for Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies
(Hendrickson, 1999). For classical, non-biblical primary source abbreviations, I
follow the abbreviations listed in Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, eds,
The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd rev. ed. (OUP, 2003), xxix-liv. Additionally, I
follow the practice of abbreviating Oxford University Press, ‘OUP’, Cambridge
University Press, ‘CUP’.
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