2 Corinthians Archives – J. David Stark

Research on (Re)writing Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence

“Rewritten Bible” is a fascinating phenomenon in Second Temple literature.¹ Prime examples are often found in texts like Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, the Genesis Apocryphon, and others.

Discussions of “rewritten Bible” often focus on generic characteristics. The aim is to define what common thread(s) hold together this kind of literature.

The Hermeneutics of Rewriting

Such research is good and profitable. But it certainly isn’t the only dimension of this literature that’s worth exploring.

It’s also quite valuable to contemplate the hermeneutical process that produced a given “rewriting” of a biblical text.

When this process is brought to the fore, there’s also a readier basis for comparing these texts and their hermeneutics with Paul’s letters and his interpretive work in them.

Rewriting Boasting

For example, in both 1 Cor 1:31 and 2 Cor 10:17 Paul quotes the same maxim: “let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”²

In 1 Cor 1:31, the quotation is direct and completes Paul’s claim that his argument is “just as it is written.” In 2 Cor 10:17, the quotation is indirect, but the wording is identical to 1 Cor 1:31.³

Wording like this occurs in Jer 9:23 (MT, OG; ET: v. 24). It also occurs in 1 Kgdms 2:10.

(Generally speaking, 1 Kingdoms is the Greek version of 1 Samuel. But the language Paul quotes to the Corinthians occurs only in the Greek text, not in the Hebrew.)

Among “rewritten Bible” texts, Pseudo-Philo transforms 1 Kgdms 2:10 (LAB 50:2). The Targum of the Prophets reworks Jer 9:23 (MT, OG; ET: v. 24; Tg. Neb. Jer 9:22–23).

Comparing how these works interpret their biblical base texts helpfully illuminates how Paul interprets one or both of these same base texts. In particular, it highlights the Corinthian letters’ world-restructuring narrative of divine action in Messiah Jesus.

If you want to read further, drop your name and email in the form below, and I’ll send you a copy of the full article.

Header image provided by Tanner Mardis. ↩
Translations here are mine. ↩
On direct and indirect quotations, see J. David Stark, Sacred Texts and Paradigmatic Revolutions: The Hermeneutical Worlds of the Qumran Sectarian Manuscripts and the Letter to the Romans, Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies 16 (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 48. ↩

Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism (2016)

Rick Brannan posted a couple tweets recently about 2016 articles from the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism (1, 2). The journal had apparently fallen out of my list of RSS subscriptions somehow, so I was grateful for the prompt. The full list of 2016 articles in JGRChJ is:

Seth M. Ehorn and Mark Lee, “The Syntactical Function of ἀλλὰ καί in Phil. 2.4”

Matthew Oseka, “Attentive to the Context: The Generic Name of God in the Classic Jewish Lexica and Grammars of the Middle Ages—A Historical and Theological Perspective”

David I. Yoon, “Ancient Letters of Recommendation and 2 Corinthians 3.1-3: A Literary Analysis”

Stanley E. Porter, “The Synoptic Problem: The State of the Question”

Greg Stanton, “Wealthier Supporters of Jesus of Nazareth”

The Christ of His Christ

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, "Anna Presenting Her Son Samuel to the Priest Eli" — Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, “Anna Presenting Her Son Samuel to the Priest Eli” (c. 1665; photo credit: Wikipedia)

In due order within The City of God’s longer discussion of Hannah’s prayer at Samuel’s dedication,¹ Augustine arrives at the clause, “[a]nd [he] shall exalt the horn of His Christ” (1 Sam 2:10). Here, Augustine ponders:

How shall Christ exalt the horn of His Christ? For He of whom it was said above, “The Lord hath ascended into the heavens,” [1 Sam 2:10 LXX; 4QSam^a col. 2, line 33] meaning the Lord Christ, Himself, as it is said here, “shall exalt the horn of His Christ.” Who, therefore, is the Christ of His Christ? Does it mean that He shall exalt the horn of each one of His believing people, as [Hannah] says in the beginning of this hymn, “Mine horn is exalted in my God?” [1 Sam 2:1 LXX, Vg.] For we can rightly call all those christs who are anointed with His chrism, forasmuch as the whole body with its head is one Christ.²

Although Augustine does not appear to cite 1 Cor 1:31; 2 Cor 10:17 in developing his interpretation of Hannah’s prayer, these texts may well be reading 1 Sam 2:10 [LXX; 4QSam^a col. 2, line 33] along a similar, Christological trajectory.³ Boasting is to be in Jesus alone, who has ascended into heaven and with whom the church is united as a “collective person[—as] ‘Christ existing as church-community.’”⁴

1. Augustine, Civ., 17.4 (NPNF1, 2:339–43).

2. Augustine, Civ., 17.4 (NPNF1, 2:343); cf., e.g., 1 Cor 6:14–17; 12:27; 1 John 2:20, 27; Justin, Dial., 86.

3. See J. David Stark, “Rewriting Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence: A Window on Paul’s Hermeneutic,” BBR 22, no. 2 (2012): 236–38; J. Ross Wagner, “‘Not Beyond the Things Which Are Written’: A Call to Boast Only in the Lord (1 Cor 4.6),” NTS 44, no. 2 (1998): 283–86, for discussion.

4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church (ed. Clifford J. Green and Joachim von Soosten; trans. Reinhard Kraus and Nancy Lukens; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 141; cf. Eph 1:15–23; 2:4–7; N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), 41–55.

Bulletin for Biblical Research 22, no. 2

The latest issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research arrived in yesterday’s mail and includes:

Beat Weber, “Toward a Theory of the Poetry of the Hebrew Bible: The Poetry of the Psalms as a Test Case”
Grant LeMarquand, “The Bible as Specimen, Talisman, and Dragoman in Africa: A Look at Some African Uses of the Psalms and 1 Corinthians 12–14”
Craig Keener, “Paul and Sedition: Pauline Apologetic in Acts”
David Stark, “Rewriting Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence: A Window on Paul’s Hermeneutic”
Ayodeji Adewuya, “The Spiritual Powers of Ephesians 6:10–18 in the Light of African Pentecostal Spirituality”

Adewuya’s article is a revision of his engaging lecture at this past November’s Institute for Biblical Research meeting in San Francisco. My own essay discusses “rewritten Bible,” or “rewritten scripture,” particularly with a view toward using this literature as an aide in discussions of Pauline hermeneutics.

Forthcoming in BBR: “Rewriting Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence”

The folks at the Bulletin for Biblical Research have very kindly agreed to publish a revised version of my presentation from the November, 2009 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society: “Rewriting Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence: A Window on Paul’s Hermeneutic.” To provide just a bit fuller picture of the essay’s argument:

In the broadest sense of the phrase, any use of Jewish scripture by a later author(s) could be understood to constitute a form of ‘rewritten Bible’. The phrase ‘rewritten Bible’ has, however, come to have a technical meaning whereby it designates a certain body of ancient, Jewish literature. The precise shape of this body of literature continues to be debated, but even with consensus on this specific point as far away as it is, ‘rewritten Bible’ can contribute valuable information to the study of Paul’s use of scripture. In particular, ‘rewritten Bible’ provides a useful foil for the study of Paul’s citations in 1 Cor 1:31 and 2 Cor 10:17 and the hermeneutical paradigm upon which these citations’ validity implicitly rests. In this case, Paul’s connections with ‘rewritten Bible’ literature especially help suggest the constitutive, hermeneutical role that Jesus played as Paul interpreted scripture for the Corinthian church within the broader context of some of the hermeneutical traditions of his near contemporaries.