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New Testament

1 Corinthians

Notes on 14 of 16 chapters·6 sermons·4 essays
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1 Corinthians 1Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, Verse 2 — "to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus." The verb here is in the perfect middle tense, and that matters. Let’s get into Greek!…5 notes1 Corinthians 2Verse 2—"I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." The worst Bible study I was ever a part of was a men's morning study at my internship at a church in Kauai in college. One of the men there was proud that…3 notes1 Corinthians 3For the Bible text, I started with the NRSVue but made some adaptations because this is genuinely hard to translate well. I added some slashes to give a sense of the range of what Paul is saying. The word usually rendered "natural" or…3 notes · 1 sermon1 Corinthians 4Verse 1—Paul and Apollos are servants (hyperetas—literally under-rowers, the guys pulling oars on the bottom deck of a ship) and stewards (oikonomos—household managers). Not owners. Not celebrities. Household staff managing something that…2 notes1 Corinthians 5Likely a case of rape/nonconsensual relationship. NRSVue "living with" sort of neuters the concept of "γυναῖκά τινα τοῦ πατρὸς ἔχειν" HAS his father's wife Also verse 2, “He who has done this.” Not that Paul’s anger is clearly on the dude.…2 notes1 Corinthians 6Remember that chapter markers are not part of the original text. So when Paul says in chapter 5 to judge insiders, he means it literally—as in, don't take your lawsuits to outside courts. This passage flows directly from yesterday's…5 notes1 Corinthians 7With all of the above in mind, we now get into the sex and marriage ethics part of the letter. This entire section is, of course, heteronormative—but of course it is. Paul had no concept of sexual orientation as we understand it. The vast…5 notes1 Corinthians 8Chapter 8. New topic. We're getting the sense that Paul is going through a laundry list of things that either Chloe reported to him or that were raised in a letter he received from Corinth. Food sacrificed to idols. This was the primary…1 note1 Corinthians 9We get a slightly defensive, feisty Paul here. Reading between the lines, someone must be claiming that Paul is living large when he shouldn't be. Or possibly that Paul is being duplicitous—sometimes eating meat and sometimes not,…3 notes1 Corinthians 10Notes Verse 4 is a good example of Paul reading the Hebrew Bible as midrash. He sees the rock as an allegory for Christ. Of course, the authors of Exodus and Numbers had no intention of this. But Paul is "twisting Scripture" for his own…2 notes1 Corinthians 11Savvy readers will notice that we've skipped 11:2–16. That's because they're some of the most obscure, difficult to translate and interpret passages in the Bible. The Lectionary likes to take shortcuts like that. 11:2–16 is definitely a…2 notes1 Corinthians 12To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the…3 notes1 Corinthians 14Tongues are a language to God, not to people.2 notes1 Corinthians 15An early creed. I handed on to you what I had received... Died, buried, raised, appeared. We see the makings of an early creed. It was proclaimed, it was received (a technical term) and handed on to the Corinthians (another technical…38 notes · 3 sermons