It is generally recognized that any viable interpretation of 1 Corinthians 8–10 must try to reconstruct the situation in Corinth to which Paul is responding. What have they asked, or in my view asserted, in their letter that calls forth this combination of arguments from Paul? This is precisely where the traditional interpretation comes up short: The effect (Paul’s argument and defense) does not seem adequate to the cause (a letter asking his opinion on issues where they are divided). On the other hand, the great strength of Hurd’s book lies in his ability to give an adequate, and consistent, answer to this question for all of 1 Corinthians.
a. The Corinthian Position
In the first place, Hurd is surely correct in seeing the Corinthian letter as being over against Paul, not simply as a series of questions calling for his advice. The combative nature of 8:1–10:22 noted above argues for this; and Paul’s inclusion of his defense (9:1–22) in this section seems to clinch it.
Second, given that Paul had previously addressed at least one of the issues taken up again in our 1 Corinthians (πορνεία; see 5:9), Hurd’s argument is also well taken that whatever it is the Corinthians were arguing for in their letter, it is something Paul had already forbidden in his previous letter. This again makes sense both of the argumentative nature of his reply and of the need for his defense. Furthermore, it is also altogether probable that the letter comes from the church as a whole, not from one of the factions in the church. After all, Paul implies that he has received the whole community in the persons of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus (16:17). This does not mean that all the church is necessarily agreed on the issues in their letter, but it does mean that Paul is giving a singular, unified response to their argument with him.
My point of disagreement with Hurd is in the content of their letter. Rather than arguing in their letter for the right to buy and eat idol food, a point Paul has no argument with, they are much more likely arguing for the right to continue to join pagan friends in the feasts at the temples. In so doing they make four points:
(1) They all have γνῶσις about idols, namely that Jewish-Christian monotheism by its very nature rules out any genuine reality to an idol. On this point they can Since then I have discovered that this alternative is the basic point of view in the small commentary by R. St. John Parry, The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the
Corinthians (Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges; Cambridge,
21926), pp. 125–55, although he presents no argument for it. It is also hinted at, but not thoroughly argued, in H. Lietzmann, An die Korinther I/II (HNT 9; Tübingen,
41949), pp. 37–52.
expect Paul’s agreement. But the point is almost too trivial if their concern were marketplace food; it has its bite only if, thinking they “have Paul on this one,” they want it to apply to their actual attendance at the temples, where the “nonentities”
stood.
(2) They also have γνῶσις about food itself, namely that it is a matter of indifference to God. It has been a moot point whether 8:8 reflects their position or Paul’s;11 but again, it is highly likely that at least 8:8a is something on which they are both agreed. The Corinthians’ point in this case, however, would have been not simply what we eat, but where we eat it. Here again they would think they have Paul:
“Since idols are nonentities and since food per se is a matter of indifference, how can you forbid our eating at the temples?”
(3) They have an “enthusiast’s” or a “magical” view of the sacraments, namely that those who partook of the Christian sacraments were thus out of danger from falling. As von Soden put it: “They put their trust … in the belief that those initiated by Christ’s sacraments are charmed against all powers and therefore possess a
limitless exousia.”12 This alone makes sense of 10:1–13, where Paul uses the analogy of Israel’s “sacraments” and yet their “overthrow in the desert” to warn the
Corinthians that the one who thinks he stands is indeed in danger of falling (10:12).
(4) They also use this occasion to question Paul’s apostolic credentials, which in turn led them to question his authority to forbid them on this matter at all. From the content of ch. 9 it may be assumed that they questioned his authority because he himself seemed ambiguous about it at two points: his failure to accept their financial support and his own compromising stance toward marketplace food, which he ate on some occasions but refused to eat on others. Such vacillation does not seem worthy of an apostle.
Add these all together and you have them asserting, not asking, something like this: “Since we all know that there is only one God and therefore that an idol has no reality, and since food is a matter of indifference to God, it not only does not matter what we eat, but where we eat it. Besides, we are saved and protected by the
sacraments. Why can’t we then continue to join our friends at their feasts, even at the temples? Besides, Paul, you seem to be unable to use your authority as an apostle.
Indeed, are you really an apostle? You have repeatedly refused our offer of financial support, and you also have been known to eat idol meat in Gentile homes, but refuse it when Jews are present. If you cannot settle on your own authority, why should you restrict ours to act in Christian freedom?”
This view of things is further supported by the background to the term εἰδωλόθυτα as well as its usage throughout 1 Corinthians 8–10.
b. The Meaning of εἰδωλόθυτα
The term εἰδωλόθυτον occurs four times in ch. 8 (vv. 1, 4, 7, 10) and one further time in 10:19. It seems reasonably clear that in 10:19 it refers to sacrificial food that is partaken in the idol temple. Not only does the context argue for such a meaning, but so also does the balanced nature of the two rhetorical questions in v. 19. In a context of eating food in the presence of a deity, Paul asks whether either the idol or the food has reality in itself, questions clearly intended to recall 8:4–6. The expected response of course is negative. The “reality” involved is to be found in the demonic nature of
11 For a recent discussion of the options, see R. A. Horsley, “Consciousness and Freedom among the Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 8–10,” CBQ 40 (1978): 577–79.
12 “Sacrament and Ethics,” p. 259.
idolatry; and eating the sacrificed food in the context of the idol-demon constitutes becoming κοινωνοὺς τῶν δαιμονίων. Since eating the food in the temple is surely the meaning here, the question is whether εἰδωλόθυτα should carry another meaning in ch. 8. Yet it is either stated or assumed by almost all who have written on the subject that εἰδωλόθυτα throughout the NT refers to idol food sold in the market. There are in fact several converging data that lend support to this view.
(1) It is well known that Jews forbade the eating of idol food, and in their case εἰδωλόθυτα could have referred only to marketplace food, since there was no danger of the Jews’ going to the idol temples. Thus m. Abod. Zar. 2:3 says: “Flesh that is entering in unto an idol is permitted, but what comes forth is forbidden” (Danby); and the Babylonian Talmud comments that the idolatrous sacrifice caused defilement in the same way a dead body defiled what it touched (b. Hul. 13b; cf. 4 Macc. 5:2).
(2) The apostolic decree in Acts 15:29 also forbids εἰδωλόθυτα, along with blood, things strangled, and πορνεία. Since these prohibitions were written to Gentile
converts, the most common view is that they place some minimum “Jewish”
requirements on Gentile believers; so that they may have social intercourse with Jewish Christians. In this case εἰδωλόθυτα would again refer to idol food sold in the market.13
(3) In some later Christian writers εἰδωλόθυτα also has the Jewish sense of marketplace food. This is especially true of Justin, since the Jew Trypho is made to say that he knows some Christians who eat idol food (Dial. 34), and of Irenaeus, who says that the heretics both eat εἰδωλόθυτα and attend pagan festivals in honor of the idols (Haer. 1.6.3), which seems to imply a distinction between the two.
But despite this strong linguistic evidence from both Jewish and Christian sources, there are real problems with making εἰδωλόθυτα equal marketplace idol food in 1 Corinthians 8, besides the fact that it surely does not mean that in 10:19.
(1) It is extremely doubtful whether sacrificial food sold in the marketplace would have been a problem to a Gentile convert, apart from contact with Jewish Christians.
Such scruples could only have stemmed from the Jewish abhorrence of idolatry.
While it is true that Gentile converts are characterized by Paul as having “turned to God from idols” (1 Thess. 1:9), there is no reason to believe that they would also have adopted Jewish thinking about marketplace food, especially so when Paul himself had no scruples about such things. This is why several scholars have suggested that the problem in Corinth is in fact to be linked to outside attempts to introduce the apostolic decree into the Corinthian church.14 The problem with this as a solution to 1 Cor. 8:1–
13, however, is the non-Jewish character of everything in the text. The offended person, whose conscience is weak, is not a Jewish Christian, but a Gentile convert (8:7).15 Moreover, there is not a hint in the text that his anxiety over idolatry has an outside source or that it is related to contaminated food; rather it is inherent to his
13 There has been considerable speculation as to the possible relationship of the Apostolic Decree to 1 Corinthians 8–10. Usually it is suggested that the question had been raised in Corinth by Peter, or at least in his name. See, e.g., A. Ehrhardt, “Social Problems in the Early Church,” in The Framework of the New Testament Stories (Manchester, 1964), pp. 276–78; and T. W. Manson, “The Corinthian Correspondence (1),” in Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Philadelphia, 1962), p. 200. Cf. the discussion in C. K. Barrett, “Things Sacrificed to Idols,” NTS 11 (1964/65): 142–43.
14 See the preceding note.
15 For the opinion that Jewish Christians are involved, see J. Dupont, Gnosis: La connaissance religieuse dans les épîtres de Saint Paul (Louvain, 1949), pp. 265–377.
former pagan understanding of idolatry in light of his Christian conversion. And finally his “fall” in 8:10–12 does not rest on his being “offended” by a brother’s eating of marketplace food nor in that person’s “idolatry”; rather, it rests in his seeing, and thereby being encouraged to imitate, a brother’s going to the temple meals (8:10).
It is appropriate, therefore, for us to seek the meaning of εἰδωλόθυτα in 1
Corinthians not in the Jewish abhorrence of idolatry but in the nature of idol-worship in pagan antiquity.16
(2) It is a well-known phenomenon that worship in both Jewish and pagan
antiquity very often involved eating a meal in the presence of the deity. At the regular seasonal feasts or at irregular but important times, like marriages, good fortune, and especially at death,17 worshipers would invite family or friends to join them at the temples or shrines. There they would sacrifice food to the deity, some of which became the burnt offering for the deity, some of which became the priests’ portion, but most of which was prepared for the eating of a festive meal before the god.
Especially in pagan antiquity such feasting usually meant drunkenness and sexual play.18
Such sacrificial meals before Yahweh are specifically enjoined in Deut. 14:22–26 and are referred to elsewhere in the OT (Exod. 24:11; 1 Sam. 9:13; 1 Kings 1:25; Hos.
8:13). Special chambers for these meals are found in the first temple (Jer. 35:2) and probably in the second (Neh. 13:7–8; cf. Ezek. 42:13).
Besides the evidence from other sources, such sacred feasting among the nations that surrounded Israel is also noted in the OT. It is found among the Canaanites (Judg.
9:27) and the Babylonians (Dan. 5:1–4); Egyptian practices, including their sexual overtones, are reflected in Exod. 32:6. Indeed, it was the combination of feasting and sexual intercourse that apparently was one of the great attractions on the part of Israel to the idolatry that surrounded them (Num. 25:1–2; Hos. 4:10–14; 7:4–5, 14; cf. Isa.
28:7–8).
By the first century C.E., however, the phenomenon of eating before Yahweh had disappeared from Judaism—almost certainly because of its close ties to πορνεία among the Gentiles. Instead God was worshiped by sacrifices and prayer in the temple, but more commonly by prayer, singing, and Scripture in the synagogue. The meal apparently persisted only as an eschatological hope, in the form of the messianic banquet.19
16 It should also be noted that one must not be so quick to read this passage in light of Romans 14. Although Paul’s answer in both cases has some analogies, the subject matter is completely different. In Romans 14 there is no mention of idolatry; it seems rather to be a question of ritualistic asceticism. In our passage there is no mention of
“weak” and “strong”—only ὁ ἔχων γνῶσιν and another having a “weak conscience.”
Nor is food per se the issue in 1 Corinthians 8–10 as in Romans 14. Thus the clearly Jewish background in Romans is of no help here.
17 See especially the evidence accumulated by M. H. Pope, Song of Songs (AB;
Garden City, N.Y., 1977), pp. 210–29.
18 Pope, Song of Songs, pp. 210–29.
19 One of Jesus’ table partners gave expression to what was probably a common hope:
“Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the Kingdom of God” (Luke 14:15; cf.
Matt 8:11; 22:1–14; 26:29; Rev. 19:9). The phenomenon of worship in the form of a meal reappearing among the earliest Christians is probably best explained as a form of realized eschatology, stemming both from Jesus’ table fellowship with “the poor” and from his instituting the Lord’s Supper in a context of eschatology.
In contrast to contemporary Judaism, there is considerable evidence that the meal in the presence of the deity continued to be a commonplace in the Hellenistic world in the first century C.E.20 The chance discovery among the papyri of the two invitations to meals at the Serapeum21 is mute evidence of what must have been the regular practice of most non-Jews in the Hellenistic world, whether they believed in the gods or not. For those who believed, the cultic meal probably also had participatory significance.
Indeed, it is the commonness of such meals in a city like Corinth, with its abundance of shrines to the “gods many and lords many,”22 over against the lack of
“Jewishness” in the text of 1 Corinthians 8–10, that argues strongly for temple attendance as the real concern in this passage. As A. Ehrhardt has said:
Even today we are surprised to read from the pen of St. Paul, ‘but if somebody seeth thee, who hast gnosis, lying at table in the temple of an idol’, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. Let us state plainly that such was indeed the case: For it has to be realised that it was the temples of the ancient world which had to supply the need for restaurants, particularly in the Greek cities.23
(3) One further thing needs to be noted in this regard, namely the combination of idolatry as eating along with πορνεία in 1 Cor. 10:7–8.
The whole of 10:1–13 is controlled by a single concern. Paul is using the history of Israel to give a severe warning to the Corinthians, who are in a similar danger as Israel. In vv. 1–5 he first establishes that Israel, as Corinth, had its own form of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Yet this did not provide them with security. In vv. 6–
10 Paul goes on to give reasons for the fall of “most of them.” In so doing, he selects four examples from Israel’s time in the desert, where they had been overthrown. The exegetical question is whether these examples were chosen because of Israel or because of Corinth, i.e., were they simply chosen at random to illustrate Israel’s fall, and as such become for the Corinthians simply another Pauline sin list, or were they chosen because in a very precise way they reflect the situation in Corinth. Surely it is the latter, and vv. 7–8 are the keys.
In v. 7 Paul says, “Do not be like them in εἰδωλολατρία.” In citing the passage from Exodus 32, however, he makes no mention whatever of the idolatry of making the golden calf or of Israel’s acclaiming it as the god who delivered them (vv. 2–4).
Rather, he quotes v. 6: “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”
This is exactly the εἰδωλολατρία that is forbidden in 10:14–22.
Verse 8 is the interesting text. For the illustration of πορνεία is from one of the OT texts (Num. 25:1–2) where sexual intercourse took place in conjunction with the
20 See the excursus in Lietzmann, Korinther I/II, pp. 49–51.
21 P. Oxy. 1.1002 (2nd c. C.E.) ἐρωτᾷ σε Χαιρήμων δειπνῆσαι εἰς κλείνην τοῦ κυρίου Σαράπιδος ἐν τῷ Σαραπείῳ αὔριον, ἥτις ἐστὶν ιε, ἀπὸ ὥρας θʼ (“Chaeremon requests your company at the table of the lord Serapis at the Serapeum tomorrow, the 15th at 9 o’clock”); P. Oxy. 111.523 (2nd c. C.E.) ἐρωτᾷ σε Ἀντώνιο(ς) Προλεμ(αίου)
διπνῆσ(αι) παρʼ αὐτῷ εἰς κλείνην τοῦ κυρίου Σαράπιδος ἐν τοῖς Κλαυδ(ίου)
Σαραπίω(νος) τῆ ις ἀπὸ ὥρας θʼ (“Antonius, son of Ptolemy, requests your company at the table of the lord Serapis in the house of Claudius Serapion on the 16th at 9 o’clock”).
22 In Pausanias’s description of Corinth a century later one can count at least 26 temples or shrines to the “lords” and “gods” (Loeb, 1.255–72).
23 A. Ehrhardt, “Social Problems,” p. 279 (see above, n. 13).
meals in the presence of pagan idols! There are two things to note here that are of significance for our argument.
(a) Every mention of εἰδωλόθυτα in the NT is also accompanied by πορνεία (Acts 15:29; Rev. 2:14, 20; and here). Moreover, in Rev. 2:14 there is the same allusion to Num. 25:1–2.24 It is highly probable, therefore, that in each case these two sins really belong together, as they did in the OT and pagan precedents. And εἰδωλόθυτα and πορνεία go together at the temples. There is evidence, in fact, that sacred meals and sexual immorality were still a part of the temple cults of the first century C.E.25 Thus in all of these texts the sins are probably not the eating of sacrificial food sold in the marketplace and sexual promiscuity in general, but sacred meals and sexual
immorality at the temples.
(b) It is instructive that Paul has a very similar kind of combative argument with the Corinthians in 6:12–20 over πορνεία, as he does in chs. 8–10 about εἰδωλόθυτα.
One should note the following: (1) In 6:12–20 the Corinthians also seem to be arguing for the “right” of πορνεία, based on “freedom” and on some partly true assertions about the nature of the body. (2) Paul’s argument involves a contrast to being “joined”
to the Lord or to a πόρνη, very much like the contrast between “becoming partners”
with the Lord or demons in 10:14–22. (3) Paul takes the “temple” imagery that he uses elsewhere of the church and applies it to the human body. One wonders whether all of this does not suggest—and in any case it is surely an open option—that temple, rather than brothel, fornication is in view in 6:12–20.
This is not to argue that the sacred meals to which the Corinthians are inclined to
This is not to argue that the sacred meals to which the Corinthians are inclined to