Lection and Liturgy

Paul wrote more than two letters to the Corinthians: it’s the only way of making sense of the letters he mentions in his correspondence with them. It’s just that we don’t have any more than two collected in our scriptures, and don’t know what happened to the other(s). We have no way of knowing exactly how many there were. Some scholars, observing that the letter in the Bible called Second Corinthians seems a bit of a patchwork, suggest that it could have been stitched together from at least two, and perhaps three original letters. There’s no real evidence to say so. The changes of mood and direction could just as well come down to getting interrupted mid-dictation by some event or news which caused a swerve in the argument. Since no-one has ever found a fragment of manuscript that shows a version of the letter with a different beginning, middle or ending, I think I prefer the simplicity of an interruption causing Paul to alter course. Either way, it’s a reminder that ...

From looking at Paul’s most carefully and tightly argued letter, we turn to one that is almost a ragbag of collected problems, First Corinthians. These problems are either ones that the Corinthians have written to Paul about, or ones he has heard of from others. Here, even more than usual, we are aware as readers that we only have half a conversation. The lectionary leaves out most of the passages in the middle of the letter where Paul is seeking to legislate for the community: issues of incest (ch. 5), settling community disputes (ch 6), provisions for marriage, celibacy and divorce (ch 7), and eating food offered to idols (ch 8). One of the losses in this is that we miss the details of how an early (probably largely Gentile) Christian church faces the problems of reimagining Jewish community organization. What happens when you transplant Jewish tradition into Greek soil without the framework of Torah to shape it? What does following the example of the rural Palesti...