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Paul, Samson Occom, and the Constraints of Boasting: A Comparative Rereading of 2 Corinthians 10–13*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2016

Ryan S. Schellenberg*
Affiliation:
Methodist Theological School in Ohio

Extract

Few texts in the Pauline corpus have been subjected to such extensive and varied comparative analysis as 2 Cor 10–13. Since Hans Windisch's influential designation of the passage as a Narrenrede (“fool's speech”), wherein Paul apes the boastful fool (ὁ ἀλαζών) of the Greek mime, exegetes have assembled a remarkable array of additional comparanda: the peristasis or hardship catalogues of Cynic and Stoic philosophers; Augustus's Res gestae; apologies epistolary, forensic, and Socratic; conventions for periautologia (self-praise) as attested by Quintilian and Plutarch and as demonstrated by Demosthenes; conventions for synkrisis (comparison) as preserved in the Progymnasmata. Despite the diversity of the evidence adduced, methodologically these studies have much in common. In general, their explanatory mode is formal and genealogical—that is, they elucidate the characteristics of Paul's boasting by identifying and describing the literary or rhetorical forms to which he is indebted.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Leif Vaage, Heidi Wendt and HTR’s reviewers for insightful comments at various stages in the development of this article. Translations of biblical texts are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.

References

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7 Studies of Paul and periautologia are a partial exception: though genealogical, they are not properly formal. Note that a very different exegetical tradition is exemplified by Josef Zmijewski, who generally avoids comparative analysis and sees the stylistic peculiarities of the passage as resulting from a variety of influences, including Paul's situation and his personality (Der Stil der Paulinischen “Narrenrede.” Analyse der Sprachgestaltung in 2Kor 11,1–12,10 als Beitrag zur Methodik von Stiluntersuchungen neutestamentlicher Texte [BBB 52; Cologne: Hanstein, 1978] esp. 412–53).

8 Barrett, C. K., “Boasting (καυχ σθαι, κτλ.) in the Pauline Epistles,” in L'apôtre Paul. Personnalité, style et conception du ministère (ed. Vanhoye, Albert; BETL 73; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1986) 363–68, at 368Google Scholar.

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10 Cf. Judge, E. A., “Paul's Boasting in Relation to Contemporary Professional Practice,” ABR 16 (1968) 3750, at 37–38Google Scholar.

11 Windisch's treatment of the mime (Der zweite Korintherbrief, 316), taken up by Welborn (“The Runaway Fool”), is an important exception.

12 See esp. Bloomer, W. Martin, “Schooling in Persona: Imagination and Subordination in Roman Education,” ClAnt 16 (1997) 5778 Google Scholar.

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14 See, e.g., Danker, “Paul's Debt to the De Corona,” 280, where a comparison of Paul and Demosthenes sponsors the claim that Paul in 2 Cor 10–13 presents himself as “a person of exceptional . . . aretē” with no consideration given to the class-specific implications of that term in Demosthenes's usage.

15 E.g., Forbes, “Comparison, Self-Praise, and Irony,” 19–20; Travis, S. H., “Paul's Boasting in 2 Corinthians 10–12,” in Studia Evangelica VI (ed. Livingstone, Elizabeth A.; TUGAL 112; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1973) 527–32Google Scholar; Watson, “Paul's Boasting,” 269–73.

16 Mitchell, Margaret M., Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 8889 Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 89.

18 E.g., Calvin, John, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (trans. Pringle, John; 2 vols.; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849) 2:338 Google Scholar; Heinrici, C. F. Georg, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther. Mit einem Anhang, Zum Hellenismus des Paulus (8th ed.; KEK 6; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1900) 314 Google Scholar; Windisch, Der zweite Korintherbrief, 344; Plummer, Alfred, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1915) 292Google Scholar; Lambrecht, Jan, Second Corinthians (SP 8; Collegeville, MI: Glazier, 1999) 181 Google Scholar; Judge, “Paul's Boasting,” 47.

19 The final phrase is from Malinowski, Bronislaw, “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages,” in The Meaning of Meaning (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1936) 296366, at 312Google Scholar.

20 Deissmann, Adolf, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World (trans. Strachan, Lionel R. M.; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927) 265–66Google Scholar; Smith, Jonathan Z., Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (CSJH; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) 4653 Google Scholar.

21 Smith, Jonathan Z., “The ‘End’ of Comparison: Redescription and Rectification,” in A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age (ed. Patton, Kimberley C. and Ray, Benjamin C.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) 237–41, at 239Google Scholar.

22 Smith, Jonathan Z., Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (CSJH; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) xiii Google Scholar [italics in original], citing Shklovsky, Victor, “Art as Technique,” in Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (ed. Lemon, Lee T. and Reis, Marion J.; Regents Critics; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965) 324 Google Scholar, at 13. See also Smith, “Dayyeinu,” in Redescribing Christian Origins (ed. Ron Cameron and Merrill P. Miller; SymS 28; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004) 483–87, at 484.

23 Occom, Samson, “Autobiographical Narrative, Second Draft (September 17, 1768),” in The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan: Leadership and Literature in Eighteenth-Century Native America (ed. Brooks, Joanna; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) 5258, at 52Google Scholar.

24 The standard biographical treatments are Love, William DeLoss, Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England (Boston: Pilgrim, 1899)Google Scholar; Blodgett, Harold, Samson Occom (Dartmouth College Manuscript Series 3; Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Publications, 1935)Google Scholar. See also Peyer, Bernd, “Samson Occom: Mohegan Missionary and Writer of the 18th Century,” American Indian Quarterly 6 (1982) 208–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Occom, “Autobiographical Narrative, Second Draft,” 53–54.

26 For Wheelock's own account, see A Plain and Faithful Narrative of the Original Design, Rise, Progress and Present State of the Indian Charity-School at Lebanon, in Connecticut (Boston: Draper, 1763). For less propagandistic treatments, see Axtell, James, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 204–17Google Scholar; Szasz, Margaret, Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007) 134–61Google Scholar; Calloway, Colin G., The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2010)Google Scholar.

27 DeLoss Love, Samson Occom, 37.

28 On the symbolic significance of ordination in connecting Native American preachers to the “sacred genealogy” of the apostles, see Andrews, Edward E., Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013) 1415 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Buell, Samuel, A Sermon, Preached at East-Hampton, August 29, 1759, at the Ordination of Mr. Samson Occum, a Missionary among the Indians (New York: Parker, 1761) ix Google Scholar; cited in DeLoss Love, Samson Occom, 53 [italics in original]. See also McCarthy, Keely, “Conversion, Identity, and the Indian Missionary,” Early American Literature 36 (2001) 353–69, at 354CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See Nelson, Dana D., “‘(I Speak Like a Fool but Am Constrained)’: Samson Occom's Short Narrative and Economies of the Racial Self,” in Early Native American Writing: New Critical Essays (ed. Jaskoski, Helen; Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture 102; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 4265 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 54; Elliott, Michael, “‘This Indian Bait’: Samson Occom and the Voice of Liminality,” Early American Literature 29 (1994) 233–53Google Scholar; Gustafson, Sandra M., Eloquence is Power: Oratory and Performance in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 9097 Google Scholar; Sweet, John Wood, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730–1830 (Early America; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) 127–28Google Scholar; Carlson, David J., Sovereign Selves: American Indian Autobiography and the Law (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 2006) 8081 Google Scholar.

31 Occom to Wheelock, 24 June 1761, in Collected Writings, 67–68, at 67.

32 This was recognized by Occom himself, who, in the preface to his A Sermon, Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, explained his motives for publishing the sermon: “As it comes from an uncommon quarter, it may induce people to read it, because it is from an Indian” (Collected Writings, 176–95, at 177).

33 Elliott, “This Indian Bait,” 234. See further Nelson, “I Speak Like a Fool,” 50–51; Sweet, Bodies Politic, 128.

34 See esp. Chiles, Katy L., Transformable Race: Surprising Metamorphoses in the Literature of Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carlson, Sovereign Selves, 80.

35 See esp. Elliott, “This Indian Bait,” 240.

36 Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) 121–31Google Scholar [italics in original]. For an insightful discussion of the limits of Bhabha's theoretical approach in accounting for such conversions as that of Occom, see McCarthy, “The Indian Missionary,” 355–56.

37 McCarthy, “The Indian Missionary,” 357.

38 Peter Jillard to Eleazar Wheelock, 2 March 1767, in An Indian Preacher in England (ed. Leon Burr Richardson; Dartmouth College Manuscript Series 2; Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Publications, 1933), 227–28, at 228 [italics in original].

39 Occom to Wheelock, 6 December 1765, in Collected Writings, 74–75, at 74.

40 Samson Occom, “Autobiographical Narrative, First Draft (November 28, 1765),” in Collected Writings, 51–52, at 51.

41 See DeLoss Love, Samson Occom, 130–51; Vaughan, Alden T., Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500–1776 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 190210 Google Scholar; Szasz, Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans, 197–216. Documentary evidence is collected in Richardson, Leon Burr, ed., An Indian Preacher in England (Dartmouth College Manuscript Series 2; Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Publications, 1933)Google Scholar.

42 Preacher or not, any Native American was sure to draw a crowd in 18th-cent. London. See further Hinderaker, Eric, “The ‘Four Indian Kings’ and the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empire,” William and Mary Quarterly 53 (1996) 487526 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fullagar, Kate, The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain, 1710–1795 (Berkeley Series in British Studies; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

43 Brooks, Joanna, American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 51 Google Scholar. Cf. Szasz, Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans, 199–200.

44 Occom, Journal, 21 November 1765–22 July 1766, in Collected Writings, 264–74, at 270–71.

45 Ibid., 269.

46 See Bannet, Eve Tavor, Transatlantic Stories and the History of Reading, 1720–1810: Migrant Fictions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011) 160–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Occom, Journal, 21 November 1765–22 July 1766, in Collected Writings, 272.

47 See Occom to Wheelock, 30 May 1766, in Collected Writings, 77.

48 DeLoss Love, Samson Occom, 147.

49 Cited in ibid., 147–48.

50 Peter Jillard to Wheelock, 2 March 1767, in Richardson, An Indian Preacher in England, 227. See also Samuel Savage to Wheelock, 5 March 1768, in Richardson, An Indian Preacher in England, 333–35.

51 Szasz, Margaret Connell, “Samson Occom: Mohegan as Spiritual Intermediary,” in Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker (ed. Szasz, Margaret Connell; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994) 6178, at 71Google Scholar.

52 For a sample of Mary Occom's distress, see her letter to Eleazar Wheelock, 15 July 1767, in Richardson, An Indian Preacher in England, 279.

53 See Occom, Collected Writings, 82–83.

54 See DeLoss Love, Samson Occom, 155–56; Richardson, An Indian Preacher in England, 353–54.

55 See Peyer, Bernd, The Tutor'd Mind: Indian Missionary-Writers in Antebellum America (Native Americans of the Northeast; Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997) 7881 Google Scholar. Occom responded to this outcome with a bitter play on words: “I am very Jealous that instead of your Semenary Becoming alma Mater, she will be too alba mater to Suckle the Tawnees” (Occom to Wheelock, 24 July 1771, in Collected Writings, 98–100, at 98). See also David McClure to Eleazar Wheelock, 21 May 1770, in Richardson, An Indian Preacher in England, 354–55.

56 Cited in DeLoss Love, Samson Occom, 156.

57 Wheelock to John Thornton, 25 August 1768, in Richardson, An Indian Preacher in England, 351–52, at 352. On Wheelock's ongoing attempts to counter “that Indian distemper: Pride,” which he regularly diagnosed in his Native American pupils, see Axtell, The Invasion Within, 211–12.

58 Peyer, The Tutor'd Mind, 77–78. See also Bannet, Transatlantic Stories, 168.

59 Jerry Sumney's study remains a convenient overview of the relevant scholarship (Identifying Paul's Opponents: The Question of Method in 2 Corinthians [JSNTSup 40; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990]).

60 Says Aristotle, “A person is thought to be great-souled if he claims much and deserves much; he who claims much without deserving it is foolish” (Eth. nic. 4.3.3 [1123b; Rackham, LCL]). See further Arthur J. Dewey, “A Matter of Honor: A Social-Historical Analysis of 2 Corinthians 10,” HTR 78 (1985) 209–17.

61 Esp. Plutarch, De laude (Mor. 539A–547F); Quintilian, Inst. 11.1.15–26. See also Philo, Spec. 1.311. For a helpful overview, see Gibson, Roy K., “Pliny and the Art of (In)offensive Self-Praise,” Arethusa 36 (2003) 235–54, at 238–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Spatharas, Dimos, “Self-Praise and Envy: From Rhetoric to the Athenian Courts,” Arethusa 44 (2011) 199219 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul's Rhetorical Education, 294–97.

63 See Dewey, “A Matter of Honor,” 212; Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul's Rhetorical Education, 298–303.

64 Thrall, Margaret E., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994–2000) 2:941 Google Scholar.

65 Esp. Georgi, Dieter, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 4060 Google Scholar. See also Barrett, C. K., The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (BNTC; London: Black, 1973) 293–94Google Scholar; Thrall, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 2:723–30.

66 Richardson, Peter, “Judaism and Christianity in Corinth after Paul: Texts and Material Evidence,” in Pauline Conversations in Context: Essays in Honor of Calvin J. Roetzel (ed. Anderson, Janice Capel, Sellew, Philip, and Setzer, Claudia; JSNTSup 221; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 4266, at 52Google Scholar: “The evidence is so meager that one must be flexible in what to consider.”

67 See Goodman, Martin, “The Politics of the Fifties: Jewish Leadership and the Jews of Corinth in the Time of 2 Corinthians,” in Second Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Second Temple Judaism (ed. Bieringer, Reimund et al.; CRINT 14; Leiden: Brill, 2014) 2535, at 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Concannon, Cavan W., When You Were Gentiles: Specters of Ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul's Corinthian Correspondence (Synkrisis; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014) 259 Google Scholar n. 3. On Philo's use of the language of Greek colonization here, see Pearce, Sarah, “Jerusalem as ‘Mother-City’ in the Writings of Philo of Alexandria,” in Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire (ed. Barclay, John M. G.; LSTS 45; London: T&T Clark, 2004) 1936, esp. 33–34Google Scholar.

68 For a judicious treatment of the evidence, see Richardson, “Corinth after Paul,” 53–61.

69 Ibid., 59.

70 Ibid., 56–57.

71 The expansion of the Jewish community after Paul's time can be explained, in part, by Vespasian's conscription, in the aftermath of the Jewish war, of six thousand Judeans to dig through the Isthmus (Josephus, B.J. 3.539–540). Concannon, When You Were Gentiles, 259 n. 3.

72 See esp. Pervo, Richard I., Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2006) 103–4Google Scholar. Similarities to the Thessalonian narrative (Acts 17:1–9) are particularly telling, since Luke's account of Paul preaching in a synagogue there runs afoul of the clear implication of Paul's letter that his converts were gentiles (1 Thess 1:9). See esp. Ascough, Richard S., Paul's Macedonian Associations: The Social Context of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians (WUNT 2/161; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) 191212 Google Scholar.

73 Pervo, Richard I., Acts: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009) 448–49Google Scholar. While the name Crispus may suggest some prestige, it does not, of course, give any indication of Jewishness.

74 Pace Welborn, L. L., An End to Enmity: Paul and the “Wrongdoer” of Second Corinthians (BZNW 185; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011) 236–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Welborn finds another prominent Corinthian with ties to Judaism in Spartiaticus, but this is not convincing (An End to Enmity, 309–19; followed by Concannon, When You Were Gentiles, 156–57). The only real data here is that Spartiaticus's grandfather Eurycles once visited and enriched himself by Herod the Great (Josephus, B.J. 1.513–531; A.J.16.300–310). But if Herod was in the thrall of this Spartan διὰ τὴν πατρίδα, as Josephus recounts (B.J. 1.515), that hardly constitutes evidence that Eurycles was equally impressed with Herod's patrimony, the myth of Spartan/Judean kinship notwithstanding. As far as we have evidence, this fictional connection was only ever exploited by Judeans eager to associate themselves with a legendarily noble people. See Gruen, Erich S., “The Purported Jewish-Spartan Affiliation,” in Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History, 360–146 B.C., in Honor of E. Badian (ed. Wallace, Robert W. and Harris, Edward M.; Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996) 254–69Google Scholar.

75 Richardson, Peter, “On the Absence of ‘Anti-Judaism’ in 1 Corinthians,” in Paul and the Gospels (ed. Richardson, Peter; vol. 1 of Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity; Studies in Christianity and Judaism 2; Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1986) 5974 Google Scholar. As Richardson demonstrates, Paul's discussion of tensions caused by varying eating practices suggests that there were also some Judean members of the Corinthian ἐκκλησία. See esp. 1 Cor 10:31–32.

76 Wendt, Heidi, At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stowers, Stanley K., “Kinds of Myth, Meals, and Power: Paul and the Corinthians,” in Redescribing Paul and the Corinthians (ed. Cameron, Ron and Miller, Merrill P.; ECL 5; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011) 105–49Google Scholar, at 113–17. And note Dieter Georgi's recognition that those he called “Hellenistic Jewish Apologists” “must be put into the wider context of a broad oriental missionary effort, wherein Isis worshippers, astrologers, and perhaps also others took part” (Opponents of Paul, 96).

77 See also Plutarch, Superst. 3 (166A–C); Josephus, A.J. 18.65–84; Lucian, Trag. 171–173; Origen, Cels. 7.3; Tacitus 5.5.1–2; Procopius, Bell. 5.9.3–7.

78 See further Wendt, Heidi, “‘Entrusted with the Oracles of God’: The Fate of the Judean Writings in Flavian Rome,” in A Most Reliable Witness: Essays in Honor of Ross Shepard Kraemer (ed. Harvey, Susan Ashbrook et al.; BJS 358; Providence, RI: Brown University, 2015) 101–9Google Scholar.

79 Compare, e.g., Diodorus Siculus 40.3; Strabo, Geog. 16.2.35–36; Josephus, C. Ap. 2.145; Quintilian, Inst. 3.7.21. See further Gager, John G., Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism (SBLMS 16; Nashville: Abingdon, 1972)Google Scholar; Feldman, Louis H., Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 233–42, 285–87Google Scholar.

80 Ripat, Pauline, “Expelling Misconceptions: Astrologers at Rome,” CP 106 (2011) 115–54, at 129–30Google Scholar.

81 Josephus's prediction of Vespasian's rise (B.J. 3.399–408; and see B.J. 3.352–353; 6.312–313) was an incident already well known in antiquity (Cassius Dio 66.1; Suetonius, Vesp. 5.6; Appian, Hist. rom. fr. 17).

82 Perhaps this should not be a surprise, given Paul's unusual approach to circumcision and his own emphasis in 1 Cor 9:19–23 on what Cavan Concannon has called his “ethnic malleability” (When You Were Gentiles, 27–46).

83 See Wendt, At the Temple Gates, 148–61. For the importance of pedigree in this regard, see, e.g., Josephus, B.J. 3.352.

84 Although the ἐκκλησία seems to have included some Jews (see n. 75 above), it was clearly composed primarily of gentiles (see esp. 1 Cor 12:2). See further David G. Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement (SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996) 91–92; and, more generally, Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 9–11. On the Greek/Roman identity of the population of Roman Corinth, see esp. Concannon, When You Were Gentiles, 47–74; Millis, Benjamin W., “The Social and Ethnic Origins of the Colonists in Early Roman Corinth,” in Corinth in Context: Comparative Studies on Religion and Society (ed. Friesen, Steven J., Schowalter, Daniel N., and Walters, James C.; NovTSup 134; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 13–35Google Scholar.

85 Canconnon, When You Were Gentiles, esp. 47–74.

86 Of course, this is not to say that Judeans, or other “barbarians,” were incapable of successful assimilation into the cities of the Greco-Roman world. Rather, what is important here is that Judean identity was not itself ordinarily a source of social standing. Though often tolerated, and sometimes admired, Judeans were also frequently pilloried for their “barbaric” customs. See further Feldman, Jew and Gentile, esp. xi; Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013) 234, 440–91.

87 See esp. 2 Cor 11:20, with Welborn, L. L., “Paul's Caricature of his Chief Rival as a Pompous Parasite in 2 Corinthians 11.20,” JSNT 32 (2009) 3956, at 51–52Google Scholar.

88 On exotic “ethnic knowledges” as alternate forms of paideia, see Stowers, “Kinds of Myth,” 113–17.

89 See BAGD, s.v. ἀσθένεια. And see Gal 4:13–14 with Schweitzer, Albert, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (trans. Montgomery, William; London: Black, 1931) 152–55Google Scholar; 2 Cor 12:20–21 with Mitchell, The Birth of Christian Hermeneutics, 80.

90 See Dodd, C. H., “The Mind of Paul: I,” in New Testament Studies (New York: Scribner, 1954) 6782 Google Scholar, at 67–68; repr. from BJRL 17 (1933); Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) 53–54.

91 Bertram, Georg, “Paulus Christophoros. Ein anthropologisches Problem des Neuen Testaments,” in Stromata. Festgabe des akademisch-theologischen Vereins zu Giessen im schmalkaldener Kartell anlässlich seines 50. Stiftungstages (ed. Bertram, Georg; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1930) 2638 Google Scholar; Deissmann, Adolf, Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History (trans. Wilson, William E.; New York: Harper & Row, 1957) 136–37Google Scholar.

92 Mitchell, Birth of Christian Hermeneutics, 4.

93 Duff, Paul B., Moses in Corinth: The Apologetic Context of 2 Corinthians 3 (NovTSup 159; Leiden: Brill, 2015) 7172 Google Scholar.

94 Buxton, R. G. A., “Blindness and Limits: Sophokles and the Logic of Myth,” JHS 100 (1980) 2237, at 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 See, by way of comparison, Douglas H. Johnson's description of the ambivalent status of the Nuer prophet Ngundeng Bong (Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries [Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994] 73–125).

96 Vlahogiannis, Nicholas, “Disabling Bodies,” in Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity (ed. Montserrat, Dominic; London: Routledge, 1998) 1336, at 20Google Scholar.

97 See Collins, Adela Yarbro, “Paul's Disability: The Thorn in His Flesh,” in Disability Studies and Biblical Literature (ed. Moss, Candida R. and Schipper, Jeremy; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) 165–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 174; following Krenkel, Max, Beiträge zur Aufhellung der Geschichte und der Briefe des Apostels Paulus (Braunschwieg: Schetschke, 1890) esp. 103–8Google Scholar.

98 For a recent survey, see Yarbro Collins, “Paul's Disability.”

99 Note that the combination of marginal ethnicity and marginal body I highlight here would have been particularly significant due to the perduring association in Greek thought of physical defect or deformity with foreign people and places, on which see Lenfant, Dominique, “Monsters in Greek Ethnography and Society in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BCE,” in From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought (ed. Buxton, Richard; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 197214 Google Scholar, at 208–9; Vlahogiannis, “Disabling Bodies,” 24.

100 Though note that recent scholarship has increasingly called into question whether Paul's influence in Corinth was as decisive as he would later depict it in his letters. See esp. Cameron, Ron and Miller, Merrill P., “Introducing Paul and the Corinthians,” in Redescribing Paul and the Corinthians (ed. Cameron, Ron and Miller, Merrill P.; ECL 5; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011) 115, at 3–5Google Scholar.

101 That Paul introduces his questions with μὴ οὐ is telling here. Like οὐ alone, μὴ οὐ invites an affirmative answer to a rhetorical question (BDF §427.2). But the latter more forcefully raises the specter of the (incorrect) negative answer, which readers are castigated for considering, or for acting as though they believe to be true. See, e.g., 1 Cor 11:22; Judg 14:3; Isa 50:2; 59:1; Epictetus, Diatr. 3.22.80. Hence Plummer and Robertson's gloss: “Do you mean to say that we have no right?” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians [2nd ed.; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1914] 179).

102 Much has been made in recent scholarship of Paul's alleged refusal to accept support from the Corinthians. See esp. Theissen, Gerd, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (trans. Schütz, John H.; SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982) 4049 Google Scholar; Marshall, Enmity in Corinth, 165–258; Hock, Ronald F., The Social Context of Paul's Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 5065 Google Scholar; and, for a thorough review of scholarship, Briones, David E., Paul's Financial Policy: A Socio-Theological Approach (LNTS 494; London: Bloomsbury, 2013) 119 Google Scholar. But, as Briones has recognized, there is no indication in 1 Cor 9 that Paul had been offered support (Paul's Financial Policy, 161–63; see further Catherine M. Jones, “Theatre of Shame: The Impact of Paul's Manual Labour on His Apostleship in Corinth” [PhD diss., University of St. Michael's College, Toronto School of Theology, 2013] 172–221). Indeed, if the Corinthians had already acknowledged his right to support by offering it, why should Paul have had to argue so strenuously that he possessed such a right before he meaningfully could claim not to have made use of it? The only plausible support for the suggestion that Paul refused a Corinthian gift comes from two later texts, 2 Cor 11:7 and 12:13, where Paul bitterly asks if he has wronged the Corinthians by not burdening them. But 2 Cor 12:16 provides an exegetical key here, revealing that the cause of the mistrust was not Paul's refusal of a Corinthian gift but rather his collection project, which the Corinthians suspected to be duplicitous. See further Hurd, Origin, 204–6; Mitchell, Margaret M., “Paul's Letters to Corinth: The Interpretive Intertwining of Literary and Historical Reconstruction,” in Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplinary Approaches (ed. Schowalter, Daniel N. and Friesen, Steven J.; HTS 53; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) 307–38Google Scholar, at 327–333; Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul's Rhetorical Education, 73–75.

103 See Wendt, At the Temple Gates, 179–83.

104 Adapted from Peyer, The Tutor'd Mind, 77–78.

105 On this identification see esp. Welborn, L. L., “The Identification of 2 Corinthians 10–13 with the ‘Letter of Tears,’NovT 37 (1995) 138–53Google Scholar. For a thorough treatment of the history of scholarship on the literary integrity of 2 Corinthians, see Thrall, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:3–49. Note, however, that Thrall's treatment predates Margaret Mitchell's groundbreaking article on the priority of 2 Cor 8 (“Paul's Letters to Corinth”).

106 As will be clear from my reading of 2 Cor 10:10 here, I am not persuaded by the notion that Paul's critic is referring specifically to Paul's rhetorical delivery (ὑπόκρισις), on which see esp. Winter, Bruce W., Philo and Paul among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a Julio-Claudian Movement (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) 204–23Google Scholar. Such a reading tears the fabric of the passage, in particular rendering v. 11 irrelevant to the accusation raised in v. 10. See further Schellenberg, Rethinking Paul's Rhetorical Education, 279–84.

107 I borrow the term from Glancy, Jennifer A., “Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23–25),” JBL 123 (2004) 99135, at 107Google Scholar.

108 See further Elrod, Piety and Dissent, 24–25.

109 See Occom, “Autobiographical Narrative, Second Draft,” 57.

110 Ibid., 56.

111 Ibid., 57.

112 Ibid., 57–58 [italics in original].

113 That Occom found 2 Cor 10–13 compelling is evident from his explicit reference to the text in A Sermon, Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul (Collected Writings, 186). Still, scholarly readers of Occom have only recently heard the Pauline resonance here. See now McCarthy, “The Indian Missionary,” 363–64; Elrod, Piety and Dissent, 30–31.

114 Elrod, Piety and Dissent, 31.

115 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 172.

116 Wheelock, Plain and Faithful Narrative, 16 [italics in original].

117 This is the telling phrase of one Samuel Savage, who met Occom in London, in his March 1768 letter to Wheelock: “But the poor indian hath been So cares'd & Such respect Shown him even by the great and Noble that I have been affraid the good man Some times hath almost forgot what he was” (Collected Writings, 333).

118 Elliott, “This Indian Bait,” 249. See also Elrod, Eileen Razzari, “‘I did not make myself so . . .’: Samson Occom and American Religious Autobiography,” in Historicizing Christian Encounters with the Other (ed. Hawley, John C.; Houndsmill, UK: Macmillan, 1998) 135–49, at 145–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 Smith, “The ‘End’ of Comparison,” 239.

120 Occom to Wheelock, 24 July 1771, in Collected Writings, 99.

121 Windisch, Der zweite Korintherbrief, 316, 344. See also Welborn, “Runaway Paul,” 159–61.

122 Forbes, “Comparison, Self-Praise, and Irony,” 20. Cf. Judge, “Paul's Boasting,” 47–48; Travis, “Paul's Boasting.”

123 Watson, “Paul's Boasting,” 272.