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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
The diversity among introductions to Paul is a tribute to the apostle's genius. There are two basic reasons for the diversity of opinion that exists today: First, internal incoherency—the difficulty of sorting Paul's thought into center and periphery (or event and context); and second, external incoherency—the gaps in our information about one of the most famous and interesting lives of all time. No consensus has emerged on the question of Paul's place in the world. We make this point not because this study will address the problem directly, but because we shall make inferences from one of the views in current circulation, namely that there is a basis to Paul's claim to Pharisaism (Phil 3:5). Attacking this view, some scholars have thought of him as a “would-be Pharisee” at best. We, nevertheless, think that the preponderance of evidence situates Paul in a universalist Jewish, probably Pharisaic, context. Paul believed that many of the law's prescriptions were still valid. As an illustration of Paul's belief in the continuing validity of the law, this essay attempts to show that 1 Cor 7:5–7 is best understood in the context of ritual purity concerns. These concerns include both the injunction for spouses to abstain from sexual activity for a time of prayer and Paul's defense of a celibate lifestyle within his own charismatic self-understanding.
1 Maccoby, Hyam, Paul and Hellenism (London: SCM, 1991) 139Google Scholar.
2 Compare Rosner, Brian S., Paul, Scripture and Ethics: A Study of 1 Corinthians 5–7 (AGJU 22; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 151Google Scholar.
3 see esp. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966) 29–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Segal, Alan F., Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990) 171Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., 170.
6 See the examples in ibid., 170–71.
7 Compare the cultic metaphors in T.Ash. 2.9, 4.5.
8 Compare m. Ketub. 5.6; m. ˒Ed. 4.10. On the “conjugal right” in 1 Cor 7:5, see Tomson, Peter J., Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles (CRINT; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1990) 107–8Google Scholar.
9 At least one exegete, however, has suggested such a reading. William, L. Countryman writes (Dirt, Greed, and Sex [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988] 205 n. 14Google Scholar) that “the allowance for sexual abstinence is to give leisure for prayer, not to purify the couple for it” (emphasis in the original), apparently interpreting σχολάσητε in its etymological sense of “to have leisure.” Clearly, however, the context of 1 Corinthians decides for the usual translation “devote yourselves to prayer.” Throughout his book, Countryman ties purity so inextricably to the Jew/Gentile partition that all pollution concerns could not have survived the removal of that partition.
10 Compare Wink, Walter, Unmasking the Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 20Google Scholar. For the subsequent ascetic use of 1 Cor 7:5, see Tatian's interpretation (Clement Alex. Strom. 3.12.81) and the treatment of this interpretation in Cartlidge, David Ray, “Competing Theologies of Asceticism in the Early Church” (Th.D. diss., Harvard University, 1969) 256–57Google Scholar. See also Tertullian, De exhortatione castitatis 10; and on Tertullian, Robeck, Cecil M. Jr., Prophecx in Carthage: Perpetua, Tertullian, and Cyprian (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1992) 120Google Scholar; and Baltensweiler, Heinrich, Die Ehe im Neuen Testament (ATANT 52; Zurich: Zwingli, 1967) 205–7Google Scholar.
11 See Cartlidge, “Competing Theologies,” 48. Antoinette Clark Wire has obscured the line between the purely ritual and the ascetic programs. In interpreting 1 Cor 7:5, she adduces examples of Jewish and Greek prophetesses who abstained from sexual relations—clearly a ritual goal for celibacy. But she also writes that “Paul expects prayer to be heightened by sexual abstinence,” thus throwing the apostle's thought into the ascetic trajectory. Wire nevertheless observes that “all the women identified as prophets in the New Testament are described in terms of their sexual lives” (The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul's Rhetoric [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990] 83, 183Google Scholar). See Cothenet, Edouard (“Prophétisme dans le Nouveau Testament,” DBSup 6 [1960] 1282)Google Scholar, who finds prophecy linked to virginity in Acts 21:9.
12 So Baltensweiler, Die Ehe im Neuen Testament, 160–61.
13 “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,” OTP 1. 814.
14 As Gunther, John J. notes (St. Paul's Opponents and their Background: A Study of Apocalyptic and Jewish Sectarian Teachings [Nov T Sup 30; Leiden: Brill, 1973] 140)Google Scholar, the “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs manifest[s] a special concern for purity.” In the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the purity idea refers both to the careful observance of priestly ritual conduct and to a sense of moral uprightness (as at Qumran). See ibid., 140–42.
15 Japhet, Sara (“The Prohibition of the Habitation of Women: The Temple Scroll's Attitude Toward Sexual Impurity and Its Biblical Precedents,” JANES 22 [1993] 69–87)Google Scholar has shown that the Temple Scroll focused on sexual impurity, while it deemphasized corpse impurity. She argues that such a tendency derives from Chronicles and that the Temple Scroll prescriptions have nothing to do with the Deuteronomic model of a war camp.
16 Wilbert Francis Howard's understanding of 1 Cor 7:5 as prescribing “seasons of special prayer” probably reflects a failure to read diachronically, as the arrangement Paul enjoins—abstinence for prayer—makes little sense to moderns (in Eiselen, Frederick Carl, Lewis, Edwin, and Downey, David G., eds., The Abingdon Bible Commentary [New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1929] 1180Google Scholar; emphasis added). D. Gerhard Delling also over-interprets, reading a congregational prayer meeting of several days' duration into Paul's words about abstaining for a season (Worship in the New Testament [London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1962] 110Google Scholar).
17 Lev 15:16–18. Compare 1 Sam 22:4; Josephus Cont. Ap. 2.198; Ant. 6.238. See Harrington, Hannah K., The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis: Biblical Foundations (SBLDS 143; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993) 244–47Google Scholar. Alon, Gedalyahu (Jews. Judaism and the Classical World [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977] 199Google Scholar) concludes that “the Halakha basically ordains that every form of impurity prohibits Torah-study and prayer” (emphasis in the original). Cohen, Shaye J. D. (“Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity,” in Pomeroy, Sarah B., ed., Women's History and Ancient History [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991] 288–90, 298 nn. 57–58Google Scholar) discusses three Alexandrian Fathers who objected to praying and/or partaking of communion after sexual intercourse; compare Origen Sel. Ezech. 420 (PG 13.793B [ άκαθαρσίανrsqb;); Dionysius of Alexandria Ep. Can. 2 (PG 10.1284A); and Timothy of Alexandria Resp. Can. (PG 33.1300A–1301A) (these last two invoke 1 Cor 7:5). Compare also Jerome Adv. Jov. 1.34 (PL 23.268–69), who makes an a minore inference from the fact that a lay person cannot pray without abstaining from “officio conjugali.”
18 Josephus Ant. 14.258 (trans. H. St. J. Thackeray; LCL; 10 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957) 7. 587; emphasis mine. See Sanders, E. P., Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Trinity, 1990) 258–76Google Scholar.
19 Nestle-Aland, (Novum Testamentum Graece [27th rev. ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993] 369Google Scholar) relegates ἐνομίζετο προσευχή to the apparatus, preferring instead ἐνομίζομεν προσευχήν. The reasons for this, given by Metzger, Bruce M. in the UBS Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament ([Stuttgart: UBS, 1971] 447Google Scholar), are not completely satisfying: “It was felt.… that the manifestly erroneous reading ἐνόμιζεν of 
74 א probably testifies to an earlier ὲνμίζομεν, and that προσευχή in 74 A B may have resulted from accidental omission of the horizontal stroke over the η, signifying a final ν.” More probably, ὲνόμιζεν was the initial clumsy stage in the move toward the more literarily acceptable ὲνομίζομεν and away from the undoubtedly strange-sounding (to early Christian copyists) report of a widespread custom of praying near water. Ἐνομίζομεν would then have removed the incomprehensible custom and turned an automatic expectation of prayer near the river into a mere hearsay that the local place of prayer happened to be near the river. At any rate, all the readings point to a custom (or house) of prayer παρὰ ποταμόν —it is only a question of whether Acts 16:13 explicitly attests the widespread existence of such a custom.
20 Jdt 12:7–8.
21 Sib. 3.591–93 (OTP 1. 375). Jacob Neusner (The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism [Leiden: Brill, 1972] 3) thinks that both Judith and the Sibylline Oracles refer to hand-washing instead of immersion, but compare Booth, Roger P., Jesus and the Laws of Purity: Tradition History and Legal History in Mark 7 (JSNTSSup 13; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1986) 159–60Google Scholar.
22 OTP 2. 33.
23 Fraade, Steven D. has collected pertinent texts in “The Nazirite in Ancient Judaism (Selected Texts),” in Wimbush, Vincent L., ed., Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990) 213–23Google Scholar.
24 Plutarch, Moralia, Table Talk 33.655D (trans. Babbitt, Frank Cole, et al. ; LCL; 15 vols.; London: Heinemann, 1927–76Google Scholar) 8. 257. Also cited in Yarbrough, O. Larry, Not Like the Gentiles: Marriage Rules in the Letters of Paul (SBLDS 80; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985) 100 n. 31Google Scholar. Plutarch's parenthetical remark is followed by an admonition “to have night and sleep intervene,” which, although serving for Plutarch as refreshment of mind and body, may correspond as well with the passing of the cultic “short time” in the passage we have quoted. See also the Cyrene Cathartic law 11–15: “Coming from a woman a man, if he has slept with her by night, can sacrifice [wherever? whenever?] he wishes. If he has slept with her by day, he can, after washing [ ] go wherever he wishes, except to [two lines missing]” (ca. early third c. BCE?; quoted in Parker, Robert, Miasma [Oxford: Clarendon, 1983] 335Google Scholar). On purity regulations at temple entrances, see Farnell, L. R., The Evolution of Religion (New York: Putnam's, 1905) 138–39Google Scholar. On sexual abstinence for cultic purposes in general, see Smith, W. Robertson, The Religion of the Semites (1894; reprinted New York: Meridian, 1956) 454–56Google Scholar. Wimbush, Vincent L. also discusses abstinence in connection with “non-Jewish cultic asceticism” (Paul the Worldly Ascetic [Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987] 55–56)Google Scholar. He notes that “this type of renunciation or ascetic practice is not counseled in 1 Corinthians,” but does not judge whether the ritual thought world was meaningful for Paul. Of course, ancient Judaism was by no means devoid of genuinely ascetic spiritualities; see Fraade, Steven D., “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in Green, Arthur, ed., Jewish Spirituality (2 vols.; New York: Crossroad, 1987) 253–88Google Scholar.
25 Pausanias, Descr. Graec. 1.34.5 (trans. Jones, W. H. S.; LCL; 4 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) 1. 187Google Scholar. Compare the treatment of ritual procedures at “local oracle sanctuaries” in Aune, David E., Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) 29–30Google Scholar.
26 Parker, Miasma, 74.
27 Sokolowski, Franciszek, Lois Sacrées des Cités Grecques Supplément (Paris: Boccard, 1962) 109 no. 54.4, 114 nos. 59.15–16;Google Scholar and idem, Lois Sacrés des Cités Grecques (Paris: Boccard, 1969) 185 no. 95.5 (post-166 BCE).
28 Sokolowski, Lois Sacrèes des Cités Grecques, 254 no. 151A.42.
29 Sokolowski, Franciszek, Lois Sacrées de L'Asie Mineure (Paris: Boccard, 1955) 83 nos. 29.4–7.Google Scholar
30 Sokolowski, Lois Sacrées des Cités Grecques Supplément, 187 nos. 115A.11–20.
31 Ibid., 160 nos. 91.12, 17–19; idem, Lois Sacrées des Cités Grecques, 239 nos. 139.14–18.
32 Sokolowski, Lois Sacrées de L'Asie Mineure, 50 nos. 18.9–15.
33 Ibid., 37 nos. 12.3–7.
34 Sokolowski, Lois Sacrées des Cités Grecques, 299 no. 171.17.
35 Ibid., 219 no. 124.9.
36 Sokolowski, Lois Sacrées de L'Asie Mineure, 54 nos. 20.25–50.
37 Sokolowski, Lois Sacrées des Cités Grecques Supplément, 201 nos. 119.7–9.
38 Aristophanes Lys. 912–13 (trans. Benjamin B. Rogers; LCL; 3 vols.; London: Heinemann, 1924) 3. 88–89.
39 Parker, Miasma, 75.
40 See esp. Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 221–58.
41 The notion that Paul could not have held non-Jewish Christians to be susceptible to impurity should be dispelled. The Jewish notion of the Gentile's permanent impurity—that is, that Gentiles were insusceptible to the impurities that affected Jews—was probably based upon the Gentile's assumed idolatry. (See Alon, Jews, Judaism and the Classical World, 187.) For Paul, conversion to Christianity would have undone this basis for permanent impurity. A newly converted non-Jewish Christian would presumably be susceptible to impurity. From Paul's point of view, they were no longer Gentiles. (Compare 1 Cor 12:2; on the “holiness of Gentiles,” see Stowers, Stanley K., A Rereading of Romans [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994] 96–97Google Scholar.) In fact, the charge that Paul had brought a Gentile into the Temple (Acts 21:27–29), whether historical or not, would seem to reflect Paul's notion of the Gentile's ritual destigmatization upon conversion.
42 Lev 15:16–18; Deut 23:10–11. Herodotus (Hist., 1.198) describes a similar remedy among Babylonians and in Arabia. Although semen impurity was the easiest to remedy for some cultic contexts, in others (reading Torah, studying mishna, midrash, etc. [t. Ber. 2.12]) it was irremediable, in contrast to other sexually-related impurities. Compare Cohen, “Menstruants and the Sacred,” 282–83. Baruch M. Bokser writes that “the early rabbinic system… taught that extra-Temple sacredness needs to be activated. Accordingly, it is when people take steps to initiate the sacred that they must follow the proper gestures of approach” (“Approaching Sacred Space,” HTR 78 [1985] 299Google Scholar). Unfortunately, Bokser credits the framers of the Mishna with inventing extra-Temple “gestures of approach” as an effort “to provide new [sacred] centering structures” (ibid., 288), while only cursorily noting that such gestures were already in place (at least in the Diaspora) long before the Temple's destruction.
43 That is, Paul overthrew the particularistic to aid in keeping the systemic.
44 Of course, non-Pauline attestations for Christian miqvaʾot are not completely lacking. The “doctrine of baptisms” of Heb 6:2 seems to imply that such a practice existed in some early Christian groups. See Heb 9:10; but compare Bellarmino Bagatti for evidence of “three baptisms” in a three-part initiation rite among some Jewish-Christians, (The Church from the Circumcision [Jerusalem: Franciscan, 1971] 239–42)Google Scholar. Emmanuel, P. Testa also notes that Jewish-Christians spoke of unctions as baptisms (L'Huile de la Foi [Jerusalem: Franciscan, 1967] 31 n. 13)Google Scholar. For the interpretations of βαπτισμῶν διδαχῆς, see Grässer, Erich, An die Hebräer (Hebr 1–6) (EKKNT 17/1; Zurich: Benziger, 1990) 341–42Google Scholar. On ritual bathing from sexual defilement among the Ebionites, see Epiphanius, Ana. 30.2.4. Gunther (St. Paul's Opponents, 134–47) discusses various early Christian washings against “pollution.” On Jewish-Christianity in general and on Christian miqvaʾot in particular, see Visotzky, Burton L., “Prolegomenon to the Study of Jewish-Christianities,” AJS Review 14 (1989) 47–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 If the stereotypes hold true regarding the time at which impurities are erased, that is, evening for Jews (the tebul yom being a special arrangement) and morning for Greeks, then the operative symbol for impurity's duration is clearly day's end. It is impossible to know whether Paul imposed the Jewish reckoning of days upon non-Jews.
46 With Michael Newton, we lament the fact that there is among students of religion “a refusal to acknowledge that ‘purity’, as an anthropological concept, is worth considering on the grounds that it has no place in the ‘higher religions’” (The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul [SNTSMS 53; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985] 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The early Christian theory that the legal pronouncements given after the golden calf incident were part of Israel's punishment—and therefore not binding upon Christians—is later than the time of Paul. See Kraemer, Ross Shepard, Her Share of the Blessings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 236 n. 67Google Scholar.
47 Students of early Jewish mysticism are now revising some of their former mantic interpretations of esoteric prophylactic practices in the direction of more practical ritual purity customs. For example, see Swartz, Michael D., “‘Like the Ministering Angels’: Ritual and Purity in Early Jewish Mysticism and Magic,” AJS Review 19 (1994) 135–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 The failure of prophecy was a regular feature of the way in which many religious traditions hallowed the past. See, for example, the chapters on “The Finality of Prophethood” and “Substitutes for Prophecy” in Yohanan Friedmann's book on Islam, , Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Aḥmadī Religious Thought and Its Medieval Background (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) 49–93Google Scholar.
49 See Josephus Bell. 3.351–54, 400–1. Like Paul, Josephus never explicitly called himself a prophet. See Sandnes, Karl Olav, Paul—One of the Prophets?: A Contribution to the Apostle's Self-Understanding (WUNT, second series 43; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1991) 176 n. 22Google Scholar; and esp. Gray, Rebecca, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 35–79Google Scholar. Richard A. Horsley and John S. Hanson emphasize text-consciousness as a development contrary to prophetism, but their denial of the existence of Pharisaic prophetism depends upon a decidedly liberationist paradigm for “prophet” (Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Jesus [San Francisco: Harper, 1985] 157–60Google Scholar; on this, see Gray, Prophetic Figures, 169 n. 7).
50 See Josephus Ant. 14.174–75, 15.3–4; Blenkinsopp, Joseph, “Prophecy and Priesthood in Josephus,” JJS 25 (1974) 239–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vermes, Geza, Jesus the Jew (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973) 69–82Google Scholar; Davies, W. D., Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (4th ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 208–15Google Scholar; Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity, 103–6 (and, more generally, 103–52); and Meyer, Rudolf, “προφήτης κτλ.,” TDNT 6 (1968) 824Google Scholar. In Ant. 17.41–44 (ET 8. 393), Josephus describes the Pharisees as men of προμηθεῖς, “believed to have foreknowledge [πρόγνωσιν] of things through God's appearances [ἐπιφοιτήσει] to them.”
51 Fishbane, Michael, The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989) 37Google Scholar. See also Giblet, J., “Prophétisme et attente d'un messie prophète dans l'ancien Judaïsme,” in Cerfaux, Lucien, et al. , eds., L'attente du messie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958) 85–130Google Scholar, esp. 90–103; Meyer, “προφήτης κτλ.” 816–19. Horsley, Richard A. (“‘Like One of the Prophets of Old’: Two Types of Popular Prophets at the Time of Jesus,” CBQ 47 [1985] 437)Google Scholar connects this “emerging ‘canonical’ thinking” with Josephus. Gray (Prophetic Figures, 7–34) disagrees with our view, describing Josephus's view of the golden age of prophecy in terms of a “vague nostalgia.” While her thesis answers the evidence of Josephus, it does not explain the presence of a postprophetic view in other sources. See also Feldman, Louis H., “Prophets and Prophecy in Josephus,” JTS 41 (1990) 400–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Greenspahn, Frederick E. (“Why Prophecy Ceased,” JBL 108 [1989] 49)Google Scholar, the rabbis suppressed prophecy because they “could hardly tolerate a rival vision of God's message.”
52 Myers, Jacob M. and Freed, Edwin D., “Is Paul Also Among the Prophets?” Int 20 (1966) 40–53Google Scholar; Langevin, Paul-Émile, “Saint Paul, prophète des Gentils,” LTP 26 (1970) 3–16Google Scholar; Windisch, Hans, Paulus und Christus: ein biblisch-religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich (UNT 24; Leipzig: Hinrich, 1934) 143–286Google Scholar; and Munck, Johannes, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (Richmond: John Knox, 1959) 11–35, esp. 24Google Scholar. See also Baird, William, “Visions, Revelation, and Ministry: Reflections on 2 Cor 12:1–5 and Gal 1:11–17,” JBL 104 (1985) 656–57Google Scholar. Holtz, Traugott (“Zum Selbstverständnis des Apostels Paulus,” ThLZ 91 [1966] 321–30)Google Scholar argues for Paul's conscious association with Isaiah and against his conscious association with Jeremiah. Sandnes (Paul, 14–15) at first repudiates this approach on grounds that it is “questionable to draw analogies between the self-understandings of Hebrew Bible prophets and Christian prophets,” but finally readmits it since Paul's apostolic self-understanding was so bound to a call experience which more closely parallels that of the Hebrew Bible prophets than of the early Christian prophets. Myers and Freed (“Is Paul Also Among the Prophets?”, 44–45) note that, when Luke recounts the Damascus-road encounter in Acts 22:17–21, the similarities between Acts 9 and Isaiah 6 extend further. Both Paul and Isaiah received their commissions to preach directly from the Lord in the Temple.
53 Myers and Freed, “Is Paul Also Among the Prophets?” 49.
54 Robinson, H. Wheeler, Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946) 167–70Google Scholar.
55 Grudem, Wayne A., The Gift of Prophecy in 1 Corinthians (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982)Google Scholar. Compare Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity, 202–3; Sandnes, Paul, 2–3; Hill, David, New Testament Prophecy (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1979) 116Google Scholar. For the history of the question of the New Testament apostolate's relation to the Jewish shaliach, see Agnew, Francis H., “The Origin of the NT Apostle-Concept: A Review of Research,” JBL 105 (1986) 75–96Google Scholar. The slippage between the concepts “apostle” and “prophet” was usually slight, and often indistinguishable. See, for example, Moses as both in Meeks, Wayne A., The Prophet-King (NovTSup 14; Leiden: Brill, 1967) 226–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Admitting the testimony of Acts would bring more evidence for Paul's prophetic selfunderstanding. Several have suggested, not implausibly, that the record of Paul's call in Acts and the account of his vision in 2 Cor 12:1–7 are best understood in the context of merkabah mysticism. See the large bibliography in Morray-Jones, C. R. A., “Paradise Revisited (2 Cor 12:1–12): The Jewish Mystical Background of Paul's Apostolate, Part 1: The Jewish Sources,” HTR 86 (1993) 177–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of course, not all scholars agree that Acts 9 and 2 Corinthians 12 describe the same event.
57 Hill, New Testament Prophecy, 110–40.
58 Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 99–102. On celibacy in Judaism in general, see McArthur, Harvey, “Celibacy in Judaism at the Time of Christian Beginnings,” AUSS 25 (1987) 163–81Google Scholar.
59 Procreation was not only a Jewish duty. As Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler notes (In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins [New York: Crossroad, 1987] 225)Google Scholar, “Paul's advice to remain free from the marriage bond was a frontal assault on the intentions of existing law and the general cultural ethos.”
60 Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 101. Brown, Peter (The Body and Society [New York: Columbia University Press, 1988] 65–82Google Scholar) cites Vermes as a background study for the Church's “ascetic spirituality” (sic), without mentioning the prophet's investment in ritual purity. On this, and on possible traces of celibacy in Revelation, the Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas, see esp. Boring, M. Eugene, The Continuing Voice of Jesus: Christian Prophecy and the Gospel Tradition (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991) 134–37Google Scholar.
61 Sandnes (Paul, 6–7) disagrees with Windisch's notion that Paul's celibate status, like Jeremiah's (compare Jer 16:1–4), was prophetic.
62 On Moses' prophetism, see esp. Meeks, The Prophet-King, 226–27.
63 De Vita Moses 68–69a (trans. Colson, F. H.; LCL; 11 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950) 6. 483Google Scholar. Compare Avot de-Rabbi Natan (A) 2.
64 Sifre Num 12.1. For the developmental history of this midrash, see Boyarin, Daniel, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 159–65Google Scholar. Compare Bloch, Renée, “Quelques aspects de la figure de Moïse dans la tradition rabbinique,” in Cazelles, Henri, et al. , eds., Moïse: L'homme de l'alliance (Paris: Desclée, 1955) 127 n. 84Google Scholar. A pertinent text not cited by Vermes appears in an associated midrash, Sifre Zutta Num 12.1, believed by Lieberman, Saul (Siphre Zutta: The Midrash of Lydda [New York: JTSA, 1968] 92–94)Google Scholar to be the oldest halakhic midrash: “What were the things which they were saying? When the elders were appointed, all of Israel lit candles and celebrated on behalf of the seventy elders who had risen to positions of leadership. When Miriam saw the candles, she said, ‘Blessed are these men! Blessed are their wives!’ Zipporah answered her, ‘Do not say “blessed are their wives” but “woe to their wives!” Because from the day when the word of the Lord was first with Moses your brother he has not slept with me!’ Immediately Miriam went to Aaron, and they were discussing the matter. As it is written, Miriam and Aaron confronted Moses concerning the woman” (emphasis mine). There are admittedly some difficulties in determining the actual Sifre Zutta text. See Strack, H. L. and Stemberger, G., Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 293Google Scholar.
65 b. Yebam. 62a. Compare also b. Šabb. 87a; b. Pesaḥ. 87b.
66 According to Sifre Zutta Num 12:4, the Lord punished Aaron and Miriam by “speaking suddenly to them” while they were in an impure state: “And the Lord suddenly [pitʾ om] said to Moses. Rabbi Eliezer said in the name of Rabbi Shimon, ‘Suddenly, that is, without warning.’ Here pitʾ om can only indicate uncleanness [tumʾ ah], as it is said, And if someone should die next to him very suddenly [pitʾ om], and he defiles [timʾ ae] the hair of his Nazirite vow, etc. (Num 6:9). Scripture is telling us that they were lacking purification from immersion at that moment when the Lord spoke suddenly to them. What they meted out was meted back to them” (translation mine). (The authors are indebted to Dr. Marc Hirshman for the references in Sifre Zutta.)
67 According to Lieberman, Saul (“Two Lexicographical Notes,” JBL 65 [1946] 67–72)Google Scholar, the suddenness of the word of the Lord was a prominent idea and is reflected in the Septuagint's rendering of ṣalaḥ by ἅλλομαι in LXX Judg 14:6 (“the spirit of the Lord leaped upon him”) and elsewhere. “There is no doubt that the LXX used here a set phrase current among the Jews about the sudden appearance of the word of the Lord” (ibid., 68). Because of this suddenness the prophet shall always remain ritually pure. According to Sifre Deut. 357 and Sifre Zutta 7.89, Moses did not know when God would speak to him. According to Lev. Rab. 1.13, the prophets of Israel had no warning when the word of God would come to them, unlike the prophets of the nations, to whom the dibbur came at night and “as a man walking” (that is, with warning). See Lieberman, 's note on Lev. Rab. 1.9, p. 23, at the end of Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah (ed. Margulies, Mordecai; 5 vols.; New York: JTSA, 1993) 4Google Scholar. xxiii [Hebrew].
68 Acts 21:9.
69 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.18 (trans. Lake, Kirsopp; LCL; 2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959) 1. 487Google Scholar.
70 Hurd, John Coolidge Jr., The Origin of I Corinthians (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983) 73Google Scholar.
71 Scholars usually explain this in terms of Paul's eschatology, but Wimbush (Paul, 69) has argued that the eschatological coordinates of Paul's thoughts on the issue are not primary.
72 Moiser, Jeremy (“A Reassessment of Paul's View of Marriage with Reference to 1 Cor. 7,” JSNT 18 [1983] 106–7)Google Scholar challenges the consensus but for a different purpose: “The charism mentioned in 7:7 need be no more than a general reference to the different responses of individual Christians, each living the new life in his or her own way in matters where important principles are not at stake.” We should also note that Tertullian believed that Paul was a eunuch, propterea et ipse castratus (De Monogamia 3.1 [PL 2.932]), and that there is a long-lived tradition that Paul was or formerly had been married (surveyed in Phipps, William E., Was Jesus Married? [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986] 106–8)Google Scholar.
73 Esp. Rom 12:6; 1 Cor 12:4–10.
74 Χάρισμα, of course, rarely appears outside the New Testament.
75 I Clem. 38.2 shows that the concept did appear after Paul (probably due to a misunderstanding of Paul). Conzelmann, Hans (“χάρισμα,” TDNT 9 [1974] 404 n. 23Google Scholar; and idem, I Corinthians [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975] 118 n. 34) cites Wis 8:21 as an example of this idea, but it does not appear there. Conzelmann also cites Ep. Arist. 237 in support of the “historical presupposition” that ἐγκράτεια is a “divine gift” (TDNT 9 [1974] 404 n. 23). This passage alludes to the giftedness of the “self-controlled,” but it is hardly useful as support for the idea of charismatic celibacy. The passage in question is an ad hoc formulation, one in a series of the author's proofs that wisdom is both divine and all-encompassing: “[The king] proceeded to ask the next guest, ‘What makes the greatest contribution to health?’ He replied, 'self-control [σωφροσύνη], which it is impossible to achieve unless God disposes the heart and mind toward it’” (“Letter of Aristeas,” in OTP, 2. 28). “Self-control” here is an important link in a larger program, but the link is made for the sake of the argument and does not have a career of its own. Furthermore, σωφροσύνη is hardly interchangeable with Paul's ἐγκράτεια (Gal 5:23). Neither of the Pauline operatives χάρισμα and ἐγκράτεια appears in the Aristeas text, (ἀκρασία appears in 1 Cor 7:5 and the verb ἐγκρατεύονται in 7:9.)
76 Compare Did. 6:2.
77 Windisch (Paulus und Christus, 150) notes that celibacy, for Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul, is based on eschatology.
78 Concerning this pragmatic approach to marriage, compare b. Qidd. 29a–b: “Our Rabbis taught: If one has to study Torah and to marry a wife, he should first study and then marry. But if he cannot [live] without a wife, he should first marry and then study.” See also Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 159 n. 40.
79 Depending upon the reasons Paul prefers but refuses to enjoin celibacy for all, which remain outside the scope of this study, 1 Corinthians may actually show evidence of three theories of celibacy: one from the Corinthian gnostics and two from Paul. There is a large literature on virginity in the early church, much of which applies to the Corinthian gnostics, but see esp. Douglas (Purity and Danger, 186), who remarks that “In [the Church's] effort to create a new society which would be free, unbounded and without coercion or contradiction, it was no doubt necessary to establish a new set of positive values.” Jerome validates Douglas's theory in Adv. Jov. 1.253, quoting the same New Testament passage she does (Gal 3:28).
80 Num 11:29.
81 1 Cor 14:5.
82 At least, not all were called to a life of apostolic prophecy. Our interpretation of Paul's charism as prophecy should not be construed to deny that others prophesied on a more episodic basis (See Cothenet, “Prophétisme,” 1223).
83 The authors are indebted to Dr. Burton Visotzky for reading and commenting on this article.
