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The Divine Comedy at Corinth: Paul, Menander and the Rhetoric of Resurrection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2018
Abstract
This article asks how the New Comedy of Menander might have influenced Paul's theological rhetoric in 1 Cor 5–15. An intertextual reading of Paul's letter against the backdrop of Menander's Samia reveals a number of shared topics, ethical concerns and dramatic characteristics. Paul's citation of Menander's Thais in 1 Cor 15.33 is part of this larger strategy to frame the struggles in Corinth within the ambit of Greek household ‘situation comedy’. Like Menander, Paul hybridises tragic and comic motifs throughout his epistle, inflecting the comedy of the Christ narrative with tragic examples of human misapprehension in this plea for ecclesial reconciliation.
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References
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25 Walton, ‘Aristophanes & Menander’, xxvii. Cf. Menander, Sam. 49–50.
26 Menander, Sam. 130: ‘It seems I have a wedded concubine, to my own surprise.’
27 Menander, Sam. 246–8.
28 Menander, Sam. 217, 361.
29 Menander, Sam. 353, 368.
30 Menander, Sam. 568.
31 1 Cor 7.1, 25; 8.1; 12.1; 16.1, 12.
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33 1 Cor 5.1–2.
34 Menander, Sam. 267–9.
35 
68, which Nestle–Aland considers a first-order witness, attests ὀνομάζεται. Even if the verb did not stand in the original text, its sense is as appropriate as the NRSV's filling the ellipsis with ‘found’.
36 Cf. Martin, D. B., The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) 163Google Scholar.
37 1 Cor 5.2; Menander, Sam. 358–9.
38 The ‘type-scene’ of πορνεία between a mother and son occurs in both tragedy and comedy with a number of variations, including Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Menander's Samia (which cross-references Oedipus at 495–7), Euripides’ Hippolytus and Seneca's Phaedra. I am grateful to Mark Reasoner for the latter two references.
39 Menander, Sam. 49–50.
40 See Menander, Sam. 269: οὐ λέγω δ’, ἄνδρες, πρὸς ὑμᾶς τοῦτ’ ἐγώ.
41 Bultmann, R., Faith and Understanding (trans. Smith, L. P.; New York: Harper & Row, 1969 [1954]), 66–94Google Scholar.
42 Menander, Sam. 397.
43 Menander, Sam. 552: νὴ τὸν Ἥφαιστον, δικαίως ἀποθάνοιμ’ ἄν. Is Hephaestus here invoked in his role as ender of domestic quarrels and prompter of laughter in the divine family (see Homer, Il. 1.571–700)?
44 1 Cor 7.11.
45 1 Cor 13.7.
46 Menander, Sam. 77–85.
47 Menander, Sam. 385–6.
48 Menander, Sam. 163–4: ταῦτόματον ἐστιν ὡς ἔοικέ που θεὸς | σῴζει τε πολλὰ τῶν ἀοράτων πραγμάτων.
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52 Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 362: ‘Äußerst abrupt setzen die rhetorischen Fragen ein – fast als ob P[aulus] hier selber zur Feder gegriffen und diese lebhaften Zeilen hinzugefügt hätte.’
53 Fee, G. D., The First Epistle to the Corinthians (revised edn; NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014) 855–6Google Scholar (emphasis added).
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56 Fee, First Epistle, 855 n. 265.
57 Thiselton, First Epistle, 1254 (emphasis added).
58 Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 367 n. 1: ‘Es ist kein Zufall, daß P[aulus] gerade Menander zitiert; nicht daß er aus dem Theater oder aus Privatlektüre ihn gekannt hätte; aber M[enander] war ein Schulschriftsteller, der wegen seiner sentenzenreichen Lebensweisheit gelesen wurde.’
59 Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief, 367 n. 1: ‘Das Metrum braucht P[aulus] nicht ignoriert zu haben, da man leicht χρησθ’ las, auch wenn man χρηστά schrieb.’
60 Schrage, Der erste Brief, iv.247. For the possibility of a Eurpidean origin of the quotation, see R. Renehan, ‘Classical Greek Quotations in the New Testament’, The Heritage of the Early Church: Essays in Honor of Georges Vasilievich Florovsky (ed. D. Neiman and M. Schatkin; Orientalia Christiana Analecta 195; Rome: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1973) 17–45.
61 A. J. Malherbe, ‘The Beasts at Ephesus’, JBL 87 (1968) 71–80.
62 Malherbe, ‘The Beasts at Ephesus’, 73.
63 Throughout the article, Malherbe presumes that Menander is the author of the citation.
64 Malherbe, ‘The Beasts at Ephesus’, 74–6.
65 See n. 14 above.
66 For a study of Menander's connection to Theophrastus, and the similarities of his and Aristotle's construction of character ethics, see Cinaglia, V., Aristotle and Menander on the Ethics of Understanding (PhA 138; Leiden: Brill, 2015)Google Scholar.
67 1 Cor 15.30–1.
68 The particle νή followed by an accusative noun occurs fifteen times in Menander's Samia (12, 112, 272, 286, 323, 363, 427, 442, 490, 515, 548, 552, 641, 680, 686), but only once in the extant tragic literature (Sophocles, fr. 957). Νή is also common in prose.
69 For Menander's fondness for aphorisms, see Nervegna, Menander in Antiquity, 209.
70 Kujanpää (‘From Eloquence to Evading Responsibility’, 186 n. 2) points out that according to Aristotle (Rhet. 2.21), ‘[r]eferring to maxims, that is, general sayings usually related to proper conduct … “is appropriate only to elderly men, and in handling subjects in which the speaker is experienced”’. Such a description fits Paul's dramatic persona in 1 Cor 15.32, 33 nicely.
71 Nietzsche, F., The Birth of Tragedy (trans. Smith, D.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1872])Google Scholar §§11–15.
72 See Auerbach, Mimesis, 30–1, 33, 44.
73 Menander, Sam. 495–7.
74 Menander, Sam. 163–4.
75 See n. 14 above.
76 1 Cor 15.52, 53.
77 Mitchell, Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 65.
78 See Stowers, S., The Diatribe and Paul's Letter to the Romans (SBLDS 57; Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981) 174Google Scholar; Peppard, M., ‘Brother against Brother: Controversiae about Inheritance Disputes and 1 Corinthians 6:1–11’, JBL 133 (2014) 179–92Google Scholar; Cover, M., Lifting the Veil: 2 Corinthians 3:7–18 in Light of Jewish Homiletic and Commentary Traditions (BZNW 210; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015) 61–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
79 On the ‘union of tragedy and rhetoric’ in Euripides, see Allan, W. A., The Andromache and Euripidean Tragedy (OCM; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 119–20Google Scholar. Allan (ibid. 118) points out that Aristophanes lampooned Euripides as a ‘composer of little lawcourt phrases (ποιητῆι ῥηματίων δικανικῶν, Peace, 534)’.
80 See n. 21 above.
81 Barth speaks of 1 Cor 15 as ‘the very peak and crown of this essentially negative and political epistle’ (Resurrection of the Dead, 101). Bultmann argues to the contrary: ‘Since in the First Letter to the Corinthians the dominant theme is not justification by faith but the temporal life of the believer within time, ch. 13 is the true climax of the letter’ (Faith and Understanding, 94).
82 Barth, Resurrection of the Dead, 71.
83 Barth, Resurrection of the Dead, 72.
84 In point of fact, Barth already coordinates 1 Cor 13 and 1 Cor 15 as the ‘twin peaks’ of the epistle. Thus, he can speak (Resurrection of the Dead, 71) of the message about love in 1 Cor 13 as ‘a decisive word which fundamentally outbids the whole surroundings’ (‘ein solches entscheidendes, die ganze Umgebung grundsätzlich überbietendes Wort’) in parallel with the ‘decisive word of the resurrection’ (‘das entscheidende Wort von der Auferstehung’) in 1 Cor 15. Similarly, Barth considers 1 Cor 13 ‘the peak-point (‘der Berg’) … [that] soars above’ the ‘plane of the rest of the Epistle’ (Resurrection of the Dead, 96, 88), even as 1 Cor 15 represents ‘the very peak and crown’ (‘die Spitze und Krone’) of 1 Corinthians (Resurrection of the Dead, 101). Barth points to the eschatological aspect of 1 Cor 13; Bultmann focuses on the contemporary significance of 1 Cor 15. The tension between them thus revolves not so much around the literary centre of the letter as its theological and temporal vista.