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How ‘Democratic’ Was the Pauline Ekklēsia? An Assessment with Special Reference to the Christ Groups of Roman Corinth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2019

L. L. Welborn*
Affiliation:
Fordham University, Department of Theology, 441 East Fordham Road, Bronx, New York 10458, USA. Email: welborn@fordham.edu

Abstract

Several recent studies have argued for the importance of democratic practices and ideology for a proper understanding of the issues and debates reflected in Paul's Corinthian correspondence. This new perspective stands in tension with older scholarship which emphasised the role of patronage in the structure and dynamics of the house churches that made up the ekklēsia of Christ-believers at Corinth. This essay draws upon new research into the political sociology of Greek cities in the early Empire, which highlights evidence of the continuing vitality of democratic assemblies (ekklēsiai) in the first and second centuries, despite the limitations imposed upon local autonomy by Roman rule. Special attention is devoted to the epigraphic evidence of first-century Corinth, whose political institutions and social relations were those of a Roman colony. The essay seeks to ascertain whether the politics of the Christ groups mimicked those of the city in which they were located or represented an alternative.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

This article was presented as a short paper at the 73rd meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in Athens on 10 August 2018.

References

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29 Meeks, Urban Christians, 79.

30 For the argument that Paul's usage of ἐκκλησία was mediated by the Septuagint and Hellenistic Jewish writers, see Berger, K., ‘Volksversammlung und Gemeinde Gottes: Zu den Anfängen der christlichen Verwendung von “ekklēsia”’, ZTK 73 (1976) 167207Google Scholar, esp. 169–83; more recently, Beale, G. K., ‘The Background of ἐκκλησία Revisited’, JSNT 38 (2015) 151–68Google Scholar; Korner, R. J., ‘Ekklēsia as a Jewish Synagogue Term: Some Implications for Paul's Socio-Religious Location’, Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 2 (2015) 5378Google Scholar.

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32 I.Delos 1519.1, 5 (Delos, 153/52 bce; IG xii/6.1.133.1–4 (Samos, second century bce); Robert, L., Le sanctuaire de Sinuri près de Mylasa (Paris: De Boccard, 1945)Google Scholar no. 73 (Sinuri (Caria) 350–344 bce).

33 This short list of politically resonant terms that follow might be significantly expanded: e.g. σχίσματα, 1 Cor 1.10; 11.18, cf. Herodotus 7.219; Diodorus Siculus 12.66.2; ἔριδες, 1 Cor 1.11; 3.3, cf. Thucydides 2.21; 6.35; Appian, Bell. civ. 2.2.6; Josephus, Ant. 14.16.1; Plutarch, Caes. 33; ζῆλος, 1 Cor 3.3, cf. Lysias 2.48; Philo Flacc. 41; Plutarch, Lyc. 4.2–3; μερίζω, 1 Cor 1.13, cf. Appian, Bell. civ.1.1; διχοστασία, 1 Cor 3.3, cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 8.72; τὸ συμφέρον, 1 Cor 12.7, cf. I.Priene 119.23; P.Oxy. 1409.11.

34 1 Cor 10.29; 2 Cor 3.17; Gal 5.13; Rom 8.21.

35 E.g. Euripides, Phoen. 403–5; Aristotle, Pol. 1281a39–b9, 1284a30–4, 1286a25–35, 1317a40–b16, 1318a2–10; cf. Raaflaub, K. A., Die Entdeckung der Freiheit: Zur historischen Semantik und Gesellschaftsgeschichte eines politischen Grundbegriffes der Griechen (Munich: Beck, 1985) 258312Google Scholar.

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38 1 Cor 9.10, 12.

39 E.g. Lysias 6.48, 30.15; Aristotle, Pol. 1282a29; Hansen, M. H., ‘How Many Athenians Attended the Ecclesia?’, GRBS 17 (1976) 115–34Google Scholar.

40 1 Cor 1.9; 2 Cor 8.4; Phil 4.15; Phlm 6; Rom 15.26.

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43 This is an inference from the phrase ἐξ ἰσότητος in 2 Cor 8.13: ‘on the basis of equality’. In the first two clauses of v. 13, Paul speaks of ‘others’ (ἄλλοι) – that is, the Jerusalem saints – for whom the collection will be a ‘relief’, and of ‘you’ (ὑμεῖς) – that is, the Corinthian believers – for whom the collection may represent a ‘hardship’. That the reference to ‘equality’ as the ground of the collection is introduced in this way implies that the ‘equality’ of which Paul speaks is an equality between persons. See the exegesis and argumentation in Welborn, ‘Paul's Place,’ 555–8.

44 On 1 Cor. 12.13 as an allusion to the baptismal formula, see Hartman, L., ‘Into the Name of the Lord Jesus’: Baptism in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997) 66–7Google Scholar, 87–8. For the egalitarian implications, see Meeks, Urban Christians, 88.

45 For different readings of the logic of 1 Cor 11.2–16, specifically, whether 1 Cor 11.11–12 represents an egalitarian correction of the arguments for the subordination of women in 11.2–10, or an affirmation of the mutual interdependence of men and women, see e.g. Meeks, W. A., ‘The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity’, HR 13 (1974) 165208Google Scholar, at 200 and 208; Martin, D. B., ‘Prophylactic Veils’, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) 229–33Google Scholar, 242–9. With a number of scholars (e.g. Meeks, Urban Christians, 220 n. 108), I regard the paragraph instructing women to ‘keep silent’ in the ἐκκλησία in 1 Cor. 14.33b–36 as a non-Pauline interpolation for the following reasons: (1) the verses disrupt the flow of the argument from 1 Cor 14.33a to 14.37; (2) the instruction contradicts the assumption of 1 Cor 11.15 that women will pray and prophesy in the assembly; (3) the attitude resembles the viewpoint of the deutero-Pauline epistles (esp. 1 Tim 2.9–15); (4) the paragraph exhibits non-Pauline sentiments – e.g., ‘as the law also says’ (14.34b); (5) manuscript evidence indicates that 1 Cor 14.34–5 was a later addition to the text of 1 Corinthians; see esp. Payne, P. B., ‘Fuldensis, Sigla for Variants in Vaticanus and 1 Cor. 14:34–35’, NTS 41 (1995) 240–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Cor 14.34–5’, New Testament Studies 63 (2017) 604–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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49 Zuiderhoek, ‘Political Sociology’, 422–5.

50 BDAG 848 s.v. πολύς 1.β, ‘the majority’. The expression οἱ πλείονες (‘the majority’) implies here, as it does elsewhere in Paul (1 Cor 9.19; 10.5; 15.6; 2 Cor 9.2; Phil 1.14), the existence of a ‘minority’ who were of a different opinion about the treatment of the wrongdoer; so, Windisch, H., Der zweite Korintherbrief (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970) 86–7Google Scholar; Thrall, M., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. i (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994) 174–6Google Scholar.

51 LSJ 1014 s.v. κυρόω 1; BDAG 579 s.v. κυρόω 1: Dio Chrysostom, Or. 59[76].1; SIG 368.25; 695.68–9; OGIS 383.122; I.Eph. vi.2054; P.Amh. 97.14; P.Tebt. 294.16; Horsley, G. H. R., New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, vol. iv (North Ryde: Macquarie University, 1987) 171Google Scholar.

52 The intensive καί in the phrase ἐβάπτισα δὲ καὶ τὸν Στεφανᾶ οἶκον in 1 Cor 1.16 implies that Paul baptised the households of the individuals named in the preceding verse (1 Cor 1.14) as well – Crispus and Gaius. For Chloe as a Christian householder at Corinth, see Theissen, G., The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) 92–3Google Scholar; Meeks, Urban Christians, 59. On the household structure of the Christian community at Corinth in general, see Judge, Social Pattern, 30–9; Theissen, Social Setting, 55–6, 83–7, 89; Klauck, H.-J., Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1981) 39Google Scholar; Meeks, Urban Christians, 29–30, 57–8, 75–8, 134.

53 Phlm 2, Rom 16.3–5 and the deutero-Pauline Col 4.15.

54 Klauck, Hausgemeinde, 21, 40–4; Meeks, Urban Christians, 75; Weissenrieder, A., ‘Architecture: Where Did Pauline Communities Meet?’, Paul and Economics (ed. Blanton, T. R.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017) 125–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 149–51.

55 Theissen, Social Setting, 89; Klauck, Hausgemeinde, 39; Meeks, Urban Christians, 75; Balch, D., ‘Paul, Families, and Households’, Paul in the Greco-Roman World (ed. Sampley, J. P.; Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003) 258–92, at 260Google Scholar. The attempt by Last, R. (The Pauline Church and the Corinthian Ekklēsia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) 5660)Google Scholar to blur the distinction between ἡ κατ᾽ οἶκον ἐκκλησία and ἡ ὅλη ἐκλησία fails to convince: first, because he minimises the evidence that the former was a fixed expression in Paul's usage, whose import was known to his Corinthian readers (1 Cor 16.19); and second, because his interpretation of the latter depends upon the problematic argument that its function in both 1 Cor 14.23 and Rom 16.23 is rhetorical, rather than referential.

56 Meeks, First Urban Christians, 75.

57 Wallace-Hadrill, A., Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) 91117Google Scholar.

58 Judge, Social Pattern, 60; Meeks, Urban Christians, 76; Chow, Patronage and Power, 83–112; Kirner, ‘Apostolat und Patronage (ii)’, 54–62; Schmeller, Hierarchie, 77–8; Lampe, ‘Paul, Patrons’, 488–523.

59 On the ‘benefits’ expected of a patron, see e.g. Cicero, Off. 1.15.47; De or. 3.133; Mur. 70–2; Horace, Ep. 2.1.102–7; Seneca, Ben. 7.22.1, 7.23.3; cf. R. Saller, Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 7–39, 120–34.

60 Schmeller, Hierarchie, 26, 33–6.

61 Schmeller, Hierarchie, 60, 71.

62 SIG³ 985 = LSAM 20; Barton, S. C. and Horsley, G. H. R., ‘A Hellenistic Cult Group and the New Testament Churches’, JAC 24 (1981) 741Google Scholar; Stowers, S. K., ‘A Cult from Philadelphia: Oikos Religion or Cultic Association?’, The Early Church in its Context (ed. Malherbe, A. J.; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 287301Google Scholar.

63 SIG³ 985 = LSAM 20, ll. 12–14.

64 Theissen, Social Setting, 121–43.

65 Martin, Corinthian Body, xv–xviii, 87–136, 179–89, and passim.

66 E.g. Horace, Ep. 1.7.37–8; Juvenal 5.14, 130, 137, 161; 7.45; 10.161.

67 Weiss, J., Der erste Korintherbrief (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910) 106–8Google Scholar; Kirner, ‘Apostolat und Patronage (ii)’, 55.

68 J. H. Kent, Corinth viii, Part 3: The Inscriptions 1926–1950 (Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1966) 23; Engels, D., Roman Corinth: An Alternative Model for the Classical City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) 17Google Scholar. Corinth's provincial charter has not survived, but an idea of its political institutions may be formed from inscriptions and coins, and by comparison with colonial and municipal charters from first-century Roman Spain; see Bitner, Paul's Political Strategy, 52–83.

69 Kloppenborg, J. S., ‘Associations, Christ Groups, and their Place in the Polis’, ZNW 108 (2017) 156CrossRefGoogle Scholar; B. D. Meritt, Corinth, vol. viii, Part 1: Greek Inscriptions 1896–1927 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931) no. 2 (200–150 bce), no. 3 (200–150 bce); IG iv.841 (late third century bce).

70 IG iv².1.676 (40–2 ce): ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμ[ο]ς ὁ Κορινθίων Τίτον Τειμοκράτους υἱὸν Λαμπρίαν ἀρετῆς ἕνεκεν. Other instances are from the second century ce: Kent, Corinth viii.3, no. 226 (reign of Antoninus Pius); no. 267 (ca. 162 ce); no. 306 (ca. 170 ce). I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Fordham University PhD candidate Steven Payne for bringing these inscriptions to my attention.

71 Kent, Corinth viii.3, 17–18; Engels, Roman Corinth, 20–1.

72 Kent, Corinth viii.3, 17.

73 Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, 641.

74 Engels, Roman Corinth, 17.

75 Engels, Roman Corinth, 17, 198 n. 27; similarly, Kent, Corinth viii.3, 23.

76 Spawforth, A. J. S., ‘Roman Corinth: The Formation of a Colonial Elite’, Roman Onomastics in the Greek East: Social and Political Aspects (ed. Rizakis, A. D.; Athens: Research Center for Greek and Roman Antiquity, 1996) 167–82Google Scholar; Millis, B. W., ‘The Local Magistrates and Elite of Roman Corinth’, Corinth in Contrast: Studies in Inequality (ed. Friesen, S. J.; Leiden: Brill, 2014) 3853Google Scholar, esp. 50–3.

77 Kent, Corinth viii.3, 24–6, 67–86, nos. 149–91.

78 West, A. B., Corinth viii, Part 2: Latin Inscriptions 1896–1926 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931) 52Google Scholar, no. 68; Kent, Corinth viii.3, 25.

79 Engels, Roman Corinth, 18. For the involvement of the councillors in nomination in cities of the Greek east, see H. W. Pleket, “Political Culture and Political Practice in the Cities of Asia Minor in the Roman Empire” in Politische Theorie und Praxis im Altertum, ed. W. Schuller (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998) 204–16, at 206 with references.

80 For lifelong membership in the βουλή, see Quass, F., Die Honoratiorenschicht in den Städten des griechischen Ostens: Untersuchungen zur politischen und sozialen Entwicklung in hellenistischer und römischer Zeit (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993) 382–94Google Scholar. On the existence of a property qualification for councillors in the cities of the Greek east, see Jones, The Greek City, 180.

81 On this dynamic, see Pleket, H. W., ‘Sociale stratificatie en sociale mobiliteit in de Romeinse Keizertidj’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 84 (1971) 215251Google Scholar; Quass, Die Honoratiorenschicht, 328–331.

82 West, Corinth viii.2, nos. 86–90; Kent, Corinth viii.3, nos. 158–63; Spawforth, ‘Roman Corinth’, 177–8.

83 West, Corinth viii.2, nos. 86 and 90.

84 West, Corinth viii.2, 75.

85 West, Corinth viii.2, no. 68.

86 As Zuiderhoek (‘Political Sociology’, 419–22) argues it was for the Greek cities of Asia Minor, where the assemblies were involved in negotiating the details of benefactions.

87 Cédric Brélaz, ‘Democracy and Civic Participation in Greek Cities under Roman Imperial Rule: Political Practice and Culture in the Post-Classical Period’, Center for Hellenic Studies Research Bulletin 4 (2016), online at: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:BrelazC.Democracy_and_Civic_Participation.2016.

88 Horn, F. W., ‘Stephanas und sein Haus – die erste christliche Hausgemeinde in der Achaia: Ihre Stellung in der Kommunikation zwischen Paulus und der korinthischen Gemeinde’, Paulus und die antike Welt: Beiträge zur zeit- und religionsgeschichtlichen Erforschung des paulinischen Christentums (ed. Bienert, D. et al. ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008) 8398CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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90 Theissen, Social Setting, 72–3. On the poverty of the majority of the Corinthian Christians, see Friesen, S. J., ‘Poverty in Pauline Studies: Beyond the So-Called New Consensus’, JSNT 26 (2004) 323–61Google Scholar, esp. 348–53.

91 Judge, Social Pattern, 59; Theissen, Social Setting, 70, 72–3; Martin, Corinthian Body, 61.

92 Badiou, A., Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003) 47Google Scholar.

93 Herodotus 3.80.6.

94 Martin, Corinthian Body, 87–103.

95 Martin, Corinthian Body, 92–6.

96 Livy 2.32.7–11; W. Nestle, ‘Die Fabel des Menenius Agrippa’, Klio 21 (1927) 350–60.

97 Martin, Corinthian Body, 38–68.

98 Martin, D. B., Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) 117–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Miller, Corinthian Democracy, 90–114.

100 Welborn, L. L., Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1 Corinthians 1–4 in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition (London: T&T Clark, 2005) 5086Google Scholar, 102–16.

101 Welborn, Paul, the Fool, 90–9.

102 Welborn, ‘That There May Be Equality’, 73–90, esp. 76–81.

103 Theissen, Social Setting, 93; Meeks, Urban Christians, 59.

104 Hurd, J. C., The Origin of 1 Corinthians (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983) 43, 48–9Google Scholar.

105 Hurd, Origin of 1 Corinthians, 78–82.

106 Ostwald, M., Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969) 149–60Google Scholar.

107 J. Ober, ‘The Athenian Revolution of 508/7 bce: Violence, Authority, and the Origins of Democracy’, The Athenian Revolution, 32–52, esp. 39–41.

108 Ath. Pol. 21; Stanton, G. R., ‘The Tribal Reform of Kleisthenes the Alkmeonid’, Chiron 14 (1984) 141Google Scholar.

109 de Vos, C. S., Church and Community Conflicts: The Relationship of the Thessalonian, Corinthian, and Philippian Churches with their Wider Civic Communities (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999) 197203Google Scholar.

110 Cf. Taussig, H., In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation and Early Christian Identity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009) 98, 100, 122–3Google Scholar.

111 Herodotus 5.66.

112 Theissen, Social Setting, 71–2; Welborn, Paul, the Fool, 250–1.

113 Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114 Ps.-Xenophon Ath. Pol. 1–5.

115 Robinson, E. W., Democracy beyond Athens: Popular Government in the Greek Classical Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Aristotle, Pol. 1291b30–42.

117 Zuiderhoek, ‘Political Sociology’, 418; Brélaz, ‘Democracy’, 5 §3.

118 Zuiderhoek, ‘Political Sociology’, 425–31; Brélaz, ‘Democracy’, 5 §3.

119 Zuiderhoek, ‘Political Sociology’, 418–25, 436–40; Brélaz, ‘Democracy’, 3 §§2–6.

120 Nor do other Greek political thinkers under Roman rule. Telling is the absence of the term dēmokratia from Plutarch's Precepts of Statecraft. Even Greek cities avoided the term dēmokratia as a description of their form of government, preferring expressions such as patrios politeia (‘ancestral constitution’). Typical is SEG li.1832, a dedication from Lycia in Asia Minor thanking Claudius for his help in ‘recovering the ancestral laws (πάτριοι νόμοι)’ and in ‘transferring the government (πολιτεία) from the thoughtless multitude (πλῆθος) to the councillors selected from among the best (ἄριστοι)’. Brélaz (‘Democracy’, 4 §2) regards the absence of the term dēmokratia from Greek political thought of the Roman Imperial period as symptomatic: ‘Dēmokratia started to be seen as a potentially subversive word in the Roman Imperial period and, for that reason, Greek cities, as well as Greek political thinkers, culled this term from their vocabulary and restricted its use to very specific contexts, namely references to the past and fictional rhetorical exercises.’

121 Ober, Athenian Revolution, 117.

122 Ibid.

123 Ibid.

124 Ibid.

125 SEG vii.87; Raubitschek, A., ‘Demokratia’, Hesperia 31 (1962) 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126 Ober, Athenian Revolution, 118.

127 Ibid.