Corinthians 1 and 2

" Despite the sway of the romish Empire that was contemporaneous with nascent Christianity, there appears to have been a good deal of ethnic and religious diversity in the ancient world. Were that non true, the Empire would not have had to be built by conquest. Identity politics, in other words, was a feature of everyday experience, such that there were social cleavages in the midst of Roman citizens, at the top of the demographic heap, and those who either determine themselves or were identified as Greeks, Jews, Germans, Persians, barbarians, and so on. Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified, was in the Roman province of Judea, and the occupation was not always a peaceful one.

and so it should come as no surprisal that as a sociological phenomenon Christianity should have spread in the context of a variety of social norms. "Christianity has never been a monolithic movement," says one commentator (Eberts 305). That is reflected in how Acts explains that the apostles themselves divided their mission. In the first part of Acts 11, Peter declares that the mission of the Church extends to both Jews and Gentiles, more specifi foreshadowy to those of Judea (Acts 11.1) and to the Grecians (Acts 11.20), i.e., pagan non-Jews on one collapse and Hellenized/Romanized Jews on the other. Of special importance was that representatives of the Jerusalem church below Barnabas and of the church in Tarsus unde

Thus the relationship of 1 and 2 Corinthians lies in the determination of the causation of the books to establish and maintain a specific understanding of the essence of Christ's life and death with the congregation, as thoroughly as a specific understanding of Christian identity in an environment perceived as hostile to Christian orthodoxy. The identity is meant to be spiritual, uniquely Christian rather than fuzzily Hellenistic or Roman. It is wherefore essential that the spiritual integrity of the cult be not only encouraged but in addition maintained by forces and norms generated within the cult and not outside it. In 2 Cor. Paul suggests that authority outside individual cults may be imposed by the priests and later the ecclesiastical structure.

But Paul's call for spiritual commitment on the part of the faithful, as well as an enforcement mechanism for guiding the faithful in their spirituality, is not a call for following the rules but rather for victorious in the Christian concept of spirituality and making it one's own. Inevitably, the heathenish encounter that ensues will distinguish Christian belief, practice, and son on, that also entails a distinction between the priestly class of Christians and the faithful more generally.

The Twelve of Galilee, under Peter, went to Galilee and beyond, to the village culture brisk there. The Brethren, under James, addressed . . . " Hebrews"--Jews who spoke Aramaic . . . used Hebrew in their synagogues, and tended to isolate themselves from the prevailing Greek society. The Hellenists, led by Stephen and Philip, directed their mission to "Hellenists"--Jews who spoke Greek . . . in the synagogue, and colligate themselves to Hellenistic culture. The last, the Apostles, under Barnabas and Paul, worked with synagogues in what is now Turkey and Greece, ministering in particular to "godfearers"--Greek men and women attracted to Judaism but who were not proselytes (Eberts 305-6).

If the overriding theme of 1 Cor. is that of preservation of communit
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