{"Affiliation":[{"label":"Affiliation","value":"Arts, Faculty of","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool","classmap":"vivo:EducationalProcess","property":"vivo:departmentOrSchool"},"iri":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool","explain":"VIVO-ISF Ontology V1.6 Property; The department or school name within institution; Not intended to be an institution name."},{"label":"Affiliation","value":"Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool","classmap":"vivo:EducationalProcess","property":"vivo:departmentOrSchool"},"iri":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool","explain":"VIVO-ISF Ontology V1.6 Property; The department or school name within institution; Not intended to be an institution name."}],"AggregatedSourceRepository":[{"label":"AggregatedSourceRepository","value":"DSpace","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/dataProvider","classmap":"ore:Aggregation","property":"edm:dataProvider"},"iri":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/dataProvider","explain":"A Europeana Data Model Property; The name or identifier of the organization who contributes data indirectly to an aggregation service (e.g. Europeana)"}],"Campus":[{"label":"Campus","value":"UBCV","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#degreeCampus","classmap":"oc:ThesisDescription","property":"oc:degreeCampus"},"iri":"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#degreeCampus","explain":"UBC Open Collections Metadata Components; Local Field; Identifies the name of the campus from which the graduate completed their degree."}],"Creator":[{"label":"Creator","value":"Wilkinson, Kevin Wayne","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","classmap":"dpla:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:creator"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; An entity primarily responsible for making the resource.; Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organization, or a service."}],"DateAvailable":[{"label":"DateAvailable","value":"2009-07-13T18:26:29Z","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","classmap":"edm:WebResource","property":"dcterms:issued"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource."}],"DateIssued":[{"label":"DateIssued","value":"2000","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","classmap":"oc:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:issued"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource."}],"Degree":[{"label":"Degree","value":"Master of Arts - MA","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#relatedDegree","classmap":"vivo:ThesisDegree","property":"vivo:relatedDegree"},"iri":"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#relatedDegree","explain":"VIVO-ISF Ontology V1.6 Property; The thesis degree; Extended Property specified by UBC, as per https:\/\/wiki.duraspace.org\/display\/VIVO\/Ontology+Editor%27s+Guide"}],"DegreeGrantor":[{"label":"DegreeGrantor","value":"University of British Columbia","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#degreeGrantor","classmap":"oc:ThesisDescription","property":"oc:degreeGrantor"},"iri":"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#degreeGrantor","explain":"UBC Open Collections Metadata Components; Local Field; Indicates the institution where thesis was granted."}],"Description":[{"label":"Description","value":"This thesis contains two movements. In the first chapter, I evaluate the Apostle\r\nPaul's self-presentation in the city of Corinth (as reconstructed through his Corinthian\r\ncorrespondence). Employing the insights of recent scholarship on gender in antiquity, I\r\narrive at the conclusion that Paul's deficiency as a public speaker, his unnamed physical\r\naffliction, and possibly his circumcision combined to feminize his image. All three of\r\nthese characteristics contravene the Greco-Roman canons of masculine appearance and\r\ndeportment. And, although the social situation in Corinth is by no means clear, it appears\r\nthat some were challenging Paul's leadership on the basis of his damaged masculinity. In\r\nchapters 2 and 3, I explore one element of the Apostle's self-presentation that may have\r\nameliorated his problematic image: sexual renunciation. Self-control in the culture of\r\nantiquity was closely associated with the masculine activity par excellence, control over\r\nothers. Thus, by simply practicing this virtue, Paul was making a meaningful statement\r\nboth about his body and about his ability to lead. I go on, however, to identify the places\r\nin 1 Corinthians 7 (Paul's only extended treatment of marriage and celibacy) where he\r\ndiverges from classical models of ascetic practice. I contend that these very alterations to\r\nthe meaning of self-control further rehabilitate his damaged masculinity. This thesis is\r\nintended to be, not only a contribution to the social history of early Christianity, but also\r\npart of a broad movement in contemporary scholarship to destabilize the foundations of\r\n'masculinity' in the West.","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/description","classmap":"dpla:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:description"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/description","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; An account of the resource.; Description may include but is not limited to: an abstract, a table of contents, a graphical representation, or a free-text account of the resource."}],"DigitalResourceOriginalRecord":[{"label":"DigitalResourceOriginalRecord","value":"https:\/\/circle.library.ubc.ca\/rest\/handle\/2429\/10675?expand=metadata","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/aggregatedCHO","classmap":"ore:Aggregation","property":"edm:aggregatedCHO"},"iri":"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/aggregatedCHO","explain":"A Europeana Data Model Property; The identifier of the source object, e.g. the Mona Lisa itself. This could be a full linked open date URI or an internal identifier"}],"Extent":[{"label":"Extent","value":"8887945 bytes","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/extent","classmap":"dpla:SourceResource","property":"dcterms:extent"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/extent","explain":"A Dublin Core Terms Property; The size or duration of the resource."}],"FileFormat":[{"label":"FileFormat","value":"application\/pdf","attrs":{"lang":"en","ns":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/elements\/1.1\/format","classmap":"edm:WebResource","property":"dc:format"},"iri":"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/elements\/1.1\/format","explain":"A Dublin Core Elements Property; The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource.; Examples of dimensions include size and duration. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the list of Internet Media Types [MIME]."}],"FullText":[{"label":"FullText","value":"BUILT: (RE)CONSTRUCTING M A S C U L I N I T Y A N D AUTHORITY IN 1 CORINTHIANS 7 by K E V I N W A Y N E WILKINSON B.A. , The University of British Columbia, 1997 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF M A S T E R OF ARTS in THE F A C U L T Y OF G R A D U A T E STUDIES (Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH C O L U M B I A April 2000 \u00a9 Kevin Wayne Wilkinson, 2000 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of OA'SICA^ MBftg-\u20acKX\u00aeU>1 th\u00a3b ft&U\/VHn )S \u00a3 f V D l 5 \u00a3 The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date A P f t A L . tfb . ZO^O DE-6 (2\/88) 11 Abstract This thesis contains two movements. In the first chapter, I evaluate the Apostle Paul's self-presentation in the city of Corinth (as reconstructed through his Corinthian correspondence). Employing the insights of recent scholarship on gender in antiquity, I arrive at the conclusion that Paul's deficiency as a public speaker, his unnamed physical affliction, and possibly his circumcision combined to feminize his image. A l l three of these characteristics contravene the Greco-Roman canons of masculine appearance and deportment. And, although the social situation in Corinth is by no means clear, it appears that some were challenging Paul's leadership on the basis of his damaged masculinity. In chapters 2 and 3,1 explore one element of the Apostle's self-presentation that may have ameliorated his problematic image: sexual renunciation. Self-control in the culture of antiquity was closely associated with the masculine activity par excellence, control over others. Thus, by simply practicing this virtue, Paul was making a meaningful statement both about his body and about his ability to lead. I go on, however, to identify the places in 1 Corinthians 7 (Paul's only extended treatment of marriage and celibacy) where he diverges from classical models of ascetic practice. I contend that these very alterations to the meaning of self-control further rehabilitate his damaged masculinity. This thesis is intended to be, not only a contribution to the social history of early Christianity, but also part of a broad movement in contemporary scholarship to destabilize the foundations of 'masculinity' in the West. Table of Contents Abstract... : . . . . . . i i List of Abbreviations 'v Acknowledgements v i Introduction 1 Chapter 1 (Re)Constructing Paul's Body: The Corinthian Fragments 6 1.1 Masculinity in the Roman World 6 1.2 Paul and Sophistic Performance 11 1.3 Circumcision and Damaged Masculinity 22 1.4 Paul's \"Thorn in the Flesh' 31 1.5 Conclusion 33 Chapter 2 Contending With Desire 36 2.1 The Agonistic Construction of Self-Control 37 2.1.1 The development of the agonisticidiom 37 2.1.2 The goal of combat: enslavement, not extirpation 43 2.1.3 The body as locus of self-control 47 2.2 Paul's Anti-askesis 52 2.2.1 1 Corinthians 7.1-2 52 2.2.2 1 Corinthians 7.5 54 2.2.3 1 Corinthians 7.7 57 2.2.4 1 Corinthians 7.8-9 60 2.2.5 1 Corinthians 7.36-38 64 2.2.6 1 Corinthians 9.25-27 65 2.2.7 1 Thessalonians 4.3-5 66 2.2.8 Galatians 5.16-25 ...68 2.3 Conclusion 71 Chapter 3 Man of the House 78 3.1 The Power to Govern 78 3.1.1 The household virtue 78 3.1.2 The civic virtue 82 3.1.3 Cosmic city and household of the gods 86 3.1.3.1 Stoics 86 3.1.3.2 Cynics 91 3.1.3.3 Epictetus 95 3.2 Paul: Man of the House 100 3.2.1 1 Corinthians 7.32-35 103 3.2.2 1 Corinthians 7.32-35 and Cosmopolitanism I l l 3.3 Conclusion 115 Conclusion 118 Nomenclature 119 Bibliography 120 1.0 Appendix A 133 V List of Abbreviations A B Anchor Bible ABR A ustralian Biblical Review A G D A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, second edition, trans, and ed. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, revised and augmented by Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1979) AJP American Journal of Papyrology CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies HNTC Harper's New Testament Commentaries HTR Harvard Theological Review HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual ICC International Critical Commentaries JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JRS Journal of Roman Studies JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JSPs Journal for the Study of the Psuedepigrapha L C C Library of Christian Classics L C L Loeb Classical Library LSJ A Greek-English Lexicon, compiled by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, revised and augmented by Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) MJ Modern Judaism NICNT New International Commentary on the New Testament NIGTC New International Greek Text Commentary NIV New International Version N R S V New Revised Standard Version NT Novum Testamentum NTS New Testament Studies OTP Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Double Day, 1985) SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series SPS Sacra Pagina Series TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel, translated and edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964) YCS Yale Classical Studies vi Acknowledgements This project was conceived in enthusiasm, but the gestation period has been long and arduous, and the birthing process downright painful. The thesis surely would have remained malformed if not for the encouragement and advice of several people. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Dietmar Neufeld and Dr. Richard Menkis, to whom the present work is dedicated. They encouraged me to develop my acumen long before this thesis was a glimmer in my eye. The other members of my committee, Dr. Daphna Arbel and Dr. Rob Cousland, offered valuable criticism and generous support. I would also like to thank all those who read parts or all of this manuscript: Chris Beall, Dr. Daniel Boyarin of U . C. Berkeley, Dr. Sander L. Gilman of The University of Chicago, Brian Hansen, Dr. Dale B. Martin of Yale University, and Rod Wilkinson. And I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Stanley K. Stowers of Brown University for providing me access to an unpublished essay. Finally, my wife, Warrena, has endured the kind of ascetic behavior not uncommon in graduate students, and has given me in return a bounty of support and encouragement. Without her this thesis would not have been possible. 1 Introduction 1 Corinthians 7 is Paul's only extended treatment of marriage and celibacy -indeed it is the only such text in the New Testament - and the proliferation of secondary literature purporting to expound it suggests that it may currently be the sexiest topic in Pauline studies. A summary of this scholarship here would be superfluous, since Wi l l Deming has carried out this task very thoroughly in his recent monograph, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy} but I shall briefly identify the characteristics of the secondary literature that I find most problematic. The most troubling tendency of twentieth-century exegetes of this passage is the palpable drive to dissociate Paul from anti-marriage or broadly ascetic views. This is characteristic of no one particular class of scholar. Naive and sophisticated, male and female, Protestant and Catholic, all are implicated in a grand march to reclaim Paul for our modern sensibilities. Remaking Paul in one's own image is nothing new, of course. He has suffered this at intervals since the deutero-Pauline epistles began to circulate mere 1 Wi l l Deming, Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5.49. 2 Dale Martin (The Corinthian Body [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995], 209) lodges a similar complaint, but he identifies the advocates of this view as being primarily Protestant, male, and married. This is true, but then this class of scholar dominates New Testament Studies in general. I think that those who want to rehabilitate Paul's \"attitude toward sexuality\" represent a cross-section of the discipline. See, for example, the Catholic Michael L. Barre, \"To Marry or to Burn: HvpoDadai in 1 Cor 7:9,\" CBQ 36 (1974): 193-202; and the Catholic and female Carolyn Osiek RSCJ, \"First Corinthians 7 and Family Questions,\" The Bible Today 35, no. 5 (1997): 275-279. See also W. E. Phipps, \"Is Paul's Attitude towards Sexual Relations Contained in 1 Cor. 7.1?\" NTS2% (1982): 125-31; Jeremy Moiser, \" A Reassessment of Paul's View of Marriage with Reference to 1 Cor. 7,\" JSNT19 (1983): 103-22; G. J. Laughery, \"Paul: 2 decades after his death. He has been, at turns, ascetic and defender of marriage, orthodox and gnostic, pro-slavery and anti-slavery, Jewish and anti-Jewish, misogynist and feminist. To be sure, some of these hinge on Paul's own elusiveness, and, in some sense, it is the fate of every author to be misread. But the pro-marriage, anti-ascetic readings of 1 Cor. 7 have become so implausible, the ruses to make Paul say what we want so elaborate, that it is surely time to readjust our sights.3 One of the strategies employed by contemporary scholars to explain away \"ascetic\" elements of 1 Cor. 7 is to claim that they are governed by eschatological expectation. This is the second characteristic of contemporary scholarship on this passage that I find problematic. If the world is about to end, so the logic goes, there will be a deemphasis on marriage and procreation. Paul's ostensible ascetic tendencies in 1 Cor. 7, therefore, represent nothing more than \"an interim ethic\" 4 It is true, of course, that a belief in the imminent end of the world left its mark on early Christian ethics, but this insight is not a panacea for every conundrum of contemporary Pauline scholarship. So often, eschatological expectation is invoked as a final answer to issues that are surely much more complex. I am convinced that the ascetic strain in earliest Christianity is one Anti-Marriage? Anti-Sex? Ascetic? A Dialogue with 1 Corinthians 7:1-40,\" The Evangelical Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1997): 109-128. 3 Some recent scholars have produced work that takes seriously Paul's asceticism. See, for example, Vincent L. Wimbush, The Worldly Ascetic: Response to the World and Self-understanding According to 1 Corinthians 7 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987); Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, & Gentiles (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994); Martin, Corinthian Body; Dale B. Martin, \"Paul Without Passion: On Paul's rejection of desire in sex and marriage,\" Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as social reality and metaphor, ed. Halvor Moxnes (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). 4 Deming, Paul on Marriage, 215. See also Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 57. of these issues that have been vastly oversimplified. What we need, i f we intend to do any justice to the complexity of human actions, is to build up layers of meaning, meticulously pieced together from ancient ascetic discourses. We need to lay these overtop of, and wrap them around, existing end-time readings. In other words, we need to put some flesh on our interpretations of 1 Cor. 7. The present project represents a modest venture in this direction: to find meaning outside of the eschaton. The focus of my inquiry is Paul's body, and more specifically Paul's body-as-text. If a text, in its broadest sense, is simply a meaningful sequence of signifiers, then the human body certainly qualifies. One's appearance and deportment are interpreted by observers according to the grammar of a \"body language\" that is specific to each culture. At the beginning of the twenty-first century in North America, one can make a \"statement\" by extending a middle finger, body piercing and tattooing, weight training, and any number of other acts on or with the body. As with any text, the language of one's body is open to interpretation, but each signifier possesses a conventional sense that allows the entire communicative act to be meaningful. The same holds true for the inhabitants of Greco-Roman antiquity, who had, of course, their own vernacular body language. The first chapter of this thesis begins with an outline of the grammar of a single, but highly significant, referent of one's body-talk in antiquity: gender. This provides a prelude to my reading of Paul's body (as it can be reconstructed from the Corinthian correspondence) according to the logic of classical gender codes. I consider three elements of the Apostle's appearance and deportment: his oratorical deficiencies, 4 his circumcision, and his unnamed physical affliction. I conclude that these draw Paul into a semiotics of feminization.5 Chapter one sets the stage for my treatment of Paul's enkrateia (self-control)6 Continuing to read the body as a text, I explore in chapters two and three some of the conventional meanings of this physical act in antiquity. For philosophers and moralists from Classical Greece to the Roman Period, enkrateia was the masculine virtue par excellence. Chapter two treats the role of agonistic imagery in constructing enkrateia as a masculine (or masculinizing) activity. And chapter three treats the isomorphic relations between self-control and the male realm of domestic and political authority. These 5 On reading the body in antiquity, see Maud Gleason, \"The Semiotics of Gender: Physiognomy and Self-Fashioning in the Second Century C.E.\", in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M . Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 389-415, passim; idem, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), passim; John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 66-7. 6 For this and other Greek terms that appear in Latin script, see below, p. 119. 7 By using these sources I am not assuming that Paul was exposed to them in any significant way. It is possible, of course, that Paul did receive a standard (i.e., for the elite) Greco-Roman education (see below, chapter one), but this is not necessary for these sources to be useful in our analysis of the Pauline epistles. First of all, I contend that the meaning of Paul's body-text is not coterminous with his own intentions (see below, note 7). In other words, meaning depends at least as much on the expectations and assumptions of the reader\/audience, making any conventional construction of self-control in antiquity potentially constitutive of the meaning of Paul's self-control. Secondly, philosophy in antiquity was not conducted in an ivory tower; it was a public activity, and philosophers were public figures. The ideas discussed in these circles, therefore, in outline i f not in their particulars, were available for popular consumption. One did not need the very best education to be exposed to some of the debates that occupied more speculative minds. Thirdly, in a very real sense, Pauline Christianity had more in common with philosophical schools than it did with traditional forms of religious practice. (See Stanley K. Stowers, \"Does Pauline Christianity Resemble a Hellenistic Philosophy?\" Paul Beyond the Judaism\/Hellenism Dualism, ed. Troels Engberg-Pederson [forthcoming].) Because his Christian communities were structured in similar ways to philosophical groups, Paul faced some of the same issues and problems. This insight will 5 traditional associations contribute to the conventional meaning of enkrateia, which means that they must be taken into account when considering Paul's practice of this virtue.8 Whether Paul is employing a conscious strategy of masculinization or not, his self-control serves to offset the image of effeminacy established in the first chapter. It is my contention, then, that part of the meaning of Paul's self-control is to be found in the conventions of Greco-Roman antiquity. But part of its meaning is also to be found in the idiosyncrasies of Paul's own encratic discourse. Does Paul endorse the conventional elements that made enkrateia a masculine virtue, or does he manipulate or even contradict them? And, i f Paul is offering a different construction of enkrateia from most classical models, what effect does this have on the masculinization that is produced in a general way by his practice of self-control? These questions are explored in the second and concluding sections of chapters two and three. I offer exegeses of passages (sticking mainly to 1 Corinthians 7) that explicitly or implicitly treat sexual self-control. After piecing together a peculiarly Pauline encratic discourse, I suggest that his manipulation of the conventional meaning(s) of this virtue actually serves to further combat his problematic body image and ensconce him in a position of authority.9 be especially useful in chapter three when I consider social organization and authority in the Cynic and Stoic cosmopolis and in Paul's universal community of faith. 8 This assumes a perspective on 'meaning' that does not equate it with 'intention.' A useful analogy for understanding my approach is the division of a speech-act into locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary forces. (The classic treatment of these terms is contained in J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961].) The fact of Paul's celibacy (the locution) is a given, and the actual effect it had on his audience at Corinth (the perlocution) is irrecoverable. But the illocution - the act's conventional sense - can be built up through analysis of the meaning of sexual continence in antiquity. This orientation allows me to bracket the empirical Paul's motivations. 9 The conflation of authority and masculinity in antiquity ensures that issues of power are also implicitly about gender and vice versa. 6 I (Re)Constructing Paul's Body: The Corinthian Fragments Gender has become an important category for thinking about the social world of antiquity. This is true because it is now widely recognized that \"masculine\" and \"feminine\" are not simply descriptive terms applied to certain \"natural\" traits, but are rather prescriptive terms that smuggle in a whole series of social and cultural corollaries. As such, gender is not merely about sorting out the women from the men (or identifying anomalous figures like the \"girly\" man and the \"butch\"); it is about relations of social dominance. A consideration of Paul's gender, therefore, is neither frivolous nor deliberately provocative. It provides one way of thinking about such canonical topics as status and authority within the early Christian communities. But, before we turn our attention to the gendered body of Paul, a few statements about masculinity in antiquity are in order. 1.1 Masculinity in the Roman World Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the habitus is a useful one for exploring the gender codes of Roman antiquity.1 I shall not discuss it here in great detail, but a brief outline will help to structure the inquiry. Habitus is a Latin word, meaning \"condition, expression, demeanor, character,\" from which our English words habit, habituate, and the like are derived. But it assumes a central position in Bourdieu's theory of socialization as a designation for the coherence of unconscious activity - those things we do without deliberation, the things that are \"natural\" or \"second nature\". According to Bourdieu, these \"natural dispositions\" (the habitus) are not inherent traits (if by that we mean \"biologically encoded\"), rather they are acquired practices. As such, individual praxis (like all things learned) is a fundamentally social phenomenon. It is the result of a society's cumulative history, and the reproduction of a society's most deeply held beliefs. Like a child's first language, habitus is learned more frequently through experience and unconscious mimesis than through explicit instruction and conscious reflection. What makes the dispositions \"natural\" is that we are unconscious of their very acquisition. But the great advance of Bourdieu's theory over most rival theories of socialization is his emphasis on the body's place in this process. He treats body rather than mind as the locus of a society's shared values. Acquisition of the habitus comes through learning how to control and manipulate the body according to the conventions of the group - something Bourdieu calls \"bodily hexis\". Seemingly innocuous commands given to a child - e.g., \"stand up straight,\" \"look at me when I'm talking to you\" - encode the society's values in the habitual behavior of its constituent members. \" A whole cosmology\" is instilled, says Bourdieu, through these insignificant injunctions.3 And it all takes place \"below the level of consciousness, expression and the reflexive distance which these presuppose.\"4 1 See, e.g., Gleason, Making Men. 2 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 54, 56. 3 Ibid., 69. 4 Ibid., 73. Such a theory is perfectly suited to a discussion of masculinity in antiquity. The practices that defined a Roman man as either masculine or effeminate were encoded in the habitus that was learned (below the level of consciousness) from virtually the time of birth. Even the birthing process itself was a chance to reaffirm Roman values through an evaluation of the offspring's body. A child who survived the delivery was examined by the midwife for signs of deformity and imperfection. If she found any cause for dissatisfaction with the baby, it was her prerogative to see to it that the child did not survive.5 The criteria to be used by midwives were bodily signs such as the sound of the infant's cry, size and shape, complexion, and physical intactness. Furthermore, the baby might be accepted or rejected by the father on the basis of sex as well as physical vigor. While unaware of what was taking place, the child was nevertheless being initiated into a process of acquiring the values of the social group. The acquisition of the habitus began in earnest, however, with a regimen of bandaging, bathing, massaging, stretching, and shaping, all finely orchestrated to produce a \"normal\" figure.6 The infant's body was wrapped entirely in bandages. Boys were wrapped with even pressure around the thorax while girls were wrapped tightly around the chest and loosely around the loins to produce respectively masculine and feminine body types (2.15). When it came to bathing, the nurse took care not to bathe the infant too frequently, for this produces a child who is weak in both body and mind (2.30). After being softened in the bath, the child should be held upside down \"in order that the vertebrae may be separated, the spine given the right curves, and the sinews be untangled, 5 Soranus Gynecology 2.10. Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, trans. Felicia Pheasant (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 51. so to speak\" (2.32). The nurse should then massage and mold the baby's features. The malleable skull of the young child should be brought \"into proper proportions, so that it may become neither too lengthy nor pointed\" (2.33). Flat noses are to be raised, aquiline noses pressed down (2.34). And a short foreskin should be stretched and fastened, \"for i f gradually stretched and continuously drawn forward it easily stretches and assumes its normal length, covers the glans and becomes accustomed to keep the natural good shape\" (2.34). Soranus seems to detect no contradiction in his call to produce the \"natural\" body, as when he advises the nurse to \"model every part [of the child's body] so that imperceptibly that which is as yet not fully formed is shaped into its natural characteristics\" (2.32). But the invasive production of these \"natural characteristics\" is, of course, a reproduction of the society's most deeply held beliefs about normal masculine and feminine traits (and hence about normal masculine and feminine social roles).7 Physical manipulation of the body, such as I have just described, is more immediate than the unconscious mimesis that characterizes Bourdieu's notion of bodily hexis, but it operates according to a similar logic. Shared ideas about the \"natural\" appearance of both male and female bodies are impressed (quite literally) upon young children. With the corporeal impression comes a mental one in which socially agreed upon notions of the \"beautiful\" are unconsciously conflated with the \"normal\" and ultimately the \"natural\". These dispositions are then reproduced again and again in social 6 Sor. Gyn. 2.12-16, 30-35; English translations of this treatise are from Soranus' Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1956). See Rouselle, Porneia, 52-54. 7 See Bourdieu, Logic, 69. 10 interaction and finally impressed upon the bodies of the next generation, thereby ensuring the durability of the habitus. A more conventional application of Bourdieu's theory, and the one explored by o Maud Gleason, is to be found in what Gleason calls the \"semiotics of gender\". The \"rules\" of masculine deportment - i.e., bodily hexis - comprised a sort of language that was learned \"below the level of consciousness\" by young Roman boys. It was primarily a negative code that required men, among other things, not to waggle their hips while walking, not to depilate their bodies, not to coif their hair with too much flair, and not to scratch their heads with one finger. As Gleason notes, the boundary drawn is often ostensibly one between men and women, but it is intended to separate the effeminates from the virile men.9 Polemo provides an excellent example of the ostensible division of characteristics into male and female, as well as an example of the essentially negative quality of masculine deportment: Now I will relate the signs of male and female physique and their physiognomical significance. You will note which prevails over the other (in any single individual) and use the result to guide your judgment. The female has, compared to the male, a small head and a small mouth, softer hair that is dark colored, a narrower face, bright glittering eyes, a narrow neck, a weakly sloping chest, feeble ribs, larger, fleshier hips, narrower thighs and calves, knock-knees, dainty fingertips and toes, the rest of the body moist and flabby, with soft limbs and slackened joints, thin sinews, weak voice, a hesitant gait with frequent short steps, and limp limbs that glide slowly along. But the male is in every way opposite to this description, and it is possible to find masculine qualities also in women.10 Although arbitrary, these rules were tacitly accepted as naturally occurring norms of appearance and deportment. They show up in physiognomic literature, of course, but Gleason, \"Semiotics of Gender;\" idem, Making Men. 9 Gleason, Making Men, 80. 1 0 Translated by Gleason, Making Men, 60 (emphasis hers). Cf. Pseudo-Aristotle Physiognomonica 5, 808B. 11 also in speeches and rhetorical handbooks, satirical epigrams, histories, in almost every form of cultural production that has come down to us, and always bearing the weight of the obvious. Fluency in this \"language\" included not only the largely unconscious performance of masculine traits, but also the ability to detect fissures in the performances of others. It is well known that the ancient Mediterranean world was characterized by intense rivalry among public males. One of the most important skills to master in this context was the ability to manipulate the code of gender performance to one's own advantage and to the disadvantage of one's rivals. Oratory in particular was a privileged site for the performance of masculinity (not to mention rival charges of effeminacy), and it is to this realm that I shall now direct my attention. 1.2 Paul and Sophistic Performance The performative nature of masculinity, which remained largely implicit and \"below the level of consciousness\" in day-to-day social relations, became explicit in the realm of public declamation. Here the crafting of a speech and the crafting of a masculine identity, forged in the intensity of audience scrutiny, were melded into a single but complex performative act. Maud Gleason has suggested that the \"semiotics of gender\" formed a parallel discourse to the formal oration. While words - the skill of expression, the subtlety of argumentation, etc. - were important, equally important in the entire communicative act were such considerations as the pitch and tone of one's voice, the refinement of one's appearance, the tempo of one's movements, and myriad other 12 signs. These are, of course, precisely the same signifiers of gender that were acquired through the habitus, but raised to a higher level of conscious reflection. The hegemonic paradigm of masculine deportment was the one considered above and championed by orators-cw\/w-physiognomists like Polemo, who was perhaps more zealous than most in both guarding his own masculine persona and detecting fissures in the performances of his rivals. The rivalry between Polemo and Favorinus, the brilliant eunuch-rhetor from Gaul, forms the backdrop for Gleason's consideration of constructed masculinities in the Second Sophistic. But the cultural logic of \"making men\" (and unmaking them too) infuses oratory going back to Cicero's Rome and beyond him to Demosthenes, Aeschines, and their predecessors in the Athenian tradition.11 It was always necessary to produce and sustain a masculine identity in each performance, for the threat of gender slippage was ever present.12 Paul's place in this sophistic milieu is a matter of debate. Bruce Winter has recently suggested that Paul was probably highly trained in rhetoric, and yet ineffective in public declamation. The ground for this proposal is Paul's claim, in 2 Cor. 11.6, that he is \\h6)-n)<; rep \\6y
'Um'\u00abfie<^v^y~]mmic the classicpostures of Plato, Xenophon, and others. But this cannot be the entire story unless we suppose that the Roman period is wholly derivative. And this is patently untrue. A more prudent, i f still only partial, explanation for the appearance of the Greek agonistic idiom in Roman guise is to be found in those activities that replaced combat as the definitive occupation of important men. Increasingly, under Roman rale, rhetorical training replaced military exercise and success in declamation superseded glory won in 1 6 The word agon itself can mean not only \"struggle\" or \"competition\" but also \"assembly\" and \"lawsuit\". 1 7 Cf. the 'observation' made by Plato's Socrates: \"the mob of motley appetites and pleasures and pains one would find chiefly in children and women and slaves and in the base rabble of those who are freemen in name.\" (PI. R. 4.431C) 1 8 E.g. X . Dec. 9.19. 42 battle. More importantly for our purposes, this shift in cultural perspee-tive was accompanied b}' an attendant shift in perceptions of the masculine ideal from the warrior to the temperate public man. At least this is the position argued by Halvor Moxnes in a recent article.19 He suggests that when agonistic competition became obsolete, first-century figures like Dio and Plutarch turned away from this model and toward other modes of being masculine. This is a plausible (if unoriginal) reconstruction, but it suffers, in my opinion, from a lack of insight into the emerging masculine ideal of the Roman period. The point is precisely not that the agonistic idiom disappeared. Rather it was suppressed and then reemerged in modified form - a kind of cultural sublimation. It reemerged as the spirit of competition in public rhetorical contests, whether forensic or purely-declamatory. Orators attacked their opponents and defended themselves with gesture, voice, and wit as their only weapons. Observe, for example, the explicit comparison made by Quintilian between oratory and war: \"let the youth whom we are ttaimng devote himself, as far as in M fact that the battles of the forum that await him are not few, let him strive for victor}' in the schools and learn how to strike the vitals of his foe and protect his own.\" To be sure the sort of military example that the Athenians found so pertinent to their own experience became 4ess so in the Roman period, but it still retained a modicum of relevance as the paradigmatic image-of an agonistic idiom that continued to inform the normative definition of masculinity. Perhaps, then, the use of agonistic imagery to describe self-s Halvor Moxnes, \"Conventional Values in the Hellenistic World: Masculinity,\" Conventional Values of the Hellenistic Greeks, ed. Per Bilde, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Lise Hannestad, and Jan Zahle (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1997), 263-84. 2 0 Ibid., 266-70. 2 1 Quint. Inst. 5.12.22. Trans. H. E. Butler, volume 2, L C L (London: William HeinemannLtd., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966). 43 control in the first century and beyond (during the so-called Second Sophistic) is not as surprising as it first appears. At any rate the idiom continued to form that vital link 99 between the virtue known as self-control and constructions of the masculine ideal. 2.1,2 The goal of combat: enslavement, not extirpation Perhaps it i sa needless thing to say at the close of this bloody century, but I shall say it nonetheless: warfare during the classical period was not nearly as destructive as modem warfare has been. This owes much, of course, to me development of military technology, especially weapons of mass destruction; but it also owes something to a transformation of military objectives. The goal of combat in classical Greece was not usually to destroy as many enemy soldiers as possible. Rather, success was achieved when the- opposing army turned baGk. To be sure, battles often resulted in huge numbers of casualties (although not by our standards), but more frequently slavery was visited upon the vanquished. In some of the passages considered above it is already apparent that the agon between reason and passion is a battle for supremacy rather than a fight to the death. Consider, for example, Xenophon's image of the aggressive passions: \"fight for our freedom against ^ This is not to say, however, that there are no differences between the earlier Greek and later Greco-Roman models. Nicole Loraux has argued that the paradigmatic death for a hoplite in Greek epic is through the thrust of a weapon (The Experiences of Tires ias: The Feminine and the Greek Man, trans. Paula Wissing [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995], 98). But femininity is introduced into the masculine body precisely at this point of penetration that brings a glorious death. Loraux-suggests that this indicates some appreciation for the role of the feminine in masculine identity. For Romans, however, wounds won in battle are glorious only when one can later reveal a scar - a testament to bravery but also evidence of the true entirety of the male body (i.e. not the gaping wound, 44 these tyrants [gluttony, lechery, drink,.and ambition]-as persistently- as i f they -were armed men trying to enslave us.\"23 The passions are tyrants and armed men.2 4 A battle must ensue, but they aim only to enslave reason, not to extinguish it. The converse is also true. The bodily urges one feels for food, drink, or-sex cannot be-eradicated-entirely.25 Rather the goal of agonistic self-control is merely to masterthem, to decide when they should be indulged and when they should not. In other words, it is desirable to enslave one's passions, undesirable (and impossible) to slaughter them. This enslavement metaphor, which is frequently coupled with agonistic imagery, continues to hold currency in the Roman period. Cicero, for example, provides this picture: They say that the -fountain-head of all -disorders is intemperance (intemperantiam), which is a revolt from all guidance of the mind and right reason, so completely alien from the control of reason that the cravings of the soul cannot be guided or curbed. Therefore just as temperance allays thecravings (appetitionesf and causes them to -obey right reason, and maintains the well-considered judgments of the mind, so -intemperance its enemy -kindles, confounds and agitates the whole condition of the soul, with the result that from it come distress and fear 97 and all other disorders For Cicero, as for Xenophon and others, the goal is to avoid the shackles of slavery by -establishing the inverse relation - mastery over pleasure. In fact, once controlled, pleasure- can even become an ally. Seneca-makes just this point,and in doing so extends but the restoration of the body's integrity is valorized). See Ibid., 88-90; Walters, \"Invading\". 2 3 X . Oec. 1.22-3. 2 4 For other examples of the passions, or more specifically Eros, as a tyrant, see, e.g., PI. R. 9.573B, 9.573D; Euripides Hippolytus 538. 2 5 Bruce S. Thonn:on,-Ems: X\/je Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, 1997), 13; see also Foucault, Use of Pleasure, 69 2 6 Foucault, Use of Pleasure, 53-62. 45 the agonistic metaphor: \"if we shall count that the gratifications of the body [corporis grata], unessential as they are, have a place like to that of the auxiliaries and light-armed troops in camp - i f we let them serve, not command - thus and thus only will these things be profitable to the mind.\" 2 8 Nevertheless, although Cicero and Seneca continue to employ images of warfare and enslavement, they, do not exhibit the same sense -of ineluctability that appears in Classical Greek.constructions of desire, Seneca calls the \"gratifications of the body\" ^ inessential, and -Cicero declares that desire is entirely voluntary. In fact, Stoics from Zeno to Aurelius maintained that there -was something unnatural, -or at least -unnecessary, about -desire. Perhaps it could even be extirpated altogether. Epictetus, for example, says: \"Have you not heard over.and over again that you ought to eradicate desire utterly apai opov Xeyco, ov% )'va $ph%ov upJiv emjSaXu) aXXa npog ro evoxqpbov Kai eunapehpov rep Kupiq) ampicrnaoroig. (\"I want you to be free from anxiety. The unmarried man cares for the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; the married man cares for the things of the world, how to please his wife, and he is divided. Likewise, the unmarried woman and the virgin care for the affairs of the Lord, so that she might be holy in both body and spirit; the married woman cares for the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say 8 5 David L. Balch, \"1 Cor 7:32-35 and Stoic Debates about Marriage, Anxiety, and Distraction,\" JBL 102\/3 (1983): 435-6. 8 6 E.g. Robertson and Plummer, First Epistle, 158; James Moffatt, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1938), 95; Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians, SPS, Volume 7 (Collegeville, M N : The Liturgical Press, 1999), 291. 104 this for your own advantage, not to place restrictions on you but to promote good order and devotion to the Lord without hindrance.\") These four verses have figured prominently in attempts to elucidate possible connections between 1 Cor. 7 and Cynic-Stoic marriage debates. One of the first to broach this subject in the English-speaking world was David Balch in his influential 1983 article in the Journal of Biblical Literature^1 Following the German scholar, Johannes Weiss, Balch understands amepurnao-TOig to be a technical word found in the marriage debates of late Stoicism. Its appearance in 1 Cor. 7.35, therefore, and precisely in the context of a discussion of marriage, signals to Balch that Paul is drawing on a traditional Stoic topos. According to Stobaeus, the ancient anthologist who excerpted some of the participants in this debate, there were three stances on marriage, all aimed to avoid distraction: it is good (i.e. the wife can keep house allowing her husband to pursue the contemplative life), it is bad (i.e. distracting in itself), and it is good for some and bad for others.89 Balch, in employing this schema to locate Paul's position relative to several Stoic philosophers, arrives at this conclusion: In partial summary, Antipater, Epictetus, Hierocles and Paul agree that one should be \"undistracted\" from one's primary duty or call. Musonius, frag. 13A, Epictetus, Dis. 3.22, and Hierocles, in Stobaeus 4.22.22, agree (against Antipater) that marriage is helpful for some but not advantageous (would be distracting) for others. Like these Roman Stoics, when Paul advises the Corinthians about marriage, he writes for their \"advantage\" [av\\i4>opov, 1 Cor 7:35). Like these three Roman Stoics, in 1 Cor 7:32-35 Paul chooses Stobaeus's third option; he advises the Corinthians that marriage is helpful for some, but not advantageous for others.90 8 7 David L. Balch, \"1 Cor 7:32-35 and Stoic Debates about Marriage, Anxiety, and Distract ion,\" \/^ 102\/3 (1983)429-39. 8 8 Ibid, 431. 89 As Deming notes (Paul on Marriage, 7), Stobaeus has four other categories, but the ones mentioned by Balch get at the heart of the debate. 9 0 Balch, \"Stoic Debates\", 434, Vincent Wimbush, who follows Balch closely, oddly suggests that Epictetus belongs in the second category (Worldly Ascetic, 63). But I 105 To this point I am in complete agreement. But Balch goes on to adopt C. K. Barrett's proposal that ttepiu,vaco (\"to be anxious\") as used by Paul in verses 32-34 is \"uniformly negative\". In other words, anxiety for the things of the Lord is not compared favorably with anxiety for the things of the world; both are undesirable.91 If this is indeed the sense, then Paul is here reiterating his claim (first made in verses 7-9) that some are better off being married and others are better off being single. As Balch writes: '\"since every person has his own special gift from God' (1 Cor 7:7), Paul observes that celibacy makes some men and women anxious and distracted while marriage makes others anxious and distracted.\"92 The reading proposed by Barrett and Balch is problematic on at least two fronts. First of ail, there is the position of these verses in the chapter. If Paul were arguing here against ascetic tendencies, these verses would logically appear alongside the arguments contained in 1-9, where this issue is addressed. As it is, they occur in the middle of a long stretch of verses in which Paul argues that, while marriage is permissible, singleness is better. The second difficulty with Balch's reading is this: although Paul adds a gloss explaining how the married person is distracted from service to God, he does not do the same for the single person. And, i f anything, it is the latter scenario that needs to be explained. These deficiencies far outweigh the solitary support offered by Balch for his reading: an undocumented claim that (jbepipvau) is always negative for the Stoa. For, even demonstrated in my discussion of Epictetus that he clearly assumes marriage to be a good thing for most of the population while singleness is for a select few. 9 1 Barrett, First Epistle, 178-82 9 2 Balch, \"Stoic Debates,\" 435. 106 i f this claim is true, he is still begging the question, surely, by assuming that Paul's use of the word is typically Stoic. 9 3 Vincent Wimbush has produced a very different reading of these verses. Unlike Balch and Barrett, who suggest that Paul is countering ascetic tendencies in Corinth, Wimbush proposes that Paul is encouraging a kind of \"ascetic\" detachment for married people.94 Whatever the external conditions of one's life, whether one is married or single, undistracted devotion to \"the things of God\" should be sought. These verses are an elaboration, therefore, of Paul's advice in 29-31, and particularly his exhortation to those who have wives to live as though not having wives. Living as though not having a wife means cultivating spiritual withdrawal (innerworldly asceticism), and it does not depend upon one's external relation to the world. Wimbush concludes his reinterpretation of these verses by claiming that the expression fiepifivgL ra rod Kvpiov, which is the inner attitude that both married and unmarried should strive for, is equivalent to Stoic a-nadeia95 \"It is assumed by Paul that the supreme commitment must be to the Lord (v. 35). So what is required is inner detachment (apatheia), not physical withdrawal.... What Paul recommends is a relativizing of all things in the world.\" 9 6 The primary difficulty with this interpretation has been clearly identified by Wil l Deming: [I]t depends on equating the notion of living a life free from distraction, which Paul invokes in 7.32-5 and which some Stoics invoke in their discussions of marriage, with a Stoic ideal of apatheia. Yet these are not analogous concepts. The former has to do with the proper management of one's outward routine, the result of which is a measure of freedom from civic, social, and economic obligations, and access to leisure time. The 9 3 Cf. Wimbush, Worldly Ascetic, 51-2, 64; Yarbrough, Gentiles, 104. 9 4 Wimbush, Worldly Ascetic, 49-54. 9 5 Ibid. 56-71. 9 6 Ibid., 70. 107 latter, by contrast, concerns release from mental and emotional attachment to things and people, resulting in an inner freedom of the soul. For this reason, too, the notion of apatheia plays no part in the Stoics' discussion of marriage.97 The attempts made by Balch and Wimbush to identify Stoic themes in verses 32-35 are hardly satisfactory. Much more compelling is Deming's careful analysis of these verses in the context of Stoic and Cynic marriage debates. His reading of 1 Cor. 7 is set up by a comprehensive summary of Cynic, Stoic, and hybrid positions on marriage.98 For my present purposes, the most important thing about Deming's summary is his recognition of the role played in these debates by cosmopolitan theory.99 He correctly views the contrasting perspectives on the value of marriage as being representative of a larger disagreement over the relationship between the cosmopolis and contemporary social-political norms. Stoics believed that marriage (which entails procreation as well as domestic, economic, and political responsibilities) was consistent with the duties of a world-citizen; Cynics believed that they were in conflict. In his reading of 1 Cor. 7.32-35, however, Deming does not develop the comparison between Paul's logic and Stoic-Cynic cosmopolitanism.100 He concentrates instead, and with justification, on the issue of distraction. He notes that Paul's position in these verses is identical to the Cynic claim that marriage is distracting. They represent, therefore, a defense of the unmarried life. This is a welcome corrective to the problematic readings of Balch and Wimbush, but it leaves so much unexplored. In what follows I shall extend his comparison of Paul and the Cynics to include the Cynic-influenced cosmopolitanism of Epictetus. Deming, Paul on Marriage, 10. 9 8 Ibid., 50-107. 9 9 Ibid., 54-61. 108 Any interpretation of verses 32-35 must account for the relationships between cbfjuepifivovg, u^ptfivgi, and \\i\u00a3\\t\u00a3pujro,i. Paul begins by saying, \"I want you to be without anxiety.\" There is little doubt that aiu-pfavous (\"without anxiety\") here is a positive descriptor - it is, at any rate, what Paul wishes for the Corinthians. The difficulties occur in the subsequent sentence when Paul says that \"the unmarried man iu-pi\\wq. the things of the Lord (how he might please the Lord), but [or and] the married man [i*piu,vg, the things of the cosmos (how he might please his wife).\" It has been commonplace to understand the first occurrence of u\u00a3piu.v\u00a7, as a positive word and the second as a negative word. 1 0 1 To be anxious for the things of the Lord is a good thing; to be anxious about the things of the cosmos is a bad thing. On this reading, the expressed desire that the Corinthians be without anxiety (atieplfivovg) refers only to the anxieties of marriage and not to the anxieties of singleness. But this seems irredeemably arbitrary. I have already noted how C. K. Barrett and David Balch resolve the problem. They make both (or, including verse 34, all four) occurrences of u^pi^vq, negative.102 It is bad to be anxious for the Lord, and it is bad to be anxious for the cosmos. I have already registered my dissatisfaction with this solution. A much better reading is offered by Gordon Fee, who suggests that icepipvqL is the same in all occurrences, but positive rather than negative.103 He wants to translate the word with \"cares for\" rather than \"is anxious about.\" On this view, Paul is not elaborating on his wish for the Corinthians to be without anxiety. Rather, he is indulging in a little paronomasia: \"I want you to be 1 0 0 Ibid., 197-205. 1 0 1 E.g., Robertson and Plummer, First Epistle, 157; Moffatt, First Epistle, 94-5; Conzelmann, \/ Corinthians, 134. 1 0 2 Barrett, First Epistle, 178-82; Balch, \"Stoic Debates\". See also, Jean Hering, The First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, Translated from the Second French Edition by A. W. Heathcote and P. J. Allcock (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), 62. 109 without anxiety (aiiepip,vovc). The unmarried man cares for (fiepiu,vg,) the things of the Lord... the married man cares for (p*pip,vg,) the things of the cosmos.\"1 0 4 If this is correct, then verse 32a is not as closely connected to 32b-35 as most have thought. In fact, I propose that 32a concludes the previous section (on detachment from one's activities)1 0 5 and 32b begins the new section (on the relative merits of marriage and singleness). Paul's punning, then, provides a clever bridge from one topic to another. The advantage of Fee's translation for p*piu.vg, is that it clearly identifies the topic of verses 32b-35 as the management of external responsibilities. Wil l Deming's work has shown that ancient marriage debates were always about the externals - the demands on one's time and energy - and not about inner turmoil or anxiety. The division between p^epifivg, ra rod Kvplou and iiepiu-vg, ra rod Koo-pjou, therefore, is the delineation of two sets of responsibilities. Unmarried men and women are responsible for managing the affairs of the Lord; their goal is to please God. Married men and women, however, are responsible for managing the affairs of the household.106 Epictetus, who makes a similar division, goes into more detail about what the latter existence involves: \".. .To make a long story short, he must get a kettle to heat water for the baby, for washing it in a bath-tub; wool for his wife when she has had a child, oil, a cot, a cup (the vessels get more and more W i Fee, First Epistle, 344-5. Cf. Hering, First Epistle, 60. 1 0 4 This reading is strengthened by the fact that there is already an unmistakable pun in the pericope (usptp,vg. and pxpApiarai). 1 0 5 32a makes excellent sense when attached to the preceding. After exhorting those who have a wife to live as though not having a wife, those who mourn to live as though not mourning, etc., Paul says, \"(31b) for the form of this world is passing away, (32a) and I want you to be free from anxiety.\" 1 0 6 Managing a household in antiquity meant more than washing dishes and raising children. The oiKog (domus) was an economic entity. It was more like operating a small business, often including the oversight of workers and relations with patrons and clients. 110 numerous); not to speak of the rest of his business, and his distraction.\"107 As for the Cynic, \"it is his conscience which affords him this power [i.e., to censure and punish], and not his arms and his bodyguards. When he sees that he has watched over men, and toiled in their behalf... and that every thought which he thinks is that of a friend and servant to the gods, of one who shares in the government of Zeus..., why should he not have courage to speak freely to his own brothers, to his children, in a word, to his 1OR kinsmen?\" What we have then, for Epictetus as for Paul, are two separate economies: a heavenly one and an earthly one. Unmarried followers of Christ are administrators in the former economy; married followers of Christ, while they do participate in that realm, are primarily taken up with managing the earthly economy, and therefore cannot serve the Lord with undivided devotion. Is this an argument against marriage? Some have read verses 32-35 in this way. 1 0 9 But elsewhere in 1 Cor. 7 Paul attempts to limit the practice of ascetic activity. Indeed, we have concluded, based on other verses in the chapter, that he establishes marriage as the norm - it is celibacy that requires a special dispensation. Thus, I propose that, rather than a general call to celibacy, verses 32-35 promote a division of labor among followers of Christ. Most members of the community are concerned with the affairs of the world. This is a good thing: it is necessary for the maintenance of the community (not to mention the maintenance of Paul's mission). But the unfortunate 1 0 7 Epict. Diss. 3.22.71-2. 1 0 8 Ibid. 3.22.95. 1 0 9 E.g. Robertson and Plummer, First Epistle, 157; Hodge, 130-1; Moffat, First Epistle, 94-7. But many recent exegetes, in reaction to this reading, have substituted their own implausible interpretations in an attempt to recover Paul as a supporter of marriage. See, for example, Jean Hering's (First Epistle, 60-1) conclusion: \"Has celibacy moral superiority? The opposite rather, for it is easier to remain faithful to the Lord when one is not 'divided'.\" I l l consequence of this lifestyle is a division of interests between the cares of the world and devotion to God. Those who are called to a life of celibacy, on the other hand, operate solely in the spiritual economy. Paul identifies their primary responsibility as the administration of the affairs of the Lord, thereby ensconcing the unmarried (i.e. those who possess enkrateia) in positions of privilege within the power structures of God's community. Verse 35 begins, \"I say this for your own benefit.\" It has often been thought that TOVTO here refers to a putative general exhortation to celibacy in the preceding verses. If this is the case, then Paul says that he urges them to be celibate for their own good. The exhortation is not intended to restrict them, it is intended to bring about good order and devotion to the Lord without hindrance. This view has been very influential, but, since I do not believe that verses 32-34 contain a general exhortation to celibacy, I read this verse in a different light. I propose that TOVTO refers, not to a call for celibacy, but to the division of labor that I have already outlined. Paul does not intend the division of labor to be a noose around anyone's neck (Bpvxpv) - i.e. a curtailment of their freedom. Rather, it is for their own good; it is intended to produce good order in the community and allow the community to wait on the Lord without hindrance.110 3.2.2 1 Corinthians 7.32-35 and Cosmopolitanism The argument of these verses bears some resemblance to Cynic cosmopolitanism. There are two realms: one mundane, made up of the conventional social relations of the Cf. Collins, First Corinthians, 292-3. 112 household and city, the other universal.1 1 1 In contrast with most Stoics, both Paul and the Cynics set these two realms over against each other.112 On the Cynic model, whoever assumes a position of authority in the mundane realm, as householder and politician, is distracted from the duties of the universal realm. He occupies a low-status position in the cosmopolis. But whoever shuns domestic and political power to devote himself to higher things will occupy a high-status position in the universal economy. Even i f he is a slave or a beggar, however powerless or degraded according to conventional standards, he has authority over those who exercise power in the mundane realm. Likewise, for Paul, it is not the householder, the one with conventional power, who occupies a privileged place in the spiritual economy (the ouranopolis), for his interests are divided. It is the unmarried person who administers the things of the Lord, and therefore possesses authority over the other followers of Christ. Unlike the Cynics, however, Paul does not want everyone to abandon marriage and become like him. Not only would this erode the foundations of his support, but it 1 1 1 One of the peculiarly Christian characteristics of Paul's model is the use of (obrog) KO(T\\wq to designate mundane associations. In addition, it is not reason but faith that is the bond between citizens of the heavenly polity. See Gal. 6.10: \"And so, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially those who are related by faith [roiig oiKelovg Trie mWetds].\" (NRSV) But these should not obscure the considerable similarities. 1 1 2 In addition to 1 Cor. 7.32-34, consider Philippians 3.18-20: \"For many people, about whom I have spoken to you often, and now speak in tears, live their lives as enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly and glory in their shame, who think about earthly things [TO emVeia]. For our commonwealth [TO -noXireutw,] exists in heaven, whence we expect the savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.\" (NRSV) The notion of a heavenly commonwealth is picked up by later Christian authors. E.g. Hebr. 11.10, 16; 12.22; 13.14; Letter to Diognetus 5; Augustine, De Civitate Dei. With the exception of the Letter to Diognetus, however, these texts are clearly future-oriented. Perhaps Paul is merely operating with a horizon that has been foreshortened, but his ouranopolis seems to exist already in the Christian communities on earth. See discussion in Wayne A. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 37-51. 113 would undermine the special authority that he is trying to claim for himself (more about this below). So, Paul constructs a scenario in which it is incumbent upon most people to fulfil the conventional domestic, economic, and political responsibilities, but in which a gifted few give these up to manage the things of the Lord, including his community of followers. This is almost identical to the Cynic-influenced cosmopolitan theory of Epictetus considered above. He admonished people to fulfil the duties of a citizen, including marriage and procreation, but left open the possibility that a few Cynics would reject marriage so that they might devote themselves to God and become, in effect, the chief administrators in God's cosmic household. On Epictetus' model, the relationships that define one's status within the mundane household - brother, father, servant - are used to define the Cynic's status within the universal, cosmic community. He has made all mankind his children; the men among them he has as sons, the women as daughters; in that spirit he approaches them all and cares for them all. Or do you fancy that it is in the spirit of idle impertinence he reviles those he meets? It is as a father he does it, as a brother, and as a servant of Zeus, who is Father of us a l l . 1 1 3 These are precisely the titles that Paul applies to himself in his role as unmarried overseer of the Christian churches. He is father and brother to Christians, and slave of Christ. 1 1 4 As Dale Martin has demonstrated, \"slave of Christ\" is not an admission of low status. It is quite the reverse. By claiming to be the O\\KOVO[W<; (managerial slave) of a very important person (Christ), Paul is claiming the considerable authority (albeit derivative) 1 1 3 Epict. Diss. 3.22.81-2; cf. ibid. 3.22.96. 1 1 4 Brother: 1 Thess. 1.4; 3.2; 4.13; 5.12, 14,25; Gal. 4.12,28; 6.1,18; Philem. 20; Rom. 1.13; 8.29. Father: 1 Thess. 2.11; Phil. 2.22; Philem. 10; 1 Cor. 4.14-15; cf. Gal. 4.19 and 1 Thess. 2.7. Slave: Phil. 1.1; Rom. 1.1; 15.16. 114 that accrues to one who manages the master's affairs.115 1 Cor. 7.32-35 seems to be of a piece with this logic. The unmarried few (Paul included) manage the affairs of the Lord, their only goal is to please their master. This gives them higher status within the Lord's (universal) household than the married majority whose interests are divided. As with Cynic cosmopolitan models, Paul recontextualized the social power that was traditionally ascribed to householders, making it the possession of the unmarried \"fathers\" or \"administrators\" of the cosmic\/heavenly realm. It will be remembered that, in keeping with this transvaluation, the virtue of enkrateia (with its links to domestic and political mastery) was also transferred from the household to the realm of the unmarried philosopher\/pedagogue. Paul's model is similar. I have already discussed at length his allocation of enkrateia and akrasia, one to the gifted, single person, the other to the household. This logic is implicit in 1 Cor. 7.32-34 where he distinguishes between the unmarried men and women who operate in the spiritual economy on the one hand, and husbands and wives who are divided between the duties of this world and service to the Lord on the other. But Paul also makes an explicit connection between akrasia and earthly things, over against the heavenly polity, in Philippians 3.18-20. Here he says that those who think about earthly things (oi ra kmyeia foovodvreq) have as their god the belly (TJ Koikia) and glory in their shame (hotjp, kv -rjj aioycvvy aur&v). To have one's belly as a god is a classic expression for akrasia. People of this sort are contrasted with the citizens of the commonwealth in heaven (TO -rcokhevua kv oupavoTg)m Thus, self-control is to be found not in earthly structures, but among the things of the Lord. 1 1 5 Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 50-85. 1 1 6 Paul would not include married Christians among those who are \"enemies of the cross of Christ\" and have \"the belly as a god\". He says in 1 Cor. 7.34 that they are divided, 115 3.3 Conclusion Unlike the anti-askesis and anorexia encountered in the previous chapter, Paul's manipulation of the traditional domestic and political correlatives of enkrateia is part of a much broader movement among Greco-Roman moralists. Above all, his tendency to associate enkrateia with the unmarried, undistracted individual, who then assumes the role of father figure in the universal community, resembles Cynic cosmopolitanism. Certainly, there are elements of Paul's ouranopolis that make it unique. Citizenship, for example, is based on faith rather than reason.117 And, perhaps most significantly, Paul's community is eschatological, which means that its contrast with the mundane is even more radical. But the social dynamics of both Cynic and Pauline universal polities seem to be the same: a few people who reject traditional social roles exercise authority over the cosmo-\/ouranopolis, a universal community defined by reason\/faith. In many ways, Cynic (and Cynic-influenced) cosmopolitan theory as well as Paul's ouranopolis share in a much broader revaluation of domestic and political roles in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. I have already made reference to Michel Foucault's analysis of the changing social relations within the Greco-Roman household. These innovations reflect new ways of relating the subject to himself (sic) and to others. In addition to the shifting power relations within the household, however, a gradual shift was also occurring from local forms of knowledge centered around the aristocracy to which means that they are citizens of the heavenly polity, but still have ties to this world. They are progressing along the path of citizenship but have a long way to go. 1 1 7 See Gal. 6.10: \"And so, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially those who are related by faith.\" 116 specialized knowledge that transcended regionalism. Stanley Stowers has advanced this hypothesis in a recent essay. It is worth quoting at length. The traditional religion and wider cultures of Greeks, Judeans, Romans and so on were based on the local knowledges of face to face communities led by aristocrats who administered the lore and practices, e.g., how to sacrifice an animal, calculate when to have a festival, read events for signs from the gods of the place. Led by the so-called Greek enlightenment, the centuries before the common era saw a massive growth in the specialization of knowledge that was no longer local. Greek philosophy led this trend for many areas of knowledge. The particular character of the Hellenistic philosophies derived from creating specialized knowledge and practices about the soul or \"how to live an entire life.\" Judean scribes and scholars also attained a similar authority as specialists in knowledges that were becoming increasingly important to Judean culture. The shift in knowledge practices also meant a shift in authority toward the specialists and away from the local knowledges of the aristocrats who now had to employ specialist [sic] themselves.\"119 Increasingly, knowledge was being managed by philosophers and teachers rather than the local elite. And, as a reflection of the authority that had been usurped from householders, philosophers occasionally adopted fictive kinship roles, notably as a component of cosmopolitan theory. Epictetus' hierarchization of the divine household\/cosmopolis is a prime example, and Paul's use of fictive kinship also shares in this dynamic. 1 2 0 Thus, the transference of authority - from householder and politician to unmarried philosopher\/pedagogue - that is observable in both Cynic cosmopolitanism and in Paul's ouranopolis is part of a broader revaluation of traditional social roles. This accounts for Paul's use of (ourog) Koajwg to describe the mundane world. 1 1 9 Stowers, \"Pauline Christianity,\" 20. 1 2 0 Stowers (\"Pauline Christianity,\" 19) writes: \"The dominant [Pauline] metaphor of a family, albeit an oxymoronic family not founded on marriage, descent and property, might be counted as a dissimilarity from the Hellenistic philosophies, but needs to be better understood.\" He remarks on the tendency of philosophers to associate as friends. This is true, but as we have seen, they also draw on kinship as a source of metaphors for describing social relations. 117 The effect of Paul's discourse is to ensconce him more securely in a position of authority. By creating a division of labor in which married folk administer worldly things, and an unmarried few administer the affairs of the Lord, he has shifted the balance of power from the householder to the celibate leader (i.e., himself). This shift is further reflected in the allocation of enkrateia (with its strong link to the exercise of authority) to the realm of the celibate leader. And, as I have stated repeatedly, a claim on authority is simultaneously a claim on masculinity. 118 Conclusion If Paul's body is a text, this thesis represents an extended reading of a rather minor passage. I have demonstrated how certain bodily signifiers drew him into a semiotics of feminization. And, because gender, as I have been emphasizing all along, is a grid for charting power relations, his feminization is equivalent to a decrease in authority. Paul's enkrateia, on the other hand, has a masculinizing effect, and is therefore rehabilitative. It too is a kind of bodily semiotics. In the first place, the physical act itself is a conventional signifier of masculine authority. But also important is Paul's textual construction of the meaning of enkrateia, which makes it the spiritual possession of a minority who are given authority over the rest. The general connection between self-control and authority, along with Paul's peculiar encratic discourse, make for a complex semiotics of masculinization that rehabilitates his image as an effective leader. 119 Nomenclature Enkrateia = self-mastery, self-control, continence Enkrates = adjectival form of enkrateia = self-controlled, continent Akrasia = lack of self-control, incontinence (usually paired with enkrateia) Akrates = adjectival form of akrasia = incontinent Sophrosyne = moderation, temperance Akolasia = intemperance (usually paired with sophrosyne) Encratic = an adjective that I invented for the purposes of this thesis meaning \"of or relating to enkrateia\" N.B. Going against my usual practice, I have tended to use masculine pronouns for the generic. The subject matter dictated this decision. 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Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966. Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Martin Classical Lectures, New Series, Volume 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Obbink, Dirk. \"The Stoic Sage in the Cosmic City.\" In Topics in Stoic Philosophy, edited by Katerina Ierodiakonou, 178-95. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Obbink, Dirk and Paul A. Vander Waerdt. \"Diogenes of Babylon: the Stoic Sage in the City of Fools.\" Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 32\/4 (1991): 355-96. Osiek, Carolyn, RSCJ. \"First Corinthians 7 and Family Questions.\" The Bible Today 35, no. 5 (1997): 275-279. Parker, Holt N . \"The Teratogenic Grid.\" Roman Sexualities, edited by Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner, 47-65. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pembroke, S. G. \"Oikeiosis.\" In Problems in Stoicism, edited by A . A . Long, 114-49. London: The Athlone Press, 1971. Pfitzner, Victor C. Paul and the Agon Motif: Traditional Athletic Imagery in the Pauline Literature. Leiden, 1967. Phipps, W. E. \"Is Paul's Attitude towards Sexual Relations Contained in 1 Cor. 7.1?.\" M S 28 (1982): 125-31. Plummer, Alfred. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. ICC. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1915. Poirier, John C. and Joseph Frankovic. \"Celibacy and Charism in 1 Cor 7:5-7.\" HTR 89\/1 (1996): 1-18. Richlin, Amy. The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Richlin, Amy. \"Gender and rhetoric: producing manhood in the schools.\" In Roman Eloquence: Rhetoric and Society and Literature, edited by William J. Dominik, 92-107. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. 131 Robertson, Archibald and Alfred Plummer. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corithians, second edition. ICC. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1914. Rousselle, Aline. Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity. Translated by Felicia Pheasant. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1979. Satlow, Michael L. \"'Wasted Seed', The History of a Rabbinic Idea.\" HUCA 65 (1994): 137-75. Schafer, Peter. Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Schofield, Malcolm. The Stoic Idea of the City, with a new Foreword by Martha C. Nussbaum and a new Epilogue by the author. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press: 1999. Segal, Alan. Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Stanton, G. R. \"Sophists and Philosophers: Problems of Classification.\" AJP 94, no. 4 (1973). Stowers, Stanley K . The Diatribe and Paul's Letter to the Romans. SBLDS 57. Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1981. Stowers, Stanley K. A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, & Gentiles. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. Stowers, Stanley K. \"Does Pauline Christianity Resemble a Hellenistic Philosophy?\" In Paul Beyond the Judaism\/Hellenism Dualism, edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen. Forthcoming. Theissen, Gerd. \"Legitimation and Subsistence: An Essay on the Sociology of Early Christian Missionaries.\" In The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth by Gerd Theissen, Edited and Translated and with an Introduction by John H. Schutz, 27-67. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982. Thornton, Bruce S. Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality. Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, 1997. Turner, Bryan S. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, second edition. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996. 132 Walters, Jonathan. \"Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought.\" In Roman Sexualities, 29-43. Watson, Nigel. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Epworth Commentaries. London: Epworth Press, 1992. Whitton, J. \" A Neglected Meaning for 2icefi* in 1 Thessalonians 4.4.\" NTS 28 (1982): 142-3. Wimbush, Vincent L. The Worldly Ascetic: Response to the World and Self-understanding According to 1 Corinthians 7. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987. Winkler, John J. The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. Winter, Bruce W. Philo and Paul among the Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Wire, Antoinette Clark. The Corinthian Women Prophets. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990. Yarbrough, O. Larry. Not Like the Gentiles: Marriage Rules in the Letters of Paul. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985,93-4 133 Appendix A UupoDoSai in 1 Cor. 7.91 \"It is better to marry than to burn\" (1 Cor. 7.9b) is a phrase that scarcely requires introduction. For some this excerpt from Paul's advice to the unmarried in Corinth represents the very worst of Pauline (indeed of Christian) sexual ethics - marriage as remedium concupiscendiae. But i f the meaning of the verse seems obvious, this is only the result of a rather vague \"consensus\" that has won the day. At the heart of this \"consensus\" is an implicit move to replace mjpovaQai (\"to burn\") with something like emBviieiv (\"to desire\"), yielding an unbearably pessimistic view on marriage - i.e. \"better to marry than to experience desire\". More than a few commentators have marshaled their creative talents in an effort to weaken the ostensible thrust of Paul's rationale. While most of these point to mitigating contextual details like the Apostle's expectation of an imminent end, others challenge the \"consensus\" interpretation of the verb -nvpovaftai. Of the latter sort, Michael Banc's article of a quarter-century ago is the most significant.3 After surveying Jewish literature from the Septuagint forward, he concludes that 1 This paper was originally delivered at the Northwest Regional Meeting of the A A R \/ S B L , May 7-9,1999 (?) (Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA). I have chosen to append it without major revision. As a result, there is some repetition of material that appears in the body of the thesis. There is also a disagreement between my interpretations of 1 Cor. 7.32-35 in this appendix and in chapter three. I leave it up to the reader to resolve the discrepancy, but I will say that chapter three represents a later and more sustained reading of these verses. 2 The full text of verses 8-9 is as follows: Aiyoi he ro?g ayaywiq KOA ra?q xqpaiq, KOXOV avroiq iav [le'ivoxriv tog Kayof et he OVK iyKparevovrai, ya^crarojouv, KpeTrrov yap iarw yau\/t^rai % \u2022mipovcrSai. (\"I say to the unmarried and the widows, it is a good thing i f they remain as I also am. But i f they lack self-control, they should marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.\") 3 Michael L. Barre, \"To Marry or to Burn? Tlvpovodai in 1 Cor 7:9,\" CBQ 36 (1974): 193-202. 134 mipouotiai in 1 Cor. 7.9 can only be a reference to the fires of judgement. A metaphorical reading of the verb (\"burn with desire\"), Barre suggests, is poorly attested and not to be countenanced. But, besides the obvious limitations of his study,4 Barre appears to be possessed of the same misunderstanding that plagues the old \"consensus\" - an assumption that \"burning desire\" could only be metaphorical. The modern reader imagines a smoldering fire to be romantic convention - cliche even - for what is primarily a psychological phenomenon. But Bruce Thornton has recently demonstrated how far removed our insipid figure is from the ancient fires of Eros (Amor).5 The burning sensation was real and it was symptomatic (rather than symbolic) of sexual desire. I employ a medical vocabulary advisedly in this instance, as erotic passion is frequently delineated on the model of a pathology. It might be argued that this too is part of a well-developed metaphorical topos, except that the medical tradition itself treats sexual desire largely as an illness that requires diagnosis and treatment. Before reconsidering 1 Cor. 7.9, therefore, I shall first outline the classical physiology of desire paying special attention to burning as a symptom, and secondly compare accounts of a related pathological condition known as satyriasis. I shall then proceed to construct a reprisal of the old \"consensus\" - i.e. that Paul does indeed treat marriage as a remedium concupiscendiae, or better yet, a remedium incendii. 4 As Gordon Fee notes, Barre limits his inquiry to the appearance of -nvpow and cognates in Jewish sources only. Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 289, n.13. Bruce Thornton, Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, 1997), 11-47. 135 The Classical Physiology of Desire: An Outline Any attempt to relate the classical physiology of sexual desire is perhaps a doomed task from the outset. Diversity of opinion, and even inconsistencies within the corpus of a single author, render any one account necessarily reductive. A highly detailed study of the subject, on the other hand, while interesting in its own right, would soon outstrip its usefulness for our purposes. Thus, although cognizant of the pitfalls, I have chosen to present a synoptic account based largely on Galenic theory.6 But I shall also incorporate supporting (and sometimes dissenting) opinions from other medical texts and literary sources, the latter often containing strikingly physiological descriptions of sexual desire. While an approach such as this may run the risk of manufacturing an illusory consensus, I think that the resulting synthesis will fairly represent the outline of a classical physiology of desire. Virtually all of our sources, medical and otherwise, agree that the desiderative mechanism is initiated by an external stimulus. Paradigmatically this stimulus is the sight of something beautiful as in Aristotle's classic expression: \"passion arises through the pleasure of sight. For no one loves without being charmed by a beautiful image.\"7 This simple etiology is also adopted by medical writers in the transmission of a common 6 1 use Galen as the backbone of my inquiry because (from our perspective) the sheer volume of his extant works makes him the preeminent medical authority of the Roman period. He flourished some 120 years after Paul's career, but represents a kind of crystallization of accumulated medical opinion from the preceding centuries. 7 Aristotle Ethica Nicomachea 9.5.3. Trans. H. Rackham, L C L (London: William Heinemann Ltd., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942). Cf. Plato Cratylus 420B. 136 Q diagnosis topos. Typically in these accounts the physician is able to properly diagnose a mysterious illness (actually sexual passion) when he observes the deleterious effects on the patient's condition produced by viewing his or her object of affection. It is the image of something beautiful that initiates (and also exacerbates) sexual desire. The connection between an external stimulus and the internal operations of desire is also rendered explicit by Lucretius: \"[Youths] meet with images from some chance body that fly abroad, bringing news of a lovely face and beautiful bloom, which excites and irritates the parts swelling with seed, so that, as i f the whole business had been done, they often pour forth a great flood and stain their vestment.\"9 I shall comment on the accumulation and emission of semen below, but for now it is sufficient to acknowledge that an external stimulus (especially a beautiful image) triggers the body's desiderative mechanism.10 This perspective on the genesis of erotic desire was appropriated to great effect by the novelists, especially Achilles Tatius, who provides a more poetic version of Aristotle's observation: \"the eye is the path for love's wounds\".11 He claims that this image enters through the eyes and imprints itself on the heart.12 But an object of beauty is not the only effective stimulus: wine (2.3.3), erotic songs (1.5.5-6), embraces (5.15.5), and kisses (Longus 1.17) are a few other conventional examples. The body's immediate response to these stimuli is, more often than not, a burning sensation. Longus, in his tale Q E.g., Valerius Maxim us Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 5.7.ext. 1; Plutarch Demetrius 37.2-3; Galen De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 6.1-10; Caelius Aurelianus Celeres Passiones 3.180-1. 9 Lucretius De Rerum Natura 4.1032-36. Trans. W. H. D. Rouse, L C L (London: William Heinemann Ltd., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953). 1 0 For this reason Galen advises that desire is controlled by avoiding erotic images and spectacles (De Locis Affect is 6.6). Cf. Lucr. 4.1063-67. 1 Achilles Tatius 1.4.4. Trans. S. Gaselee, L C L (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1947). 1 2 Ibid. 5.13.4. 137 about Daphnis and Chloe, describes the torments of desire as an actual physical heat that Daphnis attempts to quench by drinking cold water (1.23). This heat is intensified by external stimuli like kissing (1.17) or watching animals mate (3.13). In the story of Leucippe and Clitophon erotic songs and stories are said to burn one's heart and fuel desire (1.5.5,6). Vision, as I have noted, is also central to the production of desire in this novel. The villainous Thersander, for example, burns at the sight of Leucippe (1.18.1). Melitte likewise burns for Clitophon (5.15.5, 22.3, 26.1), and his embraces only kindle the flame (5.15.5). We might be tempted to dismiss these as nothing more than inane cliches, except that we find in these novels further elaboration of the physiological process. Achilles Tatius, for example, describes the conflict between love's fire in the liver and anger's fire 13 in the heart. This may sound bizarre but it is taken directly from medical arguments about the precise location of sexual desire (and its attendant heat) in the body. Aristotle maintains that desire is generated in the heart when some stimulus produces a surge of blood kindling the organ's innate heat.14 Chrysippus holds a similar position: \"it is evident that the affections of angry men arise in the region of the chest, and also those of lovers; therefore desire also arises especially in these regions.\"15 The citation from Achilles Tatius, on the other hand, is in agreement with Galen who, following Hippocrates and Plato, locates the desiderative part of the soul in the liver. In either case, it is a matter of general agreement that the stimulated heart\/liver triggers an increase both 1 3 Ibid. 6.19.2. 1 4 Arist. De Anima 1.1.403B is a description of anger, but he imagines a similar process for desire. Cf. De Partibus Animaliian 3.3.665al0-13, where Aristotle calls the heart the source of life as well as all movement and sensation. 138 in body temperature and ultimately in the production of seed. In fact, in animals that have internal testes, the warm lower organs serve as a kind of heating element that aids the transformation of excess blood into hot semen.16 Given these widely accepted \"scientific\" claims, we can conclude that the literary descriptions of erotic conflagration, while surely conventional, are nevertheless rooted in a broader cultural understanding of the desiring body.1 7 With the introduction of semen as an important element in the desiderative mechanism it appears that the desiring subject (purporting to be generic) is again shown to be male. But we should not overlook the fact that semen was not always (perhaps even not usually) considered a uniquely male humor. Following Hippocrates, Galen asserts that both men and women have testicles - men outside the body, women inside - and both secrete seed during sexual intercourse. Although the male's is thicker, hotter, and more copious, female semen is also required for conception to take place.18 Galen identifies two separate mechanisms for the production of this vital fluid. First of all, it is generated in the large artery and vein that extend from the heart to the genitals. As the blood flows along this track it gradually alters to become the white, frothy substance that is ultimately excreted.19 But there is also a second, better kind of semen which is produced wholly within the testicles themselves and contains more vital pneuma, a compound of air and 1 5 Gal. Plac. Hipp, et Plat. 3.7.32. Trans. Galen On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Edition, Translation and Commentary by Phillip De Lacy, First Part: Books I - V , Third Edition (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1984). Cf. Achilles Tatius 5.13.4. 1 6 Gal. De Semine 1.15.26. 1 7 1 am trying to avoid the error of treating literary accounts as \"mere metaphors\" for the \"literal\" or \"scientific\" discourse of medical texts. I place primary importance on the latter in this paper simply because, in the detail of their analyses, they render more explicit the logic of cultural assumptions. 1 8 Gal. Sent. 1.7, 10; 2.4. 1 9 Ibid. 1.12.5-6. 139 fire that contributes to the increasing torridity of the desiring body. This testicular semen is the all-important final component in the desiderative mechanism. Galen, at least, insists that the urge for intercourse would not exist without the testicles and their special kind of seed. One has only to observe, he says, those (animals or humans) who have had their testicles excised to know that this is true. Galen deduces from this observation that testicular semen houses an intrinsic desire for ejaculation.21 No semen, no desire. And conversely, abundant semen, abundant desire. This, then, is the body's mechanism for maintaining balance: desire for sexual activity as a means of evacuating excess seed. The ambivalence of ancient medical discourse vis-a-vis desire and sexual intercourse is well known. Although they were recognized to be natural and necessary for perpetuating the species, Soranus speaks for many anxious souls when he remarks that the body is made i l l by desire. Indeed, as we have already seen, there existed a common diagnosis topos in which a patient who displays physical symptoms that could derive from any number of illnesses is discovered to be suffering from acute sexual passion. Apuleius, in his version of this topos, says that the effects on one's health and appearance are the same in those who are i l l (aegris) and those who are in love For pneuma as air and fire see Gal. Plac. Hipp. etPlat. 5.3.8. 2 1 Gal. Sem. 1.15.29,48,2.1.32,2.4.13; cf. Lucr. 4.1041-1046: \"As soon as the seed comes forth driven from its retreats, it is withdrawn from the whole body through all the limbs and members, gathering in a fixed place in the structure, and arouses at once the genital parts alone. Those parts thus excited swell with the seed, and there is a desire to emit it towards that whither the dire craving tends.\" 99 \" Soranus Gynecology 1.30. Cf. Longus 1.14,18 and Chariton 1.1.10, where desire is called voavq (disease). Donald Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella attribute the systematization of the concept of desire as disease to Aristotle (Jacques Ferrand, A Treatise On Lovesickness, translated and edited and with a critical introduction and notes by Donald A. Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella (Syracuse, N Y : Syracuse University 140 (amantibus)23 More specifically, excess semen - the culmination of the desiderative mechanism - has pathological consequences when retained. Here, for example, is Galen's opinion: \"Scrutinizing these [observations] it appeared to me that the retention of semen does greater harm to the body than the suppression of the menstrual flow, [especially] in persons who have an abundance of poorly conditioned humors, who lead a lazy life, and who initially had indulged quite frequently in sexual relations but suddenly stopped their previous habit. I realized that in these patients the physical desire for seminal discharge was the cause [of the disorder], because all people of this type must ejaculate their abundant semen.\"24 Galen's realization gets at the crux of the matter for our present purposes. The desiderative mechanism is always cause for concern, something to be guarded and controlled. But when it is allowed to spiral out of control, producing an abundance of semen that is retained, the result is pathological imbalance. The cure for this condition quite simply is ejaculation. Sometimes masturbation is advised, although never for 25 women. Just as often sexual intercourse is identified as a cure, or at least a temporary reprieve. And frequently it is \"burning\" in particular that is purportedly quenched by the ejaculation of hot sperm. Lucretius, for example, admits: tandem ubi se erupit nervis conlecta cupido, parva fit ardoris violenti pausa parumper26 Once again there are parallels in the novels. Marriage (i.e. sex) is proposed as the only remedy that will save Press, 1990), 44-45). But, as they explain, the roots of this idea can be found much earlier. 23 Apuleius Metamorphoses 10.2. He also claims that the diagnosis is easily made when one sees an individual who burns without having a fever (aliquem sine corporis calore flagrantem). 2 4 Gal. Loc. Aff. 6.5; English translations of this treatise are from Galen on the Affected Parts, trans. Rudolph E. Siegel. (Basel and New York: S. Karger, 1976). 2 5 Lucr. 4.1063-67; Gal. Loc. Aff. 6.6. Chaereas and Callirhoe from wasting away. Apuleius tells a tale of a woman who, in the course of propositioning her stepson, calls him both the cause of her illness (i.e. sexual desire) and its cure (medela et salus). Even more striking is Clitophon's description of his sexual liaison with Melitte, who was burning with desire: he says that he healed her (JWO^V).29 This pathological complex - erotic passion as disease, burning its most salient symptom, and ejaculation an antidote - was already firmly established by the Roman Period and it retained its currency right through the middle ages in both Christian and Muslim medical traditions. If we end the inquiry right here we have already garnered enough evidence to improve upon the traditional interpretation of 1 Cor. 7.9 (i.e. marriage as remedium concupiscendiae). But I would like to extend the discussion a little further to include a related pathological condition known as satyriasis (priapism)30 - a state of persistent genital tension in non-sexual situations. Galen provides the most comprehensive, i f somewhat inconsistent (not to mention entirely androcentric), description of this dysfunction. Of particular interest is his etiological analysis. After concluding that Z b Ibid. 4.1115-16. 2 7 Chariton 1.1.11. 2 8 Apuleius Metamorphoses 10.3. 2 9 Achilles Tatius 6.1.1. 3 0 There is some confusion about whether in fact these two names designated the same disease. Caelius Aurelianus, in his fifth-century Latin paraphrase of Soranus' works on acute and chronic diseases, considers them related but distinct pathologies. If this division goes back to Soranus, then it is at least as old as the second century CE. But in the Gynecology, and in the works of Galen and others, there is no indication that there were two distinct pathologies. In fact, Aetius titles his version of Rufus' account JTepi