perseusomega9 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 7:01 pm
To your last part, my initial thinking is that the torture of christian martyrs by fire would place the writing of 1 cor 13 somewhere between Tacitus and the martyrdom of Polycarp/Peregrinus.
I wonder if Justin's condemnation of heretics to fire has any baring on this as well.
Also, 1 Clement compares resurrection to that of the Phoenix, who immolated itself so as to be reborn, and Paul preaches the need to be baptized as a means of rebirth. Connection?
perseusomega9 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 6:49 am
I was reading an essay by Krister Stendahl and he was discussing 1 Cor 13. In 13:3 he quotes
If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned , but do not have love, I have gained nothing
this jumped out at me as I've never seen that before. So I pull out my Harper Collins and in place of burned it reads "hand over my body so that I may boast" with a footnote that says some mss read burned. Checking my UBS the difference is kauxesomai vs kauthesomai.
Since my Greek is rudimentary (equivalent to a 1st grader), is there any consensus which is the more original. The 'burned" version seems to indicate a late 1st through 2nd century date, as I can't think of martyr traditions where Christians were burned until the 2nd century (unless Tacitus' report of Nero is genuine but then that still seems to imply a later date than Cornthians is usually assigned).
καυχήσωμαι][Boasting] p46 א A B (048 καυχήσομαι) 0150 33 69 1739* copsa copbo gothmg Clement Origen Didymus Jerome2/3 mssaccording to Jerome WH NA NM
p46 = c. 200
א = c.350
B = c. 350
A = c. 450
048 = c. 450
copsa = c. 300
copbo = c. 300
gothmg = c. 350
From a Skeptical Criticism (the only kind I use) standpoint the External evidence already favors "boasting". I'm not aware of any other reading with this much quality External support that is not the likely original. Combined with "boasting" obviously being The Difficult Reading here, this is not an interesting Textual Criticism issue. The survival of the early evidence for the likely original "boasting" tells us that it was not considered an especially difficult reading, such as a negative description of Jesus (think 1:41) would be.