1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by Irish1975 »

On a narrow reading of the syntax in vv.18-20, it is true that θύουσιν lacks a proper subject, and that Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα is the only recently named party. Hence the gloss added in many manuscripts. If readers had been able to recognize immediately that Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα was not the subject, the gloss would not have become standard (as it now has, in translation).

We have to read the entire passage 10:1-22 as a unit, which makes the reference to Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα intelligible.

I don't think the author intended to say either that Israel sacrifices to demons, or that pagans sacrifice to demons. The target of the citation of Deuteronomy 32:17 is the possible backsliders in the community of faith, those who are eating sacrificed meats at pagan feasts. By (a) attending pagan feasts and (b) sharing in the meat, they run the risk of becoming just like the idolators of old in the desert: "Do not be idolaters, as some of them were..." (10:7).

Because Corinthians who share the pagan meat also share in the idolatrous sacrifice, they are in great danger simply by the fact of eating the meats. This is the strict teaching of 10:1-22, and the point of the reference to Israel as such. Paul's reference to Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα is nothing more than a reference to the priestly code of Leviticus, helping him to argue that eating the meats = making the sacrifice to idols oneself.

On this reading, Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα is just a reference to Torah, to the Judaism of the book. The contemporary temple practice is not Paul's concern at all.

It should be noted that Paul takes the word "demons," and the idea that false gods are demons, directly from the Mosaic text (LXX).
Secret Alias
Posts: 18321
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by Secret Alias »

If you accept that the 'Great Church' as Celsus calls it preserved a pristine copy of the letters of Paul and documents associated with the founder of Christianity then you must accept the document in its present form. This would mean that the apostle understood 'demons' here in a wholly exaggerated manner. However if the ancillary evidence we have from various sources that Solomon captured demons in water bottles and preserved them in a large pool under the temple of Jerusalem then we can accept:

1. that the epistles were preserved in a corrupt form
2. that the reference assumes that the reference is to the continuation of 'Judaism' within Christianity
3. that this is undoubtedly a continuation of Samaritan (who consistently identify Solomon negatively and his temple) anti-Jewish propaganda which finds echo in some of Justin's references to Solomon

Of course most are unwilling to accept that our inherited early Christian literature is wholly corrupted from an original Marcionite canon. It requires too much imagination, imagination apparently being a bad thing in scholarship.
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by Irish1975 »

Secret Alias wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:48 am that the epistles were preserved in a corrupt form
We can speculate that it was a corruption of Marcion, but we know that the canonical text is a 3-car pile up:

(1) Whatevs (1 Cor 10: 23-33) The earth is the Lord’s, do whatever you want, just don’t be a jerk to someone in your immediate social circle

(2) Enlightened but restrictive (1 Cor 8) Knowledge that idols are nothing is great, but charity towards the weak brethren is more important, so don’t eat the meat

(3) The Meat is Demonic (1 Cor 10: 1-22) Eating the meat is communing with demons
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by Irish1975 »

Ken Olson wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 10:10 am Paul is trying to explain to the Corinthians why they cannot attend feasts in pagan temples, which is what some of them appear to have been doing, without contradicting what he told them earlier that the food is not tainted by having been offered to an idol because the idols do not represent anything real (i.e., the pagan gods do not exist).
The teaching is so different, I would argue, that only conservative prejudice can justify attributing everything "Paul" says about idol meat in this epistle to a single, authentic apostolic author. I agree with you that a contradiction is present, but not that "Paul contradicts himself," because I think it is not realistic that a single author--claiming to be an apostle of great authority--would have gotten so tangled up on a single subject in a supposedly single "letter." If we're imagining a Corinthian church trying to implement his instruction, is it ok to eat the meat or not? There is no coherent answer given.

Thus what we have in chs. 8 and 10 is exceptionally strong evidence that the Corpus Paulinum is a mutilated product of many hands.
His point [in 1 Cor 10: 18-20] is that you might not think you are worshipping the pagan gods (demons), but you are participating in a communal activity. If the others around you are worshipping, and you are doing what they are doing, then you are worshipping. You are their partners. That's the way it works in the temple of God for the people of Israel, and that's the way it works in pagan temples as well. The food is nothing and the idols are nothing, but your activity in fellowship with worshippers is something.
I can understand this exegesis from a modern point of view, but I don't see any basis in Paul for this "community worship" argument; nor do I see a basis in the OT for a theory of "communal sacrifice." The essential and only point for the apostle of 10:1-22 (as with 9:13), respecting temple worship, is that sacrificing to the deity and eating the meat go hand in hand. In the case of Israel, the Mosaic law dictates that the priests eat the meat sacrificed by them (Paul treats this as a general rule even if some types of sacrifice allow for the people to eat as well).

He is not saying, you'll commit idolatry because you will be joining in with their community. Rather, the meat itself is corrupted by the false gods to whom it has been sacrificed. Just as eating the bread is a sharing in the body of Christ.
lsayre
Posts: 768
Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2015 3:39 pm

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by lsayre »

I believe it was Roger Parvus who labeled Paul "the Zig-Zag Man". I take it that he meant that there were multiple hands in the soup that ultimately became each individual Canonical Pauline letter, such that nearly every Zig (Pauline point of view, or perspective, or directive, etc...) added by Paul and/or one school results in a countering or nullifying Zag added by some other school. With the Canonical end result being that any semblance of an original intent of a real Paul (if ever there was one) is nigh-on completely lost in the unintelligible Zig-Zag soup of differing perspectives.

Edit: The initial Zigs are from a Simonian leaning school and the countering/negating (and thereby confusing) Zags are from a Proto-Orthodox leaning school.
Secret Alias
Posts: 18321
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by Secret Alias »

We can speculate that it was a corruption of Marcion
Why would it make more sense to speculate that Marcion added the bit about 'Jewish' demons when Solomon establishing demons in the central building in Judaism exists independently of Marcion? In other words, the idea that those in Jerusalem worshipped demons rather than God (at the instigation of Solomon) is a standard trope that IMHO makes more sense than 'Corinthians' introducing demons on their own.

I have NEVER understood why we don't accept the corruption of the canon by the orthodox. Thankfully after this generation of believers-no-longer-believers we can start fresh considering the wide-spread corruption without having to accept the status quo as the default position. The texts are corrupt.
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by Irish1975 »

lsayre wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 3:51 pm I believe it was Roger Parvus who labeled Paul "the Zig-Zag Man". I take it that he meant that there were multiple hands in the soup that ultimately became each individual Canonical Pauline letter, such that nearly every Zig (Pauline point of view, or perspective, or directive, etc...) added by Paul and/or one school results in a countering or nullifying Zag added by some other school. With the Canonical end result being that any semblance of an original intent of a real Paul (if ever there was one) is nigh-on completely lost in the unintelligible Zig-Zag soup of differing perspectives.

Edit: The initial Zigs are from a Simonian leaning school and the countering/negating (and thereby confusing) Zags are from a Proto-Orthodox leaning school.
I’m with Parvus, mostly. But it is important—and sorry if this is pedantically obvious—to note that there are two theses at issue, and the second has way less evidence to support it:

(1) The Paulines are a soup of zigs and zags. This is the actual state of our texts, all harmonizing bullshit to the contrary nothwithstanding.

(2) An original Simonian school.

Because there are undeniably anti-YHWH Pauline passages, it seems safest to assume that these were retained because they were there from the beginning. Why would the catholics have tolerated them if they were late additions or late redactions? But it is so hard to prove how these texts evolved in their formative period, and so many different hypotheses are plausible.
davidmartin
Posts: 1585
Joined: Fri Jul 12, 2019 2:51 pm

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by davidmartin »

Irish1975 wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 7:35 am Because Corinthians who share the pagan meat also share in the idolatrous sacrifice, they are in great danger simply by the fact of eating the meats. This is the strict teaching of 10:1-22, and the point of the reference to Israel as such. Paul's reference to Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα is nothing more than a reference to the priestly code of Leviticus, helping him to argue that eating the meats = making the sacrifice to idols oneself.
This makes Paul sound very pious and orthodox, but he is not teaching his students Judaism, he's teaching them his gospel
How can he put on his pharisee hat one minute and the next say something contrary like the law is a curse without looking like a radical?
He also says he eats the meats himself sometimes, when he feels like it
No its sounds more like he was against any kind of syncretism going on which would weaken his gospel and authority. Syncretism back toward Judaism in one direction and toward pagan religion in the other, with teachers popping out to oppose him at each end
He doesn't care about the meat at all, the meat is a convenient way to keep his followers away from other points of view and he does similar things all the time. Of course Paul is syncretic himself but that's different if he is the one doing it!
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by Irish1975 »

davidmartin wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 5:42 pm How can he put on his pharisee hat one minute and the next say something contrary like the law is a curse without looking like a radical?
:banghead:
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: 1 Cor 10:20, “they sacrifice to demons”

Post by Irish1975 »

Secret Alias wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 4:15 pm
We can speculate that it was a corruption of Marcion
Why would it make more sense to speculate that Marcion added the bit about 'Jewish' demons when Solomon establishing demons in the central building in Judaism exists independently of Marcion? In other words, the idea that those in Jerusalem worshipped demons rather than God (at the instigation of Solomon) is a standard trope that IMHO makes more sense than 'Corinthians' introducing demons on their own.

I have NEVER understood why we don't accept the corruption of the canon by the orthodox. Thankfully after this generation of believers-no-longer-believers we can start fresh considering the wide-spread corruption without having to accept the status quo as the default position. The texts are corrupt.
Maybe it doesn’t. 10:20 looks garbled to me, and there could be various explanations. I was kind of flapping in the wind when I wrote the OP, but I still maintain that “oh, he’s just saying that these pagans sacrifice to demons” misses the point, which is that the words come from the LXX. The fact that Paul is quoting OT scripture is generally ignored here. So I was not implying that ‘Corinthians’ introduced the demons claim.

What sources should I look at for the Samaritan claim about Solomon?

I don’t doubt that the NT was co-opted and corrupted fom Marcion to some extent. I don’t know to what extent, or where the original Marcionite material is specifically. I thought your view was something similar.
Post Reply