What accounts for the seemingly atypical pattern of scriptural exegesis that Paul uses to interpret Exodus 34 in 2 Cor 3: 7-18? While previous scholars have approached this question from a variety of angles, in this monograph, Michael Cover grapples particularly with the evidence of contemporaneous Jewish and Greco-Roman commentary traditions. Through comparison with Philo of Alexandria's Allegorical Commentary, the Pseudo-Philonic homilies De Jona and De Sampsone, the Anonymous Theaetetus Commentary, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Seneca's Epistulae morales, and other New Testament texts, Paul's interpretation of Exodus emerges as part of a wider commentary practice that Cover terms "secondary-level exegesis." This study also provides new analysis of the way ancient authors, including Paul, interwove commentary forms and epistolary rhetoric and offers a reconstruction of the context of Paul's conflict with rival apostles in Corinth. At root was the legacy of Moses and of the Pentateuch itself, how the scriptures ought to be read, and how Platonizing theological and anthropological traditions might be interwoven with Paul's messianic gospel.
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Part One:Paul’s Exegesis of Exodus 34 in Light of the Undisputed Epistles
1.Introduction
1.1The Enigma of Pauline Exegesis
Paul’s sustained exegesis of Exodus 34 in 2 Cor 3:7–18, which leaps unexpectedly from the epistle like an interpretive bolt from the blue, has proved a perennial riddle and resource for its interpreters, modern and ancient. Set as an epideictic showpiece at the conciliatory heart of Paul’s least rhetorically unified Hauptbrief, the passage has been mined as evidence for the context in which the Corinthian correspondence was written and has been viewed by Paul’s earliest patristic exegetes onward as the key to the Apostle’s scriptural hermeneutics.1
The chief enigma, however, posed by Paul’s exegesis in 2 Corinthians is simply what to call it. Pursuing this question a little here will provide a felicitous way of introducing the aims of this project. If one searches, first, for an “emic” description, the term which most readily suggests itself is probably “midrash.”2 One can hardly open a study of Paul’s use of scripture without finding this category at least mentioned,3 and in part for good reason. One of the major advances in Pauline scholarship of the last century—especially in the work of Albert Schweitzer, W. D. Davies, E. P. Sanders, James Dunn, N. T. Wright, Daniel Boyarin, Daniel R. Schwartz, and Paula Fredriksen—has been to recognize (again) the Jewishness of Paul’s thought in the letters, including his interpretation of scripture.4 The term midrash seems doubly appropriate in Paul’s case as a shorthand moniker, since it reinforces the Palestinian, Pharisaic, and Semitic inflections of Paul’s otherwise Greek exegesis (Phil 3:5) and highlights its continuity with the apocalyptic Essene commentaries discovered at Qumran.5
Despite these apparent gains, however, there are also some serious drawbacks to using the term. The most obvious is the relative paucity of this root in the vocabulary of Second Temple Jewish exegetes and its complete absence in Paul’s letters.6 Relatedly, and of even greater importance, “midrash” emerges in post-70 rabbinic Judaism as a technical term at the center of tannaitic and amoraic discourse and identity, which is hotly debated among contemporary scholars of early Judaism.7 Given the risk that using the term “midrash” will create an anachronistic analogy with later rabbinic forms and methods, I have opted not to use it as primary descriptor of Paul’s exegesis in this study.8
If “Paul’s midrash” will not work, then what might? Again, looking to “emic” terms, “Paul’s allegory” presents itself as another prominent contender. The verb cognate with
does appear in Paul’s letters (Gal 4:24)—though not in 2 Corinthians—and thus “allegory,” broadly defined as embracing both its Platonizing and typological poles, might do well in this instance.9 Despite its attractiveness, however, “allegory” possesses several of the same drawbacks as “midrash.” Not only does calling Paul’s exegesis of Exodus in 2 Corinthians an “allegory” run the risk of aligning it with later patristic developments of this method, it may also suggest a uniquely Greek and Platonizing method undergirding Paul’s exegesis—on analogy with Philo’s contemporaneous use of allegory. It may also do too much to homogenize Paul’s “method” in Galatians and the Corinthian Correspondence (on this, see below). While it will be a major aim of this study to lift up several important connections between Paul and Alexandrian biblical exegesis, to call Paul’s method at the outset “allegory” presupposes this conclusion and may suggest a greater degree of affinity between Paul’s exegesis and Philo’s than I actually intend to endorse.
“Paul’s midrash” and “Paul’s allegory” both suffer from an additional weakness: that midrash and allegory in the Second Temple period both describe primarily an interpretive stance, attitude, end, compositional technique, or hermeneutical lens (viz. allegoresis); and only secondarily, a literary form.10 Part of the project of describing 2 Cor 3:7–18, and Paul’s exegesis more broadly, however, surely involves the question not only of method but also of form, of Paul’s rhetorical use and redactional integration of scriptural exegesis within an epistolary context.
Viewed from this angle, does “Paul’s commentary” work any better as a description? Insofar as it does not presuppose a method and highlights the interpretive character of the pericope, one can answer in the affirmative. “Commentary” moreover functions more easily as an “etic” term, while also matching several “emic” descriptions, including
(textual commentary),
(thematic exegetical treatise), the homiletic
(word of exhortation), and of course, the Latin commentanus/-um.11 The obvious disadvantage of speaking of Pauline “commentary,” however, is that his exegesis occurs in none of these forms, but in a Greco-Roman letter. “Commentary” might also run the risk of suggesting too great an affinity with modern exegetical commentaries.
Rather than describing Paul’s exegesis primarily with one of these foregoing terms, it seems better to say, as Hans Dieter Betz suggested to me in personal communication,12 that the form and method of Paul’s epistolary exegesis remains “unknown” at the present time. Indeed, the “unknown” aspects of Paul’s exegetical methods and forms provide the primary raison d’être of this current project. On these ground, I prefer to use a relatively neutral description, “Paul’s exegesis,” to describe Paul’s “use” of scripture in 2 Cor 3:7–18. It will be the aim of this study to reposition Paul’s exegesis, formally, in light of what we know about Greco-Roman and Jewish commentary genres in the first century and, methodologically, along the spectrum of allegorical, dialectical, rhetorical, and prophetic reading strategies of Second Temple Jewish exegesis, bracketed by the two extreme poles of Alexandria and Qumran.
In approaching this task through the particular lens of 2 Cor 3:7–18, such an important and oftinterpreted passage of the New Testament, I am aware of standing upon the shoulders of giants. The contribution of this study can be viewed from at least three different angles, with decreasing degrees of penetration: I will ask, first, how Paul’s exegetical practices fit within the landscape of the philosophical and scriptural commentary traditions in the first century and what this tells us about Paul’s advanced Jewish education; second, I will ask what Paul’s exegesis tells us about the theological and scriptural dynamics animating the ministerial rivalry in the Corinthian correspondence; and third, I will ask what this means for Paul’s scriptural hermeneutics.
Because my primary focus is historical, I will introduce Paul’s exegesis in this chapter primarily by recounting the way historians have viewed the passage, with regard to the argument of 2 Corinthians and Paul’s Jewish education (angles one and two). I will then suggest a new way forward, provide an overview of the current project, and state the potential literary and hermeneutical contributions of such an endeavor.
1.1.1Pauline Exegesis in the Corinthian Correspondence: The Search for Origins
Since at least the second quarter of the twentieth century, scholars have noted ...
Table of contents
Cover
Halftitle
Front Page1
Title Page
Copyright Page
Front Page2
Preface
Contents
Part One: Paul’s Exegesis of Exodus 34 in Light of the Undisputed Epistles
Part Two: Secondary-Level Exegesis in Hellenistic Commentaries, Homilies, and Other Exegetical Writings
Part Three: Lifting the Veil: The Rhetorical Function and Theological Purpose of Paul’s Exegesis of Exodus
