Malachi151

I've looked for discussion on this as an interpolation, but haven't found much. Is there any scholarly debate on this as an interpolation?

Newton's Cat

Dunno about that - but I Corinthians 14, 33-35 (starting from "As in all the churches of the saints ...) is obviously an interpolation, followed by a single verse interpolated by a different hand (which seems to be comment on verses 33-35). The reference to women in these verses is completely out of context. Someone with a negative image of women seems to have gone through the text of Corinthians interpolating stuff hostile to their gender.

According to this guy (elsewhere in Corinthians) women who uncover their heads in church should have their hair shaved off!

(Picture a bunch of peace-loving Christian males jumping on some poor female who hasn't covered her head in church - out come the shears, and snip snip snip)

Try reading verses 33-35 in a "commanding" voice, with overtones of hostility towards women.

Verse 33 begins:

For God is not the author of confusion but of peace .... there then follows an attack on women (the "authors of confusion" in the mindset of whoever made the insertions?) .... verse 37 was the original continuation - and follows the context of the verses prior to verse 33

Perhaps verse 36 was inserted by a woman? (or by a man at the instigation of a woman?)

robto

See my post in the Didache thread.

Toto

XTalk post from robto lists reasons for considering this an interpolation; there are some replies.

(eta: David Hindley makes some interesting points.)

Toto

Mass and the Lord's Supper (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Hans Lietzmann, Robert Douglas Richardson is pretty pricey. Try a library.

Ben C Smith

In The Birth of Christianity, Crossan makes some pretty good points about this Pauline passage based on the work done by Gerd Theissen a couple of decades before.

We see in 1 Corinthians 11.21 that the Corinthian problem involves some participants in the rite eating their own supper first or before, and some getting drunk while others go hungry. The question is: First compared to what? Or before what?

It appears that some of the Corinthians (Crossan calls them the haves, the opposite of those who have nothing in 11.22) are eating their own eucharistic meal (and it was just that, a full meal) before the others (Crossan calls them the have-nots) could participate. The haves probably did not do manual labor and were thus able to congregate before the have-nots were free to leave their day jobs. This impression is confirmed in 11.33 in which Paul tells the Corinthians to wait for each other.

IOW, the problem is that the haves are eating a full nonshared meal before everybody is even present, and then the have-nots arriving later are left with little or nothing (11.21), yet this little or nothing is still being called the supper of the Lord, a notion which Paul corrects in 11.20 (that is not the supper, he says).

In light of this problem, 11.23-25 makes perfect sense:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was delivered up, took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and said: This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.

Paul is saying that a real eucharistic meal involves the entire meal; it is both the bread during supper and the cup after supper; it is not, as the Corinthians would have it, merely the bits and pieces left over after the feast. For the haves to eat a full meal before the have-nots arrive is to celebrate what should have been the real supper alone, and that is not really the supper of the Lord at all; one may as well eat at home before coming to the meeting (11.34).

This does not absolutely prove that 1 Corinthians 11.23-25 is original to the text, but I think it creates a strong presumption in its favor. The alternative would be to suppose either that the interpolator saw exactly what Paul was trying to do and had exactly the tradition on hand to reinforce it or that the interpolator got lucky and fortunately stuck something resembling the Lucan version into this passage instead of something resembling the Matthean, Marcan, or Didache versions (all of which lack the explicit distinction between what comes during and what comes after supper).

Ben.

JoeWallack

JW:
Ben, assuming this is Original (as you do) what do you think was Paul's Source here? His Imagination or what he learned from men?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

yalla

Macoby in "Mythmaker" says [referring to this Pauline eucharist] "...Paul says explicitly that he did not have them from from any source but personal revelation". Which is why, earlier, Macoby has stated that "Paul himself was the inventor and creator of the Eucharist".
Therefore Paul's writings were the source for the gospels re the eucharist.

Malachi151

I would have no problem considering that "Luke" copied from Paul. This seems quite likely to me, as "Luke" was doing research and using many sources, and he wrote a lot about Paul.

Malachi151

Yeah, but this is probably not true, and I think that Didache comes before Paul. I think that perhaps Paul is the originator of this particular variant.

However, the arguments for interpolation aren't that easily dismissed, but as of now I'd come down in favor of authentic, but still with skepticism and uncertainty. I'd say its like 60% chance of authentic, 40% interpolation.