Paul’s Reception of the Psalms

I’ll be attending this conference, which explores the impact of the Psalms on Western Civilisation.  I’m just putting the finishing touches on a paper that I’ll be presenting there: “The Rhetoric of the Psalms and the Imagination of the Apostle”.  It is, of course, about 1 Corinthians.  Here’s a summary:

Drawing on the dual-motif of the condemned boaster and the vindicated sufferer, this letter summons the believers of Corinth into the narrative of Christ’s own passion.  They are called to give up their boastful, clamouring divisions, and inhabit Christ’s death in the present, looking ahead to sharing in his vindication in the future. 

Paul has imaginatively evaluated the various situations in Corinth as having a common theological significance, and so has allowed this simple rhetorical pattern of reversal – found in Jewish literature and recited in the Psalms – to give theological shape to his response.