Suppose my church has a meeting in which we go through selection criteria for a new pastor. And suppose I get up and say, “You know what? You people are saying that you want Pontius Pilate to be your next pastor. He would fit these criteria perfectly.”
The socio-historical exegete would read about this and wonder what people in my church meant when they said that they wanted Pontius Pilate to be their next pastor. An investigation would ensue, in which it would be revealed that in certain respects Pontius Pilate was actually a fairly effective leader. The study would then conclude that when people at my church were saying they wanted Pontius Pilate to be their next pastor, they were appealing to his good leadership qualities, rather than his Messiah-killing tendencies.
The problem is that, in the church-meeting scenario, people at my church were never actually saying that they wanted Pilate to be their pastor – this was simply my cunning pastoral rhetoric. So why can’t we treat Paul’s letters with the same sensitivity? 1 Corinthians is not a clear window into Corinthian church life; it’s the creative letter of a cunning preacher. So understanding first century hairstyles and views of the afterlife will not necessarily be the key to understanding his letter.
Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s extremely useful to gain a knowledge of the places and histories and practices and artefacts associated with Corinth, Rome, Thessalonica, etc… but I don’t think this knowledge will exhaust the meaning of Paul’s writings.
[...] and Even and the religion of Battlestar Galactica (on the latter see also this additional post). Matthew Malcolm could have illustrated his point by talking about church members wanting Gaius Balta…. There will be a conference on the Christian [...]
[...] example, my summary posts of 2011 SBL conferences here and here. See also Matt Malcolm’s recent post at cryptotheology for a juxtaposition of the social-historical and the [...]
[...] Why “pastoral rhetoric” trumps socio-historical investigation [...]