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clubs. The pagan feast meant a brotherhood or special bond of union; but the two kinds of brotherhood were incompatible. A Christian who, out of complaisance, attends an idol feast, is really entering a hostile brother-hood.

(c) Digression on Forbearance O'-IO"). — St. Paul aaya that he habitually oonsidera the rights of others and does not press his own rights as an Apostle to the_ full; he implies that the Corinthians should not press their liberty so as to scandalize others. This passage shows how little as yet the Judaizers had been at work in Corinth. St. Paul announces his position as an Apostle, and the right of the Christian minister to Uveof the gospel, but he will not use his rights to the full (9'8 RV). He teaches self-denial and earnestness from the example of the Isthmian games i^"^ ■ ) , and shows that the Israelites, in spite of all their privileges, fell from lack of this self -discipline. It is noteworthy that he speaks of 'our fathers' (10'). Perhaps, havingaddressed the Gentiles in particular in ch. 9, he now turns to the Jewish section of the Corinthian Church: he refers to a Rabbinical legend in 10*. Or he may be considering the whole Church as being the spiritual descendants of Israel.

8. ChristianWorship (112-14").— (a) Yeaing of Women. — In reply (as it seems) to another question, St. Paul says that it is the Christian custom for men 'praying or prophesying' to have their heads uncovered, but for women to have theirs covered. This apparently trivial matter is an instance of the application of Christian principles to Christian ceremonial. The Jews of both sexes prayed with head covered and with a veil before the face (cf. 2 Co 3"s-); therefore St. Paul's injunction does not follow Jewish custom. It is based on the subordination of the woman to the man, and is illus-trated by the existence of regulated ranks among the angels; for this seems to be the meaning of ll'".

(6) The Eucharist — The Corinthians joined together in a social meal — somewhat later called an Agape or Love- feast — and the Eucharist, probably in imitation both of the Last Supper and of the Jewish and heathen meals taken in common. To this combination the name 'Lord's Supper' (here only in NT) is given. But the party-spirit, already spoken of, showed itself in this custom; the Corinthians did not eat the Lord's supper, but their own, because of their factions. St. Paul therefore gives the narrative of our Lord's Institution as he himself had received it, strongly condemns those who make an unworthy communion as ' guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord,' and inculcates prep-aration by self-probation.

It is chiefly thispassage that has led some to think that the writer of the Kpistle is quoting the Synoptic Gospels (see below, § 10) ; the Lukan account, as we have it in our Bibles, is very like the Pauline. But the deduction is very improbable. Even if our Lukan text is right, the result is only what we should have expected, that the companion of St. Paul has taken his master's form of the narrative, which he would doubtless have frequently heard him use liturgically, and has incorporated it in his Gospel. As a matter of fact, however, it is not improbable that the Lukan form was really much shorter than the Pauline, and that some early scribe has lengthened it to make it fit in with 1 Co 11™- (Westcott-Hort, NT in Greek, ii. Append, p. 64).

(c) Spiritual Gifts (chs, 12-14). — The public manifes-tation of the presence of the Spirit known as ' speaking with tongues' (see art. Tongues [Gift of]), seems to have been very common at Corinth. After the magnif-icent digression of ch. 13, which shows that of all spiritual gilts love is the greatest, that it alone is eternal, that without it all other gifts are useless, St. Paul applies the principle that spiritual gifts are means to an end, not an end in themselves; and he therefore upholds 'prophecy' (i.e., in this connexion, the inter-pretation of Scripture and of Christian doctrine) as superior to speaking with tongues, because it edifies all present. He says, further, that women are to keep silence (i.e. not to prophesy?) in the public assemblies (14M'-, cf. 1 Ti 212). In lis (cf. Ac 21') some women are said to have had the gift of prophecy; so that we must understand that they were allowed to exercise it only among women, or in their own households. But

CORINTHIANS, FIRST EPISTLE TO

possibly the Apostle has chiefly in his mind questions asked by women in the pubUc assemblies (cf. 14?^).

9. The Resurrection of the Body (ch. is).— This, the only doctrinal chapter of the Epistle, contains also the earliest evidence for our Lord's resurrection. Appar-ently the Gentile converts at Corinth felt a great difSculty in accepting the doctrine of the resurrection of the body; it appeared to them too material a doctrine to be true (ISi", cf. 2 Ti 2^'). St. Paul replies that Christ has risen, as many still alive can testify, and that there-fore the dead will rise. For his treatment of the subject see art. Paul the Apostle, iii. 10. The Corinthian scepticism does not seem to have died out at the end of the century, for Clement of Rome, writing to Corinth, strongly emphasizes the doctrine (Cor. 24f.).

St. Paul concludes the Epistle with directions about the regular collecting of alms for the poor Christians of Judsea, and with personal notices and salutations.

10. Date and genuineness of the Epistle. —It is referred to as St. Paul's by Clement of Rome, c. a.d. 95 (jOor. 47), who speaks of the parties of Paul, Cephas, and ApoUos, but omits the Christ-party (see above § 3); we cannot infer from his phrase 'the Epistle of the blessed Paul' that he knew only one Epistle to the Corinthians, as early usage shows (Lightfoot, Clement, ii. 143). There are other clear allusions in Clement. Ignatius (Eph. 18f.) refers to 1 Co I™- ="■ 41= and probably 2«; Polycarp (§11) quotes 1 Co 6* as Paul's; references are found in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, in Justin Martyr, and in the Epistle to Diognetus; while Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian at the end of the 2nd cent, quote the Epistle fully. Of the 2nd cent, heretics the Ophites and Basilides certainly knew it. Internal evidence fully bears out the external; no Epistle shows more clearly the mark of originality ; and the undesigned coincidences between it and Acts, which Paley draws out, point in the same direction. It is in fact one of the four ' generally accepted ' Epistles of St. Paul. See art. Paul the Apostle, i. 2, for the general arguments adduced against their genuineness. Against that of our Epistle in particular it has been alleged that it is dependent on Romans — thus, 4« (' the things which are written') is said to be a quotation of Ro 12^, surely a most fanciful idea — and on the Synoptic Gospels, especially in two particulars, the account of the Last Supper (see § 8 (6) above) , and that of the Resurrec-tion appearances of our Lord (15*»). The real problem of the latter passage, however (as Goudge remarks, p. xxvii.), is not to account for the extent to which it runs parallel with the Gospels, but to explain why it does not run more nearly parallel with them. Few will be convinced by a criticism which practically assumes that a Christian writer of the 1st cent, could only know the facts of our Lord's earthly life from our Gospels. We may then take the genuineness of the Epistle as being unassailable.

If so, what is its date? Relatively to the rest of the Pauline chronology, it may be approximately fixed. In the year of his arrest at Jerusalem, St. Paul left Corinth in the early spring, after spending three months there (Ac 20'- '). He must therefore have arrived there in late autumn or early winter. This seems to have been the visit to Corinth promised in 2 Co 13', which was the third visit. Two visits in all must have therefore preceded 2 Cor. (some think also 1 Cor.), and in any case an interval of some months between the two Epistles must be allowed for. In 1 Co 16« the Apostle had announced his intention of wintering in Corinth, and it is possible that the visit of Ac 20' is the fulfilment of this intention, though St. Paul certainly did not carry out all his plans at this time (2 Co I'"- "). If so, 1 Cor. would have been written from Ephesus in the spring of the year before St. Paul's arrest at Jerusalem.

This date is favoured by the allusion of 5"-, which suggests to many commentatora that the Easter festival was being, or about to be, celebrated when St. Paul wrote. It is a

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