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Anthropological Crisis and Solution in the Hodayot and 1 Corinthians 15*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2016

Jason Maston
Jason Maston*
Affiliation:
Houston Baptist University, 7502 Fondren Rd, Houston, TX 77074, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article describes how the writers of the Hodayot understand Gen 2.7 as describing an anthropological crisis: the human is formed from the dust and wasting away. Drawing on Ezekiel 37, the hymnists maintain that this crisis is overcome by God imparting his Spirit. This understanding of Gen 2.7 is used to illuminate Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul likewise reads Gen 2.7 as a description of an anthropological problem, and he finds the solution in Ezekiel 37. Yet, he introduces his own twist so that Gen 2.7 comes to express both the crisis and the solution.

Keywords

anthropologybodydeatheschatologyhermeneuticsScripture
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 62 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 533 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

The research for this study was supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant.

References

1 See the summary in Thiselton, A., The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) 1276–81Google Scholar.

2 See recently Nordgaard, S., ‘Paul's Appropriation of Philo's Theory of “Two Men” in 1 Corinthians 15.45–49’, NTS 57 (2011) 348–65Google Scholar. For important earlier studies, see Horsley, R. A., ‘Pneumatikos vs. Psychikos: Distinctions of Spiritual Status Among the Corinthians’, HTR 69 (1976) 269–88Google Scholar; Wedderburn, A. J. M., ‘Philo's Heavenly Man’, NovT 15 (1973) 301–26Google Scholar.

3 Worthington, J. D., Creation in Paul and Philo: The Beginning and Before (WUNT ii/317; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 162–3, 166–72Google Scholar; cf. Hultgren, S. J., ‘The Origin of Paul's Doctrine of the Two Adams in 1 Corinthians 15.45–49’, JSNT 25 (2003) 345–50Google Scholar.

4 Worthington, Creation, 76–7, 184–5, 203–10.

5 Another common theory suggests Gnosticism as the background. This theory has been thoroughly discredited. See for an assessment Hultgren, ‘Origin’, 357–9.

6 Holm-Nielsen, S., Hodayot: Psalms from Qumran (ATDan; Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget i Aarhus, 1960) 312 Google Scholar.

7 Yates, J. W., The Spirit and Creation in Paul (WUNT ii/251; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 72–82 Google Scholar; Maston, J., Divine and Human Agency in Second Temple Judaism and Paul: A Comparative Study (WUNT ii/297; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) 80–94 Google Scholar.

8 The authorship of the Hymns remains debated. For the purposes of this study, the division between ‘community hymns’ and ‘teacher hymns’ will not be factored in.

9 The column and line numbers all come from the DJD volume: Stegemann, H. and Schuller, E. M., Qumran Cave 1.iii: 1QHodayota with Incorporation of 1QHodayotb and 4QHodayota-f (DJD xl; Oxford: Clarendon, 2009)Google Scholar. I have used throughout Carol A. Newsom's translation from DJD, with occasional modifications.

10 Contra Fletcher-Louis, C. H. T., All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 42; Leiden: Brill, 2002) 107–8Google Scholar, who, citing Jub 3.8–14, argues that the Qumranites did not view the Adam of Gen 2.7 as having entered into Eden. The dusty Adam, he contends, existed prior to entering a state of glory in Eden. There is no indication, though, that the hymnists held such a view of Adam.

11 See Maston, Divine and Human Agency, 80–94; and N. A. Meyer, ‘Adam's Dust and Adam's Glory: Rethinking Anthropogony and Theology in the Hodayot and the Letters of Paul’ (PhD Thesis, McMaster University, 2013), 21–116.

12 עפר appears forty-seven times, חמר fourteen times, and the two expressions eighteen times.

13 For a discussion of these expressions, see Maston, Divine and Human Agency, 84–5.

14 Contrast Ps 8.4, which may be in the background of this hymn, and the ones discussed in the following pages.

15 On the grammar of this text, see Maston, Divine and Human Agency, 83.

16 The phrase ‘pinched off c[lay]’ probably comes from Job 33.6.

17 Cf. Job 15.14, which belongs within a group of texts reflecting on the place of humanity with creation.

18 See Job 17.16; 20.11; 21.26; 34.15; Ps 7.6 [Eng 5]; 22.15 [16], 30 [29]; 104.29; Qoh 3.20; 12.7.

19 See also 1QHa 9 and 12.30–2 for other statements drawing on Gen 2.7 to describe the human.

20 Hughes, J. A., Scriptural Allusions and Exegesis in the Hodayot (STDJ 59; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 46 Google Scholar.

21 For the links with Genesis, see nn. 6 and 7 above.

22 Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 24–5 n. 43.

23 Nitzan, B., Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry (STDJ 12; Leiden: Brill, 1993) 337 Google Scholar.

24 Yates, Spirit, 79; cf. Bertone, J. A., ‘The Law of the Spirit’: Experience of the Spirit and Displacement of the Law in Romans 8:1–16 (SiBL 86; New York: Peter Lang, 2005) 101–6Google Scholar.

25 Yates, Spirit, 76–8.

26 Yates, Spirit, 76.

27 Falk, D., ‘Psalms and Prayers’, Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. i: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (ed. Carson, D. A., O'Brien, P. T. and Seifrid, M. A.; WUNT ii/140; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001) 31 Google Scholar.

28 Cf. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam, 106–7. For the connections between column 16 and Genesis 2–3, see Yates, Spirit, 72–5.

29 There is also debate about whether the Hodayot has a doctrine of resurrection. For a recent discussion, see J. J. Collins, ‘The Essenes and the Afterlife’ and Brooke, G. J., ‘The Structure of 1QHa xii 5–xiii 4 and the Meaning of Resurrection’, both in From 4QMMT to Resurrection: Melanges Qumraniens en hommage à Émile Puech (ed. Martínez, F. García, Steudeland, A. and Tigchelaar, E.; STDJ 61; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 15–33 Google Scholar and 35–53, respectively.

30 Collins, J. J., ‘The Angelic Life’, Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity (ed. Seim, T. K. and Økland, J.; Ekstasis 1; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009) 309 Google Scholar.

31 The link between Gen 2.7 and Ezek 37.1–14 is also taken up in some later rabbinic texts (e.g. Gen. Rab. 14.5–8). See Hultgren, ‘Origin’, 359–66; Novakovic, L., Raised from the Dead according to Scripture: The Role of the Old Testament in the Early Christian Interpretations of Jesus’ Resurrection (JCTCRSS 12; London: Bloomsbury, 2012) 164–6Google Scholar; Kister, M., ‘“First Adam” and “Second Adam” in 1 Cor 15:45–49 in the Light of Midrashic Exegesis and Hebrew Usage’, New Testament and Rabbinic Literature (ed. Bieringer, R. et al. ; JSJSup 136; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 351–65Google Scholar.

32 E.g. Ciampa, R. E. and Rosner, B. S., The First Letter to the Corinthians (PNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) 764 Google Scholar; Schnabel, E. J., Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (HTA; Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 2010 2) 920 Google Scholar; Meyer, ‘Adam's Dust’, 199.

33 Cf. Lindemann, A., Der erste Korintherbrief (HNT 9/1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000) 343–4Google Scholar; Martini, J. Q., ‘An Examination of Paul's Apocalyptic Narrative in First Corinthians 15:20–28’, CTR 8 (2011) 61 Google Scholar.

34 Contra Engberg-Pedersen, T., Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Cf. Asher, J. R., Polarity and Change in 1 Corinthians 15: A Study of Metaphysics, Rhetoric, and Resurrection (HUT 42; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000) 80 Google Scholar.

36 Lincoln, A. T., Paradise Now and Not Yet: Studies in the Role of the Heavenly Dimension in Paul's Thought with Special Reference to his Eschatology (SNTSMS 43; Cambridge: CUP, 1981) 39 Google Scholar; Fee, G. D., The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987) 782–3Google Scholar.

37 Collins, R. F., First Corinthians (SP 7; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999) 563–4Google Scholar; Fitzmyer, J. A., First Corinthians (AYB 32; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) 589 Google Scholar.

38 Ciampa and Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, 805–6. Worthington (Creation, 128) suggests that v. 40 is a reference to day 2 of creation (Gen 1.6–10).

39 See Worthington, Creation, 129–31; Barclay, J. M. G., ‘Stoic Physics and the Christ-event: A Review of Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)’, JSNT 33 (2011) 411 Google Scholar. Contra Martin, D. B., The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) 126 Google Scholar; Asher, Polarity and Change, 102–6; Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology, 28. If the Corinthians held a strong polarity between the earthly and the heavenly, as Asher contends, then Paul does not accommodate their view, again as Asher claims, but fundamentally rejects it. Asher's reading is far better at explaining what the Corinthians may have believed than what Paul believed. For accounts similar to Asher, see Bonneau, N., ‘The Logic of Paul's Argument on the Resurrection Body in 1 Cor 15:35–44a’, ScEs 45 (1993) 79–92 Google Scholar; Brodeur, S., The Holy Spirit's Agency in the Resurrection of the Dead: An Exegetico-Theological Study of 1 Corinthians 15,44b–49 and Romans 8,9–13 (TG.T 14; Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1996) 34–80 Google Scholar.

40 The citation of Gen 2.7 here functions in the same manner as the citation of Hab 2.4 in Rom 1.17. See Watson, F., Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016 2) 38–47 Google Scholar. Cf. Yates, Spirit, 95–6.

41 Yates, Spirit, 96: ‘verse 45 may be said to function as a hermeneutical lynchpin for the chapter’.

42 Paul has not yet moved to dealing with what type of body the rest of humanity bears. This comes only in vv. 48–9, where he employs the language of Gen 1.27 and 5.3 to describe humanity in the image of the first and second Adams. B. L. Gladd's attempt to explain the phrase πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν in 1 Cor 15.45 through the lens of Gen 5.3 falters on this account (‘The Last Adam as the “Life-Giving Spirit” Revisited: A Possible Old Testament Background of One of Paul's Most Perplexing Phrases’, WTJ 71 (2009) 297–309 Google Scholar).

43 To be clear, I am not claiming that Paul is dependent on the Hodayot, but rather that the interpretation seen in the Hodayot helps shed light on Paul's.

44 Jeremias, J., ‘“Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God”’, NTS 2 (1956) 153 Google Scholar. See Johnson, A., ‘On Removing a Trump Card: Flesh and Blood and the Reign of God’, BBR 13 (2003) 175–92Google Scholar, for a fuller discussion of the texts and this verse.

45 E.g. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 788–9; Wolff, C., Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (TNNT 7; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1996) 409 Google Scholar; Brodeur, The Holy Spirit's Agency, 86; Hultgren, ‘Origin’, 361; Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology, 29.

46 Cf. Novakovic, Raised from the Dead, 163.

47 Contra Kister, ‘First Adam’, 354.

48 See particularly Novakovic, Raised from the Dead, 165; cf. Yates, Spirit, 102.

49 Martin, The Corinthian Body, 126.

50 Asher, Polarity and Change, 99–145; Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology, 28–30. There are some important differences between, on the one hand, Martin and, on the other, Asher and Engberg-Pedersen, not least regarding the nature of the Corinthian problem with the body and the influences on Paul. However, these differences do not affect much in terms of their understanding of the resurrection body.

51 For a thorough response to the view of Martin and others, see Rabens, V., The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul: Transformation and Empowering for Religious-Ethical Life (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013 2) 86–96 Google Scholar.

52 This corresponds also to how Paul uses the term in his other letters (Rom 1.11; 7.14; 15.27; Gal 6.1; cf. Eph 1.3; 5.19; 6.12; Col 1.9; 3.16).

53 See esp. Novakovic, Raised from the Dead, 164–5; cf. Collins, First Corinthians, 570.

54 Paul's hermeneutical method here parallels how Hab 2.4 influences his reading of the Torah. See Watson, Hermeneutics of Faith.