jections to the sophistic movement remained valid in Philo's day, and provided him with a bulwark against it and its proponents. A clear picture of the debating and declaiming activities of the sophists emerges from various places in Philo's corpus. In addition there is a unique first-century verbatim account of the philosophical defence of the sophistic lifestyle with its lack of practical interest in the traditional teaching specialisation of the sophists, namely civic virtues.4 Dio's Alexandrian oration reveals the orators and sophists at work in Alexandrian politeia, usurping what he considers the traditional role of the philosophers.
Epictetus' discussion with a student of rhetoric from Corinth reveals the opportunities in store in politeia for a successful orator in that city and also helps illuminate the concept of 'bodily presence' used in 2 Corinthians 10.10. The same author also discusses the activities of sophists, especially declamations. Epictetus has long been neglected in secondary literature on rhetoric in the first and early second century.5 However, information from his corpus enhances our understanding of the sophistic tradition, supplementing the evidence of Dio Chrysostom and Plutarch. The latter recorded the activities of the sophists at the Isthmian Games, particularly the highly competitive spirit engendered between themselves and among their pupils. Plutarch also confirms their social status and exalted position in the life of Corinth.
From the sophistic side, Favorinus and Herodes Atticus reveal the wealth of praise potentially available to foreign sophists in Corinth. They also testify to the honours bestowed by 'the Council and the People' upon orators who won their favour and, in the case of the former, how fickle the Corinthians could be in withdrawing it and overthrowing his statue.
The Pauline letters to Corinth also contain information which is not found elsewhere on the first-century sophistic movement. It is possible to trace the impact of the sophistic movement on a newly emerged gathering, ἡ ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ, with the initial anti-sophistic coming of Paul, the subse-
quent relationship of converts with himself and other teachers wrongly conceptualised as that of a disciple with his sophist. There is the apostle's evaluation of the sophistic tradition; the recruiting of teachers by the Corinthians who endorsed that tradition possibly because the powerful orator, Apollos, did not return as invited; the sophistic critique of Paul as rhetorician and debater by those teachers; and finally the denunciation by Paul of those who believed that such qualifications were an ideal or even a prerequisite for an adequate teaching ministry in Corinth.
With hindsight one might consider it almost inevitable that there would be sophistic inroads into the church's perception of preachers, given the role of teachers as public speakers in secular Corinth. Paul suggested to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3.1 that the problem was nascent even while he was with them. He did not underestimate it, adopting as he did a radical stance at the commencement of his ministry with a modus operandi which was consciously anti-sophistic. He aimed thereby to distance himself from any possible identification with that movement. Renouncing the use of 'the persuasive words of wisdom' in his preaching, trusting in God's power alone, and deciding to work with his own hands so as not to hinder that proclamation were the necessary steps to take in sophistic Corinth in Paul's estimate (1 Cor. 2.5 and ch. 9). That still did not prevent problems from taking root after he left, especially with the arrival of the rhetorically gifted Apollos. In fact, Apollos' and Paul's difficult decision would provide the ammunition used against the latter, as our study of 2 Corinthians 10-13 has shown.
As contemporaries, Philo and Paul provide important and unexpected sources of information on the sophistic movement in the first century. In fact, they fill a crucial gap in our understanding of the first sixty years of the movement in the East, for we have no other extensive sources in this period in the East.6
G. W. Bowersock's conclusion that 'The Second (or New) Sophistic is a
culmination, not a sudden burst or fad' finds confirmatory evidence from both Alexandria and Corinth.7 The Second Sophistic was in bud at the beginning of the first century A.D. and, as far as the evidence exists, it came to bloom with at least two major spurts in its growth. While it remains difficult to determine precisely why it gained such impetus, we can point to the increased financial incentives for forensic orators during the reign of Claudius. The disruption of relationships between the philosophers and certain emperors had the effect of favouring orators and sophists during Vespasian's day which resulted in the latter group being exempted from taxes and liturgies. They were exploited to the full, as the rescript of Domitian shows.
What can be said with certainty is that in Alexandria and Corinth there was a high-profile sophistic movement in the first century which differed little if at all from the later description of it by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists. That must cause scholars to ponder again the beginning and growth of that very powerful movement in the early empire which came to be designated as the 'Second Sophistic'. Philostratus, born ca. A.D. 170, records that Nicetes in Nero's Principate broke new ground in his oratory, which he seems to suggest epitomised the nature of the Second Sophistic and thus heralded its 'modern' beginning in the first century.8 However, Philo's evidence points
to an even earlier date.
Philo's and Paul's sophistic opponents
Among Philo's opponents were the Alexandrian sophists, to whom he referred on numerous occasions.9 It has also been shown that 1 Corinthians deals with the inroads of the sophistic tradition in the church and 2 Corinthians 10-13 with the impact of sophistic Jewish-Christian teachers. The common view that the issues raised by opponents in 1 Corinthians differed from those in 2 Corinthians 10-13 needs revision.10 There were those in 1 Corinthians 3.18 who were 'the wise of the present age' (οἱ σοφοὶ ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ). They were the same as those whom Paul described in 1 Corinthians
7Greek Sophists, p. 9.
8Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, 511-12.
9He used the term 'sophist' in its technical sense; see ch. 3. Another group within the Jewish community with whom he was at variance were the 'literaiists'. See M. J. Shroyer, 'Alexandrian Jewish Literaiists', JBL 55 (1936), 261-84.
10E.g., C. K. Barrett, 'Paul's Opponents in 2 Corinthians', in Essays on Paul (London: SCM Press, 1982), ch. 4. For a survey of opinion on the 'false apostles' see R. P. Martin, 2 Corinthians (Waco: Word, 1986), pp. 336-41.
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4.19 as being 'puffed up' because he could not return immediately. Paul notes that they were eloquent but lacked Christian δύναμις. There also appears to be a link between these particular people and those invited as alternative ἄνδρες λόγιοι after the refusal of Apollos to return to Corinth, and the subsequent problems which these sophistic teachers of 2 Corinthians created for the church's founding apostle.
In this book the nature of the divisions has been traced to a sophistic and not a theological source. This means that the conclusions of J. Munck on 1 Corinthians 1-4 were essentially correct. His primary concern in 'The Church without Factions' was, however, to refute the long-standing influential conclusions of F. C. Baur's Pauline/Petrine dichotomy which, according to Baur, manifested itself in the conflict situations in the Corinthian church.11 The aim here has been not only to document the evidence needed to substantiate Munck's sophistic thesis, but to seek to explain why Paul so vigorously opposed a sophistic model of church leadership.12
Whatever one may say of Paul's opponents in 2 Corinthians, the group must have been Jewish in origin but also well trained in Greek rhetoric. As Hellenophiles, they would have propounded the view that such elitist training was the ideal or even an essential prerequisite for the high teaching or preaching office of the church, especially in Gentile areas.13 A similar virus had infected Judaism so that Philo felt obliged to issue a warning and to attempt to cure those who had already succumbed to it. Philo indicates that there were fellow Jews who pursued paideia not for virtue's sake but 'with no higher motive than parading their superiority, or from desire of office under our rulers'.14 Both men were locked in what they deemed a religious struggle
11J. Munck, 'The Church without Factions', in Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (London: SCM Press, 1959).
12Ibid.
13The development of leadership in the Pauline churches, especially in Corinth, cannot be sufficiently dealt with by recourse to the Weber dichotomy of charismatic versus hierarchical leadership, without first giving due weight to the nature of the elitist leadership in secular society with its essential requirement of rhetorical training. For recent discussions which proceed along the sociological constructs without reference to this crucial social background, see B. Holmberg, Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles, English translation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), and A. Chappie, 'Local Leadership in the Pauline Churches: Theological and Social Factors in Its Development: A Study based on 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Philippians', Ph.D. dissertation, University of Durham (1984). Since these words were originally written, the gap has been made good by A. D. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth: A Socio-Historical and Exegetical Study of 1 Corinthians 1-6 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993).
14Legat. III.167.
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with the sophists and their traditions in the first century. The philosophers were therefore not alone in opposing the sophists.
Philo, Paul and rhetoric
Alexandre's work on Rhetorical Argumentation in Philo of Alexandria20 has provided a secure basis on which to evaluate his indebtedness to his rhetorical education, confirming what he himself said about it.21 Alexandre noted his role as head of the embassy of the Jews of Alexandria to Gaius which confirms his capability as a public orator, a role normally undertaken in the first century by sophists.22
Philo's facility in rhetoric is certainly reflected in his writings. After subjecting his corpus to a detailed and scholarly analysis, Alexandre concludes that he 'benefited from an excellent rhetorical education, and that he not only mastered this branch of knowledge but also used the most diverse structures of argumentation'.23 He also observes that 'In the logical argumentation of a thesis, as in the elaborate development of a theme, there is apparently no model or structure sanctioned by the rhetorical conventions that Philo did not make use of or strategically adapt to his literary project.
19For Paul's discussion of a similar context that determined his modus operandi in another city see pp. 150-55.
20Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998.
21A. Mendelson, Secular Education in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1982).
22E. L. Bowie, 'The Importance of the Sophists', Yale Classical Studies, 27 (1982), 29-59.
23Alexandre Jr., Rhetorical Argumentation in Philo of Alexandria, p. 248.
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The plurality of sources which inspired him as well as the variety of rhetorical structures he employed, the diversity of philosophical themes he argued, and his use of a wealth of dialectical or formal topics — all these linked him with the Aristotelian tradition in ancient rhetoric'.24 He represents one of the two groups who emerged from his type of education, not retreating into his world as a 'layman' but entering life (πολιτεία) in Alexandria. It should be noted that evidence that Philo's training was in Greek education can be found in the vast number of citations from ancient sources apart from the Old Testament.
In making a comparison of the writings of Philo with the letters of Paul, what can be said about Paul's education and his capacity to handle rhetorical forms and the like? The former remains something of an enigma. E. A. Judge has speculated, 'To have been brought up in Tarsus need not have committed Paul to a full rhetorical education, let alone a philosophical one, while being brought up in Jerusalem need not have excluded him from at least a general acquaintance with the Greek cultural tradition'.25 Johnson argues that Paul's education was in Tarsus, while van Unnik assembled linguistic evidence in support of his view that Jerusalem was the place of Paul's upbringing and education. 26 Tarsus was known a major centre for rhetorical schools, and it would not be incorrect to assume the inroads of Greek rhetoric in Jerusalem. Forbes, by way of a case study, sought to establish Paul's deployment of rhetorical skills. He concluded that Paul did possess them and argued that he had acquired them during his preaching career or secured them in his formal education in Greek paideia, 'at least at the level of the grammatici, or the rhetorical school'.27
In the discussion of Paul and his education the dual results of first-century education appear to have been overlooked. It is known that some who had secured an education in rhetoric at a tertiary level chose, for one reason or another, not to engage publicly in the art of rhetoric. As has been noted, the term 'layman' (which was Paul's self-definition) could be invoked
24Alexandre Jr., Rhetorical Argumentation in Philo of Alexandria, p. 249.
25E. A. Judge, 'St Paul and Classical Society', Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 15 (1972), 29, 'Half of Gamaliel's pupils are said to have been trained in the wisdom of the Greeks'. However, the reference is to a later rabbi, Gamaliel II.
26S. E. Johnson, 'Tarsus and the Apostle Paul', Lexington Theological Quarterly 15.4 (1980): 105-13; W. C. van Unnik, Tarsus or Jerusalem: The City of Paul's Youth, English translation (London: Epworth Press, 1962).
27C. Forbes, 'Comparison, Self-praise and Irony: Paul's Boasting and Conventions in Hellenistic Rhetoric', NTS 32 (1986), 24.
28See pp. 224-25
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for such.28 Morgan's work is particularly helpful at this point, for she has demonstrated that the written work of any person in the empire who received a formal education in Greek παιδεία did not necessarily require a commitment to the strictures of the rhetorical handbooks. In fact, there were those who chose to ignore them in their writing.29
First-century education should have had some impact on the style of letter-writing, even if the author intended to write in what is known in English as 'plain style'. Earlier generations of scholars have commented on Paul's Greek style. Farrar suggested that Paul taught rhetoric in Tarsus. 'He thinks in Greek and it is the venacular κοινή [Koine] of a brilliant and well-educated man in touch with the Greek culture of his time.'30
Deissmann takes a diametrically opposite position. He saw Paul as 'a non-literary man of the non-literary class in the Imperial Age, but prophet-like rising above his class and surveying the contemporary educated world with the consciousness of superior strength'. Deissman was keen to refute any suggestion that his written communications were 'epistles' and not letters. He defines an 'epistle' as 'an artistic literary form, a species of literature, just like the dialogue, the oration, or the drama. It has nothing in common with the letter except its form; apart from that one might venture the paradox that the epistle is the opposite of a real letter’. He later affirms: 'The letters of Paul are not literary; they are real letters, not epistles'.31 The judgement of these scholars must be tempered either by their ideological commitment or social class, although cognizance must be taken of Deissmann's great work as a philologist specialising in papyri.32 The distinction he seeks to make by defining the two terms 'epistle' and 'letter' is appropriate given that their contents were collections of letters connected with the Second Sophistic on the one hand and non-literary collections on the other.33 However, it is not supported semantically — Paul uses epistle (ἐπιστολή) in relation to his own letters and
29T. Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
30A. Farrar, Life and Work of St. Paul (London: Cassell, 1891), vol. I, p. 630.
31A. Diessmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recent Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, E.T. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978), pp. 229,234. 'Only the colour-blindness of pedantry could possibly regard this delightful little letter as a treatise "On the attitude of Christianity to slavery'", p. 234.
32Dean Farrar had a public school and an Oxbridge education. He commented before the assessment of the papyriological evidence of non-literary letters. Deissmann's comments on Paul's origins must be tempered by the fact that he regarded the social class from which all early Christians came, including Paul, as 'Proletariat' in keeping with his membership of the German Workers Party which he secured after assuming his NT chair in Berlin.
33See pp. 206-7. For non-literary collections of letters see, e.g., P.Oxy.
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also metaphorically.34 Rosenmeyer observes that Deissmann 'divides letter and epistle by intent of the author (private vs. public), style (artless vs. sophisticated), and occasion (ephemeral vs. permanent)', but she is critical of his division.35 If Deissmann is correct in his assessment, then 2 Corinthians 10.10 is not a comment on their rhetorical style.
More recently, M. Thrall in her careful work on the characteristics of New Testament usage concludes that 'it is plain that the language of the New Testament as a whole does not reflect the κοινή as it was used by the best educated classes in Hellenistic society, those classes, that is to say, who were well acquainted with the idioms of classical literature.'36 Thrall would side with Deissmann against the much earlier view of Farrar.
Anderson seeks to answer the question 'as to whether Paul consciously worked with rhetorical theory (or some aspect thereof) in mind'. Anderson assumes that Greek is 'a second language' — 'very possibly' [his italics] — for Paul and therefore rejects his facility in it. He discusses what he calls Paul's self-characterisation — incorrectly including 2 Corinthians 10.10, which is his adversaries' comment — and acknowledges that 'Paul thus [2 Cor, 11.6] appears to contrast himself with a professional orator', acknowledging my interpretation that the term he uses may refer to a person trained in rhetoric but not practising it. After an analysis of three of Paul's letters he concludes in his final chapter that rhetorical genres cannot properly be applied to them, and believes this is also the case in terms of argumentation, which, he suggests, Paul does not defend. He also believes that Paul 'transgresses one of the important virtues of style according to rhetorical style, σαφήνεια [i.e. clarity]', and seeks to demonstrate that this is the case in both Romans and Galatians. He is surprised by Paul's use of rhetorical wordplay and is puzzled by this rhetorical aspect in his style. His conclusion is that Paul 'probably had no knowledge of rhetorical theory, nor was [he] directly influenced by the more specific methods of school rhetoric'. He acknowledges that work is needed to clarify this.37
34P. A. Rosenmeyer, Ancient Epistolary Fictions: The Letter in Greek Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 19-20. See Rom. 16.22; 1 Cor. 5.9; 16.3; 2 Cor. 3.1-3, 7-8; 10.9-11; Col. 4.16; 1 Thess. 5.27; 2.2, 15; 3.14, 17. Paul reserves the term γραφή for Scripture although it is used for a letter in literary sources; see Liddell and Scott.
35Rosenmeyer, Ancient Epistolary Fictions, p. 7, citing G. Luck, 'Brief und Epistel in der Antik’, Das Altertum 7 (1961), 77-84 in his extended critique of Deissmann.
36M. Thrall, Greek Particles in the New Testament: Linguistic and Exegetical Studies (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), p. 9.
37R. D. Anderson Jr., Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Paul, 2nd ed. (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), pp. 277, 279, 281-82,290.
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Anderson is somewhat dismissive of Fairweather's assessment of Paul's artful use of style and rejects her suggestion that 'Paul restricted himself to the level of koine in which he writes (a level which earned him criticism by at least some in Corinth); [she] assumes Paul had the ability to write better Greek but chose [his italics] not.'38 Given her expertise in ancient rhetoric and in particular her important study of Seneca the Elder with respect to this, her suggestion deserves further consideration. She believes: 'By his rejection of standard Hellenistic modes of argumentation and his reliance, instead, on an unshakable ττίστις and the "law of Christ" (Gal. 6.2), he was indeed departing from contemporary pagan and Hellenized Jewish practice, and, in literary as well as in spiritual terms, was laying down a new foundation.'39 If Paul informed the Corinthians that he rejected the wisdom of rhetoric and eloquent rhetoric in speaking (1 Cor. 1.17; 2.1), then it is not inconceivable that he adapted his writing style to what became known in a much later period, that is, in Wycliffe's day, as 'plain style' for the sake of his recipients.
Anderson's work has made an important contribution to this area of NT study. He himself acknowledges there is yet more work to be done, and the uncritical use of rhetorical handbooks, which has largely been a feature of work on the NT corpus, certainly needs to be reviewed.40 I also have reservations that it is possible to sustain the rhetorical form-critical approach currently being used on NT documents. One reason for this is that, for a projected sequel to a recent book on Corinth,41 preliminary investigation into the structure and argumentation Paul uses in 1 Corinthians suggests that one cannot impose any convincing rhetorical grid or constrain his lines of argument in structural chiastic or rhetorical forms on the various issues he discusses. Rhetorical studies on 1 Corinthians have, to date, failed to give sufficient emphasis to the strength of Paul's own style of arguing individual cases in a variety of ways.
While NT studies have become occupied with Paul's letters and rhetoric,
38Anderson, Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Paul, p. 282.
39Fairweather, Seneca the Elder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and 'Galatians and Classical Rhetoric: Parts 1 and 2', Tyn.B. 45.1 (1994) and 'Galatians and Classical Rhetoric: Part 3', 45.2 (1994), 213-43, cited on 243.
40Anderson, Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Paul pp. 291-92. P. H. Kern, who has published his own carefully measured study of Galatians, has expressed similar concerns in his Rhetoric and Galatians: Assessing an Approach to Paul's Epistle, SNTSMS 101 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
41After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001) with the proposed sequel 'After Paul Left Corinth: The Resolution of Conflict, Compromise and Change'.
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this was not the main concern of the Corinthian community. They sought Apollos' return (1 Cor. 16.12) and, when that invitation failed, they sought and apparently secured Apollos look-alikes.42 It is important to ask precisely what the Christian community of Corinth wanted of the teachers? The answer would seem to be — those skilled in what has been called 'ecclesial rhetoric'. Ma discusses this relation to the cities in Asia Minor on the basis of evidence from ca. A.D. 96 found in Dio Chrysostom's Oration 7. He defines 'ecclesial rhetoric' as 'a speech structured of course according to the norms of ancient rhetoric which was delivered in the secular assembly [ἐκκλησία] of the people.'43
It takes little imagination to see how easily the speeches rhetorically structured for the secular meeting of 'the People' could readily be thought an appropriate model for the Christian 'meeting' (ἐκκλησία) in Corinth. The modus operandi of sophists, as leaders in both education and political activities, impacted on the formal gathering (ὁ ἐκκλησία) of 'the People' (ὁ δῆμος) in secular Corinth.44 The secular model provided almost imperceptibly something of a paradigm for 'the assembly of God in Corinth' (ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ ἐν Κορίνθῳ, 1 Cor. 1.1). The term ἐκκλησία created something of a problem for the church and its significance for Christian communities in Gentile areas.45 Some of the cultural baggage which traditionally accompanied the secular gatherings was replicated in its congregational life. In the case under review, they cast their past and present 'church leaders' in teaching and running the affairs of their particular community in the same role. Paul had accused them of operating in a secular way and of behaving like 'secular' men because of their attitudes to Apollos and himself (1 Cor. 3.3-4).46
It is also highly significant that there is one particular term which Paul never used when discussing his relationship (and that of Apollos and Peter) to the Corinthian congregation, even though it had wide currency in his day
42See p. 203.
43J. Ma, 'Public Speech and Community in the Euboicus', in S. Swain (ed.), Dio Chrysostom: Politics, Letters, and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), ch. 4. See esp. pp. 109-10.
44A brief survey of electronically retrievable data shows that the term occurs over 1,400 times in selected epigraphic sources and on some 350 occasions in selected papyriological collections, which gives some indication of its wide currency. In Acts 19.39 it is used of the secular assembly.
45See my 'The problem with "Church" for the Early Church,' in D. Peterson and J. Prior (eds.), In the Fullness of Time: Biblical Studies in Honour of Archbishop Donald Robinson (Sydney: Lancer, 1992), ch. 13, which deals with politics in the main in the Philippian church, although it is just as applicable to Corinth.
46. See pp. 173-74.
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and was automatically connected with the secular assembly and political life of the city, namely, 'leader' (ἄρχων).47 It carried such secular overtones of power politics and elitism that, like the Trojan horse which was wheeled into the community, Paul avoided it.
Paul countered the secular baggage accompanying the civil 'meeting' that had surreptitiously crept into the Christian community with an alternative and even more powerful unit, that of 'family'.48 He made more frequent use of familial language in 1 Corinthians than he did in any other letter, and also invoked the same form of address in 2 Corinthians — the use of 'brother', which encompassed both genders as it did in the ordinary family circle. This was something of an innovation in the Roman colony of Corinth with its basis in the system of Roman law that restricted the term 'brothers' to siblings or those legally adopted into a family. In gatherings of the family where the aim was to encourage, comfort and build up (1 Cor. 14.3), there was no need of 'ecclesial rhetoric' in prophecy or other forms of communication in the community.
Paul lacked facility in 'rhetorical delivery' for 'ecclesial rhetoric', something that Philo did not, as his leadership of the Jewish embassy to Gaius bore witness. It was what the Corinthian church now required of its leaders.
Philo and Paul — towards a comparison
These two Hellenised Jews adopted notably similar approaches to the sophistic movement, for both were committed to Scripture as the canon whereby the movement could be assessed for their readers.
Philo believed that the experience of characters from 'The Books of Mo-
47See by way of comparison the effect that the constitutional structures of a city were readily replicated in the Jewish synagogue, T. Rajak and D. Noy,'Archisynagogos: Office, Social
Status in the Graeco-Roman World', JRS 83 (1993), 73-93.
48The secular 'horse' was unsuspectingly wheeled into the Christian community. I have argued, that this gave rise to many other problems in 1 Corinthians and hence the title, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change for the book. One reviewer made an observation also relevant to the heart of the matter in Philo and Paul among the Sophists when he noted, 'What Winter has depicted is a church in which the members, quite unconsciously, brought into the church relationships, practices and values from the society in which they lived…. It raises questions about present-day Christian practice', 'Talking Points from Books', ET 112/10 (July 2001), 325-27. This applies, of course, to the recent adoption of the term 'leader' quite uncritically in place of long-established terms such as priest, minister or pastor, and an innovation Paul would not have approved of, given the secular and political cult of leadership.
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ses' provided the paradigm for his evaluation of the sophists and the conflict they inevitably created. It is also important to note that Philo's discussion of the sophistic tradition was but part of a pioneering attempt to bring together the OT and philosophy, that is, he sought to exegete the OT in the light of those philosophical traditions which he perceived as being most closely allied to it. Thus the key to understanding Philo's discussion of the sophistic tradition in Alexandria is found in Plato's critique of it interpreted through 'The Books of Moses'.49
Paul likewise turned to the OT to evaluate the sophists and their movement in Corinth. He offers, in contrast to Philo, no allegorical or sophistic treatment of characters such as Hagar and Sarah (although elsewhere Paul does treat these two persons allegorically, Gal. 4.21-31). Paul's command 'not to go beyond the things that are written' (1 Cor. 4.6) depends on citations from Isaiah 29.14, Psalm 33.10, Job 5.13, Psalm 94.11 and Jeremiah 9.23-24. These were the parameters which ought to determine the Corinthians' conduct, evaluation and response to the sophistic tradition. For Paul the boasting by sophists, who were clearly 'the debaters of this age', had been overthrown by God, whom they had failed to know despite their wisdom, for he could only be known through the cross of Christ. Thus the key for Paul's evaluation of their activity is the OT prophets and wisdom writers interpreted through the work of Christ, in comparison with Philo's use of the Pentateuch interpreted through largely Platonic categories.50
In both 1 Corinthians 1-4 and 2 Corinthians 10—13 Paul relies on Jeremiah 9.22-24, where the boasting of the wise, the powerful and the rich had been proscribed. That trilogy of terms in Jeremiah, along with its alternative exhortation 'to boast in the Lord', established for Paul the important nexus with the sophists of Corinth in much the same way that the 'magicians' in Moses and Plato had for Philo. The wise, the well born and the powerful epitomised the class from which the sophists came and which the latter helped perpetuate through an elitist educational system which emphasised the art of rhetoric. Given that the great sin of the sophistic movement was its boasting — a weakness manifest in the record of the Alexandrian sophists in Philo's Det. 32-34 and reflected in the status terminology used in 1 Corinthi-
49Runia, Philo and the Timaeus, pp. 446-47. It was this methodological tool which marked 'a pivotal point in the history of thought'. See p. 107.
50For a recent comparison of the two writers based on an exegetical technique called 'charismatic exegesis' which was coined for the purpose of the essay, see S. K. Wan, 'Charismatic Exegesis: Philo and Paul Compared', SPA 6 (1994), 54-82. Much fruitful work could be done taking into account the variety of exegetical techniques available to, and used by, these two versatile authors in order to deal with the many situations to which they responded.
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ans 1.26-28 and 4.8,10-13 — Paul made the Jeremiah prohibition against boasting about wisdom, status and achievement a primary text in his critique of the Corinthian sophistic movement.
Both Philo and Paul also used their debating skills to overthrow the rhetorical devices of the sophists. Philo insisted that only those who were trained in rhetoric were capable of engaging the sophists in debate; and he led the way as he showed others how this could be done (Det. 35, 41). But he also added that only training in rhetoric coupled with virtuous living could defeat the sophists.
Paul, with the ironical use of the antithetical status, comments on the sophists, and his innovative treatment of the rhetorical device of 'covert' allusion in 1 Corinthians 4.6ff. demonstrated the foolishness of boasting by those who had been called to the imitatio Christi. In 2 Corinthians 10-13 he took this a step further as he used irony to refute the boasting of his sophistic opponents in the church, and to rebuff their attempts to promote themselves as teachers on an equal footing with the genuine apostles.
