Ephesians 5:14 - a baptism hymn?

 In response to our latest video on Romans, 

@christianmichael8609 comments:@23:10 - that is a strong statement there - that the recipients of the Apostolos letters did not know of Christian initiation by baptism. Ought you not be more cautious? Laodiceans 5.14 is explicitly cited by Epiphanius, and as you surely know reputable scholars have suggested that this was a baptismal initiation saying.
My reply: With your question you confirm my statement. Reputable scholars are reading Ephesians 5.14 in the light of the canonical 14-Letter Collection and the canonical NT, particularly Rom. 6:3-4 (Bruce, for example), where, of course such light-metaphor reminds of baptism. This is exactly the point, of what I was saying. Once you move, as you do, within the canonical frame, things are clear which are very different within the 10-Letter Collection. Jürgen Becker and Ulrich Lutz, for example, simply speak of Eph 5:14 as of a "baptismal song", yet, even in canonical Eph 5 there is no single mention of baptism. Hence they are careful in saying twice that this is a "guess" (in German they use twice "vermutlich", p. 166). Bruce is more willing to follow the idea, yet he makes a cautious note of B. Noack, “Das Zitat in Ephes. 5:14,” ST 5 (1951), 52-64, for its being primarily a resurrection hymn (although applicable secondarily to baptism) and points to R. P. Martin, “Aspects of Worship in the New Testament Church,” VE 2 (1963), 30. Bruce, however, refers to the earliest commentary that exists on this verse Eph 5:14 and writes (Bruce, Commentary ad loc.): "Attempts have been made to strengthen the identif ication of the tristich as a baptismal hymn by the argument that its rhythm is that found in the initiation formulae of various Hellenistic cults. The formula most commonly adduced is one quoted by Firmicus Maternus as uttered by the person newly initiated into the Attis mystery. Such formal parallels are difficult to establish, and throw no light on the meaning of what is, in context and content, an explicitly Christian composition. Clement of Alexandria quotes this tristich and accompanies it with another tristich amplifying the reference to Christ in its third clause." His criticism of referencing Hellenistic cults should have also led him to be more cautious with referencing Christian baptism, as Clement points to Christ, but does not know of a baptismal link, let alone of a baptismal hymn behind this text. Interesting is that Strack-Billerbeck adduce 1 Tim 2:8 - again, providing a non-baptismal context. So I would be less firm than you are. In addition, Makus Barth does not follow this "guess" in his commentary on Ephesians, if I have not overlooked something.

1 Timothy 2:13-15 - a terrible biblical verse with an awful historical legacy

 

 As we are doing the final corrections of the book "The Letters of Paul in the Second Century: A Critical Reappraisal", authored by myself, Mark G. Bilby, Jack Bull and Kevin Lance Lotharp, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, I came across this small section that I thought is important to share, as it shows the nature of the canonical redaction and the way it transformed a Marcionite appreciation for women into a subordination of these:

¹³For Adam was first formed, then Eve. ¹⁴Adam wasn’t deceived, but the woman, being deceived, has fallen into disobedience. ¹⁵But she will be saved through her childbearing (σωθήσεται δὲ διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας), if they continue in faith, love, and sanctification with sobriety. (1 Tim 2:13–15)

 

In light of its historical legacy: What a terrible statement![1] It is a ghastly travesty of *Pauline teaching and of his appreciation of women.[2] Here, the narrative hierarchy derived from Genesis 2 becomes theological norm: creation order implies a chauvinist moral order that connects the salvation of women—married women, others do not seem to be thought of[3]—with childbearing and the implied pregnancy, labor, pain and motherhood, understood as “penal suffering.”[4] The woman is not merely created second, she is made culpable, while Adam is exonerated by priority. It is the Christian beginning of an unending story of female temptation and seduction, as we can see, for example, in Marcion’s commentator Tertullian.

“Do you not know that you are Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway. You are the one who unsealed the forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.”[1]

 

Tertullian blames Eve, and by extension all women, for the fall of man, portraying women as the origin of male seduction into sin. A little later in the same book, he adds:

 

“First, know that the desire to please by adorning oneself does not spring from a clear conscience, but from decor designed to entice lust. Why, then, do you stir up that evil in yourself? Why do you invite someone foreign to you whom you claim to be? Moreover, we must not open the way to temptations that sometimes accomplish by pressure what God’s calls would seem to fail to; indeed, they at least move the spirit to stumble.”[2]

 

Women’s use of beautification, so his male gaze throughout this text, he accuses to be a form of seduction, recalling Eve’s role in leading Adam astray. Adornment is portrayed as an invitation to lust, and thus morally dangerous. How persistently this message of 1 Timothy resonated with the fathers can be seen from the influential John Chrysostom who in his homilies on this text preaches to his congregation: “You have crushed the head of your husband… it was you who expelled him from paradise! It was you who made him a subject of death… Do you not know that you are Eve?”[3]

---

[1] Tert., De Cultu Feminarum 1.1: Et nesciebas te Evam esse? Dei sententia in hanc sexum vestrum vivit in hoc saeculo: ergo et delictum necesse est vivat. Tu es porta diaboli, tu es prima desertrix legis divinae, tu illa es quae persuasisti eum quem diabolus aggredi non valuit.

[2] Tert., De Cultu Feminarum 2.6: Primo quod non de integra conscientia venit studium placendi per decorem quem naturaliter invitator libidinis scimus. Quid igitur excitas in te malum istud? Quid invitas cuius te profiteris extraneam? Tum quod temptationibus viam aperire non debemus, quae nonnumquam quod Deus a suis abigat instando perficiunt, certe vel spiritum scandalo permovent.

[3] John Chrys., Homiliae in 1 Timotheum, Hom. 9.

---

[1] Brox judges: “These reflections, so utterly alien to us” (“Diese uns völlig fremdartigen Überlegungen”), N. Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe (1969), 136.

[2] 1 Tim 2:13-15 is read as a fighting off the Pauline teaching from 1 Cor 7 in G. Wohlenberg, Die Pastoralbriefe (der erste Timotheus-, der Titus- und der zweite Timotheusbrief); mit einem Anhang: Unechte Paulusbriefe (1923), 120. According to Brox, this passage suggests that “it is hardly imaginable” that it “derives from the hand of Paul,” N. Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe (1969), 135.

[3] See the criticism in N. Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe (1969), 136.

[4] So G. Wohlenberg, Die Pastoralbriefe (der erste Timotheus-, der Titus- und der zweite Timotheusbrief); With an appendix: Unechte Paulusbriefe (1923), 121.

Judith Lieu, review on my Christ's Torah in SBL

 It is nice to see this in-depth, critical and welcoming review that my fine colleague Professor Judith Lieu has recently published in SBL. The view ends with the following paragraph:

"So, what are those anticipated nonspecialists to make of all this? Hints during the course of the work become explicit in his concluding suggestion that “many of [the] demarcations” of the modern world, between religions, cultures, institutions, “were historically conditioned, perhaps even once useful and helpful in some respects but must be reexamined again and again in terms of their necessity and usefulness” (354). This may surprise few, even if its application to the New Testament is less welcome. Nonetheless, as Markus Vinzent doggedly builds up his body of work into the uncertainties of any rediscovery of the earliest Christian period and writings, scholars in the field cannot avoid taking seriously his analysis, conclusions, and extensive command of patristic literature. The time is long past when his own (and others’) radical rereadings could be dismissed as maverick while “mainstream” scholarship carries on undisturbed."

Mein neuer Roman "Der Schatten der Nähe" - Coverentwurf

 Hier ein erster Blick auf den Coverentwurf meines in den nächsten Wochen erscheinenden neuen Romans:

Der Unfug des Todes - Artikel in Publik-Forum

 Ein gerade erschienener Artikel zum "Unfug des Todes" findet sich in Publik-Forum:

Markus Vinzent - Redaktion - Publik-Forum.de - christlich, kritisch, unabhängig

Hans-Rüdiger Schwab: Die Dunkelheit nach dem Ende

 gerade erschien: Markus Vinzent beschreibt ein chronisches Sterben: Die Dunkelheit nach dem Ende

Christopher Cornthwaite in discussion with me on the basics of Marcion and the New Testament

 Here for those who want to get a summary introduction that is going to get on air tonight

:

Chris is a great NT scholar, open and interested for new approaches. Thanks Chris and your viewers for all those great questions!

https://youtu.be/jKnzOoBLjdA 

A new podcast on Early Christianity with Amauri from Brazil

Do join me on this podcast / youtube (a life session): 

New Podcast on "Christi's Torah"

 Here a recently published podcast on my "Christ's Torah" which I introduce in dialogue with the podcast host Ari Barbalat from Toronto: https://newbooksnetwork.com/markus-vinzent-christs-torah-the-making-of-the-new-testament-in-the-second-century-routledge-2023

‘plagiarisms’ or ‘rivalry’?

 A good question has been set to me: 

Does Marcion actually call the other gospels ‘plagiarisms’ or are you supplying your own translation for the Latin word ‘æmulatio’ which elsewhere in Tetullain does not mean either ‘emulation’ or ‘plagiarism’ but rather ‘rivalry’?

Here my answer: 

this is a typically hermeneutical argument which is based on a wrong assumption. When Tertullian relates the opinion of Marcion he moves away from his own semantic and takes on that of his opponent (when you read the introduction to the reconstruction of the Pauline 10-Letter Collection you will come across numerous examples). Evans, the English translator of Tertullian, knew this, hence he translates Adv. Marc. 4.4, after in 1 the discussion was who had "adulterated" the text of the Gospel, in 2 the "materia aemulatione", rendered correctly as "before anything is done to it", followed by "habuerit de veritate materiam, et Marcionis ante credatur aemulationem a nostro expertum" which he renders: "it had from the truth material, and Marcion's be believed to have suffered hostility from ours before it" - it is about the material (i.e. the text) that has been taken and suffered, what Evans calls hostility, hence injury, alteration (adulteratio) - as the term "plagiarism" was only created a few years before (Tertullian still only knows the term as "kidnapper") - what Marcion criticizes is precisely this, that his New Testament had been taken and hostility done to it, what Martial called plagiatus.

Schools as the birthplace of the Gospels

 join me on the latest show of History Valley with Jacob Berman:

From Paul to Saul: The Creation of Paul's Letters in the 2nd Century! | ...

New Testament for Dummies

 Together with a non-specialist, I am working towards a New Testament introduction for dummies (highly appreciated sort of non-academics!)

Here a first go - please let me know, if this is the right level of conversation:

B: It all sounds very exciting, exceedingly complex, and evidently intellectually and spiritually dynamic. A constant to and fro, it would seem, though evidently more competitive (between Marcion and the 'canonical party') than collaborative.

 

M: In truth, both: collaborative and competitive. Nothing extraordinary in that. Communication among academics has changed little since antiquity. They did then what we do now, learn from one another and attempt to make sense of the complexities.

 

B: The question for me is, what criteria governed the reworkings? Were they undertaken in close connection with trustworthy testimonies? Were they arbitrary, naïvely fanciful, or shrewdly devised?

 

M: Excellent questions. If I see things correctly, the revisions, much as today, tended to be conservative: only what seemed mistaken or imprecise was amended, and always in contact with what one held to be reliable testimony. Even fictive narratives (genre permitting, such as in the Acta literature or apocalyptic works) sought to remain within a tradition. The naïve ones are rare; calculating, deliberate alterations are more apt, often driven by purpose.

 

B: A distinguishing criterion seems to have been the attitude towards the Torah, which Marcion sought to exclude, while others strove to retain it at all costs.

 

M: This is a sensitive point, yet Marcion is no outlier here. Torah exegesis and even the development of new writings were commonplace in Jewish scholarly circles. The Jewish "Bible" was not yet a closed canon. Particularly the category of the "Writings," that third section of the Jewish Bible beyond Torah and Prophets, remained open.

We also have authors such as Philo of Alexandria, who interprets the Torah with great freedom, or Josephus, who in his Jewish Antiquities rewrites the entire Jewish scripture for a Hebrew-speaking and later also Greek audience. Many figures whom we designate as "Christian" (Ptolemaeus, Justin, and others) wrestle with which commands of the Torah remain binding, which are divine, Mosaic, or manmade, especially in light of the writings Marcion assembled.

No one insisted on retaining the Torah "at all costs", rather, it was maintained with considerable abridgement and qualification. Certainly, Marcion represents an extreme within this spectrum, viewing the Torah and the Prophets as wholly obsolete, and reinterpreting the Gospel and ten Pauline letters as Christ's new Torah, not as part of the third division of the Jewish scriptures, but as something altogether new.

 

B: But why multiply one Gospel into four? That seems to me to weaken rather than strengthen the case.

 

M: The first redactions of the single Gospel appear to have been uncoordinated, more reflective of the diversity of opinion among teachers of the time. All four canonical Gospels not only echo Marcion's text verbally and theologically, but also diverge from it, sometimes sharply.

In the very way they made use of Marcion's Gospel, so too did they utilise the Gospels developing alongside their own. The academic world then was no larger or smaller than now. They knew of one another, paid attention, copied and altered one another. This is no sign of weakness; it is the very nature of open scholarly discourse.

 

B: Perhaps it is best explained by positing multiple versions of Jesus' life, teaching, and death in circulation?

 

M: Perhaps, but not necessarily. The literary proximity and often-parallel structure of the five Gospels rather argues against it. Yet it seems that the various authors sought further information, added it when found, removed less fitting material, and restructured their texts.

 

B: You also mentioned Tatian, who compiled a single Gospel, presumably because he sensed that four versions were too vulnerable?

 

M: I would not leap to a polemical interpretation. Up to and even beyond Irenaeus, Gospel production appears to have followed the academic norms mentioned above. Teachers continued to produce Gospels: that of Mary, of Peter, and many more. When Bishop Serapion, around Irenaeus' time, encountered the Gospel of Peter in a congregation, he took no offence at its use, until he was alerted to controversies about it, whereupon he became critical.

That Tatian fused the five Gospels likely relates to the enduring influence of Marcion's Gospel within his New Testament, prompting Tatian to make a singular one of his own, as others may have attempted, as the Gospel of Peter fragment suggests.

 

B: Irenaeus, at any rate, comes close to recommending the modern canon.

 

M: Quite so. And just as the man who calls in the fire brigade may well have lit the blaze, so Irenaeus, with his propaganda tract, is likely the architect of the second canonical redaction, just as his teacher Polycarp may have stood behind the first canonisation of the Pauline letters.

 

B: If there was no "Luke," and Acts was not written by the same hand as the Gospel, then the linkage must be redactional, must it not?

 

M: Indeed. The Gospel of Luke, save for the additions and changes, is identical with Marcion's. The redactors adapted or composed Acts, furnishing it with a preface matching the one they appended to the Gospel in its revised form. The linguistic proximity of Luke and Acts is thus redactional, a feat still prompting scholars to treat the two as a unified work. In that sense, the redactors did their job well.

 

B: Finally, there is the "truth-question," which one might answer: it is of no consequence what historical-critical analysis may reveal; what was ultimately canonised is, by the Holy Spirit's inspiration, of unassailable authority.

This answer borrows the philosophical distinction between genesis and validity, only to transmute its meaning and apply it theologically. Yet in philosophy, this notion insists that historically contingent facts (a posteriori truths) cannot determine the validity of universally binding rational truths (a priori). The Pythagorean theorem is not true because Euclid discovered it in 300 BC; it is valid by virtue of pure reason, quite independently of its genesis.

To transfer this principle to theology is a daring methodological leap, a Salto mortale. Canonisation is not grounded in a priori insight, but rather constitutes a historical process of opinion-formation, even if one believes the Spirit guided it. Such guidance can never be proved a priori, only believed a posteriori, an act of human decision.

 

M: Faith, as Tertullian first expressed it, may entail such paradoxes: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Later: credo quia absurdum. To believe may be to perform one death-defying leap after another in the circus tent, a voluntary surrender. History is of little help here. For Irenaeus and Tertullian, the "canon of truth" outranks Scripture itself, though they argue with their opponents over which Scriptures are older. But that is not the point. The Holy Spirit in theology has no birth, no death, no age. It is a breath, and breath, as we know, cannot be pinned down.

 

B: So is the historical-critical method but a meaningless game of facts, I am not of the same opinion. I regard canonisation as fallible, even if the Spirit did assist. I conceive the relationship between God and humanity as dialogical, in which God allows errors, works with our limitations creatively, patiently, mercifully. This does not imply that all aspects of canonisation are wrong.

 

M: Indeed, the moment we add the supra-factual to the factual, be it breath, be it God, we change a critical method into one marked by indeterminacy, for we have introduced the incalculable into the equation.

 

B: But suppose you could demonstrate that certain redactional moves violated the historical truth of Jesus' teaching or Paul's, or even his Spirit, perhaps for reasons of power. Why should one not name and correct them?

 

M: We are far from that. We do not yet know what the "historical truth of Jesus’ teaching and life (or Paul’s)" is, nor what aligns with or contradicts his Spirit. We must first search for the guiding interests reflected in the texts we possess or reconstruct.

 

B: Fundamentalists and ideologues may well raise the alarm, but why? What sort of lifeless, undialogical, authoritarian, at best paternalistic image of God is that?

 

M: Thus the need for critical—also historical-critical—work. It must be anti-ideological and self-critical.

A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave (Montaigne)

 If you are by chance in Berlin on 25.7. you can join me for a reading event on Medicine, Arts and Culture:

From Paul to Saul at Kirchzarten

 check out the nice post of Red Baron who attended this talk:

Red Baron's Blog: From Paul to Saul

Interview "Badische Zeitung", 1.7.2025 on the "other" Paul

 In advance of the forthcoming book on "From Paul to Saul" (here the German version "Von Paulus zu Saulus), the "Badische Zeitung" has published an interview that gives a first insight into the new project:

How Adam (and Eve) is being transformed by the canonical redaction - a passage from my new book "From Paul to Saul"

 In a few days, my new book "From Paul to Saul" is going to be published, first in German, by Herder (Freiburg).

Here is a small part that deals with the two different readings of "Adam" (and Eve) in the 10-letter collection that was part of Marcion's New Testament - the translation of which is given in the book - next to the 14-letter collection  as we know it from the canonical New Testament:

1. Adam

The sole occurrence of Ἀδάμ (Adam) within the *10-letter collection is found in *1 Cor 15, where we read:

 

*1 Cor 15:22	1 Cor 15:22-23
22For just as in Adam they die, so also in Christ will all be made alive.	22For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
	23But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s, at his coming.

 

In *1 Cor 15:22, Adam appears not as a historical figure for moral reflection, nor as a genealogical reference, but as a typological counterpart to Christ, the second Adam. The contrast is stark and theological: death through the first, life through the second. It is not the person of Adam but the condition he signifies—mortality, transgression, and universality—that defines his function in this single appearance. There is no narrative development, no elaboration of Eden, temptation, or expulsion. Adam serves here not as story but as synecdoche: a name that contains an anthropology.

The temporal aspect of the Adam–Christ antithesis in *1 Cor 15:22 is reinforced by the verb tenses employed: a contrast is drawn not merely between two figures, but between two ages—between present experience and future transformation,[1] between now and the new. As noted in passing above, A. Lindemann aptly, though perhaps too cautiously, speaks of an “incongruence” between the present tense ἀποθνῄσκουσιν (they die) and the future ζῳοποιηθήσονται (will be made alive),[2] it is more than that, an antithesis.

As verse 23—which is unattested for the *10-letter collection and also absent in terms of vocabulary—makes clear, the canonical redaction, as so often elsewhere when dealing with antitheses in the *10-letter collection as its source, sought to soften the sharpness of the pre-canonical text. This shift in verbal aspect marks not merely a chronological distinction but undermines the eschatological edge of the *Pauline vision. It dissolves the juxtaposition of Adam and Christ, and it attenuates the temporal contrast inherent in the antithesis of the Vorlage—namely, the opposition between present time and future—by speaking in verse 23 of an order, whether simultaneous[3] or sequential. The term ἔπειτα (“then”) serves not simply as a sequence marker, but as a redirection. The phrase ἀπαρχὴ Χριστός (“Christ the first fruits”) no longer refers only to a future, eschatological event. It is now read retroactively—as an indicator that resurrection has already begun in Christ’s own rising. The canonical redaction thereby reconfigures the earlier *Pauline antithesis of “now” and “not yet” into a unified salvific continuum, stretching from Adam through Christ to the eschaton.

This softening of the temporal opposition was not lost on Origen, who, reading verse 23 in light of Rom 5:12, interpreted the redemptive work of Christ not as an isolated eschatological intervention but as the unfolding of a single divine economy. He parallels Paul’s statement on sin’s entry through one man with his own extension: “Just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death passed to all men, because all sinned...” (Rom 5:12), Origen continues: “...so also through one man righteousness came into this world, and through righteousness life, and thus life passed to all men, in him in whom all were made alive.”[4]

In Origen’s reading, as in the canonical redaction, the decisive act of redemption is not postponed to a future parousia, but is already inaugurated—a movement not from present to future, but from past through present into the fullness of time. Thus, Christ and Adam are not separated by eschatological distance but are aligned within a single salvific time frame, a προκαταβολὴ τοῦ κόσμου kind of continuity, in which redemption is the fulfillment of a history that began not at Golgotha but in Eden.

The earlier *Pauline dichotomy between revelation “from faith for faith” (*Rom 1:17), “through faith in Christ” and living “in” and listening to “the Law” (*Rom 3:19,22) is thereby absorbed into a redemptive process wherein righteousness and life are not merely proclaimed but ordered—hierarchically and historically. It is a theological move well attuned to the thought-world of Irenaeus, who likewise framed salvation history as a divinely orchestrated sequence of recapitulations.[5] In this light, it is little wonder that a tradition raised exclusively on the canonical text ceased to perceive the temporal antithesis altogether.[6]

The canonical tradition draws Adam remarkably close to God—a proximity rendered with almost liturgical brevity in the Lukan genealogy of Jesus. At the conclusion of that solemn procession of names, the Evangelist ends not with Abraham or Moses, but with “Ἀδάμ, τοῦ Θεοῦ”—“Adam, who was of God” (Lk 3:38). It is the only mention of Adam in any of the canonical Gospels, and its placement at the culmination of the genealogy lends him a peculiar dignity: he is not merely first in human sequence, but, by implication, progeny of the divine. Here, Adam is not typologically subordinate, but theophorically exalted.

This elevation of Adam corresponds with what we have already noted: the canonical redaction of 1 Cor 15:23 and Rom 5:14–15 tempers the stark eschatological antithesis of 1 Cor 15:22. As observed by Origen and others, the future is now pulled back into the present, not annihilating but recontextualizing the earlier time-dualism. The progression is no longer from Adam to Christ, death to life, old to new—but from one phase of a single salvific history to the next.

This redirection finds its most explicit outworking in 1 Timothy 2, where the canonical editorial tendency toward hierarchical ordering reaches beyond eschatology into gendered anthropology:

 

¹³For Adam was first formed, then Eve. ¹⁴Adam wasn’t deceived, but the woman, being deceived, has fallen into disobedience. ¹⁵But she will be saved through her childbearing (σωθήσεται δὲ διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας), if they continue in faith, love, and sanctification with sobriety. (1 Tim 2:13–15)

 

What a terrible statement![7] It is a ghastly travesty of *Pauline teaching and of his appreciation of women.[8] Here, the narrative hierarchy derived from Genesis 2 becomes theological norm: creation order implies a chauvinist moral order that connects the salvation of women—married women, others do not seem to be thought of[9]—with childbearing and the implied pregnancy, labor, pain and motherhood, understood as “penal suffering.”[10] The woman is not merely created second, she is made culpable, while Adam is exonerated by priority. It is the Christian beginning of an unending story of female temptation and seduction, as we can see, for example, in Marcion’s commentator Tertullian.

On Eve as pars pro toto of women Tertullian states with reference to the same story from Genesis:

 

“Do you not know that you are Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway. You are the one who unsealed the forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.”[11]

 

Tertullian blames Eve, and by extension all women, for the fall of man, portraying women as the origin of male seduction into sin. A little later in the same book, he adds:

 

“First, know that the desire to please by adorning oneself does not spring from a clear conscience, but from decor designed to entice lust. Why, then, do you stir up that evil in yourself? Why do you invite someone foreign to you whom you claim to be? Moreover, we must not open the way to temptations that sometimes accomplish by pressure what God’s calls would seem to fail to; indeed, they at least move the spirit to stumble.”[12]

 

Women’s use of beautification, so his male gaze throughout this text, he accuses to be a form of seduction, recalling Eve’s role in leading Adam astray. Adornment is portrayed as an invitation to lust, and thus morally dangerous. How persistently this message of 1 Timothy resonated with the fathers can be seen from the influential John Chrysostom who in his homilies on this text preaches to his congregation: “You have crushed the head of your husband… it was you who expelled him from paradise! It was you who made him a subject of death… Do you not know that you are Eve?”[13]

The Pauline argument is no longer about the universal condition of sin and mortality—ἐφ’ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον (“because all sinned,” Rom 5:12)—but has been refracted through ecclesial order and household virtue.

Thus, a typology originally rooted in universal anthropology becomes embedded in a gendered ecclesiology. The theological weight of Adam shifts: once figure of mortality, he becomes archetype of unfallen order; once universal ancestor, now model of untouched obedience.

The final canonical reference to Adam occurs in a most fleeting and symbolic fashion in Jude 14:

“About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied...” (Jude 1:14)

Here Ἀδάμ appears not as agent, nor as type, nor as theological foil, but merely as a chronological marker. His name is invoked only to lend apocalyptic gravitas to Enoch’s prophecy. Adam is the root of a genealogical sequence that now leads not to Christ but to judgment—a reminder, perhaps, of the interpretive pliability of biblical figures once they enter into the editorial economy of canon.

Across these layers, then, Adam is progressively transposed: from figure of fall to vessel of typology, from contrast partner to continuity bearer, from dead in sin to of God. In this, the canonical redaction achieves not merely a harmonization of sources, but a transvaluation of theological symbols, suited to the present-tense male dominated church rather than to the apocalyptic horizon of the earlier *Paul.

---

[1] Weiß speaks of a “present beyond time”, Weiss, Der Erste Korintherbrief  at 356.

[2] Paul is not thinking “of a kind of law-like process … but of a (future!) act of God,” Andreas Lindemann, Der Erste Korintherbrief (Handbuch Zum Neuen Testament; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000) IX, 389 S. at 344.

[3] So Heinrici, Der Erste Brief an Die Korinther  at 465.

[4] Orig., Comm. in Rom. 5 (PG 14,1005A-B): Sicut enim in Adam omnes moriuntur, ita et in Christo omnes vivificabuntur. Hic autem cum dixerit: Sicut per unum hominem peccatum introivit in hunc mundum, et per peccatum mors, et ita in omnes homines mors pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt, non retulit ut diceret, verbi causa: Ita et per unum hominem justitia introivit in hunc mundum, et per justitiam vita, et sic in omnes homines vita pertransiit, in qua omnes vivificati sunt.

[5] Giorgio Agamben has perceptively denounced the domestication of the Parousia into a merely present phenomenon, stripped of its eschatological force; see Giorgio Agamben, Die Zeit, Die Bleibt. Ein Kommentar Zum RöMerbrief (5. Auflage edn., Edition Suhrkamp; Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2015) 234 Seiten. On Irenaeus, see Alfred Bengsch, Heilsgeschichte Und Heilswissen. Eine Untersuchung Zur Struktur Und Entfaltung Des Theologischen Denkens Im Werk "Adversus Haereses" Des Hl. IrenäUs Von Lyon (Erfurter Theologische Studien; Leipzig: St. Benno-Verlag, 1957) XXIV, 243 S.

[6] See the list of patristic commentators in Wolfgang Schrage, Der Erste Brief an Die Korinther Kor <1>; 15,1-16,24; [4. Teilband] (Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar Zum Neuen Testament, 2001) VIII, 484 S. at 194-200. A modern example is Paul Hoffmann, Die Toten in Christus. Eine Religionsgeschichtliche Und Exegetische Untersuchung Zur Paulinischen Eschatologie (2. edn.; Münster: Aschendorff, 1969) at 344-46.

[7] Brox judges: “These reflections, so utterly alien to us” (“Diese uns völlig fremdartigen Überlegungen”), Norbert Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe (4., völlig neu bearb. Aufl. edn., Regensburger Neues Testament; Regensburg: Pustet, 1969) 342 S. at 136.

[8] 1 Tim 2:13-15 is read as a fighting off the Pauline teaching from 1 Cor 7 in Gustav Wohlenberg, Die Pastoralbriefe (Der Erste Timotheus-, Der Titus- Und Der Zweite Timotheusbrief); Mit Einem Anhang: Unechte Paulusbriefe (3. Aufl. edn., Kommentar Zum Neuen Testament; Leipzig u.a.: Deichert, 1923) VIII, 375 S. at 120. According to Brox, this passage suggests that “it is hardly imaginable” that it “derives from the hand of Paul,” Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe  at 135.

[9] See the criticism in Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe  at 136.

[10] So Wohlenberg, Die Pastoralbriefe (Der Erste Timotheus-, Der Titus- Und Der Zweite Timotheusbrief); Mit Einem Anhang: Unechte Paulusbriefe  at 121.

[11] Tert., De Cultu Feminarum 1.1: Et nesciebas te Evam esse? Dei sententia in hanc sexum vestrum vivit in hoc saeculo: ergo et delictum necesse est vivat. Tu es porta diaboli, tu es prima desertrix legis divinae, tu illa es quae persuasisti eum quem diabolus aggredi non valuit.

[12] Tert., De Cultu Feminarum 2.6: Primo quod non de integra conscientia venit studium placendi per decorem quem naturaliter invitator libidinis scimus. Quid igitur excitas in te malum istud? Quid invitas cuius te profiteris extraneam? Tum quod temptationibus viam aperire non debemus, quae nonnumquam quod Deus a suis abigat instando perficiunt, certe vel spiritum scandalo permovent.

[13] John Chrys., Homiliae in 1 Timotheum, Hom. 9.