It is good for a man not to TOUCH a woman (1 Cor. 7:1)
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jun 20 07:03:28 EDT 2002
At 5:21 PM +1000 6/20/02, B. Ward Powers wrote:
>Each person will make his own judgement about this of course. But it is (in
>my judgement) a grievous error to interpret Paul to be saying in 7:1 that
>he is opposed to marriage, and that celibacy is better (a view of Paul's
>teaching for which there is no evidence).
I don't disagree with Ward's conclusion here and I certainly don't want to
initiate a discussion on the history of the interpretation of the Pauline
letters (there IS, after all, an excellent discussion list devoted to that
particular realm!), but I simply call attention to what is, I think, an
indisputable fact that 7:1ff came to be understood early enough to be a
Pauline direction to celibacy, quite regardless of what his own intention
may have been. But any person who has lived long enough knows that words
written and uttered in the public domain are subject to a whole spectrum of
misinterpretation. I guess what we are concerned with is "authorial
intent"--and that is itself not always the easiest thing to
ascertain--which is why B-Greekers often don't agree about the meaning of
one text or another.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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