Anathema and Inspired Speech in 1 Corinthians 12:3 and 16:22
As I indicated above, the term ανάθεμα is a crux interpretum in scholarship on 1 Cor 12:3 and 16:22. It is difficult to determine accurate translations and contexts for these verses.
In the first case, the absence of a verb in the phrase Ανάθεμα ’Ιησούς means that it could be subjunctive, “Let Jesus be cursed,” or indicative, “Jesus is a curse/cursed,” parallel to “Jesus is Lord.”[156] The variants in the manuscript tradition reflect this difficulty.[157] The perennial question in New Testament scholarship is: Did the Corinthians actually say this, and if so, why?Some scholars argue that Paul invented the phrase for the sake ofhis argument and that no one in Corinth was actually saying it.[158] Other scholars have proposed that Corinthian Christians were forced to curse Jesus, either because of Jewish opponents and persecution in the synagogues or the threat or reality of Roman persecution.[159] Another line of thinking suggests that Corinthians willingly said Ανάθεμα ’Ιησούς for religious reasons. Walter Schmithals argues that the phrase came from docetic Christians, influenced by Hellenistic-Jewish Gnosticism, who cursed the embodied “Jesus” and revered the spiritual “Lord Christ” (Schmithals 1971, 127). Yet another suggestion is that Corinthians engaged in rituals and speech similar to those of the female prophets Sibyl, Cassandra, or the priestess of Delphi: they cursed Jesus in an ecstatic state and did not know what they were saying.[160] Finally, I mentioned above Winter's hypothesis that the Corinthians were asking Jesus to grant a curse, similar to magical practices of curse tablets (Winter 2001, 164-83).
First Corinthians 16:22 poses similar syntactical problems.
The ανάθεμα is combined with the transliterated Aramaic phrase μαράνα θά, which may be imperative, “Our Lord, come!” or perfect or future indicative, “Our Lord has come” or “Our Lord will come.”[161] Since this is one of the few times in Paul's letters in which he uses Aramaic, scholars have examined the role of the phrase in the Palestinian origins of Christianity and how it may reflect the earliest beliefs in the return of Christ and the celebration of the communal meal or Eucharist.[162]My analysis touches on these issues, but my interests revolve more around how these statements express ideas about ritual communication, language, and knowledge in similar and distinct ways from curse tablets. Since Paul shares vocabulary with the tablets at these points, does the language and ritual of cursing illuminate how Paul and the Corinthians understand the term ανάθεμα and the broader conversation about inspired speech? Adolf Deissmann suggests that Paul uses “the technical phraseology and the cadence of the language of magic” at points throughout his letter (Deissmann 1908 [1927], 301). Characteristic of magical language are Paul's reference to “the marks of Jesus” on his body (Gal 6:17), instructions for excising a harmful person from the community (1 Cor 5:4-5), and the term ανάθεμα (Rom 9:3; 1 Cor 12:3; 16:22; Gal 1:8-9). Deissmann draws the philological parallel between the Megara tablet and Paul's language of cursing. References to the Megara tablet persist in interpretation of Paul's ανάθεμα, but they rarely move beyond the observation of similar vocabulary (Conzelmann 1975, 204; Fee 1987, 580; Fitzmyer 2008, 459; Winter 2001, 164-83).
What does it mean for Paul's argument and the religious practices in Corinth to say that Paul uses “the cadence of the language of magic”? I address this question first with reference to 1 Cor 16:22.
This verse combines a curse with an Aramaic invocation. This passage has Jewish roots: ανάθεμα suggests the Jewish conception of separation for destruction (ΠΊΠ, herem), the curse is paired with a blessing, and Paul transliterates the Aramaic phrase, “Our Lord, come.” The use of Aramaic in the urban Greek context of Corinth may provide Paul's statement with mystical power just as the Hebrew elements combined with Hekatean words provide power to the Megara tablet. The scholarly focus on the Aramaic syntax and Palestinian origins of the phrase neglects how a Greek-speaking Corinthian would hear ητω ανάθεμα μαράνα θά.[163] In the first century, Aramaic was not often spoken outside of Palestine. Even in the substantial diaspora Jewish community in Alexandria, Greek was the language of everyday life, economic transactions, scholarship, and perhaps even the synagogue (Davies and Finkelstein 1989, 110-14). If a Jewish community existed in Corinth when Paul arrived, as Acts 18 suggests, they would have primarily spoken Greek.[164] The combination of the curse and the Aramaic phrase results in a rhythmic and alliterative, even magical, sound: ητω άνάθεμα μαράνα θά. To a Corinthian, μαράνα θά is foreign-sounding and exotic, even if she has learned its meaning. She knows it is an invocation of the Lord Christ—“Our Lord, come!”—in an Eastern language of which she has privileged knowledge. In meaning and in its mysterious sound, the phrase evokes divine power.As part of a letter, the phrase also conjures power in its inscribed nature, much as the power of curse tablets arises from the confluence of writing, speaking, and ritual. Before the curse, μαράνα θά, and blessing, Paul states: “This greeting is in my, Paul's, own hand” (16:21).
Paul dictated his letters to a secretary, and at this point, he adds his signature, which calls attention to the process of writing and to himself as the author.[165] Paul's presence comes to Corinth when the Corinthians read the letter aloud in the assembly. Paul regularly closes his letters with a blessing (Gal 6:18; Col 4:18; 2 Thess 3:17; Phlm 25) but this letter is the only one in which a curse accompanies the blessing. Including the curse and μαράνα θά in the final greeting emphasizes Paul's own power to invoke God, an ability at the heart of the issues addressed in 1 Cor 11-14. This ability in turn supports Paul's claim to authority as apostle to the Corinthians.In 1 Cor 14, Paul states his own capacity for obscure, spiritual speaking: “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you” (14:18). He bolsters his authority in the Corinthian community by asserting that his writing provides instructions from the Lord: “Anyone who claims to be a prophet or a spiritual person, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord” (14:37). This statement is what Ernst Kasemann calls a “sentence of holy law,” a structured and rhythmic statement that gives Paul's judgment the weight of divine law.[166] The statement uses terms—“prophet or spiritual person”—that the Corinthians seem to value and claim (Wire 1990, 14). First Corinthians 14:37, then, presents an appeal to authority that the Corinthians cannot risk rejecting. They cannot refuse Paul's instructions if they consider themselves spiritual or prophetic or if they want to live by God's law. A similar social effect occurs in the Knidos Sanctuary of Demeter; the thief or person in the wrong cannot ignore the inscribed petition. The community sees it and knows the weight of the curse within what they accept as Demeter's law.
Paul presents himself as an inspired person who communicates with God through revelation and with the Corinthians through prophecy and commandment, in person and via letter. This dual-pronged communication with God and humans is central to Paul's discussion of prophecy and speaking in tongues, which brings us to the other use of ανάθεμα in 1 Cor 12:1-3.
In 1 Cor 12-14, Paul emphasizes the human element of communication and responds to what he sees as a Corinthian emphasis on and misunderstanding of the divine element. He orients his argument in terms of his audience’s prior religious experiences as έθνη, “gentiles”: “You know how when you were gentiles you were led off and carried away again and again to voiceless idols” (12:2; cf. Gal 4:8; 1 Thess 1:9). The passive voice of the verbs reflects a passive, perhaps ecstatic, experience.[167] The “voiceless idols” do not initiate the action. Instead, they are the object to which the Corinthians were carried (προς τα είδωλα τα άφωνα). Not only are the idols passive, but they also lack the ability to speak, a common trope in Jewish polemic against idolatry.[168]Paul provides one point of continuity between the Corinthians’ previous religious experiences with “voiceless idols” and their current experiences of spiritual speaking in the assembly: in both cases, the content of an utterance indicates its authenticity and its provenance. With the conjunction διό that connects vv. 2 and 3, Paul places “speaking in the Spirit of God” and the two potential statements—Ανάθεμα ’Ιησούς and Κύριος ’Ιησούς—within the context of the situation described in v. 2. Based on their background, Paul expects his audience to know about judging utterances. In Greek and Roman practices, visual or aural evidence of possession or inspiration by a god or spirit—trancelike behavior or erratic speech—did not always accompany or verify communication from a god. People who received oracles and prophecy evaluated and interpreted them to determine their authenticity and the proper response.[169]
For Paul, the difference between the two utterances, Ανάθεμα ’Ιησούς and Κύριος ’Ιησούς, is the presence of the Holy Spirit, who enables (δύναμαι, 12:3) true speech.
The content of the statement indicates its divine origin: Κύριος Ιησούς is a true claim from the Holy Spirit. The statements in v. 3, therefore, provide examples of how speech is connected to its divine source. If someone says, “Jesus is a curse,” the hearer knows that the Spirit of God has not inspired that person, even if she or he claims the Spirit. This knowledge is not based on the speaker’s behavior but on whether the statement is congruent with what the hearer knows.The distinction between Ανάθεμα ’Ιησούς and Κύριος ’Ιησούς is also that the latter statement is intelligible in the community, unlike the former. Because of their initiation into a community that has received the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:13), the Corinthians possess knowledge of the name “Jesus,” which requires they invoke the name in a way that reflects their knowledge. In 1 Cor 12:1-3, Paul moves his audience from ignorance (ού θέλω υμάς άγνοεΐν) to recalling knowledge of their former religious lives (ο’ίδατε) to the gap in their understanding that he addresses (διο γνωρίζω ύμΐν). Paul establishes a “once- but-now” pattern; once the Corinthians were έθνη, “gentiles,” and carried away to “voiceless idols.” But now they know the name “Jesus,” and they should use this “great name” properly. Similarly, in his discussion of food offered to idols, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they know “no idol in the world exists” and “there is no God but one” (8:4). In the idol meat situation and practices of inspired speaking, the Corinthians encounter the complexity of reconciling new knowledge with former practices and the reality of the world around them.
The curse tablets from the Sanctuary of Demeter in Corinth, as well as tablets found in other locations in Corinth and Kenchreai, locate ritual practices of harnessing divine power with written and spoken language in Corinth during Paul's time. If the term ανάθεμα existed, for the Corinthians, in curse tablet rituals, they may have imported conceptions of language and communication with gods from those experiences into how they understood Paul's discourse. In fact, Paul requests that they place his instructions in the context of their former experiences (12:2). Curse tablets use language to communicate with and persuade the gods. They petition gods that seem appropriate for the request. They call the gods by foreign and mysterious names, and knowledge of these names allows a petitioner to tap into divine power. The magical practitioner gains power by knowing how to harness language in its spoken and written, performative and permanent forms. The Corinthians cannot say Άνάθεμα’Ιησοΰς because they know the statement is based on a particular view of how divine names and powers work that is dissonant with what they know about the name “Jesus.” For Paul, this name has no part in cursing, even if the person using it in this way claims divine inspiration. This does not mean that Paul instructs against pronouncing curses, since, as we have seen, he himself does it in the closing greeting of the letter. He does not, however, curse by using the name Jesus.
The issue of claims to inspiration continues throughout the discussion about interpreting prayer in tongues and prophecy in 1 Cor 12-14. A claim to inspiration must be tested and evaluated by the community (14:27-31). Paul argues that the intelligible language of prophecy is preferable to the unintelligible language of speaking in tongues. This does not mean that he eschews such modes of speaking. Rather, he recommends translation, interpretation, and evaluation during meetings for the benefit, or “building up” (οικοδομή, 14:26), of the community. He claims his own ability to speak in obscure ways (14:18) and pronounce blessings and curses (16:21-24). In the curse tablets, obscure language is valuable for two reasons: First, the gods understand even if the speaker and other hearers do not, and second, secrecy and unintelligibility provide the statement with power and the speaker with authority. The same principles of communication may be at play in Corinthian “speaking in tongues.” Some Corinthians may value secrecy and mystery in their communication with God. By contrast, Paul focuses on human hearers. Language does not communicate unless the audience can determine the content of the utterance and test its divine source. To illustrate this point, Paul provides an analogy: people who speak in tongues are like musical instruments, “lifeless things that give sound” (τα άψυχα φωνήν διδόντα, 14:7). This phrase recalls the “voiceless idols” (τα είδωλα τα άφωνα) of 12:2 and aligns this way of speaking with the uninspired statement, Ανάθεμα ’Ιησούς.