1 Corinthians 15 has always been a
mighty consolation to Christians suddenly confronted with the relentlessness of
death. Here the apostle Paul, with the absolute confidence of the truly
faithful, triumphantly announces Christ’s victory over death, a victory in
which ultimately all his followers may snare.
However, even if we do not experience
any difficulty in sharing the emotional content of Paul’s defiant question ‘O
Death, where is thy sting?’ (1 Cor 15:55), it is still the exegete’s duty to
ask: What exactly do these words mean? What is the ‘sting’ of death?
According to Paul, it is sin, αμαρτια (1 Cor 15:56). We are inclined to regard that
as an abstract concept, but to Paul it was a personified, demonic power. It ‘lives’
(Rom 7:9) to work ‘death’ in people, who are subjected to its tyranny (Rom
7:13). Is the ‘sting’ a demonic power then?
In I Cor 15 Paul uses several elements
of the belief in resurrection that became increasingly popular in Palestine
during the inter-testamental period. We now know why this belief hardly ever
found expression in the canonical books of the Old Testament. It appears to
have been one of the fundamental concepts of Baalism. Only when the direct threat
of a Baalistic syncretism had faded did such ideas become acceptable in wider Jewish
circles. Probably very few of those who adopted them realized they were making
use of the legacy of pagan Canaan. This circumstance explains the disagreement between
Paul and the Old Testament prophet he quotes in support of two of his key
arguments in I Cor 15, the prophet Hosea. In I Cor 15:4 Paul refers to Hos 6:2
when he says that Christ was raised ‘on the third day in accordance with the
Scriptures.’ Hosea, however, was far from accepting the idea of resurrection
there. On the contrary, with heavy irony he quotes from the mouth of those who
thought they could represent YHWH in Baalisitc terms. It was Baal who
supposedly revived the dead ‘on the third day’ when he himself returned from
the Nether World. Hosea utterly rejects such a view of YHWH. What had been unacceptable
to the Old Testament prophet could be adopted by Paul in light of the resurrection
of Christ. (J. C. De Moor “’O Death, where is thy Sting?’” in Ascribe to the
Lord: Biblical and Other Studies in Memory of Peter C. Craigie, ed. Lyle
Eslinger and Glen Taylor [Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement
Series 67; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988], 99-100)