Chapter 13 seems like a
digression because some of these materials are pre-Pauline, a kind of aretalogy
of love derived from Jewish wisdom traditions. (Laura Salah Nasrallah, An
Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity [Harvard
Theological Studies 52; New Haven: Harvard University Press, 2003], 88)
Margaret Mitchell (ibid., 57-58)
rightly points out that love is only the subject of six verses, and that Paul
speaks in the first person singular throughout much of this passage. Conzelmann
(1 Corinthians, 218-19, esp. 219 n. 14), in contrast, sees 1 Corinthians
13 as a “self-contained unity”; he points to the variety of stylistic forms
within 1 Corinthians 13 which are different from Paul’s writing, and he
emphasizes (in the excursus on 219-20) the many parallels that would lead one
to conclude that this chapter is in the style of Jewish wisdom literature, a
kind of aretalogy of love. (Ibid., 88 n. 80)
