γυμνος and Gen 3:7
In this section, I will argue that the
nakedness that Paul desires to avoid (2 Cor 5:3, 4) proceeds from his belief
that Adam, originally clothed with divine glory, was divested of that covering
because of his sin. In other words, Paul does not want to experience Adam’s
nakedness. This belief is paralleled in the Judaism of Paul’s day and it
appears to be based upon the Genesis story. The reader will remember a number
of Jewish texts surrounding Paul’s day which describe Adam’s original glory in
terms of a garment, “clothing” of which he was divested because of his sin 3
Bar 6:16; 2 Enoch 22:8 and 30:12; Gen R XX, 12. The idea that
Adam’s sin deprived him of his glorious garment thus leading him naked is
especially clear in Apoc Mos 20:1, where Adam exclaims to the serpent:
. . . and in that very house my eyes were
opened, and I know that I was naked of the righteousness with which I had been
clothed, and I wept because you have deprived me of the glory with which I was
clothed.
This concept of sin depriving
Adam of his glorious garment is a close parallel, I suggest, to Paul’s
statement in 2 Cor 5:3-4. The preceding Jewish texts, and 2 Cor 5:3-4, are
probably rooted in Gen 3.
γυμνος, an uncommon word in Paul, occurs only four times in the
writings: 1 Cor 15:37; 2 Cor 11:27; Rom 8:35 and here in 2 Cor 5:3. Paul’s
employment of the term outside 2 Cor 5:3 is easily defined. 2 Cor 11:27 and Rom
8:35 refer to the literal nakedness of clothing that results from personal
assault and hardship while 1 Cor 15:37 refers to the naked, undeveloped seed
that is planed into the ground (with reference, be it noted, to the
resurrection body initiated by the Last Adam). The term in 2 Cor 5:3,
however, in addition to the literal meaning, seems to convey a metaphorical nuance—Paul
fears that he may be found bodiless. In a search for the background of γυμνος, the LXX appears to be the
most logical source of Paul’s usage of the term, especially Gen 2:25; 3:8, 10,
12. These last texts occur in connection with the Adam/Eve material and because
γυμνος is used there of primordial existence,
it apparently became paradigmatic in the other thirty usages of the term in the
LXX to describe the nakedness of Israel, the shameful and the helpless. It does
not seem insignificant that this key word in the Genesis texts is the same term
used by Paul in 2 Cor 5:3. IT is, in all probability, a key word linking 2 Cor
5:3-4 to Gen 2-3.
If the Adam story does indeed lie
behind Paul’s term γυμνος, it would shed considerable light
upon 2 Cor 5:3, 4. Although the term has sometimes been interpreted ethically
(Paul fears being found naked of righteousness on the judgement day) it most
probably should be interpreted anthropologically (Paul does not want to die
before the parousia for then he would experience bodiless existence in the
intermediate state). In other words, Paul wants to be clothed with the
glorious, heavenly body in this life without having to enter the intermediate
state at death, naked of that habitation. Such lack of glory is the consequence
of Adam’s fall. This statement assumes, of course, that even the intermediate
state belongs to the “not yet” side of Paul’s eschatology. . . . I suggest that
the idea that Adam was rendered naked of the divine glory that covered his body,
which is described in Gen 3:7, etc. and attested in other Jewish works previously
discussed, informs Paul’s term, γυμνος. (C.
Marvin Pate, Adam Christology As the Exegetical And Theological Substructure
of 2 Corinthians 4:7-5:21 [Lenham, Ma.: University Press of America, Inc.,
1991], 115-16)
