1 Cor 10:1-13
1 Cor 10:1-13 has a less clearly defined
expository pattern than some other Pauline midrashim. But its opening summary
of Exodus events (10:1-5) and its interpretive explanation of the one explicit
biblical quotation (10:7) reveal its commentary form. This, its self-contained
character, and its broadening of the question of food offered to idols to the
more general question of idolatry lend plausibility to Wayne Meeks' view that
the passage is "a literary unit, very carefully composed prior to its use
in its present context".
The christological question
becomes explicit when the “spiritual” following rock giving water to the
Israelites in the wilderness is called Christ (10:4). By metonomy the
miraculous work of God in the Old Testament can be called by the name God. But
here the Rock is identified typically and surprisingly not with God but with
Christ, and it is related to the typological character of other Exodus events
of redemption and judgment (10:6, 11). Paul goes on to warn the Corinthians,
"Neither let us tempt Christ (Χριστον
p46 D) as some of [the Israelites] tempted him" (10:9). Thus,
he places Christ both at the Exodus and in the present reality at Corinth. In a
change of mind I now agree with Anthony Hanson that "the real presence of
the pre-existent Jesus" is Paul's meaning in 1 Cor 10:4. If so, this
preformed piece is a very early witness to the church's confession of the
pre-existent Christ and, like 1 Cor 8:6 and Col 1:15—20, may be related to a
wisdom Christology. (E. Earle Ellis, “Performed Traditions and Their
Implications for Pauline Christology,” in Christology, Controversy, &
Community: New Testament Essays in Honour of David R. Catchpole, ed. David
G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett [Supplements to Novum Testamentum 99;
Leiden: Brill, 2000], 317-18)
