PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

doing so he chooses the form of an excursus is in complete correspondence with
the rules of the demonstrative genre. 159
It is a devaluing speech in which Paul belittles the charismata by setting them
against love on three accounts. 160
However, Smit’s analysis might be questioned here. Does Paul actually set the charismata
in opposition to love, or does he rather speak of what they are like without love?
Garland’s comment is apt:
Rather than being a hymn glorifying how wonderful love is, this text becomes a
subtle commentary on what is rotten in Corinth. 161
As Garland’s comment suggests, there are numerous verbal and conceptual parallels
between chapter 13 and Paul’s characterisation of the Corinthians elsewhere in the letter.
For example: οὐ ζηλοῖ (cf. 3:3); καυχήσωμαι, περπερεύεται, φυσιοῦται (cf. 4:6 etc.);
ἀσχημονεῖ (cf. 7:36). The critique of these attitudes is surely particularly cutting in the
context of chapters 12–14, as they characterise the very attitude of proud, self-seeking
pneumatism that Paul there opposes. Fitzmyer rightly concludes:
I hesitate to label the passage a digression or an insertion, because, as I see it, it is
the climax to what Paul has been teaching in chap. 12 about the pneumatika and
the diverse kinds of them, whether charismata, diakoniai, or energēmata…. In
their own way and somewhat abstractly, these verses sum up what Paul has been
saying elsewhere in this letter about the characteristics of the Christian life when
lived in Christ. 162
159
Joop Smit, “The Genre of 1 Corinthians 13 in the Light of Classical Rhetoric,” NovT
33/3 (1991): 193-216; 214.
160
Smit, “The Genre,” 215.
161
David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians (BECNT; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic,
2003), 617.
162
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary (AYB; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), 488.
121