Texts in Conversation
Philo describes the wise person as an athlete who resists the blows of the senses, while the foolish person submits like a slave. Paul echoes this imagery in 1 Corinthians 9, calling believers to compete with self-control to win the prize.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Philo Allegorical Interpretation 3:201
Classical
And to the woman He said, “‘ I will greatly multiply your sorrows and your groaning ”’ (Gen. iii. 16). Woman, who is, as we have seen, Sense, is the subject of an experience peculiarly her own, namely grief, which is called “ sorrow ’’; for there is a quarter of our being in which gladness takes rise, and in that same quarter does grief also take rise: but it is through the senses that we feel gladness, so that of necessity we feel grief also through them. But the excellent and cleansed Mind grieves least, for the senses assail him least. But the foolish Mind experiences grief abundantly, having no antidote in the soul, with which to repel the deadly ills that come from the senses and their objects.¢ The athlete and the slave take a beating in different ways, the one submissively giving in and yielding to the stripes, while the athlete opposes and withstands and shakes off the blows that are falling upon him. You crop a man in one way, a (sheep’s) fleece in another. The sheep has the role of mere passivity, whereas, in the man’s case, there is not only an active reciprocity, but his very submission is, so to speak, also reciprocal, as he adapts his position and posture to the process of being cropped. Just in the same way the man who does not reason yields to another as slaves do, and submits to sorrows as intolerable mistresses, and is powerless to look them in the face, not able to draw forth free and manly reasonings, and accordingly a vast mass of painful experiences pours in upon him through the senses. The man of knowledge on the contrary, stepping out like an athlete to meet all grievous things with strength and robust vigour, blows a counter-blast to them, so that he is not wounded by them, but regards each of them with absolute indifference ; and, I think, he might with youthful spirit address to grief the proud vaunt in the play, saying : Burn me, consume my flesh, drink my dark blood, Take fill of me; for sooner shall the stars Go ’neath the earth, and earth go up to sky, Than you shall from these lips hear fawning word.* LXXIII.
Date: 20-50 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
1 Corinthians 9:24
New Testament
23 I do all these things because of the gospel, so that I can be a participant in it. 24 Do you not know that all the runners in a stadium compete, but only one receives the prize? So run to win. 25 Each competitor must exercise self-control in everything. They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. 26 So I do not run uncertainly or box like one who hits only air. 27 Instead I subdue my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified.
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Notes and References
“... Although the emphasis in verse 24 is not on competition, or that only one receives the prize, Paul is undoubtedly appealing to the Corinthians’ competitive concern for attaining high status. It is even possible that he here is giving a different twist to another of the enlightened Corinthians’ images of how their gnōsis of the one true God makes their consciousness strong and authorizes their liberty to eat meat sacrificed to idols. The Jewish philosopher Philo, who uses so many terms that seem to have been current among the Corinthians, too, writes of how, in contrast to the ‘slave,’ who is passively subject to the ‘blows’ of the senses, the person possessed of ‘knowledge,’ ‘strengthened’ like a fine ‘athlete,’ simply regards sense-perceptible matters with ‘indifference’ (Allegorical Interpretation 3.201-202). Thus the theological ‘athlete’ does not leave the sacred ‘contest’ without a ‘wreath,’ but wins the ‘prize’ of victory, which enables the soul to ‘know God’ clearly (On the Change of Names 81-82). Paul, however, has the struggle taking place precisely in the sense-perceptible social world that Philo and the enlightened Corinthians believe is transcended in their knowledge of God ...”
Horsley, Richard A.
1 Corinthians (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries)
(p. 133) Abingdon Press, 1998
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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