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1 Corinthians

About this book
Chapter 13

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,⁠ but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.⁠ 2 And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.⁠ 3 If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I receive no benefit. 4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up.⁠ 5 It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful.⁠ 6 It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside.⁠ 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part,⁠ 10 but when what is perfect comes, the partial will be set aside. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face.⁠ Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare 1 Corinthians 13:4 and Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 49:5

New Testament · Early Christian

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Summary

In 1 Clement, the author praises love in a run of short statements modeled on the passage about love that Paul wrote to the same church in 1 Corinthians, but adds that love knows no division or rebellion, the faults Clement is writing to correct.

Passages

1 Corinthians 13:4

New Testament
3 If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I receive no benefit. 4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. 6 It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside.
55–57 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Corinthians

Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 49:5

Early Christian · First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians
1 Let the one who has love in Christ fulfill the commandments of Christ. 2 Who can declare the bond of the love of God? 3 Who is able to describe the majesty of its beauty? 4 The height to which love lifts us is beyond words. 5 Love joins us to God; love covers a multitude of sins; love endures all things, is patient in all things. There is nothing coarse, nothing arrogant in love. Love has no divisions, love does not rebel, love does all things in harmony. In love all the elect of God were made perfect; without love nothing is pleasing to God.
90–100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Clement of Rome, 1 Clement

References

“... The parallels between these passages are extremely suggestive, although perhaps not in themselves sufficient to demonstrate literary dependence. If Clement has used Paul, he echoes rather than quotes him, taking Paul’s hymn to love but adapting it to his own preferred vocabulary [...] for dealing with the situation in Corinth. The lack of direct parallels or quotations notwithstanding, it does seem likely that here Clement refers to Paul’s letter, and that his hearers in Corinth would have been expected to recognize the allusion. ...”
Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett, eds., The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 147.
“... If the emphasis at the beginning and end of the encomium to love in 1 Clem. 49.1–5a and 49.6 is on God’s love for humans, the same cannot be said of 49.5b, where “love has no schism” (σχίσμα), an allusion to Corinthian factionalism (cf. 2.6; 46.9; 54.2), where “love does not cause division” (οὐ στασιάζει), precisely the opposite of the seditious action against the Corinthian presbyters (47.6; cf. 4.12; 43.2; 46.7; 51.3; 55.1), and where “love does all things in harmony” (ποιεῖ ἐν ὁμονοία), a virtue that the author consistently hopes to inculcate among his Corinthian readers ...”
David J. Downs, Alms: Charity, Reward, and Atonement in Early Christianity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 183.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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1 Corinthians 13:4 and Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 49:5

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