Chapter 6

1 When any of you has a legal dispute with another, does he dare go to court before the unrighteous rather than before the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you not competent to settle trivial suits?⁠ 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? Why not ordinary matters! 4 So if you have ordinary lawsuits, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame! Is there no one among you wise enough to settle disputes between fellow Christians? 6 Instead, does a Christian sue a Christian, and do this before unbelievers? 7 The fact that you have lawsuits among yourselves demonstrates that you have already been defeated. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 But you yourselves wrong and cheat, and you do this to your brothers and sisters! 9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Some of you once lived this way. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 12 “All things are lawful for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “All things are lawful for me”—but I will not be controlled by anything.⁠ 13 “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both.” The body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 Now God indeed raised the Lord and he will raise us by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Or do you not know that anyone who is united with a prostitute is one body with her? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”⁠ 17 But the one united with the Lord is one spirit with him. 18 Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin a person commits is outside of the body”—but the immoral person sins against his own body.⁠ 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you,⁠ whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.

Texts in conversation

Compare Testament of Reuben 5:5 and 1 Corinthians 6:18

Pseudepigrapha, Testaments · New Testament

Summary

The Testament of Reuben teaches to flee sexual sin, describing it as a force that deceives and destroys through desire and manipulation. Paul gives the same command in 1 Corinthians, using similar language likely based on a common tradition.

Passages

Testament of Reuben 5:5

Pseudepigrapha, Testaments · Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs

3 The angel of the Lord told me that women are overcome by the spirit of sexual immorality more than men. In their hearts they scheme against men: first they captivate their minds through how they dress, then through a look they plant the desire, and finally through the act itself they capture them. 4 A woman cannot overpower a man directly, but through seduction she lures him. 5 So flee from sexual immorality, my children, and tell your wives and daughters not to dress up their heads and faces to deceive, because every woman who uses these tricks has been set aside for eternal punishment. 6 This is how they seduced the Watchers before the flood. As the Watchers kept seeing them, they lusted after them and plotted the act in their minds. They transformed themselves into the shape of men and appeared to the women while they were with their husbands.

100 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Testament of Reuben

1 Corinthians 6:18

New Testament

15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Or do you not know that anyone who is united with a prostitute is one body with her? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But the one united with the Lord is one spirit with him. 18 Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin a person commits is outside of the body”—but the immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.

55–57 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Corinthians

References

"... What is the origin or inspiration in 1 Corinthians 6:8, the central injunction of Paul's parenesis against going to prostitutes? Two answers to this question have been suggested. Whereas F. Godet and F. F. Bruce claim that the command may recall Joseph's literal fleeing from Potiphar's wife, the margin of Nestle-Aland notes the parallel of the Testament of Reuben 5:5. This short study investigates these two proposals and suggests that they may in fact both be right. The question of whether Paul quoted from non-canonical Jewish literature has long been debated. R. H. Charles's Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1913) claims that Pauline parallels can be found in Tobit (1. 199), Wisdom (1. 526 f), Enoch (2. 163 f), Letter of Aristeas (2. 92), 4 Ezra (2. 559) and especially the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (2. 292), a document he claims was Paul's vade mecum. However, E. E. Ellis and others are skeptical of such parallels, and claim that only similar phraseology is represented ('Paul's use of non-canonical Jewish literature is very doubtful at best in no case has a direct use of writings of the diaspora been established'). The relation of 1 Corinthians 6:18 to the Testament of Reuben 5:5 is largely ignored in this debate, and by commentators on 1 Corinthians. Apparently the repetition of a mere three words has not impressed scholars, who, if aware of the parallel, usually put them down to coincidence. Hans Conzelmann rightly calls 'a characteristic catchword in parenesis', and there is certainly nothing distinctive about the term for sexual immorality in question ..."

Brian S. Rosner, “A Possible Quotation of Test. Reuben 5:5 in 1 Corinthians 6:18a,” JTS 32.1 (1992): 123–127.

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

1 Corinthians16 chapters

Compare Testament of Reuben 5:5 and 1 Corinthians 6:18

Summary

Passages

Testament of Reuben 5:5

1 Corinthians 6:18

References

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