Texts in Conversation
In 1 Corinthians, Paul says he could address the community only as people of the flesh, not as spiritual people. In the Dead Sea Scroll 4Q417, the author similarly contrasts a people of spirit with the spirit of flesh, suggesting a common tradition.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
4Q417 1 i 17
4QInstruction
Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom and Instruction
15 For it is engraved, decreed by God, against all … […] of the sons of Seth, and a book of remembrance is written before him 16 for those who keep his word. And that is the vision of Hagi for the book of remembrance. And he gave it as an inheritance to humankind, together with a people of spirit, for 17 according to the pattern of the holy ones he formed it. But no more did he give Hagi to the spirit of flesh, for it did not know the difference between 18 good and evil according to the judgment of its spirit. And you, son who understands, look at the mystery that is to be and know
1 Corinthians 3:1
New Testament
1 So, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but instead as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready. In fact, you are still not ready, 3 for you are still influenced by the flesh. For since there is still jealousy and dissension among you, are you not influenced by the flesh and behaving like unregenerate people? 4 For whenever someone says, “I am with Paul,” or “I am with Apollos,” are you not merely human? 5 What is Apollos, really? Or what is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, and each of us in the ministry the Lord gave us.
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Notes and References
“... Before Collins and Goff, Frey had followed up on a suggestion of Lange, and argued that some kind of negative notion of “flesh” is to be found in 4QInstruction, where the “spirit of flesh,” does not merely denote human frailty, as in the Hodayot, but an entity which is opposed to the “sons of heaven” (in 4Q416 1 10), to the elect addressees (in 4Q418 81 1–2), and to the “spiritual people” in the pericope we are now discussing. For Frey, the “fleshly spirit” denotes “sinful humanity,” as opposed to the elect or pious ones, but one may respond that in our pericope, the issue is not sin, but rather that the “fleshly spirit” suffers from ignorance. Since Frey followed Lange in assuming that the “people of spirit” were angelic, he did not really contrast “spirit” and “flesh” in our pericope. Goff combined Frey’s suggestion with Collins’ thesis of two types of humanities, by relating the two groups of the 4QInstruction pericope to Paul’s distinction between fleshly (σαρκίνοι) and spiritual (πνευματικοί) types of people, as in 1 Cor 3:1, as well as the distinction between ψυχικός and πνευματικός in 1 Cor 15:42–49. ...”
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