“... 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 ...”