hophemphimalaya

*
IN
my view,
NONE of these ways of understanding PAUL
is adequate, and I wish to propose here a different way of reading him, one which is generated,
no less than the reading produced by Fiorenza's student, by feminist reading practices, politics,
and theory.

~*~
~*~


FIRST OF ALL,
there is the question of apparent contradiction
between Galatians and
Corinthians?


THIS
contradiction
obtains on
two levels.


FIRST,
in the baptismal formula in Galatians 3:28,
the phrase "There IS no male and female" is included,
while in the Corinthians [1 COR 12:12-13] version
it is dropped.


SECOND,
much of the advice on marriage
and general discussion of gender in Corinthians
seems to imply that there very much IS and OUGHT TO BE
male and female in the Christian communities and households,
certainly insofar as marriage
is to continue.


FINALLY,
even within Corinthians itself, there seems to be much tension between "egalitarian" notions of the status of the sexes AND rigidly hierarchical
ones.


I am
going to propose
a partially new resolution of THESE contradictions
within the context of my overall interpretation of Paul's thought,
because these expressions and tensions function within the
ENTIRE ['mydilivejournalchaiset']
system.


I will
argue in the end
that PAUL is caught HERE on the horns of the dilemma
not of his own making, as it were, and one on which we are impaled {!}
into post-modernity and (embryonic) post-patriarchy -
the MYTH of the "PRIMAL"
androgyne.


~*~


The
construction
I wish to build here
is constituted on the following notion:
The famous "myth of the primal androgyne,"
together with the myth of Adam's rib, provides the ideological base of gender in our culture
until THIS
day.


According
to THIS myth,
the first human being was an androgyne
who was later split into
the two
sexes.


However
- and THIS is the catch -
in the Hellenistic world and late antiquity,
the primal androgyne was almost always imagined as disembodied,
so that the androgyne was really NO-BODY
and dual-sex was
NO-SEX.


THIS
myth,
I suggest,
encodes the dualist ideology whereby a spiritual androgyny
in contrasted with the corporeal [and social] division
into SEXES.


~*~


GIVEN
this general understanding
of the context of Pauline thought and expression,
I can begin to set out my interpretation of the differences
and apparent contradictions between
Galatians and Corinthians
on gender.


To
put
it briefly
and somewhat crudely:
Galatians is, on my reading,
a theology of the spirit
and Corinthians
a theology
of the
body.


IN
Galatians
Paul's major concern
is to defend his doctrine of justification by faith
as a means of including the gentiles in the Israel of G D,
and he violently rejects anything that threatens that notion
and THAT ['neotheological']
inclusion.


"FOR
YOU ARE ALL
children oF g d
through faith in Yehoshua haMashiach/Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ
have put on Christ:
'THERE IS
NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK;
THERE IS NEITHER SLAVE NOR FREEMAN; THERE IS NO MALE AND FEMALE!
fOR YOU ARE ALL ONE IN cHRIST jESUS!'
IF, however, you belong to Christ,
THEN you are
Avrahams's offspring,
heirs according to
the promise!"


~*~



BUT
in Corinthians,
Paul is fighting against pneumatics
who seem both radically anti-body AND radically antinomian.
He thinks the WHOLE Christian mission is in danger,
having fallen into the peril that he anticipated at the end of Galatians
of allowing the spirit to provide opportunity for the flesh,
because the realities of the flesh and its demands
have not been
attended
to.


He produces,
therefore, a theology of the body
that balances and completes, but does NOT contradict,
the theology of
Galatians.


It is no wonder,
then, that THIS is THE text which is RICHEST in
"halakhic" prescriptions, and no wonder, as well, that it is THIS TEXT which inscribes hierarchy between men and women
in the marriage relationship?


IN
THE LIFE
OF THE SPIRIT, in Paul as in Philo,
there may be no male and female, BUT in the life of the body
there certainly
IS!


NEXT
is the fact
that in Corinthians there is an explicit and frequent appeal to BOTH Jewish tradition AND that of apostolic,
Jewish Christianity.


Several times in this letter
Paul refers to his passing on of tradition ['paradoxis'] that he had received,
and all but one of his citations of traditions attributed explicitly to YESH
appear in this letter as well, while according to other interpretations "ALL" such citations
are in Corinthians.


ALL THIS
is in direct contrast [not contradiction] to Galatians,
in which Paul emphasizes that he is not authorized by tradition,
by the teaching of YESH in the FLESH,
that he as an apostle NOT FROM MEN but from g d,
authorized by HIS VISIONARY EXPERIENCE
OF THE ['holy']
SPIRIT.


It is
no accident
that the Pauline text that MOST thematizes the body
is the one that also MOST manifests such fleshly concerns as RULES and REGULATIONS, TRADITION, LITERAL INTERPRETATION,
AND AUTHORITY.


I suggest
that we best read Paul as a middle way
between the insistence on literality AND corporeality,
perhaps EVEN the monism of the "Church of Yerushalayim", on the one hand, and the radical dualism of gnostics [and gnostic-like tendencies in the early "Church"],
on the other.


Paul's is a dualism
that makes room for the body,
however much the spirit is more highly
valued.


In
THIS light
I will reread Paul
on gender.

knipoogcool!nahnahgaap!gemeenverliefdliefdesverdrietverliefdgemeengaap!nahnahcool!knipoog
engel

05 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 17 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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