Recalibrating Christian Ethics at Corinth: Paul’s Use of Jesus the Prototype and Collective Remembrance to Provide Spiritual Guidance on Weaker Brothers and Food Offered to Idols

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Main concern here is the use of the phrase Synoptic tradition. Can this be reduced to a tradition. Is it not better to speak of (pre-)Synoptic traditions when 1 Cor is written- and then we need to recognise that  the evidence we have extant may not be the whole story, esp in light of orality.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your comments which have led to making this paper better.

I have added several sentences on the honor shame disparity as present within 1 Corinthians on lines 99-104.

Synoptic tradition has been changed to Jesus tradition in nearly all instances.

A note was placed referring to Foutopolos that idol feasts place the recipient in the grasp of the idols. 

I have removed the section on Romans 15:1-7 and focused more on appearances of Jesus tradition in 1 Corinthians. This came from another reviewer. As I did this, it took care of your concerns about that paragraph.

Reviewer 2 Report

The author of this article draft uses methods offered by social identity and memory theories to understand how Jesus is offered by Paul as a prototype to the Corinthian congregation. This draft has some promise, but would require substantial revision to make clear its contribution to and within current scholarly discussion.

Most notably, the author argues that Jesus is presented as a 'prototype', but could clarify the role of a prototype by offering a definition of 'prototype' used within social identity theory. Additionally, once the prototype and its role as a figure for Corinthian Christians to emulate is clarified, this would help clarify how various citations from 1 Cor demonstrate how Jesus is to be emulated. For example, it was unclear to me how Paul's discussion of baptism and identification with/under particular figures (1 Cor 1:10–12) is related to the goal of emulating Jesus. Doing so would also give room to clarify why and how some contextual information given about Corinth (on pp. 2–3) adds to the argument, since it currently acts as a presentation of information that does floats somewhat separately from the author's argument.

I also was not sure as to how much of Jesus's lifestyle is explicitly stated in 1 Cor that might be emulated by Corinthian Christians, beyond Paul's discussion of the Eucharist – the author points to use of some shared vocabulary with gospel literature in relation to care for the weak/poor and willingness to suffer, but the relationship between Paul's argumentation and gospel presentations of Jesus seem unclear. While the author supplements this line of argumentation with material from 1 Clement, they could more substantially clarify how 1 Clem's knowledge of Jesus's life. The article could consider the development in turning to Jesus as a prototype within SIT between 1 Cor and 1 Clem to show how the Corinthian congregation develops their relationship to Jesus and his life over the first century.

The author's English would require substantial revision. It includes uses of future "will"s and "should"s in contexts that do not require them, some repeated phrases or terms (e.g. "too" on p. 3; "he mentions" on p. 2). 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments which have improved this article. The following changes have been made as a result.

A definition of prototype has been provided from the American Psychological Association dictionary. It is on lines 29-30.

Regarding the discussion about baptism and emulating Jesus, I have changed this. See lines 133-136

In order to draw out the greater knowledge of Jesus' lifestyle at Corinth, several paragraphs were added about knowledge of him as found from 1 Cor 7:10-11 and 9:14.

The repeated phrases were addressed and the use of will and should were addressed, too.

A greater connection between the super diversity of the Corinthians as expressed in the beginning of the paper in section 2.1 is addressed in section 4 and the conclusion in section 5.