Ecclesia laus Corinthiensis

This dissertation examines the earliest reception of the letters of Paul to the Corinthians, focusing on issues of ethnicity, civic identity, and empire. At its core, the dissertation seeks to understand how Paul's earliest audience in Corinth heard and responded to Paul's rhetoric of ethnicity. This dissertation makes three important contributions to the study of Paul, the Corinthian correspondence, and the city of Corinth. First, I lay out the local context that offered Paul's audience myths, stories, practices, and experiences with which to think when interpreting Paul's letters. This shift requires pairing literary and archaeological materials as a means of reconstructing the ways in which the rhetoric of ethnicity was deployed in Corinth. Second, placing Paul within this local context shows him to be one among many using the rhetoric of ethnicity to persuade Corinthian audiences. This focus on the multiplicity of voices in Corinth seeks to open up spaces or cracks in our interpretation of the Corinthian correspondence where we might hear the voices of the Corinthians who heard and interpreted Paul's letters. Attention to ethnicity and its importance in the Corinthian correspondence is my third contribution. Studies of Paul and ethnicity have generally focused on the letters to the Galatians and Romans, except when discussing specific confrontations that Paul may have had with Jewish missionaries (e.g., the "super apostles" of 1 Corinthians 10-13). Thus, in Pauline studies, scholars have generally only tackled the topic of ethnicity when they have seen Judaism and Jewish voices opposing Paul's as affecting particular letters. Ethnicity, however, was relevant as well to the Gentiles who heard and responded to Paul's preaching. In this dissertation I show that the rhetoric of ethnicity was central to how Paul presented himself to his Corinthian audience and how he argued over community boundaries and practices. Ultimately, this allows Paul to emerge as one of many using the rhetoric of ethnicity to persuade discerning Corinthian audiences.