Paul, the Slaves of Desire, and the Saints of God
For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you refrain from porneia, that each of you know to possess his own wife [skeuos, lit. “vessel”] in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and defraud his brother in the matter, because the Lord is an avenger concerning all these matters, just as we told you before, and we solemnly warned you. For God did not call us for impurity, but in holiness.
—1 Thess 4:3–7
In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul warned the brothers in Christ to refrain from porneia (“fornication” or sexual immorality more generally), avoiding the passion of lust (pathei epithymias) exhibited by the gentiles (ta ethnē). Paul similarly exhorted the members of the Galatian church (lit. “assembly”) to practice self-mastery (enkrateia), since they had “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). Writing about one hundred years later, Justin Martyr made comparable claims. First he decried the unreasonable passions of the Greeks and their gods (Justin 1 Apol 5.9.2) then, remarking upon the transformation that occurs when one is devoted to the God of Israel, he concluded: “We who not long ago delighted in porneia now embrace sōphrosynē alone” (1 Apol 14). Ancient Christians from Paul onward frequently employed this basic argument: non-Christians are enslaved to desire, but Christians have gained control of their desires and rejected all impure, “unnatural” sexual behavior. Conflating a biblical polemic against gentile idolaters with Greco-Roman arguments that figured corruption in terms of sexual vice, authors such as Paul and Justin defined themselves against others by contrasting their exceptional virtue with the supposed vice of everyone else. The world is corrupt, they argued; it is infected with lust. Those who abandon themselves to this lust will be punished. By contrast, the followers of Christ are pure. They control their desires and will be saved.
Paul and later followers of Christ frequently defined the boundaries of their movement in sexual terms. Paul claimed that gentiles take their wives “in the passion of lust”; one of Paul’s disciples added that gentiles “have given themselves up to licentiousness” (Eph 4:19). Justin suggested that gentiles are “driven by unreasonable passion and by the scourge of worthless demons” (1 Apol 5);1 a later apologist added that they “have made a business of harlotry and established immoral houses of every base pleasure for their young” (Athenagoras Leg 34.2).2 According to Paul, the followers of Christ must always be exceptionally chaste: They do not (or should not) visit brothels (Rom 6:15–20). They do not (or should not) tolerate porneia in their midst (1 Cor 5:1–13; cf. Eph. 5:5). His disciples insisted that Christian wives remain submissive and chaste (Col 3:18; Eph 5:22–4; 1 Tim 2:8–15; cf. 1 Pet 3:1–6) and that (male) leaders rule themselves and their households well (1 Tim 3:1–7).3 Becoming “saints,” they have “put to death” what is “earthly”—“porneia, impurity, wicked, lustful passion and greediness, which is idolatry”—or so one Pauline Christian asserted (Col 3:5).4 Later Christian authors continued this theme, celebrating the fact that some Christians renounced sexual relations altogether for the sake of Christ.5 Indeed, as one author boasted, “the world hates the Christians … for they resist the pleasures” (Diogn. 6.5).
Assertions about sexual morality pervade early Christian discourse. Paul worried about marriage practices, sexual renunciation, incest, adultery, intercourse with prostitutes, and other sexual practices he identified as porneia.6 Later Christians discussed virgins, virginity, marriage, divorce, desire, porneia, and adultery at great length. Though followers of Christ did not always agree on the precise nature of the self-control required, there seems to have been universal agreement that desire (epithymia) and pleasure (hēdonē) would lead to sin. In contrast to all outsiders, the brothers and sisters in Christ were—or should have been—capable of keeping desire in check.7 They were to be characterized by true righteousness and holiness. Turning away from idolatry, they no longer engaged in sexual excess of any kind, distinguishing themselves from the corrupt communities they left behind. Claims regarding the outstanding sexual virtue of “the saints” were accompanied by a corresponding depiction of “the world” as plagued by sexual vice. Sexualized invective became a key strategy for drawing boundaries between outsiders and insiders and also for enforcing insider sexual ethics. Who were the followers of Christ? They were not gentiles. Who were the gentiles? They are sexually immoral idolaters. In this way, Christian sexual ethics, and Christians as a group, were constituted as both different from and superior to others.
This chapter considers one aspect of this early Christian sex talk: charges of sexual licentiousness against gentile outsiders as lodged by the apostle Paul. My goals are twofold: to place Paul’s arguments in the context of other ancient Mediterranean discourses and to offer an analysis of the function of these arguments. For Paul, drawing boundaries between the gentiles-in-Christ and gentile outsiders on the basis of sexual virtue (theirs) and vice (everyone else’s) was an effective strategy during the early empire, a period in which claims about virtue, sexual and otherwise, were frequently deployed to justify status and difference. Despite his world-critical stance, Paul often relied upon the very categories of virtue and vice put forward in the philosophical and moralistic traditions of his targets, combining these categories with biblical assertions regarding the gentiles and illicit sex. On the whole, Paul upheld widely shared assumptions regarding sex, gender, and status. He may have been highly critical of outsiders, yet he reinscribed the gendered sexual norms he shared with many of those he criticized.
Trained to varying degrees in Greek or Latin rhetoric and living within the cultural environment of the Mediterranean, early Christian authors would have been well aware of the rhetorical commonplaces referencing virtue and vice discussed in the previous chapter. Paul utilized “all the subtleties of Greek logical argumentation,” even if his rhetoric did not reach the heights of some of his more eloquent contemporaries.8 The second-century Christian Justin called his First Apology, a prosphōnēsis, “an address,” especially to a ruler, employing the technical term for the treatise he composed (1 Apol. 1.1).9 By the second and third centuries, Christian authors like Justin demonstrated self-conscious attention to Greco-Roman rhetorical forms in the speeches, letters, and dialogues they composed;10 Paul’s letters also employed common Greek rhetorical tropes and devices.11 Not surprisingly, then, Christian authors listed many of the same virtues and vices found in works by Greek moralists12 and employed metaphors resembling those utilized by Stoic and Cynic philosophers.13 Yet Paul and later Christians also built upon a familiar biblical argument: gentile idolaters engage in reprehensible sexual practices. “Idolatry”—itself a term of opprobrium meaning “worships other gods”—was figured as znh or porneia; one usually implied the other.14 Paul adopted this rhetorical tactic as his own, reconfiguring “idolatry” to mean “does not worship God/Christ” while continuing to equate idolatry with sexual depravity. Later Christian writings adopted a similar point of view: so, for example, the author of the Didache warned against “murders, adulteries, lusts, porneia, thefts, idolatries, magic arts, sorceries, robberies, false witness,” and “hypocrisy,” among other behavior that leads to the “way of death” (Did. 5.1), and Polycarp cautioned that one who does not abstain from avarice “will be defiled by idolatry, and shall be judged as if he were among the gentiles who do not know the judgment of God” (Poly. Phil. 11.2). To the author of Colossians, “porneia, impurity, passion, evil desire and greediness” were a form of “idolatry” (Col 3:5). In this way, the followers of Christ incorporated Greco-Roman commonplaces—“blaming” others for immoral sexual behavior, ignoble family or national origin—into their own arguments and combined them with biblical and postbiblical Jewish15 claims about the fornications of the gentiles.16 The apostle Paul was the earliest follower of Jesus to put forward these sorts of arguments, so we begin with him. But first Paul’s claims need to be placed within a larger tradition of anti-gentile sexualized invective.
CANAANITES, IDOLATERS, AND OTHER FORNICATORS
Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: I am the LORD your god. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.
—Lev 18:2–3
The book of Leviticus prefaced prohibitions against incest, intercourse with a menstruating woman, child sacrifice, bestiality, and “lying with a man as with a woman” (LXX: meta arsenos ou koimēthēsē koitēn gynaikos) with a warning: the people of Israel are not to “do as they do in the land of Egypt” or “as they do in the land of Canaan.” After listing the prohibited behaviors, Israel was warned once again: if they commit any of these abominations, they will defile the land just as the Canaanites had done and, as a result, “the land will vomit them up” (Lev. 18:24–30). By framing the commandments in this way, the book of Leviticus implied that certain sexual acts were non-Israelite practices. Furthermore, Leviticus cautioned, such acts lead to punishment by God no matter who commits them. In the process, God’s true people were represented as sexually pure, and outsiders—be they Canaanites, Egyptians, or disobedient Israelites—were associated with abhorrent sexual and religious behavior.
This association between gentiles, apostate Israel, and (purportedly) depraved sexual behavior can be found in many other biblical and postbiblical writings. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, idolatry was described in sexual terms as “fornication” or “prostitution” (znh and cognates). Canaanites were said to “prostitute themselves to their gods”; they were guilty of both false religiosity and sexual licentiousness, or so these sources suggested (Exodus 34:15–16).17 The prophet Ezekiel turned these accusations against Jerusalem. Jerusalem, by failing to live up to the covenant, acted just as one would expect idolaters to behave: as a whore. She “lavished her [Heb. “your”] whorings on any passer-by,” betraying her faithful husband, God. Judgment, appropriately, was the result (Ezek 16:15).18 As Hosea put it, Israel “plays the whore,” and Ephraim, joined to idols, engages in sexual orgies, loving fornication more than glory (Hosea 4:15–19). As a consequence, God will punish Ephraim and Israel; Ephraim will become desolate and Israel will be put to shame (Hosea 5:9, 11, 14–15; 7:8–10, 12–13; 8:2–3; 9:1–3; 10:6).
These biblical commonplaces were extended to include Greeks and other gentiles by later Jews. To the Wisdom of Solomon, idolatry was the “beginning of fornication”; idolaters “kill children in their initiations,” “hold frenzied revels,” and “no longer keep either their lives or their marriages pure” (Wis. Sol.14.12). The Letter of Jeremiah accused gentile priests of stealing gold and silver from their gods, in part, to fund trips to a brothel (10–11).19 The Book of Jubilees states that “all [the ways of the gentiles] are a pollution and an abomination and uncleanness” (22:20) and therefore a man who dared to give his daughter or sister in marriage to a gentile man ought to be stoned “because he has caused shame in Israel.”20 The Testament of Levi presented the patriarch Levi at his deathbed warning his sons to avoid behaving “like the gentiles” by eating the Lord’s offerings with whores, committing adultery, having intercourse with prostitutes, taking gentile women for their wives, and becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah. If they do indulge in such abhorrent, “gentile” behavior, they will bring a curse upon Israel (T. Levi 14.1–8). The third Sibylline Oracle contrasted Judeans who “remember the hallowed marriage bed” with Phoenicians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, and others who (allegedly) commit adultery and “have impious intercourse with male children” (Sib. Or. 3.590–600).21 According to Josephus, the Greeks follow the example of their depraved, incestuous gods, using the bad sexual behavior of their deities as an excuse “for the monstrous and unnatural pleasures in which they themselves indulged,” “unnatural” pleasures that included incest, adultery, and male homoerotic sex (Joseph Ap. 2.275).22 The sectarian Judeans of Qumran interpreted Hosea’s earlier (sexualized) condemnation of Israel as a description of Judea during their own time: the (current) disregard of God’s commands and the celebration of gentile festivals in Judea will soon leave these (new) apostates shamed and in mourning (4Q166–7).23 The Alexandrian Jew Philo excoriated apostates for becoming “licentious, shameless, unjust, frivolous, small minded, quarrelsome, companions of falsehood and false testimony.” Their impiety has led them to serve “the delights of the belly and the organs below it” (Philo Virt. 34.182).24 In this way, gentiles and wayward Israelites were persistently identified with prostitutes, adultery, lust, fornication, idolatry, and homoerotic sex while “true” Judeans were identified with proper sexual and religious practices.
DANGEROUSLY STRANGE WOMEN
Arriving in Israel from exile, Ezra was profoundly disturbed to learn that Israelite men had married women associated with the “peoples of the lands [and] with their abominations,” or so his ancient biographer suggested (Ezra 9:1).25 “When I heard this, I rent my garments and my mantle, and pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat appalled” (Ezra 9:3). From Ezra’s perspective, Israel had become dangerously polluted by intermarriage; the only solution was divorce. In this way, Ezra (or Ezra’s biographer) reinterpreted and expanded earlier commandments forbidding Israelites to marry the descendants of certain, specified nations in favor of a general decree: endogamy was the only acceptable option; any and all mixing with “foreign” or “strange” women pollutes the land.26 From Ezra’s perspective, marriage to foreign women profaned “the holy seed” of Israel by combining it with the unclean (lit. “menstruous”) people of the land (Ezra 9:2, 11–12).27 Teachings in Leviticus had already asserted that Israelite men should beware of Canaanite women; Ezra took the argument a step further by offering a blanket condemnation of intermarriage. In the process, “the people of the land,” whatever their ancestry, became “profane seed,” permanently corrupt and corrupting.28
This emphasis on Israel as a “holy seed” has led some scholars to posit an intensification of anti-gentile sentiment in some post-exilic Judean literature. Jonathan Klawans explains:
What is new in Ezra and Nehemiah is the view that the moral impurity of Gentiles is inherent. This view indeed contradicts the Holiness Code, which extends to the Gentile populace of the land prohibitions that prevent moral impurity (e.g., Lev 18:25; Num 35:15). Obviously, the assumption of the Holiness Code is that the moral impurity of local Gentiles is not inherent: otherwise the code would not bother to obligate the stranger to follow these commands.29
From Klawans’ perspective, there was a general escalation of concern about sexually defiling sins during Second Temple Judaism, as reflected in Ezra-Nehemiah, in popular Judean literature from the time, and, later, in the literature of Qumran.30 This concern was often framed in terms of the sexual danger of outsiders. As the author of Ezra put it, strange or foreign women participated in practices that were “like” the gentiles. In this way, he proclaimed a crisis of sexual immorality—figured as a crisis involving sexually suspect women and the disobedient Jewish men who had married them—and then argued that Ezra had been uniquely designated to fix this crisis, thereby justifying Ezra’s position as leader of the newly reconstituted Israel.31 Claudia Camp observes that “Ezra in effect transforms a struggle over power and material interests into a struggle over the definition of Jewish identity at a cultural-symbolic level, a struggle that was definitively mounted in terms of divorce of ‘foreign’ wives—definitively, though perhaps only symbolically.”32 Whatever Ezra did or did not do in Israel upon his return, it is clear, from the perspective of his biographer, that the purity of Israel would be permanently marred if Israelite men dared marry foreign women. Foreign women were treacherous indeed.
An emphasis on the threat of foreign or strange women can be found in a variety of post-exilic sources. In the romance Tobit, the patriarch exhorted his son Tobias to marry only a fellow Israelite: “Keep yourself, son, from all porneia; first, take a wife from among the descendants (lit. “from the seeds”) of your fathers and do not take a strange woman who is not from your father’s tribe” (Tobit 4:12).33 The “Letter of Aristeas,” a pseu-donymous work from Alexandria, suggested that Israel’s God had erected a barrier around Israel so that there could be no (sexual) mixing between Israel and other nations, thereby keeping Israel pure in body and soul.34 The Book of Jubilees, a retelling of Genesis dating from the second century B.C.E., asserted that the sexual union of gentile and Israelite was itself fornication. That author sought to prove his point by means of a creative reworking of biblical genealogy designed to demonstrate that successful patriarchs always married within the group.35 Philo and Josephus asserted that Judean priests were forbidden to marry gentile women (Philo Spec. 3.29; Josephus AJ. 8.190–6). The danger of the foreign woman came to signify the allegedly insurmountable difference between Israel/Judea and her neighbors. From the juxtaposition of Wisdom and the Strange Woman in Proverbs—a passage that many scholars associate with the time of Ezra—to the reinterpretation of the rape of Dinah in Jubilees and the Qumran community’s claim that outsiders are intrinsically defiling, foreign women were said to bring political, social, and sexual disaster upon any man of Israel foolish enough to succumb to their wiles.36 Though multivocal and complex, the theme continued in rabbinic literature: intermarriage with gentiles mixes holy seed with profane seed, polluting all who engage in it and producing apostasy.37
MEN MOUNTING MEN: HOMOEROTIC SEX AS A DISORDER OF THE GENTILES
Leviticus had suggested that “lying with a man as with a woman” ought not to occur among the Israelites; it is a “moral impurity” punishable by death and the grounds for dismissal from the land.38 The author of the Letter of Aristeas went further, suggesting that other nations defile themselves by procuring men and defiling mothers and daughters (152). Philo of Alexandria added that male homoerotic sex is “unnatural” (para physin) and “lawless” (anomos; see Philo Abr. 133–35; Philo Contempl. 59–62). His vivid description of the alleged sins of the people of Sodom offers a striking example of his claim: “The land of the Sodomites … was entirely full of innumerable wrongs, especially those associated with gluttony and lasciviousness, made great and multiplied with every other pleasure” (Abr. 133). Sodom was so overfull with luxurious delights and so committed to lasciviousness, that the Sodomites “threw off the law of nature,” eating and drinking and pursuing “lawless intercourse” (lit. “lawless impregnating”; Abr. 135). This “lawless intercourse” not only included adultery but also men mounting men. Even when the Sodomites discovered that their “lawless impregnating” of men could not result in the begetting of children, they continued with their unnatural and lawless behavior until the men became “accustomed to submitting to the things of women” (Abr. 136).39 Whatever Genesis meant to suggest about the particular crimes of Sodom, according to Philo, “unnatural” sexual practices, combined with extravagant indulgence, led to that city’s downfall.40
Philo elaborated on the identification of gentiles with male homoerotic sex to include concerns about the effeminate (read, “passive”) male partner and the need for control of the passions.41 For Philo, the final sign of the degradation of Sodom was male submission “to the things of women.” A similar concern for male self-mastery is found in 4 Maccabees. There Joseph was praised for his refusal to become a victim of Potipher’s seductive Egyptian wife: “When he was young and in his prime for intercourse, by his reason he nullified the frenzied urge of the passions” (4 Macc 2.4). Sirach urged young men to avoid luxury, refrain from looking at whores, and keep a firm watch on their daughters and wives (37:29, 41:20–22, 42:11). To Josephus, the only “natural” sex was what occurred in the union of man and woman. Jews practice this “natural sex” for the sake of procreation only, and Jewish law forbids sex between men.42 Among these authors, procreative sex was defined as best, the mastery of desire was viewed as making men “manly,” and homoerotic sex was characterized as “against nature,” a set of beliefs we have already encountered in works by Stoic philosophers from approximately the same period.43 Moreover, as Michael Satlow has recently demonstrated, Palestinian rabbinic traditions were also influenced by Greco-Roman anxieties about the “passive” male.44 Greco-Roman sources emphasized the importance of masculine self-mastery; so did Palestinian rabbinic sources. Greco-Roman sources expressed particular anxiety about the passive partner in a male homoerotic encounter; so did rabbinic sources. Greco-Roman sources equated “being a man” with self-control; so did rabbinic sources, although for the rabbis this control was to be gained through the study of Torah.45 Still, however similar these sexual categories may be, gentiles continued to represent “the other,” and the sexually suspect other at that.46
WHO IS THE “WOMAN” NOW? JUDEAN HEROINES AND THE REPROBATE POTENTATE
The reconstitution of Israel after the Babylonian exile was presented by the author of Ezra as requiring a reestablishment of male purity and control, figured as the rejection of foreign wives. Pure Israel, this story suggested, depends upon the pure seed of Judean men and the enforcement of “proper,” endogamous marriage alliances for all Judean men and women. Men must deposit the “holy seed” in appropriate receptacles, the chaste women of Judah, and they must ensure that their sons do the same. Good Judean women were expected to play their part by remaining silent, modest, and sexually faithful to their husbands, a stereotype reiterated in several sources from this period. The heroic mother of seven brave sons martyred by the Greek Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes—a story recounted in both 2 and 4 Maccabees—offers a striking example. According to 2 Maccabees, this woman “reinforced her woman’s reasoning with a man’s courage” when she exhorted her sons to face death rather than break God’s commands (2 Macc 7:21). The author of 4 Maccabees expanded the story, adding a speech (purportedly) given by the heroine after the death of her seventh and final son: “I was a pure virgin and did not go outside my father’s house; but I guarded the rib from which woman was made. No seducer corrupted me on a desert plain, nor did the destroyer, the deceitful serpent, defile the purity of my virginity” (4 Macc 18.6–9). The narrator then commented that “the sons of Abraham with their victorious mother are gathered together into the chorus of the fathers, and have received pure and immortal souls from God” (4 Macc 18:22). In this way, the “manly” strength and virtue of the mother—she guarded her chastity from her youth and gladly saw her sons tortured rather than submit to a Greek tyrant and his gods—was contrasted with the decadence and bloodthirsty violence of Antiochus. Antiochus the Seleucid King was shamed by a “common” Judean woman.
The story of Judith offers an interesting parallel: Judith, a beautiful, upright Israelite widow, overcame the Assyrian general Holofernes by pretending to bring both information and sexual favors. Instead, she assassinated him, and victory over his army soon followed. Exhibiting Holofernes’ head to her countrymen, she exclaimed, “The Lord has struck him down by the hand of a woman. As the Lord lives, I swear it was my face that seduced him to his destruction, and that he committed no sin with me, to defile and shame me” (Judith 13:15–16). Meanwhile, back at the Assyrian camp, a leader of the army proclaimed, “The slaves have tricked us! One Hebrew woman has brought disgrace on the house of King Nebuchadnezzar” (14:18). In other words, the powerful, cruel Assyrian men were no match for one brave, pure Hebrew woman who had married within her family, carefully administered her husband’s estate, and managed to avoid sex with a foreigner, even though desperate circumstances had forced her to use her beauty to “unman” the tyrant. A Greek-speaking editor of the book of Esther described the similar attitude of his heroine. Before visiting the chamber of the Persian king, Esther prayed “you know I hate the splendor of the wicked and abhor the bed of the uncircumcised and of any alien … I abhor the sign of my proud position, which I wear on the days when I appear in public.” This “sign”—her Persian crown—was to her “a menstruous rag.”47 In this version of the Esther story, as in the book of Judith, a chaste, beautiful Hebrew woman reversed the fortunes of her people by deploying her feminine wiles, yet she still managed to maintain her chastity, protect her Judean cultural identity, and guard her beauty.48 These stories implied that it was the foreign king who has become “womanly”—he allowed himself to be overcome by desire—and the Hebrew woman who behaved “like a man” since she acted to save her people rather than to sate her desires.49
The “good” women of Israel deployed their sexuality in service of their community, and they guarded their chastity, even when forced to violate conventional moral norms in order to outsmart gentile tyrants.50 By contrast, dangerous women—be they gentile women or fallen women of Israel—used their sexuality to lure Israelite men into apostasy and adultery. Famous biblical examples include Potipher’s wife, who sought to seduce the patriarch Joseph and then arranged for his arrest when he would not relent, and Jezebel, who so manipulated her husband King Ahab that she was able to arrange for the worship of Baal throughout the land.51 Proverbs warned that such foreign or “strange” women wander the streets, looking for prey: “She is loud and wayward; her feet do not stay at home; now in the street, now in the squares, and at every corner she lies in wait” (Prov 7:11–12). Men were cautioned to keep away from such women and to keep a close eye on their daughters, preventing them from joining their ranks. Sirach warned, “Be ashamed of looking at a woman who is a harlot” and “keep strict watch over a headstrong daughter” (41:20, 42:11). According to the Letter of Jeremiah, gentile men have less success in this endeavor. Their women wait at the entrances to temples hoping for a tryst and competing with one another for the opportunity (43). The author of Susanna, an addition to Daniel written during the first century B.C.E., denounced two Judean elders for falsely accusing a chaste Judean woman of adultery: “You offspring of Canaan and not of Judah, beauty has deceived you and has perverted your heart. This is how you both have been dealing with the daughters of Israel, and they were intimate with you through fear, but a daughter of Judah would not tolerate your wickedness” (Susanna 56). In other words, Judean women do not submit to adultery, even when threatened, and Judean men who would dare to assume otherwise must actually be “Canaanites.”
According to Amy-Jill Levine, “the women of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha are the screen on which the fears of the (male) community—of impotence, assimilation, loss of structure—can be both displayed and, at least temporarily, allayed.”52 In biblical texts, Israel was figuratively described as a “woman,” a faithful wife of God or an adulteress who dared deploy her sexuality elsewhere by “fornicating” with other gods. In later, Hellenistic Jewish tales, a “manly” Judean woman was often portrayed as overcoming the (supposedly) “manly” gentile king; Israel’s purity was preserved and gentile degradation was exposed. Claims about illicit sex were employed to critique Israel’s foreign rulers, associating these rulers with luxury and sexual excess and thereby gendering them as “female” and Israel as “male,” and to reaffirm Israel’s borders, even after these borders had been irrevocably shattered. Israel may be a “woman,” at least in terms of “her” social position as a subject people, but it was the gentiles who are “womanly,” or so these stories suggested.
THE DEPRAVITY OF THE GENTILES
The portrait of “man” and “woman” offered in these sources has much in common with the sources discussed in the previous chapter. Apocryphal literature such as Tobit and Sirach recommended that Judean men control their desires, be wary of seductive women, and keep careful watch over their households. The nation of Israel could be imagined as a woman and, therefore, the heroic deeds of one Judean or Israelite woman could stand for the prestige, and even the “manliness,” of the entire community. Though we have seen such discursive strategies before, in the case of biblical and postbiblical Judean literature, the goal was the production of difference between Israel/Judah/Judea and the gentiles or, more simply, everyone else. Gentile tyrants, overcome by desire, could be conquered by “manly” Judean women. Judean men were repeatedly warned to keep away from seductive yet polluting gentile women. Homoerotic sex was characterized as a gentile, not Judean, “problem,”53 as were adultery, rape, promiscuity, pimping, and bestiality.54
A crucial point in the holiness code of Leviticus seemed to be that incest, homoerotic sex, child sacrifice, intercourse with a menstruating woman, and bestiality cause impurity, an impurity then associated with the Canaanites. Though the contours of the argument changed over time, the basic strategy of defining insiders and outsiders according to sexual practice remained. The Sibyl objected to pederasty and adultery as foreign practices, opposing them to the pure marriage practices of Judeans, marriage practices that were affirmed again and again in such works as Tobit, Jubilees, and Sirach. To Josephus, Judean laws promoting endogamy and procreation and against male homoerotic sex demonstrated the exceedingly strict moral code of the Jews, a counter to accusations that the Jews are “full of lust.” Furthermore, the “unnatural” sex of the Greek gods (adultery, incest, men lying with men) was offered as evidence for the superior moral position of the Judeans. As far as Leviticus, Exodus, Ezekiel, Hosea, Ezra, the Third Sibylline Oracle, Tobit, Judith, Susanna, Jubilees, the Testament of Levi, Pseudo-Aristeas, Philo, Josephus, and the rabbis were concerned, gentiles are corrupt, and that corruption is demonstrated by their degenerate sexual behavior. As we shall see, Paul, a Greek-speaking Judean from the Diaspora, both repeated and reconfigured this argument to defend his particular group of Judeans and gentiles-in-Christ, the followers of Jesus.
PAUL AND THE SLAVES OF LUST
According to Paul, transformation in Christ resulted in a decisive break with the depravity of the world. Gentiles were “enslaved to lust”; Christ-followers became “slaves of God” (Rom 6:13–23). Gentiles characteristically commit porneia (1 Thess 4:5; Gal 5:16–26; Rom 1:18–32); Christ followers glorify God in their bodies (1 Cor 6:15–20). Gentiles join their bodies to prostitutes (1 Cor 6:15); Christ followers exercise self-mastery, or they marry and thereby channel their passions appropriately (1 Cor 7:1–16, 25–40). In this way, Paul juxtaposed the brothers and sisters in Christ with the (allegedly) depraved gentile idolaters, condemning the “crooked and perverse generation” (Phil 2:15) for sexual corruption while setting the “saints” apart on the basis of their strict self-control. Sexual immorality on the part of Christ followers cannot be tolerated. For example, when Paul heard that a brother was guilty of porneia of a kind “not even found among the gentiles” (1 Cor 5:1), he instructed the Corinthians to hand him over (paradidōmi)55 to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:5). No Corinthian Christ follower should associate with a “brother” (i.e., member of the community) who is a prostitute/fornicator (pornos), or who is greedy, or an idolater, reviler, drunkard or robber (1 Cor 5:11). Rather, “drive out the wicked from among you” (1 Cor 5:13).
This sexualized language had a two-fold purpose: to produce difference between the “saints” (hagioi) of God and those who would face God’s wrath; and to persuade the audience to accept a kind of sexual morality that, Paul argued, belongs to Judeans and gentiles-in-Christ alone. Accusing gentiles of sexual depravity, Paul participated in a long-standing polemical strategy familiar to Greeks, Judeans, and Romans alike: vilifying outsiders and defining insiders on the basis of sexual virtue and vice. Furthermore, he adopted the conventions of both Greek rhetoric and Judean anti-gentile polemics to do so. Paul’s example was imitated by later Christian authors who also condemned outsiders for depravity and celebrated the exceptional virtues displayed by their own community.56 According to Paul, rejection of God is the problem, sexual depravity is the symptom, and Christ is the cure. Those who continued in sexual sin were promised a divinely initiated punishment. Those who suppressed the truth necessarily engage in “unnatural” lust, Paul argued, a direct result of their rejection of God (Rom 1:18–32). Those involved in porneia, idolatry, homoerotic sex, and adultery, among other vices, will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9–11; compare Gal 5:16–26). The Lord will punish those gentile Christ followers who dare to continue in the lustful passions that characterized their former idolatrous lifestyle. In other words, they must accept Paul’s particular definition of sexual self-control or face eternal destruction (1 Thess 4:3–6; 1 Cor 10:7–22). This is clear from an exegesis of Paul’s letters to the Romans and to the Corinthians, as well as from the anti-gentile argumentation he employs throughout his letters.
THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS AND THE DEPRAVITY OF THE WORLD
Romans was the only letter written by Paul to a community of Jesus followers that he had not visited (Rom 1:8–12; 15:22–29). He wrote to the “saints” in Rome in preparation for a visit, possibly to deflect criticisms of him and his views prior to his arrival, with the hope of making a favorable impression upon a church from which he sought support for his further missionary work (Rom 15:22–23).57 Romans follows some of the conventions of Greek letters—the body of the letter is framed with an initial greeting and thanksgiving and concluded with a final greeting and blessings58—but it is much longer than a common letter. It has been called a “letter essay” that combines several genres,59 an extended Cynic-Stoic diatribe with an epistolary frame,60 or a 
(a speech intended to attract students) in letter form.61 The issue of genre is far from settled. Still, Paul’s familiarity with the basics of Greek rhetoric is clear.62 I do not propose to solve the issue of rhetorical genre here. For my purposes, it is enough to note that Romans offers a coherent argument containing motifs, figures, and stylistic devices found in Greek rhetoric, techniques that Paul employed for his own purposes.63
Romans is among the more logical and carefully constructed of Paul’s letters. Paul offered a careful presentation of his mission, a mission that seems to have included the following points: (a) gentiles are under the indictment of sin (1:18–3:20); (b) Christ provided the solution to the problem of gentile sin (3:21–8:38); (c) even though the Judean law did not solve the problem, at least for gentiles, God’s promises to Israel were not negated but rather fulfilled in Christ (9:1–11:36); (d) gentiles, now transformed by Christ, should live moral lives in harmony with one another as they wait for the “the hour” when Christ will return and God’s final judgment will be revealed (12:1–15:13).64 Sexual morality was clearly not the, or even a, central concern of Romans. Nevertheless, significant portions of Paul’s larger arguments were presented in sexual terms. His argument may not have been about sex or gender or status per se, yet he repeatedly used sex, gender, and status to think with.65
Claims about sexual behavior, the body, slaveries, and the flesh are essential to the persuasive force of much of the letter. For example, in order to demonstrate the depravity of the idolatrous gentiles, a primary task of 1:18–3:20, Paul describes the “unnatural” and “dishonorable” lusts of those who have rejected God. In his discussion of the transformed lives of the faithful (4:1–8:38), Paul compares the pre-Christ life of Jesus’ followers with their postbaptismal transformation in Christ. To do so, he suggests that there are two types of slavery, slavery to sin or slavery to God. Slavery to sin is portrayed as the condition of every gentile who does not follow Christ. Slavery to God refers to the new, purified state of believers. Both are represented as bodily conditions, exhibited in the “members” (mevlh, i.e, bodily parts). Paul goes on to contrast “flesh” and “those who live according to the flesh” with “spirit” and those who obey the spirit’s directives. His description of the “works of the flesh” implies that living “according to the flesh” means living in a state of uncontrolled desire. Living “in the spirit” means controlling one’s body and one’s desire. In his concluding ethical exhortations, Paul suggests that believers ought to conduct themselves “becomingly” (euschēmonōs), not in licentiousness (aselgeias), while they remain subject (hypotassō) and wait for the day (i.e., the final judgment of God). Thus, whether or not Romans was about sex, Paul often puts forth his arguments in terms of sex, flesh, body, and slavery. When Paul was interested in drawing boundaries between insiders and outsiders, when Paul discusses the nature of sin or overcoming it, when Paul offers a diagnosis of the condition of gentiles prior to their incorporation into the “body of Christ,” he does so by talking about sexual depravity.66
THE UNNATURAL LUSTS OF THOSE WHO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH
Following a brief greeting and thanksgiving, Paul describes the punishment that God has reserved for those who suppress the truth: they have been “given up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Rom 1:24). Three times Paul states that they were “given up” (paradidōmi) by God to lust. God “gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,” “gave them up to dishonorable passions” (Rom 1:26), and “gave them up to a base mind” and “to do the things which are improper” (Rom 1:28). Their first mistake was refusing to recognize and honor God, resulting in futile thinking and foolishness, for they chose to worship “images resembling a mortal human being, or birds, or animals, or reptiles” rather than the immortal God (Rom 1:23). Therefore, God abandoned them to their desires, they have become consumed with dishonorable passions, they engage in “unnatural” sex,67 and they are filled with “all manner of injustice, wickedness, greediness and vice” 
The wrath of God has already been revealed, they are already experiencing the consequences of their idolatry, and those consequences are largely sexual: abandonment by God leads to “unnatural” sex and uncontrolled desire.68
The affinities between this description of corruption and traditional representations of the vices of the gentile idolaters are obvious.69 Gentiles were commonly associated with porneia, lust, adultery, incest, homoerotic sex, and bestiality. Paul never actually identified the target of his condemnation as “the gentiles,” yet the stereotypical character of the accusations—especially the claim that they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles” (Rom 1:23)70—suggests that Paul expected his audience to think of gentiles here.71 Paul did not need to identify the targets of this invective because his audience would readily recognize the typical list of accusations against gentile idolaters. Judean authors frequently condemned the Egyptians for their worship of animals.72 As already noted, idolatry was persistently linked to fornication in Jewish literature from the Hebrew Bible to the Talmud.73 Paul reconfigured this common polemic—gentile idolaters are enslaved to lust—in order to further his argument that gentiles without Christ could not attain either salvation or self-mastery. The corrective Paul recommended for the pandemic state of gentile corruption was Christ, that is, joining the movement he supported.74 Paul began his letter to the saints in Rome by describing the degradation of the world in sexual terms, with desire 
dishonorable passions 
and “unnatural” intercourse constituting the symptoms of the perverse world and God’s just abandonment of it. By contrast, he identified those “in Christ” with purity and self-control, ascribing impurity and out-of-control lust to gentiles as a group. This tendency to formulate the break between Christ followers and the world in sexual terms can be found throughout the letter.
THE SLAVES OF SIN AND THE SLAVES OF GOD
Following the general indictment of (gentile) humanity in the early chapters of Romans, Paul argues that “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” is the best available cure for the problem of sin (hamartia), a problem that ought no longer to trouble the saints (Rom 3:22; compare 1:16–17). What were the contents of this category, “sin”? A primary attribute of “sin” as described in Romans is lack of control of one’s body. In baptism, Paul asserts, “the sinful body” (to sōma tēs hamartias) is destroyed so that “we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (doulevein hēmas tē hamartia; Rom 6:6). Sin causes the sinner to “obey the appetites” (to hupokovein tais epithymias) and to yield his “members” (ta melē, i.e., bodily parts)75 to impurity (akatharsia; Rom 6:19). Sin is linked to death—sin “leads to death,” the end (telos) of “the things of which you are now ashamed” is death, and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:16, 21, 23)—just as those guilty of idolatry, homoerotic sex, dishonorable passions, and other offenses were said by Paul to “deserve to die” at the conclusion of Rom 1:18–32.76 He imagines sin, therefore, as a bodily condition, as was righteousness, with sin resulting in death and righteousness in life.77 Sin “reigns in your mortal bodies so that you obey its desires” (Rom 6:12). Righteousness (dikaiosynē) involves yielding your “members” to God. The body ought to become an obedient instrument of God as opposed to an obedient instrument of desire (Rom 6:13, 17–18, 19). In this way, Paul suggests that two types of slavery are possible: slavery to desire and impurity or slavery to God and righteousness. Christ followers who do not control desire join gentile idolaters in a dishonorable, debased sort of “slavery.”
Paul was not the first ancient author to connect slavery and desire. As noted in the first chapter, slaves in the ancient world were often represented as morally suspect or exempt. They were morally deficient and less capable of self-control than their masters; they were supposedly “unscrupulous, lazy, and criminous,”78 different “by nature,” and lacking the requisite faculty of deliberation.79 Tied to this negative evaluation of slaves was the accusation that a free citizen could become a “slave” to luxury and desire,80 and “free” or “slave” could be differentiated on the basis of self-mastery. Masters mastered both their own bodies and the bodies of their slaves, at least in theory, but slaves were incapable of mastering their own bodies, both literally and figuratively.81 This confusion between the material circumstances of slaves—who could not control their bodies because their bodies were owned by others—and slavery to desire as a problem that could trouble masters is evident in the writings of a Roman contemporary of Paul, Seneca the Younger. Seneca recommended that Roman masters occasionally invite deserving slaves to dine with them since, “if there is any slavish quality in them as a result of their low associations, it will be shaken off by keeping company with men of gentler breeding” (Sen. Ep. 47.16). In other words, slavish slaves could be improved by the company of noble noblemen. This argument only becomes possible if one presupposes the moral failings of slaves and the moral superiority of masters. Seneca then went on to argue that even masters can become “slaves,” one to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all to fear. He concluded, “No slavery is more disgraceful than that which is voluntary” (Sen. Ep. 47.17). Thus, Seneca proposed that slavish slaves can benefit from the example of their honorable masters. At the same time, he sought to shame citizen men into rejecting “slavishness,” that is, indulgence in lust, greed, and excessive ambition, once again linking slaves with dishonorable behavior.82
Paul may have had this traditional association between “slavishness” and desire in mind when he composed Romans. The “sin” that the “slaves to sin” engaged in was largely sexualized. Sin and the passions (ta pathēmata) were linked, and the body, prior to baptism, is said to be inherently sinful (to sōma tēs hamartias). Without faith in Christ, bodily parts were said to be obedient to impurity (ta melē humon doula tē akatharsia), lawlessness, and shame.83 Like Seneca, Paul suggested that all were in danger of becoming “slaves” to the appetites84 and warned against “yielding one’s members” to sin, impurity, and lawlessness (Rom 6:13, 19). Still, unlike Seneca, Paul suggested that the cure for slavery to lust was slavery to God rather than moral improvement through the study of philosophy.85 To Paul, all of the brothers and sisters in Christ must choose “slavery to sin” or “slavery to God,” whether they were slave or free.86 All will yield their members; the question was to what, God or lust? Anyone who rejected Christ was portrayed as essentially incapable of virtue, whether slave, freed, or free. One can sell oneself to impurity, lawlessness, and desire, or one can sell oneself to God.
Juxtaposing the slaves to sin with the slaves of God in Romans, Paul emphasized the significant break between the brothers and sisters in Christ and everyone else. He did so in bodily, sexual terms, with negative slavery conforming to the Greco-Roman trope “enslavement to lust” and positive slavery defined as slavery to (his) God. Slavery to God, Paul argued, leads to a kind of bodily discipline in which one’s body becomes an instrument of dikaiosynē (righteousness). By placing these two slaveries in opposition to one another, making a very real institution—slavery—stand for devotion to God or devotion to desire, Paul subverted traditional status conceptions to some degree, even as he built upon the commonplace association of slavery and desire. Instead of simply reinscribing the traditional relationship among enslavement, lust, and shame, Paul asserted that slavery to God is advantageous, demanding that all the believers become the right kind of slave.87 Still, he continued to play upon ancient assumptions about “slavishness,” even as he asserted that all gentiles in Christ, regardless of status, must become God’s “slaves.”88 The link between slavery and sexual immorality was both preserved and contrasted with a positive, righteous slavery—slavery to God.
By employing slavery as a positive as well as a negative metaphor, Paul partially undermined ideological apparatuses that supported slavery. In Paul’s schema, slaves were not necessarily morally deficient, for they shared the status “slaves of God” or, even better, “freedmen of the Lord” (1 Cor 7:22), and “sons of God” (Gal 3:25–29) with their free brothers and sisters in Christ. “Slavery to God,” especially for actual slaves and other low-status people, could be understood as especially salvific since, as Dale Martin points out, “to raise one’s status by becoming the slave of a good and powerful master was to be saved from a harsher or less honorable fate.”89 Paul utilized status language to elevate the lower-status, slave Christ follower even above the higher-status free person. Both became, metaphorically, members of Christ’s household, but within that “household” the slave was granted the higher relative position. The slave became Christ’s “freedman,” but the free person became Christ’s “slave.” Both free and slave became members of the most prestigious household of all, the household of God. In return, people of higher status had to “give up their own interests” and “identify themselves with the interests of those Christians of lower status,” while people of lower status gain status enhancement by joining the household of God, even though they remained enslaved. Thus, while Paul did not advocate the abolition of slavery, he challenged the presuppositions that made this hierarchical structure possible.90 Paul continued to build on the theme of metaphorical slavery later in the letter, distinguishing those who live “according to the flesh” from those who live “according to the spirit.” There he asserted that, in the spirit, the “slaves of God” have become something even better, the “sons of God.”
FROM FLESH TO SPIRIT
Later in Romans, Paul furthers the theme of gentile sexual depravity, this time by arguing from the hierarchical dualisms flesh (sarx) and spirit (pneuma), a theme he broaches more directly in his letter to the Galatians.91 In Romans, Paul states, “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit” (Rom 8:5). Paul puts it this way in Galatians: “what the flesh desires is against the spirit, and the spirit is against the flesh” (Gal 5:17). The flesh and its desires lead to death, just as slavery to sin was said to be death dealing to the idolaters of Romans 1 and 6 (Rom 8:6). The “works of the flesh” include: “porneia, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these” (Gal 5:19–21). According to this argument, those who are “in the flesh” cannot submit to or please God, for they are utterly opposed to God and the things of God (Rom 8:7–8). They are enslaved by their desires and their vices. Those “in the spirit,” on the other hand, have put to death the deeds of the flesh and will live. Indeed, they received “the spirit of sonship” instead of a “spirit of slavery” (Rom 8:13–15).92 They are not only “slaves of God,” they are God’s children and heirs. In this passage the slaves of God have become sons of God who live according to the spirit and are free from the works of the flesh and the slavishness of desire.93
Arguing for the corruption of “the world” and describing the decisive transformation that occurs “in Christ,” Paul offered the following representation of gentiles: Idolaters, they have been given up to lust, impurity, the dishonoring of their bodies, their dishonorable passions, and homoerotic sex; they possess base minds, exhibit improper conduct, and are fornicators and slaves of sin. They deserve to and will die. Living according to the flesh, they are lawless, hostile, and cannot please God (Rom 1:18–32; 2:8–9, 21–24; 6:12–13, 19; 7:14–15; 8:5–8, 12–13; 12:2; 13:12–14). The brothers and sisters in Christ, by contrast, are represented quite differently: United with Christ, they have destroyed their sinful bodies and gained bodies that are instruments of righteousness. They are now slaves of God and sons of God, living according to the spirit whether they are slave or free. They have been sanctified, set free from sin, and they bear the fruits of the spirit, having “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24).94 The distinction between these two groups could not be more plain. Those who were not “in Christ” were expected to engage in 
By contrast, gentiles-in-Christ control their bodies and themselves. Paul staked his claim of purity and righteousness in Christ on sexual self-mastery. In the process, he called into question gentile assertions about their own self-mastery, a hostile rhetorical move in the first-century Mediterranean world. Writing a letter to Rome, the capital of the empire, did Paul dared to suggest that the empire and “her” emperor were illegitimate? Or was Paul willing to grant an exception for these gentile rulers, masters of the world, at least for the time being?
BE SUBJECT TO RULING AUTHORITIES
Toward the end of his letter to the Romans, Paul offers a series of instructions regarding appropriate Christian behavior. Christians ought not to be “conformed to this age” but “transformed,” demonstrating the good (agathos), acceptable (euarestos), and perfect (teleios) will of God (Rom 12:2). This good behavior involved, for example, loving one another, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, practicing hospitality, living in harmony, and “giving place to the wrath” (dote topon tē orgē), probably a reference to the coming eschaton (Rom 12:10, 12, 16, 19). In this context, Paul exhorted his readers to “be subject to the governing authorities 
for there is no authority [exousia] except by means of God” (Rom 13:1).
Given Paul’s indictment of the depravity of gentiles-without-Christ earlier in this letter, these instructions seem oddly out of place. In other letters, Paul had suggested that Christ followers should remain subordinate to those who possess authority over them, at least for now.95 Still, having repeatedly referenced the depravity of these gentiles, the view that the exousia (authority) of idolatrous rulers (archontes) is given by God is striking. Yet, Paul specifically instructed Christians to submit to archontes:
For rulers are not a fear to good work, but to bad. You do not want not to have fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have its approval. For it is God’s servant for you, for good. But if you should do wrong, be afraid, for it [authority] does not carry the sword in vain. For it is a servant of God to execute wrath against those who do wrong.
(Rom 13:3–4)
Having argued that those who do wrong are condemned to the wrath of God,96 Paul now places rulers in the position of those who, knowingly or unknowingly, carry out God’s wrath against those who commit evil. Still, he prefaces these comments by noting that the beloved (i.e., the Christ followers) ought not to avenge themselves but “give place to the wrath”; in other words, God will take care of them. He further reminds his audience that “the hour” is near (Rom 12:19, 13:11). Since “the day is at hand,” believers ought to conduct themselves in a presentable manner (euschēmonōs), not in “reveling, drunkenness, beds [koitais, euphemistic for sexual indulgence], licentiousness [aselgeiais], quarreling and jealousy.” Rather, they ought to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” and avoid the flesh and its desires (Rom 13:13–14). The saints ought to submit to the rulers, since, as doers of good rather than doers of evil, they should have no reason to fear them. Paul characteristically defined “good” (agathos) here as rejection of desire and “bad” (kâkos) as overindulgence in activities related to desire, especially sexual intercourse. Paul then recommended obedience to proper “authority” (exousia), in this case “the authorities” that collect taxes, wield a sword, demand fear, and seek honor (Rom 13:6–7). But did Paul believe that his rulers were “good”?
By stating that one ought to have nothing to fear from the rulers as long as one is doing good, Paul may have referenced the view that good rulers reward good, virtuous behavior but punish vice. In theory, good kings, good rulers, and good emperors are pious, beneficent, brave, just, moderate, and wise. Consequently, they encourage bravery, moderation, justice, piety, and wisdom among their subjects.97 Horace makes precisely this point when praising Augustus. Thanks to the Augustus, adulteries have ceased, mothers bear legitimate children, lust has been tamed, and punishment follows guilt.98 Similarly, Pliny praises Trajan’s exceptional virtues and their marvelous, empirewide effects. Thanks to Trajan, all the subjects of the empire, even the poorest, raise legitimate children who will grow into adulthood. Slaves obey their masters and masters care for their slaves (Plin. Pan. 26–7, 42). Across the empire, emperors were represented as universal benefactors, saviors, sons of a god, fulfillments of divinely ordained providence, and the guarantors of peace, security, and piety.99 Even Philo linked the exceptional virtue and piety of Augustus and Tiberius with the peace and prosperity of the empire during their reigns. According to Philo, Augustus’s every virtue “outshone human nature” (Philo Leg. 143).100 He brought peace to the entire empire, rid the sea of pirates, and set every city at liberty (Leg. 145–47). He was “the first and universal benefactor,” and thus the whole world voted him honors equal to those of the gods (149). Similarly, Tiberius, possessing noble ancestry, wisdom and eloquence, preserved the peace across the empire throughout his reign (142). These two noble emperors were contrasted with Gaius Caligula, whom Philo represents as a deranged, impious murderer. Gaius greedily stole from every inhabitant of the empire and brought sickness to the healthy and premature death to the living, while transforming the peace his predecessors had established to uproar. Augustus and Tiberius, Philo notes, had been favorably compared with the gods; however, Gaius—profligate, greedy and mad—indulged in a previously unheard of pretension, declaring himself to be a god (74–114). Building upon traditional categories of virtue and vice, Philo sought to win favor from Emperor Claudius for the redress of the grievances of the Alexandrian Jews. To that end, he extolled the virtue of two exemplary emperors and condemned the wickedness of the previous emperor.101 The decadence, inconsistency, and greed of Gaius led to disorder, sickness, and misery of emperor, empire, and subjects. The good ruler embodied virtue; therefore, he ought to establish virtue among his subjects and grant peace in his kingdom. The good princeps, according to this theory, was firmly in control of himself and responsible for a moral climate in which the virtues flourish and vices are punished.102
Paul’s argument that (good) rulers are not a terror to good behavior but to bad was therefore quite typical. What is missing, however, is the qualifier “good” (agathos), for as everyone knew, rulers could also be “bad” (kakos), a character flaw that would bring misery upon ruler and subject alike. Did Paul think that every ruler, good or bad, was a servant of God whose responsibilities included the execution of God’s wrath against those who do wrong? Certainly, Paul has been interpreted in this way.103 Yet Paul’s other arguments suggest that he believed that his rulers were already indicted by God’s wrath, for they, like every gentile, had been handed over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity and to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. They live according to the flesh, are idolaters, possess base minds, are slaves to lust and incapable of sound judgment, and can only continue to corrupt an already corrupt world. Where Philo, Suetonius, and Plutarch singled out particular rulers as licentious, in contrast to those good rulers who kept their desires in check, Paul implied that such a good gentile ruler could not possibly exist. How could he if the only virtuous gentile, let alone ruler, is a Christ follower?
Paul does not advocate a forceful overthrow of the current gentile regime. On the contrary, he warns the brothers and sisters in Christ to submit to the authorities, no matter how corrupt. Perhaps, by leaving out the qualifier “good,” however, Paul means to suggest that the gentiles-in-Christ must submit for the time being, even to a bad ruler who behaves in a way contrary to his station, punishing the good rather than the bad and promoting vice rather than virtue. After all, “the day is at hand” and so the Christ followers in Rome ought to “live peaceably with all,” if possible (Rom 12:18). God will soon take care of the bad rulers; indeed, God already has. Their corruption is revealed by their unwillingness to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and, in consequence, God has already abandoned them to dishonorable lust. Given Paul’s representation of the corrupt world, how are we to read the injunction to “pay all of them their dues; taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due and honor to whom honor is due” (Rom 13:7)? If all the gentiles-not-in-Christ are prone to vice and enslaved to their passions, can they ever deserve honor and respect? No, but God’s devastating judgment will soon be revealed. In fact, the wrath is apparent even now, so live peaceably and wait.104
ILLICIT SEX AND THE CORINTHIAN SAINTS
Paul offers more specific instructions regarding the content of in-Christ sexual purity in his letters to the Corinthian church. These letters contain Paul’s responses to questions raised by the Corinthian community—a church he had founded—as well as Paul’s reactions to news he had received about their activities. Evidence for the conversational nature of 1 and 2 Corinthians includes possible quotations of phrases used by the Corinthians themselves105 and references to letters received by Paul and to reports given to him by others.106 Paul had heard that there were schisms (1:11, 11:18). He had heard that they were tolerating porneia (5:1). He had received a letter with questions about proper behavior in the churches (7:1). He referred to the issues they raised on several occasions, introducing his arguments with the phrase “now concerning” (peri de).107 This evidence has led some scholars to seek to reconstruct the positions and behaviors of the Corinthians with whom Paul was in dialogue. For example, some have argued on the basis of Paul’s discussion of women and marriage that a group of independent, charismatic women were causing trouble in the Corinthian church, at least from Paul’s perspective.108 Others have sought to ascertain the identity of the “super apostles” whom Paul denounces in 2 Corinthians.109 Many have supposed that the Corinthian church was a particularly enthusiastic, charismatic group. These gentiles-in-Christ emphasized spiritual gifts, questioned the value of status, gender, and sexual norms, and, in Paul’s opinion anyway, were in need of a great deal of guidance.110 Since I am primarily interested in the contours of Paul’s rhetoric, I will not attempt to reconstruct the views of his “opponents,” if such a title is warranted for them. Rather, I seek to understand the specifics of the sexual morality that Paul recommends.
In Romans, Paul relies upon sexualized language to describe the depravity of the world, articulating difference in sexual terms. In his letters to the Corinthians, he offers more explicit advice about the sort of sexual morality he envisioned. As he does in Romans, Paul contrasts gentile idolaters with the brothers and sisters in Christ. He shames the Corinthians for tolerating a type of fornication that not even gentiles allow (1 Cor 5:1). He reminds them that before Christ, they had been idolaters, adulterers, effeminates (malakoi) and fornicators/prostitutes (pornoi; 1 Cor 6:9–11). He warns them not to be mismated (heterozygountes) with nonbelievers, since righteousness and lawlessness can have no fellowship (koinōnia; 2 Cor 6:14–7:1).111 In Romans, Paul exhorts believers to commit their bodily parts to the service of God rather than desire; in 1 Corinthians, he describes more fully the specifics of the sort of bodily control required. My discussion of Paul’s advice to the Corinthian Christians is limited to the extensive discussion of sexual morality found in 1 Corinthians 5–7 and to his presentation of “natural” gender in 1 Corinthians 11. These instructions are contained within the series of responses and rejoinders that make up Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.112
DRIVE OUT THE WICKED ONE FROM AMONG YOU
Following a pointed reminder that he was their “father” (1 Cor 4:14–21),113 Paul relayed his disgust for what he had heard about the lax morals of the Corinthian church: “It is actually reported to me that there is porneia among you, and of a kind that is not found even among gentiles; for a man is living with [lit. “has”] his father’s woman” (1 Cor 5:1). Here Paul turns his anti-gentile invective against a specific man and against those who welcomed him. According to Paul, by accepting this man the Corinthians had dared to tolerate behavior that even their neighbors would condemn, thereby shaming them on the basis (presumably) of a shared disdain for gentile sexual morals. Yet Paul offered few specifics regarding the actual circumstances of this man’s porneia. Was the man living with his father’s current wife, his father’s widow, a (current or former) concubine, a former wife, or a (current or former) slave? Paul did not say, and the Greek is entirely ambiguous.114 Marriage to one’s stepmother was illegal from the perspective of both biblical and Roman law.115 Still, some in the church did not regard the man’s actions as sinful, though they had embraced Paul’s message about Christ. As we shall see, some of these same Corinthians had also adopted the saying “it is well for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Cor 7:1) as their own. It seems curious, therefore, that they would knowingly welcome a man living in some sort of incestuous relationship. Paul may be exaggerating for effect.
Earlier scholars sought to resolve this dilemma by positing that there were two (false) positions circulating in the Corinthian church, one suggesting that “freedom in Christ” implies freedom from moral constraints, another asserting that believers must avoid sex altogether.116 According to these readings, the man and his sympathizers belonged to a “freedom in Christ” party that had either rejected or misunderstood Paul’s (and Christ’s) teachings in favor of a theology that overturned common moral strictures. Yet these interpretations fail to take the polemical context of Paul’s comments into account. Paul did not provide specific information about the man’s circumstances because he was not interested in doing so; shaming the Corinthians was his primary goal. It is at least possible that a case for the legitimacy of the relationship between the man and his partner could be made, even among those who had embraced what they understood to be a strict moral code. After all, Paul could not hope to shame them for tolerating an action that “even” gentiles avoid if they had not already come to understand themselves as morally superior to their gentile neighbors. Perhaps the woman was quite young, a widow after a brief marriage, or a slave of the father whom the man had inherited at his father’s death, and freed for the purposes of marriage.117 Since the focus of Paul’s rebuke was the community in Corinth, not the man or, even less so, the woman (whom he scarcely mentions), we simply cannot determine the specifics of their behavior.118 Instead, Paul’s comments were designed to reestablish his authority over his “children” (the Corinthians) in moral matters while enforcing his preferred definition of moral purity.
A few verses earlier, Paul accuses the Corinthians of being “arrogant,” warning them that as their “father” he could legitimately “come with a stick” to discipline them (1 Cor 4:18, 21). What better way to admonish them, proving their need for his watchful guidance than to accuse them of (re)assimilating themselves to the category “gentile” by means of porneia? Chapter 1 observed that honorable men were expected to master both themselves and their subordinates. This theory was extended to include male rulers, who, ideally, promoted (and enforced) mastery among their subjects. Thus, the emperor (purportedly) preserved—and, in the case of Augustus, legislated—the sexual morality of the empire. Paul seems to be operating under a similar set of presuppositions. As the “father” of the Corinthian community, it was his responsibility to preserve and define the sexual purity expected of the church in Corinth. Calling the community to expel the man, Paul provided his own version of sex legislation:
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with the pornoi [male prostitutes/sexually immoral persons]—not at all meaning the pornoi of this world, or the greedy and the robbers and the idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone of the name of brother who is a pornos [male prostitute/fornicator], greedy, an idolater, reviler, drunkard or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? God will judge those outside, “Drive out the wicked person from among you.”
(1 Cor 5:9–13)
Thomas McGinn has observed that the Augustan marriage legislation was designed, in part, to preserve elite privilege, especially elite male privilege, and to validate Augustus’ own status as the (appropriate) codifier of the regimen morum.119 Paul was obviously not a member of the Roman senatorial aristocracy; nevertheless, his “legislation” could be read in a similar way. He mentioned his previous instructions, sent in a letter (note that laws were often promulgated in letters),120 he provided clarification regarding the true intent of his instructions, and he drove his authority home by quoting existing law. “Drive out the wicked from among you” may well be a direct quotation of Deuteronomy 17:7 (LXX), a passage that recommends the death penalty for idolaters; it is certainly reminiscent of biblical prescriptions against sexual sinners.121 Whatever the behavior of the man in question, Paul’s own message was clear: he was the moral arbiter of the community, and the community must enforce Paul’s (Christ’s) moral dictates.
YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN
All things are permissible to me, but all things are not useful. All things are permissible to me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the belly and the belly for food, but God will destroy both one and the other. And the body is not for porneia but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
(1 Cor 6:12–13)
In this introduction to his discussion of the requisite holiness of Christian bodies, Paul quotes two sayings—“all things are permissible to me” and “food is for the belly and the belly for food”122—which he then attempts to overturn with the phrase “I will not be mastered by anything.” One can be under the authority of food and porneia or of “the Lord,” but not all three. Again, Paul contrasts being under the authority to desire with being in the power of God. Gluttony and sexual excess often appear together as evidence of corruption and “slavishness” in Greco-Roman discourses.123 Allowing oneself to be mastered by either food or porneia was to fail in one’s duties as a master of oneself and others.124 One cannot be a ruler of others if one cannot rule one’s own belly and body.125 Paul also connected these two related problems, food and sex, reiterating in this passage the view that saintly bodies must be mastered by “the Lord” rather than by the belly or by sexual desire. He then went on to assert that the bodies of Christians together make up the body (sōma) of Christ: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor 6:15; compare 1 Cor 12:12–31; Rom 12:3–8). Thus, the metaphor of bodily enslavement to God or to sin was taken a step further: the believer’s body is not only mastered by the Lord, it is a part of the body of the Lord. Together with the other “members,” the follower’s bodily parts make up Christ’s bodily parts. Since this is the case, “members” of the community and the “members” of each body must not engage in sexual immorality.
Having claimed that each person’s body is a member of Christ’s body and that the body of the community is Christ’s body, Paul then argues that porneia, especially porneia involving a prostitute (pornos), must not occur: “Taking the parts [ta melē] of Christ, shall I make parts of a prostitute? Certainly not!” (1 Cor 6:15b). Paul added that the one who employs a prostitute “sins against his own body,”126 as well as against the body of Christ, since his body is a “temple of the holy spirit” (6:19). By piling up metaphors—ownership by the Lord versus ownership by food and sex, the believer’s bodily parts as Christ’s bodily parts, the believer’s body as a temple of the holy spirit (1 Cor 6:19–20, 10:14–22, 12:12–31)—Paul made the purity of the church dependent upon the sexual purity of the believers.127 Bodies must be kept “pure” because they signify the social, as well as the individual body. Keeping body and community “pure” in Corinth meant avoiding intercourse with prostitutes (1 Cor 6:15–16).128 It also meant refusing to tolerate sexual immorality of any kind among (1 Cor 5:1–13), holding fast to hierarchical “natural” sex,129 exercising self-control (1 Cor 7:9), and engaging in intercourse only within the context of marriage (1 Cor 7:1–9, 36–38).
THERE SHALL BE NO PORNEIA AMONG THE SAINTS
First Corinthians 7 addressed sexual intercourse within marriage, widows, divorce, marriage to unbelievers, virgins, the unmarried, and the importance of remaining in the state in which one was called (slave/free; male/female; married/unmarried).130 An overarching theme of this complicated passage is the problem of desire:
It is well for a man not to touch a woman.
(1 Cor 7:1)131
Because of porneia, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
(1 Cor 7:2)
Do not refuse one another, except perhaps by agreement for a season, in order that you might devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again, so that Satan might not test you through lack of self-control.
(akrasia; 1 Cor 7:5)
If they cannot exercise authority over themselves [enkrateuomai], they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.
(1 Cor 7:9)132
Whoever is firmly established in his heart, not being under pressure, but having authority [exousia] over his own desire [thelēma] and having deliberated in his own heart to maintain his own virgin [parthenos], he will do well.
(1 Cor 7:37)
Paul recommends marriage for those who cannot keep desire in check.133 For those capable of self-control, celibacy was the better choice.134 Paul was so anxious about out-of-control desire that he settled for marriage as a caution against porneia. He suggests that those who had married should remain as they are (i.e., they should stay married) but offers practical and eschatological reasons for his counsel, not an endorsement of sexual intercourse.135 To Paul, it is preferable for virgins (parthenoi) to remain virgins since “the unmarried woman or virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she be holy in body and spirit” (1 Cor 7:34). Still, he further advocated that a man overcome by strong passion for his parthenos should marry her. Again, Paul raised the concept of “authority” (exousia) over desire, in this case described as authority over one’s will (thelēma).136 Better that his own virgin relinquish her virginity, granting him a proper target for the lack of authority (exousia) he has over his desire, than that he fall into porneia. The holiness of her body and spirit pale in comparison to the danger of his lust.137
By endorsing marriage as a counter to porneia, even while favoring sexual abstinence, Paul suggested that two types of Christ followers were to be welcomed: the believer strong enough to overcome desire altogether and the believer, incapable of full self-mastery, who ought to marry.138 In chapters 5 and 6 of this letter, Paul expressed outrage at the idea that believers would tolerate sexual immorality. Paul pointedly argued that such practices must not be permitted since “even the gentiles” know this behavior is wrong. In this chapter, he urged married couples to engage in intercourse as a caution against porneia, though he recommended that unmarried believers remain unmarried so long as they can also control their desires. Marriage was to be preferred to porneia, for it is better to marry than to be aflame with desire: “I wish all people to be as I myself am [i.e., sexually abstinent] but each has one’s own gift from God” (1 Cor 7:7).139 In this way, Paul constructed two types of Jesus followers, those who were able to imitate him—overcoming their desires and thereby making marriage unnecessary—and those who remained susceptible to lust and so continued to engage in sexual intercourse in the context of marriage. In either case, however, believers must always maintain strict control of their desires.140
First Corinthians 7, when read against Paul’s representation of the despicable sexual behavior of gentiles, offers further evidence of the importance of sex as a sign of saintly purity and righteousness against the impurity and immorality imputed to everyone else. To Paul, porneia and epithymia were such a threat that marriage was warranted, though celibacy was represented as the better option. The power of desire was so dangerous that virgins, though better employed in full-time concern for Christ, should submit to their lustful fiancés. Perhaps, after arguing so vehemently that believers were to be distinguished from outsiders on the basis of the way they utilize their bodily parts, Paul had no choice but to describe exactly when and under what conditions the shameful parts may be employed.141 Having been told that their bodies are “temples,” and “members of Christ,” with their bodily parts described as slaves of God, under the authority of the Lord, and meant for purity and righteousness, the Corinthian believers may have been confused as to what, precisely, constituted this proposed purity. Paul’s response indicates that marriage was the only proper venue for the expression of desire, though sexual renunciation was to be preferred.
LET WOMEN BE WOMEN AND MEN BE MEN
Another example of Paul’s concern for the sexual propriety of “the saints” can be found in his instructions regarding the veiling of women during worship.142 Paul’s insistence that women veil themselves—no other practice can be recognized among the churches of God (1 Cor 11:16)—was tied to his anxiety about the dangers of desire and his worries about “unnatural” sex. Men must be men and women must be women, even (or especially) while praying and prophesying, Paul argues. Hence, women should wear veils and men should not. Proper women should continue to wear their hair long and remain covered. Honorable men should wear their hair short and should not cover their heads. Paul argues from the order of creation, from nature, and from custom that women should be veiled and covered but men need not be. Paul prefaces his insistence that women wear veils with the following general principle: “I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3).143 Paul seems to be playing on a double meaning of “head” (kephalē) here: head as source and head as ruler.144 Paul goes on to argue that man is “the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man” (1 Cor 11:7). Alluding to the order of creation in Genesis, Paul asserts that man was not made from woman but woman from man. She was created for and from him (1 Cor 11:8). Man is also the image and glory (doxa) of God, whereas she is the glory of man.145 “In such a context, ‘head’ as ‘source’ does not exclude ‘head’ as ‘ruler’ but justifies it.”146 As “source,” man must be “head.” Paul later softens this hierarchical gender arrangement by noting “just as woman was made from man so man is now born of woman” (1 Cor 11:12),147 yet he continued to insist that woman and man are qualitatively different, with man at the “head” of the pair. This difference, a difference in kind and degree, was symbolized by head coverings and hairstyles.
A woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered “shames her head,” Paul argues. If she refuses to veil, then she should cut off her hair. But shaving her hair is not really an option, since “it is shameful [aischros] for a woman to be shorn or shaven” (1 Cor 11:5–6). “Nature itself” [hē physis autē] teaches that a woman’s hair is her pride, whereas long hair for a man is degrading. A woman’s hair is her “natural” covering (1 Cor 11:14). Her veil is therefore nature’s helpful assistant. What are we to make of this concern for male and female hairstyles and female covering? Paul’s primary concern in this passage seems to be the reinstitution of veiling for women. Nevertheless, he built his argument, in part, on hairstyles. A woman’s long hair is her glory but long hair for a man is shameful. If a woman uncovers her hair, then she should cut off her hair, but for her to do so is shameful.
What is dishonorable about long hair for men and short hair for women? According to the elder Seneca, the effeminati braid their hair and thin their voices to compete with women in softness and finery.148 Similarly, according to Dio Chrysostom a man who violates “nature’s laws” in secret is discovered when one observes his voice, glance, posture, and hairstyle.149 The Sentences of Pseudo-Phokylides cautions against allowing young boys to wear their hair long and braided, for long hair is reserved for voluptuous women.150 According to these authors, long, carefully coifed hair symbolized an abandonment of masculinity. Plucking the beard was thought to be an even clearer indication of gender deviance, but long hair also cast suspicion on a man’s manliness.151 By the same token, women’s short hair also indicated gender deviance. For example, Megilla, the woman lover of Leaena in Lucian’s “Dialogues of the Courtesans,” wears a wig to conceal her short hair:
Eventually Megilla, being now rather heated, pulled off her wig, which was very realistic and fitted very closely, and revealed the skin of her head which was shaved close, just as on the most energetic of athletes. This sight gave me a shock, but she said, “Leaena, have you ever seen such a good-looking young fellow?”
(Lucian Dial. meret. 5.3)152
Paul’s concern for hairstyles and his appeals to nature, honor, and shame, when read in light of ancient associations between hairstyle and gender, are reminiscent of his description of the corrupt world in Romans 1:18–32. In that passage, Paul condemns the idolaters for unnatural intercourse and dishonorable passions:
For this reason, God handed them over to their dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse [lit. “use”] for unnatural, and, in the same way, the men, forsaking natural intercourse with women [lit. “the natural use of women”], were consumed by desire for one another, men in men, accomplishing shameless and dishonorable acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
(1:26–27)153
Elsewhere, Paul asserts that the fornicators/male prostitutes (
can mean either) and effeminates (malakoi) will not inherit the kingdom of God. Male prostitutes were penetrated by other men for a living or, if enslaved, for the profit of their owners. Thus, as noted in Chapter 1, for a man to be called a “prostitute” was a particularly sharp insult. Such men were especially “slavish,” having abandoned manhood (i.e., the active, penetrative role) for profit.
Violations of “nature” for Paul involved violations of gender.154 Men should desire the “natural use” (physikē chrēsis) of women, not penetration by other men. Paul’s comment that the unnatural men receive “in their own persons the due penalty for their error” may be a euphemistic reference to the supposed injury that the passive partner receives.155 Similarly, “honor” (timē) requires gender conformity. An honorable man should look like a man. His bare head is his “glory” (doxa). A woman’s covering (hair or veil) is her doxa. Short, uncovered hair is her shame (aischros). Furthermore, if a woman desires at all, it should be for her “natural use” (physikē chrēsis). “‘Natural use of the female’ means that a male penetrates a female in an act that signified the subordination of the woman and control by the man over her.”156 Having chosen to describe the downfall of sinful humanity in terms of unnatural use and dishonorable desire, is it any wonder that Paul could not tolerate any gender deviancy in Corinth, signified by hairstyles and by veiling?
Paul offers yet another reason why a woman ought to wear a veil. She ought to do so “on account of the angels.” This verse is particularly enigmatic: “For this reason woman ought to have a veil/authority over her head, on account of the angels” (1 Cor 11:10). Instead of repeating his previous terminology for veiling, Paul states that a woman ought to have an “authority” over her head. Why would Paul use the term “exousia” here? He may be purposefully countering the claims of some women that they have the authority (exousia) to prophesy without the veil, since they have overcome their gender “in the spirit” and “in Christ,” thereby attaining “male” self-mastery.157 Such an argument may have been made possible by the baptismal formula now preserved in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, not male or female.”158 No, Paul argues, a veil, the symbol of female “authority” over her own desire as well as over the male desire she may attract, are both necessary. Ultimate gender equivalence “in Christ” did not result in the abolishment of “natural” gender in the community of the saints.
Paul’s use of “exousia” earlier in this letter suggests that he may have chosen to employ a play on words here to raise, once again, the problem of desire. In 1 Cor 5:1–5, Paul implies that having chosen to ignore his authority as their “father,” the Corinthians had become worse than gentiles, tolerating a pornos in their midst. In 1 Cor 6:12, Paul remarks that one could not place oneself under the authority (exousia) of food, porneia, and also “the Lord.” In 1 Cor 7:37, Paul recommends celibacy for men who have gained authority (exousia) over their desire. “Authority,” or lack of it, was embodied in sexual self-mastery or the opposite, sexual license. Thus, by claiming that women must have a veil/authority over their heads, Paul may have sought to remind them that their desire needs to be kept in check and by a proper “authority.” Desire must be covered, just as the “shameful parts” (i.e., the genitals) of the body are also covered (1 Cor 12:23–24).159 The next portion of this verse offers further support for this interpretation.
The reason Paul gives for the veil/authority—“on account of the angels”—is puzzling, yet it may also refer to the problem of desire and temptation. There was a tradition stemming from Genesis 6:1–4, expanded in 1 Enoch and other postbiblical literature, in which the “sons of God” desired and had intercourse with “the daughters of men,” leading to wickedness and immorality.160 Tertullian reads the Pauline injunction to veil as a precautionary measure against these fallen angels/“sons of God.” These angels, viewing the beauty of the “daughters of men,” lusted after them and transgressed. Therefore, virgins must be veiled to protect angels, men, and boys from similar temptation (Virg. 7.2–4).161 If Tertullian’s interpretation was correct, Paul, ordering women to put on the veil/authority “on account of the angels,” was concerned with the sexual temptation of an unveiled woman. Therefore, for Paul veils may have offered a “prophylactic” capable of protecting women from the male gaze and men from sexual temptation.162 Women must have an “authority” (veil) over their heads because they must keep their desire in control while, at the same time, providing assistance to the men and angels who also endeavor to keep desire in check.163 Indeed, the entire community needs to submit to the proper “authorities”—including Paul—to avoid sexual temptation.164
Paul’s argument regarding veiling renders desire problematic while insisting that gender deviance must not be tolerated. Women remain secondary to men by nature and creation, even if men are born through women. Therefore, it was considered disgraceful and unnatural for men to adopt the hairstyles of women, a practice that would mark them as effeminate and “unnatural,” as malakoi and arsenokoitai. Likewise, it was shameful for women to shave their heads in a vain attempt to be like men. Such women may even be mistaken for the “unnatural” women Paul described in Rom 1:26–27. Taking off the veil, therefore, placed the entire community in danger, or so Paul suggests. Women may lose control over their own desire. Men, viewing women, may become tempted and lose their self-mastery. Veiling for Paul signifies everything he claims for the followers of Christ: sexual purity, self-control, and “natural” gender. Unveiling, in this context, was risky indeed.
SEX AND PAULINE ELITISMS
If, in a Greco-Roman context, an “elite” was one who avoids excess, masters desire, conforms to “natural” gender, and displays virtue, then Paul’s condemnation of gentiles—they are incapable of mastering desire—suggests that only the followers of Christ were truly “elite.” The category “elite”—when understood as not only, or even primarily, a socioeconomic designation but as a discursive production—is subject to constant renegotiation. In Paul’s world, the “elite” purportedly included only virtuous, wealthy men of impeccable ancestry and the chaste women they controlled. Ideally, the elite exhibited mastery over themselves, their households and their subordinates. They took the dominant position in all matters, including sexual intercourse. Their women were modest and sexually loyal to the men who controlled them, bearing only legitimate children. The emperors, as the archetypal elite male in this paradigm, ought to embody the piety, self-control, and munificence expected of all who were truly noble. Hence imperial virtue, however fallacious, was proclaimed throughout the empire, with emperors honored for their exceptional, even divine, virtue and piety. At the opposite end of this ideological spectrum were slaves. Morally suspect or exempt, they possessed no legal control over their own bodies, were vulnerable to bodily penetration and violation by their superiors, and were thought to be low “by nature.”
To Paul, however, the only men truly capable of mastering desire were those “in Christ.” These men, like the “elite” of the empire, would never allow themselves to be penetrated. In a true exhibition of self-mastery, they also avoided intercourse with prostitutes and had sexual intercourse with appropriate subordinates so as to avoid porneia. Some “saints,” men and women both, were able to control desire so completely that they did not need to marry to avoid porneia but rather remained sexually continent. Still, married or not, “sisters in Christ” were properly subordinate. They veiled themselves and their desires. They submitted to their husbands, even as their husbands submitted to them. These men and women, overcoming desire through Christ, kept themselves pure. At the opposite end of this Pauline elite were idolaters (including, by implication, the emperor and his representatives). They were not pious; rather, they were hostile to God and could not possibly control themselves. They were “naturally” morally suspect. For now the followers of Christ must be subordinate to the rulers, those archontes who masquerade as the “elite,” but the day is at hand, the wrath is already being revealed, God’s swift judgment will be merciless. Paul’s alternative elitism claimed righteousness for his group alone.
In his letters to the churches of Rome and Corinth, Paul builds upon Greek and Roman cultural norms to claim elite status for all Christ followers, slave and free alike, while adopting a traditional biblical and postbiblical argument that the gentiles are enslaved to lust. Paul does not really challenge the terms of the argument—sexual virtue and sexual vice are preserved as important, if not the most important, signs of “the elite”—rather, he reconfigures this cultural logic in order to claim elite status for his group exclusively. Slaves are not necessarily “slavish.” Instead, those who suppress the truth, the idolaters, the gentiles, the perverse generation, the slaves of sin, and those who gratify the flesh were the true “slaves.” The theory that the citizen men and their women are sexually virtuous but the slaves are morally suspect is displaced by a system in which Christ followers are elite but everyone else is “slavish.” All who reject God are portrayed as incapable of virtue, since the rejection of God leads to sexual depravity by definition and Christ provides the sole solution to the problem of vice. Insider sexual ethics were also at stake. Having depicted outsiders as sexually corrupt, Paul could shame his audience for tolerating a sexual misdeed that “even the gentiles” would denounce. Suggesting that gentiles had been perverted by “unnatural” lust, Paul could then insist that the Corinthian church conform to his version of “natural” gender. Suggesting that “the saints” were freed from desire, having enslaved their “members” to God, Paul could further claim that gentiles are necessarily slaves to desire. Sexualized othering and community definition went hand and hand, a tradition that continued in later Christian discourse.