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eBook details

• Title: Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23-25).
• Author : Journal of Biblical Literature
• Release Date : January 22, 2004
• Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 275 KB

Description

Paul writes that he bears [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in his body (Gal 6:17). J. Louis Martyn comments, "Considering his physique to be a major form of communication, alongside the words of his letter, Paul points literally to his own body. He can do this because his body tells the story of the forward march of the gospel, just as do his words." (1) Martyn shares the widely held view that Paul's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] are literal scars "from Gentile stones and from Jewish whips" (2 Cor 11:24-25). (2) These "Jesus scars," Martyn continues, "reflect the wounds of a soldier sent into the front trenches of God's redemptive and liberating war." (3) Tracings of whips and magistrates' rods, however, are not prima facie the wounds of a soldier, cicatrices ennobling a warrior's breast. They are, typically, markings of a servile body, insignia of humiliation and submission. Who, then, reads Paul's somatic markings as badges of martial valor: the Christians of Galatia? the Christians of Corinth? scholars? Paul himself? In the introduction to his Anchor Bible commentary on Galatians, Martyn invites the reader "to take a seat in one of the Galatian congregations, in order--as far as possible--to listen to the letter with Galatian ears." (4) Following Martyn, I propose to read Paul's storytelling body, as far as possible, with Galatian eyes, with Corinthian eyes (see Gal 6:17; 1 Cor 4:9-13; 2 Cor 6:4-5; 11:24-26). Because Paul's rhetoric pivots, at times, on the posturing of his body, the project of interpreting Paul includes the task of interpreting his body language. In this article I read the body language of 2 Cor 11:23-25, where Paul, boasting, elaborates on the character of the beatings he has endured; more broadly, I ask how Paul's boasting of beatings contributes to the complex argument of 2 Cor 10-13. Every body tells a story; every body tells stories. Each body has multiple stories to tell, and the markings of any body may be read in multiple ways. A ribbon of scar tissue across a woman's abdomen tells the story of a cesarean delivery or of a hysterectomy. In a farming community, a severed limb is an icon of a farm machinery accident; in a land at war, a severed limb is an icon of a land mine exploding. The legibility of an individual body is contingent on social bodies, particularly on the socially inscribed body that is the object of the gaze and the socialized eyes of the one who gazes. Paul may understand his body to tell a story "of the forward march of the gospel," as Martyn suggests, but those who catch a glimpse of what Stephen D. Moore calls "the map of his [Paul's] missionary journeys that has been cut into his back" may well read other stories, some shameful, scored there. (5)

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