1 Corinthians

Horsley's 1 Corinthians (ANTC, 1998) brings useful social-historical colour to the Corinthian context but is seriously compromised by a totalising socio-political hermeneutic that consistently subordinates Paul's theology to an anti-imperial agenda — framing Paul from the outset as "a third-world missionary," an anachronistic postcolonial label that is more rhetorical positioning than historical description, and then reducing the cross to "God's political action" against Rome with atonement for sin mentioned almost in passing, reframing the resurrection as "an imminent worldwide political event" rather than a redemptive eschatological reality, treating the Lord's Supper primarily as political-communal boundary maintenance, and describing love in chapter 13 as Paul's tool for "building a countersociety" — robbing each of these of its directly theological character. God himself is reduced to a "divine estate-owner" operating through Roman-style patronage categories. Several exegetical positions are either idiosyncratic or indefensible: he argues that 11:2–16 "fits so poorly into the context" that it is a later interpolation, and that 15:56 is "probably a gloss" — both conclusions drawn without a shred of manuscript evidence; he follows Countryman's fringe reading of malakoi and arsenokoitai as "masturbators" and "male prostitutes" and then draws the remarkable conclusion that "the list in 6:9 provides no indication that Paul considered [homosexual relations] to be sinful" — a position contradicted by Fee, Thiselton, Ciampa/Rosner, Barrett, and virtually every major technical commentary; and he dismisses 8:6 as "a foreign body in the midst of a genuine Pauline letter," effectively evacuating one of Paul's most significant Christological statements. A glaring internal inconsistency undermines his central thesis: he denies any demonic dimension to the "rulers of this age" in chapter 2 in order to sustain his purely political reading, yet in chapter 10 he acknowledges that Paul genuinely believed idol worship involved fellowship with demons. Paul himself is repeatedly characterised as "arrogant," "insecure," "paternalistic," and even employing "psychic coercion," and the dedication — "To the many many women and slaves who suffered because of what 'Paul' wrote and how that was used" — with its scare-quoted "Paul," signals an adversarial posture toward both the apostle and the text from the very first page. Valuable for its social-historical background, but its theological judgments must be checked carefully against more balanced treatments such as Fee, Thiselton, or Ciampa/Rosner.

I regret that to this day I have no yet finished reading this work. I have only read 50% (the first half - 1 Corinthians chapter 1-6). However, since there are only a few reviews of this commentary, I felt the need to give it the recognition it deserves. It is in the Top 3 of the best mid-level commentaries on 1 Corinthians (1-Oropeza, 2-Thiselton Shorter, 3-Horsley). Any commentary that distances itself fro mainstream evangelical bias that is forced back onto the text (when inappropriate to do so), gets a lot of respect from me. Horlsey recognizes the fact that the Corinthians were “former” (some still were) polytheists. How many white-American churches have former polytheists in their congregation? Almost none! Which means that we need to stop reading 1 Corinthians from the perspective of modern white-Evangelicalism, and start reading the text exegetically. Horsley actually respects the original historical context of 1 Corinthians, and brings out a number of fantastic insights in his commentary. This is mandatory reading for your 1 Corinthians studies!