Paul Barnett

Polemical Parallelism: Some Further Reflections On the Apocalypse

The cult of Christ goes forth into the world of the Mediterranean and soon displays the endeavour to reserve for Christ the words already in use for worship in that world, words that had just been transferred to the deified emperors or had perhaps been invented in emperor worship. Thus there arises a polemical paraliell’sm between the cult of the emperor and the cult of Christ, which makes itself felt where ancient words derived by Christianity from the treasury of the Septuagint and the gospels happen to coincide with solemn concepts of the Imperial cult which sounded the same or similar. 1

Opposition in Corinth

Who were Paul’s opponents in 2 Corinthians? In 1971 C.K. Barrett’ wrote that ’this opposition constitutes one of the crucial questions for the understanding of the New Testament and the origins of Christianity’. Dr Barrett’s answer, that the opponents were ’Jews, Jerusalem Jews, Judaizing Jews’ (p. 251) is, I believe, correct, though not a112 have agreed with him. The continuing diversity of opinion only serves to underline the complexity of the problem. Indeed Dr Barrett himself comments that while ’There is ... a good case for the view that the opponents were Judaizers ... it is easy to understand why it has been attacked’ (p. 251). I concur with Dr Barrett in his central thesis that Paul’s opponents in Corinth were Judaizing Jews from Jerusalem though I will argue against his subsidiary view that the JnspXiav dn6aroXoi are to be