The First Epistle to Corinthians, by Anthony C. Thiselton. NIGTC. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Pp. xxxii + 1446. $75.00. While there are a number of recent commentaries on 1 Corinthians, both brief and detailed, it is a long time since there has been a detailed commentary in English on Greek text of epistle, and students and scholars will be grateful for Anthony Thiselton's massive and detailed work. After prefaces and general bibliography, volume opens with a fifty-two-page introduction dealing in turn with Roman Corinth in time of Paul, Christian community in Corinth, occasion of epistle, and its argument and rhetoric. In commentary proper, there is an introduction to each major section of text, followed by Thiselton's own translation of Greek, a bibliography, then a verse-by-verse commentary. Here there are short sections on significant textual variations, where appropriate (and in a smaller typeface), along with a considerable number of excursuses on points of particular significance or debate (also marked out clearly by use of a different font). There are also a number of representative sections dealing with posthistory, influence (Wirkungsgeschichte), and reception of various portions of letter, which serve to illustrate how text was taken up in patristic, medieval, Reformation, and modern periods. Finally, there are extensive indices. A number of features of general approach adopted in commentary are noteworthy. First, Thiselton suggests that Corinthian culture has much in common with social constructivism, competitive pragmatism, and radical pluralism which characterizes so-called postmodernity as a popular mood (p. 14; cf. pp. 12-17, 40-41). Thus Paul's challenging appeal to Corinthians has a surprising amount of direct relevance today. This proposed parallel is interesting and suggestive, especially for preachers, though I am not sure it can be so confidently drawn. To talk about psychological insecurity generated by status inconsistency ... radical pluralism, and a situation where 'truth' lost its anchorage in extralinguistic world and became a matter of social construction or 'local' perception (pp. 40, 42) is to propose a massive thesis about ancient world, one which may read (post)modern attitudes and anxieties into firstcentury context without sufficiently doing justice to profound historical and cultural distance between then and now. Indeed, overall I missed from commentary much sense of cultural (and even theological?) distance between Paul and his contemporary interpreters. A second interpretative approach worthy of attention is Thiselton's use of speech-- act theory (following J. L. Austin, J. R. Searle, and N. Wolterstorff) to interpret some of kinds of statements Paul makes in epistle, not as mere descriptions or claims to power but as performative utterances: the performance of an act in saying something (J. L. Austin, cited on p. 112; cf, e.g., pp. 51-52, 115, 146, 455, 1017). Third, summarizing insights from a wide range of recent studies, including those by Bruce Winter, Andrew Clarke, and John Chow, as well as classic contributions of Gerd Theissen and Wayne Meeks, Thiselton places considerable weight on sociohistorical background as a key to understanding issues at stake in I Corinthians. Also influential in commentary are rhetorical analyses of epistle by Margaret Mitchell and others. These two areas of recent research have a major impact on interpretation presented. However, Thiselton is keen to stress that `social history' should not lead to an unintended marginalization of Paul's central theological concerns (p. 403). And indeed, this is a commentary that takes Paul's text seriously as theology, and seeks to interpret it in light of theological tradition, from patristic period onwards (see, e.g., 187, 1169-78; Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, et al. …
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