Corpus-Paul

[yonder moynihan gillihan <ymgillih AT midway.uchicago.edu>]

Another excellent clue to the date of 1 Thess is the development of Paul's
anthropological vocabulary throughout his correspondence.  Only in 1 Thess
5.23 does Paul use terms formally identical to those of Gnostic
anthropology as he prays that God will preserve every aspect of the
members of the church in to pneuma kai h psyche kai to soma (I need to
review the transliteration scheme).  If this verse reflects popular Greek
anthropology by its juxtaposition of terms, the meaning Paul gives those
terms is quite different from that of the Gk philosophers and Gnostics.
Rather than implying that God should protect the psyche until the prison
of the soma dies, or that the church consists of three categories of
people--pneumatics, psychics, and somatics--Paul simply uses the terms to
denote the whole person in every aspect of existence: 
        May God sanctify you ENTIRELY and may YOU--your pneuma, psyche,
        and soma--be kept COMPLETE and blameless.
Together the three terms do not denote discrete portions of the self, but
the spectrum of human existence and experience, which together constitute
a whole indivisible being.  Paul could easily have imagined that this
phrase would have brought to mind familiar ideas in his Gentile audience,
aiding their understanding of the power of God to touch every aspect of
their being.
        We know from the Corinthian controversy that these three terms and
the anthropological assumptions behind them became heatedly contested.  It
is significant, too, that this combination of terms, used so, does not
appear anywhere else in Paul's letters.  May we assume that he quickly
realized the danger of casually adopting Greek anthropological terms after
some problem arose?  I read 1 Cor as an attempt to "come to terms" with
the tensions between pagan and Jewish anthropological systems, and to
directly address the problems that became apparent after his letter to the
Thessalonians.
        Opinions?