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  • From: "Mark E. Roberts" <mroberts AT oru.edu>
  • To: <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Sophistic Self-Praise Using Hardship Catalogs?
  • Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 16:52:04 -0500


Thanks to all who responded to my earlier query about the
use of hardship lists in ancient encomia. I have benefited
from readings suggested by respondents and have now focused
my query more specifically.

Do any encomia by sophists (or other discourses including
self-praise), preferably of the 1st century CE or slightly
later, incorporate such hardship lists, or catalogs?

As I study the "Fool's Speech" of 2 Corinthians
11.21b--12.10, I find convincing the claim of the E. A.
Judge school that this discourse is a response to the
sophistic self-advertisement of Paul's opponents, who are
following some form of encomium in their boasting.
Specifically, I find Bruce Winter's identification of Paul's
opponents as Jewish Christians proficient in sophistic
oratory to be convincing. But this approach leads to
interpreting Paul's hardship list in 11.23b-29 as a parody:
The sophistic opponents boast of their pneumatic
experiences, Paul of his sufferings, performing irony in an
effort to undercut their pretensions.

I find convincing instead the view (in John Fitzgerald's
_Cracks in Earthen Vessels_ and Brian K. Peterson's
_Eloquence and the Proclamation of the Gospel at Corinth_,
among others) that Paul includes his hardship list not to
parody but to respond to, point by point and
straightforwardly, similar boasting by his opponents that
their hardships testify to their being diakonoi Christou.
Paul counters that he is more a servant of Christ than they
because he has endured more hardships than they.

Hence my search for examples of sophists (other than Paul's
opponents)--whether Christian, Jewish, or pagan--whose
encomia (or other discourses containing elements of
self-praise) include hardship lists.

I appreciate any suggestions list members may offer.


Mark E. Roberts

Holy Spirit Research Center
Oral Roberts University




  • Sophistic Self-Praise Using Hardship Catalogs?, Mark E. Roberts, 07/05/2001

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