Eject the Evil

An Exegetical Essay on 1 Corinthians 5:9-13

Ἔγραψα ὑμῖν ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι πόρνοις οὐ πάν-

A.       TRANSLATION¹

1 Corinthians 5:9-13

I wrote to you in the other² letter not to intermingle³ with filthy people⁴—⁵ 10 not meaning the filthy of this world,⁶ or the greedy and⁷ grasping,⁸ or the idolaters, because then you would have to leave this world altogether.⁹ 11 Okay, now¹⁰ I’m writing¹¹ to you not to intermingle with anybody called a member of the family¹² who is filthy, or greedy, or an idolater, or is verbally abusive,¹³ or an alcoholic, or grasping—¹⁴ not even to eat with this kind of person!¹⁵ 12 What, is it for me to judge those outside the church?¹⁶ Don’t you judge those inside the church? 13 God judges¹⁷ those outside. “Eject the evil one from among yourselves!”¹⁸

B.       INTRODUCTION

The Apostle Paul wrote his “first”¹⁹ letter to an astonishingly depraved Corinthian church that was rife with syncretistic factionalism (1:12, 3:4), sexual immorality (5:1) and shameless self-promotion (5:2,6). Whether dragging their internecine disputes before the gentile magistrates of the public courts (6:1-8) or conducting themselves deplorably at the Lord’s Supper (11:17-22), inside and outside the church, the Corinthians continually debased the name of Christ and shamed the Family of God. In anticipation of his imminent arrival (4:19), Paul’s epistle puts the whole church on notice by unflinchingly detailing every unseemly issue and unchristian practice he intends to correct when he gets there.

The following essay deals with a short five-verse passage near the end of the first third of this letter (5:9-13). Through a critical examination of the original text of this passage, and a careful consideration of its meaning, themes and contexts, it will be shown that the Apostle Paul was adamant that the Corinthian church—and by application every church everywhere—was to set a high moral bar for its membership's behavior and diligently expel anyone failing to reach it.

First, the socio-historical contexts of the letter will be examined. Secondly, we will look at the literary features of the passage. Then a detailed examination of the text will be undertaken. This will be followed by a reflection on what Paul’s first century expectations might mean for a faithful Church in the first half of the twenty-first century.

Street in ancient Corinth

C.       CONTEXTUL CONSIDERATIONS

      1.     HISTORICAL

It is axiomatic that familiarity with the social, religious and commercial characteristics of mid-first century Corinth will “have a profound influence on [our] understanding of Paul’s letter to the church there.”²⁰ It is therefore advisable to cast at least a passing glance at these aspects of the Corinthian milieu.

The city in which Paul planted the Corinthian church²¹ had leveraged its many geographical and geological advantages so well since its refounding in 44BC, that it was easily one of the most commercially successful sea-ports in the Empire.²² Populated initially by Julius Caesar with freedmen, veterans and labourers from Rome, Corinth maintained its Roman character despite a steady influx of non-Romans later on.²³ Fiercely independent, Corinthians were proudly litigious and great lovers of oratory.

Of course, not everyone was wealthy in Corinth. While there was undoubtedly several prominent citizens in the Corinthian church, the majority of its membership came from the lower classes (1:26).²⁴ That notwithstanding, however, Thiselton cites B. W. Winter’s tantalisingly plausible theory that Gallio’s dismissal of Paul (Acts 18:12-17) evolved into a tacit exemption from the public expression of emperor worship for the Corinthian Christians.²⁵ This unspoken religious legitimacy would certainly account for the Corinthian believer’s uncommon confidence in the public sphere.²⁶

The Temple of Apollo and Acrocorinth

Pagan religious expression in Corinth was as diverse as its population,²⁷ given that the immense temple to Aphrodite perched on the summit of the Acrocorinth, ostensibly claiming the old city for the goddess of love, was likely no longer dominant.²⁸ As for the legendary licentiousness of the devotees of Aphrodite, Fee suggests this is exaggerated, and that, overall, vice was no worse in Corinth than in any wealthy city of that era.²⁹ Nonetheless, it is certain from Paul’s epistle that pagan idolatry was just as ubiquitous and that the gentile sexual mores of the Corinth of his day were as unwelcome in its churches as they would have been in its synagogue.³⁰ Simply put, “Paul’s Corinth was at once the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world;”³¹ none of which is a paragon of humility, morality or modesty.


      2.     LITERARY

Paul wrote first Corinthians as a response to major problems in the church reported to him “by Chloe’s people” (10:11, 11:18) and/or Stephanus’ group (16:17), as well as to give answers to questions posed to him in writing by the church itself (7:1). Chapter Five is the beginning of a two chapter-long exhortation to the church to better police the moral behaviour of its members. It starts with Paul’s rebuke of the church’s mischaracterisation, and consequent mishandling, of a case of sexual impropriety in their midst. An unnamed member is having sex with his mother-in-law,³² and instead of disfellowshipping with the man, the church is actually bragging about their open acceptance of him (5:1-6). Using paschal metaphors—the cleansing of leaven before the festival, and the Lord as the Passover lamb (5:6-8)—Paul illustrates how the immorality of one member corrupts the whole church and offends the sacrifice of Christ. Our passage continues this metaphor in mentioning meal fellowship (v. 11) and “purging evil" (v. 13).³³

In verses 5:12-13, Paul ends his rebuke and introduces the theme of in-house judgement that takes up the first eight verses of the next chapter. Using forensic language as a bridging device,³⁴ Paul segues back to the subject of sexual immorality. With a more refined (if somewhat scatological) body-as-temple metaphor (6:15-19), Paul cleverly re-illustrates how outside corruption enters the dwelling-place of the Spirit of God through the actions of a single member. The imperative “glorify God in your body” (v.20) nicely echoes the call to “purge the evil from among you” that ends our passage (5:13).


      3.     PASSAGE STRUCTURE

The passage can be seen as three chiasms:

v. 9:               A   The call to judge corruption in the church stated.

v. 10:                 B         Clarification.

v. 11a:           A   The call to judge corruption in the church restated.

v. 11b:               B         Clarification.

v. 12:             A   The call to judge the church is restated rhetorically.

v. 13a:               B         Clarification.

v. 13b:           A   The call to judge corruption in the church is restated.



D.       ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT

    9.   Ἔγραψα ὑμῖν ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι πόρνοις,
              I wrote to you in the other letter not to intermingle with filthy people—

This is the first of four exhortations in our passage for the Corinthian church to police the conduct of its membership (vv. 11,12b,13b). There is near unanimous agreement among modern commentators that ἐγραψα is a “genuine past tense, I wrote, not an epistolary aorist, I am writing,”³⁵ unlike the one in verse 11—an obvious conclusion given τῇ ἐπιστολῇ (the letter) in the prepositional phrase that follows the verb.³⁶ As it is a first person singular, ἐγραψα also eliminates the need to attach an adjectival genitive to ἐπιστολῇ. The present letter is not the first time Paul’s addressed this issue.³⁷

With regards to συναναμίγνυσθαι (be not intermingled), a sixth century majuscule ms renders it as an imperative,³⁸ but this variant is reduced to insignificance under the weight of earlier witnesses attesting to the infinitive; which is a moot point in translation, since, as an “infinitive of indirect discourse, it represent[s] an imperative.”³⁹ The exact meaning of the “double compound verb”⁴⁰ is open to some debate.⁴¹ “To associate” is the preferred gloss,⁴² and is in harmony with BDAG.⁴³ However, its use in the LXX (Ezk 20:18) is in relation to the negative mixing of God’s people with Gentiles. Even in Josephus (Ant. 20, 165) it refers to an intermingling of opposite moral agents. In light of that, the purity context of the Deuteronomic reference in verse 13 (Deut 17:7), the “metaphor of the leaven”⁴⁴ of verse 6-8, and the Jewish antecedents of Paul’s distaste for pagan syncretism, a stronger translation might be warranted.⁴⁵ Even “mix up together”⁴⁶ would be better.

Likewise, a more forceful contemporary gloss for πόρνοις (filthy people) seems in order,⁴⁷ given that the splendid “fornicators” of the Authorised Version is terribly outdated and the common modern gloss, “sexually immoral people,” is fast becoming unintelligible to western secular ears. Though not perfect, the word “filthy” suits.⁴⁸

    10.   οὐ πάντως τοῖς πόρνοις τοῦ κόσμου τούτου ἢ τοῖς πλεονέκταις καὶ ἅρπαξιν ἢ εἰδωλολάτραις, ἐπεὶ ὠφείλετε ἄρα ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου ἐξελθεῖν.
              not meaning the filthy of this world, or the greedy and grasping, or the idolaters, because then you would have to leave this world altogether.

Here Paul clarifies which sexual sinners he was not referring to, while expanding his prohibition to include other types of immoral people—οἱ πλεονέκται, ἅρπαγες, εἰδωλολάτραι (the greedy, [the] grasping, [the] idolaters).⁴⁹ The former two would be considered personae non gratae even by those τοῦ κόσμου τούτου (of this world),⁵⁰ the οἱ ἔξω (the outsiders) of verse 12, whereas οἱ εἰδωλολάτραι (the idolaters) would be considered so only by monotheists.⁵¹ Their placement here gives the Corinthians a pagan and Christian yard-stick for measuring the wickedness of πορνεία (sexually filthy behaviour) and to see just how incompatible οἱ πόρνοι (the filthy) are with οἱ ἀδελφοί (the brothers).

Ciampa and Rosner, agreeing with Blomberg, take ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου ἐξελθεῖν (to go out of this world) as Pauline discouragement of Christian monasticism;⁵² as does Thiselton, in his look at the whole verse.⁵³ This might be missional presupposition, however, if the idiomatic reading explained in BDAG is correct.⁵⁴ This is not to say that Paul would support Christian ghettos—he wouldn’t—but rather to suggest that an anti-monastic reading here undermines the stark division the Apostle is attempting to draw between the outside and the inside.

    11a.   νῦν δὲ ἔγραψα ὑμῖν μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι ἐάν τις ἀδελφὸς ὀνομαζόμενος ᾖ πόρνος ἢ πλεονέκτης ἢ εἰδωλολάτρης ἢ λοίδορος ἢ μέθυσος ἢ ἅρπαξ,
              Okay, now I’m writing to you not to intermingle with anybody called a member of the family who is filthy, or greedy, or an idolater, or is verbally abusive, or an alcoholic, or grasping

As noted above, the aorist ἔγραψα (I wrote) here is epistolary—that is, if the νῦν (now [at this time]) is temporal, as in the text, and not the logical νυνί (now [as it is]) found in a few witnesses.⁵⁵ Basically, this is a restatement of the call in verse 9 with an unambiguous⁵⁶ form of the clarification added, ἐάν τις ἀδελφὸς ὀνομαζόμενος (if one called a brother). The participle form of ὀνομάζω (I name) is a passive “used in a middle sense,”⁵⁷ the context conveying the offender not simply “being named as a brother…but…passing himself off as Christian.”⁵⁸

There are also two more types of sinner to be avoided, ὁ λοίδορος (the verbal abuser) and ὁ μέθυσος (the alcoholic). The call to shun the first raises few eyebrows, but for the church to expel an alcoholic presents a problem for Christians today who hold this particular sin to be pathological in origin, rather than moral, like other sins.⁵⁹ Representing the thinking of this group, Fee notes, alcoholism “is a situation where the church should be a place of healing, not of rejection.”⁶⁰ Thiselton is less concerned about the therapeutic dimension and concentrates on the fact that “the literature of first-century Judaism places more emphasis on the unacceptable behavior to which [alcoholism] gives rise than to the consumption of alcohol in itself.”⁶¹ Although Paul might have the drunks of the Corinthian communion in mind here (11:21), it is possible that he includes drunkards at this point in his letter because thinking about οἱ πόρνοι (the filthy) recalled to his mind the LXX version of Proverbs 23:21, which reads μέθυσος καὶ πορνοκόπος, “drunkard and whoremonger.”⁶²

Nonetheless, the modern therapeutic view of sin and sinners is not the same as the Apostle Paul’s view. Here he equates drunks with verbal abusers and idolaters, elsewhere in his letter, idolaters with homosexuals (6:9), all of whom he believes can rightly respond to excommunication and stop their sinning.

    11b.   τῷ τοιούτῳ μηδὲ συνεσθίειν.
              not even to eat with this kind of person!

Here is the clarification of what Paul meant by not intermingling. The extent of this prohibition is debated. It is argued that the use of μηδὲ (not even), rather than simply μη (not), is unnecessary if all that is in view is the prohibiting of an offender from simple table-fellowship.⁶³ Thiselton agrees, but sets a limit, suggesting that “Paul’s μηδὲ…exclude[s] withdrawal from the normal courtesies of life [while including] association, support, and compromise of community-identity.”⁶⁴ However the TDNT tells us that “συνεσθίω [lexical form of "to eat with"] is the positive word for unrestricted intercourse in the community,”⁶⁵ so not eating with someone would mean withdrawal of this privilege. When Ciampa explains that in this verse and “Psalm 101 (in the LXX) the faithful are not to eat with those guilty of slander, arrogance, and greed,”⁶⁶ he rightly connects OT notions of defilement avoidance with Paul’s exhortation. In a moment Paul will tell the Corinthians to eject the evil one from their midst, so he's unlikely to mean anything less than complete social ostracism here.

    12.   τί γάρ μοι τοὺς ἔξω κρίνειν; οὐχὶ τοὺς ἔσω ὑμεῖς κρίνετε;
              What, is it for me to judge those outside the church? Don’t you judge those inside the church?

Paul once again is calling the church to monitor itself, this time using two rhetorical questions, legal terminology, and an inside/outside paradigm. According to Thiselton, the μοι ([to] me), in the idiom τί γάρ μοι (for what to me), “is technically a dative of interest [which more] concerns a formal role or sphere of interest here than any notion of psychological or spiritual indifference.”⁶⁷ In other words, it’s not any Christian’s job to judge non-Christians.

The second question has a fascinating textual variant in “several early witnesses.”⁶⁸ Mss P⁴⁶, syr^p, and cop^bo drop οὐχὶ (not) and read the imperative aorist κρίνατε (you [pl] judge!) for the present indicative κρίνετε (you [pl] judge), turning a rhetorical question into an explicit command.⁶⁹ Nevertheless, question or command, the intent is the same, to remind the Corinthians that their judgement starts inside the house of God (cf. 1 Pet 4:17).

    13a.   τοὺς δὲ ἔξω ὁ θεὸς κρινεῖ.
              God judges those outside.

Here is the final clarification in our passage. This time Paul is removing any possible ambiguity arising from his rhetorical questions. The fellowship judges itself; the world outside is to be left to the perfect judgement of God. Whether κρινει (he judges) should be accented as a present tense or future tense is debated.⁷⁰ The UBS Committee opted for the future κρινεῖ (he will judge) because “the expectation of the parousia was vivid in Paul’s day.”⁷¹ Thiselton suggests avoiding the problem altogether by translating ὁ θεὸς κρινεῖ (God will judge) as “‘have God as their judge’, which may include both present state and future action.”⁷²

    13b.   ἐξάρατε τὸν πονηρὸν ἐξ ὑμῶν αὐτῶν.
              “Eject the evil one from among yourselves!”

Our passage ends with a final command to expel the now obvious source of corruption from the church. Here Paul uses a recurring phrase from LXX Deuteronomy,⁷³ although he substitutes the LXX’s singular future indicative active ἐξαρεῖς (you [sg] will remove) with the plural aorist imperative ἐξάρατε (you [pl] remove!).⁷⁴ It’s possible that the ubiquitous και ἐξαρεῖς (and you [sg] will remove) construction of the Greek OT might account for the plural future indicative variant found in several mss.⁷⁵ “The double use of ἐκ (ἐξ) (out of) intensifies the injunction,”⁷⁶ leading to a range of translations. The ESV has “purge,” the NRSV “drive out” and the NIV chose “expel,” just to name a few.

Pointing to the lack of the usual Pauline citation formula, such as καθὼς γέγραπται (as it is written), many commentators suggest that much of the expected impact of the OT phrase would be lost on a gentile Corinthian audience unfamiliar with the Hebrew Scriptures.⁷⁷ Fee suggests the omission renders Paul’s intent uncertain.⁷⁸ Ciampa and Rosner, however, judging rhetorically, think “the lack of connection suits the chapter’s emotionally charged atmosphere [and the command] closes Paul’s instructions on the case of the incestuous man in an unambiguous and uncompromising way”⁷⁹



E.       APPLICATION

As we have seen, first century Corinth was a dire and diabolical place, the Corinthians licentious, decadent and thoroughly idolatrous. Such was the sea of sin that surrounded the archipelago of house churches there, threatening to swamp them with every wave of immorality. Such, too, was the wicked water from where sprung the members of those besieged assemblies. It should surprise none of us that there were so many problems in the Corinthian church, nor that they should require a strong hand to resolve. It should also come as no surprise to us that, the more the world outside our western churches comes to resemble Corinth, the more the world inside our churches resembles the Corinthian church; and the more in need we are of the same strong hand. In fact, with monstrosities like partial-birth abortion and homosexual adoptions being shamelessly championed in every town square, and the nihilistic, values-free philosophies that masquerade as ethics multiplying relentlessly around us, it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion than that western culture has actually out-Corinthed the Corinth of Paul's day.⁸⁰

This abysmal slide of the culture into casual abomination has had an all too predictable effect on the western churches. Like the Corinthian church, many today boast of their tolerance for the very same sinners Paul commands us to eject from our midst (5:11). “Gay-friendly” churches celebrate οἱ πόρνοι (the filthy); Prosperity doctrine Pentecostals exalt οἱ πλεονέκται (the greedy) and οἱ ἅρπαγες (the grasping); Ecumenist Protestants fall over themselves to fellowship with Roman Catholic εἰδωλολάτραι (idolaters); and they would all happily accept a busload of οἱ μέθυσοι (alcoholics) staggering among their pews, as long as they were willing to admit to having a drinking problem and allowed themselves to be prayed over. If he weren’t already with the Lord, the Apostle Paul would be spinning in his grave.

Paul’s epistolary call to isolate and expel those wicked, so-called brothers among us must be taken up again by the shamefully compromised churches of today. It is tough love he is advocating, the hard metric of amputation. In times of extremis—such a time as this—to save an arm, a hand is lost; to save a church, a member must be removed.



F.       CONCLUSION

The Apostle Paul’s insistence on our obligation to engage in church discipline, in order to keep the leaven of the outside world from corrupting our holy assemblies is unmistakable. In the space of five verses, Paul exhorts the Corinthians four times to rightly discern and/or eject any members who engage in unrighteous behaviours. However difficult today’s churches might find putting Paul’s command into practice, not to do so would raise serious doubts about a church’s commitment to biblical authority and its concern for the souls of its membership. If a little leaven will spoil the whole lump (5:6), and the leaven is clearly identified, what Christian assembly, after reading and understanding 1 Corinthians 5:9-13, could fail to eject it from among them?









Footnotes:

1. Italics indicate a word added for the sake of clarity, rather than grammatical necessity.

2. Paul is clearly referring to a “former letter.” Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, ed. Ned B. Stonehouse et al., Revised Edition., NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 241–242.

3. Συναναμίγνυμι indicates a deeper interpersonal involvement than is suggested by “to associate”. Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, PNTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 216.

4. The substantive πόρνος carries the idea of sexual immorality and has a strong pejorative, disapproving force. In contemporary English, “filthy” has the right sense and force. “In the shameful vices of unnatural sex relations, which spread like a plague in the Graeco-Roman world of his day, Paul sees the outworking of a severe judgment of God, R. 1:18 ff.” Hauck and Schulz, “πόρνη, πόρνος, πορνεία, πορνεύω, ἐκπορνεύω,” Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., TDNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), Vol. 6, 579.

5. The em dash indicates what Fee calls “a rough construction” between πόρνοις and οὐ. Fee, The First Epistle, 241.

6. If the adverb πάντως is negated by οὐ, rather than the “whole concept expressed” in the sentence, then Paul meant to exclude τοῖς πόρνοις τοῦ κόσμου τούτου. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 409-410.

7. Although ἤ is read in P⁴⁶ א^c D^b , καί is in the text of the NA28 and UBS 5, which “is strongly supported [by] Alexandrian and Western witnesses” and א A B C D*, et al. Metzger, TCGNT, 485.

8. The gloss “grasping” for the substantive ἅρπαξ maintains the semantic sense of the verb form ἁρπάζω, “to forcefully take something away from someone else, often with the implication of a sudden attack.” L&N 57.235, p. 583.

9. Literally “to leave out of the world,” but BDAG suggests “leave the world [is] a euphemism for die.” Italics in original, 348.

10. Almost certainly a temporal νῦν. See note 126, Fee, The First Epistle, 241.

11. ἔγραψα is an epistolary aorist; here rendered as per Fee, The First Epistle, 245.

12. Something of an over-translation for ἀδελφός, but “brother” is too narrow and “sibling” is rarely used.

13. A more contemporary term for λοίδορος than “reviler.”

14. The beginning em dash and final exclamation point indicates the extemporaneous nature of this final clause.

15. Contemporary usage seems to demand the addition “of person.” NIV is similar, reading “such people.”

16. Original sentence is an idiom literally asking, “For what to me the (pl) outside to judge?”

17. κρινεῖ is in the future tense in the NA28 text, but Metzger tells us the earlier mss had no accents, so this can be read legitimately as a present indicative to be consistent with the two infinitives in the previous verse. Metzger, TCGNT, 485.

18. The quotation marks indicate Paul’s OT citation (Deut 17:7).

19. The title “First Corinthians” is a historical misnomer. The letter was at least second, as evidenced by 5:9. Craig Blomberg, 1 Corinthians, The NIV application commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 1994), location 396, Kindle.

20. Fee, The First Epistle, 1.

21. Based “fairly precisely” from the time the Roman Provincial Governor Gallio was there (Acts 18:12). Blomberg, 1 Corinthians, loc. 386.

22. C. K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, BNTC (London: Continuum, 1968), 1.

23. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 3.

24. This was typical for the early church. “There is no doubt that Christianity spread most rapidly among the lower classes.” Barrett, The First Epistle, 57.

25. An unofficial recognition of religio licita status. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 30-31.

26. Thiselton reflects on “the position of certain Christians who held high office” in Corinth. Ibid.

27. “Pausanias describes at least 26 sacred places ... devoted to the ... Roman-Greek pantheon [and] the mystery cults.” Fee, The First Epistle, 3.

28. Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 515.

29. Fee, The First Epistle, 3.

30. “[T]here is no reason to doubt a [Corinthian] Jewish presence” at this time. Blomberg, 1 Corinthians, loc. 349.

31. Fee, The First Epistle, 3.

32. “Paul does not call the offense adultery [or] incest, so that the woman was probably the offender’s [widowed or divorced] stepmother.” Barrett, The First Epistle, 121.

33 Before the feast of unleavened bread, and the Passover that immediately follows it, all leaven is customarily removed from the Jewish home and burned. See Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1975), 81–82.

34. Πρᾶγμα, κρίνω and ἄδικος in v. 1 and ἀποστερέω in v. 8 connects to κληρονομέω in verse 9.

35. Barrett, The First Epistle, 130.

36. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 409.

37. Paul is resolving an issue from a former letter, to be sure, but one that is integrally related to the present concern. Fee, The First Epistle, 242.

38. The imperative 2nd person plural συναναμιγνυσθε in D¹. NA28, 526.

39. Daniel B Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament with Scripture, Subject, and Greek Word Indexes (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 603.

40 Thiselton, The First Epistle, 409.

41. Ibid.

42. ESV, NET, NIV, NKJV, NRSV.

43. BDAG, 965.

44. Greevan, "συναναμείγνυμι",TDNT, vol. 7, 854.

45. See footnote 3 above.

46. “The verb literally means to ‘mix up together.’ Fee, The First Epistle, 243.

47. See footnote 4 above.

48. I'd initially used the word "perverts," but was persuaded by Dr Mark Keown that, in its common usage, this word excludes many types of sexual immorality that Paul would've included (e.g. bigamists). It is interesting to note, though, that pervert was once a common enough gloss for μαλακός (passive homosexual): “…nor perverts nor homosexuals (Collins)…”. Emphasis in original. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 449-450.

49. For a description of the textual variant occurring among these additions, see footnote 7 above.

50. The behaviour of the greedy is “judged to be extremely sinful by Christians and many others.” BDAG, 824.

51. The entry in LSJ identifies εἰδωλολάτρης as a word of NT derivation. LSJ, 227.

52. “Paul “takes it for granted that believers take full part in the community and society in which they live.” Ciampa, The First Letter, 217.

53. “Paul wishes to emphasize the impossibility of a Christlike community forming a ghetto” Thiselton, The First Epistle, 410.

54. See footnote 9 above; cf John 17:15.

55. “א* C D 6 104 365 629 pm.” See note 126 in Fee, The First Epistle, 241.

56. Fee speculates that the misunderstanding of Paul’s previous letter was owing to those “who are arrogant” (4:18) exploiting the ambiguity in its wording. Fee, The First Epistle, 243-244.

57. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 413.

58 Italics in original. Ibid.

59. “The only ground given for this exclusion from Christian fellowship is that of moral failure.” Barrett, The First Epistle, 132.

60. Fee, The First Epistle, 247.

61. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 414.

62. Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament: English Translation (London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1870), Pr 23:21.

63. Fee, The First Epistle, 247.

64. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 415.

65. Greevan, "συναναμείγνυμι",TDNT, vol. 7, 855.

66. Ciampa, The First Letter, 219.

67. Italics in original. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 416.

68. Metzger, TCGNT, 485–486.

69. Ibid.

70. See footnote 17 above.

71. Metzger, TCGNT, 486.

72. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 415.

73. Seven times (Deut 17:7, 12; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21, 22; 24:7), two with Ἰσραήλ in place of ὑμῶν αὐτῶν (17:12, 22:22).

74. Ciampa, The First Letter, 220..

75. και εξαρειτε D2 L 630. 1241. 1505 m sy(h). NA28, 256.

76. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 417.

77. Ibid., 417-418.

78. Fee, The First Epistle, 248-249.

79. Ciampa, The First Letter, 220.

80. “[Looking at Corinth’s intellectual character] provides an embarrassingly close model of a postmodern context for the gospel in our own times [giving] 1 Corinthians…a distinctive position of relevance to our own times. Thiselton, The First Epistle, 17.