The social and legal setting of I Corinthians 7:17-35: de facto slave marriages in the church at Corinth

This study illuminates I Corinthians 7:17-38 with social-historical and legal materials from studies of Roman slavery and of women in the ancient world. The thesis is that the questions I Cor 7 addresses regarding marriage, divorce, and remarriage reflect the social realities not only of free marriages, but also of slave relationships of concubinage or contubernity among members of the Corinthian congregation. The de facto domestic relationships of slaves had no legal status or protection; only free people had Roman conubium or its equivalent in other cultures, the status allowing them de iure to contract free marriage. Considering how 7:25-35 addresses Christians of low social status, including slaves and ex-slaves, broadens the understanding of its instruction.; All leading interpretations of the most difficult blocks of material, 7:25-35 and 7:36-38, miss part of the social instruction of one or both paragraphs. Recognizing that problems of de facto slave marriages affected how the Corinthians framed the questions they wrote Paul and how they understood Paul's response in I Cor 7 sheds new light upon 7:25-35 and 7:36-38. Reading 7:25-35 through the eyes of Christian slaves and freedmen recovers an interpretive possibility present to Paul's ancient audience but lost to modern readers who presume only the single pattern of free marriage.; "Concerning virgins," 7:25-35, is juxtaposed to 7:17-24: the concerns of slaves in 7:17-24 carry into 7:25-35. This juxtaposition expands the purview of 7:25-35, which concerns not marriage versus celibacy, but remarriage after losing a spouse--whether de facto or de iure. The Corinthians advocating celibacy appeal to the contemporary Roman ethos of the univira to deny Christians any right to remarry. Paul uses the compromised situation of de facto slave marriages, and the enforced loss of those relationships, as an anomaly showing that those who need remarriage should be allowed it.; This approach also frees 7:36-38 from domination by 7:25-35, which (via Hans Lietzmann, Werner Georg Kummel, and John Hurd) is the major methodological flaw of most modern studies. As the church fathers saw, 7:36-38 addresses a separate topic: fathers (or guardians) with daughters in potestate who desire marriage.