1 Corinthians 15 is the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, written by Paul the Apostle at Ephesus in the mid-50s AD. The longest sustained discussion of resurrection in the New Testament, it responds to members of the Corinthian church who denied the resurrection of the dead, arguing from the resurrection of Jesus that believers also will be raised, and describing the transformation of the body at the end of the age. The chapter preserves an early creedal summary of the Christian message (verses 3 to 8) that is widely regarded as a tradition older than Paul's letters and is commonly dated to within a few years of the crucifixion, which has made it a principal source in historical study of the resurrection. The chapter is also the source of several phrases well known in English, among them "O death, where is thy sting?" Passages from the chapter are appointed for Christian funeral liturgy and are set to music in Handel's Messiah and Brahms's German Requiem.
Text
The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 58 verses.3
Composition and context The chapter belongs to the letter that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth in the mid-50s AD. Anthony C. Thiselton, following Karl Barth, regards it as "the close and crown of the whole epistle", tied to the letter's recurring concern with divine grace. Hans Conzelmann, a critical scholar, takes the opposite view, treating the chapter as a self-contained treatise on the resurrection and doubting its original connection to the rest of the letter, a position bound up with theories that 1 Corinthians combines more than one letter. (see Unity of the First Epistle to the Corinthians) Fitzmyer defends the chapter's integrity and describes it as a well-defined treatise in four parts: the kerygma (verses 1 to 11), the argument that the resurrection of believers follows from Christ's (verses 12 to 34), the manner of the resurrection (verses 35 to 49), and the final victory over death (verses 50 to 58).
The Corinthian denial Paul writes because "some" at Corinth were saying "there is no resurrection of the dead" (verse 12), and much of the chapter is directed against that view and its consequences. What exactly they denied is disputed. Thiselton surveys several overlapping reconstructions and concludes that no single one excludes the others, and that "some" may point to more than one group; most scholars agree that few if any denied the resurrection of Christ himself. A common view is that the objection was to the resurrection of the body, since in a Greek setting the immortality of the soul was the familiar form of afterlife, whereas Paul's hope of bodily resurrection derives from Jewish eschatology; Barrett connects the denial with an incipient Gnosticism at Corinth, and Fitzmyer, following Conzelmann, holds that the Corinthians doubted not that God could raise the dead but, "as Greeks", what such a resurrection was for. Another reconstruction, going back to John Chrysostom and Luther, is that the Corinthians held an "over-realized" eschatology in which the resurrection had in some sense already occurred (compare ); Conzelmann cautions that "we do not know so much about the Corinthian views". N. T. Wright rejects the over-realized reading and holds that the objection came from former pagans denying a future bodily resurrection on ordinary Greco-Roman grounds, since their culture took for granted that the dead do not return to bodily life; he argues that the terms ("raise") and ("resurrection") denoted a return to bodily life rather than survival without a body, so that an argument for the immortality of the soul would have been unnecessary at Corinth.
Summary Paul first recalls the gospel he had preached, quoting a creed transmitted to him that Christ died for sins, was buried, was raised on the third day and appeared to named witnesses, and adding himself as the last to whom the risen Christ appeared (verses 1 to 11). He then argues that if the dead are not raised then Christ has not been raised, and Christian faith is worthless, whereas in fact Christ has been raised as the indication of those who will follow, so that at his coming he will reign until death, the last enemy, is destroyed and God is "all in all" (verses 12 to 28). After supporting arguments drawn from practice and from his own dangers (verses 29 to 34), Paul answers the question of how the dead are raised: as a seed is transformed into a plant, the body is "sown" perishable and raised imperishable, a "natural body" giving way to a "spiritual body", with Christ the "last Adam" as the pattern of the risen (verses 35 to 49). Finally he discloses a "mystery": not all will die, but all will be changed "in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet", when death is swallowed up in victory (verses 50 to 58).
Interpretation
The early Christian creed (verses 3–8)
Paul introduces verses 3 to 5 with the verbs (, "I handed on") and (, "I received"), the technical language for transmitting fixed tradition; Barrett describes Paul here as "a link in the chain" rather than the originator, and Collins notes that his command of the terminology reflects rabbinic training. Larry Hurtado calls the formula "sacred tradition". Several features mark the passage as a formula Paul quotes rather than composes: four clauses each introduced by (, "that"), which Thiselton notes function in the manner of quotation marks; a stylized parallelism; the perfect passive (, "he has been raised") against the surrounding aorists; and vocabulary Paul does not otherwise use, including "according to the Scriptures" and "the Twelve", the latter appearing here alone in his letters. Oscar Cullmann and J. N. D. Kelly describe the resulting unit as an early confession shaped for catechesis or preaching, and Fitzmyer calls it "the oldest record of the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus", older than the Gospel accounts.
On "died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (verse 3), commentators generally see a reference to the Suffering Servant of , but caution against pressing it: Barrett judges that "the general allusion was made before specific passages were alleged", Collins calls the phrase "an interpretive formula, a hermeneutical key" rather than a proof-text, and Fitzmyer notes that pre-Christian Judaism did not read the Servant song of an expiatory death. Fee argues that since Second Temple Judaism did not read Isaiah's Servant song as referring to a personal Messiah, whoever first joined Jesus's death to "our sins" in those terms took a decisive step in earliest Christian belief, and that the evidence points to Jesus himself, at the Last Supper.
Date and origin Whether the formula was first composed in Aramaic or in Greek in the Jerusalem apostolic community setting, or took shape in a Greek-speaking church or in DamascusHans Grass, Ostergeschen und Osterberichte, Second Edition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1962) p. 96; Grass favors the origin in Damascus. is debated, although consensus is that it is very early. Collins reports that most scholars follow Joachim Jeremias, who argued from Semitisms such as the Aramaic name "Cephas" and the parallel structure for a Palestinian original; Conzelmann records the same discussion while noting that Jeremias offered "signs" rather than strict proofs. Fitzmyer objects that "there is no known Semitic equivalent" of the phrase "according to the Scriptures", so a formula with Palestinian roots could still have reached its final shape in a Hellenistic Jewish community. How much of verses 3 to 8 belonged to the original unit is likewise disputed: many commentators limit it to verses 3b to 5, and Fitzmyer, following Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, treats the reference to the five hundred in verse 6 as Paul's own addition.
Paul's own conversion and his stay with Cephas and James at Jerusalem () are generally taken as the occasions on which he could have received the tradition, which places its formulation within a few years of the crucifixion. Published estimates fall within a narrow range. Wright likewise places the formulation "within the first two or three years after Easter", and describes the tradition as "firm, universal and early", to which Paul could appeal in the mid-50s "as something which all early Christians knew well" and distinguishes its content, which Paul says he received by revelation (), from its wording, which was handed on to him. Hays dates the formula to within about three years of the crucifixion; James Dunn holds that it was "formulated as tradition within months of Jesus' death";, quoted in Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (2010), n. 140. the Jesus Seminar, convened by Robert W. Funk, allows "two or three years at most";, quoted in Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (2010), n. 140. Helmut Koester holds that the traditions in Paul's letters "can be dated to the time before Paul's calling, that is, no later than within five years after Jesus' death";, quoted in Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (2010), n. 140. Bart Ehrman questions how precise such figures can be. While accepting that Paul inherited the formula, he argues that calling a passage "pre-Pauline" does not establish that it was composed or circulating before Paul's conversion, and asks what would show that the appearance to the Twelve stood in a creed by AD 36. Geza Vermes states that the words of Paul are "a tradition he has inherited from his seniors in the faith concerning the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus".Geza Vermes (2008) The Resurrection. London, Penguin: 121–22 (; ) Gerd Lüdemann, who rejects a bodily resurrection, nonetheless places the formula "within the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus"; and the classicist Michael Grant calls it "very early"., quoted in Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (2010), n. 140. Michael Goulder, who explained the resurrection appearances as visionary rather than bodily, likewise held that Paul "received" the tradition "at his conversion", "perhaps two years after Jesus' death"., quoted in Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (2010), n. 140. Willi Marxsen dissents, arguing that the formula "is by no means an ancient formula, but a relatively late one"., quoted in Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (2010), n. 140.Further studies converging on an early date (Licona (2010), n. 140): ; ; ; ; ; and .
The early date is nonetheless accepted across a wide range of positions, including by scholars who reject a bodily resurrection: Lüdemann, who explains the appearances as visionary experiences, describes the recovery of pre-Pauline confessional formulations as "I do insist, however, that the discovery of pre-Pauline confessional formulations is one of the great achievements of recent New Testament scholarship"., quoted in Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (2010), n. 140. For this reason the passage occupies a central place in historical study of the resurrection of Jesus, where it is treated as the earliest surviving evidence for what the first Christians claimed; Thiselton, citing Wolfhart Pannenberg, adds that the reference to the burial implies the empty tomb and makes a claim open to historical testing. The competing historical explanations of the appearances themselves are treated at Resurrection of Jesus.