Since the publication of E. A. Judge's ‘Paul's Boasting in relation to Contemporary Professional Practice’, and more especially since the appearance of H. D. Betz's Der Apostel Paulus und die sokratische Tradition, scholarly attention to Paul's ‘boasting’ in 2 Corinthians 10–12 has focussed on the question of literary form.

Comparison, Self-Praise and Irony: Paul's Boasting and the Conventions of Hellenistic Rhetoric

The apostle Paul’s presentation of his own physical body within the Corinthian correspondence functions as a gender-nuanced argument for authoritative leadership that mirrors the humiliated and shameful glory of the crucified Christ. Paul is committed to exercising his authority only in keeping with weakness, lack of rhetorical power, and feminized shame. He boasts that his own servile and feminizing sufferings are patterned after those of Christ. Even the apostle’s apparently glorious experiences are accompanied by the infliction of suffering and the removal of an ability or right to speak. Lastly, his Sinai account demonstrates that even Paul’s boast of open speech and self-disclosure is implicated in a feminizing act of unveiling his own shame and weakness. Even as he argues for his superiority to Moses on the basis of what at first glance appears to be a masculine apostolic boldness, the apostle’s status is called into question. For his boldness and openness of self-presentation habitually reveal Paul to be shamefully weak and socially feminized. Paul’s willing self-humiliation is predicated upon an insistence that in his body he will mirror the socially-gendered shame and weakness of the glorious and powerful crucified Christ.

Rhetoric, gender, weakness, and shame : Paul's somatic self-presentation in the Corinthian correspondence

Current research on religious conversion

In his now programmatic article, ‘Die Legitimitat des Apostels’, E. Kasemann drew attention to the fact that the issue at stake in 2 Corinthians was Paul himself and that, of all the accusations being levelled against him, Paul was especially being blamed for his supposed ‘Selbstlob’. From his opponents' perspective, Paul's μέτρον το κανόνος; (10. 12 ff.) and his δοκιμή (13. 3, 6) appeared questionable, lacking the obvious and objective power and authority associated with apostleship. His boasting was thus viewed to be irresponsible, illegitimate, and deceitful (5. 12; 11. 16; 12. 16). Specifically, Paul lacked a ‘fixed μέτρον’, i.e. an objective evidence for his legitimacy, which was ‘controllable’. For, in contrast to the apostles in Jerusalem, Paul could not point to a commissioning from the earthly Jesus, the miraculous signs of an apostle, or financial support from churches to support his claims. Hence, ‘seinem Apostolat fehlt die nachprufbare Eindeutig-keit’.

‘Self-Commendation’ and Apostolic Legitimacy in 2 Corinthians: A Pauline Dialectic?

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Paul-Making History: In Search of a Sartrean Biographical Method

II Corinthians xii. 1–1O gives us a glimpse into the life of Paul the visionary and the resurgence of interest in transcendental experiences has brought new attention to Paul's experience of the third heaven. Research into drug-induced experiences sheds no greater light on Paul's account but, as might be expected, relating the episode to ‘charismatic’ experiences has proved more fruitful.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0028688500004288

A. T. Lincoln

Papers

‘Paul the Visionary’: The Setting and Significance of the Rapture to Paradise in II Corinthians XII. 1–10