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5 What is idol-food? Idol-food and sacrifices Though it is very often assumed that all idol-food is meat,1 there is nothing in the text to make this a certainty. "If food puts an obstacle in the way of my brother I will never again eat meat (krea)" (8:13) shows clearly that the idol-food Paul has in mind most readily is meat. It cannot be inferred from this, however, that only meat could be idolfood : Paul's reference to refusing to eat meat is rhetorical,2 and in 8:13 what might cause a brother to fall is broma—a general term for "food." Other terms used for idol-food in 1 Corinthians are not specific to one sort of food. Arndt and Gingrich translate eidolothyta (8:1,4,7,10; 10:19) as "meat offered to an idol."3 This is a judgment made from an unwarranted understanding of the passages here in question and from a 1 Some scholars claim explicitly that idol-food was meat: Morton Scott Enslin, Christian Beginnings (New York: Harper, 1938), p. 251; Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1911), p. 163; Margaret E. Thrall, The First and Second Letters of Paul to the Corinthians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 61. Most scholars do not address this question directly, but only imply the identification of eidolothyta and meat: Hans Conzelmann, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975 [translated from Der erste Brief an die Korinther, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1969]), p. 142; Kirsopp Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul: Their Motive and Origin (London: Rivingtons, 1911), p. 198; Willis, Idol Meat, p. 1. The only scholar who makes much of the explicit identification of meat and eidolothyta is Gerd Theissen, in "The Strong and the Weak in Corinth: A Sociological Analysis of a Theological Quarrel," in The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity. Essays on Corinth by Gerd Theissen (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), p. 121-44. 2 Compare 1 Cor 9:19-23. 3 William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 4th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952). 53 54 Dangerous Food set of assumptions concerning the practices of sacrifice. The strongest evidence for the identification of eidolothyta with meat is a common meaning of thyo as "to kill in sacrifice," something possible only of animals. Arndt and Gingrich claim in the entry concerning thyo, however , that its proper and most common meaning is simply "to sacrifice ." Because many sorts of food were offered to Gods—grain, wine, honey, as well as many sorts of animals—it is likely that "things sacrificed to idols" might include foods other than meat. Thyo (and thysia, compare 10:18) has a range of connotations, from "sacrifice" to the wider concept "to offer." This wider connotation is certainlypossible: Liddell and Scott suggest that it is sometimes used in explicit contrast to sphazo, "to slaughter, especially for sacrifice." Another indication of the sort of food Paul spoke of has been sought in 10:25: "Eat everything sold in the market [en makelloi]." Arndt and Gingrich include a set of assumptions in the translation of this word also, which they give as "meat market." The RSV echoes this judgment. Makellon, however, has a more general sense of "food market."4 The hypothesis that eidolothyta may refer to more sorts of food than meat is strengthened by 8:4, where Paul uses the expression brosis ton eidolothyton. Brosis here means "eating," but it is also a general term for food, with no necessary connotation of meat (compare Cor 2 9:10, where it clearly refers to bread). Similarly, less direct indications of what was eaten or avoided are non-specific: 8:10, "If someone sees you . . . reclining (katakeimenon) in an idol's temple" (katakeimenon here means simply "to recline to eat"); 10:21,22, "you cannot drink . . . the cup of demons . . . you cannot have a share in the table of demons"; 10:27, "eat everything set before you"; 10:30 "If I partake"; 10:31, "whether you eat or drink." Though the most ready meaning of eidolothyta is meat from sacrificed animals, there is nothing in the text of 1 Corinthians to limit Paul's use of the term exclusively to meat. Many other sorts of food were used...

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