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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
Manual work and the leisured class
The well-to-do despised people who worked with their hands. A respectable teacher was expected to live on a patron, on fees or even on begging, so an apostle who made tents for his keep looked low class.
The new pastor insisted on paying his own way by fixing cars on weekends, and some of the board found it embarrassing. In Paul's world people of standing did not work with their hands. Craftsmen were usually better off than peasants, but they were poor, worked long hours and had little status. Teachers and philosophers were expected to live on a rich patron's support, on fees from their students, or on begging. Paul supported himself with a trade, and in a city that cared about status, people noticed.
Keener writes that "the well-to-do despised artisans". A teacher was expected to live on a patron, on fees from students or even on begging, but not on a working-class job. Artisans were usually better off than peasants. Still, they toiled, stayed poor and had little social status, especially those who moved from place to place, as Paul the leatherworker did. Some well-to-do Corinthians wanted Paul to take payment like a regular philosophical teacher. They were embarrassed that he kept himself as a low-status artisan. Taking a patron's money had a cost. "Sages on the payroll of patrons" had less freedom to challenge their patrons' values, while refusing a gift could be read as refusing friendship. Keener and his notes suggest two reasons Paul refused pay: so as not to look like a sophist teaching for gain, or so as not to become his hearers' dependent client. Wright suggests he did not want anyone in Achaea to think that paying him meant owning him and trimming his message. Paul still defended the right of apostles to be supported. Wright and Bird say the rival teachers in Corinth disparaged Paul "for his manual labour, his refusal to accept payment." Bailey states the expectation plainly: "Intellectuals were expected to be financially independent." Humility was a Jewish virtue, but Greeks heard it as humiliation, fitting only for people of very low status. Judaism valued labor with one's hands and sharing with the poor. Jewish sages, and probably artisans themselves, respected manual work, while people of status across the Mediterranean despised it.
An analogy: a visiting lecturer who turns down the fee and pays his hotel bill by working shifts in a local warehouse. Some admire him; the sponsors who wanted their names on the program feel snubbed.
Because the elite looked down on manual work and expected teachers to be supported, Paul's reminder that his own hands met his needs, as in Acts 20:34, was a deliberate lowering of himself. In 1 Thessalonians 2:9 he labored day and night to avoid weighing on anyone, and in 2 Corinthians 11:7 his free preaching is turned against him.
Not a refusal of all support. Paul defended the right of apostles to be paid and took gifts from other churches; what he refused was to become the paid client of the people he was teaching.
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- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 2 Corinthians, Purpose, introduction to 2 Corinthians 8:1-9, and on 2 Corinthians 6:10, 11:7, 11:8 and 12:13
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on 2 Corinthians 8:1-9:15, 11:7 and 12:14
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians, comment on 2 Corinthians 11:7-15
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 21, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Who were the super-apostles?
- Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes, section 3.2
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Ephesians 4:28
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Ephesians 4:28
