2 Corinthians 11:16-33, The fool's boast and the basket over the wall

Audiences resented boasting except for good reasons, such as self-defense or necessity, and aristocrats boasted of heritage and achievements, not sufferings (the cultural backgrounds article Ancient Boasting; Keener). The article reads Paul as playing the fool and parodying the self-promotion his culture prized. Under Jewish law a synagogue court sentenced lesser offenses to 39 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:2-3), and an offender could escape by renouncing his community, which Paul would not do (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). The Mishnah describes the method, as the Zondervan dictionary reports: "Thirteen strokes were administered on the chest and thirteen on each shoulder." The Porcian law forbade scourging a Roman citizen, but officials sometimes beat citizens with rods anyway (the dictionary; Keener and his notes). Josephus tells of a wreck after which passengers "swam for our lives all the night." Whether Aretas IV controlled Damascus is debated: Keener thinks he may have, the dictionary takes the ethnarch as the city's governor under him, and the cultural backgrounds notes say he may only have led the Nabatean community. Rome honored the first soldier up an enemy wall with a wall crown, and Wright reads the escape as a parody of it (the cultural backgrounds notes; Wright).