‘As a Miscarriage’. The Meaning and Function of the Metaphor in 1 Cor 15:1-11 in Light of Num 12:12 (LXX)

Abstract

On the basis of the Greek text of Num 12:12 and of the use which Philo makes of it in the first book of his Allegories of the Laws (176) the present article proposes a new understanding of the metaphor of miscarriage (ἔκτρωμα): a being not only born dead and/or incapable of living, but also deadly. In this double meaning the term utilized by Paul in 1 Cor 15:8 describes the pre-Christian past of the Apostle as both lacking life (as being without Christ) and lethal (as a persecutor of the church of God). The metaphor at the same time, constitutes the starting point of the transformation which occurred in Paul thanks to the apparition of the Risen One: from being dead to alive, and from deadly to being a bearer of life (vv. 9-10). Such a metamorphosis is tangible proof of the power of the Risen One, who even now transforms the lives of his own, and eo ipso also the guarantee of fi nal resurrection, when the good work already begun will be brought to its completion (cf. Phil 1:6).