The Corinthian correspondence clearly indicated that the apostle Paul was deeply engaged in polemics with his critics and opponents in the church. He responded to the crisis situation with ‘the message of the cross’, knowing fully well that it was ‘foolishness’ according to the social ethos of his time. Yet, Paul argued that paradoxically it was precisely in the commonly perceived ‘weakness’ of the crucified Christ that the Divine ‘power’ and ‘wisdom’ had been revealed. In this study, Wenhua Shi shows that the language employed by Paul was no ordinary language of mere words, but vivid and powerful ‘body language’ expressed in crucifixion, rhetoric and peristasis (catalogue of hardship and suffering). In the end what the apostle did was far more than just a personal apologia, but a most drastic inversion of the Greco-Roman social ethos.weiterlesen