Muted Scholarship in 1 Corinthians: A Gender-Critical Enquiry

Abstract

The First Letter to the Corinthians has provided a significant amount of material for scholars interested in studying how gender functions within Pauline writings and more generally in early Christianity. The body of work is rich and vast and draws largely on feminist theory and method as both an approach and an analytical lens. This paper argues that a careful application of gender-critical analysis has arguably been mute in such studies, despite the vast amount of feminist critique applied to these texts. Such muted scholarship has perpetuated a dialogical framework that juxtaposes studies of femininity and masculinity and has failed to take seriously the argumentative nature of rhetoric and explore important issues such as gender construction and representation within 1 Corinthians.