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Why Did the Pure Bride of Christ (2 Cor. 11.2) Become a Wedded Wife (Eph. 5.22-33)? Theses About the Intertextual Transformation of an Ecclesiological Metaphor

Wissenschafthch-Theologisches Seminar, Kisselgasse 1, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany

This essay intends to show that the paraenesis on marriage in the letter to the Ephesians (5.22-33) has an anti-ascetic motivation. When hierarchically structured marriage is presented as the image of that relationship between Christ and the church which is established in creation (Gen. 2.24) and redemption, it appears as the normative lifestyle. At the same time, the pseudo-Pauline author deprives of its raison d'être an analogous christological-ecclesiological justification of a lifestyle free of marriage, which had appealed to Paul. The author does this by modifying the statements of 2 Cor. 11.2 and 1 Cor. 6.15-17, inter alia with the aid of 'fictitious self-references'. Thus Eph. 5.22-33 is an attempt to help stabilize patriarchal marriage against competing receptions of Paul, by making the apostle's view on this topic unambiguous.

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