Death and Salvation in Paul and Ancient Judaism (1 Corinthians 5:5)

Abstract In 1 Cor 5:5, Paul responds to a matter of church discipline by commanding the Corinthians to “hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that the spirit might be saved on the day of the Lord.” One intransigent problem in this verse is the causal relationship at its heart: how can “destruction of the flesh” result in “salvation of the spirit”? In 1972, Göran Forkman suggested the rabbinic notion of atoning death—that death, plus confession, provides atonement for individual sin—might illuminate Paul’s logic. The man’s punishment expiates his crime and permits him to share in eternal life. Forkman’s suggestion has not gained wide acceptance: the rabbinic texts are late; they require confession for death to have expiatory value; moreover, expiatory death seems impossible to reconcile with Pauline thought. I reexamine this possibility in three parts. First, the rabbinic material is far more diverse than Forkman realized: death, physical suffering, and shameful burial all have expiatory value without confession. Second, expiatory death and suffering also appear in earlier Second Temple texts. Finally, since Paul invokes individual expiatory death and suffering elsewhere, it is a viable interpretation for this passage as well.