Tongues and cymbals: Contextualizing 1 Corinthians 13:1

Abstract

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul's message is one of unity. The key to understanding Paul's metaphor of the cymbal in 1 Corinthians 13: I lies in knowing that within the biblical tradition, the cymbal was never played alone, but always accompanied other instruments, singing, and words of praise. Paul urges the tongue-speakers at Corinth to abandon their solo performances and place their girls in the service of building up the community. Love mandates that all utterances be interpreted for the community, so that the gift of tongues will no longer divide God's church, but will instead contribute to its unity in Christ.

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If I speak with the tongues of humans and of angels, but I do not have love, I have become a ringing bronze-thing, or a loud-sounding cymbal (1 Cor 13:1)

Several factors influence the interpretation of a metaphor. First, the interpretation is necessarily limited by what we know about the objects, persons, or situations alluded to. If what we know, or think we know, about the elements of a given metaphor in some way differs from what the speaker or writer knows, our interpretation will probably differ accordingly. This is often the case in the interpretation of metaphors found in ancient texts such as the Bible. Frequently, an image does not make sense to a given audience because important information is not available to clarify its intended meaning. In attempting to fill in the blanks, we risk retrojecting our own ideology, technology, cosmology, etc., onto a given metaphor. In so doing, we also risk missing the point.

Second, we interpret an image according to our understanding of the context in which it appears. Suppose, in the course of a conversation, I say to you, "Words drip from his tongue like honey." Assuming that you are familiar with the qualities of honey, you might interpret this image in one of two ways. If I had already made it clear to you that I was speaking of a politician, or perhaps a lawyer, you would probably decide that honey in this context is a bad thing: smooth but sticky, with minimal nutritional value. If you knew, on the other hand, that I was speaking of an actor, or a poet, you might decide that honey is in this case a very good thing: something soothing, tantalizing, and delectably sweet. Your interpretation would also be influenced by what you knew or assumed about my personal taste, and by your own evaluation of the person being discussed.

In chapters 13 through 15 of his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul uses a number of musical metaphors, referring specifically to five musical instruments. Such references occur nowhere else in Paul's writings. Perhaps for this reason, many scholars have overlooked the significance of these images. At the same time, a smaller number of exegetes and commentators have attempted to interpret these metaphors, but have imported ideas and assumptions foreign to the world of Paul and the first Christians.

In this essay I examine the metaphor of the "ringing bronze thing," or "loud-sounding cymbal." I propose to arrive at a clearer understanding of this metaphor by an investigation of the uses of cymbals, together with other musical instruments in sources unquestionably familiar to Paul and his first-century audience, namely the writings of the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible. I will also give careful attention to the context in which these musical metaphors occur. In so doing I hope to clarify their significance for Paul's ancient readers and for readers today.

Chalkos

The word chalkos means bronze, brass, or copper, and can refer to various vessels, implements, or other items made of this material, or, more generally, to anything made of metal (Liddell & Scott). Here the noun stands parallel with a well-known musical instrument, the kymbalon, which in many respects corresponds to the modern-day instrument known as the cymbal. Moreover, chalkos is modified by a participle denoting a ringing sound, peal, or echo. These contextual clues seem to suggest that chalkos here refers to a musical instrument, although the word does not appear elsewhere with this meaning. In light of this fact, speculation as to the nature, shape, or classification of such an instrument has yielded no definitive conclusions. A few proposals follow.

The chalkos has frequently been interpreted as a brass instrument similar to the trumpet or horn (Smith: 111). Others have identified it as a gong, such as might have been used in the rites of orgiastic cults, in preparation for the state of ecstasy (Schneider: 955; see also Conzelmann: 221). J. Schneider notes that the participle echon suggests an instrument that produced long-echoing and roaring or booming sounds, which he perceives to be uniquely characteristic of the gong (111). In his commentary on the First Letter to the Corinthians, Gordon Fee likewise interprets the chalkos as a gong, which he describes as a metaphor for an "empty, hollow sound"; he compares this to the empty sounds of pagan worship, alluded to by Paul in 12:2 (632). It should be noted, however, that there is no record of the use of a gong in any Hellenistic cult.