Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

1 Corinthians 1:23

ἡμεῖς δέ. We, on the contrary.

Χριστὸν ἐσταυρωμένον. The Christian doctrine was the very reverse of what Jews and Greeks demanded. Instead of Messiah upon an earthly throne, triumphant over His enemies, instead of a skilful and original disputant, the Christian preachers speak of a condemned criminal. As a temporal Prince He had no pretensions to notice. To the title of philosopher, at least in the Corinthian sense of the term, He had no claim. His one argument was His Life and Death. What wonder if this doctrine were to the Jews an offence, and sheer nonsense in the ears of the inquisitive and argumentative Greek? Moreover the curse pronounced in Deuteronomy 21:23 was a great difficulty in the way of the reception of the Gospel by Jews.

σκάνδαλον. The A.V. translation stumblingblock is most probably incorrect. σκάνδαλον is properly a trap to catch birds, and it is ordinarily used in the LXX. as equivalent to snare. See Judges 2:3; 1 Samuel 18:21. It is, however, used to translate a word equivalent to stumblingblock in Leviticus 19:14. Cf. Galatians 5:11.

μωρίαν. Folly. The A.V. foolishness hardly gives a strong enough sense, since the word has gone out of common use and remains for us only in the Scriptures.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

1 Corinthians 1:23

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