y'all's body is a temple

A New Testament professor at Fuller, Joel B. Green, shed new light on a well-known scripture the other day. Most of us who have grown up in the Christian world know 1 Corinthians 6:19 - "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?"

It's a standard passage that many a youth pastor has used to encourage kiddos not to have sex or smoke or drink or anything else like that - and they are partially justified considering the context of 1 Cor 6:19. Since we are united with God, why would we want to also unite with a prostitute? We'll ignore the fact this passage doesn't address "smoking" or "drinking" but "fornication," and every faith tradition seems to have a different understanding of what "fornication" means.

But what I wanted to look at for a minutes are the two little words "your" and "body." Since this blog does have a Koine Greek title, I guess I'm permitted to delve into a little Greek. In this passage, "your" (ὑμῶν) is plural and "body" (σῶμα) is singular. So it's "your (plural) body (singular) is the temple of the Holy Spirit." English is a little limited here because we don't have a plural version of "you." "You" can mean you personally or you as a group of people.

In certain areas of the country, people do use a plural version of "you." In the south, it's "y'all." In the Philly area, it's "yous" (as in "yous guys"). In the western part of PA, it's "You'ns."

So a better translation would maybe be "y'all's body is a temple."

What's the point? I think Paul, when using "body" is probably referring to the body of Christ, i.e., the community of believers. His point is that the Jerusalem Temple is no longer where God's Spirit resides on earth. God's Spirit resides in the community, or the body, of those who follow Christ.

Now, as members of that community, we shouldn't be uniting our physical bodies to prostitutes. And beyond that, we should be responsible with the way we treat our bodies so as not to do harm to the body of Christ.

Reading the context of the passage, the interpretation above might be a stretch. Paul seems to be writing a lot in this section about physical human bodies, and given his theology (and that of the early church) of the infilling of the Spirit, it is not a stretch to say he is referring to our individual bodies as temples.

So why the use of a plural "you" and a singular "body?" Maybe his Jewish understanding of there being one Temple is important here. Maybe he wouldn't want to say that we are all mini temples, but that our entire community is the one temple of God's Spirit.

I am not proposing any enlightening conclusions here. I don't have any. I just thought this was worth a second look. Maybe you will want to keep the conversation going? Post some comments.