1 Corinthians 5:1

1. [ὀνομάζεται] after ἔθνεσιν. All the best uncials omit this. So Vetus Lat. and Vulg. Also Origen. But it is found in the Peshito.

1. ὅλως. There is a difficulty in the translation of this word. It usually means altogether or on the whole. Neither of these renderings would give a good sense here. It occurs elsewhere in the N. T. only in ch. 1 Corinthians 6:7; 1 Corinthians 15:29, and in Matthew 5:34. In the first of these it has the meaning altogether. In the other two it has the usual meaning, with a negative, of not at all. Here it must be rendered ‘universally.’ ‘It is everywhere reported,’ &c. Meyer, however, would render ‘one hears generally’ (überhaupt, im Allgemeinen).

ἀκούεται ἐν ὑμῖν πορνεία. This explains the mention of the ‘rod’ in the last verse.

ἥτις οὐδὲ ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, of a kind that does not exist even among the Gentiles. Two considerations of some importance, bearing on Church history, are suggested by this passage. The first bids us dismiss the idea that the Christian Church at the beginning of its career was a pattern of Christian perfection. Corinth (see Introduction) was more depraved even than most heathen cities. Accordingly, the Corinthian community, as described here and in chap. 1 Corinthians 11:21, was lamentably ignorant of the first principles of Christian morality and Christian decency, and the Apostle had to begin by laying the very foundations of a system of morals among his converts. It is probable that nowhere, save in the earlier years of the Church at Jerusalem, was there any body of Christians which was not very far from realizing the Christian ideal, and which was not continually in need of the most careful supervision. The second point is that St Paul’s idea of discipline seems to have differed greatly from the principles which were creeping into the Church at the end of the second century. See 1 Corinthians 5:5, and compare it with 2 Corinthians 2:5-8, which seems plainly to refer to the same person. In spite of the gravity of the crime—it would seem (2 Corinthians 7:12) that it was committed while the father was alive—we find here nothing of the long, in some instances life-long, penance which had become the rule of the Church for grave offences before the end of the third century. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remark that by the words ‘father’s wife,’ stepmother is meant. But the language of the Apostle seems to imply that she had been divorced by the father and married to the son, a proceeding which the shameful laxity of Corinthian society rendered possible. The Rabbis, moreover, held that all existing relations were dissolved by baptism and circumcision. Thus Jewish rigorism and heathen licence were alike opposed to the higher morality of the Church. See note on ch. 1 Corinthians 7:11. Estius, however, thinks that the son was living publicly with his father’s wife, as though she were his own.

ἔχειν. Meyer insists that this word is only used of marriage. But John 4:18 shews that it is also used of unlawful connections. Therefore it is quite impossible to infer from the word whether or not a marriage had taken place.