The Imperishable Prize
The isthmus of Corinth was the scene of the Isthmian games, one of the four great national festivals of the Greeks. The celebration was a season of great rejoicing and feasting. The contests included horse, foot, and chariot-racing; wrestling, boxing, musical and poetical trials, and later, fights of animals. The victor’ s prize was a garland of pine leaves, and his victory was generally celebrated in triumphal odes called epinikia, of which specimens remain among the poems of Pindar.** At the period of Paul’s epistles the games were still celebrated, and the apostle himself may very probably have been present.*** At the same time, he would have been familiar with similar scenes in Tarsus, in all the great cities of Asia Minor, especially Ephesus, and even in Jerusalem.
Is temperate (ἐγκρατεύεται). Only here and ch. 7:9. The candidate for the races was required to be ten months in training, and to practise in the gymnasium immediately before the games, under the direction of judges who had themselves been instructed for ten months in the details of the games. The training was largely dietary. Epictetus says: “Thou must be orderly, living on spare food; abstain from confections; make a point of exercising at the appointed time, in heat and in cold; nor drink cold water nor wine at hazard.” Horace says: “The youth who would win in the race hath borne and done much; he hath sweat and been cold; he hath abstained from love and wine” (“Ars Poetica,” 412). Tertullian, commending the example of the athletes to persecuted Christians, says: “Coguntur, cruciantur, fatigantur.” “They are constrained, harassed, wearied” (“Ad Martyres,” 3). Compare 2 Tim. 2:5.
Beateth the air. A boxer might be said to beat the air when practising without an adversary. This was called σκιαμαχία shadow-fighting. Or he might purposely strike into the air in order to spare his adversary; or the adversary might evade his blow, and thus cause him to spend his strength on the air. The two latter may well be combined in Paul’s meta phor. He strikes straight and does not spare. Compare Virgil, in the description of a boxing-match:
“Entellus, rising to the work, his right hand now doth show
Upreared; but he, the nimble one, foresaw the falling blow
Above him, and his body swift writhed skew-wise from the fall.
Entellus spends his stroke on air.”
“Aeneid,” v., 443. Morris’ Translation.
27. I keep under (ὑπωπιάζω). A feeble translation, and missing the metaphor. The word means to strike under the eye; to give one a black eye. It occurs elsewhere in the New Testament but once, Luke 18:5 (see note). Rev., I buffet. The blow of the trained boxer was the more formidable from the use of the cestus, consisting of ox-hide bands covered with knots and nails, and loaded with lead and iron. So Entellus throws his boxing-gloves into the ring, formed of seven bulls’-hides with lead and iron sewed into them (Virgil, “Aeneid,” v., 405). They were sometimes called γυιοτόροι limb-breakers. A most interesting account is given by Rodolfo Lanziani, “Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries,” of the exhuming at the foundation of the Temple of the Sun, erected by Aurelian, of a sitting bronze statue of a boxer. The accompanying photograph shows the construction of the fur-lined boxing-gloves secured by thongs wound round the forearm half-way to the elbow. The gloves cover the thumb and the hand to the first finger-joints. The writer says; “The nose is swollen from the effects of the last blow received; the ears resemble a fiat and shapeless piece of leather; the neck, the shoulders, the breast, are seamed with scars.… The details of the fur-lined boxing-gloves are also interesting, and one wonders how any human being, no matter how strong and powerful, could stand the blows from such weapons as these gloves, made of four or five thicknesses of leather, and fortified with brass knuckles.”
9:27 discipline my body. To live with a purpose, to intentionally seek the good of others. “He clearly shows that he was keeping his body under control, not to merit forgiveness of sins by that discipline, but to keep his body in subjection and prepared for spiritual things, for carrying out the duties of his calling” (AC XXVI 38).