1 Corinthians 10:1-4

Just over a month ago, I read 1 Corinthians 10 after having found a citation of it (verse 31 specifically) in the introduction to my edition of The Bhagavad Gita.  I noticed a couple rhetorical devices in the first four verses:

1 For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink.  For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.  [ESV]

This passage exhibits both anaphora (the repeated "all") and polysyndeton (the repeated "and"), and these devices provide a sense of entirety.

1 Corinthians 12:18

A couple weeks ago, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from 29 January 2016:

The text was 1 Corinthians 12:12-26.  I noticed in particular verse 18:  "But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose."  This comes right after Paul's arguments that a foot is still part of the body even though it's not a hand and that an ear is still part of the body even though it's not an eye.

Hearing the text this time, I realized that God's "arrang[ing] the members in the body" has a broader sense.  It works both within and outside of this illustration.  In the immediate context, it refers to the positions of the foot and ear and so on.  Since these body parts are acting as metaphors for individuals in the body of Christ, however, there's also a second sense:  God puts people in specific places and times.

1 Corinthians 13:7

I read 1 Corinthians 13 recently and noticed epistrophe (the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses or sentences) in verse 7:  "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."  That "all things" is repeated gives a sense of the entirety of that "all."

1 Corinthians 15:24

I forgot to write about this earlier, but when I watched Worship Anew last month (22 November - the Last Sunday of the Church Year), I noticed a small feature in the epistle reading from 1 Corinthians 15.  Verse 24 is "Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power."  "εἶτα τὸ τέλος, ὅταν παραδιδῷ τὴν βασιλείαν τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρί, ὅταν καταργήσῃ πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ πᾶσαν ἐξουσίαν καὶ δύναμιν·"  There's polysyndeton (the repeated "and" or "καὶ"), and this - along with "every" (πᾶσαν) - gives a sense of completeness.

1 Corinthians 1:18

Last Friday, there was an installation service for various LCMS leaders.  I saw some clips of this (on Instagram stories, of all places), including some of the readings.  I noticed something about 1 Corinthians 1:18:  "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

I realized that this is in the form of a chiasm:

A. For the word of the cross is folly
B. to those who are perishing 

B. but to us who are being saved
A. it is the power of God.

As a word, chiasm comes from the Greek letter chi (χ), which is shaped like a (tilted) cross.  I don't know if there's really anything theological to this, but I thought it interesting (and a bit amusing) that this description of what "the word of the cross" is has a structure named after a cross-shaped letter.