‘The Rock Was Christ’: The Fluidity of Christ’s Body in 1 Corinthians 10.4

Paul’s identification of Christ with the rock that provided water to Israel in the wilderness has confounded interpreters. This article seeks to demonstrate that Paul depends upon a tradition within early Jewish thinking, as evidenced in poetic works such as Deut. 32, Ps. 78 and Ps. 95, which linked Israel’s God to this rock. Despite growing unease with using rock imagery to describe God, as seen in Jeremiah’s recasting of this tradition, as …