Stated “polemnically”:
The Corinthians did not have an “overrealized eschatology. Instead, they employed categories of self-understanding derived froma decidedly noneschatological Greco-Roman cultural environment. Their particular form of “enthusiasm” seems to have been a hybrid of Stoic and Cynic philosophical influences, popular sophistic rhetoric, and charismatic spiritual fervor. Paul keeps injecting future apocalyptic language into his argument to gain critical leverage against various problematical practices of the Corinthians; this in no way demonstrates, however, that the source of the Corinthian errors was a premature eschatological timetable.
Richard Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpretor of Israel’s Scripture, p. 6.
I think I’ve heard Jim Jordan argue exactly the opposite. He says that the Corinthians are trying to figure out which parts of the old system are the same and which parts are different.
Unbelievable. Now that you mention it I think he said it recently in order to make a larger point that I really agree with.
But while I can see some of the wisdom material working with this view (“we are kings”) I don’t see the larger picture about rhetoric working this way. Also, Acts shows us an international Judaism largely compromised with magic, and I Cor explicitly shows them rationalizing idolatry. I can’t fit idolatry into the eschatological view and it also provides evidence of likely importation of other ideas rather than an “internal” eschatological mistake.
At the same time, my early work with 1 Cor was heavily influenced by Hays’ commentary, so I may simply be deeply biased. But at this point I think any eschatological errors are simply rationalizations for the importation of “timeless” philosophies.