04_Peters_copiaaa_67-84 28/04/15 12:15 Pagina 79 CROWNS IN 1 THESSALONIANS, PHILIPPIANS, AND 1 CORINTHIANS 79 gaining the imperishable crown of the heavenly politeuma in the future. Yet, Paul still plays off the associations of the civic crown by insisting that one who wins will receive an imperishable crown rather than a perishable one. Funerary portraits in Roman antiquity regularly depicted the deceased with the laurel crowns of athletes who had won the race of life 39. Funerary practices such as the ros- alia, an Italian festival in which the dead received rose crowns, spread across the Roman Mediterranean and had analogues in ad- jacent cultures such as the rose wreaths mentioned in Wisdom 40. To eschew a floral crown for an imperishable one would have had implications of civic crowns depicted in ephebic or benefactor in- scriptions. In 1 Cor 9,24, Paul uses the proverbial commonplace that there are many runners in a race, but only one can take the prize (brabei/on) 41. Then, in verse 25, he distinguishes among prizes based on their per- ishability — the Roman Greek athletes with whom the Corinthians are familiar exert themselves for a perishable crown — but a group of individuals with whom Paul identifies by using the term “we” (h`mei/j) run for an “imperishable” (a;fqarton) one. It is difficult to know what Paul means. For Fitzmyer, the “ ‘we’ may be editorial, or refer to Paul and Barnabas as examples of runners, or to Chris- tians in general, with whom Paul would identify himself” 42. Conzelmann opines that Paul is employing a proverbial phrase evinced by Lucian’s Anacharsis 13, where Solon responds to Anacharsis’ query whether all runners receive prizes by informing him that only one does (4,15). He finds it logical that all runners would participate in the race and receive the crown. However, the 39 ASCOUGH, Paul’s Macedonian Associations, 63. 40 Onno Van Nijf notes that, since there is scant evidence of the rosalia prior to Roman colonization in Macedonia, “self-commemorators who intro- duced rosalia into their funerary arrangements were thus making a deliberate statement of (assumed) Roman cultural identity”. O. VAN NIJF, The Civic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East (Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology 17; Amsterdam 1997) 64. Cf. ASCOUGH, Paul’s Macedonian Associations, 26-27. 41 Wreaths are a symbol of the race of faith in a multitude of Jewish and Christian sources. Cf. Wis 5,15; Philo, Leg. 2.108; 2 Tim 4,8; 1 Pet 5,4; Jas 1,12; Rev 2,10. 42 J. FITZMYER, First Corinthians (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries; New Haven 2008) 373.