04_Sandnes_550-564_copia_550-564 10/12/15 10:24 Pagina 561 561 PROPHET-LIKE APOSTLE 561 throughout chaps. 8–10. It is not by accident that Paul brings the question of eating food offered to idols to a close by saying that “ … I do not seek my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 10,33 – 11,1). This passage echoes how Paul elsewhere portrays Christ’s altruism (Phil 2,1-4; Rom 15,1-3.7) and love (1 Cor 13,5), thus making an inclusion to 1 Cor 8,1-6 where it says that “love builds up” and that true knowledge is found only when God and Christ are seen in tandem. This is the analogy that really matters for the argument in which Paul speaks of his prophet-like compulsion to preach the gospel. To conclude, the prophet-like apostolate which is resident in 1 Corinthians 9 covers only some aspects of Paul’s ministry, but it is subordinated to his Christ-like apostolate 31. III. Not a Prophet, but Apostle of Christ Paul never calls himself a prophet, although several texts are shaped in ways conducive to such associations. Not even in the Book of Acts is Paul said to be a prophet, although the Damascus event is depicted in ways making that an adjacent category. Worth noticing though is what the Roman soldier who rescues Paul from the Jerusalem mob says to him. “Then you are not the Egyptian … ” (Acts 21,38). “The Egyptian” was a well-known prophet proclaim- ing that the end time was at hand, and made signs of eschatological salvation (Josephus, Ant. 20,169-72; Bell. 2,261-263). When Paul conceived of himself as a servant in God’s history of salvation with Israel and the nations, “prophet” must have appeared as the most obvious category. And yet, he is clearly hesitant. He joined the ranks of the prophets but consciously stayed away from calling himself so. Clearly, this category did not exhaustively explain how he conceived of himself. In the words of Sigurd Grindheim: “ … the conviction that God has done something fundamentally new in Christ also de- 31 NAJDA, Prophet, 139-143, points out that Paul’s apostolate mirrors Christ’s “Proexistenz”, which is another word for his altruism. He subordinates this to the “Proexistenz der alttestamentlichen Propheten” (119-133). A general problem with his study is that being prophet-like becomes almost everything in Paul’s ministry. In my view, it is more accurate to say that in 1 Corinthians 9 Christ is the primary model for Paul’s apostolate, not the prophets.