1 Corinthians 14:22 offers the contextually counter-intuitive statement that, in the liminal space of public worship, ‘tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers’. Commentators often contradict this allocation by stating that the ‘conversion’ in 14:24–25 shows the importance of offering intelligible signs to outsiders. This essay argues that such interpretation obscures the semiotics of prophecy ‘for believers’, which can only be understood through fuller exploration of the substrata of texts invoked both by the citation of Isaiah 28:11–12 in 14:21 and the clear allusion to Isaiah 45:14 in 14:25. From the latter text, an evocative relocation within the Isaianic corpus, I show that the disclosure of the church’s identity requires the recognition of the outsider. The essay concludes by contrasting the versatility of Pauline ecclesiology to ecclesial models of ‘diaspora’ and ‘host’.

中文翻译：

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“从外国人的嘴里”：在哥林多前书 14:20-25 中揭示教会

哥林多前书 14:22 提供了上下文违反直觉的陈述，即在公共敬拜的阈限空间中，“舌头不是信徒的标志，而是非信徒的标志，而预言不是非信徒的，而是信徒的”。评论家经常通过声明 14：24-25 中的“皈依”表明向外人提供可理解的迹象的重要性来反驳这种分配。本文认为，这种解释掩盖了“为信徒”预言的符号学，只有通过对以赛亚书 28:11-12 在 14:21 中的引用和对以赛亚书 45:14 在 14:25。从后一个文本中，在以赛亚语料库中令人回味的搬迁，我表明教会身份的披露需要外人的认可。