Passage

1 Corinthians 1.23

"But we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness." (1 Corinthians 1:23, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"21. For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe. 22. Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom:"

"23. but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness;"

"24. but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. 25. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." (1 Corinthians 1:21-25, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"21. For seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn't know God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. 22. For Jews ask for signs, Greeks seek after wisdom,"

"23. but we preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to Greeks,"

"24. but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." (1 Corinthians 1:21-25, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"21. For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. 22. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:"

"23. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;"

"24. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. 25. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." (1 Corinthians 1:21-25, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"21. for, seeing in the wisdom of God the world through the wisdom knew not God, it did please God through the foolishness of the preaching to save those believing. 22. Since also Jews ask a sign, and Greeks seek wisdom,"

"23. also we, we preach Christ crucified, to Jews, indeed, a stumbling-block, and to Greeks foolishness,"

"24. and to those called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God, 25. because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men;" (1 Corinthians 1:21-25, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Paul the Apostle
Audience: Christian believers at Corinth, a mixed Jew-and-Gentile congregation fractured by partisan attachments to teachers (1 Cor 1:11-13)
Location: composed in Ephesus, addressed to Corinth
Time period: c. AD 55-56

Theological reading

The verse is the heart of Paul's theologia crucis, theology of the cross. Against a church already drifting toward eloquence-prizing factions, Paul names the centre of his preaching: a crucified Messiah. The whole sentence is built as a paradox. The Jewish demand is for signs, the Roman and Greek demand is for wisdom, and the gospel is neither. It is a crucified man, in whom God's saving power is hidden under the appearance of weakness. Paul does not offer to remove the offence; he sharpens it. The cross is not a problem in the gospel he then explains away. It is the gospel.

The Jew-Gentile pair in v. 23 maps the two universal reasons people reject the crucified Christ. To first-century Jews, a crucified Messiah was a contradiction in terms. Crucifixion was a Roman shame-execution carrying the curse of Deut 21:23 ("anyone hung on a tree is under God's curse"); a cursed Messiah was unthinkable. To Greeks and Romans, a god who shares the death of a despised provincial criminal could only be foolishness; their gods stood above suffering. The cross offends both shapes of worldly expectation, and Paul claims that this very offence is the wisdom and power of God (v. 24).

The verse also gives a window into the pre-Pauline kerygma, the earliest Christian preaching pattern. The "we preach" formula is plural, and the content, Christ crucified, matches the earliest creedal material Paul transmits in 1 Corinthians 15 ("Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures"). Paul did not invent the cross-centred message; he received it. The proclamation that the Messiah was crucified pre-dates his letters by twenty-plus years and would have been pointless to invent: it is precisely the most awkward fact for early Christian missionaries to defend in either of their main audiences. That awkwardness is itself a quiet historical-credibility datum for the early Jesus tradition, parallel to the criterion-of-embarrassment arguments made in Crucifixion Denial Refutation.

The verse functions as the apologetic answer to the Copycat-Christ Hypothesis and the Zeitgeist Movie Defeater cluster. The pagan mystery religions did not preach a crucified saviour. They preached agricultural-cycle vegetation gods whose myths were not historical. Paul's audience knew the difference, which is why "Christ crucified" was scandalous, not familiar. The "stumbling block" formula picks up the skandalon of Isa 8:14 and is part of Paul's broader use of Isaiah 53 and the Servant Songs as the OT lens for reading the cross.

Key words

G5547 - christos, christos (Strong's G5547), Christ, the title carrying the full Messianic charge that makes the crucified Messiah a stumbling block.
dynamis (Strong's G1411), the "power" of v. 24 ("the power of God"), pairing with the apparent weakness of the cross.

Cross-references

Isaiah 53, the Servant Song that frames the crucified-Messiah pattern in Israel's scriptures.
Romans 1.16, Paul's parallel: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation."
1 Corinthians 1.18, the wider rhetorical unit: "the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing."
1 Corinthians 1.18-25, the full paragraph of which v. 23 is the centre.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.