“I fought wild beasts in Ephesus”
If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for human motives, what did I gain? If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.' (1 Corinthians 15:32 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Paul in the arena against lions.
The cultural key
Almost certainly figurative: Roman citizens were not thrown to the beasts, and Paul's own catalogs of sufferings (2 Corinthians 11) never mention an arena. 'Fighting wild beasts' was live metaphor for battling savage opposition (Ignatius uses it of his guard detail: 'ten leopards, I mean soldiers'), and Paul's Ephesus years supplied candidates enough, from the Artemis riot to whatever made him 'despair of life itself' in Asia (2 Corinthians 1:8). The closing quote is Isaiah's fatalists ('let us eat and drink...'), possibly seasoned with the Epicurean slogan Corinth knew.
Recovered meaning
'Humanly speaking, I went through the arena at Ephesus, and if the dead stay dead, why?' The beast-fight names ministry at its most savage, endurable only on resurrection logic.