1. Corinth as the Context

Download: Corinth as the Context

Class Description

1 Corinthians is easily the most revealing letter Paul wrote to any of the churches. Reading it, we find a church riddled with strife, sinfulness, and doctrinal error. Rather than reading 1 Corinthians as if it were written today, we’ll read it in its original context. Doing so, we’ll reconstruct the various situations to see how Paul addressed them. Having done so, we’ll be in good shape to apply the truths, instructions, and warnings to ourselves today. My prayer is that this class will make the Bible come alive for you in a new and exciting way that will not only educate you but also challenge you to live out your faith authentically.

Objectives

1. To become familiar with life in first-century Corinth
2. To reconstruct what was happening in the church at Corinth
3. To see how 1 Corinthians made sense to its original recipients
4. To apply 1 Corinthians to our context today

Context

1. geography
2. history
3. politics
4. economics
5. quality of life
6. technology
7. religion
8. housing
9. morality
10. society
11. culture

Sources to learn about the context of Corinth in the first century include visiting the site in person, looking at pictures and maps, consulting archeology, inscriptions, coins, and ancient literary sources.

Pliny the Elder’s Description of Corinth

The inlets on either side are called the Gulf of Corinth and the Saronic Gulf, the former ending in Lechaeum and the latter in Cenchreae. The circuit of the Peloponnese is a long and dangerous voyage for vessels prohibited by their size from being carried across the isthmus on trolleys, and consequently successive attempts were made by King Demetrius, Caesar the dictator and the emperors Caligula and Nero, to dig a ship-canal through the narrow part, an undertaking which the end that befell them all proves to have been an act of sacrilege.

In the middle of this neck of land which we have called the Isthmus is the colony of Corinth, the former name of which was Ephyra; its habitations cling to the side of a hill, 7.5 miles from the coast on either side, and the top of its citadel, called Acrocorinth, on which is the spring of Peirene, commands views of the two seas in opposite directions. (Natural History 4.10-11)¹

Donald Engels’ Description of Lachaeum Port

“The man-made harbour-one of the largest in the Roman world—would be crowded with vessels from all over the Mediterranean. Its quays and warehouses would be packed with goods coming from as far as India, China, and even Indonesia: spices, silks, precious stones, exotic woods, marble blocks of every color in the rainbow from Anatolia, North Africa, Italy, and producing areas of Greece, amphoras filled with wines, olive oils, and other vegetable oils, copper and tin ingots for the city’s bronze foundries, and block of Corinth’s own building stone for export.”²

Diolkos and Canal

In the 7th century before Christ, Periander built an overland stone road called the diolkos. Merchants used it to transport their cargo from one side of the isthmus to the other. Roman Emperors Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero all wanted to cut a canal but failed for a variety of reasons. After gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire, Greece financed the digging of the canal, which was completed in 1893 after eleven years. Today, only smaller ships make use of the canal since it is not deep enough for commercial freighters.

History of Corinth

Founded in the tenth century bc by the legendary Sisyphus, Corinth had become a major city by the time the Roman general Mummius destroyed it in 146 bc. Roughly a century later, Julius Caesar decreed that a Roman colony be planted at Corinth under the name Colony of Corinth in Praise of Julius (Colonia Laus Julia Corinthiensis). -Although the Senate assassinated him on March 15, 44 bc, the colony still sprung up later that year.

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor on the Founding of Roman Corinth

The first colonists would also have numbered slaves, and of course, freemen willing to gamble on the advantages of being in on the ground-floor of an enterprise which promised great rewards. Once the new colony grew it would have attracted far-sighted entrepreneurs both from Greece and from the major trading countries in the eastern Mediterranean, notably Egypt. Such infusions of new capital in a prime commercial situation inevitably generated more wealth, and within fifty years of its foundation many of the citizens had become men of very considerable means. In order to gain capital, however, many of the first settlers turned to grave robbing. There was a ready market in Rome for Corinthian artifacts in terra cotta and bronze, and the graves had not been looted by the army of Mummius. Interest in terra cotta soon waned, but desire for bronze waxed. Well into the first century a.d. the avidity with which collectors sought Corinthian bronze could be termed a “mania” by Pliny the Elder.³

Roman Corinth was quite different than the previous Greek Corinth of the past. Now the city adopted the Roman way of doing everything from Latin inscriptions, to the Roman marketplace (forum not agora), to Roman governing structures, to the Roman calendar for religious observances.

In 27 bc, Emperor Augustus made Corinth the capital of the surrounding province of Achaia.  By the time Paul arrived there in the 50s ad, the city had swollen to as many as 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants. At the crossroads of Greece and Peloponnese (north and south) as well as the Aegean and Ionian Seas (east and west), Corinth profited greatly from shipping traffic. Furthermore, Corinth hosted the Isthmian Games every two years, providing huge opportunities for businesses of all kinds when foreigners came to cheer on the athletes.

Bibliography

Elder, Pliny the. Natural History: Books 3-7. Translated by H. Rackham. Vol. 352. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1942.

Engels, Donald. Roman Corinth: An Alternative Model for the Classical City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archeology. 3rd ed. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002.

1. Pliny the Elder, Natural History: Books 3-7, trans. H. Rackham, vol. 352, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1942).[↩]
2. Donald Engels, Roman Corinth: An Alternative Model for the Classical City (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 12.[↩]
3. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archeology, 3rd ed. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 65-6.[↩]