See G. E. Wright and F. V. Filson, The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (SCM Press, 1946), pp. 80, 88f. This meant transhipping cargoes, but small vessels were hauled across the isthmus ‘by means of a ship tramway with wooden rails’ according to J. E. Harry (ISBE, ii, p. 710). Strabo calls it the diolkos (Geography 8.2.1). Nero tried to cut a canal, but without success. The modern canal follows the route planned by Nero.
An inscription on part of the lintel of a synagogue has been found. It is agreed that this is later than the time of Paul, but it may show the site (LAE, p. 16, n. 7; G. E. Wright, An Introduction to Biblical Archaeology [Duckworth, 1960], p. 177).
Parry sees evidence of the Roman character of the city in that it was the first city of Greece to admit the gladiatorial games (p. ix). Robertson and Plummer maintain that by New Testament times the descendants of the original Italian colonists ‘had become to a large extent Hellenized’ (p. xi). Corinth’s population was a medley of races which had apparently retained most of the worst features of the original stocks.
Edwards, p. xii.
Moffatt, p. xvii.
There were more than a thousand prostitutes connected with the temple of Aphrodite in old Corinth (Strabo, 8.6.20). This goddess could be styled Aphrodite Kallipygos, ‘Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks’ (Athenaeus, 12.554c). Shrines were ‘everywhere’ erected to ‘Aphrodite the hetaira (‘courtesan’)’ ‘as patroness of harlots’ (ibid., 13.559a and note, Loeb ed.); this was presumably the reason for the ‘ancient custom in Corinth … whenever the city prays to Aphrodite in matters of grave importance, to invite as many prostitutes as possible to join in their petitions’ (ibid., 13.573c). Murphy-O’Connor doubts whether Corinth was worse than other ports in the Eastern Mediterranean. He thinks both Strabo and Athenaeus were in error (SPC, pp. 55–57, 127f), and ascribes much to Athenian propaganda. But even he admits that Corinth had ‘a certain reputation in sexual matters’ (SPC, p. 56), and the ancient writers account for it better than he does. Dio Chrysostom speaks of Diogenes observing large numbers gathering at Corinth because of its harbours and its prostitutes (Discourses, 8.5). Murphy-O’Connor quotes from Plutarch a reference to ‘the great army of prostitutes’ at Corinth, and explains them as ‘city prostitutes’ rather than the servants of Aphrodite (SPC, p. 106). But they were still prostitutes and there was an army of them, even if Murphy-O’Connor is right.
A. M. Hunter, Introducing the New Testament (SCM Press, 1945), p. 76.
Hunter puts the population at half a million (ibid.), while Godet (p. 5) and ISBE (ii, p. 713) say it was between 600,000 and 700,000. J. Cambier gives this figure with some precision, speaking of 200,000 free men and 400,000 slaves (A. Robert and A. Feuillet, Introduction to the New Testament [Desclee, 1965], p. 413). Ellicott, however, thinks of 100,000. Murphy-O’Connor, discussing archaeological work at Corinth, says no hypothesis about the population has been put forward (SPC, p. 32). It is clear that the population was large, but just how large it is impossible to say with our present knowledge.
Strabo calls Corinth ‘wealthy’ and gives three reasons: its position, so advantageous for trade; the Isthmian Games; and the thousand prostitutes (8.6.20). He refers to the city’s statesmen, its painters and craftsmen, but does not speak of philosophers. He also refers to its great paintings and works in bronze (8.6.23). Pausanius has a detailed description of the city (Description of Greece, 2:1–5). Horace quotes a proverb, ‘It is not every man’s lot to get to Corinth’ (Epistles, I.17.36); the Loeb editor explains that this ‘originally referred to the great expense of a self-indulgent life at Corinth’.
Cited in Parry, p. x.
Cf. K. Lake, ‘It must be admitted that he chose a position which was not likely to avoid trouble, though it had the advantage of being easily found by the God-fearer who had previously frequented the synagogue’ (The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul (Rivingtons, 1911), p. 104).
This appears to be the meaning of Acts 18:7, rather than that he ceased living with Aquila and Priscilla and came to live with Justus.
It is possible that there is another Jew. The Sosthenes who is joined with Paul and Timothy in the salutation (1 Cor. 1:1) may be the synagogue ruler of Acts 18:17. But this is far from certain. J. Massingberd Ford emphasizes the Jewish element in the Corinthian church in an article entitled, The First Epistle to the Corinthians or the First Epistle to the Hebrews?’ (CBQ, xxviii, 1966, pp. 402–416). But others, e.g. T. W. Manson, see the Corinthian church as largely Gentile (Studies in the Gospels and Epistles [Manchester University Press, 1962], pp. 190–209). This seems indicated by Acts 18:6; 1 Cor. 12:2 (though there were some Jewish Christians, 1 Cor. 7:18).
Wright, Biblical Archaeology, p. 177; Murphy-O’Connor, SPC, p. 37.
Theissen, while agreeing that most of the Corinthians were lower class, points to evidence that some were not. Thus nine out of seventeen persons (or circles of people) linked with Corinth engaged in travel (pp. 91f.), not normally an occupation of the poor. Some reproached Paul ‘repeatedly’ for not accepting hospitality (p. 97; he cites 9:1ff.; 2 Cor. 10–13), which argues the means for providing it; the eating of meat (chs. 8–10) concerned the wealthy rather than the poor (pp. 125f., 128). He finds all this important, for ‘associations of the ancient world were, to a great extent, socially homogeneous. Religious associations give evidence of expressing class-specific forms of sociability to an even greater degree than do professional groups …’ (p. 146). The Christians differed in including people of various social classes and treating them all as “brothers’.
‘He was not merely a renegade Pharisee who believed in messiah, but a successful one’ (Moffatt, p. xiii). That is what they found impossible to forgive.
Cf. K. Lake, op. cit., p.110
‘In these cities, with their mobile, eager, and excitable populations, crazes of some kind are not only a common feature, but almost a social necessity.… As Renan says … let there be two preachers, or two doctors, in one of the small towns in Southern Europe, and at once the inhabitants take sides as to which is the better of the two. The two preachers, or the two doctors, may be on the best of terms: that in no way hinders their names from being made a party-cry and the signal for vehement dissensions’ (Robertson and Plummer, p. xx). Proctor remarks that the process would have been helped by the multiplicity of races at Corinth (p. 969).
See the Introduction to Colin Kruse’s Commentary on 2 Corinthians (TNTC).
Hurd thinks that the letter the Corinthians wrote to Paul (1 Cor. 7:1) was in reply to the misunderstood letter. He holds that an examination of what Paul says about the Corinthians’ letter enables us to reconstruct something of Paul’s lost letter (pp. 213–239).
J. Moffatt, An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament (T. & T. Clark, 1927), p. 117.
See the list in Robertson and Plummer, p. xxiv.
T. W. Manson denies that Paul visited Corinth from Ephesus. He holds that Paul completed his work in Ephesus, then paid the ‘painful’ visit to Corinth, after which he went on to Macedonia (2 Cor. 1:15ff.). But Paul speaks of that plan as though it was not carried out, and a further disadvantage is that Manson has to postulate a special missionary expedition in the neighbourhood of Troas, for Paul was certainly there (2 Cor. 2:12; see Studies, pp. 211–217). it is better to see the ‘painful’ visit as an interruption of the Ephesian ministry.
The view is held strongly by some. Thus K. and S. Lake maintain that ‘there is overwhelming reason for believing that 2 Cor. 10–13 is part of the severe letter and that 2 Cor. 1–9 is a later letter’ (An Introduction to the New Testament [Christophers, 1938], p. 122). So also Willi Marxsen, Introduction to the New Testament (Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 79ff. on the other hand, M. Dibelius says, ‘ancient letters had a fairly certain protection against such accidental interweavings, in the fact that the address of the letter stood on the reverse of the papyrus. This would make it difficult accidentally to take part of one letter for another letter, and an editor who without visible grounds made two letters out of four would be a strange figure, especially if he deleted from the intermediate letter the essential matter referred to in 2 Cor. 2 and 7, and yet used a fragment of that letter in 2 Cor. 10–13. Hence we shall have to content ourselves with the loss of these two letters, viz. the original first and the intermediate third’ (A Fresh Approach to the New Testament and Early Christian Literature (Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1936), p. 154). See also Orr and Walther, pp. 21–24. R. Batey rejects the idea that 2 Cor. 10–13 is Part of the ‘severe’ letter, and sees it as later than the others, part of a fifth letter to the Corinthians (JBL, LXXXIV, 1965, pp. 139–146).
Moffatt, p. xv.
L. Pullan, The Books of the New Testament (Rivingtons, 1926), p. 135.
A. Robertson, in HDB, i, pp. 489–490.
Manson sees the Epistle as probably written against the background of Paul’s ‘struggle with agents of Palestinian Jewish Christianity either under the direct leadership or acting in the name of Peter’ (Studies, p. 207). However, though Manson’s treatment is very stimulating, he does not seem to have established this point.
Schmithals has set out his ideas in books like Gnosticism in Corinth (Abingdon, 1972) and Paul and the Gnostics (Abingdon, 1972). W. G. Kümmel holds that ‘the entire epistle shows a front against a new Gnostic interpretation of the Christian message’, though he does not accept all of Schmithal’s position (Introduction to the New Testament [SCM Press, 1966], p. 202). Willi Marxsen regards 1 Corinthians as ‘a polemic against Gnosticism’ (Introduction, p. 72). But Conzelmann denies that there are ‘any traces of such a myth (i.e. a Gnostic myth) in Corinth’; he finds only ‘isolated traces of the beginnings of the formation of what later presented itself as “Gnosticism” ‘(p. 15). Bruce sees it as ‘anachronistic’ to call the Corinthians ‘Gnostics’ (p. 21), and R. P. Martin accepts Bruce’s view of ‘incipient gnosticism’ (New Testament Foundations, 2 [Paternoster Press, 1978], p. 173). R. McL. Wilson has a helpful article entitled ‘How Gnostic were the Corinthians?’ (NTS, 19, 1972–73, pp. 65–74). He concludes that at Corinth we have ‘at most only the first tentative beginnings of what was later to develop into full-scale Gnosticism’, and warns that ‘careless and indiscriminate use of terms like gnostic and gnosticism in this connection is dangerous and misleading’ (ibid., p. 74).
Cf. A. H. McNeile, this is ‘the most intensely practical of all St. Paul’s letters. The whole of it was written to meet immediate needs of his converts’ (An Introduction to the Study of the New Testament [Oxford University Press, 1927], p. 122).
Godet, p. 2.
M. Dibelius, A Fresh Approach, p. 155. Cf. Conzelmann, ‘here Paul is practicing applied theology, so to speak’ (p. 9).
Robertson and Plummer, p. xvi.
Beet points out that no church would accept ‘without careful scrutiny, so public a monument of its degradation’ (p. 5).
Moffatt, p. xxvi. Conzelmann finds ‘no conclusive proof of different situations within 1 Corinthians. The existing breaks can be explained from the circumstances of its composition. Even the complex that gives the strongest offense, chaps. 8–10, can be understood as a unity’ (p. 4).
Robertson and Plummer say there may occasionally be doubt about a word, ‘but there is probably no verse or whole clause that is an interpolation’ (p. xviii). Moffatt is of opinion that ‘its unity hardly requires detailed proof’ (An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, p. 113).
I have discussed this inscription in my TNTC on 1 and 2 Thessalonians (see secion 2, Date of composition of 1 Thessalanians). The inscription is quoted and discussed by K. Lake, The Beginnings of Christianity, v (Baker reprint, 1966), pp. 460ft. A more recent discussion, with additional data, is that by J. Murphy-O’Connor (SPC, pp. 141–152).
J. A. T. Robinson points to wide agreement on AD 55 (Redating the New Testament [SCM Press, 1976], p. 54). S. M Gilmour also opts for AD 55 ‘on the basis of the chronology most commonly assumed’ (IDB, i, p. 692). Others prefer a date a year or two later.
