I. The City and Its People
As much as for any other document in the NT—and more so than for most—the various sociological, economic, and religious factors that made up the environment of the city of Corinth have a profound influence on one’s understanding of Paul’s letters to the church there. Its strategic location as sentry of the four-and-one-half-mile (5,950-meter) Isthmus that bridged the Peloponnese and the mainland and separated the Saronic and Corinthian gulfs insured for it a long and illustrious history. It controlled both the overland commercial traffic and that between Italy and Asia, which for the most part found it safer and more convenient to take this “inland” route than to go around the Peloponnese.
The city’s history is essentially in two parts. As a Greek city-state it flourished both before and after the golden years of Athens (5th c. B.C.). But as leader of the Achaean League in the mid-second century B.C., it came into conflict with Rome and was destroyed by the Roman consul Lucius Mummius in 146 B.C. The site lay dormant for one hundred years, until it was refounded in 44 B.C. by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony. The reason for its refounding was probably twofold. First, its strategic location for commerce (described by Strabo) made its refounding almost inevitable. All the necessary ingredients for economic boom were available: a natural defense in the Acrocorinth; adequate water supply from springs; the relationship to Rome; being master of the two harbors for East-West commerce; and control of the Isthmian games, which ranked just below the Olympian in importance (see on 9:24–27). Second, according to Strabo (8.6.23c), Corinth was repopulated by freedmen from Rome. Since their status was just above that of the slave, and since Rome often tended to be overpopulated with such, this was a convenient way for Rome to rid itself of potential trouble, on the one hand, and for the freedman to seize an opportunity for socioeconomic advancement, on the other.
As the description by Strabo some fifty years later makes abundantly clear, prosperity returned to the city almost immediately. Since money attracts people like dead meat attracts flies, Corinth quickly experienced a great influx of people from both West and East, along with all the attendant gains and ills of such growth. The Romans were dominant; they brought with them not only their laws but also their culture and religions. But the Roman world had been thoroughly Hellenized; and since Corinth was historically Greek, it maintained many of those ties—religion, philosophy, the arts. And from the East came the mystery cults of Egypt and Asia and the Jews with their synagogue and “peculiar” belief in a single God.
Since Corinth lacked a landed aristocracy, an aristocracy of money soon developed, along with a fiercely independent spirit. But not all would strike it rich; hence thousands of artisans and slaves made up the bulk of the population. Most likely, however, the splendid wealth of the city spilled over to the advantage of these people as well.
As often happens in such centers, vice and religion flourished side by side. Old Corinth had gained such a reputation for sexual vice that Aristophanes (ca. 450–385 B.C.) coined the verb korinthiazō (= to act like a Corinthian, i.e., to commit fornication). The Asclepius room in the present museum in Corinth provides mute evidence of this facet of city life; here on one wall are a large number of clay votives of human genitals that had been offered to the god for the healing of that part of the body, apparently ravaged by venereal disease. This aspect of Corinthian life, however, has tended to be overplayed by most NT scholars, relying on Strabo’s (surely erroneous) description of the thousand temple prostitutes who were alleged to have plied their trade at the temple of Aphrodite on the Acrocorinth. In the first place Strabo was speaking of Old Corinth, and even then it is doubtful whether his information was accurate. Sexual sin there undoubtedly was in abundance; but it would have been of the same kind that one would expect in any seaport where money flowed freely and women and men were available.
The religious expression of Corinth was as diverse as its population. Pausanias describes at least 26 sacred places (not all were temples) devoted to the “gods many” (the Roman-Greek pantheon) and “lords many” (the mystery cults) mentioned by Paul in the present letter (8:5)—and Pausanias does not mention the Jewish synagogue, whose partial lintel with the inscription “synagogue of the Hebrews” has been discovered. Although there is no direct evidence for it, the very wealth that attracted artisans and tradesmen undoubtedly also lured to Corinth artists and philosophers of all kinds, in search of patronage. The latter would also have included a fair share of itinerants and charlatans.
All of this evidence together suggests that Paul’s Corinth was at once the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world.
The scattered pieces of evidence from Acts, 1 Corinthians, and Romans suggest that the church was in many ways a mirror of the city. At one point in fact (12:13) Paul interrupts his argument to emphasize the diversity of those who have all become one body—Jew, Greek, slave, free. This mix is substantiated in other ways as well. Of the people who are named, at least three are Jews (Aquila, Priscilla, Crispus), even though they bear Latin names. Three (or four) others who also have Latin names are probably Romans (Fortunatus, Quartus, Gaius, Titius Justus), at least one (or two) of whom (Gaius, Titius Justus) were among the wealthier members. The others bear Greek names (Stephanas, Achaicus, Erastus), and of these at least Stephanas and Erastus were probably well-to-do. According to what is said early on however, not many of them came from the upper socioeconomic strata (1:26); indeed, the evidence from a later passage (7:20–24) suggests that some were slaves. The mention of Stephanas’s household (1:16) probably reflects a situation where, besides his family, there were slaves or attached freedmen (see on 16:15–17). If our interpretation of their abuse of the Lord’s Table is correct (11:17–34), some of the tensions in the community were between some of the more well-to-do and the poor.
Although there were some Jewish believers in the community, very little in the letter itself points to a Jewish background. At least three instances that speak of their former way of life explicitly indicate that they were former idolaters and therefore chiefly Gentiles (6:9–11; 8:7; 12:2). Other items imply the same: e.g., the whole matter of going to the temple feasts (8:1–10:22; see esp. 8:10) is a strictly Gentile phenomenon; the attitude toward marriage, thinking it to be a sin (chap. 7), scarcely fits Judaism, even Hellenistic Judaism; going to the proconsul, or city magistrates, for adjudication (6:1–11) fits the normal processes of the Greeks and Romans within the city, whereas the Jews were forbidden to ask Gentiles for judgments. Their arguing for the right to go to the prostitutes (6:12–20) and their denial of a future bodily resurrection (15:1–58) also sound more Hellenistic than Jewish.
Thus, the picture that emerges is one of a predominantly Gentile community, the majority of whom were almost certainly at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, although there were two or three wealthy families. As former pagans they brought to the Christian faith a Hellenistic worldview and attitude toward ethical behavior. Although they were the Christian church in Corinth, an inordinate amount of Corinth was yet in them, emerging in a number of attitudes and behaviors that required radical surgery without killing the patient. This is what this letter attempts to do.