Corinth

In the Bible

Corinth is the Greek city where Paul preached the gospel and founded a church during his second missionary journey. According to Acts 18, Paul came to Corinth after leaving Athens. There he stayed with the married couple Priscilla and Aquila, who shared his trade of tentmaking, and he taught in the synagogue every Sabbath. Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed together with his whole household, and Paul remained in the city for a year and six months (Acts 18:11). The Jews brought charges against Paul before Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia, but Gallio refused to hear the case, regarding it as a matter of Jewish law (Acts 18:12–17). Apollos later ministered in Corinth (Acts 19:1).

Paul's letters to this church are 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. On grounds such as the mention of Gaius and Erastus in Romans 16, many scholars hold that Romans was also written in Corinth. Cenchrea, Corinth's eastern port, had a church in which Phoebe served (Romans 16:1).

Background

Corinth lies on the narrow isthmus (a slender strip of land joining two larger landmasses) that connects mainland Greece with the Peloponnese. With two ports, Lechaeum to the west and Cenchrea to the east, it served as a crossroads of east–west trade. The city was destroyed by the Roman army in 146 BC and refounded as a Roman colony by Julius Caesar in 44 BC. In Paul's day it was the leading city of the Roman province of Achaia. It was a cosmopolitan city where merchants, freedmen, Jews, and others lived side by side, and it hosted the Isthmian Games. For this reason, some interpreters read 1 Corinthians 9:24–27, with its athletic imagery, in light of this background.

An inscription discovered at Delphi bears Gallio's name. On the basis of this inscription, scholars generally date Gallio's proconsulship to around AD 51–52 and use this period as a fixed point for establishing the chronology of Paul's life.

Significance in the Bible as a Whole

The Corinthian church is one of the early churches whose circumstances are known in the greatest detail in the New Testament. First Corinthians records a range of problems faced by a church in a Gentile city:

• Factions aligned with different leaders (1:12)
• Sexual immorality and lawsuits among believers
• Questions concerning marriage and food offered to idols
• Women's head coverings in worship
• Disorder at the Lord's Supper
• Confusion surrounding the gifts of the Spirit
• Claims denying the resurrection

In responding to these problems, Paul wrote passages such as the Love Chapter (chapter 13) and the Resurrection Chapter (chapter 15). In 2 Corinthians he defends his apostleship and urges the Corinthians to contribute to the collection for the church in Jerusalem (chapters 8–9).

Interpretation and Debates

• The "thousand temple priestesses" story: Descriptions of Corinth as a sexually immoral city are often accompanied by the story that the temple of Aphrodite had a thousand priestesses. This story derives from the writings of the Greek geographer Strabo. Critics point out, however, that his account concerns the older Corinth destroyed by Rome and that its historicity is disputed, making it difficult to apply directly to the Corinth of Paul's day. The story does not appear in the biblical text.
• The number of letters: 1 Corinthians 5:9 and 2 Corinthians 2:4 are sometimes read as referring to letters that no longer survive. On this basis, some hold that Paul sent at least four letters to Corinth. Scholars are also divided over whether 2 Corinthians combines several letters into one.
• Passages connected with present-day debates: The passages on tongues and prophecy in 1 Corinthians 12–14 and the verses on women keeping silence (14:34–35) are treated as key texts in the debates over cessationism and continuationism and women's ordination. Pentecostal and charismatic churches read these passages as evidence that the spiritual gifts continue today. Some Reformed circles that hold to cessationism read them within a framework that emphasizes order in worship and the completion of revelation.

In the Korean Church

The Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, is frequently read at wedding services. Preachers often liken churches experiencing division and conflict to "the Corinthian church." In doing so, they frequently emphasize that, although the church had many problems, Paul still addressed it as "the church of God" (1 Corinthians 1:2).