1 CORINTHIANS INTRO
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Letter to the church in Corinth in 50 AD
Greece divided in to northern - Macedonia - Philippi Thessalonica Berea
Achai - southern Corinth Cencherea Athens
sailors could short cut through the isthmas of Corinth - physically pull the ships on rollers and across the land
The harbors and isthmus at Corinth:
1. The narrowest point of the isthmus was, and is, four miles wide.
2. It separates the Saronic Gulf (on the east) and the Corinthian Gulf
(on the west).
3. There were two good harbors on the Saronic Gulf:
a. Cenchrea.
b. Schoenus.
4. There was one good harbor on the Corinthian Gulf called the
Lechaeum.
The isthmus was known as:
a. The eye of Greece.
b. The bridge of the sea.
c. The gate of the Peloponnesus.
d. The acropolis of Greece.
e. The Gibraltar of Greece.
f. The city of two seas.
g. The bridge of Greece.
h. The lounge of Greece.
i. The Vanity Fair of the ancient world.
Luxury soon came to Corinth.
1. Her markets had representatives from all over the world. They had
Arabian balsam, Phoenician dates, Libyan ivory, Persian carpets,
Cilician goat’s hair, Lycaonian wool and Phrygian slaves.
2. Since Corinth lacked a landed aristocracy, an aristocracy of money
soon developed, along with a fiercely independent spirit.
H. Gymnastic games were held here. There were only four places in Greece
where these games were held. These were second only to the Olympic
games held in ancient times.
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea;
port city of Corinth
After these things he left Athens and went to Corinth.
And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. He came to them,
and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and they were working, for by trade they were tent-makers.
And he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.
But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the word, solemnly testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.
But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
Then he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God, whose house was next to the synagogue.
Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians when they heard were believing and being baptized.
And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent;
for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.”
And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
But while Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat,
saying, “This man persuades men to worship God contrary to the law.”
But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrong or of vicious crime, O Jews, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you;
but if there are questions about words and names and your own law, look after it yourselves; I am unwilling to be a judge of these matters.”
And he drove them away from the judgment seat.
And they all took hold of Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, and began beating him in front of the judgment seat. But Gallio was not concerned about any of these things.
Paul, having remained many days longer, took leave of the brethren and put out to sea for Syria, and with him were Priscilla and Aquila. In Cenchrea he had his hair cut, for he was keeping a vow.
They came to Ephesus, and he left them there. Now he himself entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.
Claudiaus edict of claudius put everyone out of Rome
delphi pagan oracle steam came out of rock and they would speak in tongues - inscription Gallio inscription in De;phi
AD 51 from emperor claudius to Gallio
written in Ephesus 1 Cor. 16
Corinth diagram
temple to Aphrodite on the hill food & fornication = idolatry CH. 8-10 meat to idols CH. 5-7 fornication they are all related to each-other.
strabo geography 8.6.20 (trans. Jones)
Corinth is called "wealthy" because of its commerce, since it is situated on the Isthmus and is master of two harbors, of which the one leads straight to Asia, and the other to Italy; and it makes easy the exchange of merchandise from both countries that are so far distant from each other. And just as in early times the Strait of Sicily was not easy to navigate, so also the high seas, and particularly the sea beyond Maleae, were not, on account of the contrary winds; and hence the proverb, “"But when you double Maleae, forget your home."”Source unknown At any rate, it was a welcome alternative, for the merchants both from Italy and from Asia, to avoid the voyage to Maleae and to land their cargoes here. And also the duties on what by land was exported from the Peloponnesus and what was imported to it fell to those who held the keys. And to later times this remained ever so. But to the Corinthians of later times still greater advantages were added, for also the Isthmian Games, which were celebrated there, were wont to draw crowds of people.
Strabo, Geography 8. 6. 20 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The temple of Aphrodite [in Korinthos in the days of the tyrant Kypselos] was so rich that it owned more than a thousand temple slaves, courtesans, whom both men and women had dedicated to the goddess. And therefore it was also on account of these women that the city was crowded with people and grew rich; for instance, the ship captains freely squandered their money, and hence the proverb, ‘Not for every man is the voyage to Korinthos.’ . . .
Now the summit [of the Akrokorinthos] has a small temple of Aphrodite; and below the summit is the spring Peirene . . . At any rate, Euripides says, ‘I am come, having left Akrokorinthos that is washed on all sides, the sacred hill-city of Aphrodite.’"
12.4. 36
Fornication and Incest
Sexual license was the rule rather than the exception in much of the ancient Mediterranean world. Hauck and Schulz write concerning Greek sexual ethics, "The main cause of prostitution is the Greek view of life which regards sexual intercourse as just as natural, necessary and justifiable as eating and drinking" (Kittel 1968, 4:582). Athenaeus devoted Book XIII of the Deipnosophists to extramarital sex among the Greeks. He indicates that prostitution was an established and respected function in Corinth. Athenaeus relates that whenever the city of Corinth would pray to Aphrodite in matters of grave importance, the people would "invite as many prostitutes as possible to join in their petitions, and these women [would] add their supplications to the goddess and later [be] present at the sacrifices" (Deipnosophists 13.573c). Further, it was the custom for the city to celebrate a festival of Aphrodite for the prostitutes (13.574b-c). The lyricist Pindar wrote in their honor:
Young girls, who welcome many strangers with your hospitality, ministrants of Persuasion in rich Corinth—who on the altar send up in smoke the auburn tears of fresh frankincense the many times that ye fly in thought up to the Mother of the Loves, heavenly Aphrodite, upon you, my children, free from reproach, she hath bestowed the right to cull the soft beauty in your desired embraces. When Necessity requires it, all things are fair. (Athenaeus Deipnosophists 13.574a)
This latter indicates that the Greeks saw nothing wrong with cultic prostitution, and although some complained of the influence of ordinary prostitutes, most saw nothing wrong with this either. Athenaeus relates that the Corinthian courtesan Lais replied to a detractor who had criticized her profession, "What is foul, if it seems not so to those who indulge in it?" (Deipnosophists 13.582d).
But the problems of sexual license were not just limited to prostitution. The Roman sage and cynic Seneca wrote, "Is there any shame at all for adultery now that matters have come to such a pass that no woman has any use for a husband except to inflame her paramour? Chastity is simply a proof of ugliness" (On Benefits 3.16.3). However, as Paul says in I Corinthians 5:1, even the pagans were aghast at incest. Gaius notes in his Institutes (1.63): "Again, I may not marry a woman who was previously my mother-in-law or daughter-in-law or step-daughter or step-mother." And Cicero writes about a woman who had broken up her daughter's marriage to marry her son-in-law: "Oh! to think of the woman's sin, unbelievable, unheard of in all experience save for this single instance!" (In Defense of Cluentius VI [§15]). He goes on to speak of this incident as a "scandal among men" and a "disgrace" (In Defense of Cluentius VI [§15-16]). So when the Corinthians tolerated incest, they had gone even beyond the bounds of pagan propriety. But fornication and prostitution were often accepted in ancient Greek culture, and Paul's denunciation of them in I Corinthians 6 went against the grain of Greek mores.
Marriage and Divorce
Divorce was as much a problem in the ancient world as it is today. There was a long standing tradition of divorce in the Greek world. Diodorus of Sicily reports that Charondas, a sixth or seventh century B.C. leader of a Greek colony in Italy, had established a law "which gave a wife the right to divorce her husband and marry whomever she chose" (12.18.1). Closer to New Testament times, Seneca states, "Is there any woman that blushes at divorce now that certain illustrious and noble ladies reckon their years, not by the number of consuls, but by the number of their husbands, and leave home in order to marry, and marry in order to be divorced?" (On Benefits 3.16.2). Consequently, when Paul quoted from Jesus that the wife should not leave her husband nor the husband divorce his wife (I Cor. 7:10-11), he was teaching something novel to Greek society.
Eating Meat Offered to Idols
It was common in worshiping certain Greek gods for the devotee to share the sacrifice with the god and invite his or her friends to eat the worshiper's portion at a banquet, often in the temple of the god. The orator Aristides relates a dream that he had in which the god Asclepius commanded, "After this to go to the Temple and make a full sacrifice to Asclepius, and to have sacred bowls set up, and to distribute the sacred portions of the sacrifice to all my fellow pilgrims" (Sacred Tales 2.27). There was a temple of Asclepius near the gymnasium in Corinth (Pausanias Description of Greece, Corinth 4.5). In addition, on the road to the Acrocorinthus were temples to Isis and Sarapis (Pausanias Description of Greece, Corinth 4.6), who also were worshiped with meals in their temples. Fee (1987, 361) notes that there survive today at least thirteen papyrus invitations to cult meals. Willis (1985, 40-42) gives the Greek text and translations of nine of them. I have redone several of the following translations to make them consistent with one another (the original translations in Willis 1985 were done by Grenfell and Hunt 1916 [for (4), (5), (6), (7), and (10)], Willis 1985 [for (8) and (9)], Eitrem and Amundsen 1936 [for (11)], and Oates, Samuel and Welles 1967 [for (12)]). Six of them invite the recipient to the temple of a god: Sarapis, Thoeris, or Isis. They read as follows:
(4) Chaeremon asks you to dine at a table of the lord Sarapis in the Sarapian [temple] tomorrow, which is the 15th, from the 9th hour (P. Oxy. 110).
(5) Apollonius asks you to dine at a table of the lord Sarapis on the occasion of the coming of age of his brothers in the Thoerian [temple] (P. Oxy. 1484).
(6) Apion asks you to dine in the house of Sarapis at a table of the lord Sarapis on the 13th from the 9th hour (P. Oxy. 1755).
(7) Diogenes asks you to dine at the first birthday of his daughter in the Sarapian [temple] tomorrow, which is well-spread [pacwn, a variant (?) of pacewn 'thick'; cf. Liddell-Scott 1968, 1351], from the 9th hour (P. Oxy. 2791).
(8) The god invites you to a table in the Thoerian [temple] tomorrow from the 9th hour (P. Colon 2555).
(9) Sarapis asks you to dine at the sacred offering for the lady Isis in her [or, his] house tomorrow, which is the 29th, from the 9th hour (P. Fouad 76).
This last meal may be taken as either at Isis's temple or at Sarapis's house, depending upon how one understands the significance of the definite article preceding the word 'house'. But three of the invitations which Willis lists are definitely to meals at the host's house. They read as follows:
(10) Antonius, [son] of Ptolemaeus, asks you to dine with him at a table of the lord Sarapis in the [house] of Claudius Sarapion on the 16th from the 9th hour (P. Oxy. 523).
(11) Sarapion, former gymnasiarch, asks you to dine at a table of the lord Sarapis in his own house tomorrow, which is the 15th, from the 8th hour (P. Oslo. 157).
(12) Dionysios asks you to dine on the 21st at a table of Helios, great Sarapis from the 9th hour at his father's house (P. Yale 85).
These invitations illustrate two situations reflected in the book of I Corinthians: a meal in an idol's temple (8:10) and a meal in honor of a god at a person's home (10:28). Therefore, the situations which Paul was addressing in I Corinthians were ones with which the Corinthians were familiar. They may well have wanted to continue a basic part of social life that they had engaged in before their conversion.
dio chryssotom 33.48-49
Philo jew from alexandria de specialibus legibus 3.56 CH. 11
Authorship: 1:1; 1:13; 2:1-5, 10; 4:9; 4:15; 9:1, 2, 6, 14-15; 11:23; 14:1, 37; 15:8-10; 16:8-9, 19, 21
Recipients: 1:2, 7, 11, 14, 16, 26; 3:1-4; 6:11; 7:8, 10, 12-13, 18, 21, 26, 29; 8:2, 7; 10:1: 11:18, 22, 30: 12:2; 14:12, 20; 15:12, 34; 16:15-18
Purpose: 4:14, 17-18; 5:9-11; 7:1
Paul mentions no less than 8 major faults but division was never recommended as a solution and he still called them the “church of God”