St. Paul the Apostle The Early Epistles (The Corinthian Correspondence, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians) Valentin de Boulogne. Saint Paul Writing His Epistles (oil on canvas), c. 1620. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. with Dr. Bill Creasy 1 Copyright © 2020 by Logos Educational Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this course—audio, video, photography, maps, timelines or other media—may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval devices without permission in writing or a licensing agreement from the copyright holder. Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner. 2 St. Paul the Apostle The Early Epistles (The Corinthian Correspondence, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians) Author: St. Paul the Apostle Recipient: The believers in Corinth, Galatia and Thessalonica Date Written: c. A.D. 50-52; 54-57 The Corinthian Correspondence St. Paul arrived in Corinth sometime in late A.D. 50, the last stop on his 2nd missionary journey (A.D. 50-52). When Paul walked the 52-mile trek from Athens to Corinth, he entered one of the greatest and most modern cities of the Roman Empire. Archaeology suggests that Corinth was occupied as early as 6500 B.C., and by 740 B.C. (about the time of the biblical king Ahaz and the Jewish prophet Isaiah) it was a major Greek city with a population of at least 5,000 people. By 400 B.C. Corinth was one of the largest and most powerful cities in Greece, with a population of over 90,000, and by the end of the 2nd-century B.C. it was capital of the Achaean League, a confederation of over 50 Peloponnese city-states. Corinth’s power and influence came to an abrupt end, however. In 146 B.C. Rome declared war on the Achaean League, and the Roman General Lucius Mummius Achaicus attacked Corinth; put all the men of the city to the sword; sold the women and children into slavery; shipped statues, paintings, works of art and anything else of value to Rome; and he razed Corinth, reducing it to ashes. For his swift and decisive victory over Corinth and the Achaean League, Rome awarded Mummius a triumphal procession: he entered Rome in a chariot drawn by four white horses, the general himself was crowned with laurel leaves, and he wore a purple and gold-embroidered triumphal toga. The crowds cheered him wildly. 3 Thomas Allom. The Sack of Corinth (oil on canvas), 1870. Private collection. [Sold at Christie’s auction, Lot 28, May 31, 2012 for £51,650]. Corinth would not lay long in ashes, though, for its geographic location was strategically too important. Straddling the narrow, 4-mile wide isthmus that links the Peloponnese peninsula with mainland Greece, Corinth boasted two major harbors: Lechaeum to the west on the Corinthian Gulf and Cenchreae to the east on the Saronic Gulf. Lechaeum was the principal port for trade with Italy and Sicily, while Cenchreae served commerce in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas: 4 Harbor on the Gulf of Corinth, leading out to the Ionian Sea. Photography by Ana Maria Vargas 5 In 44 B.C., shortly before his assassination on March 15 (“the ides of March”), Julius Caesar ordered that Corinth be rebuilt as a major maritime center of commerce, ruled by Roman officials and colonized chiefly by Caesar’s retired military veterans, plebeians, freedmen and a minority of Romanized Greeks. In this way, Corinth lost its Greek identity and became a thoroughly Roman city. By St. Paul’s day, new Corinth was a little over 100 years old—a modern, bustling commercial center with a large population of sailors, merchants . and con-men of every sort. There was money to be made in Corinth, and plenty of people made plenty of it, including former slaves and their descendants. Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65), the Roman philosopher, statesman and dramatist, writing a letter to Lucilius, procurator of Sicily (c. A.D. 65) “on the good that abides,” savages one such upstart, a man named Calvisius Sabinus, the nouveau riche son of a slave, for his pretentions and bad taste: “Calvisius Sabinus . had the bank account and the brains of a freedman [an ex-slave]. I never saw a man whose good fortune was a greater offence against propriety. His memory was so faulty that he would sometimes forget the name of Ulysses, or Achilles, or Priam—names which we know as well as our own attendants. No major-domo in his dotage, who cannot give men their right names, but is compelled to invent names for them—no such man, I say, calls off the names of his master’s tribesmen so atrociously as Sabinus used to call off the Trojan and Achaean heroes. But none the less did he desire to appear learned.” (Moral Letters to Lucilius, 27, 5) Corinth was a prime example of social mobility in the 1st-century Roman Empire, a place where fortunes rose and fell depending on one’s abilities, work ethic . and luck. Indeed, with continual construction, expansion and rebuilding in 1st-century Corinth, archaeology has uncovered hundreds of inscriptions from building projects that testify to incessant public boasting and self-promotion, the marks of an upwardly-mobile, status- conscious society. Here’s one example: 6 Dr. C. and his Logos students inspect an inscription in Corinth that reads: “Erastus pro idilitate s.p. [sui pecunium] stravit,” or “Erastus in return for the treasurership, paved with his own money.” Erastus was a member of the church St. Paul founded at Corinth (Romans 16: 23). Photography by Ana Maria Vargas Because of its vibrant maritime trade, Corinth hosted a large transient population from the many cultures that surrounded the Mediterranean, and as one would expect, those cultures exerted significant social, religious, political and economic influences on the resident population. In Corinth temples to Poseidon, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite and Isis co-existed with a Jewish synagogue and with the embryonic Christian “house” churches founded by St. Paul. 7 Temple of Apollo in Corinth. Photography by Ana Maria Vargas As one might expect, catering to hundreds—if not, thousands—of sailors and traveling salesmen, all of whom spent their money freely while in town, immorality also flourished in Corinth. Although largely in ruins during St. Paul’s day, the temple of Aphrodite, had stood prominently atop the Corinthian acropolis, and it had been staffed by 1,000 temple prostitutes, giving Corinth its notorious age-old reputation for immorality. The historian Strabo (c. 64 B.C. – 24 A.D.) writes in his Geographica, reflecting back nearly 500 years: “[In Corinth] the temple of Aphrodite [during the 6th century B.C.] was so rich that it owned more than a thousand temple slaves, courtesans [etai√ra], whom both men and women dedicated to the goddess. And, therefore, it was also on account of these women that the city was crowded with people and grew very rich; for instance, the ship captains freely squandered their money, and hence the proverb, ‘Not for every man is the voyage to Corinth’ [for the company of women was very expensive in Corinth!]. Moreover, it is recorded that a certain courtesan said to the woman who reproached her with the charge that she did not like to work or touch wool: ‘Yet, such as I am, in this short time I have taken down three webs [caqeiÆlon i∆stiu√ß].’”1 (Geographica, VIII, 6, 20) 1 There is a wickedly delightful play on words in the ending phrase “taken down three webs,” which cannot be captured in English: it reads, “lowered three masts,” or “debauched three ship captains.” 8 Indeed, since the 6th century B.C.—and into St. Paul’s day, “Corinthian girls” were noted for their generous and extraordinary “talents.” The Temple of Aphrodite sat atop the Acropolis in Corinth. Photography by Ana Maria Vargas Although Scripture includes two epistles to the Corinthians, the Corinthian correspondence consists of at least five exchanges between St. Paul and the church. Corinth’s socially diverse, status-conscious population, its thriving economy and its large number of transient workers presented enormous challenges to the small, fledgling church, a community that spanned the entire socio-economic spectrum. In an affluent society where commerce and skilled trades were abundant and upward social mobility and class distinctions were commonplace, forming a Christian community where “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3: 28) posed enormous challenges, and tensions among groups emerged quickly and sharply, manifesting themselves in factions and divisions, lawsuits among believers, sexual scandals and questions on marriage. The Corinthian correspondence addresses all of these . and more. 9 1 Corinthians Outline I. Introduction (1: 1-9) II. The Body of the Epistle (1: 10 – 15: 58) A. Reported Divisions and Abuses (1: 10 – 6: 20) 1. Factions and Divisions (1: 10 – 4: 21) 2. Immoral Behavior (5: 1 – 6: 20) B. Answers to the Corinthian’s Questions (7: 1 – 11: 1) 1. Marriage and Virginity (7: 1-40) 2. Food Offered to Idols (8: 1 – 11: 1) a. Exercising knowledge and love, part 1 (8: 1-13) b. St. Paul’s example (9: 1-27) c.