The Greek city of Corinth was situated astride the narrow isthmus connecting the Greek mainland with the Peloponnesus, the peninsula extending west of the southern tip of the mainland.
For our purposes a recital of the details of its long history seems unnecessary. But if you are interested in them, see this article.
Its location made Corinth an ideal meeting ground for travelers by sea. And since sea-faring merchants and diplomats from many lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea would have passed through Corinth, it was a very cosmopolitan place, acutely attuned to the currents of thought and religion from a variety of ancient traditions. And as we often find today as well, many citizens of Corinth who dabbled in these exotic foreign philosophies and religious ideas did so very superficially and proudly considered themselves more "enlightened" than others.
Into this setting came a traveler from the east in the year AD 51 together with several colleagues. He did not come by sea, but by land, across the isthmus from Athens to the east. Before that he had traveled from the southeastern corner of Asia Minor to its northwestern one, then across the Aegean Sea to the northern mainland of Greece, and from there south to Athens.
He was a short man, not impressive or attractive physically, but with a keen and quick mind, and filled with enthusiasm. His contribution to Corinth was not just another exotic religious tradition, but news of an event that he believed transformed world history: the life, death and bodily resurrection of a Jewish man named Jesus. (For more on this man see my other blog here.)
This traveler from the East—like many in his day and culture— had two names. One reflected his ethnic and religious background as a Jew and was a Hebrew or Aramaic name. At home it was pronounced shah-ool. His parents may have chosen it for him because they were descended from the Israelite tribe of Benjamin, which had given to Israel its first king, whose name also was Sha'ul.
But Sha'ul's family were moderately well-to-do, and among their non-Jewish friends and neighbors they used a name that sounded more like a Roman or Greek name. For their son they chose the name Paul.
You can read all about the first missionary visit of Paul to Corinth in Luke's sequel to his gospel, the book called Acts of the Apostles (Acts 18). On his first visit to Corinth Paul met with opposition from the Jewish synagogues there, because several of their leaders believed his message and joined him in spreading the faith to their fellow Jews in the city. But Paul was undeterred, and God protected him, so that he was able to found several worshiping groups of believers in Jesus, that met in the homes of the well-to-do members. These were called "house churches", and are referred to in Paul's letters written later to the believers in Corinth from other points on his missionary journeys.
The letters were not just friendly notes ("postcards"), telling him about his travels. They were "pastoral" in nature. Something like remote teaching sessions, by the man to whom they owed their knowledge of Jesus, and who was passionately attached to them and wanted to help them grow in their knowledge of Jesus, of the Old Testament scriptures, and of God's own nature and design for how they were to live differently from now on both in their homes and outside among non-believing friends.
And although some of the most profound discussions of central theological issues are contained in Paul's letters to his "young churches", they were more than theological tracts. They focused on specific problems that the Corinthian house churches were having. Because some worship sessions were preceded by a kind of "box lunch social" (ironically, called in Greek agapē "[meals shared in] love"), and the more well-to-do members did not share their food with the poorer members, schisms based upon wealth were beginning to develop. Most of the first generation of Corinthian believers were probably Jews, who rightly abhorred anything to do with idols and their veneration, which was everywhere to be found in Greek and Roman cities. But others were non-Jewish converts, who sincerely believed in Jesus as Lord and Son of God, and that there was one God, but saw no problem with continuing to observe the formalities of Greek civic life that often included hints of idolatry and polytheism. This too led to tension between Jewish and non-Jewish believers. And there were other problems having to do with misunderstandings of some of Paul's teachings.
In sum, Paul needed to keep close touch with the believers in this city, and the New Testament contains two of the several letters that he wrote to them. We call them First and Second Corinthians.
Our study for the coming months will be in the first of these. It was written from Ephesus on the western coast of Asia Minor in the year 55 AD.
If you like, you can read the opening chapter in preparation for my next posting. It can be found online here. But I encourage you to get in the habit of reading the study texts from your own printed Bible. I base my remarks on the original Greek text, but I quote usually from the New International Version. You can use any translation that you own, as I will try to explain any important point at which your particular version may differ from the English text I quote.
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