Jul 14 2009
Introduction to 1 Corinthians (part 1) by Father Charles Callan
This was posted recently on my primary blog, which contains everything found on this site and more.
Due to the length of the introduction I have decided to divide it up into a series of posts. This first post looks at the city itself; its history, geographical importance, and social situation. Circumstances relating to St Paul’s ministry in the city and the production of the Letters to Corinth will be presented in future posts.
1. Corinth. The city to which the Corinthian letters were addressed, and which St Paul first visited and evangelized on his second missionary journey, was not the ancient metropolis by the same name. The old city, which Cicero called the “light of all Greece” (PRo Lege Manil. 5), was destroyed by the Romans under the generalship of Lucius Mummius in 146 B.C., and lay in complete ruins for an entire century. In 146 B.C. Julius Caesar laid on the anceint site the foundations of the new metropolis and called it Colonia Julia Corinthus.
In a comparatively short time the new city became nearly as populous and flourishing as the old one had been. This was due to its remarkable location. Lying at the southern extremity of the isthmus, about four miles in breadth, that connects the Peloponnesus or lower portion of the Grecian peninsula with the mainland, and fed by the two famous seaport towns, Lechaeum on the west and Cenchrae on the east of the isthmus, Corinth was bound to be, as it had been in the past, a commercial center of highest importance. Its position was conspicuous on the highway of commerce between the Orient and the Occident, and it was not without reason that the great business thoroughfare of the then-known world passed this way; for all trading between the East and Rome took this route in order to avoid the perilous and more or less continual storms that swept the seas about the southern coast of Greece. Although inferior to Athens as an intellectual center Corinth was very eminent in this respect also. It was proud of its many schools of philosophy and rhetoric, as well as the excellence of its architecture.
As might be expected, Corinth was unrivaled in its wealth, in the variety of its population, and in its profligacy. Being the capital of the Roman Province of Achaia it was the residence of the proconsul, and its political and civil influence was mainly Roman. Asiatics were also there from Ephesus, and Jews in sufficient numbers to have their synagogues. And yet, having been Greek in its origin, the city never lost the spirit and customs of its ancestors; its language, its literature and its laws remained Greek.
St Chrysostom pronounced Corinth “the most licentious city of all that are or ever have been.” During the daytime its streets were packed with peddlers, sodliers and sailors; with foreign and domestic traders, boxers and wrestlers; with idlers, slaves, gamblers and the like. At night the great metropolis was a scene of drunken revelry and of every kind of vice. “To live like a Corinthian” was to lead a dissolute and lawless life. Far from correcting or restraining the shameless immorality of its inhabitants the religion of Corinth only added to it. Aphrodite Pandemos, the goddess of lust and sinful love, was the guardian deity of the city. In her temple, professional prostitutes who gave lascivious dances at public festivals, and carnal intercourse with whom was looked upon as a religious consecration. Little wonder that a city of such gross sensuality should have been filled with defrauders, fornicators, idolators, adulterers, effeminate, liars, thieves, covetous, drunkards, railers and extortioners (1 Cor 6:8-10). St Paul, from his long residence there, had personal knowledge of conditions as they existed, and hence the vividness and force of the letters he addressed to the faithful of that wicked city.
The ancient site of Corinth possesses now only a miserable town of five churches and a few thousand inhabitants. Aside from some Doric dolumns, still defying in their massive grandeur the wastes of time, no relic remains of the glories and powers that once were gathered there. The site of the old city is no so desolate because, not only has it been repeatedly plundered since ancient days, but in the year 1858, after a destructive earthquake, it was largely abandoned, and a new city by the same name was built on the west of the isthmus on the Corinthian gulf.
