Ancient Corinth

I love to learn about the apostle Paul. He is such a stirring character. But I need to get the geography right. So, where is Corinth, and what do we know about it?

Wikipedia tells us -

Corinth (/ˈkɔrɪnθ/; Greek: Κόρινθος Kórinthos), was a city-state (polis) on the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece, roughly halfway between Athens and Sparta.

For Christians, Corinth is known from the two books First Corinthians and Second Corinthians in the New Testament.

Ancient Corinth was one of the largest and most important cities of Greece, with a population of 90,000 in 400 BC. After the Romans built a new city in its place and made it the provincial capital of Greece in 44 BC, the city's population was between 50,000 to 700,000 according to different sources.

The Oxford Bible Atlas advises that it was a “Greek city, important from early times; sacked by Romans 146BC; re-founded by Julius Caesar; most important city of Rom. Province of Achaia. From apostolic times there was here an important Christian community.”

Corinth is mentioned several times in the Bible e.g. Acts 18:1–18, I Cor. 1:2, 16:5-6, II Cor 1:1, 1: 23, 12:14, 13:1; II Tim 4:20.

Acts 18 tells us that Paul went to Corinth after visiting Athens. It was in Corinth that he discovered Aquila, a Jew born in Pontus, and his wife, Priscilla. They were “newly arrived from Italy, part of the general expulsion of Jews from Rome ordered by Claudius. Paul moved in with them, and they worked together at their common trade of tent making. But every Sabbath he was at the meeting place, doing his best to convince both Jews and Greeks about Jesus.” (The Message – Eugene Petersen). Even though there was a great deal of arguing from the listeners there “a great many Corinthians believed…” (ibid) and Paul was encouraged by a dream in which “the Master” told him not to be intimidated – “You have no idea how many people I have on my side in this city.”  So Paul stuck it out, remaining there for a further eighteen months.

A modern writer has this:

It's easy to see why Paul chose Corinth as headquarters for his mission to the west. The city was young, dynamic, not hidebound by tradition, a mix of dislocated individuals without strong ethnic identities seeking to shed their former low status by achieving social honor and material success. Paul was not intimidated by a big, bustling, cosmopolitan hub city, with no dominant religious or intellectual tradition, for Corinth shared many characteristics with Tarsus, his home town, and Syrian Antioch, his home church city. The heart of the city, the forum, was filled with temples and shrines to the emperor and various members of his family, built alongside temples to the older Greek gods such as Apollo. Apollo's son, Asklepios, the god of healing, had a shrine there as well as at Epidaurus, the ancient site of miracle healings, about 50 miles southeast.

Book club members might also find the following web site helpful: http://www.mpumc.org/uploads/file/corinth.pdf

It seems that I Corinithians was written from Ephesus and that it is just one of maybe four that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.

Here is a painting of St. Paul by Bartolomeo Montagna.

Julie Swannell