![]() Then he heard from "Chloe’s people" that factions had developed in the church ( 1Co_1:11). Paul referred to this letter as his "former letter" ( 1Co_5:9). Therefore he wrote a letter urging the believers not to tolerate such conduct in their midst. There he heard disquieting news about immorality in the Corinthian church. Returning to Ephesus on his third journey Paul made that city his base of operations for almost three years (A.D. Paul then proceeded on to Syrian Antioch by way of Caesarea. He left taking Priscilla and Aquila with him to Ephesus. Paul ministered in Corinth for 18 months, probably in A.D. After local Jewish officials expelled the church from the synagogue, it met in a large house next door that Titius Justus owned. There, too, he met Priscilla and Aquila, Jews who had recently left Rome. In Corinth he preached the gospel and planted a church. Paul had arrived in Corinth first from Athens, which lay to the east. These athletic contests were important in the life of the Greeks, and Paul referred to them in this epistle ( 1Co_9:24-27). Isthmia was another little town east of Corinth, just north of Cenchrea, that hosted the Isthmian Games every two or three years. ![]() Cenchrea, the port of Corinth on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, was the town from which Paul set sail for Ephesus during his second missionary journey ( Act_18:18). These included the bema (judgment seat or platform), the place where judges tried important cases, including Paul’s ( Act_18:12). There were several other local sites of importance to the student of 1 Corinthians. "All of this evidence together suggests that Paul’s Corinth was at once the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world." Other major deities honored in Corinth included Melicertes, the patron of seafarers, and Poseidon, the sea god. The Greek geographer Strabo wrote of 1,000 prostitutes, but this probably referred to the early history of the old city, and it may have been an exaggeration. Hundreds of female slaves served the men who "worshipped" there. The most notorious shrine was the temple of Aphrodite that stood on top of an approximately 1,900 foot high mountain just south of the city, the Acrocorinthus. "The old city had been the most licentious city in Greece, and perhaps the most licentious city in the Empire." 450-385 B.C.) coined the verb korinthiazo (= to act like a Corinthian, i.e., to commit fornication)." "Old Corinth had gained such a reputation for sexual vice that Aristophanes ( ca. Consequently fornication flourished in Corinth. In Paul’s day many of the pagan religions included prostitution as part of the worship of their god or goddess. Ĭorinth’s strategic location brought commerce and all that goes with it to its populace: wealth, a steady stream of travelers and merchants, and vice. Nero began this canal, but it was finally completed in 1893. Later the Greeks cut a canal linking these two gulfs. This did away with the long voyage around the Peloponnesus. If a ship was small enough, they would drag the whole vessel across the four and a half mile isthmus from one gulf to the other. ![]() There, stevedores would reload them onto other ships. In Paul’s day large ships would transfer their cargoes to land vehicles that would cart them from the Corinthian Gulf, west of the isthmus, to the Saronic Gulf, east of the isthmus, or vice versa. This site made Corinth a crossroads for trade by land, north and south, as well as by sea, east and west. It stood just southwest of the Isthmus of Corinth, the land bridge that connected Northern Greece and Southern Greece, the Peloponnesus. The ancient city of Corinth enjoyed an ideal situation as a commercial center. The population consisted of Roman citizens who had migrated from Italy, native Greeks, Jews ( Act_18:4), and other people from various places who chose to settle there. In Paul’s day it was a Roman colony and the capital of the province of Achaia. Corinth had a long history stretching back into the Bronze Age (before 1200 B.C.).
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