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CORINTHIANS, FIRST LETTER TO THE

One of Paul’s extant canonical letters to Christians in Corinth. Though called 1 Corinthians, it is not the earliest letter, for Paul wrote a letter previous to this (there was also a letter from the church to Paul), which has not survived. The character of the letter has made it one of the fundamental sources for a social description of “the first urban Christians.”

Author, Provenance, Date

The authors are Paul, apostle to Gentiles, and Sosthenes (1 Cor. 1:1; cf. Acts 18:17?), about whom nothing is known. The letter was sent from Asia (16:19), probably Ephesus. The dating is less sure: the majority hold to a “late” date, based on an Acts chronology that puts Paul’s first visit to Corinth at the time of Gallio (ca. 51/52 c.e.) and 1 Corinthians ca. 53-55. A minority view holds that Acts is confused about the Gallio hearing being on the first visit, that Paul’s first visit to Corinth was “early” (41-42), and that 1 Corinthians was written between 46 and 49.

Corinth

The city of Corinth is well known through excavations conducted since the 19th century. Information on Corinth and its surrounding area in the Roman period is very rich and provides a general and a specific context for understanding the letter, including its economic setting. Some features of the excavations have assisted significantly in interpreting Paul’s or the community’s activities: dining rooms for cultic meals, benefaction inscriptions (e.g., by Erastus; Rom. 16:23), evidence for later synagogues, a meat market, houses of the wealthy, harbors, and roads.

Occasion

Following his first lengthy visit to Corinth, during which a Christian community was established, Paul went to Ephesus and Asia, from which he wrote a letter to Corinth (the “previous letter”; 5:9-13), taking a strong line on community standards, perhaps arguing for Corinthian agreement to the apostolic decree of Acts 15. This initial letter (a fragment of which may be embedded in 2 Cor. 6:14–7:1) prompted both a letter and oral messages in reply (5:1; 7:1, 25; 8:1; 12:1; 16:1, 12; cf. also 15:1; 11:2). From this information, a reconstruction can be made of the Corinthian letter to Paul and of Paul’s previous letter. It is obvious that the Corinthians felt keenly about a number of issues, and raised a variety of questions.

The letter we call 1 Corinthians is Paul’s response. The preceding communications made Paul feel a pressing need to instruct the Corinthians at length on matters of Christian behavior and practice: sex, grievances, marriage, betrothal, virginity, food, apostolic support, females and males at worship, Lord’s Supper, charismatic gifts, resurrection, support for Jerusalem, even a visit by Apollos. Conditions in Corinth involved uncertainty and confusion at the least, dissension and opposition at the worst. The occasion was thus a difficult one for Paul: how to reply to the information he had from Corinth? The “tone” of 1 Corinthians reflects this ambivalence, at some points harsh (his handwritten autograph, 16:22; opening appeal, 1:10; admonition, 4:14, 21), at other points moderate and accommodating.

Parties and Opposition

The sense of strain is found especially in the discussion of quarrels and divisions (1:10–4:21), which begins with a suggestive identification of something akin to parties: “I belong to Paul, . . . Apollos, . . . Cephas, . . . Christ” (1:12). While Paul rejected the validity of these groupings, he continued to speak of them as if they had objective reality in the Corinthian situation (3:4-5, 21-23; 4:6). Concerns woven into chs. 1–4 that may bear on these groupings include baptism, wisdom, spirituality, maturity, precedence, leadership, power. These are different from the ethical issues of chs. 5–16; they involve qualifications to lead and direct the congregation, closely related to the party labels of 1:12 and emphasized in 4:14-21. In Corinth there were questions about Paul’s role as founder and teacher (4:15-17; 3:1-3, 6-7, 10; 4:1-5; cf. also Rom. 16:17-20, written from Corinth); it was likely a matter of “patronage and power.”

The evidence for a troubled community is strong, but was there deliberate opposition to Paul? Various suggestions have been made, usually deriving either from the slogans buried in the letter (“it is well for a man not to touch a woman,” 7:1; “all of us possess knowledge,” 8:1; “no idol in the world really exists,” 8:4; “all things are lawful,” 10:23; “let Jesus be cursed,” 12:3), or from a mirror reading of Paul’s advice (which presumes that if Paul argued for something, someone else was arguing against it). Sometimes an effort is made to link slogans and parties and leaders, but without convincing results; e.g., earlier claims about a “gnostic” opposition to Paul are rarely repeated now. Yet the tone and some of the details suggest that there was opposition; if so, it is more likely to be reflected in the body of the letter (chs. 1–4) than in the ethical advice (chs. 5–16), because this issue is more directly treated in the first main section, where rival leadership is discussed.

Closely related to this question is an analysis of who had been active leaders in Corinth. Paul and Sosthenes and Apollos had certainly been active there and were viewed as leaders, though Sosthenes did not enter the picture other than as co-author of the letter; Cephas/Peter probably had been to Corinth, since some saw him as a figurehead for a group; Timothy had represented Paul (4:17; 16:10; cf. Rom. 16:21), and Titus was soon to do so if he had not already (2 Cor. 2:13; 8:16; 12:18); Chloe (1:11) played a role, as did Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus (16:15, 17; 1:16); probably Crispus and Gaius (1:14; cf. Rom. 16:23) were influential within the community; and no doubt Erastus was also (Rom. 16:23); Aquila and Prisca (16:19) and Silvanus (2 Cor. 1:19) had some role at an earlier stage. The list is long, exceeded only by the more complex list of Rom. 16:1-16. Among those persons active in Corinth were some of wealth and power and status, persons accustomed to honor and deference, who acted as patrons and reaped the prestige. While some of the persons known to be active leaders in Corinth were closely linked with Paul (Sosthenes, Timothy, Titus, Aquila and Prisca), not all were; if there were opposition to Paul, it was probably centered on the leadership of one or more of these persons, in which case Apollos and Cephas/Peter head the list.

Literary and Rhetorical Analysis

A wide variety of partition theories have been developed, arguing from repetitions, overlaps, seams, and conflicting travel plans. None has commanded wide assent; the usual view is that 1 Corinthians (possibly with one or two interpolations: 14:34-35?) is a unity. There are two main approaches to analyzing the letter’s structure and unity. One using a letter-writing model argues for 1 Corinthians as a sequential response to external oral and written topics — topics raised with Paul by the Corinthians and reflected in chs. 5–16 — surrounded by typical letter elements. The other, based on rhetorical conventions of antiquity, argues for a unified letter of persuasion with its own internal logic, a rhetoric controlled by Paul, not the recipients. Both approaches come to the same conclusion on the unity of the letter, though they move in different directions with respect to Paul’s purpose: in the one case he adopts a “rhetoric of reconciliation”; in the other the letter is largely a defense of Paul’s attempt to bring the Corinthians into conformity with the apostolic decree, arguing that the existing tension derived from that decision.

Major Issues in Corinth

The most divisive matter is leadership (1:10–4:21), on which topic Paul is variously appealing (1:10; 4:16), threatening (4:19-21), defensive (2:1-5), condescending (3:1-4), and sarcastic (4:8-13). His main objective is to claim his precedence in the founding of the church, to minimize the roles of others, Apollos in particular, and to urge the church to avoid divisions. Much attention is given to sex (chs. 5-7), about which Paul has heard both orally (5:1) and in writing (7:1). Topics include an incestuous relationship, a civil suit, continued recourse to (sacral?) prostitutes, conjugal disputes, divorce, betrothal, and virginity. Paul also emphasizes food (chs. 8–10), dealing with eating food offered to idols and sacrificial questions, along with a defense of his own practices on support (both food and money). That focus shifts to concerns over community worship (chs. 11–14): male and female dress codes, aberrations in observing the Lord’s Supper, and the use of spiritual gifts, especially the more prominent charismatic gifts such as speaking in tongues. A particular interest is Paul’s attitude to women, mainly focused on 11:2-16 (women’s roles in worship), but involving also the more general issues of women’s sexual “equality” (ch. 7) and his laconic comment in 14:33b-36 about whether women should speak in meetings — the latter passage often viewed as an interpolation.

The one sustained doctrinal question Paul addresses is resurrection from the dead, on which there were disagreements in the congregation (esp. 15:12-19). Ch. 15 raises the more general question of Paul’s knowledge and use of Jesus traditions: tradition of Jesus’ death and resurrection (15:3-7); tradition of the Last Supper (11:23-26); the Lord’s commands on divorce and apostolic support (7:10; 9:14; cf. 11:2). The implications of 1 Corinthians’ collection of Jesus-related materials is still debated: was it more important in Corinth, compared with other communities, because some leaders had close links with Jesus? Finally, Paul describes his and Timothy’s travel plans, mostly dealing with gathering and transporting a famine-support collection to Jerusalem, but also including an allusion to Apollos’ refusal to return to Corinth (16:1-12; cf. 4:18-21).

Significance

Continued scholarly preoccupation with 1 Corinthians derives from several factors. (1) It is a basic resource for descriptions of Paul’s ethics and some of his theological emphases. (2) Nowhere are tensions within early Christianity seen more clearly than here; these include not just matters of parties and divisions but also issues such as social status, patronage, wealth, slavery, and power. (3) Many studies focus on the pastoral dimensions of Paul’s relationship with the community. (4) The letter serves as an integral part of a diachronic or longitudinal analysis of issues in one church over a period of almost 50 years (i.e., up to 1 Clement in the mid-90s) and involving a substantial number of letter exchanges, which show an ongoing concern with divisions (e.g., 1 Clem. 1:1; 3:1-4; 9:1) and a shifting dynamic. In sum, a careful reading of 1 Corinthians allows a lively sense of the spread of Christianity, of Paul’s and his congregations’ varied relationships, of Paul’s independence of thought, and of the range of figures that emerged in the early Christian developments.

Bibliography. J. K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth. JSNTSup 75 (Sheffield, 1992); A. D. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth. AGJU 18 (Leiden, 1993); J. C. Hurd, The Origin of 1 Corinthians, 2nd ed. (Macon, 1983); L. A. Jervis and P. Richardson, eds., Gospel in Paul. JSNTSup 108 (Sheffield, 1994); W. A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven, 1983); M. M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation (Tübingen, 1991); J. Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth (Wilmington, 1983); G. Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (Philadelphia, 1982).

Peter Richardson

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CORINTHIANS, FIRST LETTER TO THE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)