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2. Paul Founds the Church at Corinth

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Paul grew up in Tarsus, Cilicia as a zealous practitioner of Judaism. As an adult, he joined the Pharisees, a strict sect focused on living out the Torah meticulously. When Christianity started spreading, Paul did everything he could to stop the new sect. On his way to Damascus to prevent Christianity from spreading, he had a visionary experience in which Jesus appeared to him. Convinced that he had been wrong and that Jesus really was the Jewish Messiah, Paul flipped. He became Christianity’s most zealous evangelist and missionary. On Paul’s second missionary trip, he visited fourteen cities and started little cells of Christianity everywhere he could. After travelling through Macedonia (northern Greece), Paul came down to Corinth by land. Acts 18 records what happened while Paul was there.

Aquilla and Priscilla’s Expulsion from Rome (Acts 18:2)
  • Suetonius: “Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from the city.”1 (Claudius 25)
  • Cassius Dio: “As for the Jews, who had again increased so greatly that by reason of their multitude it would have been hard without raising a tumult to bar them from the city, he did not drive them out, but ordered them, while continuing their traditional mode of life, not to hold meetings.”2 (History 6.6)
  • Anthony Thiselton: “They were probably freed persons of Jewish origin who left Rome in ad 49 when the Emperor Claudius closed down a Roman synagogue because of continuous disturbances centering on the figure of Christ. They may well have been converted in Rome, and then came directly to the Roman colony of Corinth to set up their small shop in which to sell leathercraft among the commercial developments off the Lechaeum road.”3
    • Tentmaking in Corinth (Acts 18:3)

    Tents and awnings applied to many situations in antiquity.

    • Canvas cloths were used as awnings in theaters (Pliny the Elder, Natural History23).
    • Sailcloth awnings provided shade in the forum (ibid.).
    • Awnings were used in inner courts of houses (ibid. 19.24).
    • Shops had linen awnings projected over the pavement (Juvenal, Satires168).
    • Linen pavilions were used at beaches (Cicero, Against Verres 5.30, 80).
    • Merchants at festivals used heavy canvas booths to sell their wares (Juvenal, Satires 153).
    • People likely slept in leather or canvas tents when crowds flocked to Corinth for the Isthmian games every 2 years.
      • Paul’s Workplace in Corinth
      • The north forum contained 44 shops around a square, surrounded by porticoes.
      • The shops were 13 feet tall by 13 feet deep with widths varying from 9 to 13 feet.
      • Jerome Murphy-O’Connor: “In the back of the shop a series of stone or brick steps was continued by a wooden ladder to a loft lit by an unglazed window centered above the shop entrance. This is where the family that owned the business slept, cooked, and ate. A hired man, such as Paul, would have slept in the workroom. …Each worker had a bench on which tools were laid out, such as straight and curved needles, an awl, a punch, pincers, half-moon knives, shears, and an edge-shaver. They worked seated in leather aprons stained by the wax they used both to roll the flax thread and to protect the hides.”4
      • A shop like this was optimal for evangelism to customers and other shopkeepers.
      • The work was tedious, the hours were long, and the pay was little.
      • Lucian of Samosata: “Their trades, however, were petty, laborious, and barely able to supply them with just enough. … All the men in the workshops … toiling and moiling from morning till night, doubled over their tasks, they merely eke out a bare existence from such wage-earning…”5 (Lucius, Fugitives 13, 17).
      • Paul mentioned his long hours toiling in 1 Thess 2:9 and 2 Thess 3:7-8.
        • Initial Conversions in Corinth (Acts 18:4-8)
        • Initially Paul went to the synagogue to tell them about Jesus. Although he made a couple of converts, they “opposed and reviled him.” He went to the house of Titius Justus next door to the synagogue. Crispus, “the official of the synagogue” was likely a benefactor who had made a sizeable donation. Sosthenes, too, has that title in verse 17.
          • Appearing before Lucius Junius Gallio (Acts 18:9-17)
          • Gallio was the brother of Seneca, the philosopher, whose books have survived. Emperor Claudius appointed Gallio proconsul (a one-year term) of the province of Achaia.
          • Seneca: “All I could say was what my mentor Gallio had said when he was on the point of starting to have a fever in Greece. He immediately boarded a ship, and kept insisting that his sickness was due to the location and not to his body.”6 (Letters 1).
          • Jerome Murphy-O’Connor: “[I]t is natural to assume that Gallio took a dislike to Achaia and used a minor illness as an excuse to leave his post. Such an unreasoning aversion to a place is normally the result of a first impression; it may intensify with the passage of time, but it does not usually begin late. If this assessment is correct, it is unlikely that Gallio remained in Achaia more than four months, i.e., from June to September.”7
          • Gallio left Corinth and stopped at Delphi on his way to Rome. While there he noticed how small the city’s population was. He told Claudius about the situation, which resulted in Claudius sending an official letter to Delphi, which they inscribed in stone. Archeologists have identified nine fragments and, on that basis, reconstructed the entire letter. This is how we know Gallio was proconsul in the year 51-52.
            • Paul’s Departure (Acts 18:18-19)
            • After more than a year and a half in Corinth, Paul journeyed east to the port of Cenchreae from which he sailed to Ephesus. He would remain there for another two or three years.
              • Timeline of Events8
              • 51 Paul visited Corinth.
              • 52 Apollos visited Corinth (Acts 18:27-19:1; 1 Cor 3:5-7)
              • 52 Paul stayed in Ephesus for 2+ years (Acts 19:10)
              • 53 Paul wrote a lost letter to the Corinthians about sexual purity (likely based on a report from Apollos when he returned from Corinth) (1 Cor 5:9).
              • 54 Chloe sent some people (employees or slaves) to Corinth who reported on scandalous behavior in the Corinthian church (1 Cor 1:11).
              • 54 Paul sent Timothy to Corinth to remind them of how to live as a Christian (1 Cor 4:17).
              • 54 Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus of Corinth visited Paul in Ephesus with a letter from the church, requesting instruction (1 Cor 7:1; 16:17).
              • 54 Paul wrote 1 Corinthians9 based on his experience of visiting and founding the church, the report of Apollos, the report of Chloe’s people, and the letter from the Corinthians.
                •  Bibliography

                Dio, Cassius. Dio’s Roman History. Translated by Earnest Cary. Vol. 7. Loeb Classical Library. London, England: William Heinemann, 1955.

                Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archeology. 3rd ed. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002.

                Samosata, Lucian of. The Runaways (Fugitivi). Translated by A. M. Harmon. Vol. 5. Loeb Classical Library. London, England: William Heinemann, 1962.

                Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters on Ethics. Translated by A. A. Long Margaret Graver. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2015.

                Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Translated by Robert Graves. London, England: Penguin, 2007.

                Thiselton, Anthony C. 1 Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical & Pastoral Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011.

                Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Vol. 13. Nigtc. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.

                1. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (London, England: Penguin, 2007), 195.
                2. Cassius Dio, Dio’s Roman History, trans. Earnest Cary, vol. 7, Loeb Classical Library (London, England: William Heinemann, 1955), 383.
                3. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, vol. 13, Nigtc (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 1343.
                4. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archeology, 3rd ed. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 194.
                5. Lucian of Samosata, The Runaways (Fugitivi), trans. A. M. Harmon, vol. 5, Loeb Classical Library (London, England: William Heinemann, 1962), 69, 73.
                6. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters on Ethics, trans. A. A. Long Margaret Graver (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2015), 412.
                7. Murphy-O’Connor, 166.
                8. I based this timeline on Murphy-O’Connor.
                9. Thiselton estimates Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in 53 or 54. Anthony C. Thiselton, 1 Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical & Pastoral Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 25.
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