Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

Brothers and sisters, consider what you were when God called you to be Christians. Not many of you were wise from a human point of view. You were not in powerful positions or in the upper social classes.

1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 26, God’s Word Translation

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VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re glad to be with you today as we continue with our series on Anchored by Truth that we are calling “Paul’s Places.” By “Paul,” of course, we’re referring to the Apostle Paul who wrote at least 13 of the books out of the 27 books that comprise the New Testament. The Apostle Paul, started out life named “Saul.” But his encounter on the road to Damascus with the risen Christ changed Saul forever. So, later Saul began to go by the name “Paul.” And as Paul he became the foremost apostle to the gentiles. God used Paul to write almost half of the New Testament including first and second Corinthians, the books we’re focusing on today. To help us continue this study about “Paul’s Places” we have RD Fierro back in the studio. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, in our last couple of episodes we focused on the book of Romans. So, today you want to move to the next couple of books as they are arranged in the order of the New Testament – which are the books of first and second Corinthians. What are we going to see in these books?

RD: Well, I’d like to start by thanking our listeners for joining us here today. We have a singular focus on Anchored by Truth which is to help people develop a solid understanding of why they may be confident that the Bible is the inspired word of God. 15 or 20 years ago this kind of focus was far less necessary. When you told people in those days that you believed in the Bible most people didn’t think anything about it. Even people who did not personally believe in the Bible largely accepted the fact that the Bible was widely thought to be the word of God. But we have now experienced an unrelenting attack on the reliability of scripture for more than 2 decades. There have been countless TV shows, movies, books, not to mention internet presentations that claim to reveal “the real Jesus” or the “real story” behind this Bible “myth” or that “Bible story.” But today if you proclaim that you believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God you are more likely to encounter open disbelief at best or outright hostility at worst.

VK: And often this hostility is quite blatant. In 2001 PBS aired a 7 episode series entitled “Evolution.” Around that same time the magazine Scientific American published an article entitled “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.” The subtitle of that article was “Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science but their arguments don’t make sense.” And these are just two examples of the many that could be cited where the Bible is now openly attacked by seemingly informed sources.

RD: Right. And these attacks on the reliability and inspiration of scripture don’t just come from outside the church. There have been and are prominent teachers within the church who have abandoned the idea that the Bible is inspired. Well, the good news is that these attacks can be refuted but the bad news is that it takes time, energy, and effort to do so. The Bible has truth, facts, and reason as its bedrock and that can be demonstrated, however in order for us to demonstrate that it does take effort. We try to give listeners a head start in knowing how to build their own confidence in the Bible as the inspired Word of God in our shows. But we must ask listeners not to just read the Bible but also come to know something about ancient history including the places and cultures that existed thousands of years ago.

VK: And that’s the big reason we wanted to undertake this study series on “Paul’s Places.” Paul’s Places is all about the epistles, or letters, that the Apostle Paul wrote to various churches. And in our Bibles the titles assigned to those epistles, which we also call books, are geographic names like Romans, Corinthians, Philippians, etc.

RD: Yes. And since we raised the subject for anyone who wants to get the detailed rebuttal to the PBS series and the Scientific American article I highly recommend Dr. Jonathan Sarfati’s book Refuting Evolution 2. He takes apart the arguments made by PBS and the magazine piece by piece using the application of real science and logic.

VK: Or listeners can go to our website, crystalseabooks.com, and click on the Anchored by Truth icon and then go to “2020.” In 2020 we did a 10 episode series entitled “The Truth in Genesis” featuring Dr. Sarfati where we did a good introduction on the science that demonstrates that the book of Genesis is literal history. So, where do you want to start today?

RD: Well, as we have just mentioned Bible has truth, facts, and reason as its bedrock. This is true not just for books like Genesis but for all the other books including the books of the New Testament. One way to see this is to do what we are doing in this series – looking at the epistles, the letters, written by the Apostle Paul and investigating the reason that a particular letter was written to a particular church. When we do so we find out that the unique geographic and historical circumstances of the church and the city are very helpful to understanding why that epistle contained the material that it did.

VK: And so today we want to look at the historical and cultural setting for the city of Corinth and see how that relates to the contents of the 2 letters that were written to that church. So, the first thing that we need to clarify is that Corinth still exists as a city today in the nation of Greece. You can find it on a map with a simple internet search. Corinth is about 50 miles west of Athens and today we would say it is located in southern Greece. But in Paul’s time Corinth was in a province called Achaia which was essentially southern Greece. The northern part of Greece in Paul’s time was called Macedonia. The cities of Philippi and Thessalonica, which also received letters from Paul, were located in Macedonia.

RD: Yes. So, if you look at a map to see where Corinth is located even today one fact leaps out at you. Corinth is located on a very narrow strip of land called an isthmus that connects the northern part of Greece with the southern part. At its narrowest this isthmus is only about 6 miles wide. On the eastern side of the isthmus is the Saronic Gulf which connects to the Aegean Sea. On the western side is the Gulf of Corinth which connects to the Ionian Sea. This obviously means Corinth sits in an ideal place to be a commercial and trading center.

VK: Corinth is very near the middle of the isthmus. And as you said the narrowest part was about six miles wide, although it was somewhat wider where Corinth stood. Therefore, it was a natural place to transfer goods and passengers whether they were heading east from Italy and Europe or west from Asia. The Greeks and Romans both tried to connect the two seas by cutting across this isthmus; and traces still remain of their attempts. They also tried to figure out ways to move ships across the isthmus but none of these attempts succeeded. So, Corinth just relied on its two ports to receive and dispatch ships. Because of its unique location Corinth was literally where, for the Mediterranean world and Roman Empire, the east met the west.

RD: Exactly. So, just an example of its importance in the Roman world if you look at a map Corinth was almost due west of the city of Ephesus which is on the western tip of Turkey near the modern day city of Izmir, Turkey. Ephesus was the major commercial center for the Roman province of Asia. By boat Corinth would be about 250 miles from Turkey where as if someone used a land route it would be closer to 900 miles. In ancient Rome it would have been the difference between a couple of days (with favorable winds) and several weeks. Coming from Rome and heading east the same thing would have been true from the opposite direction. The city of Syracuse which is on the southern tip of Italy would have been a few days by boat but weeks by land.

VK: So, this tells us that Corinth was a city that was used to a lot of travelers coming and going. And it was a place where a lot of goods and money changed hands. In other words, it was a vibrant city commercially during Paul’s time. And therefore anyone who lived in Corinth would have had the opportunity to meet and speak with travelers from all over the Roman world. Right?

RD: Right, sort of.

VK: Why sort of?

RD: Well, this is where we have to start thinking about the kind of traffic that would have been taking place in that day. There were a lot of travelers, a lot of merchants, and lot of sailors and ship crew. So, just as in many modern day port cities there were a lot of people who were away from their homes and who had been spending long days on ships. It was a very important commercial and trading center but it was also a city that catered to desire.

VK: Corinth had a long history even prior to the 1st century AD. At one time it even had its own navy. According to Greek historians the first ships of war were built there in 664 B.C. But it had its ups and downs. It was destroyed by Romans in 146 B.C., because of a rebellion but Julius Caesar restored Corinth a century later (46 B.C.). After its restoration it grew so rapidly that it soon became again one of the most important centers in Greece. And it was a very important city when Paul visited it on his second missionary journey.

RD: It was important from the standpoint of trade and commerce but it was literally known throughout the Roman world for the amount of sexual immorality that took place there. The study note from the New Geneva Study Bible says, “Corinth was thoroughly pagan and immoral. The city was filled with pagan temples and on the south there was a high acropolis with a temple of Aphrodite. From the fifth century BC the expression ‘to Corinthianize’ meant to be sexually immoral.”

VK: And that’s why you said “sort of.” What you meant was Corinth was a great place to found a church because any message delivered there would likely be spread across the entire Roman Mediterranean world. But it would have been a challenging place to have a church, wouldn’t it? I mean there would have been a lot of temptation in a place like Corinth.

RD: Exactly. But let’s go a little deeper into what having a temple of Aphrodite actually meant in terms of the daily life there. It was common in ancient cities for the city to worship one god or goddess. For instance, Diana was the principal deity worshipped at Ephesus. Minerva or Athena was worshipped at Athens. Diana was the goddess of the hunt, nature, and wild things. Minerva or Athena was the goddess of wisdom, justice, law, and defensive warfare. So, Athens was well known for its elevated philosophy.

VK: I see where you’re going. Venus was the Roman equivalent of the goddess Aphrodite. Venus was the goddess of love, sex, and fertility in the Roman pantheon. So, the worship of Venus exacerbated the tendencies that were already present in Corinth because of the sea trade and commercial interests. I guess we could think of Corinth as a sort of ancient version of Las Vegas.

RD: Yes. Corinth was dedicated to the goddess of love, or licentious passion. The temple of Venus was erected on the north side of the Acrocorinthus, a mountain about half a mile in height on the south of the city. This mountain was covered with temples and splendid houses but was especially devoted to Venus. There was actually a law that said that 1,000 beautiful females should officiate as courtesans, or public prostitutes, before the altar of the goddess of love. Some merchants would actually send to foreign countries to get women and present them to the temple to, in their minds, enhance their chances for business success. Obviously, in a city with a lot of foreign travelers the temple, the prostitutes, generated a lot of revenue for the city. Travelers would lose their money so quickly there was a proverb that said, "It is not for everyone to go to Corinth,"

VK: So, my guess is you’re going to tell us that one of the primary reasons Paul wrote 1 Corinthians was to address the problem of sexual immorality which was rampant in Corinth. And this problem was made all the more egregious because in Corinth not only was sexual immorality not discouraged it was actively encouraged by the government, the economic forces within the city, and the religious establishment at the temple. Yikes. I’d like to say that is different from today but I’m not so sure that it is.

RD: You’re absolutely right about the point I’m making. The Apostle Paul spent more time talking about sexual immorality and how to overcome it in 1 Corinthians than in any other epistle that he wrote. Paul spent the better part of chapter 5 through 7 of 1 Corinthians discussing sexual immorality in one way or another. That’s close to 20% of the content of this book and it’s far more than he discussed a single “sin issue” in any of his other epistles. 1 Corinthians is 16 chapters and so is the book of Romans.

VK: And we talked about the book of Romans in our last two episodes of Anchored by Truth. 1 Corinthians and Roman are about the same length. In his letter to the Romans, however, Paul devoted less than a half-dozen verses to discussing sexual immorality, as opposed to nearly 3 chapters in 1 Corinthians. So, it’s clear to see that sexual immorality was a much bigger problem for the church in Corinth than the church in Rome. And now we know from Corinth’s location, history, culture, and economy why that was true. Interesting. Sad, but interesting. So, in what other ways did the geography and culture of Corinth influence the problems that Paul was dealing with in 1 Corinthians?

RD: Well, one of the other big issues that Paul dealt with in 1 Corinthians that he scarcely mentions in any of his other epistles was the issue of food offered to idols.

VK: The issue of whether Christians could eat food that had been offered to idols came up in the early church because of this pervasiveness of pagan temples that were present in most of the cities of the Roman world. It was common in those times for people when they bought food to take it to a temple and ask a pagan priest to bless it. This was especially common when wealthier people were putting on a large dinner – in essence a feast - for their friends or business associates. And this would have been a common practice for meals or feasts that were being put on for members of craft or professional guilds. Right?

RD: Right. Then, as today, it was common for people who worked at a specific trade or craft to belong to a guild, a professional organization. In fact, in many places you couldn’t practice a trade or craft unless you belonged to the guild because the guild was the organization that decided who got what work. And just like today the guilds would put on what we would call “business dinners.” At these guild dinners the members would do the same things they do today – socialize, discuss business issues and government problems, gossip, and make connections.

VK: So, anyone in the church in Corinth who was part of a trade or practice would have had the practice of attending these professional or business dinners for years or decades. It was a normal part of life for them. But when they became Christians they had a problem they had never had before.

RD: Yes. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes – or sandals – of the guild dinner organizer for a second. The organizer isn’t a Christian so he shares, or at least practices, the local religious beliefs. Well, one purpose of the local god or goddess was to provide the city residents with good fortune and material blessings. So, naturally the dinner organizer would want to be sure the dinner promoted the success of the guild’s members. This would include not only buying good food but getting a blessing on that food before it’s served at the banquet. Getting the food, especially the meat, blessed was a common part of banquet preparation. Well, getting the food blessed meant that that food had been dedicated to the god or goddess, the idol.

VK: And the dinner guests would have expected the dinner host to do that, wouldn’t they? And if the host or the guests weren’t Christians, which the vast majority weren’t, there was no problem with getting the blessing and eating the food. But Christians are prohibited from worshipping idols and eating food that had been dedicated to an idol would have been a form of worship. So, the Christian guest has a problem that none of the other guests have.

RD: Exactly.

VK: And Paul made this problem very clear in 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, verses 18 through 22. Paul said, “Think about the people of Israel. Weren’t they united by eating the sacrifices at the altar? What am I trying to say? Am I saying that food offered to idols has some significance, or that idols are real gods? No, not at all. I am saying that these sacrifices are offered to demons, not to God. And I don’t want you to participate with demons. You cannot drink from the cup of the Lord and from the cup of demons, too. You cannot eat at the Lord’s Table and at the table of demons, too. What? Do we dare to rouse the Lord’s jealousy? Do you think we are stronger than he is?” That’s from the New Living Translation.

RD: Yes. So, again we see how Corinth’s culture and economy impacted the church in Corinth and therefore the letter that Paul wrote to the church. In this case we are still talking about the first letter Paul wrote where Paul felt it necessary to correct some of the church members’ behavior that he had either observed or been told about. Corinth was a commercial center. In Paul’s day the economy was vibrant. The crafts and trades in Corinth were prospering including lots of people who had been in a craft or business before Paul first preached there on his second missionary journey. But for the craftsmen, tradesmen, or business owners who encountered Paul or the new faith of Christianity things now change.

VK: Now, you’re being told that there is not a pantheon of gods and goddesses. There is one true God who made heaven and earth. And you are learning that that one true God has prescribed certain standards for behavior and especially for worship. Paul was a Jew and many of his first audience members were Jews. So, they were all very familiar with the first of the 10 commandments. “I am the LORD your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where you were slaves. Do not worship any god except me.” That’s Exodus, chapter 20, verses 2 and 3 from the Contemporary English Version. So, now you are being told that if you continue to eat food that has been offered to a pagan god or goddess you are participating in idolatry. And that is hard on you because times and business are good and you don’t want that to change.

RD: Right. And that helps explain why in the very first part of 1 Corinthians Paul said, “Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.” That’s 1 Corinthians 1:26 and 27 in the New Living Translation. Paul was noting that most of the church members were not “wealthy” or “powerful” when they became Christians.

VK: In other words, not very many of the business owners, the well-established tradesmen, or the upper crust in Corinth wanted to give up their lifestyle to follow Jesus. And we are experiencing that same thing today aren’t we?

RD: Yes. We started out this episode noting that in America and in most of the western nations being a Christian was perfectly acceptable, if not even outright encouraged. Even people who weren’t Christians didn’t have a problem with their neighbors who were and many probably were glad to do business with them because Christianity promotes virtuous conduct including honest business conduct. But as we noted that common cultural consensus has been eroded and now some Christian businesses have been outright attacked because they have insisted on adhering to their values. And even more people are displaying an unwillingness to set aside their worldly pleasures to embrace the narrow gate that opens to salvation.

VK: So, in a very sad and odd way we are turning the clock back almost 2,000 years. In 1st century AD Corinth a business owner, say someone who sold cloth and fabric, might have practiced their business for decades and got along just fine. But once they heard Paul preach and became a Christian now they can’t go to the guild dinners anymore or, at least if they go, they have to explain why they are not eating some or all of the food. And they can’t go to dinners at the houses of some friends anymore. And now they especially know they can’t go down to the temple of Aphrodite anymore for … well, for what they know will be taking place at the temple. They are declining to do many of the things that their friends are still doing and their friends cannot figure out why. It’s easy to understand how a person like that may have questions for which they really want answers.

RD: Right. Paul had founded the church in Corinth on his second missionary journey. And at the time he wrote 1 Corinthians 3 to 5 years had passed. And during that time problems had arisen and many church members were looking for answers. So, they turned to the great Apostle who had founded the church. So, what we see in 1 Corinthians is Paul having to address several issues that were exceptionally problematic because of Corinth’s culture and geography. And we’re going to see in the next episode of Anchored by Truth that the sexual immorality and idolatry he addressed were not the only issues Paul had to confront.

VK: This sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today, let’s listen to a prayer of adoration for the Father. A lot of people will wonder whether the price they will pay to be a Christian is worth it. That question is easily answered when we consider the magnificence of our salvation. As the old hymn says “I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold; I'd rather be His than have riches untold; I'd rather have Jesus than houses or lands. I'd rather be led by His nail pierced hand.”

VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”

(Opening Bible Quote from the God’s Word Translation)

1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 26, God’s Word Translation