1 Corinthians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)

Garland, David E.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781585583225
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Paul's first letter to the Corinthians is one of the most important epistles in the New Testament. David Garland's thoughtful new commentary draws on extensive research and engages the best of contemporary scholarship while providing a readable study that will be accessible to thoughtful readers as well as students, pastors, and scholars. After considering the context of the letter and the social and cultural setting of Corinth, Garland turns to his exegetical work. An introduction to each major unit of thought is followed by the author's own translation of the Greek text. In the course of his verse-by-verse commentary, he incorporates references to other ancient writings that help explain particular aspects of Paul's meaning or provide information on the social and cultural context. He also refers to the work of other commentators and provides extensive notes for further reading and research.

Introduction to 1 Corinthians

Roman Corinth

The city of Corinth was ideally situated on the narrow land bridge between Peloponnesus and mainland Greece. Strabo (Geogr. 8.6.20) attributes the city’s wealth to the fortune of being “the master of two harbors.” Cenchreae, about six miles to the east on the Saronic Gulf, led straight to Asia, and Lechaeum, about two miles to the north on the Corinthian Gulf, led straight to Italy. A four-mile rock-cut track (diolkos, built ca. 625–585 B.C.) connected the two ports, enabling cargo and even small ships to be hauled across the isthmus to the other gulf, and thus allowed transporters to avoid the treacherous sea journey around the cape of the Peloponnese (cf. Acts 27). Corinth was a natural crossroad for land and sea travel.

Corinth had aroused Rome’s wrath as the chief city of the Achaean league, which revolted rather than submit to Rome’s demands to dissolve the league (cf. Cicero, De lege agraria 1.5; Strabo, Geogr. 8.4.8; 8.6.23; Pausanias, Descr. 2.1.2). The Roman military machine’s superior numbers and prowess led to the league’s inevitable defeat and the demolition of its leading city in 146 B.C. Lucius Mummius, the Roman general, sacked and burned the city. Reportedly, the male population was killed, the women and children were sold into slavery (Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 3.53–54; Strabo, Geogr. 8.6.23; 10.5.4; Pausanias, Descr. 2.1.2), and the city’s treasures were plundered. The extent of the destruction of the city may have been exaggerated by the ancient sources (Wiseman 1979: 494), but 146 B.C. marks its end as a normally functioning city.

Strabo (Geogr. 8.6.23) asserts that the town remained desolated and largely uninhabited for 102 years after this defeat. Its old shrines became a curiosity for tourists, and the ruins provided shelter to squatters and visitors to the Isthmian games now under the control of Sicyon (C. Williams 1987: 26; Stansbury 1990: 134). [1] In 44 B.C., shortly before his assassination, Julius Caesar decided to establish a Roman colony on the site with the official name Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis (Colony of Corinth in Honor of Julius). [2] Rome established colonies to solve overcrowding in the city and to promulgate Roman civilization across the world. This resettlement created a new Roman heritage for Corinth and gave it a different appearance from its Greek period. The new city was laid out with a new grid on top of the former Greek city (see Romano 1993). Many of the existing Greek buildings were utilized in the design, but the Romans imposed a city plan, architecture, political organization, and ethos different from the Greek predecessor. [3]

Strabo (Geogr. 8.6.23; 17.3.15) recounts that Julius Caesar colonized the city with persons predominately belonging to the “freedman class.” Rome needed to export the swelling ranks of the poor and settle its potentially restless army veterans. The city’s Roman identity was guaranteed by the immigration of a Roman population. Hopkins (1978: 66) estimates that during the years 88–80 B.C., “Roughly half of the free adult males in Italy left their farms and went to Italian towns or were settled by the state on new farms in Italy or the provinces.” A portion of these must have resettled in Corinth. Crinagoras (Greek Anthology 9.284) acidly refers to the Corinthian settlers as “those often sold, unstable or disreputable slaves.” Appian alleges that the first colonists were desperate and out of options, and Strabo’s (Geogr. 8.6.23) claim that they looted the Greek tombs and established a market for necrocorinthian ware suggests that these first colonists were strapped for cash (Lanci 1997: 26–27). The city, however, was soon transformed from ruin to riches. The denizens of Corinth in Paul’s day were known for their wealth and ostentation. The new city allowed many aggressive freedmen and their heirs, who would have been freeborn, the chance to acquire wealth through commercial ventures. Without an entrenched aristocracy, the citizens of Corinth were not fated “to remain in their allotted position on the social scale” but had a real opportunity for upward social mobility, primarily by attaining wealth and buying friendships and clients (Carter 1997: 53). The favorable economic climate attracted settlers from all over the empire who could work their way up the social ladder. Stansbury (1990: 120–21) makes it clear, however, that this society was not egalitarian. It was an oligarchy that was “hierarchic and elitist, and therefore safe” from a Roman point of view. De Vos (1999: 189) notes that the elite “used a number of social control mechanisms to restrict access to their group, including wealth, marriage, and social ties.” Despite the city’s prosperity, poverty afflicted many inhabitants. Alciphron (Epistles 3.60), a second-century writer, explained why he did not go to Corinth: “I learned in a short time the nauseating behavior of the rich and the misery of the poor.” Murphy-O’Connor (1984: 148) interprets the proverb “Not for every man is the voyage to Corinth” (Strabo, Geogr. 8.6.20; Horace, Ep. 1.17.36) to mean that only “the tough survived there.” Winter (1989) points to evidence of grain shortages after Paul left Corinth that resulted in famines worsening the divide between rich and poor.

In Paul’s time, Corinth had a mixed ethnic population of Roman freedmen, indigenous Greeks, and immigrants from far and wide. De Vos (1999: 187–88) argues that it is conceivable that Jews were included among the original colonists and that a strong Jewish community was “well integrated and on good terms with the wider community.” Despite this diversity, Corinth was heavily influenced by Rome, and C. Williams (1987: 31) argues that its population “felt themselves to be Roman.” Pausanius’s claim that the city was basically Greek has been reevaluated. Winter (2001: 16) remarks, “While Pausanius provides important information on the topography and religious sites of Corinth from a later era, his rereading of Corinth from the fashionable perspective of the Greek Classical revival in the Rome of his day does not provide hard background evidence of the culture of the mid-first century.” Stansbury (1990: 116) concludes, “The Greek Corinth of old would live on in folk memory and literature, reinforced by the traditions of the Isthmian festival.” But everything was given a Roman stamp. When Paul visited, the city was geographically in Greece but culturally in Rome.

In what follows, I highlight two factors from this urban context—social relations and religious/philosophical influences—that I believe have a direct bearing on the Corinthians’ behavior and their misinterpretation of the Christian faith that Paul is compelled to address.

Social Relations

This letter should be read against the background of Corinth as a city imbued with Roman cultural values (Gill 1993: 328). Aulus Gellius (Noctes atticae [Attic Nights] 16.13.9) claimed that colonies were “miniatures” of Rome. They were established to foster the majesty of Roman culture, religion, and values. The original freedmen settlers were still under obligation to their former masters in Italy, and they may have acted as their business agents (De Vos 1999: 190). The official language of Latin predominates in the extant public inscriptions prior to the time of Hadrian (101 of 104 [Kent 1966: 19]), and the inscriptions on the coinage minted by the magistrates were in Latin. [4] The religious focal point of the Corinthian forum was the temple at the west end dedicated to the imperial family (designated Temple E). It was of Roman construction and towered over all other temples as an ever present symbol of the dominant imperial presence. [5] Upon entering the forum, one could not help but direct an eye to this temple, and the construction of the long line of buildings blocked the view of the grand archaic temple to the north.

When Paul came to Corinth to begin his missionary activity, the city teemed with commerce as the vital link between Rome and its eastern provinces, attracting traders from everywhere in the empire (C. Williams 1993). Throngs attended the Isthmian games. A building boom occurred between the reigns of Augustus and Nero, making Corinth “arguably the most dazzling and modern of Greek cities” (Savage 1996: 36). Many inhabitants were so affluent that “wealth and ostentatious display became the hallmark of Corinth” (Betz 1985: 53), which contrasted with the relative poverty of the surrounding countryside of Achaia. Betz (1985: 53) attests that while “Greeks tried as best they could to preserve their traditional culture, the Corinthians indulged new attitudes and ways of life fueled by the new wealth and unbridled by ancestral tradition. Thus, the province and its capital were in many respects worlds apart.” Corinth rose in status as a Roman colony while the surrounding areas tied to the Greek past decreased in status. Spawforth (1994: 407) calls attention to grievances raised against Corinth by people of Argos who grumbled that the Corinthians were proud of their privileged position with Rome and had turned their backs on their Greek heritage and the other cities in the old Achaean league (see Winter 2001: 4–5, 19–20).

This letter also should be read against the background of a mercantile society, as “the core community and core tradition of the city culture were those of trade, business, entrepreneurial pragmatism in the pursuit of success” (Thiselton 2000: 4). These values fed the zeal to attain public status, to promote one’s own honor, and to secure power. According to Savage (1996: 35), “Perhaps no city in the Empire offered so congenial an atmosphere for individual and corporate advancement.” B. Peterson (1998: 61) asserts that Corinth “seems to have been a city designed for those who were preoccupied with the marks of social status”—that is, “the value which others place on one’s goods and achievements” (Barclay 1992: 56). Horace’s (Sat. 1.6.16–17) mockery of the Roman populace as “absurd slaves to fame, who are stupefied by titles and masks” could apply to Corinth. Meeks (1983: 54) argues that an individual’s status was tied to a variety of factors: “occupational prestige, income or wealth, education and knowledge, religious purity, family and ethnic group position, and local-community status.” They do not all carry the same weight, and their relative value in the equation depends on who is doing the weighing. Meeks (1983: 54) explains, “Most individuals tend to measure themselves by the standards of some group that is very important to them—their reference group, whether or not they belong to it—rather than by the standards of the whole society.” One could possess high status according to certain markers but low status when it came to others, creating a status dissonance that fed an internal restlessness and a greater desire to achieve the dignitas that one believed was one’s due. Stansbury (1990: 278) contends that a “shortage of reasonable avenues of honor at the top of the political structure” existed. The scramble for scarce honor was as intense as the scramble for scarce wealth. The result was that many well-to-do sought honor wherever they could get it. Stansbury (1990: 278) lists the available options as “sponsoring private entertainment, games and festivals, patronage of new cults or collegia, demonstration of rhetorical skill or philosophical acumen, sponsorship or receipt of an approved honorary statue with appropriate epigraph, and socially conspicuous displays of a private retinue of slaves and freedmen.” In this social climate, one could only increase one’s standing via a “combination of patronage, marriage, wealth, and patient cultivation of connections” (Stansbury 1990: 87; cf. Chow 1992). MacMullen (1974: 106–7) argues that a key measure of one’s standing in Roman societal structure was the size of philanthropic gifts and the number of clients. Crucial for any success and status in this culture was attaining the patronage of powerful persons and bestowing benefaction on others to establish an array of influential friends and clients, exerting political enmity to ostracize opponents, and employing skillful oratory to persuade others in any assembly. To use terms from American culture: schmoozing, massaging a superior’s ego, rubbing shoulders with the powerful, pulling strings, scratching each other’s back, and dragging rivals’ names through the mud—all describe what was required to attain success in this society. Persons also wanted to accumulate wealth and “then display or distribute it in a way that would bring individual honor” (Stansbury 1990: 76). Possessing wealth cleared a path for social climbing because it enabled one to buy friends and clients through extravagant spending and win the esteem accorded benefactors.

The implications of this backdrop for understanding the problems that beset the Corinthian church should not be underestimated. Few Christians could have been unaffected by the dominant culture surrounding them, even if they assimilated its values only subliminally. Most, if not all, of the problems that Paul addresses were hatched from the influence of this setting. Values that were antithetical to the message of the cross—particularly those related to honor and status so basic to the Greco-Roman social system, in which power manifesting itself in ruthlessness and self-advancement is thought to be the only sensible course—percolated into the church, destroying its fellowship and its Christian witness as some members sought to balance civic norms with Christian norms. Secular wisdom—which reflected the code of conduct of the social elites, who jostled one another for power, prestige, and popularity—had its hold on members of the church. Its values played havoc on Paul’s attempt to build a community based on love, selflessness, and the equal worth of every member. Corinthian society was riddled by competitive individualism, and this ethos spilled over into the relationships in the church as wealthier members competed for followers. Socially pretentious and self-important individuals appear to have dominated the church. It is likely that they flaunted their symbols of status, wisdom, influence, and family pedigree and looked down on others of lesser status. They appear to have wanted to preserve the social barriers of class and status that permeated their social world but were nullified in the cross of Christ. For some, the Christian community had become simply another arena to compete for status according to the societal norms.

Drawing on Mary Douglas’s anthropological studies and grid and group matrix, Carter (1997: 51) thinks that this church’s culture fits the model of a “highly egocentric, individualistic and competitive society, dominated by the ‘Big Man,’ who imposes himself as a leader, and who derives prestige and power from the size of his following.” He goes on to describe this culture as “highly materialistic and egocentric: any sense of relationship o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Preface
• Author’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• Transliteration
• Map
• Introduction to 1 Corinthians
• I. Letter Opening (1:1–3)
• II. Thanksgiving for God’s Grace Given to Them (1:4–9)
• III. Factions and Dissension in the Church (1:10–4:21)
• IV. Incest, Lawsuits, and Prostitution (5:1–6:20)
• V. Instructions about Sexual Relations, Divorce, and Marriage (7:1–40)
• VI. The Dispute over Food Sacrificed to Idols (8:1–11:1)
• VII. Headdress in Public Worship (11:2–16)
• VIII. Divisions at the Lord’s Supper (11:17–34)
• IX. The Use of Spiritual Gifts in Public Worship (12:1–14:40)
• X. The Resurrection (15:1–58)
• XI. Instructions for the Collection and Travel Itineraries (16:1–12)
• XII. Letter Closing (16:13–24)
• Works Cited
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Authors
• Index of Greek Words
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Writings
• Notes
• Back Cover