From the evidence in Acts, his two letters to the Corinthians and the letter to the Romans, Paul made three visits to Corinth. The first resulted in the establishment of the church in Corinth (Acts 18:1-18; 1 Cor.l5:l-2). He was accompanied on this initial visit by Timothy and Silvanus (Silas). Paul remained in Corinth for eighteen months and made his living as a leatherworker. Thanks to an inscription that was found at Delphi concerning Gallio, the Roman governor (proconsul) in Corinth, the dates for this visit can be established. Gallio seems to have taken office in July of 51 C.E. and served only one year. Since Paul was forced to appear before Gallio due to a complaint lodged against him by the Jewish synagogue in Corinth, he likely arrived there in early 50 C.E. and departed in late 51 or in 52 C.E.

His second visit was occasioned by conflict in the church and challenges to his leadership, as reported to him in Ephesus by "Chloe's people" (the household of a member of the church in Corinth). Their information caused Paul to make a brief visit that he later described as unpleasant and "painful" (2 Cor 2:1).

A promised third visit had to be postponed until the crisis with his critics had been resolved. This last visit finally occurred after reconciliation with the Corinthian church had been accomplished and the church had prepared an offering for the impoverished Christians in Jerusalem. Paul then went to Corinth, received the offering, and headed a delegation to take the contribution to Jerusalem (Rom 15:25-31). The dating of this third visit is uncertain but possibly took place in 55-56 C.E. After Paul left Corinth, he never again returned to Greece.

Archaeology has illuminated numerous references to the Corinthians in both Acts and the letters of Paul, as discussed below.

The Synagogue
When Paul first came to Corinth, he naturally sought out a synagogue, as was his custom, to begin his Christian evangelizing. Not far from the entrance structure (propylaea) to the forum/agora on the Lechaion Road, a lintel stone was found with crude lettering: "Synagogue of the Hebrews." Since stones were often scattered from their original location by later destruction and some were moved elsewhere to be used in new construction, it is by no means certain that the original synagogue was in this area. Furthermore, this lintel stone dates from three or more centuries after the time of Paul. However, the size of the stone suggests that it may not have been moved far from its original location, and new synagogues frequently were erected on the site of previous ones. Since we know Paul lived for a time in a house owned by a Gentile "worshiper of God, Titius Justus, which was adjacent to a synagogue, it is tempting to think of his residing somewhere in that vicinity. Corinth may have had more than one synagogue; Crispus and Sosthenes are both named in Acts as the "official" (archisynagogos) of a synagogue, but the relation between the two and the synagogue mentioned is unclear (Acts 18:8, 17).

Paul's Trade
All Jewish teachers of the Law (Torah) in the 1st century had a trade, and Paul was no exception (rabbis as such seem to have developed first in the late 1st or early 2nd century). He supported himself by the leather-worker's trade (1 Cor 4:12). Tents were made of leather, and even in the urban center of Corinth tents were in demand. Sailors in port frequently camped in tents rather than paying for accommodations on shore, and the thousands of visitors to the Isthmian Games often preferred tents to the limited and sometimes dubious inns of the day. Paul worked in a shop with a fellow Jew, Aquila. and lived with him and his wife, Priscilla. who had come from Italy after the edict of Claudius banishing some Jews from the city of Rome: "Paul went to see them, and, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers" (Acts 18:2-3).

The Corinthian Congregation
A surprising amount of detail regarding the makeup of the Corinthian congregation may be gained from an understanding of the situation in Corinth. Paul said that not many of the new Christian church "were of noble birth" (1 Cor 1:26), but the new Roman city provided opportunities for those who were not of the nobility to acquire respectability and even wealth. It is apparent from 1 Corinthians that several members of the congregation had significant social status. Erastus, likely a Corinthian freedman who had made money in business, was the city treasurer, and he may also have been an aedile (an officer in charge of public works), one of the two highest city officials (Rom 16:23). Crispus and Sosthenes were rulers of the synagogue (Acts 18:8,17), though it is not clear that Sosthenes was in fact a member of the congregation. Crispus and Stephanas owned homes (1 Cor 1:14, 16), and the house of Gaius was large enough for the whole congregation to meet there (1 Cor 1:14). Phoebe, a deacon of the nearby church at Cenchreae, is called a "benefactor" or "patron" of Paul and of the church as a whole (Rom 16:1-2). The same term was used for women who were significant and generous donors to the Greek and Roman temples. It was not uncommon for women to serve as officers in organizations in the Greco-Roman world. Jewish women frequently even served as "rulers of the synagogue." (However, it is a matter of debate whether the title actually represented the holding of an office or was merely honorific, or perhaps was first used to describe an officeholder and was later expanded to include any significant patron of the synagogue.)

No doubt the percentage of the congregation who were members of the upper class was low (1 Cor 1:26), and not many were wealthy. But they were not impoverished, either; all were expected to contribute to an offering for the poor in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:2; 2 Cor 8:1-6). Nonetheless, the new church seems to have been guilty of the same social discrimination in their observance of the Lord's Supper as the Romans a banquets referred to by the Roman writers Pliny the Younger and Juvenal where the wealthier guests were said to eat better food than the poore guests and at different sittings. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church: "Whe you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. For when th time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, an one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not hav homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church ( God and humiliate those who have nothing?" (1 Cor 11:20-22). The Corinthian congregation usually met in small groups in private homes ("house churches"; "the church in the house of," 1 Cor 16:9), but occasionally they all met together ("the whole church," 1 Cor 14:23). Perhaps these individual meetings of smaller "cells" of the church may partly account for the partisan divisions so notorious in the Corinthian church: "Each one of you says, 'I belong to Paul,' or 'I belong to Apollos,' or'I belong to Cephas' [Peter], or 'I belong to Christ'"(l Cor 1:12).

Based on the size of the larger villas excavated in the vicinity of Corinth, no more than fifty persons could have gathered inside any one home, including the open atrium area. This would suggest that the total membership of the congregation at Corinth may have been little, if any, larger than fifty people, if indeed the "whole church" met sometimes at one house, such as that of Gaius (Rom 16:23).

The Body of Christ
Paul reminded the Corinthians that the church was the "body of Christ" and they were "members" of that body, each with valuable gifts, just as the several members of the human body have their own specialized functions and worth (1 Cor 12:12-27). In the museum at Corinth a curious collection of terra-cotta body parts can be seen, votive offerings dedicated at the Asclepeion in thanks for healing by Asclepius, Greek god of healing. Perhaps when Paul used the metaphor of the body he was thinking of the gratitude of those healed for each of the various parts of their bodies and the importance of each "member" to the functioning of the body as a whole.

Meat Offered to Idols
One particularly vexing problem for the young congregation was the question of meat offered to idols (1 Cor 8). During the great feast days so much meat was offered to the gods that the priests and the wealthy could not eat it all. The surplus therefore drove down the price of meat in the macellum, or meat market, providing the ordinary people a rare opportunity to obtain meat. For some in the church, termed by Paul "the strong," the matter was not a problem, as it was not to Paul himself. But to others, called "weak believers," to eat that meat was to engage in spiritual pollution. Paul says Christians may partake freely of the food without asking any questions. But if the host makes a point of saying it was meat from pagan sacrifice, the Christian should refuse it to avoid giving the wrong impression. Furthermore, if the faith of a weaker Christian would be harmed, the strong should not cause the destruction of that person's insecure faith by exercising their freedom to eat such meat. Love must be the controlling principle in the family of faith, the Body of Christ (lCor 8-ll).

Athletic Metaphors
It was in his writings to the Corinthians that Paul first used athletic metaphors. In the years 49 and 51 C.E. the Isthmian Games were celebrated at Corinth, and it is possible that Paul attended them. (Jews in Palestine generally avoided such pagan events, but in Asia Minor that does not seem to have been the case. At Miletus, for example, Jews had their own reserved seats in the theater.) Certainly Paul was in a sports-mad environment. In 1 Corinthians he uses metaphors from boxing, wrestling, and running (1 Cor 9:24-28), and he refers to the "perishable crown" awarded to the winning athletes. At various times in the Isthmian Games the victor's wreaths were made of pine or wilted celery (certainly a "perishable" crown), in contrast to the fresh celery used at the Nemean Games.

Immorality at Corinth
Paul writes to counter problems in the church concerning immorality within the membership (1 Cor 5:1-6:20). This certainly was not the first time in ancient history that Corinth had been linked to immoral conduct. Beginning with the rivalry between Athens and Corinth in the 4th century B.C.E., Athenian writers enjoyed lampooning Corinthians as especially degraded. Plato and Aristophanes even coined words to designate acts of immorality using its name, and a stock figure in Greek theater was the drunk wearing the Corinthian hat.

In antiquity a temple to Aphrodite stood on the higher east peak of the Acrocorinth, and Strabo claimed that a thousand sacred prostitutes served there. However, he had misunderstood an earlier reference to the women—mostly Corinthian matrons, but including prostitutes—who had entered the temple to pray during the wars with the Persians. Furthermore, no evidence of any structure large enough to accomodate so many people has ever been found on the Acrocorinth. Archaeological evidence found by the American School of Archaeology at (Athens indicates that the Temple of Aphrodite was approximately 33 feet wide by 52 feet long, insufficient for such a number. Of course, Corinth was a port town and prostitutes were numerous. But sacred prostitution was not a practice among the Greeks, as it was in certain religions of the Near East, and Corinth was likely no more and no less immoral than other Greco-Roman cities—including Athens.

Excerpted from A Guide to Biblical Sites in Greece and Turkey by Fant and Reddish.