Series on First Corinthians

The letter to the Corinthian Christians was composed by the apostle Paul and likely handwritten by Sosthenes, a brother in Christ.

Now lest you think, "Oh, wait a second now, are you saying that’s not inspired?" No. Paul and his words were inspired, his penmanship was not. Okay?

SR:
→ What I believe Douglas is getting at here is that since Paul includes Sosthenes in his opening statement, do we have to worry that that somehow means the letter is not inspired. The answer is, no, we don’t have to worry. The 1^st Corinthian letter is inspired regardless of whether Paul actually penned it or dictated it. He didn’t have to actually be the one who held the pen to paper for the letter to be inspired.

It appears that Paul dictated his letters. Why might that be?

Douglas goes on to say: Paul had a trouble with his eyes. Paul said in:

SR: → Paul had a "physical ailment." What might it have been? His condition was a trial to the Galatians. And they would have torn or plucked out their own eyes to give them to Paul…​ Do you think his ailment might have something to do with his eyes? Can you think of why Paul might of had trouble or an ailment with his eyes? What happened when Jesus appeared to him when he was persecuting Christians? He was blinded entirely for three days.

Then his sight was miraculously restored. Do you think that maybe while his sight was restored, it just maybe wasn’t like it was before he was blinded? Just thinking.

To emphasize this point, that Paul had eye trouble, he personally pens a sentence in closing out the Galatian letter in:

And supporting the idea that Paul dictated his letters and someone else transcribed them we see in the Roman letter:

And so Paul likely dictated some or most of this to Sosthenes to write down, likely written about AD 55. He would have been in the city of Ephesus at that point. That is, he sent the letter from Ephesus.

There had been divisive quarrels within the church at Corinth and Paul wanted to firmly address them. I mean, they were tearing each other apart. Paul wanted to address this.

Paul and Timothy were about to make another visit to them, so the apostle wanted them to be ready for when he arrived. Paul had been hearing bad-conduct reports from Corinth and felt it best to give them foreknowledge of his pending visit so they could get things in order, clean some house, before he shows up.

Corinth was a major city in the Peloponnese of Greece [which is the name of the mountainous southern peninsula of Greece. It’s connected to central Greece by the Isthmus of Corinth and had about 100,000 residents.]

The city lay at the southern foot of a mountain, Akrocorinth (which means "Upper Corinth," elevation 1883 feet). Atop this mountain was the past location of the Temple of Aphrodite.

Douglas says he’s been there. He walked up to the top to the temple area. He says, "That first time I walked up to the top of it I determined two things:

And it served as a location for their cult worship in that day. It sported a thousand sacred prostitutes in the temple of Aphrodite. And pagan worshipers, mostly sailors, because it was a big sailor port town, they would come into town and instead of going to: church of Christ meets here,

the challenge was to walk up the hill and sleep with some of the thousands of sacred prostitutes to worship Aphrodite. That’s how you worshipped it. It was driven by the flesh.

With that history in mind, Paul would say to them, later on in 1^st Corinthians, with the shadow of this temple coming up…​ [It] is on the east side of the city, which means, [as the sun moved across the sky,] the shadow of the temple would work its way across the city. He was likely in the shadow where the temple of Aphrodite was, when he says in…​

The original city of Corinth dates back to the 6^th BC. In 164 BC, Corinth joined together with many other cities to fight Roman domination, but lost, and as a result, was completely destroyed. It was rebuilt in [44 BC, shortly before the] assassination of Julius Caesar.

Corinthia was actually the name of the [city-]state in Greece. It was the double-ported, prized location of the Mediterranean, with the Saronic Gulf on the east and the Corinthian Gulf on the west. In order to save time, instead of traveling around the whole peninsula, Rome built a four mile road to physically move their fleet and freight by land [rolling over logs] from one harbor to another. It would save them considerable time.

Today though, the Greek government has carved a large canal there, allowing barges and large ships to never leave the water moving between the Saronic Gulf and the Corinthian Gulf (and vice-versa). It makes a big difference when you don’t have to sail around the whole peninsula.

Corinth was steeped in paganism. It was the primary location city and headquarters of the goddess Aphrodite. Immorality was rampant in Corinth.

(Here are a couple) ancient terms to describe things:

Because Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, & idol gluttons, [as Paul described them], To Cretanize meant to lie.

To Corinthianize meant to sleep with something. To be sexually immoral. If you were traveling the Roman empire anywhere and they wanted to talk about some type of debauchery, they’d say: to Corinthianize. That’s how well known [Corinth was] with sexual depravity. You walked into town, if you come into the east side there’s this big mural, it’s big. It is of Dionysius, the god of wine. If you were to stare at the eyes, stare at the eyes, and just look at the eyes, you’re going to see, it’s kind of [an optical illusion]. It’s a play on the eyes. And what they would do is they would stare at this mosaic and when they saw that illusion they’d say, "Oh Dionysius wants me to go get wasted.

Let’s go drink a bunch of wine." It was a money maker, huge money maker in town. Travelers and locals have fixed their eyes on this and all the other things that they had going on there. This was a sailor town, bordered on both east & west ports by sailors.

Paul brought Christianity to the location, in

This event occurred about AD 51, about four years before he wrote [this] book. He would stay for eighteen months on the initial visit, resulting in many converts, like Crispus and Gaius from the jewish synagogue.

This is further confirmed in

So Gaius was included in on those early converts too. And potentially even Priscilla and Aquila, a couple from Rome now in Corinth, might have…​ been converted there as well.

So Paul introduced the gospel in this pagan culture.

Now how do you think a bunch of pagans would respond when a bunch of people leave paganism and now are trying to walk the upright and moral life? They’re not going to respond well and those new converts are not going to be liked too much and we’re going to see [later] that Paul met some persecution.

Priscilla and Aquila were in Corinth because they were recently kicked out of Italy [by Emperor] Claudius' two-year decree, expelling all Jews out of Rome. Eventually, they could go back to Rome and that’s obviously what they did because now Paul is mentioning them as well when he’s writing to the Romans.

You know Paul wrote the book of Romans from this location (from Corinth).
It appears [Aquila and Priscilla] were with Paul when he departed Corinth for Asia and are with him in Ephesus when he writes this letter to the Corinthians.

They would prove to be great comrades, even making and selling tents together to pay their way.

In the opening of the letter, it appears that it was co-authored by both Paul and Sosthenes.

(And Douglas says here) If I have it in your notes "co-authored", it’s not co-authored, it’s "co-written", co-written by Sosthenes.

(SR:) Personally I would have said, "transcribed by Sosthenes, dictated by Paul."

Douglas continues:
It is also important to note that only Paul was the apostle, carrying with [that] the apostolic authority. So Christ used Paul to get the words to the paper. Don’t ever discount apostolic authority because there are actually people when they hear Sosthenes might have written it, they say, "Oh well, then what he said was good too." No, he didn’t say it, he just wrote it (ie transcribed it), that’s all he did.

Sosthenes was the same guy who was beaten in,

This persecution should be no surprise since his mentor, Paul, was persecuted from the very onset in Corinth.

The stone in Corinth, to which Paul was chained before Gallio, still stands to this day, being called Bema. Through archaeology they know where Gallio’s judgement seat & the Bema stone [are]. These are historical facts & events. There was a proconsul Gallio at the time that Paul would have been there. Paul was brought before him there in Corinth and chained to the stone.

Paul held firm to the concept that the world would ultimately persecute those who are preaching Christ’s gospel. He says in,

He would often say you’re going to be persecuted, I mean, the guy was killed for his faith and he knew he would be killed, but he was willing to die for it.

The letter was addressed to the church in Corinth. This is in contrast to the second letter which was addressed to the saints of Achia. Paul referred to them as the ekklesia (church), a phrase they would have clearly understood.

(I’ve always heard this word pronounced Ek-kla-see-a, but Strong’s Bible Dictionary shows the 2nd syllable has a long "e" sound as in kLE, not kLa, ek-kLE-see-a, anyway, Douglas continues)

When we hear church we think, "Oh it’s a building where people meet on Sunday." No, the word is ekklesia. klesia - call, hello and ek is out. The "called out."

When the Greeks had public meetings of the citizenship, the people were “called out,” ekklesia for the official city business.

Jesus used that word when he introduced his church in Matthew chapter 16 verse 18. He said, upon this rock I will build my ekklesia. It is the same terminology which Peter used, when he wrote “so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

WE are the church. WE were called out of darkness into the light of Christ and so don’t think of church as a noun. Don’t think of church as a building. Church is a people who have subjected themselves to the calling out by the gospel to Jesus Christ. That’s who we are.

Stop boiling it down to something on [Warren Rd]. You know, it says the church of Christ. In contrast, the denominational way to think of church is to think of it as a building. To think of it as a building or a group. Instead of defining it as a people who were once part of the lost and now are the saved.

Not only are they called out, but [they are also] sanctified. He used the word “saint”, claiming they were sanctified, meaning set apart. That is what saint means.

The dual-term “grace and peace” was a common salutation of greeting from the Jewish culture of the day. Grace comes from the word charis, God’s unmerited favor. Peace from eirene (pronounced, I believe, A-rE-nE) which is equivalent to the Hebrew term shalom (peace). This was the most common greeting of the day and also of Paul.

We sing that song: It is well. When peace like a river attendeth my way and sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say…​

Do [you] know what peace is? It is well, it is well with my soul. That’s when everything’s just a-okay. It’s that relaxing feeling before you go off to nana land at night where you are absolutely at peace.

That peace is being extended to you.