THE
PULPIT COMMENTARY, EDITED BY THE
·VERY REV. H. D. M. SPENCE, D.D., DEAN OF GLOUOESTEB;
AND BY THE
UEV. JOSEPH S. EXELL, U.A.
WITH
INTRODUCTIONS BY THE
VERY REV. F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S., DEAN OF CANTERBURY RIGHT REV. H. CO'l'TERILL, D.D., F.R.S.E. VERY REV. PRINCIPAL J. TULLOCH, D.D. REV. CANON G. RAWLINSON, M.A. REV. A. PL Ul\IMER, M.A., D.D.
NEW EDITION.
Uonbon; KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., L~ 1898 .. THE FIRST EPISTLE . OF
PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS. INTRODUCTION.
ST. PAUL AT ComNTH.
ALONE, and much disheartened by the unfruitfulness of his sojourn, St. Paul left Athens after his memorable address in the Areopagus, and sailed to Corinth. In about five hours his vessel dropped anchor in the bright waters of the Saronic bay, under the pine woods and low green hills of Cenchrere. A walk of about eight miles along the valley of Hexamili brought him to the city, nestling under the hnge mass of it., citadel-the famous Acrocorinthus, which flung its dark shadow over each of the city's double seas. I1~ that city he spent more than a year and a half of his life. • The city of Corinth was no longer the old city so famous and so powerful in the days of the Peloponnesian War. After the decline of Sparta and Athens, she had held the hegemony of Greece, and had placed herself at the head of the Achrean league. In B.c. 196, Flamininus, after the battle of Cynocephalre, bad proclaimed at Corinth the independence ofHellas. But in IJ.c. 146 the city had been taken, its buildings cornmitteu to the flames, its treasures rifled, and its inhabitants massacred by L. Mummius. After it had lain in ruins fur a hundred years the prescient eye of Julius Cresar had recognized the beauty and importance of the site, ancl, wi.Bhing both to immortalize his own name and to call attention to his mythic descent from Venus-who, under her Greek name of Aphrodite, had been the patron goddess of the city-be rebuilt Corinth from its foundations; gave it the name of Julia Corinthus, and peopled it with a colony of ·1rnterans and freedmen. With the advantage of its two harbours, Lechreum and Cenchrere, and of the Diolkos, or land channel, over which ships were dragged to avoid the circumnavigation of Cape Malea, the town at once became important. It was "the bridie of the sea." Jews flocked to it for trado; Phconicfrrns, ii INTRODUCTION '1'0
for commerce; Romans, in or<lcr to visit a place so famous and to buy "antiqnit.ies," genuine and spurious, for the Roman market; men of pleasure, to avail themselves of the immomlity for which it soon became infamons. Greeks were attracted in large numbers by the renown of tho revfrecl Isthmian games. It was the Greeks who stamped their own character upon the majority of the inhabitants. They became proverbial for litigious i;;hrewdness, intellectual restlessness, and, above all, sensual indulgence. The mixture of classes and nationalit.ies in a seaport and emporium of commerce produces invariably an unfavourable effect, and Corinth-still continuing to bo in a certain sense "the Star of Hellas," and the emporium of half the world-became known as the Vanity Fair of the Roman empire; alike the London and the Paris of the first century after Christ. Into this city of six hundred thousand inhabitants-this seething mass of Jews. merchants, philosophers, ex-soldiers, retailers, and agents of vice- the lonely and suffering apostle found his way. With all their faults of head and of heart, these Greeks aroused his deepest interest. Evidently bis stay in Corinth impressed his imagination. He draws many illustrations from their stadium, their races, their boxing matches, their courts of justice, their theatres, their garlands of Isthmian pine ( eh. ix. 24, 27; iv. 9; ix. 25; 2 Cor. ii. 14-16; v. 10; ix. 25). He learnt to love the Corinthians with intense aff~ction, though he never bad io deal with any Church so inflated and BO immoral, so indifferent to his sufferings, so contemptuous towards his teaching, or so tolerant of the opposition and the calumnies of his personal enemies and rivals. ' The worst moral sins of the city were dishonesty, drunkenness, and above all, sensuality, which was directly due to the worship of Aphrodite Pandemos, and to the thousand female hieroduli, who were consecrated to her service. Against these sins again and again the apostle liften up his voice ( eh. v. 10; vi. 9-20; x. 7, 8; xi. 21; 2 Cor. vi. 14; vii. 1; xii. 21, etc.). The chief intellectual faults were a litigious spirit, restless speculation, eacrer 0 factiousness, and inflated vanity. To these St. Paul . would not pander for a moment. Perhaps because he had learnt experience from the failure of his more recondite and philosophical address at Athens, he determined to discard all human wisdom and eloque:nce, and to preach the gospel in its uttermost and humblest simplicity, knowing nothing am_ong them but Christ Jesus, yes, and Christ crucified (eh. i. 17, 23; ii. 1-5; 2 Cor. i. 18). The volatile suspicious character of the people made the apostle feel the necessity for being most carefully on his guard. He was determin.ed to set au exarnple of the most lofty and disinterested self-denial.. He had been trained to a trade, like every other Jewish boy, in accordance with a wise rule of the rabbis. His trade was the humble and mechanical trade of tent-making; and finding a Jewish compatriot named Aquila, who worked THE FIRST EPISTLE 'l'O THE CORINTHIANS. iii