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Begin Typing VigilCorinth, which had been destroyed by the Roman consul Mummius in 146 B.C., was refounded as a Roman colony a hundred years later by Julius Caesar. Its situation on the isthmus which connected the Greek mainland with the Peloponnese gave it such advantages that it quickly recovered its prosperity, and became in political and commercial importance the foremost city of Greece. Lying on the direct route between East and West, with the eastern port, Cenchreae, and a western port, Lechaeum, much traffic passed through it, smaller vessels being actually dragged across the isthmus from port to port. Its population was very mixed, Romans, Greeks, and representatives of many other races, including numerous Jews, composing it. The city was proverbial for its wealth and luxury, and a byword for its profligacy. It owed its knowledge of the gospel to Paul, who founded the church there. His work was very successful, and he left behind him a flourishing community. But the heathen antecedents of the majority and the vicious environment in which it lived, affected very gravely the spiritual and moral development of the church. Party spirit; a preference for showy gifts rather than solid commonplace morality; an intellectuahsm which was alike shallow and conceited, priding itself on its 'advanced' character and spurious liberalism; an astonishing complacency towards the vilest sexual depravity — were all too prevalent.
The letter was occasioned partly by a series of questions put to Paul in a letter from the church, partly by information as to abuses which he had received from private sources. The church was split into factions; there was an exceptionally bad case of incest; Christians were suing each other in heathen law-courts; the church asked his opinion on marriage problems, on meats offered to idols, on the veiling of women, on the Lord's Supper, on spiritual gifts, on the resurrection of the dead, on the collection for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. These conditions and problems will come before us in detail in our study of the epistle.
The genuineness of the epistle is attested by its very early quotation in Clement of Rome, probably about A.D. 95, and by the fact that the church in Corinth must have known whether it had received the letter or not. It could not have passed into general acceptance if the church, which had a continuous history, had been in a position to say such a letter is not in our archives, nor have we ever heard of it before. It is also sufficiently attested by its own internal evidence. It was not the first letter sent to the church by Paul, but this earlier letter no longer survives except possibly in a fragment (2 Cor. 6:14-17). Our epistle was written from Ephesus; the precise chronology is uncertain, perhaps it was in the spring of A.D. 55.
The letters attributed to Paul can be found on this timeline. This collection includes Paul's authentic episltes as well as the disputed writings.