Paul's letters to Corinth

After reading some of Paul's earliest letters, those to Galatia (Asia Minor) and Thessalonica (in Greece) we continue on to look at Paul's "first letter" to the church in Corinth.  Paul wrote at least four letters to the church(es) in Corinth but only two survive. There is an early letter that is alluded to in I Corinthians 5:9, then the letter we now call 1 Corinthians, the "first letter" to the Corinthians in our New Testament.  A third letter (a "painful letter") was apparently sent later and then a more moderate response that we record as 2 Corinthians.

The "first letter" (I Corinthians) was written from Ephesus, probably around 54-7 CE, about the time of Acts 19.  In this letter Paul expresses concerns about the divisions and practices of the church in Corinth and gives strong practical admonition on living as a Christian in a pagan society.  His advice is especially poignant, as the church in Corinth consisted mostly of pagan converts in a society that had little connection with the Jewish moral code.  Worship of Aphrodite was an excuse to engage in prostitution; sex and pornography were widely available on the internet (whoops, wrong millenium!) and the church struggled with the grace that Jesus offered.  Paul's advice oscillates between concern (morality is important!) and recognition that human beings are quick to rationalize their harmful behavior.  He tells the young church to not judge those "outside the church" but to have genuine moral standards within the church -- advice that is still good today.

A video summary on this "First Letter to the Church in Corinth", well done by Read Scripture Series is available here.  (I highly recommend this series!  It has a nice, simple introduction to almost every book of the Bible.)

There are a variety of study helps for reading Corinthians.  There is a nice introduction to the Corinthian letters at Blue Letter Bible and an introduction from Easton's Bible Dictionary is available here.  A full commentary (Catholic) is available here.  A commentary in "easy English" (for those with English as a second language, made available by a ministry of Wycliffe Associates UK) is available here.  See also a commentary here and a nice overview from Overview Bible.

"Google" search brings a lot of good resources to us (and a few bad ones.)  And, of course, there is always a Wikipedia article on I Corinthians....  

We will look carefully at I Corinthians over the next two weeks before moving on to the second letter and then back to a gospel.