The Congregation Behind the Letters

Paul's Corinthian correspondence is the closest thing the New Testament has to a case file on a single congregation. It shows a community split into parties naming Paul, Apollos and Cephas; arguing over a lawsuit brought by one member against another before a civil court; divided over whether meat sold in the market after sacrifice could be eaten; and holding a common meal at which the wealthy ate and drank before the poorer members arrived, which Paul says makes the meal no longer the Lord's supper at all. It also records early instructions on the supper and on resurrection appearances that Paul says he received and passed on, which makes them older than the letter carrying them.

The community's enthusiasm for speaking in tongues and prophecy is met not with prohibition but with an argument for order and for intelligibility, and the chapter on love sits in the middle of that argument rather than standing alone as the wedding reading it has become. A second letter defends Paul's authority against rival apostles who evidently impressed the Corinthians more than he did.

An inscription from Delphi naming the proconsul Gallio, whom Acts places on the bench when Paul was brought before him, anchors the whole episode to the early 50s CE and is one of the firmest dates in Paul's life. Roughly forty years later a letter from the church at Rome, known as First Clement, was sent to Corinth to address a fresh quarrel in which the congregation had deposed its elders. It was still arguing.