Acts 18:1

Acts 18:1. Came to Corinth. The Corinth which was so intimately connected with the life and work of Paul was a new city, comparatively speaking. The old city of the same name, so renowned in Grecian story, had been completely destroyed by the Roman Mummius, and for a hundred years the capital of the ‘Achaean League' was left a heap of ruins. Its destruction was, indeed, so complete that it passed into a proverb. Some eighty-seven years before Paul's visit, Julius Cæsar rebuilt the fallen city, and made it a ‘Colonia' and at this period it was a city of the second rank in the Empire. The growth of the new city was strangely rapid; it soon surpassed its former opulence and splendour; it became a vast commercial centre, and was frequented by strangers from all parts. To a city so peopled, and possessing so great a trade, it can easily be believed that many Jews were attracted. The laxity of the morals of Corinth has been frequently commented upon; writers tell us there was, in this great and wicked city, one temple dedicated to Venus Pandemos, to which a thousand courtesans were attached.

It was in this great mercantile centre that Paul fixed his abode; and here for a year and a half he remained. His success in his missionary work was very marked; for in this dissolute city of traders from all parts of the world the ‘tent-maker' founded a great and influential community, obedient to the commands of Christ. In the records of the Church of the first days, the Corinthian community in numbers, in stedfastness, in devotion, take rank with Antioch and Ephesus, Thessalonica and Rome.