5.1 Licentious Corinth: Ancient Evidence

There is no question that Corinth at one point enjoyed the reputation of a “sex capital.” A wealth of sources attests to it. Famous exhibits include the verb κορινθιάζω (“to live in a Corinthian fashion,” i.e., “live as a prostitute or pimp,” or in the middle voice “to visit prostitutes”),Footnote ² the related noun κορινθιαστής (“pimp” or “whoremonger”),Footnote ³ and the use of “Corinthian girl” (Κορίνθια κόρη) as a euphemism for prostitute (Plato, Resp. 404d, Aristophanes, Lys. 91). Some of Corinth’s sex workers were familiar throughout the Greek world. Best known was Lais of Corinth, whose fame lasted for centuries. Whether sacred prostitution ever took place at Corinth is more doubtful. Several scholars have argued that sacred prostitution in the ancient world is a historiographical myth.Footnote ⁴ Strabo’s account of a massive temple of Aphrodite at Corinth with more than a thousand courtesans dedicated to the goddess (Geogr. 8.6.20 [C378]) is in any case unlikely. Older sources do not mention the surely noteworthy phenomenon of sacred prostitution on such a massive scale, and archaeological research fails to support Strabo’s claim of a temple that could hold so many individuals.Footnote ⁵ The general consensus at present is that there was no sacred prostitution at Corinth. This leaves open the possibility, considered likely by some, that sex workers actively participated in Aphrodite’s cult and dedicated some of their earnings to the goddess.Footnote ⁶

In the eyes of many New Testament scholars, such debates are neither here nor there, because Paul wrote during a later period. New Testament scholarship has placed great emphasis on the fact that Corinth was destroyed in 146 BCE and was rebuilt by Caesar as a Roman colony some one hundred years later, in or around 44 BCE. Evidence quoted by earlier generations of scholars to depict Corinth as a center of licentiousness is dismissed because it applies to Old Corinth, not to the city of Paul’s day.

A good deal of more recent scholarship maintains that New Corinth was no different from other ancient (port) cities when it came to prostitution. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor argued, in a discussion that would have considerable influence on subsequent scholarship, “it is doubtful that the situation at Corinth was any worse than in other port-cities of the eastern Mediterranean.”Footnote ⁷ E. P. Sanders similarly maintained that there is “no reason to regard first-century Corinth as more addicted to vice than other cities of similar size and circumstances.”Footnote ⁸ Was Roman Corinth indeed no different from other (port) cities? The answer is difficult to know. We do not, after all, have reliable statistics for much of anything in the ancient world, and we have little sense of how much sex work took place in Corinth and other ancient cities. Even when it comes to Old Corinth, solid data is unavailable. It is clear that Old Corinth was depicted as a center of prostitution, but this portrayal largely derives from Athenian sources, often hostile to Corinth.Footnote ⁹ Archaeology likewise cannot settle the question of the volume of sex work at Corinth because brothels (and other locales, like inns and taverns, in which prostitution frequently took place) are difficult to distinguish from private houses and other places of business. Graffiti and wall paintings that indicate meretricious activity have been richly preserved at Pompeii but not very well at Greek sites.Footnote ¹⁰

Perhaps a more useful approach, then, is to analyze whether Corinth still enjoyed a reputation as a “sex capital” in Paul’s day. We cannot be sure that there was significantly more prostitution in Corinth than elsewhere, but we can determine, to an extent, if the stereotypical understanding of Corinth as a sex capital survived the destruction of Old Corinth. For the interpretation of Paul’s letters, this is arguably more significant. In order to understand Paul’s response to the Corinthians, it is more pertinent what he and his contemporaries may have thought the inhabitants of Corinth were like, than any reconstruction of wie es eigentlich gewesen. Given the weight of scholarly opinion moving in the opposite direction, I will discuss a wide range of evidence of Corinth’s ongoing reputation for sexual license in what follows in this section. Readers should feel free to skip ahead to Section 5.2 when this point has been established to their satisfaction.

The scholarly claim that Paul’s Corinth was no different from other cities suggests that its reputation on this score was solely a thing of the past. The matter is not, however, quite so clear-cut. For one, the literature that attests to the reputation of Old Corinth remained popular throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Some of this evidence is available to us only because it has been preserved, fragmentarily, in a Roman-era source, Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae, a text to which we will return below. Generally speaking, texts from the classical era were preserved because they continued to be read and studied in later periods. These writings were not relegated to the archives but continued to influence later generations’ understanding of the world around them. It would hardly be unexpected, then, to see the ancient reputation of Corinth reflected in later sources. While it is true that the city was (partially) destroyed and rebuilt, it is doubtful that later readers of sources that lampooned or lambasted the Corinthians would always carefully distinguish between Old and New Corinth.

Any failure to clearly distinguish between Old and New Corinth would, moreover, be understandable, because the cities were in some crucial respects not very different. The notion that Corinth was completely demolished and its population annihilated has been revised in more recent scholarship. A certain degree of continuity between the two phases of the city cannot be denied. The new city incorporated ancient buildings that had remained in place and the inhabitants (some of whose families had never abandoned Corinth) revived the old cults, reinstated control of the Isthmian Games, and adopted images and symbols related to the Greek city.Footnote ¹¹ Roman-era inhabitants actively sought to encourage the notion that their city was a continuation of the ancient city. As Benjamin Millis has argued, “the early colonists of Roman Corinth, whatever their origins, were at pains to emphasize and promote their status not as interlopers but as legitimate successors and inheritors of the Greek city.”Footnote ¹² This perspective was accepted by some outsiders. Favorinus in various ways connected the Roman-era Corinthians with those of the classical past and even referred to the latter as their ancestors (πρόγονοι, Dio, Or. 37.1, 7, 16).Footnote ¹³ The later inclusion of Corinth in Hadrian’s Panhellenion suggests that this perspective was more widely shared since membership appears “to have required the demonstration (or at least plausible assertion) of a community’s Greek ancestry.”Footnote ¹⁴ Others, however, like Pausanias, disputed that the Roman-era inhabitants were true Corinthians.Footnote ¹⁵ “Corinthianness” was evidently malleable: rather than a clear-cut distinction between Greek and Roman Corinth, the relation to the classical past and, concomitantly, Hellenic identity, was subject to negotiation.

Importantly for present purposes, a substantial degree of continuity is apparent between the two phases of the city in its ongoing association with Aphrodite, among whose many ephitets were Aphrodite Hetaira (“courtesan”) and Aphrodite Porne (“prostitute”).Footnote ¹⁶ The goddess was of central importance in Roman Corinth, as she had been in Old Corinth.Footnote ¹⁷ At least three sanctuaries within the Roman city were devoted to her cult, with two more in the nearby harbor towns of Lechaion and Cenchreae.Footnote ¹⁸ These were fitting locations for the shrines, because the goddess was associated with the sea as much as with sex. The most famous of her sanctuaries was her temple on the summit of the Acrocorinth. Although prominently situated, it was of modest dimensions (ca. 10 x 16m, appropriately called a ναΐδιον by Strabo, Geogr. 8.6.21 [C379]). Its fame in the Roman world was due in part to its appearance on many Corinthian coins. Donald Engels argues that these Roman-era coins “may be regarded in part as promotional devices,” which reminded “the bearer of one kind of entertainment all too freely available in the ‘City of Aphrodite.’”Footnote ¹⁹

Another shrine of interest is the structure known as Temple F on the West Terrace, built in the late first century BCE or early to mid-first century CE, and most likely dedicated to Venus/Aphrodite, suggesting that the cult of Aphrodite enjoyed unabated support around that time.Footnote ²⁰ Likewise relevant in connection to Paul’s stay in the city is the tomb of the famous courtesan Lais. Pausanias writes that if one goes up the road to Corinth from Cenchreae (as Paul almost certainly did, cf. Rom 16:1), one encounters “a temple of Aphrodite Melaenis (Black Aphrodite) and the grave of Lais, upon which is set a lioness holding a ram in her fore-paws” (Descr. 2.2.3–2.2.4). In explaining the significance of this tomb, Pausanias writes that the famous courtesan “so won the admiration of the Corinthians that even now they claim Lais as their own” (2.2.5).Footnote ²¹ If the Corinthians continued to do so in the second century, when Pausanias wrote, it stands to reason that they did so in Paul’s day as well. Lais lived in the fifth century BCE, so Pausanias’ assertion that the Roman-era Corinthians claimed her as their own (ἀμφισβητεῖν σφᾶς) is another indication that they understood themselves as the rightful heirs of the population of the classical era. A final pertinent artifact that Paul may have encountered as he reconnoitered the city is a votive plaque to Aphrodite listing the names of sex workers who offered prayers to the goddess during the invasion of the Persians. This plaque was still visible during the Roman era according to Athenaeus, Deipn. 13.573d.Footnote ²² Roman Corinth remained, then, as the second-century CE orator Aelius Aristides put it, “clearly Aphrodite’s city” (σαφῶς τε Ἀφροδίτης τὴν πόλιν, Or. 46.25). While there was nothing exclusive about the relationship between Corinth and Aphrodite (the goddess was worshiped elsewhere, and the Corinthians obviously worshiped other deities as well), there was undeniably a special connection between the goddess and this city, which remained intact after the partial destruction and rebuilding of Corinth.

Evidence that is more difficult to assess is Roman-era sources that make reference to Corinthian licentiousness but do so (primarily) in relation to the classical past. Dio Chrysostom, Or. 8.5, for instance, mentions the presence of courtesans at the Isthmian Games near Corinth, but the passage is set in the time of Diogenes of Sinope (fourth century BCE). Plutarch, Amat. 21 (Moralia 768a) cites “the great army of courtesans” (τῶν ἑταιρῶν μέγας στρατός) in Corinth, but the context is a story about Lais, the famous courtesan of the classical period. Maximus of Tyre, Or. 32.10 refers to the Corinthians as “hedonists” (Κορινθίων τῶν φιληδόνων) and suggests that the presence of courtesans was characteristic of the city (32.2), but the context is a debate about pleasure (ἡδονή) that draws heavily on classical exempla. While these texts are evidence that Corinth’s reputation as a center of prostitution remained well known in the Roman period, they do not provide direct evidence that this reputation was thought to apply to Roman Corinth as well.Footnote ²³

The same is true of Strabo’s account from the first century BCE, which, as noted above, refers for the most part to the classical period. Strabo mentions Corinth again when describing Komana, which he deems “a small Corinth”:

Strabo uses aorist and imperfect tenses to describe what transpired in Corinth, perhaps suggesting that the heyday of Corinth as a sex capital lay in the past, though this is arguably to invest the choice of tenses with undue temporal significance. The proverb “not for every man is the voyage to Corinth” was, in any case, current in Strabo’s own day and is explained by him with reference to the costs associated with Corinth’s prostitutes.Footnote ²⁴ Strabo had already mentioned this saying in Geogr. 8.6.20 (C378), in a passage that identified prostitution as the main source of Corinth’s famous wealth.Footnote ²⁵ The proverb is further attested, with minor variations, in a range of Roman-era sources in Latin and Greek, which indicates that it was well known and widespread. Aulus Gellius fittingly dubs it a “frequens … adagium” (Noct. Att. 1.8). Ancient explanations of the proverb regularly cite Corinthian prostitution, which suggests that the view of Corinth as a center of prostitution remained in effect.Footnote ²⁶ Yet in other instances, the saying is used to convey the view that some things can only be accomplished by some, not by everyone, and there is no immediate connection with prostitution.Footnote ²⁷

Other evidence more directly points to Corinth’s ongoing reputation in this regard. (Pseudo-)Plutarch, Proverbs used by the Alexandrians 92 mentions the saying: “you seem about to sell ‘piggie’ in Acrocorinth” and explains it as follows: “Regarding the dissolute women available by the hour, i.e., you seem to be about to hire yourself out in Corinth. For the female part is called ‘piggie.’”Footnote ²⁸ It is uncertain how common this proverb was, but other than the saying “not for every man is the voyage to Corinth,” it draws a direct connection between Corinth and prostitution.Footnote ²⁹ Plutarch’s authorship is debated, with some scholars arguing the text goes back to the grammarian Seleucus of Alexandria.Footnote ³⁰ Since Plutarch and Seleucus both lived during the first century CE, the evidence in either case suggests that during this period people continued to associate Corinth with prostitution.Footnote ³¹

Also from the first century CE is the following passage from Martial that further reinforces the association between Corinth and (venal) sex:

The point of this epigram is that it is unfitting for Laelia, who has an impeccable Roman pedigree, to speak and act in a Greek – specifically Corinthian, and therefore whorish – fashion.Footnote ³² When Martial writes “you may learn all Corinth by heart,” this refers to “all the Greek erotic language in the prostitute’s repertoire.”Footnote ³³ The connection with Corinth and prostitution is strengthened by the closing reference to Lais, the famous Corinthian courtesan.Footnote ³⁴ While Lais lived in the classical past, this passage suggests that Corinth still functioned as a byword for prostitution in the first century.

A speech of uncertain date by Favorinus (c. 85–160) offers further support for the hypothesis that Corinth remained popularly associated with sexual license.Footnote ³⁵ Alluding to a sexual scandal of some kind in which he appears to have been involved, Favorinus denies the charges by drawing on Corinth’s reputation. Referring to himself in the third person he asks his Corinthian audience:

Favorinus’ point is that the accusation lacks credibility since the Corinthians know that he did not engage in sexual impropriety even when he was in Corinth, the “city favoured by Aphrodite,” where there is plenty of ἄδεια (“license,” “impunity”) and συγγνώμη (“excuse,” “pardon”), where – as we might say – “everything goes.” Favorinus argues that it is implausible that someone who stayed on the straight and narrow in Corinth would abandon that course once in Rome, a city characterized, in contrast, by lawfulness.

The notion of Corinth as a city of prostitution and erotic desire is also found in the Isthmian oration (Or. 46) by Aelius Aristides given at Corinth in 156 CE,Footnote ³⁶ a significant part of which is in effect a panegyric on the city (par. 20–31):

Aristides praises the city’s abundance of ἵμερος, which denotes “desire, longing, lust,” regularly with an amorous connotation.Footnote ³⁸ That this is the sense here as well is indicated by the close association with ἔρως (“love, passion, desire,” or perhaps here: “objects of desire”).Footnote ³⁹ The plentiful lusts and desires that Corinth has on offer have a “chaining” (ἀναδήσασθαι) and “inflaming” (φλέγεσθαι) effect on “everyone.” Corinth owes this captivating quality to Aphrodite, a connection artfully established by Aristides by assigning to the city the very characteristics (“love, desire, friendly converse, and allurement so as to steal away the mind”) that are said to belong to the goddess’ bridle in Homer, Iliad 214–219.

A final piece of evidence to be considered here is found in Athenaeus’ Deiphnosophistae, a text from the late second/early third century CE. The interlocutors at the fictive symposium that forms its subject have a great deal to say about prostitution at Corinth, much of it pertaining to the classical period. An exception to this antiquarian focus appears in the context of a debate between two participants, the grammatikos Myrtilus and the philosopher Cynulcus.Footnote ⁴⁰ The former, although originally from Thebes, presently works in the city of Corinth, and in Cynulcus’ eyes embodies everything that is wrong with the city (13.567a):

Myrtilus’ métier at Corinth is described by Cynulcus as teaching the art of love (ἐρωτοδιδάσκαλος)Footnote ⁴² and writing about prostitutes (πορνογράφος).Footnote ⁴³ Further developing the portrayal of Myrtilus as a lurid Corinthian, Cynulcus quotes a fragment from the Middle Comedy poet Eubulus:Footnote ⁴⁴ “I went to Corinth. Although I had quite a good time there eating an herb called Ocimon (‘Basil’), it disagreed with me; and I chattered away my tunic there” (13.567c). Cynulcus relates Myrtilus’ explanation of this passage: “What a fine Corinthian sophist, who explains to his students that Ocimon is a courtesan’s name!”

Myrtilus recognizes that his association with Corinth plays a key role in Cynulcus’ denunciation of his person and begins his response by saying, “I will take as my starting point the lovely city of Corinth, since you criticized me for working as a sophist there” (ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τῆς καλῆς Κορίνθου, ἐπειδή μοι τὴν αὐτόθι σοφιστείαν ὠνείδισας, 13.573c). The speech that follows features a variety of quotations from classical sources that attest to the prominent place of sex workers in Corinthian society and their connection with Aphrodite. The depiction of Myrtilus as a sex-crazed Corinth-based sophist, and the attack against him on the basis of his association with Corinth, offers further proof that Corinth continued to have a reputation in this regard in Athenaeus’ time.

In short, whatever the sociohistorical reality, which in many ways remains inaccessible to us, Roman Corinth was regularly viewed as a place that offered lust and passion in abundance, to paraphrase Aelius Aristides. It is reasonable to assume that Paul was familiar with this aspect of the city’s reputation. He may well have been familiar directly or indirectly with some of the claims made about Corinth in classical and postclassical texts and would almost certainly have become aware of its reputation when he traveled to the city and experienced Aphrodite’s local prominence.

5.2 Licentious Corinth: Pauline Evidence

Porneia (“illicit sex”) and cognate terms appear seventeen times in the undisputed letters, all but two of them (Gal 5:19, 1 Thess 4:3) in the Corinthian correspondence.Footnote ⁴⁵ While Paul suspected non-Jews in general of licentiousness (see Chapter 3, pp. 45–55), the Corinthians evidently stood out even among them. The earliest glimpse we catch of Paul’s interaction with the believers in Corinth already points in this direction. Paul mentions a Previous Letter in 1 Cor 5:9: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons” (Ἔγραψα ὑμῖν ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι πóρνοις). Whatever else this letter contained, it evidently featured a warning against associations with pornoi. The word pornos, in classical Greek used for male prostitutes, has a broader sense in Paul, which reflects the broadening of the semantic field of porneia in Second Temple Jewish literature. Whereas porneia generally referred to “prostitution” in classical and Hellenistic Greek, Jewish authors around the turn of the common era subsumed various kinds of sexual activity under this header, including adultery, incest, and exogamy.Footnote ⁴⁶

Even before writing the letter now known as 1 Corinthians, Paul was evidently concerned about “sexually immoral people” at Corinth. Yet his warnings against these individuals proved insufficiently clear, as he found himself forced to explain in his subsequent missive, now known as 1 Corinthians, that he did not mean “the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world” (1 Cor 5:10). What he had meant, he insists, is that Christ-following Corinthians should not “associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister (τις ἀδελφòς ὀνομαζóμενος) who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber” (5:11). This clarification was prompted by the failure of the Corinthians to act against one of their own who engaged in porneia (5:1). Perhaps some Corinthians reasoned that Paul’s requirement to shun sexually immoral persons in general was an unreasonable and impracticable demand.Footnote ⁴⁷ Be this as it may, Paul clarifies that this requirement only applies to fellow Christ-believers and that the community has a duty to act against so-called brothers or sisters who are pornoi but not against anyone else (5:12–13).

The details of the new case of porneia are unclear. Paul writes: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality (porneia) among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife” (5:1). Scholarly reconstructions of what had taken place draw heavily on arguments from silence. Since Paul does not refer to the woman as the son’s own mother, there is no blood relation. Since Paul does not call her his stepmother (μητρυιά) and does not use the word μοιχεία (“adultery”) to describe the relationship, she was no longer married to the man’s father; they were either divorced or he had passed away. Since Paul does not refer to the relationship as a marriage (γάμος), they were not formally married, even though the expression “having a wife” (γυναῖκα … ἔχειν) signals something more than a one-off encounter.Footnote ⁴⁸ Since Paul does not pronounce judgment on the woman (but only on the man), she was not a member of the community (5:3, cf. 5:12–13).

It is questionable how eloquent Paul’s silence really is and if his failure to use certain words can carry the weight interpreters assign to it.Footnote ⁴⁹ In the case of Paul’s failure to punish the woman, for instance, the theory that she is not a member of the community is but one possible scenario. The egalitarian perspective it assumes (the man and woman bear equal responsibility for the relationship) does not comfortably fit the Roman patriarchal context. Perhaps the woman is not condemned because she did not enter into this arrangement of her own volition but was forced to do so by the “son,”Footnote ⁵⁰ possibly for financial reasons.Footnote ⁵¹

While it is clear that Paul condemns the man, he focuses his anger on the community, scolding them for their lackluster response and failure to condemn and exclude the person committing this act of porneia (5:2, 5:6). Despite Paul’s previous warnings against pornoi, the Corinthians had failed to take proper measures when one of their own revealed himself to be such a person.

Following his instructions on how to deal with pornoi in general and this person in particular (5:3–13), Paul turns to another issue, a court case between believers before a secular court (6:1–11). If and how this connects to the incestuous relationship of 5:1 is debated,Footnote ⁵² but it is notable that Paul provides in this chapter a list of “wrongdoers” (ἄδικοι) that elaborates on the list of people to be avoided in the previous chapter (6:9–10; 5:10–11). Both lists begin with pornoi, suggesting that both issues were related, on some level, to illegitimate sex.

This impression is strengthened by the fact that porneia returns to center stage in the immediately following section, 1 Cor 6:12–20. In this part of the letter, it seems clear that the kind of illegitimate sex that Paul has in mind is prostitution. Paul asks rhetorically: “Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute (πóρνη)? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her?” (6:15–16). Paul’s failure to cite a specific case has led some to suggest that he still has the relationship of 5:1 in mind.Footnote ⁵³ It is in any case clear, though, that 6:12–20 is broader in scope. Paul does not restrict his comments to the specific case of 5:1 but offers a more general warning against porneia. Paul was evidently unconvinced that the man of 5:1 was the only one wont to engage in porneia, even if he does not accuse anyone directly of visiting prostitutes. If all Corinthian Christ-followers had been firm in their resolve against porneia, and the problem only pertained to a single rotten apple, the case could have been closed after 5:1–13.

Further suggesting that Paul conceived of porneia as a problem for a considerable group of Corinthians are two statements in this pericope frequently taken to reflect the Corinthians’ point of view rather than Paul’s: “all things are lawful for me” (6:12) and “food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” (6:13).Footnote ⁵⁴ If that is correct, some of the Corinthians may have argued that visiting pornai was acceptable. It is also possible, however, that Paul is parodying their position and ridiculing their appeal to freedom by suggesting that, if applied absolutely, it would result in justifying visits to a bordello.Footnote ⁵⁵

The matter was certainly not merely hypothetical, though. Paul viewed porneia as a clear and present danger to the Corinthians. This is confirmed in the letter’s next section, where Paul writes that “because of cases of sexual immorality (διὰ δὲ τὰς πορνείας), each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband” (1 Cor 7:2). The plural instances of porneia to which Paul refers perhaps include the cases discussed in the previous chapters, but are likely broader in scope, since Paul argues on this basis for the general prudence of marriage. Paul made this statement in response to the view of some of the Corinthians that “it is well for a man not to touch a woman” (7:1). They had expressed this view in a letter to Paul, which may well have been occasioned by the Previous Letter, mentioned in 5:9. As Joseph Fitzmyer points out, Paul’s advice “not to associate with sexually immoral people” in the Previous Letter presumably “raised questions in the minds of some Corinthian Christians about various topics, such as, ‘Is sexual intercourse to be allowed at all?’ ‘Is it right for a man to touch his wife?’”Footnote ⁵⁶ The reference to instances of porneia in 7:2 may be relevant in this connection. In the Previous Letter, Paul insisted that the Corinthians should steer clear of pornoi, but since the porn-word group could cover a wide range of activities, ambiguity remained about the kind of sexual activity Paul was concerned about. It stands to reason that some would have concluded that it might be better to avoid all forms of sexual interaction, thus leading to the view that “it is well for a man not to touch a woman” (7:1). Paul’s response that marriage is advisable because of instances of porneia (7:2) clarifies that marriage (and intercourse within the context of marriage, 7:3–5) does not constitute or facilitate porneia but rather guards against it.Footnote ⁵⁷

Paul’s next mention of a porneia-cognate appears in the context of a discussion of the consumption of idol meat (1 Cor 8–10). Toward the end of this discussion, Paul cites the example of the wilderness generation of Israel (10:1–5) and derives from their conduct a number of exhortations for the Corinthians, including: “We must not indulge in sexual immorality (μηδὲ πορνεύωμεν) as some of them did” (10:8). Given the broader context of eating idol meat, and the immediately preceding injunction not to become idolators (10:7), it is possible, though by no means necessary, that the porneia that Paul has in mind entails sexual activities in cultic contexts.

The final mention of porneia appears in a section of 2 Corinthians in which Paul discusses his third visit to Corinth. Paul fears that “when I come again, my God may humble me before you, and that I may have to mourn over many who previously sinned and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and licentiousness that they have practiced” (πενθήσω πολλοὺς τῶν προημαρτηκóτων καὶ μὴ μετανοησάντων ἐπὶ τῇ ἀκαθαρσίᾳ καὶ πορνείᾳ καὶ ἀσελγείᾳ ᾗ ἔπραξαν, 2 Cor 12:21). That ἀκαθαρσία, πορνεία, and ἀσελγεία all refer to sexual malfeasance is suggested by the singular article and singular relative pronoun governing the triad.Footnote ⁵⁸ Paul had indicated in the previous verse that he was concerned about various forms of disunity in the community as well but only with respect to this trio of sexual sins does he worry that “many” who engaged in this previously will not have repented even when he visits Corinth for the third time. This suggests that from Paul’s perspective, a substantial share of the Corinthian community had been committing sexual sins of various sorts during much or even all of the time that he had known them.Footnote ⁵⁹ Indeed, not much seems to have changed since Paul penned 1 Cor 5:1–2; then as now, their sexual malfeasance constituted grounds for mourning (πενθέω, used by Paul only in these two contexts) and then as now, serious punitive measures appeared necessary (1 Cor 5:3–5; 2 Cor 13:2). It is significant that Paul affirms in 2 Cor 12:21 that these people actually practiced (ἔπραξαν) what he considered sexual malfeasance. Elsewhere, with the exception of the individual of 1 Cor 5:1, it is not entirely certain if anyone actually engaged in porneia or if Paul was warning against what he regarded as a potential problem.

In sum, from Paul’s earliest interactions with the Corinthians (the letter mentioned in 1 Cor 5:9) up to his final letter (or one of his final letters),Footnote ⁶⁰ porneia presented a significant challenge. Paul discussed porneia more frequently in these letters than anywhere else and at times did so apparently unprompted by any specific incident.

5.3 Stereotypical Assumptions about Corinth in Paul’s Correspondence

I have argued that Corinth’s reputation for sexual license continued into the Roman period, even if it was not quite as prominent as during the classical era. We have also seen that Paul, in his epistolary interactions with the believers in Corinth, was unusually concerned about porneia. Rather than dismissing this overlap as merely coincidental, I suggest that it is more plausible that the exceptionally high number of warnings against sexual license in letters to a city with a notable reputation in this regard reflects the influence of stereotypical assumptions about Corinth and its inhabitants.

Paul did not have objective access to “what really happened” in Corinth. Basic though this point may be, much mainstream New Testament scholarship still regularly assumes or implies that we can reconstruct the reality that Paul responded to by “mirror reading” his letters. Yet what that mirror reflects is, at best, Paul’s perception of what happened, not any “bare facts.”Footnote ⁶¹ This is an important distinction, because there is no question that substantial variety exists in how human beings perceive the same data and that their perceptions are influenced by a variety of factors, stereotypes prime among them.

The social-cognitive studies discussed in Chapter 2 suggest that people perceive and evaluate the same actions very differently depending on the perceived identity of the protagonist. I argued that the methodological point to be derived from this is that if the evaluation of an individual closely matches the stereotypical view of the social group to which they are assigned, this stereotype has likely exerted influence on the perceiver. If a person is deemed particularly aggressive, and a stereotype of aggression related to that person’s ethnic identity obtains in the cultural context of the observer, it is reasonable to assume that the evaluation of the action has been impacted by this stereotype. Even if the act was aggressive from the perspective of the protagonist, the observer is likely to view it as relatively more aggressive.

In the case of the Corinthian correspondence too, there is significant overlap between stereotype (Corinth as a center of sexual license) and perception (Paul’s understanding/fear that porneia was a widespread issue), which suggests that the former impacted the latter. Impact in this context means that while the perception is based on certain facts, the way in which these facts have been interpreted and the significance that is attached to them have been influenced by stereotypical assumptions. Put differently, we may ask if Paul would have offered a similar assessment and paid an equal amount of attention if the same events had transpired in a different city. Would Paul have included so many reminders about the dangers of porneia, even when not immediately prompted by concrete problems? Would Paul have responded similarly forcefully (“hand him over to Satan!”) if something along the lines of 1 Cor 5:1 had happened elsewhere? Or was he determined to respond forcefully especially in this Corinthian context, which was full of desires and lusts, ready to chain and inflame people (so Aelius Aristides)?

That Paul was personally familiar with the Corinthians does not much matter. Stereotypes do not vanish once people establish a degree of familiarity.Footnote ⁶² They are usually adjusted only to the extent that is required to accommodate conflicting information. Paul’s perception of the Corinthian believers, then, was not simply the accumulation of his personal encounters with them but a more complex equation that involved prior expectations about the city and its population, adapted and adjusted based on his experiences with them.

As noted previously, it is plausible that Paul was to some degree familiar with the reputation of Corinth before he first arrived there. Manfred Beller reminds us that “when people from various countries and cultures meet each other … there is no such thing as a pristine encounter. Our attitudes are culturally determined.”Footnote ⁶³ When Paul made his way around Corinth, he encountered much that would have confirmed culturally determined expectations about the licentiousness of Corinth’s populace: the central place of Aphrodite in the city’s architecture, the propagation of her cult on the city’s coins, the respect paid to the tomb of a prostitute from the past, and perhaps a plaque with the names of sex workers on display for the general public. Any perceived sexual malfeasance by the Corinthians would have reinforced Paul’s sense of the city and its inhabitants as licentious. Even if it was not objectively worse than in other cities, this behavior would be more readily noticed by Paul and assumed greater significance for him under the influence of his stereotypical assumptions about the city and its populace. This would then explain why he warned so forcefully and frequently against porneia, even if there was not always some specific issue or incident to elicit these admonitions.

Paul also lacked direct access to the Corinthian situation in the sense that he relied on reports from others. Apart from the letter from the Corinthians (1 Cor 7:1), he was informed about Corinthian goings-on by “the people of Chloe” (1 Cor 1:11), visitors like Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus (1 Cor 16:17), and his aides Timothy and Titus (1 Cor 16:10–11; 2 Cor 7:13). That information reached Paul via a multistep process means increased opportunity for stereotype influence. The perception of the situation at Corinth of at least some of these informants may well have already been influenced by Corinth’s reputation, to the effect that the reports that Paul received placed a relatively strong emphasis on (potential) sexual malfeasance.Footnote ⁶⁴ Corinth’s reputation, then, may have effected the amplification of the problem of porneia in the Christ-community at two subsequent stages: in the perception of informants like Timothy and in the interpretation of their reports by Paul.

While the scenario that Paul’s emphasis on porneia is to be explained at least in part in terms of the effects of Corinth’s stereotypical reputation on this score is plausible, it is admittedly ultimately impossible to prove. The different evaluation of the same action performed by a white and a Black protagonist in the study by Duncan could only be demonstrated in the controlled environment of an academic experiment.Footnote ⁶⁵ In real life contexts, it is much more difficult to know to what extent stereotypical expectations have impacted the evaluation of a person as, for example, aggressive or unreliable, or if this evaluation was based on a relatively accurate perception of a social situation. Further complicating the matter is the possibility that Corinth’s reputation for licentiousness attracted people intent on “selling piggy” (or purchasing it), to the effect that this reputation may have functioned akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Arguably, then, Paul’s emphasis on porneia is to be explained as the result of a variety of factors. There may have been comparatively much sexual license in the city, and there were some real instances of porneia among the believers, which under influence of stereotypical expectations Paul and his sources noted more quickly (and along the lines of which they interpreted ambiguous behavior), and to which Paul therefore accorded particular significance in his interactions with the Corinthians.

5.4 Reception History

Awareness of the considerable influence of stereotypes on how we perceive and evaluate social situations cautions against a straightforward equation of social reality with description, such as we have, in rhetorically inflected form, in Paul’s letters. Throughout the history of interpretation, readers have, however, taken Paul’s references to porneia as dependable evidence of the conditions of social life at Corinth. When combined with evidence from the classical period, this intimated to many of Paul’s interpreters that the city remained an epicenter of depravity over the course of many centuries, suggesting that the Corinthians suffered from “engrained vices” that remained stable in the longue durée.Footnote ⁶⁶

Such assumptions are reflected in many colorful descriptions of the city by Pauline scholars, some of the finest examples of which date to the Victorian age. Corinth was “the very metropolis of refined debauchery,”Footnote ⁶⁷ so “conspicuous for its depravity,” and home to such “abysmal profligacy” that it warranted the name “new Gomorrah.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Interpreters were aware of the chequered history of Corinth but considered this irrelevant as far as the city’s essential character was concerned. Frederick William Robertson (1816–53), who enjoyed considerable popularity in the nineteenth century, especially posthumously, described it as “the hotbed of the world’s evil, in which every noxious plant, indigenous or transplanted, rapidly grew and flourished … Corinth now in the apostle’s time, as in previous centuries, became a proverbial name for moral corruption.”Footnote ⁶⁹

Such dim depictions of Corinth were rhetorically powerful and theologically useful: Paul’s letter evinced that the rays of the Gospel’s light could reach even into the darkest of places.Footnote ⁷⁰ Yet it would be unduly reductive to explain its appearance solely in utilitarian terms. It came about primarily as a result of reading Paul’s Corinthian correspondence in light of classical depictions of the city and vice versa, in a kind of interminable hermeneutical feedback loop.Footnote ⁷¹ Classical portrayals of the Corinthians as particularly licentious led the Pauline interpreter to readily notice and emphasize this element in Paul’s letters, and awareness of Paul’s emphasis on porneia had a similar effect on how the classical evidence was construed. Paul’s attention to porneia rendered classical accounts about Corinth’s sexual license relevant and confirmed their accuracy for many New Testament scholars.

The problem of porneia in Corinth, then, was arguably amplified twice or even thrice: not only Paul’s sources and Paul himself may have been particularly attentive to (potential) porneia as a function of their prior understanding of Corinth (as argued in Section 5.3), Pauline interpreters, likewise aware of the city’s reputation for sexual license, also paid outsize attention to claims about illicit sex in Paul’s correspondence. The effect of these various interpretive moments was cumulative and resulted in the titillating portrayals of Corinth as an utterly depraved city, some representative samples of which were quoted above. As a result, although Paul never in fact claimed that Corinth was a cesspool, his letters contributed substantially to the construction and distribution of this understanding of the city and its inhabitants.

What effect did the combined image of classical and Pauline Corinth exert on how modern interpreters viewed the contemporary world? In contrast to the alleged descendants of the Galatians (variously identified as the Irish, French, Welsh, Scots, and Germans) and contemporary “pagans” (with the “discovery” and exploration of unfamiliar continents, there seemed more than ever), the Corinthians were not a significant population group in the nineteenth century. The city suffered considerably during the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and had to be rebuilt after the earthquake of 1858.Footnote ⁷² There were nonetheless many “Corinthians” to be found in the nineteenth century, because the word had made its way into the English language as a synonym for a profligate or licentious person.Footnote ⁷³ It is difficult to say if this materially impacted how actual Corinthians were perceived, but the use of the demonym in this manner did encourage ethnic stereotyping inasmuch as it conveyed that a population group could be reduced to an essential trait and that this trait was shared by everyone with this ethnic or geographic background. This usage of “Corinthian” can be traced back to Plato and Aristophanes (Corinthian girl), but the popular image of Corinth presupposed here was likely due to a significant extent to the letters of Paul as they were expounded by many of his modern interpreters.

The essentialist understanding of Corinth(ians) as licentious may seem difficult to sustain given the city’s destruction and refoundation in a different garb, not to mention the dynamic nature of its populace due to the continuous influx of people via its two ports.Footnote ⁷⁴ In the mind of some of Paul’s nineteenth-century interpreters, it was, however, precisely the changing nature of the Corinthian public that explained the city’s consistently low morality.Footnote ⁷⁵ The licentiousness of Corinth had to do with the “mixture of races.”Footnote ⁷⁶ Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford and later Dean of Westminster, wrote in his introduction to 1 Corinthians that Paul faced in that city “the mixed populations and mixed belief of a degenerate race.”Footnote ⁷⁷ It was broadly agreed that race-mixing led to bad morals. As an anonymous author put it in the London Quarterly Review of 1888: “In social life [at Corinth] there was visible the corruption which nearly always springs from the mixture of races, for it is a sadly established fact that such intermixture results in the mutual infection with strange vices rather than the communication of new and unwonted virtues.”Footnote ⁷⁸ Corinth was a place “where mingled the streams of Oriental licentiousness and of yet coarser Roman vice.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Paul encountered in this city a “mongrel and heterogeneous population of Greek adventurers and Roman bourgeois, with a tainting infusion of Phoenicians.” This last quote is from Frederic William Farrar, whose work would go on to have a great deal of influence. His claim about the mongrel population and tainting Phoenician infusion would frequently be approvingly quoted, even as recently as 2020.Footnote ⁸⁰ Farrar was described by a contemporary as “one of the most learned and eloquent Christian writers and preachers of this day”Footnote ⁸¹ and certainly did much to deserve this reputation. Trained at King’s College London and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society, Dean of Canterbury and Chaplain in Ordinary to Queen Victoria. Farrar wrote several highly influential exegetical studies and commentaries on New Testament texts. He was also a notable proponent of scientific racism.Footnote ⁸² This shines through in comments like the one quoted above about the tainting influence of the Phoenicians. For Farrar, as for the authors previously quoted, it was not just the alleged influence of this specific ethnic group but, more generally, the mixed nature of the Corinthian population that explained its immorality.Footnote ⁸³ Paul’s Corinthian correspondence attested in their view to the inferiority of “mongrel races,” just as his letter to the Galatians attested to the inferiority of Celtic races and the apostle’s comments on “heathens” evinced the inferiority of non-Christian races. This, then, is another example of how Paul’s letters fashioned lenses, a series of categories, with which to make sense of the contemporary world. The Corinthian Correspondence, read along these nineteenth-century lines, legitimized essentialist thinking about population groups as morally depraved and lent support to segregationist claims that “race-mixing” inevitably leads to moral degeneration.

Conclusion

While little can be said with any degree of certainty about the volume of venal sex in Roman Corinth or of other activities that Paul would have construed as porneia, there is good evidence to suggest that Corinth’s reputation for sexual license continued into the Roman era. This chapter has argued that it is likely that this understanding of the city contributed to Paul’s extraordinary emphasis on porneia in his letters to this city. Research on how stereotypes impact human perception suggests that it is plausible that under the influence of this stereotypical understanding of Corinth, Paul (and his sources) readily noticed evidence of sexual licentiousness, construed ambiguous evidence along these lines, and registered contradictory evidence to a lesser degree.

By pursuing this line of argument, this chapter has sought to steer a middle course between what might overly schematically be called “older” and “newer” scholarship. Older scholarship regarded Corinth as a cesspool of moral corruption, whereas more recent scholarship frequently asserts that Roman Corinth was no different from any other (port) city. The implication of the latter view is that it is entirely coincidental that Paul put such remarkable emphasis on avoiding sexual licentiousness in letters addressed to a place famous on that score. I have argued that this is an implausible scenario and that the connection is better explained as a function of an ongoing stereotype about Corinth and its inhabitants.

One final question remains to be addressed: Should this stereotype be classified as an ethnic stereotype? In several ways, the Corinthian case tests the limits of that category. One complicating factor is that much of the ancient evidence centers around the city of Corinth rather than its inhabitants. It seems reasonable, however, to assume a high level of correspondence between the reputation of a city and that of its inhabitants, even if it did not apply to all of them in equal measure. A more serious difficulty is that while it is not particularly controversial to refer to the Corinthians of the archaic and classical periods as an ethnic group, the matter is more complicated for the Roman period due to the significant influx of people from elsewhere.Footnote ⁸⁴ It is important to recall in this connection that people can have multiple identities at the same time (e.g., Corinthian and Jewish)Footnote ⁸⁵ and that at least some Roman colonists presented themselves as legitimate Peloponnesians and descendants of the Corinthians of the past; in contemporary parlance, we might say that they claimed an authentically Corinthian ethnic identity for themselves.Footnote ⁸⁶ This claim was accepted by some and disputed by others, effectively illustrating the malleability and contestability of ethnic identity. The Corinthian example certainly continued to be relevant to discussions about ethnicity in later eras, specifically the question of the mixture of ethnic or racial groups, for which Paul’s Corinthian letters were marshalled as a powerful cautionary tale.