Slides: Acts 18
Slide 1
Corinth (Acts18)
Near Athens
Capital of Achaia
Slide 2
Expulsion under Claudius (Acts 18:2)
Attested by Suetonius
- c. 41 or 49, prob 49
- Dio Cassius (3rd cent): couldn’t meet
- Maybe earlier, lesser restriction
Similar expulsion under Tiberius
40,000-50,000 Jews in Rome
- perhaps 5% of Rome
- Wouldn’t all leave
Slide 3
Aquila and Priscilla/Prisca
Paul uses formal Prisca and Silvanus
- Lk uses informal Priscilla and Silas
4 of six NT ref’s mention her first:
- Higher status (exceptions, but often husband slaveborn)
Roman names: common for Greek and Latin speaking Jews in Rome
- Some: Aquila prob. freed member of gens Acillia in Rome (but from
Pontus)
Prisca maybe belonged to freeman gens Prisca
House churches standard
Slide 4
Economic base of A. and P.
Mobility: Pontus- Rome-Corinth-Ephesus-Rome: craftspeople and traders
- Often migrants, lived by laws of host city; met together for business;
- Foreigners of diff. groups met together and sometimes recognized as
- A semiautonomous politeuma (some polit. Independence)
- Patrons
Artisans- low urban occupation, but:
- Independent
- Provincials and Jews (not favorable status) but assimiliated
Corinth:
- wealthy lived near the Craneum
- significant class disparity
Slide 5
Some women artisans
- More often: helped in selling
- Husbands and wives sometimes formed business partnerships (sometimes with her money)
- Partnership called societas
Slide 6
Why A. and P. and Paul in Corinth?
Prob. most significant Jewish community in Greece S. of Macedonia
Roman element prominent and dominant:
- 8 of 17 names in Cor.ch. Latin (Crispus, Titius, Justus, Erastus; but Sosthenes is Greek)
Many Jews with Roman names, but not this percentage
1/3 named persons in Paul’s letters Roman
10x higher than expected among nonRomans
Slide 7
Manual labor: despised by philosophers, esp. elite
4 ways to earn wages:
- fees;
- patron;
- begging (Cynics);
- manual labor
. most despised: aristocratic ideology:
. exceptions like Stoics Cleanthes and Musonius Rufus (Stoic ideal of self-sufficiency)
Slide 8
Manual labor: praised in Jewish source
Shemaiah: “love labor” (ahav et-hamlakah, m. Ab. 1:10)
R. Gamaliel b. Judah ha-Nasi, “Study of Torah is good with the way of earth” (derek eretz), “for their labor causes sin to be forgotten” (m. Ab 2:2)
R. Eleazar ben Azariah: “If there is no Torah, there is no way of earth; if there is no way of earth, there is no Torah” (Ab 3:17)
Later rabbis warned against dependence on others
But: R. Nehunia ben Hakazah: If you take on the yoke of Torah, you’re freed from the yoke of Rome and from the way of earth (Ab. 3:5): later sources also mandate payment of teachers
Slide 9
Early Jewish sources despise some base crafts,
But some praiseworthy:
- sandal makers,
- bakers
- carpenters
- leatherworkers
- scribes
Slide 10
Hard work of artisans
- production mainly small scale, in homes and small shops
- most businesses employed family members (inc. slaves) (largest businesses employed up to 100 slaves)
- average 6-12 workers
Work day:
- sunrise to sunset
- many opportunities for conversation
- some shops loud and dangerous (smiths and sculptors);
- others, like leatherworkers and sandalmakers, quiet
- Philliseus the shoemaker stitched while someone read aloud;
- Some took naps
- Sometimes people came in just to talk
Slide 11
Shops usually single rooms:
- Did work there, stored supplies, displayed and sold wares
- Family often slept upstairs or in mezzanine
Leatherworker had at least:
- Table, stool, awls, knives, sharpening stones, and oil and blacking for treating leather (Hock)
Shops usually near agora (marketplace) (in Corinth near bema)
Artisans:
- Economic bracket intermediate between minute upper class and massive lower classes
Slide 12
Learning Trades
Apprenticeship, usually within family or other families of same trade
Starting ages 10-13 (sometimes girls as well, in Egypt);
- But could start at age 25 (one inscr.)
Rabbis: train sons in same trade
Saul prob. learned trade from father
Slide 13
Cloth workers:
- Usually not citizens of Rome; nor of Tarsus, for which they raised protests in first cent. AD
Artisans despised by elite as “slavish”;
- Cicero: no workshop benefits a free person;
- Elite considered them incapable of virtue and uneducated
Slide 14
Tents important in Corinth
e.g., awnings for Isthmian games (April-May);
but also for theater, etc
linen industry big in Tarsus
- Linen tabernacula used by merchants for market-stands and individuals as sunshades;
- Tarsus’s tentmaking renowned through Med. (even appears translit.’d in Heb. In rabbis)
- Cilician wool (goat’s hair) in Tarsus
- Goat’s hair so prominent warm cloaks made called cilicium, imported to Italy from time of Aug.
- Some: Paul’s father may have worked there (maybe for army)
Slide 15
But Paul prob. not weaver of tents from goat’s hair or linen
- Required tools too large for travel
- Paul very mobile, so prob. bag of tools: would make and repair tents and other leather products
In Corinth, those needing leatherworking:
- Esp. civilians who traveled a lot (hence reaching travelers, merchants, etc.)
- Of 17 Corinthians known by name in NT, 9 were on travels, prob. for commercial reasons
Prob. people of some means and status (ones most Judean Christians couldn’t reach)
Slide 16
Leatherworking (Ronald Hock)
- 2 tasks in leatherworking: cutting and sewing
- would learn “how to cut the leather pieces so that their placement would take advantage of the natural strengths of the leather and thus best withstand strains and pulling”
- also how to sew them together with basing stitch, seam stitch, or felling stitch (last two if seams needed to be waterproof)
- after completing apprenticeship, might get his own tools
Slide 17
Religious milieu of marketplace
public statues in Corinth’s marketplace:
- Poseidon, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, and Zeus
Most sanctuaries in agora:
- Ephesian Artemis: images of Dionysus; Athena in middle
- Above agora, temple to Aug’s sister Octavia
Slide 18
Talking at Work
Working all day long, hence conversations:
- E.g. stories about Socrates and others discussing politics and philosophy in cobbler’s shop
Culture of talk and gossip:
- Leaning out windows to talk with neighbors,
- In streets, customers or shopkeepers next door, drinking in taverns
- Doing business lunches with coworkers at restaurant
Cynics engaged in intellectual discourse in such locations
Missionary preaching at work?
- For long hours, see Acts 20:34; 28-30; 1 Thess 2:9; 1 Cor 4:12; 2 Cor 12:14
Slide 19
Trade groups, families: as guilds
Might control a whole street or section of a city
Thus Glass Street, Incense Street, Perfume Street; Jeweler’s Plaza; Cobbler’s Marketplace; Fishmongers Forum; etc.
“Where do you live?” Among barbers (inscr’s, gravestones, etc)
“everything emporium’s” (general store) did exist
- But usually you knew which sections of town to go to to get particular merchandise
Friendly cooperation, common supplies- not cutthroat competition
Slide 20
Trade guilds
Mainly social bodies
- Met once a month or so
- Somewhat nicer meal and wine than usual
- Or for birth of founder or patron or patron deity
- Provided burial for all members
MacMullen: All assemblages (Butchers, Youths, etc)
“opened their meetings with a prayer to the deity they had inevitably chosen at the moment of their incorporation”
- E.g. Silvanus for woodcutters
- Bacchus for restaurant owners, etc.
Thus A. and P. excluded from leatherworkers guild
Happy to have another Jew stay with them
Slide 21
Living conditions
Tenements in Italy:
- Wealthier on bottom
- Less wealthy higher
- Poorest in tiny rooms on top
- Or small lofts above workshops
Slumlords with hit squads to take out troublesome tenets
Egypt: sometimes 20 people crowded into one room home;
- Childhood mortality close to 50%; babies abandoned; people sometimes rented or owned quarter of a room
Slide 22
Synagogue in Corinth (Acts 18:4)
Inscription “Synagogue of the Hebrews” (but uncertain date)
Found near the agora
2d cent.: Trypho there
Slide 23
Acts 18:5
Silas and Timothy came, bringing word of Thess. Believers (1 Thess 3:6ff; then Paul wrote 1 Thess.)
Also gift from Philippi (2 Cor 11:8f; Phil 4:15)
Slide 24
18:7
Titius Justus
- May= Gaius (Rom 16:23- familiar praenomen, rather than official narr. title Titius Justus)
- Roman nomen and cognomen: probably Roman citizen
- (perhaps from a Roman family settled in New Corinth under Julius Caesar)
Home:
- average tricinium was 36 sq. meters- held 9
- first class seating in triclinium
- average atrium: with normal furniture, about 30-40 people
Named Corinthians plus families (in Acts and Paul):
- about 50
- surely multiple house- churches
- except perhaps in Gaius’s “whole church” (Rom 16:23)
House: family- type atmosphere, but divisions
Slide 25
Acts 18:8:
- Crispus: as leader of synagogue, probably well-to-do; often used their own means for upkeep of synagogue
Acts 18:9-10:
- Biblical visions and dreams: esp. of God or angels
- Pagan and often early Jewish, of deceased persons
- “Don’t be afraid”: common in statements of assurance (Gen 50:21); including oracles
Acts 18:1:
- 18 months- hence Cor’s already have some of Paul’s teaching
- breezy summers= currents of air met there
- Isthmian games in April- May 31
Slide 26
18:12
Achaia: proconsul 27 BC-AD, then AD 44 onwards
Praetors- governors- consuls (fast track)
Gallio (Seneca’s brother)
- Born in Cordova, but adopted by wealthy rhetorician
- Changed name (orig. Marcus Annaus Novatus)
Known for his charm and with
Apparently sent in April of 51
- Took up office July 1, AD 51
- Paul prob. arrived late 49, early 50
- Before July 52 Gallio became ill and didn’t finish term of office
Accuracy of Acts (A.N. Sherwin- White)
- Official list of proconsuls in specific periods not available before archaeologists
- Food shortage in AD 51: much unrest in Corinth at this time
Slide 27
Which bema?
E. end of Cor’s forum, overlooking lower terrace of Corinth’s forum (like Roman rostra)- in front of colonnaded shops nearly 500 ft long- largest tribunal in empire (1 Cor 6); built under Aug.
But some: it was used only for ceremonial and a few official matters; prob. a tribunal in admin. Building
Lawcourts: known to be loud, angry shouting on both sides