5. Sexual Immorality in 1 Corinthians

Download: Sexual Immorality in 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 5:1-3; 6:12-20

Venus (Aphrodite) and Prostitution

• Venus, the Roman goddess driving physical attraction, romance, and fertility was a big deal in Corinth. She had a temple on the Acrocorinth.
• Strabo: “The sanctuary of Aphrodite was so rich that it possessed more than a thousand temple slaves—hetairas—who had been dedicated to the goddess by both men and women. Because of them, the city was crowded and became rich. The shipowners spent freely and easily, and thus a proverb says, “the voyage to Corinth is not for all men.””1
• Jerome Murphy-O’Connor: “Many New Testament introduction and commentaries have stressed this aspect because it appears to provide an explanation for the attention that Paul was obliged to give to sexual problems in 1 Corinthians 5-7. However, the context clearly indicates that Strabo is here referring to the pre-146 c. city and not the newly constituted Roman colony that he visited in 29 b.c. Then he saw only a “small temple of Aphrodite” (21b); the same adjective would apply to the two that Pausanias mentions. …Corinth did have “a great army of prostitutes” (Plutarch, Moralia 768a), but it is doubtful that the situation there was any worse than in other port-cities of the eastern Mediterranean.”2

Corinth Was Known for Lewdness

• Martial: “You live on Senate Street, Laelia; your mother (who never used make-up) was descended from the sunburnt Etruscans, your tough old dad’s from somewhere round Aricia … But you’re forever stockpiling Grecisms … Have you no shame? … The bed’s where such expressions should be heard … You should hear yourself talk—and you a respectable married lady. … But even if you get all Corinth by heart and can recite it, Laelia, you still won’t quite be Lais.”3
• Lais was a famous hetaira or courtesan in Corinth who lived four centuries before Christ. A hetaira was a cultured prostitute who only worked for the wealthy. Lais was known for her beauty and wit and her exorbitant fees.

Roman Sensibilities about Marrying a Stepmother

• 1 Corinthians 5:1-2 A man in the church was living with his father’s wife
• Gaius: “Moreover, I cannot marry my former mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, or my step-daughter or step-mother. We make use of the word “former,” because if the marriage by which affinity of this kind was established is still in existence, there is another reason why I cannot marry her, for a woman cannot marry two men, nor can a man have two wives. Therefore, if anyone should contract a nefarious and incestuous marriage, he is considered to have neither a wife nor children, hence the issue of such a union are considered to have a mother but no father, and for this reason are not subject to paternal authority, but resemble children whom the mother has conceived through promiscuous intercourse”4 (Gaius, Institutes63-64)
• Catullus, a crass poet writing a century earlier considered incest one of the most defiling things a person could possibly do (Catullus, Poem 88).

Jewish Sensibilities about Marrying a Stepmother

• Leviticus 20:11 (see also Lev 18:8; Deut 27:20) The Torah regarded lying with one’s father’s wife as a capital crime.
• Mishnah, Sanhedrin 7.4 “These are [the felons] who are put to death by stoning: He who has sexual relations with (1) his mother, (2) with the wife of his father, (3) with his daughter-in-law, (4) with a male, and (5) with a cow.…“5

Chow’s Dowry Theory

• Why would someone marry his father’s wife? If his father was deceased, the concern could be over losing the stepmother’s dowry.
• John Chow: “[I]n Paul’s day, material interests, which might include money and power, rather than sex and affection seem to have a bigger role to play in the establishment of a marital relationship. Indeed, for the sake of keeping wealth, men in those days could do some strange things. The satirists tell us that there were husbands who were willing to condone their wives’ acts of adultery in return for the control of their dowries. …For on the one hand, through marriage, he would not have to pay higher taxes. On the other hand, he would immediately be able to have total control over his share of the inheritance from the father who probably was dead at that time. Better still, through marrying his stepmother he might have been able to preserve in his house his stepmother’s dowry to his father and might even have access to the possessions of his wife’s family.”6

Hand Him over to Satan

• 1 Corinthians 5:3-5  Paul has told them to cast the man out of the church.
• Anthony Thiselton: “[F]or the offender himself sudden removal from a platform of adulation to total isolation from the community would have a sobering if not devastating effect.”7
• James South: “[It means] putting him outside the sphere of God’s protection within the church and leaving him exposed to the satanic forces of evil in hope that the experience would cause him to repent and return to the fellowship of the church. The ‘flesh’ to be destroyed is thus not his physical body.”8
• 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 Sin is contagious.
• Dale Martin: “Paul is not afraid that social contact between a Christina and a non-Christian will pollute the church; but he does think that the disguised presence within the church of a representative from the outside, from the cosmos that should be “out there,” threatens the whole body. … In that case, the only remedy is violent expulsion of the polluting agent, which will result in the return of the body to a clean, healthy state.”9
• 1 Corinthians 5:9-12 Paul didn’t want them to isolate themselves from their unbelieving neighbors and coworkers. Rather, he wanted them to hold the line within their own community, among those who had already become believers.

Prostitution in the Roman Empire

• Sex for pay was a legal though scurrilous profession in the Roman Empire.
• Horace: “The sight of a certain aristocrat leaving a brothel drew a famous remark from Cato: ‘Keep up the good work!’ he said. ‘Whenever a young man’s veins are swollen by accursed lust, he’s right to go down to that sort of place instead of grinding other men’s wives.’” (Horace, Satire 2.31-34)10
• Marguerite Johnson: “In the Roman world, the legal practice of sexual labour was placed under the jurisdiction of the Curule Aediles; workers were required to register and, during the reign of Caligula (37-41), to pay tax. … [T]he brothels ensured there would be less likelihood of adultery. In other words, commercial sex ensured that wives were safe from other men. The perceived role of the worker as some kind of societal safety valve, a requirement for the maintenance of a calm home environment, may also be witnessed in the more graphic sources … [W]orkers of both sexes were there to provide services one would not ask of a wife. These workers were, nevertheless, despised and ridiculed.”11

Corinthian Slogans

• 1 Corinthians 6:12-15  Depending on your translation, some of these words will be in quotation marks, indicating that they were what the Corinthians were saying, not the instruction of Paul.
• David Gill: “The Roman love of food is reflected in the cookbooks that have survived from antiquity, such as that attributed to Apicius. His recipes include, “Numidian chicken,” “rabbit with fruit sauce,” “liver sausage,” “anchovy delight without the anchovies,” and “sweet and sour pork.””12
• Jay E. Smith: “[T]he notion that the body was morally irrelevant—that sin was an internal matter of motives and intentions and not an external matter related to the body—was commonplace. …It was in this environment that the slogan ‘Every sin that a person commits is outside the body,’ with its belief that bodily actions were morally irrelevant, could come to expression.”6:18,” The Journal of Theological Studies 59, no. 1 (2008): 95.">13
• 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 Verse 18 is likely another slogan to which Paul replied.
• v12a Corinthians: “All things are permitted for me”
  • Paul: “But not all things are beneficial”
• v12b Corinthians: “All things are lawful for me”
  • Paul: “But I will not be dominated by anything”
• v13 Corinthians: “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food and God will destroy both one and the other.”
  • Paul: “The body is meant not for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.”
• v18 Corinthians: “Every sin that a person commits is outside the body”
  • Paul: “But the sexually immoral person sins against the body itself”

Temple Prostitutes, Brothels, or Banquets?

• Older commentaries drew on the Strabo quote I started with about Aphrodite and her temple prostitutes to interpret 1 Corinthians 6. However, this was not the case when Paul was there. Brothels were common in cities. We have archeological evidence from Ephesus and Pompeii as well as plenty of literary evidence. Banquets were another venue where high-end prostitutes worked.
• Cicero: “[I]f there is anyone who thinks that youth should be forbidden affairs even with courtesans, he is doubtless eminently austere (I cannot deny it), but his view is contrary not only to the licence of this age, but also to the custom and concessions of our ancestor. For when was this not a common practice? When was it blamed? When was it forbidden? When, in fact, was it that what is allowed was not allowed?”14 (Cicero, Pro Caelio 48)
• Bruce Winter: “Gluttony and drunkenness were an accepted part of social life in Corinth, as were the promiscuous ‘after-dinners.’ For grand dinners such as the series of banquets given by the President of the Isthmian Games for the citizens of Corinth, travelling brothels could be brought in by the host to cater for guests after the dinner in the place where it was held. The élite who gave private banquets to which they invited clients as well as other guests provided not only for their physical hunger but also for their sexual appetites. It needs to be noted that 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 does not state that Christians actually went to brothels. They were having sexual intercourse with prostitutes in the context of dinner. … The strong adversative ‘but’ used on both occasions in 6:12 was Paul’s way of giving clear warning against choosing the path of gluttony and whoring that epitomized conduct at banquets attended by young men who had gained the freedom of adulthood. If Christian youths affirmed that they had come of age and all was now permitted, Paul countered with a statement that not everything was beneficial.… Fornication, like drunkenness, was one of the grounds for exclusion from the kingdom (6:9-10).”15

Chow, John K. Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth. Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1992.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Pro Caelio, De Provinciis Consularibus, Pro Balbo. Translated by R. Gardner. Loeb Classical Library. London, England: William Heinemann, 1970.

Gaius. The Institutes of Roman Law. Translated by Edward Post. 2017, Reprint, 1904. Originally published as 1904.

Gill, David W. J. “1 Corinthians.” In Romans to Philemon. Edited by Clinton E. Arnold. Vol. 3. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002.

Horace. Satires and Epistles. Translated by Niall Rudd. London, England: Penguin, 2005.

Johnson, Marguerite. Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature: A Sourcebook. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022.

Martial. Epigrams. Translated by Gideon Nisbet. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford, England: Oxford University, 2015.

Martin, Dale B. The Corinthian Body. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1995.

Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archeology. 3rd ed. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002.

Neusner, Jacob. The Mishnah: A New Translation. New Haven, CT: Yale, 1988.

Smith, Jay E. “The Roots of a ‘Libertine’ Slogan in 1 Corinthians 6:18.” The Journal of Theological Studies 59, no. 1 (2008): 63-95.

South, James T. Disciplinary Practices in Pauline Texts. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992.

Strabo. The Geography. Translated by Duane W. Roller. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 2020.

Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Vol. 13. Nigtc. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.

Winter, Bruce W. After Paul Left Corinth. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

1. Strabo, The Geography, trans., Duane W. Roller (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 2020), 375.
2. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archeology, 3rd ed. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 56-7.
3. Martial, Epigrams, trans. Gideon Nisbet, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford, England: Oxford University, 2015), 181.
4. Gaius, The Institutes of Roman Law, trans. Edward Post (2017: repr.,  1904), 74.
5. Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1988).
6. John K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1992), 137-8.
7. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, vol. 13, Nigtc (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 396.
8. James T. South, Disciplinary Practices in Pauline Texts (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 43.
9. Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1995), 170.
10. Horace, Satires and Epistles, trans. Niall Rudd (London, England: Penguin, 2005), 55.
11. Marguerite Johnson, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2022), 135-6.
12. David W. J. Gill, “1 Corinthians,” in Romans to Philemon, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 133.
13. Jay E. Smith, “The Roots of a ‘Libertine’ Slogan in 1 Corinthians 6:18,” The Journal of Theological Studies 59, no. 1 (2008): 95.
14. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Caelio, De Provinciis Consularibus, Pro Balbo, trans. R. Gardner, Loeb Classical Library (London, England: William Heinemann, 1970), 465-7.
15. Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 88, 91-2.