The modern city of Corinth sits about three kilometers north of the ancient one, which is now an extensive archaeological zone. 37.94°N, 22.93°E — about 80 kilometers west of Athens. The city Paul addressed was neither of them exactly: it was the new Roman Corinth, refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC on the ruins of an older Greek city Rome had leveled almost a century earlier.
A Verse From an Argument
Paul's first letter to the Corinthians is, in form, a long answer to a series of disputes the church had written him about — division, sexual ethics, food sacrificed to idols, lawsuits, the Lord's Supper. Chapter 13, the famous passage on love, sits in the middle of an argument about spiritual gifts. The verse begins where the argument changes register.
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."
The Greek word translated charity in the King James and love in modern versions is agapē. Paul defines it not by feeling but by behavior. Across this verse and the next three he names fifteen specific actions love does and does not do — five of them in verse 4 alone. The list is precisely what the Corinthians, given the rest of the letter, were not doing. The most-read wedding passage in history was, in its first hearing, a correction.
Eighteen Months on the Bema
Acts 18 records that Paul lived in Corinth for eighteen months during his second missionary journey, working as a tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla. Toward the end of that stay he was hauled before the proconsul Gallio at the city's Bema — the raised judgment platform in the agora. The Bema is still there. So is the inscription that names Erastus, the city treasurer mentioned by Paul in Romans 16:23. Paul's actual coworker has a paving stone with his name on it, in situ, in Corinth.
A City Built on a Channel
Ancient Corinth controlled the narrow isthmus between mainland Greece and the Peloponnese — a four-mile land bridge that ships preferred to cross by being hauled across rather than sailing the long, dangerous route around the southern Peloponnese. The city grew rich from the traffic. Nero began digging a canal in AD 67. The work was abandoned. The modern Corinth Canal, finally completed in 1893, follows a route Nero's engineers had marked. The verse that mentions Corinth was written by a man crossing that same isthmus.
What the Earthquake Did
A major earthquake in 1858 leveled the older Greek-Roman town. The modern city of Corinth was rebuilt three kilometers north, leaving the archaeological zone — temple of Apollo with its surviving Doric columns, the Bema, the Lechaion Road, the Asklepion — relatively intact for excavation. The American School of Classical Studies has been digging here since 1896. The city Paul wrote to is not under the modern town; it is alongside it.
Corinth Today
Modern Corinth has about 30,000 residents. The Corinth Canal cruise route is one of the most photographed transits in the Mediterranean. The ancient site is open to visitors. Behind the marble of the Bema, the chapter on love is still being read at weddings every weekend in every language the New Testament has been translated into. The verse named the city; the city kept the verse.
Write It Out
Copy the first line of the chapter out for yourself. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. By the time you finish it, you notice every item on the list is a correction. Envy, boasting, self-importance — Paul is naming things this church was actually doing. The passage read at weddings was written to people who were behaving badly, and that is the only reason it is any use at one.
A correction letter became a wedding text. The address has not changed.