Now that I have summarized the major themes and emphases of 1 Corinthians in the previous post, I can address the more specific questions of authorship, date, and purpose.

1 Corinthians is one of the seven undisputed Pauline letters – which, of course, does not mean that no one has ever disputed its authorship, only that the solid critical consensus is that Paul wrote it.  Its writing style, themes, mode of argumentation, presupposed historical context, theological views, and most everything else cohere well with what we can establish as Pauline, so in this case (unlike letters such as Ephesians or 1 Timothy) there is little reason to doubt its authorial claim.

As is true of all of Paul’s letters (and the ones forged in his name!) 1 Corinthians begins (as did nearly all ancient personal correspondence), with the writer stating his name and indicating to whom he is writing:

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, To the church of God that is in Corinth (1:1-2).

Paul typically identifies himself in a way that establishes his authority.  In this letter he is writing to make authoritative pronouncements to the Corinthians about how to deal with their problems (many of which they appear not to have seen as problems!).  And so he indicates that he is not a self-authorized but was made Christ’s own apostle (that is, Christ’s human representative speaking on his behalf) by “the will of God.”  It’s a subtle way of saying that “you had best pay attention to what I’m saying here.”

He names his companion as Sosthenes, whom he never mentions elsewhere in his surviving letters; in the account of Paul’s 18-month missionary stay in Corinth provided in Acts 18, Sosthenes is named as a Jewish leader of the synagogue (18:17), and traditionally it was claimed that he was converted by Paul  and became a traveling companion – but Acts says nothing about him converting or accompanying Paul afterward.  So we don’t know who this particular Sosthenes was.

When I say Paul wrote 1 Corinthians it does not completely solve the problem of authorship: there are some places in Paul’s letters where a verse or passage appears to have been added to the letter by a different writer.  I am not referring here to “textual variants” where we have later manuscripts that have additions not found in other manuscripts (as in the last twelve verses of Mark or the woman taken in adultery in John); I am talking about passages that are in ALL our manuscripts but that nonetheless appear not to have been originally there. These are referred to as “interpolations” rather than “textual variants” (since none of the texts/manuscripts are variant!).

In cases of interpolation, a copyist/transcriber would have added the verse/passage BEFORE our surviving manuscripts were produced, so that they all have the word(s) but the original did not.  This, obviously, is difficult to prove, but scholars have long argued that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is an interpolation.  Those are the rather notorious verses the sternly warn women to be completely silent in church. If they have questions, they should ask their husbands as home.

Just this past year I devoted an entire post to the passage, showing the argument against Paul himself writing it (see: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-paul-tell-women-to-keep-silent-the-argument-that-1-cor-1434-35-is-an-interpolation/).  I won’t give all the details here, but will just summarize:

• These verses appear to contradict Paul’s views of women elsewhere, including three chapters earlier where women are allowed to to pray (aloud) in church
• They interrupt the flow of Paul’s discussion here – he is talking about the gift of prophecy both before and after the verses, they interrupt the subject, and the verse before and the verse after flow quite well without the intervening verses
• And they appear to be closely modeled on the even more forceful 1 Timothy 2:11-15, a book Paul did not write (though it claims to be written by him.)

The payoff: Paul did write 1 Corinthians, but probably not these two rather commonly cited verses.

In terms of when Paul wrote the letter, it is usually dated to the mid-50s, and it appears to have been written from Ephesus (16:8).  As was his custom, Paul appears to have dictated it (to Sosthenes?  Someone else?), since he indicates at the end that he is writing the greeting in his own hand (16:21)

As to why Paul wrote the letter, our only clear indications come in what he actually says.  For starters, it helps to know his recipients.  Paul speaks of them as principally his own converts when he had originally planted the church in Corinth.  He clearly indicates that they are mainly (almost entirely?) converted pagans (12:2). And he suggests that most of them are from the lower classes (1:26).

Also from the letter we learn that after Paul established the church in Corinth, he moved on to Ephesus to continue his work, and while there he received bad news from two sources.  First, he has heard from “Chloe’s people” that the church has become widely fragmented (1:11).  “Chloe” is a woman’s name; her “people” are generally thought to be her slaves or business associates or possibly family members, who have travelled to Ephesus to carry out her business concerns and met up with Paul.  If this is correct, then she must be one of the wealthy members of the congregation – either in Corinth (her people came from there) or in Ephesus (her people had returned from there).

The disunity, as I indicated in the previous post, was manifest in factions that had developed in the church led by individuals who claimed both to have superior spirituality and to present distinctive understandings of what it meant to be a follower of Christ as promoted by one of the known leaders of the movement: Paul, Cephas (Peter), Apollos (a charismatic preacher from Alexandria, according to Acts 18), or even Jesus (1:12)

Much of the letter, as we have seen, expresses Paul’s deep anxiety about the divisiveness in the church, evident not only in the factions but also in reports of some church members taking others to court (over what we are not told; ch. 6)), disagreements about the role of women (14:34-35 is apparently an interpolation made later, but the discussion of headcoverings in chapter 11 is original), the chaotic worship services involving spiritual one-upman-ship by the hyper-spiritual showing off their facility with most impressive spiritual gifts (tongues; chs. 12, 14), the lack of respect shown to those who are “weaker” in the faith who do not understand that pagan gods actually do not exist and so refuse to eat meat sacrificed to them (chs. 8, 10), etc.

Some scholars have argued that a major part of the problem involves socio-economic discrepancies in the congregation.  Those few who are better educated and wealthier may have a more liberated view of women, may be able to eat and drink more at the weekly meal, may have a more sophisticated view of the pagan gods as not even existing, and gifted with more rhetorical and social skills that allow them to dominate others.  That makes a good deal of sense for most of the problems of divisiveness in the church.

Paul’s other source of information was a letter he received from (some?) church members involving one or more questions of sexual ethics (7:1).  The particular problem was whether it is ever legitimate for a follower of Jesus to have sex, even with a spouse.  Paul deals with the matter directly.  Yes, it is better to devote oneself entirely to one’s Christian faith, given the “impending crisis” (7:26).  Paul appears to be referring to the end of the age with the imminent return of Christ in judgment (as he explains in ch. 15).  There is a lot of work to be done in converting others and preparing for the imminent end!   Who has time for intimacy?!?  But, Paul does concede that sex drives sometimes get in the way of life, and it may be necessary for some to engage in sexual activity.  If so, it is far better to do so in a legitimate way, in marriage.  Or as he memorably puts it:   “It is better to marry than to burn” (with lust? in the afterlife? 7:10).

Other issues of sexual ethics have come up as well, whether in the letter Paul received or through Chole’s people or some other source  These include those Corinthian Christians not seeing a problem with frequenting prostitutes and one of their number sleeping with his step-mother.  Oddly to many readers, the second appears to be the more serious problem for Paul.

Basically, the congregation, from Paul’s perspective, is in a mess, and he is eager for them to amend their ways.   Moreover, he appears to see that many of these problems are rooted in the failure of some of the now-leaders of the church to realize that followers of Christ are not already leading an exalted spiritual existence and that salvation has come to them in its fullness, in their spirits.  This world is still a place of pain and sin, and the “saints” need to remove themselves from the power-struggles and immoral desires of this age, to anticipate the imminent end of the world as they know it, and to keep their bodies pure – both the body of Christ, the church, and their individual bodies as members of it.