Christianity: History of the Bible and its Connection to Corinth

This week in class we are discussing Christianity and Byzantine Rome. Most individuals have heard of the Bible, but I wonder if anyone truly knows its history. I was curious as to a more detailed history of the Bible so I searched for a website. I also found information on the city of Corinth because my small group is reading 1 Corinthians this semester and I wanted to know more about the city and church. Overall, the history of the Bible, in the Old and New Testaments, and the city of Corinth directly relate and provide many interesting facts.

The Bible was written over a total of 1,600 years. Forty different authors made it into sixty-six books. I was surprised to learn that the various authors wrote the Old Testament and New Testament in two different languages. The Old Testament was in Hebrew, with the New Testament in Greek.

Judaism influenced the Bible. Christianity believes that God commanded Moses to write down the scriptures and laws. Other authors also wrote when God inspired them. By around 450 B.C.E., a council of rabbis gathered the various scrolls written over time and arranged them into the Torah (Old Testament only). By 250 B.C.E., it was translated into Greek in Alexandria. The website I cited remarks that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (parts of all Old Testament books except Esther and the oldest version of Isaiah) show the reliability of the Jews' scripture writing because they have the same content.

The New Testament began to be written in 40 C.E. as the gospels by Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, and others. Letters and books also made up the New Testament. It was later translated into Greek (although the Greeks did not recognize many books of the New Testament as legitimate until later). Today there exist 24,000 writings from the New Testament alone.

In addition, my small group is studying 1 Corinthians, so I found information about the city of Corinth, in Greece. 1 Corinthians is in the New Testament and is made of a series of letters the apostle Paul wrote to the Church of Corinth. The website states that there were two Corinths. Ancient Corinth was very prosperous but the Roman Empire destroyed it in 146 B.C.E. because of its connection with the Achaean League. Julius Caesar re-established the city in 44 B.C.E. It prospered as well, with an eventual size five times that of Athens, as a major trading city. Corinth had many individuals of different cultures living there because it was a trading port (by the isthmus that connects Peloponnesus to the rest of Greece). Italy traded with Greece through Corinth frequently. The center of the city was filled with shrines to previous and current emperors and Greek gods (like Apollo and Epidaurus). (The picture shows the last remnants of Apollo's temple left today.) Mithranism (one of Christianity's main rivals at this time) was also prominent. These shrines and idol worship were the basis for Paul's letters to the Corinthians telling them to turn away from their evil ways and back to God. The city's prosperity eventually declined with earthquakes.