1 Corinthians Study Notes and Transcript PDF

I Corinthians AN URBAN PENTECOSTAL CHURCH IN TROUBLE WEEK ONE 1  Assessment Methods Learning Outcomes Type Due Dates Weighting...

I Corinthians AN URBAN PENTECOSTAL CHURCH IN TROUBLE WEEK ONE 1  Assessment Methods Learning Outcomes Type Due Dates Weighting 1. Describe the socio-historical Comprehensive Objective Nov. 28 30% background relevant to Paul’s Examination Corinthian correspondence as well as the letter’s respective structures, Outline of Letters Oct. 24 5% themes, theology, and styles. Chronology of Paul’s letters Oct. 31 5% and visits 2. Explain passages in the Corinthian Critical responses to weekly Oct. 24, 31, 15% letters and make application to questions Nov. 7, 14, 21 contemporary Pentecostalism in Asia. Course Notebook Nov. 28 10% 3. Assess Paul’s concern for, and Exegetical Essay (word count Nov. 28 35% correction of, an erring church in light 2,000) of Pentecostalism. Demonstrate critical engagement with both the primary biblical materials and secondary literature from a range of perspectives. 2  Assignments OUTLINE Do up a table of contents only by reading Readings in 1 Corinthians Read through as much as you can in one shot because it's a letter the bible alone without referring to commentaries Readings in Thomas Schreiner, 1 Corinthians (available *The reason we do that is so that we learn to think by ourselves rather than in Alphacrucis Library) Reading of textbooks are supplementary and Prof Doug would usually not preach from textbooks relying on "experts" to learn about the bible - have your own revelation Outline of 1 Corinthians 1 Cor writes it in a very logical manner, unlike 2 Cor Chronology of Paul’s visits and letters to the Corinthians Follow through with Prof Doug's verses and we should be able to get the chronological order right. If we do it thoughtfully, points will be awarded to all. Study Guides/Notebook Passages have been broken down accordingly so that we can use it to submit the notebook. Make sure you answer all the questions to help you reflect. Objective Exam Exegetical Essay All that you need to study for the exam is within the study guide provided. There will be false and multiple choice matching Make sure your name is written on the actual assignment The essay will be on "The Lord's Supper". and please use Times New Roman 12 pt font. Make sure your name is written clearly and in Times New Roman, 12pt. 3 Don't number the first page of your essay.  Books relied on or cited in the lectures Barrett, C. K. A commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. Bruce, F. F. 1 and 2 Corinthians: based on the Revised standard version. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1980. Ciampa, Roy E and Bruce S. Rosner. The First Letter to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Fee, Gordan. The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. 4  Books relied on or cited in the lectures Garland, David. 1 Corinthians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2013. Hays, Richard. First Corinthians. Louisville, Ky.: John Knox Press, 1997. Morris, Leon. 1 Corinthians: an introduction and commentary. Downers Grove, IL : IVP Academic, 1985, 2008. Schreiner, Thomas E. 1 Corinthians. Downers Grove: IVP. 2018. 5  BIG PICTURE The early church was established during what was called the Graeco-Roman World. It is a Mediterranean System When we look at the New Testament, we always ask the question: "What is the culture there like?" During the time in which the chapter/verse was written The Social Context of the Early Church 6  Social Context of the Early Church Mediterranean culture Households run by patriarchs Love for honor/fear of shame Honour comes by how people think of me. For Eg: When you do something, does it bring honour or shame? Status/role-Slaves/owners Status is your station in life, like your trade and it goes up and down the social ladder and for the most part, Patronage & Quid pro quo (friendship) ittoo.doesn't change with generation. Usually, if your mother was a slave, you and your children would be slaves It is repeated in cultures that are poorer but those who are not so poor, they get an education and they Religion (pantheon of the gods) are able to come out of that. Patronage means if you get a position, you will use that position to help your friends - That's how it works Hellenism (Greeks) during this world. I'll do something for you and you do something for me. So they say, it's who you know and so everything is done on this basis - This is the Mediterranean culture. The Polis Common Language The Pantheon of Gods means they had a diversity of religion within their culture. When Alexander the Great, who is a Greek, conquered this land, it Religious Pantheon brought a common language that runs across the empire. 7 This language would be the language used in business and commerce. All of the letters in NT are written in Greek. So the people can understand in Roman and also in Greek. Just like in Singapore - we understand both English and Mandarin.  ROMANS JEWS 1.75K miles of roads were built so that 1.The Jews were dispersed Romans Jewish wagons and troops can move easily around Europe throughout the empire; they were not gathered in one area, BUT GOD Efficiency Diverse, but Jews shared 2.In order to have commerce, they always has a plan B. There was something very attractive about Communication (roads the same basic story: needed to conquer to become a colonial being a Jew during this time. power Security Common Texts 2.They had strong convictions about 3.Everything was taxed in Rome, so morality as they had the OT. Power & War Shared stories from the corruption was also very immense *This brings order and sense, predictability Taxes texts 4.The social economic structures were 3.Plan B is when Paul starts to look Socio-economic Convictions and very layered - Beautiful people on top, then professionals who keep the for common ground and preaches in and political patterns commitments wealthy families operating, then the the synagogues and that is where he bottom layer who are largely on finds his first converts. - Ruling families Practices welfare *1/3 of them were likely slaves. - Stratified society - Welfare 5.In order to make money from the people, they were very brutal. Political tension The world of the early church is made up of all of these cultural contexts 8  SIMILARITIES TO OUR CURRENT WORLD 1.The Graeco-Roman Empire actually looks very similar to our current world. We think: How does World of A.D. 50-65 cf World of 2024 (Asia) the Corinthian church world match up with Asia? Roads—50,000 miles 2.Globalisation and technology has allowe us to have contact from anywhere in the world. The Commerce, arts, culture (Roman, Greek, Jewish) Graeco-Roman world had 50K miles of roads which allowed them to communicate very far; commerce was global during the early church similar to that of Asia - Singapore is one of the epicentres for Travel globalisation and business. Global: Common language in urban centers & for 3.During this period of Paul's ministry, the people travelled. This was unique to that time, the idea commerce of travelling. When we read this passage, we don't think so much about it because similarly, we too always travel. Paul has been to Rome 72 times! *After the 1st century, this door of travel closes Local: Lexus and the Olive Tree for 1,900 years until now, in our time. Key cities 4.Lexus and the Olive Tree is the idea of "Local Global" - Everyone has their own culture, the food Pluralism & Syncretism you eat, the language you speak, customs etc. BUT when you walk out the door, everything else turns global. Paul works locally but he thinks globally. He doesn't just think about the church at Ideas 7.Paul is one of the most entrepreneurial of his generation and Corinth but the thinks of the church of Christ globally. We all belong to something much greater generations thereafter. He was creative with his ideas than ourselves. Pagans Icons 8.Pagans: People don't care about any of the Gods. 5.Paul always does his missionary work strategically in key cities. He holds a strategic approach in his missiological process. It is always from the key cities that the gospel spreads. They are non-religious Divided society 6.The Pantheon of Gods - also known as Pluralism; where there are many Gods and people are used to this. Everybody loves to hear your story of miracles 9 until you start telling them the bid story that there is only one way to heaven and t is through Jesus Christ. 9.Divided Society of the haves and the have not: Throughout the OT, the bible breaks barriers - rich/poor, Jesus is not another God on the fireplace, He is the only God on that slave/free, Jew/Gentile and Paul will take a temperature of the church by the ability to do that through fireplace and that creates a lot of friction and can split families. Similar to the power of the Holy Spirit. what many families go through in today's times.  Imagine when Paul and his team came into one of these cities, he had the Five Major Transitions veterans, rich, poor, slaves, gentiles, Jews, women, marginalised altogether. This is what contributed to the problems in the church. We are saved not just to go to heaven but saved to proclaim the good news especially to the poor! Geographically—from Jerusalem and outward. Linguistically—from Aramaic of Palestine to the All of Jesus's Disciples are Jewish, yet they have to work their way through a koine Greek of the Hellenistic world—all NT letters in huge geographical change in major cities - a different language but yet they are tasked to do missionary work in a place completely different from what they Greek. were used to - Culturally—from a sect within Palestinian Judaism to an assembly within the dominant Greco-Roman Culturally: It's like going from a rural country to a metropolitan country. So sociologically, there is a difference. culture. Sociologically—from a rural to urban (cults). Demographically: The gospels are all Jewish but after the Pentecost, it Demographically—from Jews to Gentiles. By A.D. 70, becomes all gentile so the early church has a Roman culture and that is the reason why God chooses Paul because he was able to function as both Roman the majority of the Christians were Gentile in and Jew equally. background. 10  Timeline (A.D.) Paul established the church and he is there for 18 months but then the relationship with the Corinthians is rocky and he has to work through 5-10 Birth of Paul his heartache with them. 30, 31 Cross, Resurrection, Ascension, Most of the story takes place in Ephesus his third missionary journey Pentecost (Acts 1-6) The Good News Begins in Jerusalem 32, 33 Stephen is stoned (Acts 7) 35, 36 Paul is converted (Acts 9:1-9) Paul’s first visit to Jerusalem (Acts 9) The Good News Spreads to the Gentiles 43, 44 James the apostle is executed (Acts 12) 11 47, 48 Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13-14) 49 The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) 49-51/52 Paul’s Second Missionary Journey (Acts 15:36- 18:22) 53-57 Paul’s Third Missionary Journey (Acts 18:23- 21:14) 58-62 Paul as Prisoner and trip to Rome (Acts 21:15- 28:10) 62-64 Paul is Prisoner in Rome (Acts 28:11-31) 12 13 A Very Short Introduction to Corinthians 14  Corinth THE BRIDGE Third largest city (after Rome and Alexandria) in the The Corinthians built a bridge which was an apparatus that extends for 6KM Roman Empire. Located on an isthmus 6km wide. There is another route, however it was very dangerous Population: 400,000-700,000 (estimate). So the entire civilised Graeco-Roman world will pass through this port and therefore a lot of riches would come to them through this. A bridge built across the isthmus allowed ships to unload at one port, and have cargo dragged across the land bridge to the port on the other side. Corinth became the crossroads between Europe and Asia (East/West and North/South trade routes). Commerce exploded. 15 The city’s location offered opportunities for the entrepreneur to become rich. Corinth hosted the Isthmus Games; a 14,000-seat amphitheatre. Corinth was cosmopolitan and wealthy. The arts, philosophy, religious syncretism, and sacred prostitution flourished. 16  The People of Corinth People came from everywhere: Jew/Gentile, slave/free (approximately 1/3 of population were slaves), rich/poor, and male/female. The city attracted merchants, tradespeople, artisans, and philosophers (lovers of wisdom). The city also attracted gold diggers, troublemakers, cheats, and crooks. 17 The Temple of Aphrodite was dedicated to This church would be the first in their region “sacred prostitution”. Prostitution was routinely They have no one else to copy or take after practiced. Their culture is like establishing a church in that of a rich city They tried to use theology to fit into their culture Fornication in Corinth was so rampant, “to fornicate” became a verb – “to Corinthianise”. The church at Corinth was “a mirror of the culture”. 18  Paul the Person Born in Tarsus (a Greek city) to Jewish parents. Roman citizen Thought in Greek, educated in Hebrew. Trained in Jerusalem under Gamaliel. Pharisee. Persecuted the Church. Converted on Damascus Road. Leader: 80 people with Paul, 40 worked with him, and 9 were women. 19  Paul the Apostle/Theologian People don't follow the leader unless the leader has something so attractive that is worth following Lead missionary sent to the Gentile world. People kept wondering if he was an Apostle Paul was the one who provided the first theology Provided the Church with its first theology. Task Theologian: when intepreting all the letters in the NT Paul was a task theologian. Most of his letters Remember we have one side of the convo, not two were written to solve problems in the Early Church We have the writer's side so we have to infer Paul always writes to address the problem in the church (1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Paul always addresses the problem theologically Philippians, and Philemon). Paul treats really sticky issues in the church and provides a theological response of it. How to Find the theological key? Paul treated sticky issues with a theological response First of all you need to know who God is (incarnation, cross, resurrection, and Second Coming). What is he like in his character? God is independent from anybody, he is all powerful 20  Paul and the Corinthians Paul planted the church in Corinth (with Silas and Usually he is in the church only for a few weeks, so he this is considered long Timothy) during his second missionary journey in so he knows the people there, the names and their children and they are threatening him. A.D. 49/50. Paul stayed for 18 months (Acts 18). Converts/members–representing a cross-section of secular society: Priscilla and Aquila: Jews, business owners* Almost certainly, she has financial strength otherwise her name wouldnt be first Crispus: Jew, patron, and leader of the synagogue* Sosthenes: Jew, leader in the synagogue, and co- worker He probably has substantial Gaius: Roman, all the churches met in his home* 21  Titius Justus: Roman, lived next door to the synagogue* Fortunatus and Quartus: Romans Stephanas (household): Greek, the church met in his home* Erastus: Greek, city treasurer, highest ranking member* Most important person from a secular position Phoebe: Greek, Paul’s patron, also a pastor* Phoebe is a woman and also a pastor, almost certainly has financial strength Chloe: Greek, businesswoman and patron* Patrons means she helped to support him Achaicus and Lucius: Greeks *wealthy or at least people of means 22  Important Terms Honor and Shame: Honor and shame refer to the 1st century early church is a high honor and shame culture - what do people think about me? If they think negatively of me, thats shameful, if they think highly of me, it's honour. ongoing gain or loss of esteem determined by one’s peers, family, and social-economic class. Status and Role: Status is a person’s position in Status: For eg: you are wealthy, upper middle class, poor - stratified society society. Role is the expected behavior matching one’s Role: means what is that expected behaviour from that status? status. Status is based primarily on such things as It can be difficult for people to change their status. wealth, education, rhetorical skill, family pedigree, and political connections. 23 Patron/Patronage: Person of higher social standing This was somebody that was wealthy and somebody of lower standing, the patron would support and usually there would be a hook provides services or money to lower-class person There would be enormous number of patrons in the early church but the difference is (client). The client was expected to repay (with interest) it is never transactional, it was done without a hook, not expecting any returns. as well as give loyalty to the patron. Paul was supported by a number of women like lydia - lives in a big house and sells luxury goods. Note: In the early church, a patron is also a person who provides a service or financial support without expecting payback. For example, Lydia, Phoebe, and Chloe were patrons to Paul. Note: In secular culture, there were minimal social relationships between classes. Not so in the Church. 24  The Story A Pentecostal/charismatic church, blessed with spiritual gifts. They are also urban which is why 1 Corinthians is so important. Leaders speak in the tongues of angels. They believe They speak in tongues all the time and they've been given this spiritual experience but are in competition with one another, and are arrogant about it. the “Spirit” revealed to them “divine wisdom and knowledge.” Therefore, they believe they enjoyed Problem: Whoever special status. They are spiritually mature, more ESSAY (TAKE NOTE): spiritual and spiritually superior to others. The wealthy people are taking advantage of the poor and then celebrating the Lord's Supper and Paul is furious 25 The Corinthians challenge Paul, arguing about the cross, spiritual gifts, and the resurrection. They criticize Paul for For not having the same kind of spiritual experience like them. not being spiritual. Furthermore, they say Paul is clumsy when he speaks and lacks the capacity to “go deep” when he preaches. Their moral behavior includes tolerance of incest and They are in Christ but have not yet shakened off their cultural practices and values They are arrogant, boastful and they are proud. participation in blatant acts of sexual immorality. Regardless, the Corinthians are arrogant, boastful, and proud. 26 “The Corinthians may have the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t have them!” Though they speak in tongues, they don’t act like new creatures in Christ. They still follow the values and standards of secular Corinthian culture. To make matters worse, they are in open rebellion against As a leader, the worse hurt is those who hurt you from the inside. Paul (their spiritual father). They see little reason why Paul has a right to correct them. 27 1 Corinthians is Paul’s response to: (1) the problems he has heard from Chloe’s people (1 Cor. 1-6), and (2) “questions” the Corinthians raised in a letter they have written to Paul (1 Cor. 7-16). Paul’s task is to reestablish his authority as an Apostle, and convince the Corinthians he is right, and they are wrong. His response is combative. Paul will confront the problems “head on”, one after another. There are 11 specific problems. 28  Eleven Problems What Paul has heard (1-6) Factions in the Church (1:10-4:21) Incest/tolerant leadership (5:1-13) Brother takes brother to Courts (6:1-11) Believers going to Prostitutes (6:12-20) 29 What the Corinthians have written (7-16) These are questions that the Corinthians have raised Marriage and Sex (7:1-40) Liberty: Meat Offered to Idols (8:1-10:33) Women in Worship (11:1-16) There are some women who are acting up in church and embrassing the life out of everybody but it has absolutely nothing to do with women and leadership The Lord’s Supper (11:17-34) Spiritual Gifts & Chaos (12:1-14:40) They are abusing spiritual gifts Resurrection from the Dead (15:1-58) The Collection (16:1-4) Paul is going to address all of this from a theological viewpoint 30  Theological Themes in 1 Corinthians Eschatology as a theological framework focused on Christ’s death, resurrection, and return. Jesus Christ, the cross, salvation, and power of the Spirit. The Church, as the temple of the Holy Spirit, and as the body of Christ. Moral Living in Christ. Paul’s theological indicative and moral imperative. 31  The So What? Pentecostal/charismatics worshipping in urban churches struggle with similar problems. The cult of personalities. Spiritual elitism (emphasis on strength rather than weakness). Arrogance, stubbornness, and divisiveness. 32  A theology adjusted to fit our culture. Sexual and other moral sins, rampant in contemporary urban culture, also in the church. The centrality/uniqueness of cross and gift of salvation. Proper use of the spiritual gifts. 33  Exegesis Assignment Sources: Commentaries marked with a star in the bibliography. Translation: NIV is fine What did the original meaning of the text? What did the original audience understand? 34  NOTE Outline All texts have a historical and a cultural context Literary context is what is happening around the verses The outlining should go in a chronological manner that you can do by bullet Introduction points Historical/Political/Cultural Context The aim is to get the Corinthian correspondence order right Remember to use Times New Romans, 12pt, no need for notes or citations but Literary Context add in footnotes and sources Content (the main part of your assignment) Analysis (verse by verse) 11:23-30 is where Prof does the exegesis Study notes and Timeline can do bullet points but The spaces in between the verses is where you do the exegesis for timeline need to make sure it's chronological Theological Concepts These verses go together and which verses are standalone Summary PART 3: APPLICATION You can annotate chapter by chapter and you bullet point the essentials Application Bibliography 35 A First Step (before consulting the commentaries) POINTERS MENTIONED BY PROF DOUG Don't go into the commentaries but learn to see it for your selves. Read the passage several times v17 onwards Read the passage again and again until you get the storyline of the story Paul is famous for repetitions What is the general storyline? Paul runs a laundry list of "here is who you were and this is who you are now" The main issue is that people are abusing the Lord's Supper Are there causes and effects? This is what you did and this is what you will become. What about metaphors? Paul was famous for this Look for Don't ever con-speculate, interpret what is there from God's inspired word. You may infer Any ideas, phrases, words that you don’t know something but be very careful. Patterns Repetitions Contrasts and comparisons Lists Cause and effect Images, metaphors Figures of speech 36  POINTERS TO NOTE Look for Paul has a rhetorical style of asking questions Take a look at conjunctions - when it says "therefore", go back and ask why is it there for? Question and answers He will go "do you not know?" Or just but? What comes after the but? Conjunctions "But Christ", "therefore" these are I put Look at the verbs and see how they drive the passage. Are they active or passive? What about if there were anything emotional? Terms, dialogues that go back and forth and if Verbs: active, passive, past, present, future he is talking both ways. *The thing about the letters is that it's just one side of the story Emotional terms How do you see God in the story? and we need to fill in the other side, which is the Corinthians side. What are the theological keys? (Is Note the tone of voice, is he angry/pastoral? Dialogue this christology etc) Any other themes or changes Usually you will see how you can fit Tone into Paul's theological propositions Where is God's role in the story? What does it mean to think theologically? What about the people? - You can do a mindmap Scene changes Read the text and see what springs out at you, what comes to your mind Actions/roles of God Submit the first draft of your essay by 7 Nov Actions/roles of people Essay will be on Chapter 11:17-34 and The Lord's Supper Read from different translations such as NASB, ESV, NTL, RSB Diagram the passage Prof Doug will look at what difference does it make? How can I use it in your personal life or in Now to the commentaries a teaching- the application of the exegesis 37  For Next Week OTHER MATTERS There are no exams on 2 Corinthians Try and read 1 Corinthians in a single sitting (it will take Exams will be a closed book Rule of thumb for an exegetical research and essay is 2.5hrs per page about an hour). If it is too much, read 1 Corinthians 1-6. spent writing your research and re-writing it etc. EXEGESIS ESSAY Study Guide Notebook 2000 words, double space times new Roman's Introduction with outline for notes Use 5 sources. Commentaries are available in Alphacrucis library are designated with a* in the syllabus - Two Assignments: Indent new paragraph, don't add another double space Outline of 1 Corinthians; Chronology of Paul’s visits Page numbers, don't number first pages and letters to the Corinthians (see syllabus for instructions) Start reading 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. 38 SOT ADM 2024 BIB353 I & II Corinthians Problems in a City Church Lesson 1, 17 October, Transcription (Recording Part 2 – 3) the hour or on the hour, and we take a 10-minute break. And then we'll do it again, and we do it again. The third hour, or part of that, I want to spend on helping you with how to do things. I know that there are some of you, at least from my experience as I've been teaching adult students, who or in ministry or wanting to go into ministry for years and years or lay people who are well established already that you've been out of school for a while and so there's that certain fear as to what in the world will happen. I am too rusty or I never was any good. I want to take away that fear. If you work, you will do well. I promise you will do well if you work. And what kind of students you were 20 years ago is irrelevant, unless you were a good one. I came out of Bible school. I was really a pretty good preacher at that point. But I was one of these irregular students who never opened a book. And so if you saw my transcript, I don't even want to look at it. But it's probably got A's and D's. It was nothing to be proud of. So I was grateful that some years later somebody would take a chance on me. This is, you work, you're going to do well. I know you're going to do well. But you're going to need some help because some of the stuN we're doing, one of the assignments is that an exegetical assignment, and one of your first questions may be, what in the world is exegesis? I remember when I started at Vanguard, I'd been at Bible school, but we didn't do any of that stuN. And I heard these exegesis and hermeneutics. And, you know, it had sort of a nice ring to it. I had no clue what it meant. But I learned over those next few months, don't use fake words when you preach. Because it sounds ridiculous. So I still have people 50 years later come up to me and say, Doug, I'm still hermeneutic your material. So obviously they don't know what the word means either. They're just laughing because I must use hermeneutics when I'm 21. And I probably avoid big words. I try to avoid them in class actually as much as I can. But You will be just fine. So in that third hour, I'll spend time with you. I'll respond to questions. And I'll probably teach part of it. But I want to begin, if I can have my slides, with... I'll just go through these first ones because it's about the assignments, then we'll take our first break. So if you would give me the next slide. Give me the next one. This slide is good for you because it gives you dates and everything. It's not good for me because I can't read it. But here's your assignments. One of the most important things for you to do in this class is read. And I mean read the Bible. Read 1 Corinthians. I would like you, if you can, to read it through in one shot. It'll take probably an hour, 15 minutes. And the reason to read it in one shot is it's a letter. And if you got a letter from somebody, you wouldn't read half of it and then come back to it a week later and read the other half. So if you can. But if you need to divide it, do it this way. Chapters 1 through 6... and then chapters 7 through 16. And I'd like you to read it through every week if you can, and then the chapters that we'll be doing in class. For example, next week I'll do chapters 1 through 6, so that you're familiar with the text itself. The readings, the textbook is Shriner's. It's first Corinthians and it's available in the Alpha Cruces library. And you'll see the readings from it. The readings aren't real heavy. Here's how I use textbooks. They are supplemental. I don't teach from a textbook. My theory has always been. If you have the textbook, and I teach from the textbook, why do you need me? Just read the textbook. So it's supplemental. And there are times there will be a heavy week, and you may not be able to keep up with the readings. Just take a breather and get your work done first. Your first assignment is, I want you to outline for Corinthians. You'll look some. Just your Bible. And I don't care if you're right or wrong. That's not important. It's that you are dealing with these 16 chapters, and you can see some kind of divisions. So almost like a table of contents for 1 Corinthians. And for me, obviously, after all these years, I can do this five diNerent ways in my sleep. But if you give me a book, say, in the Old Testament I'm not familiar with, I'm in the same situation as you are. So I recognize it's not that easy. But 1 Corinthians is written, Paul writes it in a very logical manner, unlike 2 Corinthians. I won't have you outline 2 Corinthians because it's just, It's like sometimes you think Paul has ADD, which, of course, he doesn't. We have to piece it together. But I would like you to outline it. That is an assignment for next week. You turn it in. In fact, there's two assignments like this. The second one is a chronology of Paul's visions and letters to the Corinthians. And I want you to construct that. You see in the syllabus, I have given you other passages where we can put it together. But by just reading any one, there's no way that we can put the whole story together. So here's, I'll start you. We know Paul's first visit to the Corinthians was on the second missionary journey when he established the church. So there was a series then of letters Some that we actually don't have, but we know they're there because Paul tells us. And a series of visits. And I'd like you to get a chronological order of how that happens. So if you follow my verses, that should be easy enough. Here's the thing on the outline and the chronology. You'll submit it. It's not important to me that you get it precisely. What's important to me is you do it thoughtfully. And if you do it thoughtfully, it gives you the points. There is a ton of students. So when you submit, we will send back to you Here's the answers. And you can then check your homework to see how it is. But if it's done thoughtfully, I just give you the points. So I don't give you like, oh, this is an 85 or whatever. And then there's one more like that. It's called the study guides or a notebook. There is a file, should be, on Canvas. where you can access the study guides. And the first one is an introduction. And it, like, covers the lecture tonight. What I've done is I've taken the passages and I've broken them up into the sequence in which I'll cover them. And you can use it like an oboe. You'll have my lectures, your readings, you can keep notes. If you use these that I've set up, they'll expand so you can make as much room as you want. And you'll submit that at the end of the class, the end of the course, the whole notebook, which again, if you do thoughtfully, give you the points. There's a series of questions with Each one of these, except for the first one, the first one are these assignments on construct, an outline construction of chronology. There will be like maybe four questions that you will have read the material, you may start responding, you may do it after the lecture, but I want you to respond to each one of those questions. Again, If you do these thoughtfully, they give you the point. Here's the thing. You have to answer all the questions. You can't say, oh, there's four. I think I'll do three because either one is too hard. That's not how it works. It's all or nothing. So make sure you do all of them, but they'll help you. This process should not take long, but it is something that you'll do each week. Here's where you earn your grade. There is an objective exam at the end, which means true, false, and multiple choice matching. And in that study guide folder, there is a study guide for this final objective exam. There is nothing on the exam that's not in that study guide. So you should do well. It's maybe 75 questions, and it's very comprehensive. If you've studied, you'll do well. If you haven't studied, it could be a long 75 questions. But I will give you everything you possibly need to be successful. And then... The other main essay is an exegetical essay. So 2000 word essay. And what I've selected is on the Lord's supper and first Corinthians 11, which I'll talk about in the third hour. It is sure to write your name on your actual assignment, not just on the, the that carries your name, but your name on the actual assignment. And always make sure that you number your pages. And put this in your mind, you never number your first page. I am old school, so I usually work from hard copy. So if the copy gets separated, It has your name on it, and I'm fine. And this next part is critical. Your favorite font may be who knows what. For this class, your favorite font becomes Times New Roman 12 point. Times New Roman is the typical font that's used for academic work, though there's others. When there is a ton of students and there's a multitude of fonts, it's like a bad dream trying to grade. So if everything is consistent and this 12 point font is important, not 11, not 10, 12 point. So we have consistency and this will be good for your future because all assignments. should be Times New Roman 12.5, unless described to you diNerently. So you may have questions, and you can send those in. This is a good time for me to mention, somewhere on your Zoom page, there is a button that's question and answer. So while I teach tonight, If you have questions, you can just enter them as we go, or you can enter during the week. But if you enter, some of you enter them as you go. We'll do a selection of those, and I'll answer them in the third hour. Over a week's time, City Harvest staN will sort those through and get them into categories. And I'll respond to them the following week. But I can respond to your questions tonight if you use that little button. I think for now it's 9 o'clock for you. So we'll come back at precisely 9, 10. So take a 10-minute break, and we'll see you back very shortly, okay? God bless. Part Three can drive people crazy but the New Testament the letters of the New Testament are written within a very complex cultural matrix on the big picture it's what we call the Greco Roman world which is nothing to do with  The big world that's out there, and it was ruled under Mediterranean system, then under the Greeks, then under the Romans. And even though, at the point we're talking, the Romans ruled literally this entire world, the culture, you don't get rid of your culture, so we see that flow over. And to understand any scripture in the New Testament, we always need to ask, what is the cultural context? That will tell us much. It's like if something, say, takes place in Singapore, some big event, and 10 years later, everybody in Singapore knows what that is. But anybody not in Singapore has no idea of what that event is. And so if you tell a story using that as a context, people have no idea what you're talking about. Well, the same is true with the early church. So I'm going to give you one of these quick tours. of the social context of the early church, which will include social, cultural, political, economic, and religious aspects. So let's take this right together. Next slide. Here is, we'll start first with the Mediterranean culture that precedes Hellenism, which is the Greeks. But these are characteristics, all of these are present when we read 1 Corinthians. The idea of a household run by a patriarch. In Paul's letters, we'll often see, like, The church met in this person's house or this person and all of their household. Very critical in first century is this idea of a household, especially by the middle class or above. It's where an entire family and extended family and an extended family are all under one roof along with their cattle, goats, And that makes up the household, and generally the oldest person is the patriarch, who absolutely has all the power, makes all the decisions. So when we see in the New Testament that The jailer, St. Philippians, and his whole household accepted the Lord. That is often what happens. And Paul will target that in that if the patriarch finds the Lord, generally he will bring along the household. So this idea of a household run by a patriarch. Honor and shame. I think later I actually deal with these two terms. But this idea of honor comes by, and both of these are determined by what other people think of me or think of you. Honor comes by how people think of me. So if I am involved in something, bring honor to me and be like boy that's really good or does it bring shame and first century is highly leaning towards the shame you avoid it whenever possible and honor and shame are huge issues i'll talk about those i think in some important terms so i won't do it right here And again, I'll touch those, but status and role are, status is your station in life. Like you're a slave, or you are a farmer, or you are a tradesman, or you're a lawyer, and it goes up and down the social ladder. For the most part, those don't change. If you are a slave, Your children are slaves. Their children are slaves. In most poor countries, this is still the case. It's not like, oh, this person grew up like I did without electricity, without running water. Usually that is repeated in poor cultures. And Cultures that are not so poor, that person gets an education and can lift themselves up. But for the most part, these are fixed. So status is your station and role is what kind of things belong to that station. For example, if you're at the lower end, manual labor, that's part of the role. If you're at the upper end, you avoid manual labor like the plague. That's why Paul saying he works in Corinth with his hands really bothers the Corinthians because it's like embarrassing. Paul, you're this highly educated person. What are you doing? And you recognize some of these from your own culture. I lived in Latin America for 25 years and Latin America can be very much this. The advantage to this though, is it gives you a much closer view at what first century culture looks like. If you're from the West, this doesn't really look like, I mean, all these elements are there, but not to the degree they are in much of the rest of the world. so you should be able to identify and it'll help you then understand the context of what's happening in a book or a letter in the scripture patronage and quid pro quo that is um if you get a position you help your friends it's just the way it works um and um I know Singapore isn't like this, but in a lot of countries, it is. This quid pro quo probably isn't Singapore too, I don't know. But I know in Latin America, it's who you know. You do something for me, I'll do something for you. And everything is done practically on this basis. It's on who you know, how you help, how can they help you. And then under this Mediterranean culture that still is very present in Corinth is this idea of religion and it's everything. There's this pantheon of the gods, Zeus. All of these gods, there's gods for Rome, there's gods for  every city, there's gods for household, there's a pantheon of gods, so real diversity of religion. Well, when the Greeks, with Alexander the Great, conquers this culture, it brings along, it adds these, but it brings along three or two other areas that are very the polis are cities. Up until the Greeks, cities are not really that significant. I mean, even in the Gospels, Jerusalem, it's not, I mean, it's like a small city compared to what we're talking about in Europe. So, the bulk of populations move to the cities and so we get these big cities like rome alexandria corinth antioch those are sort of in the order of size rome's the largest alexander's the second largest corinth is the third largest city in the roman empire so From our perspective, we can very much identify, because most of us come from a very urban situation, or you live in a very urban situation. And then one huge item, common language. The Greeks bring a common language that runs across the empire. It's Greek. They don't speak Latin. Greek is the language of business, of commerce. It is, um, all of the letters in the New Testament are written in Greek. Huge advantage to the early church where everybody has their own language. Um, but there's one language that I also know, um, very similar to a Singapore situation. And if you're in one of the other countries, perhaps the same. But most people speak English. You conduct commerce with English. But when you are with your friends, you revert to English. Chinese or whatever other dialect that is very similar to what I'm talking about here in the early church. There's that main language, and then there's the second language, which I'll get to later. And again, more emphasis on this religious pantheon, so it just grows and grows. Next slide. Rome overthrows the Greeks, but again, Cultures don't get overthrown. It takes centuries for that to happen sometimes. So take all of the cultures I have listed, these main ones that survive, and then we add to it. Here's the Romans when they conquered the Greeks. Here's what's typical about the Romans. They are eNicient. This is something that In the previous cultures, there is an eNiciency. One of the reasons they're eNicient is you can't do commerce if you're not eNicient. And their commerce runs over the entire Greco- Roman world. So big emphasis on eNiciency. Communication. You cannot make money if you can't link together places. So they build 50,000...  miles, about 75,000 kilometers of roads so that their wagons and their troops can easily move across the empire. Great advantage for the gospel. It's sort of like our information highway, which I'll come to shortly. There's a big emphasis on security. You will have seen in the gospels. You couldn't travel five miles without getting accosted, sort of take the parable of the Good Samaritan. Very dangerous to go anywhere. Well, the Romans try as much as possible to secure these roads so that people can travel. You have to travel in order to do business. It's important to recognize that most of their travel is done not individually, but in groups, which makes travel safer. Paul often, seldom is he alone, often he has somebody with him, but sometimes he is alone. And Paul travels, I think about 15 000 kilometers and probably 10 000 of those are on foot so unlike the romans who will have some troops with them paul is vulnerable on these trips nonetheless it is an amazing improvement over what was The Romans, in order to have commerce, need to conquer. And so they become a colonial power. And they take over one region after another. And so we have war, a lot of conflict. And now remember, the Greeks bought in cities. Well, this is an expensive process for Rome. They have almost like a welfare system going. that um people in the cities if you can't get there they're going to have rebellion so i like when people are rural they can sort of survive oN the land you can't in the cities in order to do all of this world taxes the life out of everybody everything is taxed and the corruption in it is absolutely immense. One of the parables, we even see this is true in the Gospels, where the famous parable on, should we pay taxes to Caesar? That is one of the hottest questions asked in the New Testament and for another class. The social economic structures of Rome are very layered. For example, you have the beautiful people on top, the blue bloods, I call them. And then after that, it's very stratified. You have the people who are professionals, who serve the blue bloods, lawyers, doctors, the people that are necessary to keep these wealthy families operating. And so often, this group are a group of professionals, but they're slaves. So very stratified. And then you have the...  welfare the majority I think one could say probably a third of the people who are alive in the Roman Empire are slaves so let's say there are 75 million 25 million of those would be slaves so huge and this becomes They have got to keep inside fighting down and fighting with them down in order to make money. And so they can be very brutal. And so there's all kinds of those tensions. Then, in the midst of all this, there are Jews. Remember in the Old Testament when Israel was carried into exile. Think of... There was Israel and there was Judah. Israel was the wealthy branch and they get carried into exile long before Judah does. We focus on Judah because that's, they go to Babylon and then we get the great story about how Cyrus the King gives the verdict and allows them to go back and build the temple. the the group i'm talking about are those from israel the wealthy uh and it's much larger they are dispersed throughout the empire they're not gathered together in one spot and so that's often where we say and i need a better term for this um so i don't mean this pejoratively god always has a left hand um That is, God always has a plan B. So, God brings good out of bad. This structure of these Jews being spread throughout all the Roman Empire, and they actually make out about 10% of the population, there is something very attractive about being a jew in this world that is roman hellenistic because this world can be very chaotic especially with the gods well the jews they have common texts they have the old testament they share common stories they have the old testament stories they have strong convictions about morality, about commitments to Yahweh. And they have similar practices. Just that sense of order. It's actually what Christianity brings to this early church or to the world of the first century. It brings order. It brings sense. It brings predictability. That's what happens with the Jews and so forth. Plan B is when Paul, who's at the point of despair, moves into the Greco-Roman world, he starts and he looks for common ground, which is very typical of Paul's missiology. Find something common and go from there. So Paul almost always starts in the synagogue. Often he doesn't last there more than six weeks or less because the people are Jews. They're Old Testament and Paul's preaching race. They see this as heretical and they beat him and they throw him out and Paul has to move into somebody's house or something. But this is where he starts and where he gets the first... So the world of this early church is made up of these cultural contexts. Next slide. This is something that I have put together, and here's what I argue. is that this world, the Greco-Roman empire between say 45 and 75, it may even go up to 90, but there is a window here where this world looks very similar to our globalized world in 2024. And we can really work from some of these commonalities. You think of how does this world match up with Asia? But let me give you my rendition. There are 50,000 miles of roads. This opens up the empire to anybody, like technology, like the information highway. You can, if you've got a computer, You can set it up under a tree if you've got it charged and reach anything anywhere. The entrepreneurialism that can come from that is amazing and you can break all this status and role and carry yourself out if you're entrepreneurial. But the point is, technology and globalization allows us to have I, in the course of a week, I would receive communication from any number of countries, any number of diverse people other than Westerners. In fact, before 1989, that wasn't really possible. 1989 was the fall of the Berlin Wall, and globalization burst on the scene. Before 1989, this idea of you had freedom to cross everything and communicate wasn't the case. But after that, everything blew open. Let me give you an example. When we first went to the mission field, This would be January of 1976. We were granted in a country that was only beginning to develop. But when our son was born, I didn't call my parents. I sent them a telegram. Who sends telegrams? But the world just wasn't open. And to make a long-distance call, I would have to go to the post oNice, get an appointment, go to the post oNice to a central place where I could call a poll that cost so much money. You only did that like once every, not very often. The world wasn't really tied together. There were Two radio stations. In fact, there was just one radio station. Half of it was in English. Twelve Hours and Twelve Hours was in Spanish. And television was one channel. Well, after 1989, this changes everything. Television, you've got all of the, you've got CNN. And then the other channels would follow. And you became very globalized. Email comes in, this idea of technology. I found something attractive about this pre-1989. I was, besides my work with Latin America Child Care, I was also one of the leaders for missions. So I was in charge of Central America and of the missionaries in Central America and of the language school. All the missionaries going to Latin America with the Assemblies of God came to Costa Rica for a year. And the language school was one of my projects that I started some years previous. But I would try to visit each of the countries like every three months or every four months. And there wouldn't be a lot of communication in between because if I wrote a letter, a letter's gonna take two or three weeks and then take two or three weeks back for an answer, which was kind of nice. Once email came, You send that letter by email and people are back to you in 20 minutes wanting to know, did you get my email and what's the answer? There is something nice about being able to take a deep breath that globalization just ended. So very similar to the idea of roads is technology and globalization. Commerce. Commerce is global during this period. of the early church, while almost every major company has their global tie. St. Hor is filled, it's like one of the centers. corporations for globalization that goes out to the entire world, the arts, cultures could easily be transmitted from one place to the next. And something huge is that there's travel. Before the Romans, even earlier on in the first century, there's just simply not that much travel. It was too dangerous. But during this window of, like, Paul's ministry, between, say, 45 and 65, people traveled. We look in the New Testament and in the letters, people are always traveling. Always traveling. We don't think anything about that because we travel, too. But that was unique, this idea of travel. There's a description in Rome that carries... It's on somebody's grave stone. And it's the person on it. It's inscribed, he'd been to Rome 72 times. Everybody traveled. Paul carried out all his ministry by traveling. By the later part of the first century, that door closes, which... closes all the globalization and it stays closed for 1900 years. So this window is very unique and one we should be able to identify with because it looks like our world. I alluded to this earlier about English being the language commerce. Local, global. My friend Ivan Sarivacha has written, and I forget exactly, it's a combination of globalization, I think that's what it means, which is a combo of local and global. And Thomas Friedman has written a famous book called The Lexus and the Alder Tree. And here's how that goes. Everybody in this kind of world has their own culture. You have the foods you eat at home. The language is usually whatever your first or second language other than English is, that's what you speak at home. You have all the customs like was had for hundreds of years at home. Local. But when you walk out the door, everything turns global. So for Friedman, his idea of Alexis is like that's representative of the global. And the olive tree is representative of what happens at home. This idea of local, global. Paul always works locally. Christ of which he's the one who invents all the metaphors for the body of Christ he thinks of it globally so the idea is you could be in this little place and have 20 people you're not some little church you belong to something much much bigger so even in the church we get global and local key cities this idea to, you can just name them oN. If we were in a class and we were together, I'd say, just tell me major cities of which there is action. And we could just name them oN. The key cities that sprung up under the Greeks, Paul does all his missionary work through key cities. And if you follow his three missionary journeys and you keep track of the places he goes, they are always important cities in a region. They're important cities, they're capital cities of areas. Paul's whole missiological and strategical approach is based on, he goes to the key cities, often starts in the synagogue, and then from the key cities, the good news is spread throughout the hinterland, which is very much Paul's missiological process. We've spoken about this pantheon of the gods, so pluralism. The idea here is not so much you have to My God, I got 20 of them. No problem. Have you got five more? No problem. We just put them all together. No problem. So you get this pluralism. What happens then out of that comes a mixture of it all. That's what we call syncretism. But this idea of pluralism, And here, you'll have to think about how Asia works. But in the West, very much so, this idea of pluralism is what we call politically correct. That is, people love to hear your story of something exciting that's happened in your life, a miracle, something mystical.  You can be on TV and everybody loves your story until, we'll call that the mini story, until you tell the big story, the meta narrative, there's a big word, which is there is only one way to heaven and that is through Jesus Christ. Well, the people will look at you in the early church they have this challenge of Jesus is not another God you add on top of the mantle of your fireplace how this works is you get rid of everything else on the fireplace and Jesus is there all by himself and that creates immense friction splits families, suNering, pain. And for Paul, any kind of suNering like this is like suNering like Jesus. And Paul actually doesn't see that as a negative. But many of you have come out of exactly these kind of contexts. And you get ostracized. And it can take years in order to heal some of those. And sometimes until the very end, sometimes not at all. This world of this window is filled with ideas. That is entrepreneurialism. Creativity. Paul is one of the most entrepreneurial of all of his generation and generations thereafter. We think of Paul's work as, well, everybody, we just take it for granted. But at the time, it is absolutely creative. It's entrepreneurial, the way he goes at things. And it can also ideas very similar to our globalized world. You come up with something that you just think up and once in a while that idea will hit and it will be unbelievably successful. I think next time when I'm at City Harvest, which is just another couple weeks, I'm thinking of preaching about something along those lines of listening to the spirit and that creative part that springs up within us and we think of something brand new. And then out of that comes something wonderful. It doesn't have to be big. But just that kind of idea, very similar to the first century. And then there's just a bunch of pagans. People don't care about any of the gods. Our context have nothing to do with, they're just nominal, non-religious, a huge segment. And then a divided society that is rich, middle class, and poor. And in the early church, with the exception of Corinth, is almost always the haves and the have-nots. And the Bible, throughout the Old Testament, in the Gospels, and certainly in the letters, there is that emphasis on you've got to break the barrier down between rich and poor. That's what happens when the Gospel comes present. When the Gospel comes present, in fact, you break down four barriers. Male-female.  slave free, Jew, Gentile, rich, poor. And Paul will take a temperature of the church by their capacity to do that. And if you read the Acts, you'll see these verses come up where it's through the power We'll take a look and we'll see how Paul travels everywhere. He's got teams, and those teams are made up. They're like a microcosm of what I'm talking about. It'll have young, it'll have veterans, it'll have male, it'll have female, it'll have slaves. Can you imagine when Paul's team comes rolling into one of these cities? It is like these groups simply don't hang around together. They have nothing to do with each other. Rich, they never have anything to do with the poor. Jews hate Gentiles. Gentiles aren't. Women are marginalized. These have to be broken down. And so we're going to see in Corinth, I'll talk about 11 problems, but many of them have to do with the haves and the have-nots. And the scripture throughout is so clear. When we're redeemed, we're just not saved to go to heaven. We are saved so that we can proclaim the good news and that good This is a good place for me to stop. I'll be back on track. And we'll start taking a look at the Corinthian situation. So let us come back at, what is it for you? Nine? Nine? It's 9 to 52, but in any case, it's 52. Let's come back at two minutes after the hour. So take a 10-minute break. Amen. so Okay. So, Caleb? Caleb, you've got a hardship here, okay? So that you don't want to miss your family, who are more than anybody, okay? Oh, you like to see things when I have shit like this? Huh? Mama. It's okay. It's okay.  I miss you, Auntie. I miss you. I miss Auntie and you. I miss me. I miss Auntie and you, Mommy. Aiyo, baby ah. Y'all better go and sleep. He's not feeling well, okay? He's already trying to go to sleep. So you better go now. So, so so.. Thank you. you Okay, we're back for the final hour. I will do the introduction with Corinth, and then I'll take some time just to talk about where I would like you to start on doing the exegesis. So, next slide. You can imagine How diNicult it's going to be. We end the gospels with the cross and resurrection and the promise in Luke of Pentecost. But like all of Jesus' disciples are Jewish and most of them haven't been anywhere. When you look at this world I've just described, it doesn't look anything like the Jewish world. And yet that is the task of the early church missions. They are going to have to work their way through a huge geographical change from Jerusalem to these major cities and to the big world out there. It's a diNerent language. The Aramaic of Palestine shifts to Greek. If any of you have done missionary work where the language is diNerent than your first language, you have to learn a new language. It's almost a deal breaker. I could spend a lot of time just on this one because I had to go through that process of When I'm 30 years old, I have to learn another language to the degree that I can preach and teach in that language. A lot of you have a second language, your native language, and you're completely fluent. But to be able to write or to teach... can be threatening in another language other than English even. So when you start from scratch, this is going to be a huge barrier. Culturally, what I described and what they're going to hit is completely diNerent. It is like going from the country  of some place in the world that's rural with some little towns into a metropolis like Singapore. I mean, even I was stunned the first time I got to Singapore. Everything was newer and more modern than any place I'd ever been. And I live in Southern California. Just sort of takes your breath away. Sociologically, there is a diNerence. And demographically, this is a big one. In the Gospels, it is all Jewish. When after Pentecost, there is this barrier that's crossed, and it's going to be all Gentile. Those are diNicult transitions that we can talk about as we go. This process is so complete that all the letters we have in the New Testament are written in Greek. The early church becomes this very Greek-Roman type of culture. Which is understandable, but it isn't anything like the Gospels. That is one of the reasons that I think the Lord chooses somebody who can function in both cultures equally when he chooses Paul. So we'll look at that shortly. Next slide. a very quick timeline. Wild guess by most scholars is Paul is born somewhere around 5 to 10 AD, something like that. If we place the cross at 30 or 31, we get Paul's conversion, best guess, somewhere around 36 AD. And... Then we see there is this period of Paul takes five years where he's out, spends a couple years in Antioch. Next slide. just so that you get your bearings as to where we're at. So we'll pick it up. It is Paul's first missionary journey. It's somewhere around 47 to 48, maybe even to 49, but more likely 47 to 48. And then Acts 15, which is the Council of Jerusalem, over do Gentiles need to be circumcised? And Paul is the big voice here is that the gospel is for every person there. The only thing that matters is name Jesus Christ as Lord. From 49 to say 51 or 52 is Paul's second missionary journey. We find this in chapters 15 through 18 in Acts. And it's on this second missionary journey that he hits Corinth and he stays there. and establishes this church. He's there for 18 months. And then the third missionary journey, he headquarters in Ephesus. And his relationship then with the Corinthians takes place during these three years. And it is rocky, as we shall see. It's heartbreaking. Paul's beloved church, the one that...  he has spent most of his life, is rebelling. And Paul has to deal with the situation, go through his own personal heartache, and try to get people back on the same line. From his third missionary journey, he goes back to Jerusalem. He's almost immediately about three years, and then he appeals to Caesar and the book ends with his trip to Rome and he's held, um, in, um, he's under house arrest, so to speak in Rome. And that's how Romans ends. So we are working on that at the end of this second missionary journey, uh, But most of our story takes place while he's in Ephesus on his third missionary journey, so it relates to the Corinthians. Next slide. You can look at this map and you can track his missionary journeys. I won't do it here because I can't. But you should be able to. Next slide. Here we go. Corinth. Let's talk a little about Corinth. Corinth is the largest city after Roman Alexandria. It is estimated that it has as many as 700,000, probably closer to 400,000. Nobody is sure. But Corinth, if you look on that map, you'll see If you look at Corinth, you see it's located on this little isthmus that's only six kilometers wide. And that is where wealth is going to come by the bucket load. The Corinthians build the bridge, not a bridge like you think over water, but they build this apparatus that extends for six kilometers where If it's a small ship, a ship can come to one side and they can drag the ship over this six kilometers And it can then keep going on the other side, or if it's larger, they unload it, drag the cargo across, and add it to another ship. Why does this matter? Because the trip otherwise, they have to go down over this unbelievably dangerous route. It's only like 200 miles, but it's dangerous. In fact, one of the... sayings would be, if you go around the long way, make sure you make a will. It was so dangerous. What happens then is Evshex are going to come to, from east and west, are going to pass through this isthmus, which makes Corinth a huge trading center. Whenever you get Of course, what's more to where it's located, it is also the main city between Europe and Asia. So this north-south route, so practically the entire civilized Greco-Roman world is going to pass through Corinth, which makes it One of the most important cities, not just the third largest, one of the most important cities of this time in the world. Next slide. Its location provides opportunity for people to get rich. It's not the blue bloods who are going to get rich. Orange is sort of way out there. It's people who are looking for an opportunity for a better life. A lot of them are prisoners even that Rome has sent out and then from all over the world. For an entrepreneur, it's a dream. whenever you get the whole world at your doorstep. And all of this money from commerce going is a terrific opportunity for wealth. So Corinth becomes one of these cities that is really spectacular. I've only been to the Holy Land once and I made this trip through Corinth. There's this 14,000-seat amphitheater that is still there. Its architecture was spectacular. It's a cosmopolitan city. It's rich. There's lots of the arts. There's philosophy. There's all kinds of religion all mixed together. there are prostitutes. I mean prostitutes everywhere. There are sacred prostitutes. Next slide. There is this area that I'll look at in a moment that houses like a thousand of these, they call them sacred prostitutes. And not only does everybody who passed through take advantage of the services, but so did the Corinthians. People come from everywhere. So you want a diverse population. There's Jew, there's Gentile, there's slave, there's free. Maybe a third are slaves. There's rich and poor. There's male and female. And rarely do these combinations relate with each other. That is going to be one of the challenges of the gospel. which is our challenge, isn't it? We still struggle with ethnicities. We struggle with the haves and the have-nots. We struggle with people who have, people who don't, and male and female. Who's in charge? Who has the upper hand? For Paul, this is going to be a big problem, and one that the gospel simply has to overcome. Corinth attracts merchants, tradespeople, artisans, and especially these philosophers, lovers of wisdom. When I do the first four chapters next week, I will spend time, Corinth is obsessed with these wise men, end quotes. They are these, they even practice being smooth-tongued. They, like somebody who was like practicing for opera, now they practice with their voice and unbelievably popular. And because Corinth was rich, they would flood Corinth with, they would have this, it didn't matter if they made sense. It was that it was unique. Or a mystery. Or you take a Bible passage and you turn it into some conspiracy where A equals this letter and B equals that. And it would just be utter nonsense. But people were obsessed with it. This creates a problem with Paul. Because the Corinthians know that Paul was with them. They know Paul can match any of these people. And he refuses to do it. And what's more, every group would hire one of these. They're like, you have an in-house lawyer? Well, you have an in-house philosopher. And Paul naturally would be theirs and he won't take money. And they resent it. They really resent it. They resent the fact that he is upper end and he works. And they resent the fact they can't control him because he won't take any money. The city, though, where you have people flocking in this opportunity to be rich, attracts everybody else. Gold diggers, troublemakers, cheats, crooks. There's every kind of scoundrel you can imagine in Corinth. Next slide. Corinth has this temple that I mentioned earlier. It's up on a high hill. And at night, the prostitutes would come down and ply their trade. So fornication in Corinth was rampant. I mean, like when people got saved, This is so much part of their culture that they're still, we see, going to prostitutes, except they have it now spiritualized, and Paul has to sort this out. The church at Corinth People who make up the church are, is a mirror of Corinthian culture. So one needs to understand this culture of the Greco-Roman world, and especially then on a much narrower scale, what is it like the culture in a rich city and the people in the Now, before we get too hard on them, we need to remember there are no models. They have no one to copy. They are the first within their region, and sometimes they get it absolutely upside down. But as we go, we'll see the problems that come. They've just brought them over from their culture, and so they try to sort of tip theology to fit their culture. Next slide. Paul. And I'll see how much I get beyond this, but Paul, in Paul's letters, but especially first and second Corinthians, we see his heart. We see inside a church. This is the only church in the New Testament that we see inside of it. That's why it is so critical to us. This is what a church looks like in the real world in the first century.  Everything he does in Corinth gets challenged. Well, all his other works are just going fantastic. We see him angry. We see him sad. We see all these personality sides, Paul. And while we have to be careful, this is unique from anyone else in the New Testament. that's why Paul, the person, becomes very important. If I had time, I'd just stop here and say, okay, take 15 minutes and write down everything you know about Paul. But I will give you a few points, and then in your notes you can keep track as we go. Paul's born in Tarsus, which is a Greek city, and it is a sophisticated city. It's filled with arts. It is filled with this philosopher's, his well-educated place. He is born to Jewish parents who are Roman citizens. Paul is one of the few of this Certainly, none of the other disciples are Roman citizens. Paul is a Roman citizen, which gives him special opportunities because he is a Roman citizen. Paul, this Lexus in the olive tree, Paul thinks in Greek. At home, it's Hebrew. He is educated in Hebrew as a younger child, but also in Greek. So he's completely comfortable in two worlds. He's like bi-cultural. His parents send him to Jerusalem. And there he studies under the leading rabbi of this entire period, Gamaliel. And so Paul is certainly... the most educated of all of the New Testament crowd. And Paul is brilliant. You don't have to read too much of Paul, read Romans, and you realize Paul's going to be the smartest person in every room. But Paul refuses to demonstrate all those capacities for one simple reason. He wants to preach a message of Jesus that everybody can understand. So he'll do it in the simplest way. And it'll drive the Corinthians crazy because it's like, Paul, you're a terrible speaker. Or whatever the case, Paul refuses to be like the smooth tongue. He can match them and does. He does it in Athens and he does it at the end of 2 Corinthians. He can match them and surpass them. He just refuses to. The gospel is too important. People, everybody needs to be able to understand. We need to remember that when we're sharing the good news or if we're teaching or even preaching. Don't get fancy. Make sure everyone can understand. My model is I preach to my mother. My mother had a grade eight, and she loved the Lord. She loved the scripture, but there was a certain level My mother's favorite time would be, let's say, at camp, and the morning speaker is a Bible teacher. She loves that. I am a Bible teacher, and I try to teach so that anybody can understand. If I'm way up in the clouds, I'm wasting my time, I'm wasting yours. So I'm trying to be... where you can follow me easily. Paul thinks in Greek. He's educated in Hebrew. He is well-trained. He's a Pharisee, by the way. And to be a Pharisee, you have to be married. We don't know anything about this. If that's the case, Paul's wife likely had died. It's hard to say. We know he was a Pharisee. He says he was. He persecuted the church. He was the greatest enemy of the church. And he has this magnificent Damascus Road experience. Paul's testimony always begins in his other letters with, I persecuted the church. Paul doesn't see himself as a terrible sinner. Paul sees himself as lost, not as a terrible sinner. He thinks he was a terrific Pharisee. He kept all the law. He was better. He practiced it. And that is why he persecutes the church. What's the principle here? concept for Jews. There is one God. There is only one God. There is none like him. Anything else is idle. Well, there comes this early brand of Jesus followers who say Jesus is God and he's from Nazareth. Born of Mary. To make it worse, he's crucified. For the Jews cursed is he who was hung on a tree. And then to make it worse, they say, this man who was crucified as a criminal, God raised him from the dead to his right hand. That is blasphemous for Paul. It is. These people need to be obliterated. They are a threat to the gospel. And the best to do is drag them out of their house and kill them. Um, Paul is so oNended. When he starts on that Damascus road trip, he has learned nothing new. But all of a sudden, a light from heaven hits him and he's knocked oN his horse or his mule to the ground. And Paul knows he's in the presence of the divine. He doesn't know who the divine is. Just like Moses with the burning bush. He has no idea who Yahweh is. He just knows this is a power beyond me. And so that's Paul. He's knocked to the ground and listen to what he says. Who are you? He knows it's divine. And then listen to the response. Jesus responds, I am Jesus. Who will you crucify? He doesn't say, I'm the Lord. He doesn't say, I'm Christ. He says, Jesus. He is the man from Nazareth. And it hits Paul. The story is true. How do I know? Because I just talked to Jesus. Out of this experience, by the time Paul gets to Damascus, he's already developing out his great theology on justification by faith. And he has this slogan that becomes a slogan for the early church. And here's where I'll pick it up next week. But his slogan is, Jesus Christ is Lord. Think how theological that is. Jesus. the incarnation. It is God become flesh. When we say Jesus, it's this, it's the Christmas story. Christ, he is the Messiah throughout the Old Testament. It is waiting for this Messiah, this Christ who will turn everything around. Jesus Christ is Lord, he's God. Paul covers it all, Jesus. This incarnation, Christ, is this cross. Lord, it's God. My Lord, Jesus, Christ. And that becomes a testimony of faith. Paul would have been a great marketer, because you can't get any slogans better than that one. My Lord, Jesus, Christ. As we'll see, Paul is a closely and nine of them were women as you take notes I encourage you keep note of people's names when the Bible has a name it's often important of events and of places and see what who knows something wonderful may come from it I'll show you next week how what we've learned, and this is called social science criticism, what we've learned from all the archaeology in the first century is from a person's name, you can tell whether they're Jew or Gentile, you can tell where they're from, and you can usually tell their economic status. So that's why I'll pick it up next week and we'll get into the story of Corinth. What I want to do uh from here is i want to talk to you a little bit about your assignment on exegesis and there is um a word document that if you could pull up for me i think it's called first step towards doing exegesis and we could put it up here this is where i want you to start Corinthians chapter 11 verses 17 to 34 which contains the tradition for the Lord's Supper that in two weeks we'll all celebrate on the first of the month um that isn't um the one I want I don't think the slide I want um Well, maybe give me the next slide and let me take a look to be sure. It is the slide that I want. Go back. This is the first step. So if you... The sources you will use for this study, I have starred in your syllabus, but I've also... posted or will post a document that says, here are the available books from Alpha Cruises Library. When you do this study, I don't want you to use other commentaries. I want you to use the ones that are starved because they are quality. You may have a whole set of commentaries at home that you love. Here's sort of a rule. If they're free, don't use them. If they're old, don't use them. If they've been revised from a 1909 version, don't use them. At the beginning of your career, your best to let me choose your sources until you learn some of the sources. You need to work from a good translation. I don't use the NIV for my exegetical work. I use the New American Standard, but the NIV is fine. And I'll talk about the diNerence in translations later. What you're looking for when you interpret a text is what was the original meaning of that text? What did the author intend to say? What did the original audience understand? So it's an informed task of trying to find out not what does it mean to me right now? It's what did it mean in its original form? Gordon Fee has this great statement on the text cannot mean something now that it didn't mean then. So our task with exegesis is try to find what the audience understood. So that's one of our goals. Next slide. Here's where you can start. What I've laid out these first ones is a typical bloodline. that you don't have to do anything with this week, but it's where you're going to go and start with the very brief introduction, then all texts have a historical context and a cultural context. That is, what's the story around it? You'll see in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, The rich are coming early and eating all the food before they celebrate the Lord's Supper. There is a big historical, cultural impact there. And you're looking for the literary context, that is, what's happening around the verses, what happens before verse 17. eleven problems this is one of those problems content is the main part and that's where you do an analysis verse by verse and you look for what are the theological concepts you do a summary and then the so what a brief application and your bibliography but that's not where we're going to start we're going to start is with um some things that i would just like you to take a look at so if you give me the next slide a first step read the passage several times do not go to the commentaries at this stage if you go to the commentaries you will never think for yourself and It is. I remember when I was a young student, I would think, who cares what I think? Why don't I just go do something on somebody who actually knows what they're talking about? But I learned this process is important, and I still use it when I do a passage. I will read that passage over and over and over.  until I get the storyline that I can say in my own words. This story is about, where I can write it in two or three sentences or four sentences. When I read this passage, these are things I'm looking for. Not all of these are in every text, but some are. Are there any ideas that come up? What about phrases that catch my attention? Are there words, are there phrases I don't know about? You'd have to know from the first century. So is there anything I don't know about? And you just make a note. Are there patterns, certain kind of structures or repetition? Paul's famous for repetitions. Is there contrasts and comparisons? lists paul runs laundry lists of here's who you were this is who you are now are there cause and eNect if you do this this is what will happen for example in this story paul says if you keep doing what you're doing stay home from church until i come because that's why some of you are dying there's a cause and eNect what about metaphors Paul is famous for his metaphors. Are there figures of speech? Next slide. Questions and answers, sort of. Paul has this rhetorical style of asking a question. What are you thinking, so to speak? Conjunction. My early professor would teach me in Paul's writings, when it's therefore, go back and ask why it is therefore. Paul would be filled with those, or just that. Almost always in Paul's writings, what comes after the but is really terrific. You were lost. You were dead. You had no chance to save yourself. But Christ in his mercy. Look at the verbs and see how they drive the passage. Are they active? Are they passive? Sometimes in certain passages, I can do the entire exercises around five or six verbs, other times not. What about anything emotional? Are there terms that are emotional? Dialogue, is there a dialogue back and forth? Or where Paul is having the dialogue, he's talking both ways. One of the things that's very diNicult for us when we are doing the letters is we have just one side of the story. We have to fill in the other side. In other words, the Corinthian side. and that takes some skills, and we can't make up stuN. So oN of the dialogue, what about the tone? Is Paul angry? Is he being pastoral? The tone, are there any scene changes? Think in terms of and you're taking a picture of something, and then you shift and take a picture of something else. Are there any of those? What is God's role in the story? And I'll begin with this next week. What does it mean to think theologically? And it's not anywhere near as hard to think. What about people? I'm low-tech. So I have a whiteboard. In fact, I often use a whiteboard that I got in Singapore. When you're on the school, a remedial school, where young people come and finish up their high school, and it's like a whiteboard. You can write on it and use yellow stickums. And I outline on a whiteboard. And I'll diagram the story. And I'll underline stuN. before I'll ever look in the text. And it's then that I will go to the commentaries. For this week, all I want you to do is read that text and see if you can, what springs out to you. What comes out to your mind? So we'll take it one step at a time. I'm going to, for many of you, this is like a first time. So what I have designed is that you will submit a draft that's on like November 7, I believe. It's that Thursday. And then Jennifer and I will work through that draft. My intent was to get it back to you by the next week, and some of those we will, but our class has grown so huge that it may take a couple of weeks for us to go through a couple hundred of these, and we'll give you feedback. Then you take that and you write your final draft, and that's the one we grade. So that final draft is actually going to be due two weeks after our last class, so we finish on a Thursday and then there's two weeks before your next class begins. This final draft you can take up to the end of that seventh week if you need it. So you have plenty of time and you'll have our feedback. The reason I want to do a draft is if you just have a final assignment, Our feedback doesn't mean much because you're on to the next thing. So I want to give you the feedback so you can integrate it. That's how you learn. It's like double work for us, but so much more help for you. You will have questions, you can send them in and the oNice will get them to us. But for this week, get yourself a whiteboard or big page paper and just keep track of stuN as you read and read over again. You'll look and see there's something cultural I don't know anything about. How does that work? And actually, the only way you can find out cultural stuN is from books. What I want you to look at here is to know what it is you need to look at. So let's see how you go. I've got 15 minutes left, and so I'm going to take a little bit of time if you have, if you've submitted questions to respond to those. So if you could put up both Jennifer and myself. And Jennifer, were you able to pick up any questions? Yes, we have several, and since we're on the topic of the final assignment, I think we can start there. The question is, what are the verses for the exegete couple assignment? Chapter 11, verses 17 through 34. And the Lord's Supper, the one that we all know by heart, is within that. And I will say I'm going to post by next week a sample one. I'll write one on some other passage so you can see a sample. But that's the passage. Okay. And when reading the passage, is it good to go use diNerent translations, read diNerent translations? Yes, that's good. There are diNerent kinds of translations. There are translations that try to stay as close to the original language as possible, so to the Greek. And so they're almo