“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Galatians 5:1 NRSV
In part one of this series, we talked about the 1 Corinthians passage in comparison to the rest of the scriptures, and we also challenged the idea that women's head coverings were a big deal to the disciples or Jesus. We found that there appears to be no evidence biblically for a doctrine of head coverings in the scriptures beyond this passage. In fact, we discovered that there appears to be some evidence that women were not judged for wearing open hair overall except in some local cultures - much like today.
Today, we will dig further into the culture of the city of Corinth. Many commentaries focus on the women alone in the passage in question. We will start with cultural influences on the men first here as well. The next article in this series will cover the actual text of 1 Corinthians 11:1-16… the culture in Corinth is a factor in understanding the text.
We know that Corinth was a melting pot of cultures; after all, it was a Roman port city with strong Roman cultural influences. It was a common religious practice of Roman men to take their toga or tunic and raise it over their head and ears to cover them during prayer and worship in various pagan temples. This was not a Greek practice; rather, it was wealthy refined Roman men that would do this during a religious ceremony. In a setting with a number of people, it would be the person doing the sacrifice or prophecy—the priest—who would wear the head covering.
In pagan temples, the priest would cover themselves, their head and ears in particular. The male emperor, who was considered to be a priest, has often been portrayed in artwork from the era with a head covering.
Now that we understand the impact of culture on the men in regards to coverings, let’s move towards how the pagan culture impacted women in this area.
In a previous article, I wrote about the church at Ephesus. Paul had specific suggestions for Timothy - the overseer of the Church help him combat the disruptive influence of the Temple Artemis on the services there. Artemis was a goddess in Greek mythology, which meant that the priests were women in the temple, and men who served in this temple were eunuchs. The services in the Artemis temple worship was incredibly sensual. The Greek historian Herodotus writes of the unusual worship practices of women through temple prostitution in another Artemis temple in Babylon in 539 BCE:
"Artemis 'compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life... Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple... It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home."
Like Ephesus, Corinth had many temples! As mentioned the Temple Apollos lay in ruins during the time of Paul’s letter, but its influence was still very strong in regards to emperor worship and male head coverings. The main temple worship of Corinth was now the worship of Aphrodite - the goddess of love and fertility.
In the first century AD, the goddess Aphrodite, known to the Romans as Venus, was one of the most revered and complex figures in the pantheon of Greco-Roman deities.
While Aphrodite was primarily the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation, she was also considered the goddess of marriage, sea and seafaring, and even war. Her beauty was considered unmatched, often leading to tales of gods and mortals falling in love with her. She was also associated with fertility, both in the human sense and in the growth of vegetation, linking her to the cycle of life. In some myths, especially in the Iliad, she was often depicted in Greek and Roman art as a mature woman, sometimes nude, symbolizing the ideal female form. Some notable artworks include the "Aphrodite of Knidos" and the "Venus de Milo."
There was likely no place in the Roman Empire more open to prostitution than the city of Corinth! With a nearly 600 year history of temple prostitution, this city was not shy about sexuality. Greek geographer Strabo from the first century BCE/CE said this of the temple worship conducted there hundreds of years before Paul’s letter: “The sanctuary of Aphrodite was so rich that it had more than one thousand female sacred servants (hierodoulai), courtesans (hetairai) whom both men and women used to dedicate to the goddess” (Geography 8.6.20). The “sacred servants” and “courtesans” have been historically interpreted as female slaves belonging to the goddess Aphrodite (or Venus), who performed ritual sex acts for payment to the cult.
There is of course debate on how much temple prostitution was active during Paul’s writing to the Corinthians, but seeing that we have several biblical hints of the issues surrounding sex in the Church culture that are found in earlier parts of Paul’s letter, I think it’s evident from there was at the very least a substantial amount of sex trade work happening in the city as shown in chapters 3, 5 and 6.
“Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,””
1 Corinthians 3:16-19 NRSV
“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Should you not rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you? For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present I have already pronounced judgment”
1 Corinthians 5:1-3 NRSV
“Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NRSV
And finally this one here:
““All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”
1 Corinthians 6:12-20 NRSV
With these passages you can see the layering that Paul is doing prior to addressing the covering issue and then communion services after that. These passages would strongly suggest that the Corinthian Church had some significant cultural challenges in relation to pagan influences.
I posted a number of pictures in this article but there are many more. You will notice that nearly all of the pictures of Aphrodite artwork here portray either her or her priestesses with short or open hair. This will become important in the last part of this series when we go through the text.
Of course… we cannot be certain of what things were really like in every sense of the word at the time of Paul’s writings. What we do know is that there was a long history of pagan temple worship that stood in stark contrast to the life of a Christ follower. Since the influence of Aphrodite and Apollos worship was strong in this city, it is clear that the Church was also grappling with issues of promiscuity and paganism that affected the city. Men and women in the church were either emulating pagan practices or reacting with legalistic practices during the services.
Next week… we get into the text!
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