Corinth: The Roman City Where Paul Stayed Eighteen Months

Among the cities of Paul's mission, Corinth holds a special place. It was the site of his longest continuous stay before Ephesus — "a year and six months" (Acts 18:11, Douay-Rheims) — and the recipient of the two longest letters he addressed to any single community. It was also where an encounter with a Roman governor left, by an accident of epigraphy, the single firmest date in the whole reconstruction of Paul's life. This entry gathers what the sources say about the city and Paul's time in it, labelling each claim by its evidentiary weight — (Scripture) for what the New Testament text states, (Tradition) for later Christian memory, and (Scholarship) for modern historical and archaeological reconstruction.

A Roman colony on the isthmus

Ancient Corinth stood on the narrow isthmus joining the Peloponnese to the Greek mainland, commanding the land route north to south and, through its two harbours, the sea route east to west. In Paul's day it was the capital of the Roman province of Achaia and the seat of its governor. (Scholarship) The classical Greek city had been destroyed by Rome in 146 BC and left largely desolate for a century, until Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman colony in 44 BC; the Corinth that Paul knew was therefore a relatively new, Latin-administered, cosmopolitan commercial city, populous and prosperous, with the mixed and mobile population of a great trading hub. (Scholarship)

The site lies in modern Greece, in the region of Corinthia, at the village of Ancient Corinth (Archaia Korinthos), a short distance southwest of the modern town of Korinthos, which occupies a separate coastal site. The coordinates given here point to the excavated archaeological area around the ancient agora and the Temple of Apollo, not to the modern town. (Scholarship)

Paul at Corinth

Paul reached Corinth on his Second Journey, "departing from Athens" (Acts 18:1). There he lodged and worked with Aquila and Priscilla, a Jewish couple lately expelled from Rome, "because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome" (Acts 18:2). The three shared a trade: "because he was of the same trade, he remained with them, and wrought; (now they were tentmakers by their trade)" (Acts 18:3). (Scripture) This is the same manual craft by which Paul supported himself elsewhere, described in our reference on the Apostle Paul.

Discouraged at first, Paul was reassured in a night vision: "Do not fear, but speak; and hold not thy peace... for I have much people in this city" (Acts 18:9-10). (Scripture) He remained "a year and six months, teaching among them the word of God" (Acts 18:11) — one of only a very few ministries in Acts given so exact a duration. (Scripture) The account of this founding is told in the Acts of the Apostles, the continuous narrative source for Paul's career; his own letters confirm the Corinthian mission but do not narrate it step by step.

Gallio and the anchor of Pauline chronology

The best-known episode of Paul's Corinthian stay is his appearance before the Roman governor. "When Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul, and brought him to the judgment seat" (Acts 18:12). Gallio declined to adjudicate what he judged an internal Jewish dispute, and the case collapsed (Acts 18:14-17). (Scripture)

This otherwise minor scene carries unusual weight, because Gallio is independently datable. An inscription found at Delphi, quoting a letter of the emperor Claudius, fixes Gallio's proconsulship of Achaia to about AD 51-52. (Scholarship) Since Acts places Paul in Corinth during that term, the so-called Gallio inscription gives the reconstruction of Paul's whole life its single firmest calendar anchor, and the conventional dating of the journeys is counted forward and back from it. Two cautions belong here: the inscription is at Delphi, not at Corinth, and it dates Gallio's term of office rather than Paul directly — the link to Paul depends on the Acts narrative. (Scholarship)

The Corinthian letters

Corinth is the addressee of two of Paul's letters, First and Second Corinthians, written after the founding visit; most scholars place their composition somewhat later, chiefly from Ephesus and Macedonia during the Third Journey. (Scholarship) They open by naming the city directly: "to the church of God that is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints" (1 Corinthians 1:2). (Scripture) These letters are among the richest surviving windows onto the life of an early urban congregation — its divisions, its social range ("not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble," 1 Corinthians 1:26), its worship, and its disputes — and much of what is known about the Christians of Corinth comes from them rather than from Acts. (Scripture / Scholarship)

What a visitor sees today

Corinth is one of the most thoroughly excavated cities of the Greek world, investigated over more than a century by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. (Scholarship) The most conspicuous monument is the Temple of Apollo, whose heavy archaic Doric columns still stand above the site; around and below it spread the Roman forum (agora), streets, shops, fountains, and an on-site archaeological museum. Above the ancient city rises the steep citadel of Acrocorinth. (Scholarship)

Visitors are often shown a raised stone platform in the forum, the bema or public rostrum, commonly pointed out as the kind of "judgment seat" before which Paul was brought to Gallio (Acts 18:12). The identification of this particular structure with that exact scene is a reasonable and popular association rather than a proven fact, and is best treated with that caution. (Scholarship / Tradition)

Fact and tradition

The identification of the site is secure: Corinth has been continuously known, and excavation has confirmed the Roman colonial city that Paul would have entered. (Scholarship) The Gallio synchronism is as solid as ancient chronology gets, though, again, it dates the governor rather than the apostle. Where local tradition points to a specific stone — the bema, or a paving inscription sometimes linked to the Erastus named in Romans 16:23 — the connection to a named New Testament individual is plausible but not demonstrable, and such claims should be weighed carefully rather than asserted as settled. (Scholarship)

Corinth belongs to the same missionary story that began in Paul's birthplace, Tarsus, honoured today at why Tarsus and explained in our guide to where Tarsus is. That story is what St Paul Global Week marks. On 28-30 June 2027, around the 29 June Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, a faith-tourism gathering organised by Funny Tourism will bring pilgrims to Tarsus and Mersin, in the birthplace of the Apostle, with the Feast Day prayer programme broadcast live worldwide. You are warmly invited to explore the programme and, for church and community leaders who wish to bring a group, the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme.