Corinthian Matters

A Resource for the Study of the Corinthia, Greece

Category: Religion, Saints

Corinthian Matters in Corinth

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Corinthian Matters will be on its (mostly) annual tour to the Corinthia three weeks from now (May 26-June 2). I will only be in the Corinthia for a week this year because I have to get back for a digital proficiency workshop in early June, but that still allows seven full days of Corinthiaka goodness. If you will be around and have the time to get together, shoot me an email.

I’ll be working on several projects while in the region with a number of good collaborators and friends:

1. Drone Photography and EKAS: Since 2017, I have been working with Professor Albert Sarvis, a geospatial technologist at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, to capture low-altitude drone photographs of parts of the Isthmus surveyed by the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey in 1998-2002.  Our work is designed to contribute to a longer-term goal of publishing the EKAS data sets, and to understand the large-scale transformations of the Isthmus between antiquity and the present such as canal construction and the trans-Isthmus fortification walls. This will mark our second season of drone photography.

2. Washingtonia: I have teamed up with Kostis Kourelis (Franklin & Marshall College) and others to study the vanished settlement of Washingtonia, somewhere in the vicinity of the village of Examilia. This colony of refugees of the Greek War of Independence was founded in 1829 by American philhellene and philanthropist Samuel Gridley Howe with clearly great prospects in mind. Last year, my students from Messiah College carefully studied Howe’s letters and journal entries to discern the location of the village and nature of settlement.  I’ll be visiting Examilia this summer to learn what I can but also have a history student at Messiah who will be conducting archival research in Boston to try to dig up some new documents.

3. Lakka Skoutara. Toward the end of my time in the Corinthia, I’ll have the privilege of connecting with Bill Caraher before he heads to the Argolid. We’re going to head to an abandoned village of Lakka Skoutara between Korphos and Sophiko and document this abandoned village one final time. We’ve studied formation processes at the settlement for some 20 years now and we’ll be submitting our article to a forthcoming collection with the Digital Press on abandoned villages. We may also capture drone photographs of the village.

4. Kodratos. I’ve been working this year with Jonathan Werthmuller, a graduating senior at Messiah College, to produce an English translation of the 17th century Latin life of St. Kodratos by Jesuit scholar Reinhold Dehnig, based on a Greek original by the 14th century historian Nicephorus Gregoras. We’ve worked from both the Latin and the Greek as part of a semester-long project. It’s been a blast, and I hope to visit again the church of Kodratos in Corinth, which features prominently in the vita.

 

On Phoebe, Honored Courier of St. Paul (Michael Peppard)

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We’ve mentioned Phoebe of Kenchreai here at Corinthian Matters as an individual who was not simply a “helper” to St. Paul — one translation of the Greek diakonos) — but also a prostasis, an influential member of some wealth and authority in the earliest Christian community of the region.

Michael Peppard has recently published an article in Commonweal  (“Household Names: Junia, Phoebe, & Prisca in Early Christian Rome“) about Phoebe and two other significant women named in the final chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Peppard’s piece discusses the high status of these women and their importance in the mission of Paul. It’s a thoughtful piece of which I include a few snippets below.

But pay closer attention to whom Paul addresses and a surprise emerges: the status of women in the early church in Rome. Specifically, three women: Junia, Phoebe, and Prisca. They are not household names. They are not mentioned from pulpits on Sunday morning. But they were undeniably important to Paul—and to the Christian assemblies in Rome and Corinth, where they were authoritative leaders….

…Back to the first-century Phoebe: a more powerful translation than “benefactor” for prostatis would also be more faithful to the Greek term in its social context. When used in the masculine form prostatês, its semantic range covers “leader,” “ruler,” “presiding officer,” “administrator,” “protector,” “guardian,” or “patron.” Certainly the possession of wealth and the concomitant powers of benefaction could be related to one’s role as a leader, presider, or protector. But generosity alone does not capture the meaning of the term that Paul uses for Phoebe…

…As an honored and trusted courier, Phoebe could have had the sender’s blessing to explain her letter and its author’s intention as well. The social context thus suggests that, in addition to being a diakonos, a prostatis, and the courier of the most important theological text in Christian history, Phoebe may also have been its first authorized interpreter….

Thus when Phoebe arrived in Rome with Paul’s letter, it was into Prisca’s hand she most likely placed the scroll. Prisca had known Paul for years, and she was one of his most trusted partners, just as Phoebe was a trusted courier. So when we envision the very first discussion of the letter to the Romans, both scriptural and historical evidence suggest the same thing: it was women who were doing the talking.

 

 

Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions

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This new Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions, edited by Eric Orlin and a team of collaborators, claims to be the “first comprehensive single-volume reference work offering authoritative coverage of ancient religions in the Mediterranean world.” As the publisher page describes it:
The volume’s scope extends from pre-historical antiquity in the third millennium B.C.E. through the rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. An interdisciplinary approach draws out the common issues and elements between and among religious traditions in the Mediterranean basin. Key features of the volume include:
  • Detailed maps of the Mediterranean World, ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, and the Hellenistic World
  • A comprehensive timeline of major events, innovations, and individuals, divided by region to provide both a diachronic and pan-Mediterranean, synchronic view
  • A broad geographical range including western Asia, northern Africa, and southern Europe

This encyclopedia will serve as a key point of reference for all students and scholars interested in ancient Mediterranean culture and society.

Orlin, Eric, ed. Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions. Routledge, 2015.
Not possible to outline an A-Z encyclopedia running over a thousand words, but the associated keywords suggest enough connections to Corinthiaka:
Abraham. Acolyte. Aeon. Aggadah. Apis. Assumption. Baptism. Byzantine Rite. Catharsis. Church of Rome. Codex Vaticanus. Constantinople. Cult Statue. Dead Sea scrolls. Demeter. Dionysius Exiguus. Eldad and Modad. Exorcism. Falcon. Fascinus. Flavia Domitilla. Glossolalia. Hagiography. Harpokrates. Healing Cults. Heaven. Heliopolis. Herodotus. Incubation. jackal, sacred. Jannes and Jambres. Jonah. Jude, Epistle of. Kerdir. Kirta Epic. Kronos. Lady Elat. Leviathan. Liturgy of John Chrysostom. Maccabees, First Book of. Magic bowls, Aramaic. Marduk. Midrash Rabbah. Monk. Nazirite. Netinim. Obadiah. Oracle. Pantheon. Peplos. polis religion. priestess. Ptolemaic kingdom. Renenutet. rites of passage. Sacrament. Samaritan Pentateuch. Saturnalia. Selkhet. Sinai, Mt. Sophokles. Taurobolium. Theodoric. Tobiad. Urartu. Vestal Virgins. Witchcraft. Yeshiva. Yohanan ben Zakkai. Zealots. Ziggurat.
Google Books has digitized and made available a significant chunk of the encyclopedia including the forward, which outlines the reason for the work and approach to subject (new theoretical currents, interdisciplinary approaches to religion, and the growing importance of material culture, among others). Digitized text also includes maps and numerous entries, which range from a hundred words to a page or more. A keyword search by the word “Corinth” turns up a couple of dozen hits from the currently digitized material.

On the Churches and Saints of Corinth

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Kodratos of CorinthTomorrow marks the feast day of Kodratos, Corinth’s most famous ancient country saint martyred during the reign of the Emperor Decius. As I noted a number of years ago when I paraphrased a Latin version of his life, Kodratos was Corinth’s quintessential rural saint: an orphan raised by his Father God in the fields and mountains after his parents’ early death. When he descended into the city of sin and pleasure as an adult, smelling of the country (in a good way — as his biographer notes), he preached with eloquence and attracted a small group of like-minded associates (the famous Leonidas of Lechaion was a friend of his) until he and a few others were martyred by Jason the provincial governor. When confronted with torture, Kodratos responded: “Bring it on!”

The stories and biographies of Corinth’s martyrs and saints such as Kodratos remain largely inaccessible to an anglophone public today because they have rarely been translated, let alone paraphrased, from their Byzantine Greek and Medieval Latin sources (or the modern Greek summaries). In a similar way, most of the late antique churches around Corinth associated with Corinth’s martyrs were excavated by Greek archaeologists (Dimitrios Pallas, especially) who published their findings in Greek (or French and German), rarely in English.

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Church of Kodratos in Ancient Corinth

Strangely, then, an English-speaking public is somewhat disconnected from the abundant early Christian remains in the Corinthia and the description of martyrs noted in Byzantine martyrologies and the Acta Sanctorum. This is unfortunate given both the popular interest in religion in Corinth and a healthy tourist industry oriented specifically around St. Paul and Christian pilgrimage.

 

There is, however, a growing body of scholarship in English discussing the churches around Corinth. These include:

  • William Caraher, “Church, Society, and the Sacred in Early Christian Greece,” PhD Dissertation, Columbus, 2003: Ohio State University. See also his two recent articles on the Lechaion basilica, which he has discussed and posted on his blog.
  • Brown, Amelia R. “Medieval Pilgrimage to Corinth and Southern Greece.” HEROM: Journal on Hellenistic and Roman Material Culture 1 (2012): 197–223.
  • Brown, Amelia R. “The City of Corinth and Urbanism in Late Antique Greece,” PhD Dissertation, Berkeley, 2008: University of California- Berkeley. Available as PDF here.
  • Richard Rothaus, Corinth: The First City of Greece, Leiden, 2000: Brill. See especially his chapter on Christianizing the city. Snippet view of part of the book available via Google Books
  • G.D.R. Sanders, “Archaeological Evidence for Early Christianity and the End of Hellenic Religion in Corinth,” in Schowalter and S.J. Friesen (eds.), Urban Religion in Roman Corinth, Cambridge, MA, 2005, 419-42. Freely available via Academia
  • V. Limberis, “Ecclesiastical Ambiguities: Corinth in the Fourth and Fifth Century,” in Schowalter and Friesen (eds.), Urban Religion in Roman Corinth, Cambridge, MA 2005, 443-457.
  • Sweetman, Rebecca J. “Memory, Tradition, and Christianization of the Peloponnese.” American Journal of Archaeology 119, no. 4 (2015): 501–31. Available for free download here.
  • Sweetman, Rebecca. “The Christianization of the Peloponnese: The Topography and Function of Late Antique Churches.” Journal of Late Antiquity 3, no. 2 (2010): 203–61.

I hope to work with a student or two at Messiah College next year to produce DIY English translations of some of these lives and perhaps descriptions of the churches. That would be a fun project.

This marks the fourth in a (mostly) Wednesday Lenten series on resources for the study of religion and Christianity in Corinth. Earlier posts include

 

 

 

 

 

2015 Publications in Corinthian Studies: New Testament, Christianity, and Judaism

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This is the third in a series of five bibliographic reports related to Corinthian scholarship published or digitized in 2015. This post also marks the next installment in a Lenten series on resources for the study of Judaism, New Testament, and early Christianity in Corinth (see last week’s post on Corinthian-related blogs). Today’s report presents scholarship published or digitized in 2015 related in some way to the subjects of Christianity, Judaism, and the New Testament. This includes some scholarship on the Hellenistic and early Roman “backgrounds” of Christianity and Judaism but most of this material relates to New Testament studies.

Download the PDF by right clicking on this  link:

I generated these reports through Zotero tags and searches, and there are undoubtedly missing entries as well as false positives. Next week, I’ll put together a post about using the bibliographic database for the study of religion in Roman Corinth.

If you see references missing from the list, please send to corinthianmatters@gmail.com

Photo by David Pettegrew, June 6, 2014
Photo by David Pettegrew, June 6, 2014

 

The Long Lent

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The liturgical season of Lent begins today in the western Christian churches. If you don’t know what this is, Lent is a penitential season of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving that culminates in the celebration of Easter / Pascha. As far as liturgical seasons go, it’s a pretty old one that had emerged clearly by the council of Nicaea in AD 325, and perhaps earlier in some form. Today it is universally celebrated by different Christian denominations (even the anabaptist and brethren in Christ college where I teach usually serves up an Ash Wednesday service to students). Sometimes eastern and western calendars are closely aligned so that Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians are celebrating the season (nearly) simultaneously. This year, these traditions have conspired against each other to produce about the greatest timespan possible between the celebration of western Easter (March 27) and Orthodox Pascha (May 1). This means that between eastern and western calendars, Christians will be in a lenten penitential season for nearly three months this year. And that’s a whole lot of Lent.

This liturgical season intersects in a number of ways with Corinthian studies.  The New Testament letters of 1 and WinterSkyCentralPA2 Corinthians, with all their discussion of repentance, salvation, the memorial of the last supper, and resurrection, among others, have made good material for for the lenten cycle of scripture readings (even this morning, at an Ash Wednesday mass, I heard 2 Corinthians 5.20-6.2). And the Corinthian saint Leonidas and his companions were martyred and are celebrated during Pascha/Easter (Sneak peak for next year: Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants will be celebrating Easter / Pascha the same day and on April 16, the feast day of Leonidas and companions. I’m working now with some Latin students at Messiah to prepare a little translation of the relevant passages about those saints from the Acta Sanctorum)

So it only seems appropriate that I re-launch my weekly series on resources and books for reading and understanding 1 and 2 Corinthians, early Christian communities, and religion in Roman Corinth. Yes, I planned to do this two years ago but wasn’t on my game. In fact, I’m pretty bad at delivering any series consistently. But I have a little more time this semester, and will aim to deliver a Wednesday series.

“Bridge of the Untiring Sea”: Contents

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Working through page proofs today for my contribution to the forthcoming Isthmus collection. I have transcribed below the table of contents for the volume, which highlights a chronological arrangement: two essays on the Bronze Age, about 7 essays on the archaic to Hellenistic sanctuary, and 7 essays on the Roman and late Antique Isthmus. Some 13 of the 17 essays deal specifically with Isthmia. While some of the essays explore broader historical issues, this is solid archaeological volume with its strong emphasis on classes of artifacts and particular sites.

I’ll add the bibliography to the Corinthian Studies library in Zotero today. The other front matter for the volume includes new maps of the Isthmus, new authoritative plans of Isthmia, about 160 photos and illustrations, and 6 tables. Look for this volume in print in August or September.

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Introduction (Elizabeth R. Gebhard and Τimothy E. Gregory)

Chapter 1. An Early Mycenaean Habitation Site at Kyras Vrysi (Eleni Balomenou and Vasili Tassinos)

Chapter 2. The Settlement at Kalamianos: Bronze Age Small Worlds and the Saronic Coast of the Southeastern Corinthia (Thomas F. Tartaron)

Chapter 3. The Archaic Temple of Poseidon: Problems of Design and Invention (Frederick P. Hemans)

Chapter 4. The Domestic Architecture of the Rachi Settlement at Isthmia (Virginia R. Anderson-Stojanović)

Chapter 5. City, Sanctuary, and Feast: Dining Vessels from the Archaic Reservoir in the Sanctuary of Poseidon (Martha K. Risser)

Chapter 6. The Temple Deposit at Isthmia and the Dating of Archaic and Early Classical Greek Coins (Liane Houghtalin)

Chapter 7. Riding for Poseidon: Terracotta Figurines from the Sanctuary of Poseidon (Arne Thomsen)

Chapter 8. The Chigi Painter at Isthmia? (K. W. Arafat)

Chapter 9. Arms from the Age of Philip and Alexander at Broneer’s West Foundation near Isthmia (A. H. Jackson)

Chapter 10. New Sculptures from the Isthmian Palaimonion (Mary C. Sturgeon)

Chapter 11. Agonistic Festivals, Victors, and Officials in the Time of Nero: An Inscribed Herm from the Gymnasium Area of Corinth (James Wiseman)

Chapter 12. Roman Baths at Isthmia and Sanctuary Baths in Greece (Fikret K.Yegül)

Chapter 13. The Roman Buildings East of the Temple of Poseidon on the Isthmus (Steven J. R. Ellis and Eric E. Poehler)

Chapter 14. Corinthian Suburbia: Patterns of Roman Settlement on the Isthmus (David K. Pettegrew)

Chapter 15. Work Teams on the Isthmian Fortress and the Development of a Later Roman Architectural Aesthetic (Jon M. Frey)

Chapter 16. Epigraphy, Liturgy, and Imperial Policy on the Justinianic Isthmus (William R. Caraher)

Chapter 17. Circular Lamps in the Late Antique Peloponnese (Birgitta Lindros Wohl)

2013-2014 Publications in Corinthian Studies: New Testament, Christianity, and Judaism

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This is the fourth and final post in a series of bibliographic releases of new Corinthian scholarship published or digitized in 2013-2014. See this post last last Monday for further information about the sources of this bibliography and instructions for accessing the Zotero database. For earlier releases, see these posts:

Today’s list presents scholarship published or digitized in 2013 and 2014 related in some way to the subjects of Christianity, Judaism, and early Christianity. This includes some scholarship on the Hellenistic and early Roman “backgrounds” of Christianity and Judaism but most of this material focus directly on questions of religion.

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I have divided these reports by year to keep them manageable. Download the PDFs by right clicking on these link:

I generated these reports through Zotero tags and searches, and there are undoubtedly missing entries as well as false positives. For best results, visit the Zotero library or download the RIS file into your bibliographic program.

If you see references missing from the list, please send to corinthianmatters@gmail.com

Corinthian Scholarship Monthly (December-February). Part 2

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Here is the second part to last week’s post about new scholarship in the last three months.

You can find the full collection of articles and books related to Corinthian studies at the Corinthian Studies Zotero Page. If you don’t see URLs for articles and books below (they sometimes don’t transfer in the copy), visit the Zotero group page. The new entries are tagged according to master categories .ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY or .NEW TESTAMENT AND EARLY CHRISTIAN.

As I noted previously, Version 2 of the library in RIS format is scheduled to be released by summer. I am always looking for reviewers of articles or books listed in the CSM posts. If you can write and are qualified, drop me a line.

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Adams, Edward. The Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? A&C Black, 2014. http://books.google.com/books?id=FNBBAgAAQBAJ.

Angeli Bernardini, Paola, ed. Corinto: luogo di azione e luogo di racconto : atti del convengo internazionale, Urbino, 23-25 settembre 2009. Pisa [etc.]: F. Serra, 2013. http://www.libraweb.net/result1.php?dettagliononpdf=1&chiave=2848&valore=sku&name=Luogo.jpg&h=870&w=600.

Balzat, Jean-Sébastien, and Benjamin W. Millis. “M. Antonius Aristocrates: Provincial Involvement with Roman Power in the Late 1st Century B.C.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 82, no. 4 (December 2013): 651–72. doi:10.2972/hesperia.82.4.0651.

Batchvarov, Kroum N. “Clay Pipes and Smoking Paraphernalia from the Kitten Shipwreck, an Early Nineteenth-Century Black Sea Merchantman.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18, no. 1 (March 1, 2014): 1–19. doi:10.1007/s10761-013-0244-z.

Bradshaw, Paul F. Rites of Ordination: Their History and Theology. Liturgical Press, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=shQpnQEACAAJ.

Çakırlar, C., S. Ikram, and M-H. Gates. “New Evidence for Fish Processing in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Formalised Epinephelus Butchery in Fifth Century Bc Kinet Höyük, Turkey.” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, January 1, 2014, n/a–n/a. doi:10.1002/oa.2388.

Docter, Roald, and Babette Bechtold. “Two Forgotten Amphorae from the Hamburg Excavations at Carthage (Cyprus, and the Iberian Peninsula) and Their Contexts.” Carthage Studies 5 (2011) (2013): 91–128.

Forbes, Hamish A. “Off-Site Scatters and the Manuring Hypothesis in Greek Survey Archaeology: An Ethnographic Approach.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 82, no. 4 (December 2013): 551–94. doi:10.2972/hesperia.82.4.0551.

Hall, Jonathan M. Artifact and Artifice: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian. University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Heil, Andreas, and Gregor Damschen, eds. Brill’s Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist. Leiden: Brill, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=9jqOAgAAQBAJ.

Jones, Catherine M. “Theatre of Shame: The Impact of Paul’s Manual Labour on His Apostleship in Corinth.” PhD Thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, 2013. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/43420.

Laios, K., G. Tsoucalas, M. Karamanou, and G. Androutsos. “The Medical–Religious Practice of Votive Offerings and the Representation of a Unique Pathognomonic One Inside the Asclepieion of Corinth.” Journal of Religion and Health, 2013, 1–6. doi:10.1007/s10943-013-9811-1.

Lambert, Craig. “Norman Naval Operations in the Mediterranean.” Journal for Maritime Research 15, no. 2 (2013): 241–43. doi:10.1080/21533369.2013.852314.

Last, Richard. “Money, Meals and Honour: The Economic and Honorific Organization of the Corinthian Ekklesia.” PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 2013.

Nichols, Aidan. Figuring out the Church: Her Marks, and Her Masters. Ignatius Press, 2013.

Polinskaya, Irene. A Local History of Greek Polytheism: Gods, People and the Land of Aigina, 800-400 BCE. Leiden: Brill, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=8FqNAgAAQBAJ.

Punt, Jeremy. “Framing Human Dignity through Domination and Submission? Negotiating Borders and Loyalties (of Power) in the New Testament.” Scriptura 112 (2013): 1–17. doi:10.7833/112-0-82.

Reed, David Alan. “Paul on Marriage and Singleness:  Reading 1 Corinthians with the Augustan Marriage Laws.” PhD Thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, 2013. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/43426/1/Reed_David_A_201311_PhD_thesis.pdf.

Rowan, Clare. “Coinage as Commodity and Bullion in the Western Mediterranean, Ca. 550–100 BCE.” Mediterranean Historical Review 28, no. 2 (2013): 105–27. doi:10.1080/09518967.2013.837638.

Saliari, Konstantina, and Erich Draganits. “Early Bronze Age Bone Tubes from the Aegean: Archaeological Context, Use and Distribution.” Archeometriai Műhely [Archaeometry Workshop], 2013, 179–92.

Schoenborn, Christoph Cardinal. The Source of Life: Exploring the Mystery of the Eucharist. Ignatius Press, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=oydLAgAAQBAJ.

Spinks, Bryan D. Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day. SCM Press, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=-309AgAAQBAJ.

Stoneman, Richard. Pindar. I.B.Tauris, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=jwlgAgAAQBAJ.

Thiessen, Matthew. “‘The Rock Was Christ’: The Fluidity of Christ’s Body in 1 Corinthians 10.4.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36, no. 2 (December 1, 2013): 103–26. doi:10.1177/0142064X13506171.

Toffolo, Michael B., Alexander Fantalkin, Irene S. Lemos, Rainer C. S. Felsch, Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, Guy D. R. Sanders, Israel Finkelstein, and Elisabetta Boaretto. “Towards an Absolute Chronology for the Aegean Iron Age: New Radiocarbon Dates from Lefkandi, Kalapodi and Corinth.” PLoS ONE 8, no. 12 (December 26, 2013): e83117. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083117.

Wallace, Christopher. “Ager Publicus in the Greek East: I. Priene 111 and Other Examples of Resistance to the Publicani.” Historia 63, no. 1 (2014): 38–73.

———. “Ager Publicus in the Greek East: I. Priene 111 and Other Examples of Resistance to the Publicani.” Historia 63, no. 1 (2014): 38–73.

Walsh, Justin St P. Consumerism in the Ancient World: Imports and Identity Construction. Routledge, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=XU83AgAAQBAJ.

A New Bibliography for 1 and 2 Corinthians

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It’s easy these days to locate books and articles related to St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Bibliographies have proliferated online and lists of select commentaries and introductions are a dime a dozen. See, for a few examples, the bibliographic lists compiled on Bible.org, BiblicalStudies.org (with some PDF documents), Baker publishing group, the United Methodist Church (see Part IV), and Leaven (2 Corinthians).

Here at Corinthian Matters, we’ve been slowly building our New Testament collection in the Zotero Library. During the fall, Megan Piette, a history major at my school, invested hours and hours into adding hundreds of relevant New Testament entries. She keyed all articles published in three recent works related to archaeology, history, and the New Testament: Urban Religion in Roman Corinth (2005), Corinth in Context (2010), and Corinth in Contrast (2013). More impressively, she entered all relevant Corinthiaka listed in the bibliography sections of Urban Religion in Roman Corinth and Corinth in Context. Finally, she mined the references sections of a couple of commentaries and New Testament introductions. The collection is by no means exhaustive but it is a good one that includes 526 items representing major commentaries, books, and articles. Kudos to Megan for making this happen.

Thanks to batch tagging in Zotero (see my post from Thursday), I was able to categorize all of these under the master tag .NEW TESTAMENT and create a subcollection called “New Testament”. In addition, I tagged items with keywords such as “commentary”, “1 Corinthians” and “2 Corinthians”. So, if you want to find recent commentaries on 1 and 2 Corinthians, just select the two tags “.NEW TESTAMENT” and “commentary”. The search pulls up 33 items.

Zotero_Corinthians_1

I also tagged articles and books that deal with specific chapters in 1 and 2 Corinthians. So if you’re interested in relevant material on 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 (the famous love chapter), simply select the tag “_1 Cor. 13”. This is a critical component of the library because the search feature of Zotero does not work as well — since articles and abstracts use different ways of referencing the texts, e.g., “I Corinthans XIII”, “1 Cor. 13”, “First Corinthians Chapter Thirteen” etc…

Note that this tag does not pull in entire commentaries on 1 Corinthians, which obviously have something to say on that chapter.

Zotero_Corinthians_2

There are lots of holes in this bibliography, and we need another round of thorough tagging, but this is a start to providing a useful bibliographic collection related to the Corinthian correspondence and St. Paul’s Corinth. We’ll keep building the Zotero Library until some better online tool takes its place.

I invite readers with a background in New Testament studies to comment below on other accessible online bibliographic resources that can guide an interested person in locating relevant books and articles. If you have articles and books that you believe should be included, you may send them to me here.