Corpus-Paul

["Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT attbi.com>]

Andrew Goddard wrote:

> I've been asked about the size of Pauline congregations eg at Corinth and
> thought I recalled a disucssion of this some time ago on this list but
> cannot find it either in my own folder of stored messages or on the archive
> (though that may be because I've not really worked out how to search that).
> Can anyone help by pointing me to previous thread, suggesting literature or
> putting forward theories ?
> I've heard numbers from as low as about 40 to several hundred.
>

I don't have the citation handy to confirm this (it is, I believe in his work 
on
Corinth and in his _Paul: A critical Life_), but my memory is that 
Murphy-O'Connor
estimates a congregation of no larger than 50 members. His reasoning is, I 
believe,
grounded in the view that 1 Cor presents the community as able to meet in one 
household
and that archeology reveals that the largest house in 1st cent. Corinth could 
hold no
more than 50 persons.

I await correction.

Yours,

Jeffrey Gibson

--
Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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