ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the context for the ritual activity of the early church, because, as the previous chapter noted, ritual theorists consider context crucial for determining the function and significance of a rite. The fuller and more specific context we can provide, the better the rite in question is situated, hence understood. In this chapter we focus on a specific place, namely, Corinth, and for good reason: (1) Paul’s Corinthian correspondence tells us more about the church there than we know about it in any other location (Osiek 1992: 62-3); and (2) the literary and archaeological record for Corinth provides considerable information about the city in the early Roman period, including the time of Paul. Specific to baptism, the architectural record reveals much about how water was used in early Roman Corinth, so that we can readily locate baptism in a spectrum of water use. Before we look in detail about water use in Roman Corinth, however, some attention to the sources we have for the recreation of life in the city and its environs is needed.
