Below are general resources on this Epistle followed by Chapter specific material.
Major Headings, Key Verses
Most Bibles have various headings at the beginning of chapters and before sections of Scripture that are on a given topic. These are known as “pericopes” (pear-ick-oh-peas). These have been added not by translators, as no pericopes are known to exist in the original manuscripts, but by the publishers with the help perhaps of the translation committee. They are not inspired, but only helpful for the reader to create mental categories of the respective texts. (And, in some cases, they are most UN-helpful, such as Matthew 28:19-20).
In the PDF attached below is my version of (I hope) helpful pericopes for Ch 1-7. Also included are what I think are some key sentences from the NKJV, positioned where they occur in chapter. (Recall that a sentence is defined as a complete thought. In the Gr manuscripts there are no clear divisions of sentences, and in any case any English sentence depends on the approach taken of the translators. A further variable is that verse designations–which also were not part of the original manuscripts, nor were chapters–often are based on individual sentences but not universally so.) The PDF of Ch 1-7 pericopes is here: 1 Corinthians Pericopes
Word frequencies
in the 1 Corinthians Epistle, word frequences down to 10x are given below:
Imperative verbs
The imperative verbs in 1 Corinthians are given here:
Key Word: Flesh
The idea of “flesh,” in a negative sense, is an important idea in the Corinthian Epistles (and the rest of the NT). The greek “root” is “Sarx.” The word does NOT always mean something evil, or even ‘fleshy’ as we think of the term as something less than “Spiritual.” All the occurrences of the root “Sarx” is given here:
Key Word: Judge, Judging, Judgment
One of the main ideas in this Epistle is about “judging.” Below are two charts that may help understanding this significance:
Directly below is shown some incoming issue to be judged (shown by the scribbled text on the far left). Judging in essence is about dividing, either simply into two categories as shown, or into multiple categories. Judging is about ‘cutting’ (dividing) which is in fact what the root of the root krino suggests. The foundation of judging is the wisdom principles that govern such act. As we will see in 1 Cor, it is made clear that in God’s Kingdom, and in the Church, there is a separate and distinct ‘book of Wisdom’ from the world’s ‘wisdom.’ Using the former leads to a Spiritual, Godly division of an issue with a heart attitude of humility because such judging is being done in the name of God Himself. When judging follows human ‘wisdom’ it naturally seems to lead to an attitude of pride.
The chart below shows all the word forms in the NT that contain the Gr root word “krino” which is the basis of our English word “to judge.” In the the graph to the right of the three columns on the left is shown symbolically the frequency of the word in each of the 27 NT books as shown on the separate image on the top right. The left most end of the image shows the Gospels in order, left to right (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), then Acts, then all 27 Epistles, and finally on the far right the Book of the Revelation. What is notable for the word “krino” (shown in the fourth row), is that essentially all the uses of it occur in Acts, Romans, and 1 Corinthians, with almost no uses in the remaining books of the NT. This highlights the importance of the idea of “judging” in the 1 Cor Epistle.
Ch. 1
Key Words
1 Corinthians Key Words
Ch. 2
Ch. 3
Resources for Chapter 3 are here:
Ch. 4
Resources are here:
Ch. 5
Resources are here:
Ch. 6
Resources are here:
Ch. 7
Resources are here:
Ch. 8
Resources are here:
Ch. 9
Resources are here:
Ch. 10
Resources are here:
Specific to the command flee idolatry, resources are here:
Ch. 11
Resources are here:
Specific to the issue of headcovering, resources are here:
Specific to the issue of The Lord’s Supper, resources are here:
Ch. 12
Resources are here:
Ch. 13
Resources are here:
The “Love List” of 15 descriptions of agape love in vs. 4-7 is here:
Ch. 14
Resources are here:
Ch. 15
Resources are here:
Ch. 16
Resources are here: