The First Missionary Couple

Paul is commonly seen as the master missionary who single-handedly evangelized the Roman world but, in fact, he had a lot of help. On his first missionary journey, he worked alongside Barnabas and chose Silas as his companion for the second missionary journey. Along the way, he picked up Timothy (and perhaps Luke) as well. In Corinth, he made the acquaintance of a married couple, Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:1-3), who are mentioned in his letters (1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16:3-5) as his fellow co-workers in Christ.

From Philippi to Athens

After baptizing Lydia in Philippi, Paul (16:16-24) exorcised the spirit of divination from a slave girl, spoiling the talent that was profitable for her masters. The masters hauled Paul and Silas before the magistrates who had them beaten with rods and thrown in prison. Luke recounts another miraculous “prison break” scene (vv. 25-34), except this time, Paul and Silas do not escape from prison but remain to evangelize the warden.

Vv. 35-40 make no mention of the miraculous earthquake. On the next morning, the magistrates ordered the release of Paul and Silas. They are even more eager to hustle them out of town when they find out that Paul, at least, is a Roman citizen; flogging was an illegal punishment for Roman citizens.

According to Acts 17:1-15, trouble with the Jewish citizens of Thessalonica made their visit there short-lived and trouble followed them to Beroea as well. Leaving Silas and Timothy behind, Paul left for Athens.

Paul tells a slightly different story in his first letter to the Thessalonians. After referencing his suffering and mistreatment at Philippi (1 Thess 2:2), Paul discussed how he was separated from the Thessalonians and wanted to return but Satan blocked his way (2:17-18). Paul eventually chose to remain alone in Athens in order to send Timothy back to Thessalonica to check on the state of the infant church there (3:1-5). In Paul’s version, Timothy had initially accompanied him to Athens.

Paul Before the Areopagus

Alone in Athens (17:16-34), Paul continued to spread the word of Jesus and had discussions with the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. Eventually, he was interrogated by the city council, the Areopagus. Paul’s speech to the council gives us an idea of how a 1st-century missionary would have evangelized pagan Gentiles.

Paul begins by referencing an altar he saw in the city that was dedicated “to an unknown god.” He asserts this unknown god is the God who made the world and everything in it: “For in him we live and move and have our being” (v. 28). This God created all humanity and placed within us a longing to seek him out. Paul even quotes the Stoic poet Aratus (3rd century BCE): “of him we too are offspring.”

Although God has overlooked human sinfulness in the past, now is a time for repentance because he has fixed a time in which the world will be judged by Jesus. We know this to be true because God has raised him from the dead. Mention of the resurrection drew both negative and curious reactions from the jaded Athenians and Paul soon left Athens for Corinth.

Fresco from Pompeii of a Roman couple. Prisca and Aquila could have looked something like this.

Setting Up Shop in Corinth

Once in Corinth Paul apparently ran out of funds and needed to work his trade as a tent maker so he would not have to beg for support (2 Cor 11:7-9). He ended up working and living with Priscilla (Prisca in Paul’s letters) and Aquila, fellow tent makers and Jewish believers who had recently arrived from Italy, forced out due to an edict from the emperor Claudius (Acts 18:1-3). The Roman historian Suetonius explains: “He expelled Jews from Rome, who were constantly making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.” Historians debate exactly when this happened, with 49 CE being a frequently cited date.

It sounds like an odd trade in a city like Corinth, but tent makers were in high demand because they made awnings for residences and shops as well as tents for temporary lodgings. They would probably also able to work leather goods such as cloaks and belts. Paul lodged with Aquila and Prisca until Silas and Timothy arrived with money from the Macedonian churches (2 Cor 11:9). This enabled Paul to return full-time to his ministry, so he left their home and moved next door to the synagogue (Acts 18:5-7).

When, after 18 months in Corinth, Paul returned to Asia, he took Prisca and Aquila along and left them in Ephesus to build up the church there (18:18-21). According to Acts 18:24-28, they would prove instrumental in catechizing Apollos, who would become a popular teacher in Corinth. A few years later, after the death of Claudius, they returned to Rome. The move may have been prompted by Paul who was planning a visit to Rome and may have wanted to use them as a vanguard in laying the groundwork for him. In his letter to the Romans, Paul praises the couple for having “risked their necks for my life” (Rom 16:3-4). They and the church that met in their home are the first to receive his greetings.

Christianity is Not a Crime

Towards the end of his stay in Corinth, Paul once again got in trouble with the local Jewish congregation and was brought before Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia (Acts 18:12-17). The case the Jews presented to Gallio was that Paul was persuading people to worship God “in ways that are contrary to the law.” Judaism was a legally recognized religion in Roman law and they wanted Gallio to declare that Paul’s Chrisitianity was not the same as Judaism. Gallio did not want to engage in semantics (“a matter of questions about words and names and your own law”) and refused judgment. In short, Gallio decreed that Christianity was not a crime under Roman law.

An inscription allows us to date Gallio’s proconsulship to 52 CE, giving us the best chronological peg in Paul’s life. Paul would have arrived in Corinth in late 50/early 51 and lodged with Aquila and Prisca a year or two after they were expelled from Rome. This period is also the time when he wrote his first letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest document we have in the NT. We will look at that letter next week.

We the People

[Note: I will be on vacation next week, so I won't be posting any new articles until I return the week of August 8.] 

The Council of Jerusalem sits at the center of Acts and marks a turning point in the story. Prior to the council, Luke’s narrative thread darts from one character to another: Peter, Stephen, Philip, Saul, Peter again, and Paul. But after the council, the apostles disappear from the story and the focus is solely on Paul. Not only that, but the author seems to insert himself into the story with an unexpected shift from 3rd person narration to 1st person.

Paul’s New Partner

After the men from James arrived in Antioch and started enforcing the separation of Jewish and Gentile Christians at common meals, Paul decided to hit the road on another missionary journey. Acts explained (15:37-39) that Barnabas wanted to take John Mark with them and Paul refused. Whether for that reason or Barnabas siding with Peter in the table-fellowship controversy (Gal 2:13), Paul chose Silas as his new missionary partner.

Silas was first mentioned in Acts 15:22 as a leader in the Jerusalem church who, along with Judas Barsabbas, would carry the Jerusalem council’s decree to Antioch. He is most likely the same person Paul identifies as Silvanus in his letters. Given Silas’ position within the Jerusalem community, he would bring legitimacy to the Pauline mission.

Timothy’s Circumcision

Revisiting the towns from the previous mission, Paul and Silas travelled overland to Lystra where lived a disciple named Timothy (Acts 16:1-4). Timothy was the son of a Jewish Christian mother and a Greek father and was highly recommended by believers in Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to join him on the mission, so he had him circumcised.

Paul’s action here has puzzled many commentators. Why did Paul circumcise Timothy when the Jerusalem council did not require it of Titus (Gal 2:1-3)? The key, I think, is that while Titus was Greek, Timothy was the son of a Jewish mother. If he was then considered to be Jewish by birth, he needed to be circumcised if he would be accompanying Paul since he did not want Timothy to become a distraction to his mission.

Timothy’s circumcision would also demonstrate that Paul was not opposed to Jewish Christians following the Mosaic law. It was a literal embodiment of what Paul wrote in 1 Cor 9:20:

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law.

The “We” Passages

Leaving the region of Galatia, Paul and his companions were prevented from going to the cities on the west or northern coasts of Asia Minor (16:6-10). They made their way to Troas, a seaport on the northwestern shore and there Paul had a vision one night of a Macedonian man inviting him to come over to Europe. Convinced that God was calling them, “we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia.”

This first use of the 1st-person plural in what had been up to this point 3rd-person narration is quite jarring. It marks the first of four We-Sections (16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16). The first We-Section covers the journey from Troas in Asia Minor to Philippi in Macedonia. The second and third pick up four chapters and several years later and cover the journey from Philippi to Jerusalem. The last We-Section covers the captive Paul’s journey from Caesarea to Rome.

Scholars have debated the meaning behind these “we” passages. The obvious explanation is that the author is recounting experiences that he shared with Paul and the others. The day-by-day detail of the itinerary in the We-Sections reads like the travel journal of an eyewitness. The problem is that Acts paints a different portrait of Paul than what we know from his authentic letters. The alternate theory is that the use of “we” is a stylistic device well-known in sea voyage literature of the time. Critics of this theory argue that the “we” passages do more than simply recount travel by ship.

For the time being, I am inclined to believe the “we” passages are taken from an eyewitness source. Scholars say that the use of language in these passages match that of the rest of Acts, so they either come from the same author or were thoroughly re-written to match his literary style.

In the second century, Irenaeus attributed the Gospel and Acts to Luke, a companion of Paul. Why Luke and not any of the dozen other companions of Paul? Maybe it was a guess or maybe that was the tradition he received. Whatever the case may be, I refer to the author as “Luke” for simplicity’s sake, instead of using a circumlocution such as “the author of the Third Gospel.”

Icon of Lydia of Thyatira. Thyatira is one of the "seven churches" mentioned in Rev 2-3. The message to the church in Thyatira (Rev 2:18-29) warns against a prophetess who teaches the community to practice immorality and eat food sacrificed to idols. We know from Paul's letters (1 Cor 8) that he had no objections to eating meat sacrificed to idols. If Lydia returned to Thyatira and promoted Paul's version of Christianity, could she be the false prophet condemned in Revelation? NT Christianity was not monolithic and one group of faithful believers could be considered false brothers by another group.

Women’s Liberation

The first convert in Philippi – indeed, the first Christian convert in all of Europe – is Lydia (16:11-15), a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira in Asia Minor. Royal purple cloth was a luxury item that only royalty and the wealthy could afford. Since Lydia had a household large enough to accommodate both servants and guests, she was probably a financially independent woman. Acts calls her “a worshipper of God,” so she was a Gentile God-fearer.

The author writes that on the Sabbath day Paul and his companions went outside the city to a place along the river where the Jewish women gathered for prayer. This suggests there were not enough men in Philippi to form a proper synagogue. After her baptism, Lydia welcomed Paul and his companions to her home, ignoring the restrictive customs of the day that would not allow a woman talk to a man, let alone invite him into her home. By the end of the chapter (v. 40), Lydia’s home had become a house-church for the Christian community in Philippi.

Luke’s subtle point here is that Jewish women could not be founding members of a Jewish synagogue. But as Christians, women like Lydia could be the founding members of a local church. The freedom of the Gospel empowers women and frees them from the restraints placed on them by their faith and culture. It calls to mind the statement of absolute equality in my favorite passage from Scripture (Gal 3:28):

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are one in Christ Jesus.