[253] 4. CORINTH. (XVIII 1) AFTER THESE EVENTS HE LEFT ATHENS AND WENT TO CORINTH. (2) AND, FINDING A CERTAIN JEW NAMED AQUILA, A MAN OF PONTUS BY BIRTH, WHO HAD LATELY COME FROM ITALY, AND PRISCILLA HIS WIFE, BECAUSE CLAUDIUS HAD COMMANDED ALL THE JEWS TO LEAVE ROME, HE ACCOSTED THEM. (3) AND BECAUSE HE WAS OF THE SAME CRAFT, HE ABODE WITH THEM, AND WROUGHT AT HIS TRADE [FOR THEY WERE TENTMAKERS BY THEIR CRAFT]. (4) AND HE USED TO DISCOURSE IN THE SYNAGOGUE EVERY SABBATH, AND TRIED TO PERSUADE JEWS AND GREEKS. (5) AND WHEN SILAS AND TIMOTHY ARRIVED FROM MACEDONIA, HE WAS WHOLLY ABSORBED IN PREACHING, ATTESTING TO THE JEWS THAT THE ANOINTED ONE IS JESUS.

Almost all MSS. add to v. 3 the explanation which we have given in parentheses; but it comes in very awkwardly, for Luke, who said at the beginning of the verse, "because he was of the same craft,"did not intend to say at the end, "for they were tentmakers by craft". The Bezan Text and an old Latin Version (Gig.) omit this detail; and they must here represent the original state of the text. In order to make the explanation a little less awkward, the two great MSS. read, "he abode with them and they wrought". The explanation is a gloss, which crept from the margin into the text. It is doubtless very early, and perfectly trustworthy: its vitality lies in its truth, for that was not the kind of detail that was invented in the growth of the Pauline legend.

Aquila, a man of Pontus, settled in Rome bears a [254] Latin name; and must therefore have belonged to the province and not to non-Roman Pontus. This is a good example of Luke's principle to use the Roman provincial divisions for purposes of classification (pp. 91, 196).

There is here a reference to Imperial history. Aquila and Priscilla had come recently from Rome, on account of an edict of Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome. Suetonius says that the expulsion was caused by a series of disturbances "due to the action of Chrestus"; and in all probability this Chrestus must be interpreted as "the leader of the Chrestians"(p. 47 f.), taken by a popular error as actually living. In the earliest stages of Christian history in Rome, such a mistake was quite natural; and Suetonius reproduces the words which he found in a document of the period. As Dion Cassius mentions, it was found so difficult to keep the Jews out of Rome on account of their numbers, that the Emperor did not actually expel them, but made stricter regulations about their conduct. It would therefore appear that the edict was found unworkable in practice; but Suetonius is a perfect authority that it was tried, and it is quite probable that some Jews obeyed it, and among them Aquila. Neither Suetonius nor Dion gives any clue to the date; but Orosius says that it occurred in Claudius's ninth year, 49. I believe that this date is a year wrong, like that of the famine (p. 68), and for the same reason: the edict must be placed in the end of 50, and thus Aquila arrived in Corinth six or seven months before Paul came in Sept. 51.

The careful record of Aquila's antecedents must, on our hypothesis, be taken as not a mere picturesque detail; Luke mentioned his Roman residence, because it had [255] some bearing on his subject. After some time (during most of which Paul had been in Aquila's company at Corinth and at Ephesus), a journey to Rome is announced as Paul's next intention, XIX 21. Aquila was able to tell him of the events that had occurred in Rome "at the action of Chrestus"; and his experience showed him how important it was to go direct to the great centres of Roman life. The connection of Luke with the Macedonian journey (p. 203) is an interesting parallel.

Paul mentions in writing to the Romans, XV 24, that he intended to go on from Rome to Spain. Such an intention implies in the plainest way an idea already existent in Paul's mind of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. Spain was by far the most thoroughly romanised district of the Empire, as was marked soon after by the act of Vespasian in 75, when he made the Latin status universal in Spain. From the centre of the Roman world Paul would go on to the chief seat of Roman civilisation in the West, and would thus complete a first survey, the intervals of which should be filled up by assistants, such as Timothy, Titus, etc.