Aquila And Priscilla

Holy Gospel: June 2, 2011

Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. He went to visit them and, because he practiced the same trade, stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. Every sabbath, he entered into discussions in the synagogue, attempting to convince both Jews and Greeks.

When Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began to occupy himself totally with preaching the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. When they opposed him and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your heads! I am clear of responsibility.  From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” So he left there and went to a house belonging to a man named Titus Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next to a synagogue. Crispus, the synagogue official, came to believe in the Lord along with his entire household, and many of the Corinthians who heard believed and were baptized.

John 16:16-20

Jesus said to his disciples: “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later and you will see me.” So some of his disciples said to one another, “What does this mean that he is saying to us, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?” So they said, “What is this ‘little while’ of which he speaks? We do not know what he means.”  Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Are you discussing with one another what I said, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’?

Triablogue: Aquila, Priscilla, Acts 18:2 and the Edict of Claudius

After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. In his commentary on Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, ©2007), Darrel Bock notes that “Luke is a careful, ancient historian.” He says, “It is interesting to note that (1) classical historians respect Luke as a historian as they use him (Nobbs 2006) and that (2) a careful look at the details of Acts shows that, where we can check him, Luke is a credible historian. (pg. 6). Evidence for a committed Jewish Christian presence in Rome as early as 49 C.E. may be found in an edict of Claudius (41-54 A.D.). Luke alludes to the hardships borne by Aquila and Priscilla, who had arrived in Corinth ca. 49 or 50 “because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome” (Acts 18:2). This edict of expulsion is known from Suetonius, who published his Lives of the Caesars in 120 C.E. Commenting on Claudius’s acts with regard to certain foreign groups in Rome, he states without elaboration, “Judaeos impulsore Chresto adsidue tumultuante Roma expulit” The statement is ambiguous, and may be translated in either of two ways: (1) “He expelled from Rome the Jews constantly making disturbances oat the instigation of Chrestus”; (2) “Since the Jews constantly make disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, eh expelled them from Rome.” The first translation allows the interpretation that Claudius expelled only those responsible for the disturbances among the Jews. The second translation suggests that the entire Jewish community was affected by the edict because they had been engaged in frequent rioting. The reason for favoring the first translation is that in Rome the Jewish community was divided into a number of district synagogues. In all probability the decree of expulsion was directed against the members of one or two specific synagogues, who would have been forced to leave the city until there was a guarantee of no further disturbances. The notorious confusion displayed in the words impulsore Chresto suggests a contemporary police record.