성경 주석서

Acts 18:1-8 Paul worketh for his subsistence, and preacheth Christ

at Corinth, first to the Jews, and, upon their opposing

and blaspheming, to the Gentiles with more success.

Acts 18:9-11 He is encouraged by the Lord in a vision, and abideth

there a long time.

Acts 18:12-17 The Jews accuse him before Gallio the deputy, who

will have nothing to do with them.

Acts 18:18-23 Paul passeth from city to city, confirming the disciples.

Acts 18:24-28 Apollos, instructed more perfectly in the Christian

doctrine by Aquila and Priscilla, preacheth it at

Ephesus, and afterward in Achaia, with great efficacy.

The metropolis of Achaia, being a rich sea town, and situate in the very isthmus which joins Peloponnesus unto Achaia; made a Roman colony, and now flourishing with learned men. Here St. Paul gathered a famous church, unto which he wrote two of his Epistles.

Verse 1. - He for Paul, A.V. and T.R. After these things, etc. No hint is given by St. Luke as to the length of Paul's sojourn at Athens. But as the double journey of the Beroeans, who accompanied him to Athens, back to Beraea, and of Timothy from Beraea to Athens, amounted to above five hundred miles (Lewin, p. 268), we cannot suppose it to have been less than a month; and it may have been a good deal more. His reasonings in the synagogue with the Jews and devout Greeks, apparently on successive sabbaths, his daily disputations in the Agora, apparently not begun till after he had "waited" some time for Silas and Timothy, the knowledge he had acquired of the numerous temples and altars at Athens, and the phrase with which this chapter begins, all indicate a stay of some length. Came to Corinth. If by land, a forty miles' or two days' journey, through Eleusis and Megara; if by sea, a day's sail. Lewin thinks he came by sea, and that it was in winter, and that possibly one of the shipwrecks mentioned in 2 Corinthians 11:25 may have occurred at this time. Corinth, at this time a Roman colony, the capital of the province of Achaia, and the residence of the proconsul. It was a great commercial city, the center of the trade of the Levant, and consequently a great resort of the Jews. It had a very large Greek population. Ancient Corinth had been destroyed by Mummins, surnamed Achaicus, R.C. 146, and remained waste (ἐρήμη) many years. Julius Caesar founded a Roman colony on the old site (Howson), "consisting principally of freedmen, among whom were great numbers of the Jewish race." Corinth, as a Roman colony, had its duumviri, as appears by coins of the reign of Claudius (Lewin, p. 270.

XVIII.

(1) And came to Corinth.—The journey may have been either by land along the Isthmus of Corinth, or by sea from the Piræus to Cenchreæ. The position of Corinth on the Isthmus, with a harbour on either shore, Cenchreæ on the east, Lechæum on the west, had naturally made it a place of commercial importance at a very early stage of Greek history. With commerce had come luxury and vice, and the verb Corinthiazein= to live as the Corinthians, had become proverbial, as early as the time of Aristophanes (Frag. 133), for a course of profligacy. The harlot priestesses of the Temple of Aphrodite gave a kind of consecration to the deep dyed impurity of Greek social life, of which we find traces in 1Corinthians 5:1; 1Corinthians 6:9-19. The Isthmian games, which were celebrated every fourth year, drew crowds of competitors and spectators from all parts of Greece, and obviously furnished the Apostle with the agonistic imagery of 1Corinthians 9:24-27. Less distinguished for higher culture than Athens, it was yet able (standing to Athens in much the same relation as Venice did to Florence from the 13th to the 16th century) to boast of its artists in stone and metal (Corinthian bronze was proverbial for its excellence), of its rhetoricians and philosophers. On its conquest by the Roman general Mummius (B.C. 146), many of its buildings had been destroyed, and its finest statues had been carried off to Rome; and it was a Roman jest that the general had bound the captains of the ships that carried them, to replace them in case of loss. A century later, Julius Cæsar determined to restore it to its former splendour, and thousands of freed-men were employed in the work of reconstruction. Such was the scene of the Apostle’s new labours, less promising, at first sight, than Athens, but, ultimately, far more fruitful in results.

(1) There can be no doubt that the “vow” was that of the temporary Nazarite, as described in Numbers 6:1-21. It implied a separation from the world and common life (this was the meaning of the word “Nazarite”), and while under the vow the man who had taken it was to drink no wine or strong drink, and to let no razor pass over his head or face. When the term was completed, he was to shave his head at the door of the Tabernacle, and burn the hair in the fire of the altar. It will be noted that the Nazarites in Acts 21:24, who are completing their vow, shave their heads. Here a different word (“shorn”) is used, which is contrasted with “shaving” in 1Corinthians 11:6. It was lawful for a man to have his hair cut or cropped during the continuance of the vow, and this apparently was what St. Paul now did. But in this case also the hair so cut off was to be taken to the Temple and burnt there, and this explains the Apostle’s eagerness “by all means” (Acts 18:21) to keep the coming feast at Jerusalem.

Acts 18:1-11. Paul goes from Athens to Corinth, labours there with his own hands for his maintenance. He is Encouraged in his preaching by a Vision of the Lord

1. After these things Paul departed] The best authorities omit the name of the Apostle, merely reading “he departed.” So R. V.

came to Corinth] As Athens was the seat of culture, so Corinth was the seat of commerce in the south of Greece. The city, at this time the political capital of Greece and the residence of the Roman pro-consul, stood on the isthmus which united the Peloponnesus to the mainland, and through it all land traffic between the peninsula and the rest of Greece must pass, while its two harbours, one on each side of the neck of land on which Corinth stood, made it the resort of seafaring traders both from east and west. Of Lechæum, the western port, on the Corinthian gulf, we have no mention in the New Testament, but Cenchreæ, the harbour on the Saronic gulf, by which communication with the East was kept up, is mentioned in Acts 18:18. The city was also made famous for its connexion with the Isthmian games, from which St Paul in his Epistles draws frequent illustrations when writing to the Corinthian Church. (See 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, &c.) For further particulars of the history of Corinth see Dict. of Bible, s. v.

Found

"A Jewish guild always keeps together, whether in street or synagogue. In Alexandria the different trades sat in the synagogue arranged into guilds; and St. Paul could have no difficulty in meeting, in the bazaar of his trade, with the like-minded Aquila and Priscilla" (Edersheim, "Jewish Social Life").

To Corinth (εις Κορινθον). Mummius had captured and destroyed Corinth B.C. 146. It was restored by Julius Caesar B.C. 46 as a boom town and made a colony. It was now the capital of the province of Achaia and the chief commercial city of Greece with a cosmopolitan population. It was only fifty miles from Athens. The summit of Acrocorinthus was 1,800 feet high and the ports of Cenchreae and Lechaeum and the Isthmus across which ships were hauled gave it command of the trade routes between Asia and Rome. The temple of Aphrodite on the Acrocorinthus had a thousand consecrated prostitutes and the very name to Corinthianize meant immorality. Not the Parthenon with Athene faced Paul in Corinth, but a worse situation. Naturally many Jews were in such a mart of trade. Philippi, Thessalonica, Beroea, Athens, all had brought anxiety to Paul. What could he expect in licentious Corinth?

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Acts 18:1. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα: in continuation of the narrative, cf. Luke 10:1.—χωρισθεὶς: in Acts 1:4 with ἀπό, and so usually—only here with ἐκ, departure from Athens emphasised, because events had compelled the Apostle to alter his intended plan (Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 240, and Blass, in loco), cf. 1 Chronicles 12:8 (A al.); 2Ma 5:21; 2Ma 12:12, with an accusative of place.—Κόρινθον: Corinth from its position as the capital of the Roman province Achaia was the centre of government and commerce, while Athens was still the great educational centre of Greece. St. Paul, with his keen eye for the most important and prominent stations of Roman government and the meeting points of East and West, might be expected to choose a place from whence the influence of the Gospel could spread over the whole province. Like Ephesus, Corinth lay on the great highway between East and West; like Ephesus it was, as Professor Ramsay terms it, one of the knots on the line of communication, the point of convergence for many subordinate roads. But Corinth, with all its external beauty, its wealth and fame, had become a byword for vice and infamy, cf. Κορινθιάζεσθαι, Κορινθιάζειν, Wetstein, 1 Corinthians 1:2, and references in Farrar, St. Paul, i., 557 ff., and it has not been unfairly termed the Vanity Fair of the Roman empire: at once the London and the Paris of the first century after Christ (Farrar, u. s., p. 556). To this infamous notoriety not only the cosmopolitanism of the city contributed, but the open consecration of shameless impurity in its temple service of Venus, see Ramsay, “Corinth,” Hastings’ B.D.; C. and H., small edition, p. 324 ff.; McGiffert, Apostolic Age, p. 262, and notes below.

Acts 18:1-2. In Corinth, at which Paul had arrived after his parting from Athens (χωρισθ., comp. Acts 1:4), he met with the Jew Ἀκύλας (Greek form of the Latin Aquila, which is to be considered as a Roman name adopted after the manner of the times instead of the Jewish name; see Eust. ad Dion. Per. 381), a native of the Asiatic province of Pontus, but who had hitherto resided at Rome, and afterwards dwelt there also (Romans 16:3), and so probably had his dwelling-place in that city—an inference which is rendered the more probable, as his temporary removal to a distance from Rome had its compulsory occasion in the imperial edict. We make this remark in opposition to the view of Neander, who thinks that Aquila had not his permanent abode at Rome, but settled, on account of his trade, now in one and then in another great city forming a centre of commerce, such as Corinth and Ephesus. The conjecture that he was a freedman of a Pontius Aquila (Cic. ad Famil. x. 33. 4; Suet. Caes. 78), so that the statement Ποντικὸν τῷ γένει is an error (Reiche on Romans 16:3, de Wette), is entirely arbitrary. Whether Πρίσκιλλα (identical with Prisca, Romans 16:3, for, as is well known, many Roman names were also used in diminutive forms; see Grotius on Rom. l.c.) was a Roman by birth, or a Jewess, remains undecided. But the opinion—which has of late become common and is defended by Kuinoel, Olshausen, Lange, and Ewald—that Aquila and his wife were already Christians (having been so possibly at starting from Rome) when Paul met with them at Corinth, because there is no account of their conversion, is very forced. Luke, in fact, calls Aquila simply Ἰουδαῖον (he does not say, τινα μαθητὴν Ἰουδ.), whereas elsewhere he always definitely makes known the Jewish Christians; and accordingly, by the subsequent πάντας τοὺς Ἰουδαίους, he places Aquila (without any distinction) among the general body of the expelled Jews. He also very particularly indicates as the reason of the apostle’s lodging with him, not their common Christian faith, but their common handicraft, Acts 18:3. It is therefore to be assumed that Aquila and Priscilla were still Jews when Paul met with them at Corinth, but through their connection with him they became Christians.[72] This Luke, keeping in view the apostolic labours of Paul as a whole (comp. Baumgarten, p. 578), leaves the reader to infer, inasmuch as he soon afterwards speaks of the Christian working of the two (Acts 18:26). We may add that the reply to the question, whether and how far Christianity existed at all in Rome before the decree of Claudius (see on Rom., Introd. § 2), can here be of no consequence, seeing that, although there was no Christian church at Rome, individual Christians might still at any rate be found, and certainly were found, among the resident Jews there.

προσφάτως] nuper (Polyb. iii 37. 11, iii. 48. 6; Alciphr. i. 39; Jdt 4:3; Jdt 4:5; 2Ma 14:36), from πρόσφατος, which properly signifies fresh (= just slaughtered or killed), then generally new, of quite recent occurrence; see Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 374 f.; Klausen, ad Aesch. Choeph. 756.

διὰ τὸ διατεταχ. Κλ. κ.τ.λ.] “Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit,” Sueton. Claud. 25. As Chrestus was actually a current Greek and Roman name (Philostr. v. Soph. ii. 11; Inscr. 194; Cic. ad Fam. xi. 8), it is altogether arbitrary to interpret impulsore Chresto otherwise than we should interpret it, if another name stood instead of Chresto. Chrestus was the name of a Jewish agitator at Rome, whose doings produced constant tumults, and led at length to the edict of expulsion.[73] See also Wieseler, p. 122, and earlier, Ernesti, in Suet., l.c. This we remark in opposition to the hypothesis upheld, after older interpreters in Wolf, by most modern expositors, that Suetonius had made a mistake in the name and written Chresto instead of Christo—a view, in connection with which it is either thought that the disturbances arose out of Christianity having made its way among the Jewish population at Rome and simply affected the Jews themselves, who were thrown into a ferment by it, so that the portion of them which had come to believe was at strife with that which remained unbelieving (Wassenbergh, ad Valcken. p. 554; Kuinoel, Hug, Credner, Baur, Gieseler, Reuss, Thiersch, Ewald; also Lehmann, Stud. zur Gesch. d. apost. Zeitalt., Greifsw. 1856, p. 6 ff.; Sepp, Mangold, Beyschlag in the Stud. u. Krit. 1867, p. 652 f.; Laurent, neutest. Stud. p. 88, and others); or it is assumed (Paulus, Reiche, Neander, Lange, and others) that enthusiastic Messianic hopes excited the insurrection among the Jews, and that the Romans had manufactured out of the ideal person of the Messiah a rebel of the same name. While, however, the alleged error of the name has against it generally the fact that the names Christus and Christiani were well known to the Roman writers (Tacitus, Pliny, and Suetonius himself, Ner. 16), it may be specially urged against the former view, that at the time of the edict (probably in the year 52, see Anger, de temp. rat. p. 118; Wieseler, p. 125 ff.) the existence of an influential number of Christians at Rome, putting the Jewish population into a tumultuous ferment, is quite improbable; and against the latter view, that the Messianic hopes of the Jews were well enough known to the Romans in general (Tacit. Hist. v. 13) and to Suetonius in particular (Suet. Vesp. 4). Hence the change (attested by Tertull. Apol. 3, ad nat. i. 3, and by Lactant. Inst. div. iv. 7. 5) of Christus into Chrestos (Χρηστός) and of Christianus into Chrestianus (which pronunciation Tertullian rejects by perperam) may not be imputed to the compiler of a history resting on documentary authority, but to the misuse of the Roman colloquial language. Indeed, according to Tacit. Ann. xv. 44: “Nero … poenis affecit, quos … vulgus Christianos appellabat; auctor nominis ejus Christus,” etc., it must be assumed that that interchange of names only became usual at a later period; in Justin. Apol. I. 4, τὸ Χρηστόν is only an allusion to Χριστιανοί. The detailed discussion of the point does not belong to us here, except in so far as the narrative of Dio Cass. lx. 6 appears to be at variance with this passage and with Suet. l.c.: τούς τε Ἰουδαίους πλεονάσαντας αὖθις, ὥστε χαλεπῶς ἂν ἄνευ ταραχῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου σφῶν τῆς πόλεως εἰρχθῆναι, οὐκ ἐξήλασε μὲν, τῷ δὲ δὴ πατρίῳ νόμῳ βίῳ χρωμένους ἐκέλευσε μὴ συναθροίζεσθαι.[74] This apparent contradiction is solved by our regarding what Dio Cassius relates as something which happened before the edict of banishment (Wieseler, p. 123, and Lehmann, p. 5, view it otherwise), and excited the Jews to the complete outbreak of insurrection.[75] The words ὥστε … εἰρχθῆναι, which represent the ordinance as a precautionary measure against the outbreak of a revolt, warrant this view. From Acts 28:15 ff., Romans 16:3, it follows that the edict of Claudius, which referred not only to those making the tumult (Credner, Einl. p. 380), but, according to the express testimony of this passage, to all the Jews, must soon either tacitly or officially have passed into abeyance, as, indeed, it was incapable of being permanently carried into effect in all its severity. Therefore the opinion of Hug, Eichhorn, Schrader, and Hemsen, that the Jews returned to Rome only at the mild commencement of Nero’s reign, is to be rejected.

πάντας τοὺς Ἰουδαίους] with the exception of the proselytes, Beyschlag thinks, so that only the national Jews were concerned. But the proselytes of righteousness at least cannot, without arbitrariness, be excluded from the comprehensive designation.

[72] See also Herzog in his Encykl. I. p. 456.

[73] Herzog, in the Jahrb. f. D. Theol. 1867, p. 541, rightly defends this explanation (against Pressensé). The objection is entirely unimportant, which Mangold also (Römerbr. 1866) has taken, that short work would have been made with an insurgent Chrestus at Rome. He might have made a timely escape. Or may he not have been actually seized and short work made of him, without thereby quenching the fire?

[74] Ewald, p. 346, wishes to insert οὐ before χρωμένους, so that the words would apply to the Jewish-Christians.

[75] To place the prohibition mentioned by Dio Cassius as early as the first year of Claudius, A.D. 41 (Laurent, neutest. Stud. p. 89 f.), does not suit the peculiar mildness and favour which the emperor on his accession showed to the Jews, according to Joseph. Antt. xix. 5. 2 f. The subsequent severity supposes a longer experience of need for it. Laurent, after Oros. vi. 7, places the edict of expulsion as early as the ninth year of Claudius, A.D. 49; but he is in consequence driven to the artificial explanation that Aquila indeed left Rome in A.D. 49, but remained for some time in Italy, from which (ver. 2 : ἀπὸ τῆς ʼΙταλίας) he only departed in A.D. 53. Thus he would not, in fact, have come to Corinth at all as an immediate consequence of that edict, which yet Luke, particularly by the addition of προσφάτως, evidently intends to say.