Acts 18:12-28
It was hard to organize today’s reading without breaking it up into smaller pieces. There’s a lot going on in these 17 verses. Paul starts in Corinth, moves on to Ephesus, then to Caesarea, then Jerusalem (maybe; see below), then Antioch, then Galatia and Phrygia – with more activity at Ephesus as we end our reading. But the real confusion comes in the likelihood that Paul wrote I and II Thessalonians while he was in Corinth. So where to split chapter 18 – how to fit all these things together? So we end up with Paul’s third missionary journey interrupted by his writings to the Thessalonians. We’ll just go with the flow!
So we begin with the Jews hassling Paul again: …the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal… (v. 12) The Roman proconsul would have none of it and dismissed them all. So then the Jews …seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. (v. 17) That sounds really strange, except for the introduction that Paul writes back to the Corinthians in his first letter: Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother… (NASB). Is this Sosthenes in Paul’s Corinthian introduction the same man who was beaten in front of the proconsul? And if so, when did he become a “brother”? So maybe the Jews beat Sosthenes because they were angry at losing their case before the proconsul and they took it out on Sosthenes because they suspected him of following Jesus? That’s the only reasonable explanation I can imagine! Strange!
Paul takes Priscilla and Aquila with him to Ephesus and leaves them there, which turned out to be a good move, since Apollos came to Ephesus and had to be instructed correctly by Priscilla and Aquila (vv. 24-26). One wonders why Paul did not leave Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth in the first place – why take them along at all? Clearly Paul was hearing from the Lord in all this!
There’s a lot of travel in verse 22: When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch. It’s very likely that the church he greeted was the Jerusalem church. Jerusalem is about 2500 feet above sea level – we’ve talked earlier about travelers going “up” to Jerusalem even when it was a journey to the south. In addition, Caesarea is much closer to Jerusalem (about 75 miles) than to Antioch (250 miles), and the verse continues with Paul going “down” to Antioch (to the north and at sea level again). Luke leaves out a lot of intermediate information in today’s reading!
Verse 23 begins Paul’s third missionary journey. We’ll pick that up again after we read through the Thessalonian letters.
Slava Bohu!