God’s Word for You
Acts 17:1-2a On to Corinth
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, October 23, 2020
18 After this Paul withdrew from Athens and went to Corinth. 2 He found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who recently came from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to withdraw from Rome.
After Paul established a congregation in Athens, beginning (perhaps) with the leadership of Dionysius and the financial support of Damaris, he separated himself from that city. The Greek verb “withdrew” is choristheis (χωρισθεὶς), the same word that appears at the end of verse 2 regarding the Jews of Rome. Perhaps Luke uses this word in both verses to connect Paul with these new people in an elegant and significant way.
He headed to Corinth, about 50 miles west of Athens. Corinth sits on the west end of a narrow strip of coastline dividing the Aegean Sea to the east from the Ionian Sea to the west. Corinth can boast about the oldest railroad known to man. In Paul’s time, it had already been operating for more than six hundred years. Of course, this railroad didn’t have steam or diesel engines, but it was a track along which vehicles could travel from one sea to the other, overland. These vehicles weren’t train cars, but ships. It was the safer route for ships, even though it meant being hauled out of the water and up onto the slipway and then overland rather than making the treacherous voyage to the south around southern Greece. The slipway or diolkos was a five-mile long grooved track. This primitive railway system would have required about 200 men (or oxen) to pull a ship overland. The trip would take five or so hours per ship, and it was active for about seven hundred years (600 BC - 100 AD).
In Paul’s day, Corinth was officially a colony city of Rome, made so by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. This meant that Corinth enjoyed certain privileges within the Roman Empire. Geographically, it was on the Ionian Sea and on the isthmus that connected northern Achaia from the south. Everyone traveling through stopped in Corinth. It was thrust up against a towering cliff, the Acrocorinth (“Corinthian Height”) 1,800 feet high. There were docks, harbors, shops of all kinds, and a vigorous artistic trade. Corinthian brass and pillar columns were and are famous (but with all respect to actor Ricardo Montalbán, there is no such thing as “fine Corinthian leather”). It was also a city of wickedness. A “Corinthian” in the Roman Empire was either a man who slept with prostitutes or a woman who was a prostitute. The temple of Venus in the city had a thousand female slaves who ‘worshiped’ by providing sex for visitors, and there were many male prostitutes as well, who made themselves available to other men for sex, and certain wealthy women as well. Sexual sins were so rampant in Corinth and the godly roles of men and women so completely forgotten that Paul had to address the issues more than once in his two Epistles (see 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, 6:9-10, 6:12-20, 7:1-12, 10:8; and 2 Corinthians 12:21.
Paul met Aquila and Priscilla there in Corinth. It’s easy to understand how this happened, since they were tentmakers and, we will learn in verse 3, so was he. It would be natural, walking among the shops and businesses of downtown Corinth, to peek into the tentmaking shop, especially if the owners were Jews. Aquila and his wife had quite a story to tell. He was from Pontus, the extreme northeastern strip of Asia Minor touching the Black Sea. He and his wife had been in Italy when Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) expelled the Jews from Rome. Later in Acts 18 (Acts 18:12-17) we will confirm that Paul was in Corinth during the time of Proconsul Gallio in Achaia, which we know was 51-52 AD. While archaeology has supported this date as the most positively definite date in the life of the Apostle Paul, we need to remember that the Bible is never proved by archaeology or other sciences like astronomy, but only supported by them. We believe the Bible to be true because we have faith in Christ, and not because any human tells us that this or that event in the life of Jesus or his apostles or anyone else in the Bible can be proved in some way. It is this same faith in Jesus that saves us. We don’t achieve salvation or eternal life because of anything we have done, or proved, or researched, or discovered. Not even because of anything we might have written. We are saved by the grace of God given to us in Jesus, and through Jesus we have every blessing from God: forgiveness, peace, eternal life, and everlasting love and joy with everyone who has had that same faith in Jesus our Lord. Even ancient tentmakers from the Black Sea.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.