Acts 18
Paul settles in Corinth for a year and a half, works as a tentmaker alongside Priscilla and Aquila, weathers a formal charge before the Roman proconsul Gallio, and begins a third journey east.
Summary
Paul comes to Corinth and finds a Jewish tentmaker named Aquila, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome. Paul stays with them and works — they are tentmakers by trade. Every sabbath he reasons in the synagogue, trying to persuade both Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy arrive from Macedonia, Paul is occupied with the word and testifies to the Jews that Jesus is the Messiah. When they oppose and revile him, he shakes out his garments and says: your blood be on your own heads; from now on I will go to the Gentiles. He leaves the synagogue and goes to the house of Titus Justus, a worshipper of God, whose house is next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believes in the Lord together with his entire household. The Lord speaks to Paul in a vision at night: do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you; I have many people in this city. Paul stays eighteen months, teaching the word of God.
When Gallio is proconsul of Achaia, the Jews make a united attack on Paul and bring him before the tribunal, charging that he is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law. Before Paul can speak, Gallio says: if it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime I would have reason to accept your complaint; but since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things. He drives them from the tribunal. The crowd seizes Sosthenes the ruler of the synagogue and beats him in front of the tribunal, and Gallio pays no attention. Paul sails to Ephesus with Priscilla and Aquila. He enters the synagogue and reasons with the Jews; when they ask him to stay longer, he declines, promising to return if God wills, and sails from Ephesus. He lands at Caesarea, goes up to greet the church in Jerusalem, and goes down to Antioch. A learned Alexandrian named Apollos, eloquent and competent in the scriptures, arrives in Ephesus, knowing only the baptism of John. Priscilla and Aquila hear him and take him aside to explain the way of God more accurately. He crosses to Achaia and is a great help to the believers, showing by the scriptures that the Messiah is Jesus.
- Acts 1Chapter 1 is a prologue and a hinge.
- Acts 2Pentecost is the structural and theological engine of the whole book.
- Acts 3Chapter 3 is the first miracle narrative in Acts, and its structure follows a pattern the book will repeat: the sign, the crowd, the sermon, and the opposition (which comes in chapter 4).
- Acts 4Chapter 4 is the first formal opposition scene in Acts, and it establishes a pattern: arrest, interrogation, the apostles' refusal, release, prayer, and the Spirit's confirmation.
- Acts 5Chapter 5 is one of the most dramatically concentrated in the book.
- Acts 6Chapter 6 is transitional but efficient.
- Acts 7Chapter 7 is the theological and dramatic climax of the Jerusalem section.
- Acts 8Chapter 8 is the first chapter of the middle section — Judea and Samaria — and it works by juxtaposition.
- Acts 9Chapter 9 contains the first telling of Paul's conversion (the other two are in chapters 22 and 26), and it is worth reading all three consecutively to see how Luke shapes each one for its audience.
- Acts 10Chapter 10 is the structural pivot of the first half of Acts and one of the most carefully constructed chapters in the New Testament.
- Acts 11Chapter 11 has two movements.
- Acts 12Chapter 12 is the last major Peter chapter in Acts, and it works as a deliberate counterpoint to the Herod material.
- Acts 13Chapter 13 is the beginning of the long Pauline section, and it opens with a scene worth pausing over: the Spirit speaks during a worship service in Antioch — while they are worshipping and fasting — and sets Barnabas and Saul apart for a specific but unnamed work.
- Acts 14Chapter 14 completes the first missionary journey and its most memorable episode is the Lystra scene (verses 8-20).
- Acts 15Chapter 15 is the structural centre of Acts and one of the most important chapters in the New Testament.
- Acts 16Chapter 16 is one of the richest in Acts.
- Acts 17Chapter 17 covers three cities and demonstrates the range of Paul's rhetorical repertoire.
- Acts 18Chapter 18 is relatively measured in tone after the drama of chapter 17.
- Acts 19Chapter 19 is the longest account of Paul's settled ministry in any city and falls into two parts.
- Acts 20Chapter 20 is the most elegiac in Acts.
- Acts 21Chapter 21 is the beginning of the long arrest sequence that occupies the rest of the book.
- Acts 22Chapter 22 is the second telling of Paul's conversion (the first is in chapter 9, the third in chapter 26).
- Acts 23Chapter 23 is structurally a thriller: the Sanhedrin hearing (verses 1-10), the night vision in the barracks (verse 11), the assassination plot (verses 12-22), and the extraordinary military escort to Caesarea (verses 23-35).
- Acts 24Chapter 24 is the first of three formal hearings in Acts — before Felix (24), before Festus (25), and before Agrippa (26) — and it establishes the pattern the others follow: Jewish accusation, Paul's defence, Roman incomprehension of the internal religious question, and a procedurally inconclusive result.
- Acts 25Chapter 25 is a pivot chapter.
- Acts 26Chapter 26 is the third and final telling of Paul's conversion (compare chapters 9 and 22) and the most rhetorically elaborate.
- Acts 27Chapter 27 is one of the most detailed sea narratives in ancient literature and is written in the first person plural (the we-passage resumes at verse 1), which gives it its immediacy.
- Acts 28Chapter 28 is the ending the book has been building toward, and it rewards slow reading.