1: After
these things Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth 2: And found
a certain Jew named Aquila born in Pontus lately come from Italy with his wife
Priscilla because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome and
came to them 3: And because he was of the same craft he abode with them
and worked for by their occupation they were tentmakers 4: And he
reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks 5:
And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia Paul was pressed in the
spirit and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ 6: And when they
opposed themselves and blasphemed he shook his raiment and said to them Your
blood be upon your own heads I am clean from now on I will go to the Gentiles 7:
And he departed from there and entered into a certain man's house named Justus
one who worshipped God whose house joined hard to the synagogue 8: And
Crispus the chief ruler of the synagogue believed on the Lord with all his
house and many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized 9:
Then spoke the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision Be not afraid but speak
and hold not your peace 10: For I am with you and no one shall set on you
to hurt you[1]
for I have much people in this city 11: And he continued there a year
and six months teaching the word of God among them 12: And when Gallio was
the deputy of Achaia the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul
and brought him to the judgment seat 13: Saying This fellow persuades
men to worship God contrary to the law 14: And when Paul was now about
to open his mouth Gallio said to the Jews If it were a matter of wrong or
wicked lewdness O you Jews reason would that I should bear with you 15:
But if it be a question of words and names and of your law look you to it for I
will be no judge of such matters 16: And he drove them from the judgment
seat 17: Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes the chief ruler of the
synagogue and beat him before the judgment seat And Gallio cared about none of
those things 18: And Paul after this tarried there yet a good while and
then took his leave of the brethren and sailed from there into Syria and with
him Priscilla and Aquila having shorn his head in Cenchrea for he had a vow[2] 19: And he came to Ephesus and left
them there but he himself entered into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews[3] 20:
When they desired him to tarry longer time with them he consented not 21:
But bid them farewell saying I must by all means keep this feast that comes in
Jerusalem but I will return again to you if God wills And he sailed from
Ephesus 22: And when he had landed at Caesarea and gone up and greeted
the church he went down to Antioch 23: And after he had spent some time
there he departed and went over all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in order
strengthening all the disciples 24: And a certain Jew named Apollos born
at Alexandria an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures[4]
came to Ephesus 25: This man was instructed in the way of the Lord and
being fervent in the spirit he spoke and taught diligently the things of the Lord
knowing only the baptism of John 26: And he began to speak boldly in the
synagogue whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard they took him to them and
expounded to him the way of God more perfectly[5] 27:
And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia the brethren wrote exhorting the
disciples to receive him who when he was come helped them much who had believed
through grace 28: For he mightily convinced the Jews and that publicly
showing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ[6]
[1] Even
though Paul was bold, he had fears, just like everyone else. He had already
been whipped (39 stripes), imprisoned, and stoned for the cause of Christ. God,
in his infinite mercy, came to Paul in a vision to calm his fears. It is a sorry
fact, that even though people must believe in the supernatural to even identify
as Christians, God’s people are often taught to fear and shun the mystical
which includes salvation itself, along with all the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
i.e., ministry gifts, the miraculous gifts, and fruits of the Spirit. This
writer’s opinion is that this is done to empower the Nicolaitan-like, hierarchal,
structure of all denominations and most churches.
[2] Paul consecrated
himself to God by taking a Nazarite vow which is described as following:
Numbers 6:1 And YHWH spoke to Moses saying 2:
Speak to the children of Israel and say to them When either a man or a woman
shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite to separate themselves to YHWH
3: They shall separate themselves from wine and strong drink and shall
drink no vinegar of wine or vinegar of strong drink neither shall they drink
any liquor of grapes nor eat moist grapes or dried 4: All the days of their
separation shall they eat nothing that is made of the vine tree from the
kernels even to the husk 5: All the days of the vow of their separation
there shall no razor come upon their heads until the days be fulfilled in the
which they separate themselves to YHWH they shall be holy and shall
let the locks of the hair of their heads grow 6: All the days that they
separate themselves to YHWH they shall come at no dead body
7: They shall not make themselves unclean for their father or for their
mother for their brother or for their sister when they die because the consecration
of their God is upon their heads 8: All the days of their separation they
are holy unto YHWH 9: And if any one die very suddenly by them and they
have defiled the head of their consecration then they shall shave their heads
in the day of their cleansing on the seventh day shall they shave it 10:
And on the eighth day they shall bring two turtles or two young pigeons to the
priest to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation 11: And the
priest shall offer the one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt
offering and make an atonement for them for that they sinned by the dead and
shall hallow their heads that same day 12: And they shall consecrate
unto YHWH
the days of their separation and shall bring a lamb of the first year for a
trespass offering but the days that were before shall be lost because their
separation was defiled 13: And this is the law of the Nazarite when the
days of their separation are fulfilled they shall be brought to the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation 14: And they shall offer their offering to
YHWH
one he lamb of the first year without blemish for a burnt offering and one ewe
lamb of the first year without blemish for a sin offering and one ram without
blemish for peace offerings 15: And a basket of unleavened bread cakes
of fine flour mingled with oil and wafers of unleavened bread anointed with oil
and their meat offering and their drink offerings 16: And the priest
shall bring them before YHWH and shall offer their sin
offering and their burnt offering 17: And he shall offer the ram for a
sacrifice of peace offerings unto YHWH with the basket of unleavened
bread the priest shall offer also their meat offering and their drink offering 18:
And the Nazarite shall shave the head of their separation at the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation and shall take the hair of the head of their
separation and put it in the fire which is under the sacrifice of the peace
offerings 19: And the priest shall take the boiled shoulder of the ram
and one unleavened cake out of the basket and one unleavened wafer and shall
put them upon the hands of the Nazarite after the hair of their separation is
shaved 20: And the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before YHWH
this is holy for the priest with the wave breast and heave shoulder and after
that the Nazarite may drink wine 21: This is the law of the Nazarite who
has vowed and of their offering to YHWH for their separation beside
that that their hand shall get according to the vow which they vowed so they
must do after the law of their separation.
[3] Because of his shaved head, the Jews
could readily see that Paul had recently taken a Nazarite vow. The shaved head
was therefore a holy thing to the Jews--not a fashion statement—as was the
uncut hair of the Nazarite. Only those who had taken a Nazarite vow were
forbidden to cut their hair, but only during the days of their vow—it did not
matter whether they were men or women. Nowhere in the Bible are women commanded
to allow their hair to grow or forbidden to cut their hair—both are associated
with the holy vow of the Nazarite. Ezekiel wrote about people who did not know
the difference between the holy and the profane.
[4]
To be “Mighty in the scriptures” consists not only of knowing the Word of God, but obeying
the Word of God. Jesus said strength comes from being doers of the Word not
hearers only.
[5]
Priscilla was teacher to this man, who was already a teacher and a preacher “mighty
in the scriptures,” right along with Aquila. It is remarkable that this is the third-time
Luke mentions Priscilla by her name. And in the previous mention, she was named
first—before her husband. This was
simply not done in ancient times, and rarely done now, even in modern times—unless
it is a deliberate choice on the part of the writer—so it is certain that Luke
(who was a Greek physician—the Greeks
were even more misogynistic than the Jews) was deliberately challenging the
gender biased social norms of his time by naming Priscilla at all, much less by
naming her first in the previous mention.
[6]
It was the scriptures of the Old Testament that he was expounding from. We
should never cast aside the Old Covenant as irrelevant to New Testament
Christianity as it was the Bible of the early Church. The Word of God is all
one. Christians have a duty and high calling to know the Word of God—all of it.
When Paul, in his letters to the churches, exhorted to study the scriptures, he
was referring to the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Covenant (they had also been
translated into Greek [the Septuagint—LXX]).
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