1. Paul Arrives in Corinth (18:1–4)
1After that, Paul left Athens and came to Corinth.
2There he met with a Jew named Aquila, whose family belonged to Pontus; he had recently come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla, because of Claudius’s edict that all Jews should leave Rome. So Paul joined them,
3and stayed with them and worked, because he followed the same trade: they were tentmakers by trade.1
4He discoursed in the synagogue every sabbath, speaking persuasively to both Jews and Greeks.2
1 From Athens Paul continued his journey in a southwesterly direction, until he reached Corinth.
Corinth, on the Isthmus of Corinth, the land-bridge connecting the Peloponnese with Central and Northern Greece, occupied a most favorable position for commercial enterprise, at the junction of sea routes to the west and east and of land routes to the north and south. It had two ports—Lechaeum, on the Gulf of Corinth (leading to the Ionian Sea and the central and western Mediterranean), and Cenchreae, on the Saronic Gulf (leading to the Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea). For long Corinth was a political, commercial, and naval rival of Athens. In 146 B.C., in savage reprisal for an anti-Roman revolt, Corinth was leveled to the ground by the Roman general L. Mummius, and the site lay derelict for a century. Then in 44 B.C., the city was refounded by Julius Caesar and given the status of a Roman colony, with the title Laus Iulia Corinthus (“Corinth, the praise of Julius”). In 27 B.C. it became the seat of administration of the Roman province of Achaia. Corinth was not long in regaining its old commercial prosperity.3 In earlier days Corinth had acquired a reputation for sexual license remarkable even in classical antiquity,4 and with the regaining of commercial prosperity Roman Corinth regained something of this old reputation: it is plain to readers of Paul’s Corinthian correspondence that the Christian community which he founded in Corinth had difficulty in maintaining the standard of sexual conduct which the gospel required.5
2–3 Even so, Corinth was the kind of city which Paul’s strategic eye discerned as a promising center for intensive evangelism, and there he settled for a considerable time. Not long after, he met a married couple, recently come to Corinth from Italy, with whom he quickly formed a firm and lifelong friendship. These were Aquila and Priscilla, “tentmakers”—or perhaps, more generally, leatherworkers6—by trade. It was this that first apparently brought Paul into contact with them, for he himself had been apprenticed to the same trade. This trade was closely connected with the principal product of Paul’s native province, a cloth of goats’ hair called cilicium, used for cloaks, curtains, and other fabrics designed to give protection against wet. In Judaism it was not considered proper for a scribe or rabbi to receive payment for his teaching, so many of them practised a trade in addition to their study and teaching of the law.7 Paul, as a matter of policy, earned his living in this way during his missionary career (cf. 20:34; 1 Cor. 9:3–18; 2 Cor. 11:7; 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8).8
Aquila and Priscilla, we are told, had come to Corinth because the Emperor Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. This was not the only occasion on which the authorities at Rome saw fit to clean up the city by expelling undesirable groups of oriental incomers. Claudius’s edict is usually connected with a statement by Suetonius, that he banished the Jews from Rome because they were “indulging in constant riots at the instigation of Chrestus.”9 This Chrestus may have been an otherwise unknown troublemaker who was active in Jewish circles in Rome about the middle of the first century, but in that case Suetonius would probably have called him “a certain Chrestus.”10 Most probably he had the Founder of Christianity in mind but, writing some seventy years after these events, he mistakenly supposed that “Chrestus,” who was mentioned in one of his sources of information as the leader of one of the parties involved, was actually in Rome at the time, taking a prominent part in the contention.11 Suetonius’s statement, in fact, points to dissension and disorder within the Jewish community of Rome resulting from the introduction of Christianity into one or more of the synagogues of the city.
It is difficult to say whether Aquila and Priscilla had any part in this dissension or were simply involuntary victims of the emperor’s expulsion order. In Paul’s references to them he does not suggest that they were converts of his; the greater likelihood is that they were Christians before they left Rome, founder-members, perhaps, of the Roman church.12 More often than not, Priscilla is named before her husband by both Luke and Paul;13 some have inferred from this that she belonged to a higher social class than he—that she was connected, by emancipation if not by birth, with the noble Roman family called gens Prisca. It cannot be known if, like Aquila, she was Jewish by birth. When Paul mentions her in his letters, he uses her more formal name Prisca; Luke calls her by her more familiar name Priscilla, following a practice which is evident in the names of other characters in his narrative.14 Whatever their antecedents were,15 Priscilla and Aquila came to Corinth to pursue their trade there, and were joined before long by Paul as a fellow-tradesman.
4 A great commercial city like Corinth inevitably had a considerable Jewish colony, and Paul was able immediately to follow his usual procedure and proclaim the Christian message in the local synagogue.16 Here, sabbath by sabbath, he held discourse with the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, showing how Jesus had fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies. According to the Western text, he did so by “inserting the name of the Lord Jesus” as an interpretative expansion in those passages which—as the event proved—pointed forward to him. Even if the Western addition is no part of the original text, it does give us a convincing picture of the sort of thing Paul did.17
2. Paul Spends Eighteen Months in Corinth (18:5–11)
5When Silas and Timothy came back from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself to preaching, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus.18
6When they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his clothes and said to them, “Your blood is on your own heads; I am clear of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
7So, quitting the synagogue,19 he went into the house of a God-fearer called Titius20 Justus, whose house was next door to the synagogue.
8Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, with all his household, became a believer in the Lord, and many of the Corinthians, as they listened, believed and were baptized.
9Then the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision by night: “Do not be afraid,” he said; “speak, and do not be silent,
10for I am with you, and no assailant will do you any harm. I have many people21 in this city.”
11So he remained there for a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
5 After a few weeks, Paul was rejoined by his companions Silas and Timothy, who had returned from Macedonia (perhaps by sea). The news that they brought—especially Timothy’s news about the steadfastness of the sorely tried converts of Thessalonica—came as a great relief to Paul.22 At the same time, a gift of money from his friends in Philippi relieved him for the time being of the necessity to support himself by tentmaking;23 he was able therefore to concentrate on the preaching of the gospel, and he sought to convince his Jewish hearers that the promised Messiah had come, and had come in the person of Jesus.
6–7 At last his witness in the synagogue stirred up such intense opposition there that he had to find some other place in which to prosecute his evangelism. By a spectacular gesture (shaking out his cloak so that not a speck of dust from the synagogue might adhere to it24) he expressed his resolve to have done with that building and his abhorrence of the slanderous talk in which his opponents were indulging—not so much against Paul himself as against the one whom Paul proclaimed as Messiah and Lord. He had discharged his responsibility to them, he assured them; if they would not accept the news of salvation which he brought, he was now free of blame.25 As at Pisidian Antioch and elsewhere, so at Corinth too he would take his saving message to people who knew how to appreciate it. And he had not far to go. For adjoining the synagogue was the house of a God-fearing Gentile who had listened to Paul and been persuaded of the truth of his words. This man now placed his house at Paul’s disposal, and people who had been accustomed to attend the synagogue did not have to leave their habitual route if they wished to go on hearing Paul: they made their way toward the synagogue, as usual, but turned in next door.
The most probable form of this God-fearer’s name, as given by Luke, is Titius Justus—a Roman nomen and cognomen suggesting that he was a Roman citizen, perhaps a member of one of the families settled in Corinth by Julius Caesar when he made it a Roman colony. But what was his praenomen? There is much to be said for the view, favored by W. M. Ramsay and E. J. Goodspeed, that it was Gaius—that this man is the Gaius named by Paul in 1 Cor. 1:14 as one of the few converts in Corinth whom he baptized with his own hands.26 If so, he is almost certainly to be identified also with “Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church,” as Paul puts it in Rom. 16:23. A man whose house was large enough to accommodate Paul’s voluntary congregation and (later) the whole church of Corinth (if the identification is well founded) would have been a fairly well-to-do citizen.
8 In 1 Cor. 1:14 Paul mentions another Corinthian convert who was baptized by him personally, Crispus by name. Luke shows us who this Crispus was—no less than the ruler of the synagogue. He and his family27 evidently followed Paul on his departure from the synagogue, and joined the new Christian community in Corinth. Many other Corinthians came to hear the good news, and believing it they were baptized and swelled the new community.
9–10 Shortly after Paul’s leaving the synagogue, he had an encouraging experience: he received one of the visions which came to him at critical junctures in his life, heartening him for whatever might lie ahead.28 On this occasion the risen Christ appeared to him by night and assured him that no harm would befall him in Corinth, for all the opposition his witness might stir up. His opponents had made it impossible for him to stay in Thessalonica and Beroea; his opponents in Corinth would not have similar success, however hard they might try to force his departure. He had come to Corinth full of misgivings—“in much fear and trembling,” he says himself (1 Cor. 2:3)—but he should abandon all fear and go on proclaiming the gospel boldly. He would reap an abundant harvest by so doing, for the Lord had many in Corinth who were marked out by him as his own people.29
11 Thus filled with fresh confidence, Paul stayed in Corinth and continued his work of preaching and teaching for a year and a half. The next five years, in fact, were devoted not so much to traveling as to inaugurating and consolidating Christian witness in two important centers west and east of the Aegean—first Corinth and then Ephesus. The time spent in Corinth probably stretched from the fall of A.D. 50 to the spring of A.D. 52; we are able to date this period of Paul’s career with considerable accuracy from the following mention of Gallio as proconsul of Achaia.
3. Paul Before Gallio (18:12–17)
12When Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a concerted attack on Paul. They brought him before the tribunal30
13with the charge:31 “This man incites people to worship God in a manner contrary to the law.”
14When Paul was on the point of defending himself, Gallio said to the Jews, “Listen, Jews.32 If this were a crime, or some act of malicious fraudulence,33 it would be reasonable for me to take up your case.
15But if these are disputes about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of such things.”
16So he drove them from the tribunal.
17Then all34 (the bystanders) seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and proceeded to beat him up in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no heed to this.35
12 Paul received a divine promise that no harm would befall him through any attack in Corinth, but he was not promised that no attack would be made. An attack was indeed made on him, and one which might have had serious consequences. On this occasion his Jewish opponents, instead of stirring up the city rabble against him or accusing him before the civic authorities, approached the Roman administration of the province. Any decision taken by civic magistrates, like the politarchs of Thessalonica, would have effect only within their limited jurisdiction, but the verdict of a Roman governor would not only be effective within his province but could be followed as a precedent by governors of other provinces. Had the proconsul of Achaia36 pronounced a judgment unfavorable to Paul, the progress of Christianity during the next decade or so could have been attended by much greater difficulties than were actually experienced.
Gallio was a son of the elder Seneca, the rhetorician (c. 50 B.C.–c.A.D. 40), and brother of the younger Seneca, the Stoic philosopher (c. 3 B.C.–A.D. 65). His name was originally Marcus Annaeus Novatus; but after his father brought him to Rome from his native Cordova in the principate of Tiberius, he was adopted by the rhetorician Lucius Junius Gallio, and thereafter bore the same name as his adoptive father. His contemporaries speak of him as a man of great personal charm—“no mortal,” said his brother Seneca, “is so pleasant to any one person as Gallio is to everybody.”37 After holding the praetorship in Rome, he was appointed proconsul of Achaia. From an inscription at Delphi in Central Greece, recording a directive from the Emperor Claudius, it can be inferred rather precisely that he entered on his proconsulship in the summer of A.D. 51.38 He left Achaia because of a fever (perhaps before his year of office had expired) and went on a cruise for his health.39 At a later date, after his consulship (A.D. 55),40 he took a cruise from Rome to Egypt because of threatened phthisis.41 In A.D. 65, like other members of his family, he fell victim to Nero’s suspicions.42 vv
13 The charge which was preferred against Paul before Gallio was that of propagating a religion and on that basis forming a society not countenanced by Roman law. The Jewish community and synagogue of Corinth, like Jewish communities and synagogues elsewhere throughout the empire, had the status of a collegium licitum,43 but Paul’s accusers maintained that the gospel which he preached had nothing to do with their ancestral faith: it was no true form of Judaism, and therefore should not share in the protection extended to Judaism by Roman law. Paul should be prohibited from further propagation of the gospel, if not indeed punished for his activity in propagating it thus far.
14–16 An elaborate podium overlooking the lower terrace of the forum of Roman Corinth is commonly pointed out as Gallio’s tribunal, where he sat to administer justice.44 On this occasion, Paul was about to open his mouth in reply to the charge brought against him, when Gallio abruptly brought the proceedings to an end. Listening to the charge, he quickly decided that the dispute was internal to the Jewish community, that it concerned conflicting interpretations of Jewish religious law. Paul was obviously as much a Jew as his accusers were. What Paul was propagating, Gallio reckoned, was simply a variety of Judaism which did not happen to commend itself to the leaders of the local Jewish community; and he had no intention of adjudicating on a matter of this kind. Had Paul been charged with a recognizable crime or misdemeanor, he said, he would naturally have taken the matter up;45 but as it was plainly a disagreement about Jewish religious terminology, they must settle it themselves. So he bade them begone from his tribunal.
17 As they went away, an incident occurred which reveals how prone the populace of these Gentile cities was to anti-Jewish demonstrations. Taking advantage of the rebuff which the proconsul had dealt to the Jewish leaders, the crowd of bystanders seized one of those leaders, Sosthenes (possibly the successor to Crispus as ruler of the synagogue),46 and beat him up in the very presence of the proconsul, who had not yet left the tribunal. But Gallio turned a blind eye to this brutal ventilation of anti-Jewish sentiment.
Gallio’s ruling meant in effect that Paul and his associates, so long as they committed no breach of public order, continued to share the protection which Roman law granted to the practice of Judaism. It probably served as a precedent for other Roman judges, especially as it proceeded from a man whose brother (Seneca) occupied a position of influence at the imperial court. It meant that for the next ten or twelve years, until imperial policy toward Christians underwent a complete reversal,47 the gospel could be proclaimed in the provinces of the empire without fear of coming into conflict with Roman law. The next charges brought against Paul before a Roman judge were personal to himself.48 Luke’s account of Gallio’s decision is of high relevance to the apologetic motive of his history. And it may be that, as Ramsay thought, the memory of Gallio’s decision was one of the things that encouraged Paul, some years later, to appeal “from the petty outlying court of the procurator of Judaea, who was always much under the influence of the ruling party in Jerusalem, to the supreme tribunal of the Empire.”49
1. Hasty Visit to Ephesus (18:18–21)
18So Paul spent many more days there; then, taking his leave of the brothers, he set sail for Syria, in the company of Priscilla and Aquila. He had his hair cut short in Cenchreae, for he was under a vow.50
19They landed at Ephesus, and51 Paul left his companions there. He himself went into the synagogue and held discourse with the Jews.
20They asked him to stay with them longer, but he did not consent;
21he took his leave of them, saying,52 “I will come back to you, God willing,” and set sail from Ephesus.
18 Paul was not likely to leave Corinth immediately after Gallio had given his decision. That decision, which (without Gallio’s intending it so) proved so favorable for Paul’s mission, was probably given in the summer or early fall of A.D. 51; Paul stayed on for the ensuing winter. At last, however, he left Corinth, for he wished to pay a short visit to Syria and Judaea. Along with Priscilla and Aquila, therefore, he sailed across the Aegean from Cenchreae, the eastern port of Corinth. Before setting sail, he had his hair cut: he had allowed it to grow long for the duration of a vow which he had undertaken. This was probably not a formal Nazirite vow, which could not properly be undertaken outside the Holy Land,53 but a private vow, the fulfilment of which was an act of thanksgiving—possibly for the divine promise of verse 10, which had been confirmed by his preservation from harm throughout his Corinthian ministry.
19 The ship on which they embarked took them to Ephesus. Here Priscilla and Aquila settled down for some years, either transferring their business from Corinth to Ephesus or leaving their Corinthian branch in the care of a manager (as perhaps they had already left their Roman branch) and opening a new branch in Ephesus.
Ephesus was at this time the greatest commercial city of Asia Minor north of the Taurus range, although its harbor required constant dredging because of the alluvium carried down by the Caÿster, at the mouth of which it stood. Standing on the main route from Rome to the east, it enjoyed political importance in addition to its geographical advantages: it was the seat of administration of the province of Asia, and at the same time a free Greek city, with its own senate and civic assembly; it was an assize town, and prided itself especially on its title “Temple Warden of Artemis” (cf. 19:35). The great temple of Ephesian Artemis, built to replace an earlier one which was destroyed by fire in 356 B.C., was reckoned one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Much of the site of Roman Ephesus is unoccupied; it has been excavated over many years by Austrian archaeologists, who have restored some of the buildings. Part of the site is occupied by the town of Selçuk, formerly called Ayasoluk (a name commemorating the Ephesian residence of “John the Divine”).54
There was a large settlement of Jews at Ephesus. The privileges granted them in 44 B.C. by Dolabella (a partisan of Julius Caesar, and Roman consul in that year) were subsequently confirmed by the civic authorities55 and by the Emperor Augustus and his lieutenants.56 Paul now paid a brief visit to their synagogue before continuing his journey.
20–21 According to the Western text, Paul was eager to reach Jerusalem in time for one of the Jewish festivals. If the festival was Passover, there was probably a good reason for his haste: the seas were closed to navigation until March 10,57 and in A.D. 52 Passover fell in early April. He had time to hold some preparatory discourse with the members of the synagogue, but although they were interested in what he had to say and asked him to stay longer, he was unable to do so. A ship was about to leave the Ephesian harbor which might bring him to Judaea in time for his appointment, so he bade them farewell and promised, if it were God’s will, to come back and spend more time with them.
2. Brief Visit to Judaea and Syria (18:22–23)
22Having landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch.
23Having spent some time there, he departed and went through the Galatian region and Phrygia, city by city, strengthening all the disciples.
22 Paul’s ship from Ephesus brought him to Caesarea, then the chief Mediterranean port of Palestine. When the wind is east of north, it is easier to put in at Caesarea than at Seleucia. Having landed at Caesarea, he went up to Jerusalem and greeted the mother-church. Jerusalem is not mentioned, but it is certainly implied:58 a reference in a Judaean setting to “the church” without qualification could only be to the church of Jerusalem, and it is from Jerusalem, not from Caesarea, that one would “go down”. (One would not “go down” from a place on the coast, like Caesarea, to an inland city, like Antioch.) Whether he had any special commission to discharge in Jerusalem in connection with the festival or otherwise, Luke does not say. A few scholars attach considerable importance to this Jerusalem visit, identifying it with the visit described by Paul in Gal. 2:1–10.59 Apart from chronological problems involved in this identification, there is the major difficulty that Barnabas, who accompanied Paul to Jerusalem on the occasion mentioned in Gal. 2:1, was no longer in his company at this time.
When Paul had completed whatever he had to do in Jerusalem, he “went down” to Antioch (for the expression we may compare 11:27, where a group of prophets “came down” from Jerusalem to Antioch).60
23 Antioch (on the Orontes) was the city from which Paul had set out on his missionary journey with Silas (as on his earlier missionary journey with Barnabas), and, although Antioch was no longer his base, he may well have told the church there of God’s continued dealings with him and of other Gentiles who had entered by the same “door of faith” as the Gentiles of Cyprus and South Galatia, whose conversion he and Barnabas had reported to that church some years before (14:27).
After spending some time in Antioch, he set out on his travels again. An impression of haste is given by the succession of participles in the Greek text of verses 22 and 23; in fact a journey of about 1500 miles is covered in these two verses and in 19:1. Luke was probably dependent here on a skeleton itinerary—not the same itinerary as that represented by the “we” narrative of Acts, which includes more detail. From Antioch Paul set out for central Asia Minor by the same land route which he and Silas had previously followed, crossing the Taurus range by the Cilician Gates. Although “the Galatian region and Phrygia” here is not the same phrase as is used in 16:6 (“the Phrygian and Galatian region”),61 there is probably not much material difference between them. W. M. Ramsay and W. M. Calder thought (rightly, it may be) that “the Galatic region” here meant Lycaonia Galatica (i.e., that part of Lycaonia which lay within the province of Galatia, as distinct from eastern Lycaonia, which formed part of the kingdom of Antiochus).62 In any case, Paul seems to have passed once more through Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and Pisidian Antioch, not carrying out pioneer evangelism but giving help and encouragement to old friends and converts. On this occasion no hindrance was placed on his westward path, so his way was now open to Ephesus.
24Now a Jew named Apollos,63 whose family belonged to Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a man of learning,64 well versed in the scriptures.
25He had been instructed65 in the way of the Lord and was aglow with the Spirit;66 as he spoke, he taught the story of Jesus accurately, although the only baptism he knew was John’s.
26He began to express himself freely in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila67 heard him, they took him home with them and set forth the way of God to him more accurately.
27When he wished to cross over to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there, asking them to give him a welcome. When he arrived, he gave great help to the believers through (divine) grace;68
28he argued strenuously and convincingly with the Jews, and that in public, as he showed69 by the scriptures that the Messiah was Jesus.
24–25 Between Paul’s departure from Ephesus (after his hasty visit) and his return to it (after he had been to Judaea and Syria) another extremely interesting Christian arrived in the city. This was Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria—perhaps a traveling merchant of a type not unknown in the first century,70 who gave welcome help in the synagogues of cities which he visited. It is not expressly stated (except in the Western text) that Apollos received his accurate instruction in “the way of the Lord” (i.e., the gospel) in his native Alexandria, but he may well have done so. The gospel certainly reached Alexandria at a very early date, although the origins of Alexandrian Christianity are lost in obscurity (only in the second half of the second century does the obscurity begin to be dissipated).71
Apollos’s understanding of Christianity deviated in at least one important respect from the form of Christianity, based on Jerusalem, which is depicted for us in Acts: the only baptism of which he knew was the baptism administered by John the Baptist; baptism in the name of Jesus, as proclaimed by Peter on the day of Pentecost (cf. 2:38), was evidently unknown to him. It has been suggested that his “accurate” knowledge of the story of Jesus came to him from a primitive gospel writing not unlike our Gospel of Mark;72 it is doubtful, however, if the word “instructed” would be satisfied by a reading knowledge; it rather implies listening to a teacher. But Apollos combined great knowledge of the scriptures with a masterly skill in expounding their messianic content, and this was coupled with spiritual fervor—an expression which probably denoted not so much an enthusiastic temperament as possession by the Spirit of God (which is what it means when used by Paul in Rom. 12:11).73 It may seem strange, no doubt, that someone who was indwelt and empowered by the Spirit should nevertheless know nothing of Christian baptism; but primitive Christianity was made up of many strands, and of some of those strands we have little or no knowledge. Even after his further instruction, Apollos is not said to have received Christian baptism.74
26 Priscilla and Aquila, who continued to attend the synagogue in Ephesus after Paul’s departure, listened to Apollos when he began to expound the scriptures there, and were greatly impressed by the learning and skill which he devoted to the defense of the gospel. No one else, in their experience, came so near their friend Paul in this ability. As they listened, they became aware of some gaps in his knowledge, accurate as it was, so they took him home and set forth “the way of God” to him more accurately still (they themselves had probably had the same experience when they met Paul and he supplemented the knowledge of the Way which they had acquired in Rome). Arnold Ehrhardt remarks that Paul was a greater asset to the Jerusalem church than it gave him due credit for, for either directly (as in 19:1–7) or indirectly, through his disciples (as here), he brought deviant forms of primitive Christianity into line with the Jerusalem way.75 That the Jerusalem way is the norm is taken for granted by Luke.76 But Priscilla and Aquila’s procedure was admirable: how much better it is to give such private help to a teacher whose understanding of his subject is deficient than to correct or denounce him publicly!
27–28 After some time, Apollos wished to cross the Aegean and visit Greece: according to the Western text, he was invited to do so by some Corinthians who made his acquaintance in Ephesus. At all events, he went to Corinth, armed with a letter of introduction from his friends in Ephesus to the Corinthian church. He proved himself a tower of strength to the believers in Corinth, both by his teaching in the church and by his preaching to those outside, especially to the Jews of Corinth, as he argued cogently (refuting all counter-arguments) that the Messiah of whom the scriptures spoke must be identified with Jesus of Nazareth.77 The influence that Apollos exercised in Corinth may be gauged from the references made to him in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence. Paul speaks of him as watering the seed which he himself had sown.78 If some of the Corinthian Christians were disposed to claim Apollos as a party leader to the detriment of Paul79 (impressed perhaps by his Alexandrian methods of biblical interpretation), there is no hint that Apollos himself encouraged this tendency, and Paul speaks of him in warm terms as an appreciated colleague.80