14. Corinth and Ephesus

The urban experience includes a cluster of things like communications and mobility, the disintegration of traditional religion, impersonality and anonymity, human planning, control and bureaucracy. And in the decayed inner cities of our time we would have to add economic neglect, racial disadvantage, unemployment, poor housing and education, crime, violence, family breakdown, and tensions between the police and the community.

The process of urbanization constitutes a great challenge to the Christian church. On the one hand, there is an urgent need for Christian planners and architects, local government politicians, urban specialists, developers and community social workers, who will work for justice, peace, freedom and beauty in the city. On the other, Christians need to move into the cities, and experience the pains and pressures of living there, in order to win city-dwellers for Christ. Commuter Christianity (living in comfortable suburbia and commuting to an urban church) is no substitute for incarnational involvement.

It seems to have been Paul’s deliberate policy to move purposefully from one strategic city centre to the next. What drew him to the cities was probably that they contained the Jewish synagogues, the larger populations and the influential leaders. So on his first missionary expedition he visited Salamis and Paphos in Cyprus, and Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe in Galatia; on his second he evangelized Philippi, Thessalonica and Berea in Macedonia, and Athens and Corinth in Achaia; while during the greater part of his third journey he concentrated on Ephesus. Indeed Luke deliberately describes how the gospel spread ‘by the gradual establishment of radiating centres or sources of influence at certain salient points throughout a large part of the Empire’.

It is true that some of the towns Paul visited were small and insignificant. This could not be said of Athens, Corinth and Ephesus, however. It has been reckoned that Athens may have had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, but that Ephesus had half a million, and that Corinth at its peak had nearly three-quarters of a million. All three were leading cities of the Roman Empire, situated round the shores of the Aegean Sea, while Corinth and Ephesus were also provincial capitals. They could perhaps be characterized as follows.

Athens was the intellectual centre of the ancient world, as we saw in the last chapter, the city where Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Zeno had all expounded their respective philosophies. It was also the birthplace of democracy, and, of the three famous universities of antiquity (Alexandria, Tarsus and Athens), Athens was the most distinguished. Although it had now declined from the peak of its brilliance, the brightest students still flocked to it from all parts of the empire. For the world’s younger intelligentsia it retained an almost irresistible magnetism.

Corinth was above all a great commercial centre, a world-famous emporium. Situated close to the isthmus which joined mainland Greece to the Peloponnesian peninsula, it commanded the trade routes in all directions, not only north–south by land but also east–west by sea. For before the Corinthian canal was cut for three and a half miles across the isthmus, there was a diolkos or slipway, along which cargoes and even small vessels could be hauled, thus saving 200 miles of perilous navigation round the southern tip of the peninsula. As a result, Corinth had two ports, Lechaeum on the Corinthian Gulf to the west and Cenchreae on the Saronic Gulf to the east. Thus ‘through its tow harbours Corinth bestrode the isthmus, with one foot planted in each sea’, which led Horace to call it bimaris or ‘two-sea’d’. So Corinth was a city of seafarers, of maritime merchants, and it is hardly surprising that Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, whom the Romans called Neptune, was worshipped there. F. W. Farrar imagined its markets stocked with cosmopolitan goods – ‘Arabian balsam, Egyptian papyrus, Phoenician dates, Libyan ivory, Babylonian carpets, Cilician goats’-hair, Lycaonian wool, Phrygian slaves’. Paul must have seen its strategic importance. If trade could radiate from Corinth in all directions, so could the gospel.

Ephesus was also famed for its commerce. Barclay calls it ‘the market of Asia Minor’. It had political importance as well, as the capital of the Roman province of Asia. But in particular Ephesus was one of the principal religious centres of the Graeco-Roman world. The imperial cult flourished there, and at one time the city boasted as many as three temples dedicated to the worship of the emperor. Above all, Ephesus was famed as ‘the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis’ (19:35). In classical mythology Artemis (whom the Romans called Diana) was a virgin huntress, but in Ephesus she had somehow become identified with an Asian fertility goddess. Ephesus guarded with immense pride both her grotesque many-breasted image (probably in origin a meteorite) and the magnificent temple which housed it. This structure had more than one hundred Ionic pillars, each 60 ft high, and supporting a white marble roof. Being four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens, and adorned by many beautiful paintings and sculptures, it was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world. In addition, under Diana’s patronage, superstitions and occult practices of all kinds flourished. And the magic words and formulae, which were sold to the gullible, were known as ‘Ephesian Letters’.

Here, then, were three major cities of the Graeco-Roman world, all of them in differing degrees being centres of learning, trade and religion. Luke plainly understands their significance for the spread of the gospel. Having portrayed the apostle Paul among the philosophers in Athens (17:16ff.), he now describes his visits to Corinth (18:1ff.) and to Ephesus (18:18bff. and 19:1ff.). These visits followed a similar pattern, namely the evangelization of Jews, their opposition to the gospel, the apostle’s deliberate turn to the Gentiles, and the multiple vindication of his dramatic decision. This is Luke’s underlying theme in chapters 18 and 19.

First, in both cities Paul began with a serious and sustained attempt to ‘persuade’ his Jewish hearers in the synagogue that Jesus was the Christ (18:4–5; 19:8).

Second, in both cities Paul responded to Jewish rejection of the gospel by leaving the synagogue and turning to Gentile evangelism, using as his base the house of Titius Justus in Corinth and the lecture hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus (18:6–7; 19:9).

Third, in both cities Paul’s bold step was vindicated by many people hearing and believing the gospel (18:8; 19:10).

Fourth, in both cities Jesus confirmed his word and encouraged his apostle – in Corinth by a night vision and in Ephesus by extraordinary miracles (18:9–10; 19:11–12).

Fifth, in both cities the Roman authorities dismissed the opposition and declared the legitimacy of the gospel – in Corinth through the proconsul Gallio and in Ephesus through the city clerk (18:12ff.; 19:35ff.).

1. Paul in Corinth (18:1–18a)

After this [that is, following his Areopagus speech and its aftermath], Paul left Athens and went to Corinth (1). It was about this journey (as was noted at the end of the last chapter), in anticipation of his mission in Corinth, that Paul later wrote: ‘I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.’ We need to penetrate deeper into the causes of Paul’s fear and the reason for his resolve. What was it about Corinth which caused his alarm and demanded his decision to preach only Christ and his cross?

It was surely the pride and immorality of the Corinthian people which intimidated Paul, since the cross comes into direct collision with both. To begin with, the Corinthians were a proud people. Their intellectual arrogance emerges clearly in Paul’s correspondence with them. They were also proud of their city, which Julius Caesar had beautifully rebuilt in 46 bc. They boasted of its wealth and culture, of the world-famous Isthmian games which it hosted every other year, and of its political prestige as the capital of provincial Achaia, taking precedence even over Athens. But the cross undermines all human pride. It insists that we sinners have absolutely nothing with which to buy, or indeed contribute to, our salvation. No wonder that not many wise, influential or upper-class Corinthians responded to the gospel!

Second, Corinth was associated in everybody’s mind with immorality. Behind the city, nearly 2,000 ft above sea level, rose the rocky eminence called the Acrocorinth. On its flat summit stood the temple of Aphrodite or Venus, the goddess of love. A thousand female slaves served her and roamed the city’s streets by night as prostitutes. The sexual promiscuity of Corinth was proverbial, so that korinthiazomai meant to practise immorality, and korinthiastēs was a synonym for a harlot. But the gospel of Christ crucified summoned the Corinthians to repentance and holiness, and warned them that the sexually immoral would not inherit the kingdom of God.

It is in these ways that Christ’s cross, in its call for self-humbling and self-denial, is a stumbling block to the proud and the sinful. Hence Paul’s ‘weakness with great fear and trembling’ and his necessary decision in Corinth ‘to know nothing . . . except Jesus Christ and him crucified’.

a. Paul stays with Aquila and Priscilla (18:2–6)

There, in Corinth, he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome (2a). This married couple, whom Paul later called his ‘fellow workers in Christ Jesus’, who had ‘risked their lives’ for him, were an example of an extraordinary degree of mobility. Born in Pontus on the southern shore of the Black Sea, Aquila had migrated to Italy. We are not told why, nor whether this move was before or after his marriage to Priscilla. It was together, however, that they left Rome for Corinth, and on account of an imperial edict. Suetonius referred to this in his Life of Claudius (25.4): ‘as the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [impulsore Chresto], he banished them from Rome’. The people expelled he called ‘Jews’, but ‘Chrestus’ seems to mean Christ (the pronunciation of ‘Christus’ and ‘Chrestus’ will have been very similar), in which case the Jews were Christians and the disturbances in the Jewish community had been caused by the gospel. Presumably, then, Aquila and Priscilla were already believers before they reached Corinth. They later undertook a further move, this time from Corinth to Ephesus in the company of Paul, and the church, or a portion of it, met in their house (18:18, 19, 26).

Paul now went to see them (2b), and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them (3). They shared the same trade as well as the same faith. What was it? Virtually all English versions translate skēnopoios ‘tentmaker’, since skēnē or skēnos is a tent. Some commentators prefer ‘leather worker’ or ‘saddler’, however, ‘since the tents of antiquity were usually made of leather’. Another possibility is ‘cloth worker’, and it is at least plausible (though not proven) that Paul wove a coarse fabric from the thick goats’ hair of his native Cilicia. Called in Latin cilicium, it was used for curtains, rugs and clothing as well as tents. What is certain is that he worked with his hands. Indeed, rabbis were required to learn a trade, and urged all young men to do the same. It is true that Paul also insisted several times on the right of Christian teachers to be supported by their pupils. But he himself voluntarily renounced this right, partly so as not to be a ‘burden’ to the churches, and partly to undercut the accusation of underhanded motives by preaching the gospel free of charge. ‘Tentmaking ministries’ have rightly become popular in our day. The expression describes cross-cultural messengers of the gospel who support themselves by their own professional or business expertise, while at the same time being involved in mission. The principle of self-support is the same, and the desire not to burden the churches, but the main motivation is different, namely that this may be the only way for Christians to enter those countries which do not grant visas to self-styled ‘missionaries’.

While Paul worked at his trade on every weekday, every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade [an imperfect tense expressing his persistence] Jews and Greeks, the latter being ‘God-fearers’ who attended synagogue worship (4). When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, however, after staying in Berea (17:14) and visiting Thessalonica, they brought with them not only the good news of the Thessalonians’ faith and love, but also a gift. As a result, Paul was able to give up his tentmaking. Instead, he now devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah (5). Either way, it was the identity of the historical Jesus and the expected Messiah which mattered. But this Jewish mission met with stubborn resistance, which led Paul to repeat the drastic step he had taken in Pisidian Antioch (13:46, 51) and to turn to the Gentiles. This time he expressed his decision in a dramatic gesture and statement: But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest [so that ‘not a speck of dust from the synagogue might adhere to’ them] and said to them, echoing Ezekiel, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles’ (6).

b. Paul turns to the Gentiles (18:7–11)

Luke’s next statement, that then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshipper of God (7), is more than a geographical note. It means rather that the scene of his evangelistic labours changed from public synagogue to private house, and that so the people being evangelized changed from Jews to Gentiles. We know that the house belonged to one Titius Justus, and that he was a God-fearer, but it is pure speculation that his other name was Gaius, and indeed the Gaius mentioned in Romans 16:23 and 1 Corinthians 1:14. It is surprising that the first convert of the Gentile mission was Crispus, the synagogue leader, who was in charge of the services, and that his entire household believed in the Lord (8a), but following him many of the Corinthians, presumably Gentiles, who heard him [Paul] believed and were baptised (8b).

Paul’s audacious decision to move from synagogue to home, from Jewish to Gentile evangelism, was quickly vindicated by God not only through the conversion and baptism of many (8), but also through a vision of Jesus (9–10) and through the attitude of the Roman authorities (12ff.). One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision (9a). ‘The Lord’, according to Luke’s consistent usage, means ‘the Lord Jesus’ (see verse 8, ‘believed in the Lord’). Yet ‘the message is couched in the language used by God himself in the Old Testament when addressing his servants’. Both the prohibition ‘Do not be afraid’ and the promise ‘I am with you’ were regularly addressed by Yahweh to his people. Now Jesus said the same things to Paul: Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city (9b–10). He was to continue witnessing, fortified by the presence and the protection of Christ, and by the assurance that Christ had ‘many people’ (laos) in Corinth (cf. 15:14, ‘God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles’). The expression reminds us of the Good Shepherd’s statement that he had ‘other sheep . . . not of this sheepfold [Israel]’, that is, Gentiles. They had not yet believed in him, but they would do so, because already according to his purpose they belonged to him. This conviction is the greatest of all encouragements to an evangelist. Strengthened by it, Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God (11). For the word of God is the divinely appointed means by which people come to put their trust in Christ and so identify themselves as his.

c. Paul is vindicated by Roman law (18:12–18a)

At some point during these eighteen months Jewish opposition to the gospel, which had earlier led Paul to turn to the Gentiles (6), erupted again: the Jews . . . made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment (12b), the bēma, which was ‘a large, raised platform that stood in the agora . . . in front of the residence of the proconsul and served as a forum where he tried cases’. It was in keeping with Christ’s promise that no-one would harm Paul (10) that the Jews took him to court while Gallio was proconsul of Achaia (12a, almost certainly ad 51–52), for Gallio proved to be a friend of justice and truth. He was the younger brother of Seneca, the Stoic philosopher and tutor of the youthful Nero, and Seneca spoke appreciatively of his brother’s tolerant kindness. Incidentally, Luke was correct to call Gallio ‘proconsul’, since ‘Achaia was at this time a “senatorial” province of the Empire, and therefore governed by a proconsul – as opposed to an “imperial” province, which was governed by a legate’. The province’s status had changed only in ad 44.

Of what offence did the Jews accuse Paul? ‘This man,’ they charged, ‘is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law’ (13). But which law was he supposed to be contravening? Gallio understood them to be referring to what he called ‘your own law’ (15), but they knew as well as he that debates about the Jewish law were beyond his jurisdiction. So they must have been trying to make out that Paul’s teaching was against Roman law, because it was not an authentic expression of Judaism. Judaism was a religio licita, an authorized religion. But Paul’s teaching was ‘something new and un-Jewish . . . ; it was, they urged, a religio illicita, which accordingly ought to be banned by Roman law’.

The proconsul gave the accused no opportunity to reply to this charge, for he refused to hear it himself.

Just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to them, ‘If you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanour or serious crime [that is, an obvious offence against Roman law], it would be reasonable for me to listen to you. But since it involves questions [neb, ‘bickering’] about words and names and your own law – settle the matter yourselves. I will not be a judge of such things.’

(14–15)

Having made his decision not to hear the Jews’ case, Gallio drove them off (16). An unpleasant example of mob rule followed. It seems that a crowd of Gentile onlookers, ‘in an outbreak of the anti-Semitism always near the surface in the Graeco-Roman world’, now turned on Sosthenes, who had evidently succeeded Crispus as the synagogue leader, and beat him in front of the proconsul (17a). Luke’s addition that Gallio showed no concern whatever (17b) does not mean that he was indifferent to justice, but that he considered it judicious to turn a blind eye to this act of violence.

Gallio’s refusal to take the Jewish case against Paul seriously or to adjudicate was immensely important for the future of the gospel. In effect, he passed a favourable verdict on the Christian faith and thus established a significant precedent. The gospel could not now be charged with illegality, for its freedom as a religio licita had been secured as the imperial policy. Luke’s concluding comment is logical: Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time (18a), not now because of his vision of Jesus, but because of the judicial decision of Gallio. Jesus would keep his promise to protect him; the chief means of his protection would be Roman law.

2. Paul in transit (18:18b–28)

Luke now follows Paul from Corinth to Ephesus, Caesarea, Jerusalem, Antioch and back through Galatia to Ephesus again. His narrative is very condensed, either because his information was limited (he was himself still in Philippi) or because his purpose was to get Paul from Achaia to Asia (where he had previously been forbidden by the Spirit to preach, 16:6), from his two years in Corinth to his three years in Ephesus, without dwelling on his intervening months of travel.

a. Paul visits Ephesus, Jerusalem and Antioch (18:18b–23)

Sometime after Gallio’s refusal to hear the Jewish charge against the apostle, Paul left the brothers and sisters and sailed for Syria (18b), presumably intending to report back to the church of Syrian Antioch which had sent him out (13:1ff.; 14:26ff.; 15:35ff.), and was accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila, who may well have financed his trip. Luke now adds the interesting detail that before he sailed, he had his hair cut off at Cenchreae, Corinth’s eastern port, because of a vow he had taken (18b). Commentators have been perplexed regarding who made this vow, what it was, when it was taken and why. As for the person concerned, although the grammar permits it to be Aquila, the context requires that it was Paul. The reference to his hair makes it almost certain that it was a Nazirite vow, which involved abstinence from drinking wine and from cutting one’s hair for a period, at the end of which the hair was first cut and then burned, along with other sacrifices, as a symbol of self-offering to God. If the vow was completed away from Jerusalem, the hair could still be brought there to be burned. Such vows were made ‘either in thankfulness for past blessings (such as Paul’s safekeeping in Corinth) or as part of a petition for future blessings (such as safekeeping on Paul’s impending journey)’. Once Paul had been liberated from the attempt to be justified by the law, his conscience was free to take part in practices which, being ceremonial or cultural, belonged to the ‘matters indifferent’, perhaps on this occasion in order to conciliate the Jewish Christian leaders he was going to see in Jerusalem (cf. 21:23ff., relating to his subsequent visit).

They arrived at Ephesus, where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila. He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews (19). His mission was so much more acceptable to the Jews in Ephesus than in Corinth (did this have anything to do with his shaven head?) that they wanted him to stay. But when they asked him to spend more time with them, he declined (20), adding (according to the Western text), ‘I must at all costs keep the coming festival in Jerusalem’, which Ramsay declared ‘may be confidently understood as the Passover’. Whatever the reason for Paul’s haste, as he left, he promised to return, saying: ‘I will come back if it is God’s will.’ Then he set sail from Ephesus (21).

When he landed at Caesarea, Palestine’s chief port, he went up to Jerusalem and greeted the church and then went down to Antioch (22). After spending some time in Antioch, probably from the early summer of ad 52 to the early spring of 53, and having doubtless given its church a full account of his second missionary expedition, Paul set out from there on what proved to be his third and last journey. He will have gone first in a northerly direction, then west through the Cilician Gates, over the Taurus range, and travelled from place to place throughout the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples (23). This must mean that he revisited the churches of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, which he had established during his first missionary journey (chapters 13 to 14) and consolidated during his second (16:6).

b. Apollos visits Ephesus (18:24–28)

Meanwhile, during the year or so which must have elapsed since Paul left Corinth, a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus (24a). Luke goes on to tell us three interesting facts about him. First, he was a learned man [though logios could mean ‘eloquent’, as in rsv, neb], with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures (24b). Alexandria had a huge Jewish population at that time. It was here that the Septuagint (lxx) had been produced some two hundred years before Christ, and here that the great scholar Philo, Jesus’ contemporary, lived and worked, struggling by allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament to reconcile Hebrew religion with Greek philosophy. Did Apollos himself interpret the Old Testament allegorically? Perhaps Luther was right in being the first person to propose Apollos as the author of the letter to the Hebrews. Second, he had been instructed in the way of the Lord (i.e. the Lord Jesus). He also spoke with great fervour (‘fervent in spirit’, as in Rom. 12:11, probably meaning ‘spiritually fervent’), thus matching learning with enthusiasm. In addition, he taught about Jesus accurately. He was therefore, although Jewish, a Christian teacher (25a). Third, however, he knew only the baptism of John (25b), whom Luke knew to have been the Messiah’s forerunner and to have belonged to the Law and the Prophets, not the kingdom. Since Apollos can hardly have known John’s baptism without also knowing his teaching, he must have been familiar with John’s witness to Jesus as the Messiah. But how much did he know? At all events, when he began to speak boldly in the synagogue, and Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they recognized that his understanding was defective, invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately (26), literally, ‘more accurately’ (rsv), the comparative of the adverb akribōs used in the previous verse.

It is not possible to be sure which Christian truths Apollos knew when he taught ‘accurately’ and which were explained to him ‘more accurately’. On the one hand, Luke could hardly have described him as ‘instructed in the way of the Lord’ if at that stage he was still completely ignorant of the death and resurrection of Jesus. On the other hand, if his knowledge was largely limited to John’s baptism and teaching, his grasp of these events may have been minimal, and he will also have needed to hear about Jesus’ commission, exaltation and gift of the Spirit. Such truths as these Priscilla and Aquila taught him. Their ministry was timely and discreet. As Professor Bruce remarks, ‘how much better it is to give such private help to a preacher whose ministry is defective than to correct or denounce him publicly!’

Next, when Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him, for he was better equipped now for a wider ministry,

and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.

(27–28)

Indeed, in 1 Corinthians 1 – 4 Paul himself wrote appreciatively of Apollos’s ministry in Corinth and generously acknowledged him as a fellow worker in God’s field. ‘I planted the seed,’ he wrote, ‘Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.’

3. Paul in Ephesus (19:1–41)

While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior [or ‘made his way overland’, jb] and arrived at Ephesus (1), keeping his promise to return if God willed it (18:21). It was, therefore, during Paul’s year of absence from Ephesus that Apollos came, ministered and left again.

a. Paul and John the Baptist’s followers (19:1b–7)

On arrival in Ephesus Paul found some disciples. At least, that is what they claimed to be. In reality, however, they were disciples of John the Baptist, and were decidedly less well informed than Apollos had been. Luke records the dialogue which developed between them (2–4) and its sequel (5–7).

paul’s first question Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

their answer No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.

paul’s second question Then what baptism did you receive?

their answer John’s baptism.

paul’s comment John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.

On hearing this, they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all.

This incident has become a proof text in some Pentecostal and ­charismatic circles, especially when the inaccurate and unwarranted av translation of verse 2 is followed, namely ‘Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?’ From this it is sometimes argued that Christian initiation is in two stages, beginning with faith and conversion, and followed later by receiving the Holy Spirit. But those twelve ‘disciples’ cannot possibly be regarded as providing a norm for a two-stage initiation. On the contrary, as Michael Green has written, it is ‘crystal clear that these disciples were in no sense Christians’, having not yet believed in Jesus, whereas through the ministry of Paul they came to believe and were then baptized with water and the Spirit more or less simultaneously.

When Paul first met them, he assumed that they were believers, but noticed that they gave no evidence in their bearing or behaviour of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So he asked them his two leading questions, whether they had received the Spirit when they believed, and into what they had been baptized. His first question linked the Spirit with faith, and his second, with baptism. That is, his questions expressed his assumptions that those who have believed have received the Spirit, and that those who have been baptized have received the Spirit, for he cannot separate the sign (water) from the thing signified (the Spirit). He took it for granted that baptized believers receive the Spirit, as Peter also taught (2:38–39). Both his questions imply that to have believed and been baptized and not to have received the Spirit constitutes an extraordinary anomaly.

Consider now the answers which Paul received to his questions. In answer to his first, they said that they had ‘not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit’. This cannot mean that they had never heard of the Spirit at all, for he is referred to many times in the Old Testament, and John the Baptist spoke of the Messiah as baptizing people with the Spirit. It must rather mean that, although they had heard John’s prophecy, they had not heard whether it had been fulfilled. They were ignorant of Pentecost. In answer to Paul’s second question, they explained that they had received John’s baptism, not Christian baptism. In a word, they were still living in the Old Testament which concluded with John the Baptist. They understood neither that the new age had been ushered in by Jesus, nor that those who believe in him and are baptized into him receive the distinctive blessing of the new age, the indwelling Spirit.

Once they came to understand this through Paul’s instruction, they put their trust in Jesus, of whose coming their teacher John the Baptist had spoken. They were then baptized into Christ, Paul laid his hands on them (giving his apostolic seal of approval to what was happening, as Peter and John had done in Samaria), the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. In other words, they experienced a mini Pentecost. Better, Pentecost caught up on them. Better still, they were caught up into it, as its promised blessings became theirs.

The norm of Christian experience, then, is a cluster of four things: repentance, faith in Jesus, water-baptism and the gift of the Spirit. Though the perceived order may vary a little, the four belong together and are universal in Christian initiation. The laying-on of apostolic hands, however, together with speaking in tongues and prophesying, were special to Ephesus, as to Samaria, in order to demonstrate visibly and publicly that particular groups were incorporated into Christ by the Spirit; the New Testament does not universalize them. There are no Samaritans or disciples of John the Baptist left in the world today.

b. Synagogue and lecture hall (19:8–10)

The pattern of Paul’s evangelistic ministry in Ephesus was similar to that in Corinth. First, Paul entered the synagogue, where he was already known (18:19), and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively [rsv, ‘arguing and pleading’] about the kingdom of God (8). To argue from the Old Testament Scriptures about the kingdom is the same as to argue that Jesus is the Messiah, since it is Jesus the Messiah who inaugurated the kingdom (cf. 28:31). But, as in Corinth so in Ephesus, the Jewish people rejected the good news: some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way, as Christian discipleship is again called, since ‘Christianity was for the disciples the way of all ways . . . in which to walk.’ As a direct result of this stubborn opposition in the synagogue, Paul left them. He also took the disciples with him and had discussions [dialegomenos; rsv, ‘argued’] daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus (9). In fact, this new outreach to the Gentiles in the form of dialogue evangelism went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord (10). It is a bit tantalizing that Luke tells us nothing about Tyrannus. We must assume that he was a philosopher or educator of some kind, who lectured during the cool hours of the morning, but was prepared to rent his schoolroom or lecture hall (scholē) to the Christian evangelist during the heat of the day. Since tyrannos means a despot or tyrant, ‘one wonders idly if this was the name his parents gave him or the name his pupils gave him!’ What is clear is that Paul’s daily Christian lecturing for two years led to the evangelization of the whole province.

c. Some power encounters (19:11–20)

In Corinth Christ encouraged his apostle and endorsed his teaching through a night vision; in Ephesus, through signs and wonders by which Christ’s power over disease, demon possession and magic was demonstrated. God did extraordinary miracles through Paul (11). Handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him [‘the sweat-rags being used for tying round his head and the aprons for tying round his waist’ while he was engaged in his tentmaking] were taken to those who were ill, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them (12). Some commentators are embarrassed by these verses and tend to dismiss them as legendary. At least four points may be made on the other side. First, Luke himself is not content to describe these events as mere ‘miracles’, dynameis, demonstrations of divine power; he adds the adjective tychousas, which is variously translated ‘special’ (av), ‘singular’ (neb), ‘remarkable’ (jb) and ‘extraordinary’ (rsv, niv). He does not regard them as typical, even for ‘miracles’. Second, he does not regard them as magic either, for he sets them apart from the magical practices which Ephesian believers were soon to confess and renounce as evil (18–19). Third, the wisest attitude to the sweat-rag miracles is neither that of the sceptics who declare them spurious; nor that of the mimics who try to copy them, like those American televangelists who offer to send to the sick handkerchiefs which they have blessed; but rather that of Bible students who remember both that Paul regarded his miracles as his apostolic credentials, and that Jesus himself condescended to the hesitant faith of a woman by healing her when she touched the edge of his cloak. Fourth, as in the Gospels so in Acts, demon possession is distinguished from illness, and therefore exorcism from healing.

The mention of exorcism leads Luke to tell of some Jewish exorcists who attempted to tap the power they believed to inhere in the name of Jesus, with disastrous consequences. To be sure, there is power – saving and healing power – in the name of Jesus, as Luke has been at pains to illustrate (e.g. 3:6, 16; 4:10–12). But its effectiveness is not mechanical, nor can people use it second-hand. Nevertheless, in spite of this misuse of the Name, the incident had a healthy effect. When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear [neb, ‘awestruck’], and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honour (17).

The power encounter of Jesus with the kingdom of Satan was not yet complete. After healing and exorcism came deliverance from occult practices.

Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. A number who had practised sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas [the drachma being a silver coin representing about a day’s wage].

(18–19)

We have already noted that Ephesus was famous for its ‘Ephesian Letters’ (grammata), which were ‘written charms, amulets and talismans’. That these young believers, instead of realizing the monetary value of their magic spells by selling them, were willing to throw them on a bonfire was clear evidence of the genuineness of their conversion. Their example also led to more conversions, for in this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power (20).

d. Paul’s future plans (19:21–22)

After all this had happened, after the synagogue and lecture-hall evangelism and the power encounters, but before the riot in the theatre, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem, first passing through Macedonia and Achaia (21a). Luke does not add at this stage the reason for this circuitous route, but we know that he was going to pick up the offering which he had been urging the Christians of northern and southern Greece to collect for their poverty-stricken sisters and brothers in Judea. His eyes were not on Jerusalem, however. ‘After I have been there,’ he said, ‘I must visit Rome also’ (21b), and beyond that he was even dreaming of Spain, ‘the most westerly outpost of Roman civilization in Europe’. His vision had no limits. As Bengel rightly commented, ‘no Alexander, no Caesar, no other hero, approaches to the large-mindedness of this little (a play on his name Paulos, “little”) Benjamite’. Meanwhile, he sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, ahead of him to Macedonia, presumably in order to make last-minute preparations for the offering, while he stayed in the province of Asia, indeed in Ephesus itself, a little longer (22), because ‘a great door for effective work’ had opened before him, and many were opposing him. Both the opportunity and the opposition demanded his continued presence in Ephesus.

e. The riot in the city (19:23–41)

Luke gives his readers a graphic account of the riot which Demetrius the silversmith started and the city clerk skilfully quelled. Perhaps he obtained his information from Aristarchus and/or Gaius, who found themselves caught up in the uproar (29) and later became Paul’s and Luke’s travelling companions (20:4–6). Haenchen’s presuppositions lead him to find in the story ‘a regular tangle of difficulties’. He elaborates six of them. But Howard Marshall is right to say that Haenchen’s case ‘disappears under scrutiny’. He gives an adequate explanation of each supposed problem. Luke’s narrative divides itself naturally into three sections relating to the origin, course and termination of the riot.

First, its origin. It was inevitable that sooner or later the kingly authority of Jesus would challenge Diana’s evil sway. Luke declares that the disturbance arose ‘about the Way’ (neb, ‘the Christian movement’). At root its cause was neither doctrinal nor ethical, but economic. Demetrius, whom Ramsay called ‘probably Master of the guild [of silversmiths] for the year’, drew the attention of his and other craftsmen to Paul’s success in convincing people that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. As a result, the sales of silver shrines of Artemis (either miniature models of the temple or statuettes of the goddess) were dwindling and their affluent lifestyle was threatened. Not that Demetrius played directly on their covetousness, however. He was subtle enough to develop three more respectable motives for concern, namely the dangers that their trade would lose its good name, their temple its prestige, and their goddess her divine majesty (27). Thus ‘vested interests were disguised as local patriotism – in this case also under the cloak of religious zeal’.

Demetrius proved to be a skilled rabble-rouser, for the response was immediate.

‘The most impressive ruins in Asia Minor . . . Ephesus stands dignified and alone in its death,’ wrote H. V. Morton. The excavated site is magnificent; it is easy to visualize the riot. According to the Bezan text of verse 28, the infuriated craftsmen went ‘running into the street’ before they started to shout for Diana. This was probably the Arcadian Way, the main thoroughfare of Ephesus, 11 m wide, marble-paved and colonnaded, leading from the harbour to the theatre. The theatre itself, still in a fine state of preservation, nestling at the foot of Mount Pion and nearly 500 ft in diameter, could accommodate at least 25,000 people. Here the crowd dragged Gaius and Aristarchus. And here Paul (overconfident perhaps in the immunity he believed his Roman citizenship would give him) was prevented from coming by the pleas of both the disciples and by some officials of the province who were his friends (31). Luke rightly calls them ‘Asiarchs’. These were leading citizens who were prominent members of the provincial council of Asia, especially its ‘annual presidents and perhaps ex-presidents’, and/or the city’s deputies who served on it, and/or ‘the administrators of the various temples of the imperial cult, who were under the charge of high priests appointed by the provincial council’. Paul was fortunate to have the friendship and the advice of some of them. By now confusion reigned in the theatre. Some people were shouting this or that, but most of them had no idea why they were there. A diversion was caused when some Jews tried to put forward their spokesman, no doubt in order to disassociate Jews from Christians, but the crowd, who would not have comprehended the distinction, shouted him down and for two hours resumed their chanting of Diana’s name. Indeed, this section begins and ends with the hysterical screams Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! (28, 34). Haenchen is right to comment that ‘in final analysis the only thing heathenism can do against Paul is to shout itself hoarse’.

Luke now describes how the crowd’s frenzy was calmed by the city clerk (grammateus, 35), who was ‘the elected head of the city executive’ or ‘the chief administrative assistant, annually elected, of the magistrates; he had a staff of permanent clerks, responsible for the paper work of the city’.

This city clerk was evidently a man of high intelligence and of great skill in crowd control. He made four points. First, the whole world knows that Ephesus is the guardian of Artemis’s temple and image. Since this is undeniable, no-one is going to deny it, and the cult of Artemis is in no danger (35–36). Second, these men (Gaius and Aristarchus) are guilty of neither sacrilege (robbing the temple) nor blasphemy (reviling the goddess). They are innocent (37). Third, Demetrius and his colleagues are familiar with statutory legal procedures. If they have a private grievance, they should bring their case to the proconsular court sessions. If, on the other hand, their case is more serious and more public, they should refer it to a legal assembly, the correct technical term for the regular (three times a month) official meetings of the dēmos or city council (38–39). As Dr Sherwin-White comments, Luke ‘is very well informed about the finer points of municipal institutions at Ephesus in the first and second centuries ad’. Fourth, the citizens of Ephesus are themselves in danger of being charged with civil disorder. If this were to happen, they would not be able to justify themselves. Each of these arguments was persuasive; the four together were decisive. When the city clerk dismissed the assembly, they went home in a very subdued mood.

Luke’s purpose in reporting this incident was clearly apologetic or political. He wanted to show that Rome had no case against Christianity in general or Paul in particular. In Corinth the proconsul Gallio had refused even to hear the Jews’ charge. In Ephesus the city clerk implied that the opposition was purely emotional and that the Christians, being innocent, had nothing to fear from duly constituted legal processes. Thus the impartiality of Gallio, the friendship of Asiarchs and the cool reason­ableness of the city clerk combined to give the gospel freedom to continue on its victorious course.

4. Paul’s strategy for urban evangelism

In spite of the obvious cultural differences between first-century cities in the Roman Empire and the great urban complexes of today, there are also similarities. We may learn from Paul in Corinth and Ephesus important lessons about the where, the how and the when of urban evangelism.

a. The secular places he chose

It is true that in both Corinth and Ephesus he began in the Jewish synagogue; that was his custom. But when the Jews rejected the gospel, he withdrew from the synagogue and moved to a neutral building instead. In Corinth he chose a private house, the home of Titius Justus, while in Ephesus he rented the lecture hall of Tyrannus. And easily the greater part of his evangelistic ministry in both cities was spent in these secular situations.

In our day we still have to evangelize the religious. The equivalent to the synagogue in our culture is the church. It is here that the Scriptures are read, prayer is offered, and ‘God-fearers’ congregate, people on the fringe who are attracted but not committed. The gospel must be proclaimed to them. But we must not limit our evangelism to the religious and neglect all the others. If religious people can be reached in religious buildings, secular people have to be reached in secular buildings. Perhaps the equivalent to Paul’s use of the house of Titius Justus is home evangelism, and the equivalent to his use of the hall of Tyrannus is lecture evangelism. People will come to a home, to listen to an informal talk and engage in free discussion, who would never darken the door of a church, and there is an important place for apologetic and/or explanatory Chris­tian lectures in the local college or university or in some other neutral public place.

b. The reasoned presentation he made

Luke uses several verbs to describe Paul’s evangelistic preaching. But two of them stand out in these chapters. Each occurs four times, almost equally divided between his ministry in Corinth and in Ephesus. They are the verbs to ‘reason’ or ‘argue’ (dialegomai) and to ‘persuade’ (peithoō). In Corinth, ‘every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks’ (18:4). In consequence, the Jews complained to Gallio that ‘this man . . . is persuading the people’ (18:13). In Ephesus Paul spoke boldly in the synagogue for three months, ‘arguing persuasively [literally, ‘arguing and persuading’] about the kingdom of God’ (19:8), and then after withdrawing from the synagogue he ‘had discussions daily’ [rsv, ‘argued daily’] in the hall of Tyrannus (19:9). Thus both in the religious context of the synagogue and in the secular context of the lecture hall, Paul combined argument and persuasion. As a result, Demetrius was able to complain that ‘this fellow Paul has convinced [rsv, ‘persuaded’] . . . large numbers of people’ (19:26). Martin Hengel suggests reasonably that Paul’s letters (especially Romans and parts of 1 and 2 Corinthians) ‘contain brief summaries of lectures and . . . the much reduced quintessence of what Paul taught’ during those years in Tyrannus’s lecture theatre.

This vocabulary shows that Paul’s presentation of the gospel was serious, well reasoned and persuasive. Because he believed the gospel to be true, he was not afraid to engage the minds of his hearers. He did not simply proclaim his message in a ‘take it or leave it’ fashion; instead, he gathered arguments to support and demonstrate his case. He was seeking to convince in order to convert, and in fact, as Luke makes plain, many were ‘persuaded’. Luke indicates, moreover, that this was Paul’s method even in Corinth. What he renounced in Corinth was the wisdom of the world, not the wisdom of God, and the rhetoric of the Greeks, not the use of arguments. Arguments of course are no substitute for the work of the Holy Spirit. But then trust in the Holy Spirit is no substitute for arguments either. We must never set them over against each other as alternatives. No, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and he brings people to faith in Jesus not in spite of the evidence, but because of the evidence, when he opens their minds to attend to it.

c. The extended periods he stayed

Luke is careful to give us the details. In Corinth Paul began by preaching in the synagogue every Sabbath, presumably for several weeks or months, and then moved to the house of Titius Justus and ‘stayed . . . for a year and a half, teaching . . . the word of God’ (18:11). Next, he ‘stayed on in Corinth for some time’ (18:18), so that probably he was in the city for about two years altogether. In Ephesus he began with three months in the synagogue and then lectured for two years in Tyrannus’s lecture hall (19:8, 10). Since later he also ‘stayed in the province of Asia a little longer’ (19:22), it is understandable that he could later refer to his ministry in Ephesus as having lasted ‘for three years’ (20:31). Thus he spent two years in Corinth and three years in Ephesus, and in both cases his teaching was comprehensive and thorough.

His use of the lecture hall of Tyrannus was especially remarkable. The accepted text says that he lectured there daily for two years, but the Bezan text adds that he did it ‘from the fifth hour to the tenth’ (19:9, rsv margin), that is, from 11 am to 4 pm. Dr Bruce Metzger thinks that this addition ‘may represent an accurate piece of information, preserved in oral trad­ition before being incorporated into the text of certain manuscripts’. According to Ramsay, ‘public life in the Ionian cities ended regularly at the fifth hour’, that is, at 11 am, having begun at sunrise and continued during the cool of the early morning. But at 11 the city stopped work, not for ‘elevenses’, but for an extended siesta! According to Lake and Cadbury, ‘at 1 p.m. there were probably more people sound asleep than at 1 a.m.’ But Paul did not sleep in the daytime. Until 11 am he would work at his tentmaking and Tyrannus would give his lectures. At 11, however, Tyrannus would go to rest, ‘the lecture-room would be disengaged’, and Paul would exchange leather work for lecture work, continuing for five hours, and stopping only at 4 pm when work was resumed in the city. Assuming that the apostle kept one day in seven for worship and rest, he will have given a daily five-hour lecture six days a week for two years, which makes 3,120 hours of gospel argument! It is not surprising that Luke continues: ‘all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord’ (19:10). For all the roads of Asia converged on Ephesus, and all the inhabitants of Asia visited Ephesus from time to time, to buy or sell, see a relative, visit the baths, attend the games in the stadium, watch a drama in the theatre or worship the goddess. And while they were in Ephesus, they heard of this Christian lecturer named Paul, who was both speaking and answering questions for five hours in the middle of every day. Evidently many dropped in, listened and were converted. They then returned to their towns and villages as born-again believers. Thus the gospel must have spread to the Lycus Valley and to its chief towns Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis, which Epaphras had visited but Paul had not, and perhaps to the remaining five of the seven churches of Revelation 2 and 3, namely Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis and Philadelphia. This is a fine strategy for the great university and capital cities of the world. If the gospel is reasonably, systematically and thoroughly unfolded in the city centre, visitors will hear it, embrace it and take it back with them to their homes.

When we contrast much contemporary evangelism with Paul’s its shallowness is immediately shown up. Our evangelism tends to be too ecclesiastical (inviting people to church), whereas Paul also took the gospel out into the secular world; too emotional (appeals for decision without an adequate basis of understanding), whereas Paul taught, reasoned and tried to persuade; and too superficial (making brief encounters and expecting quick results), whereas Paul stayed in Corinth and Ephesus for five years, faithfully sowing gospel seed and in due time reaping a harvest.

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