Apollos (not a god, not a space mission)

 Fifth Tuesday of Easter

Lectionary Texts:

Acts 9:10-31

John 15:18-16:4

Today we return to our Acts Bible Study. Please read Acts 18:24-8.

This is one of very few stories in Acts 13-28 that does not involve Paul. Apollos (his name has an s as its final letter) has come from his native Alexandria to be a missionary in Ephesus. Alexandria is the second largest city in the Roman Empire; Ephesus, the third. We know virtually nothing about the spread of Christianity in Egypt in the first century. Nothing other than Apollos's being from Alexandria is mentioned about Egypt in Acts. Later Christian texts of a somewhat legendary tendency say that Mark took the gospel to Alexandria. Walter Baur in 1937 was the first scholar to theorize that Christianity in Egypt was not mentioned in the NT because Egyptian Christianity was Gnostic from the start. Ironically, despite this absence of information, all our earliest Greek New Testament manuscripts are from Egypt, primarily from areas in the Nile Delta near Alexandria. Some of these mss. go back to the second century. 

We do know that Judaism abounded in Alexandria. There were more Jews there than in Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine combined. Virtually all of these were Greek speaking Jews. Apollos was one of them. We know that he was learned and eloquent and that he had been converted in Alexandria to some form of Christianity. He may have been a John the Baptist follower. V. 25 indicates that he knew of John the Baptist baptism but not of Christian baptism. He was a very effective, if not altogether accurate, evangelist. Priscilla and Aquila, who had remained in Ephesus when Paul went on to Antioch, "took him aside and explained the Way of God to him more accurately." 

Greek does not make a distinction between capital and lower case letters. The NRSV editors have capitalized Way. In a couple of earlier places in Acts we have seen Christianity referred to as "the Way." The Common English Bible (CEB) does not capitalize it. The CEB reads here, "God's way." The NRSV capitalization implies that Priscilla and Aquila are teaching Apollos Christianity, as opposed to John the Baptist religion. We know that John the Baptist religion, without faith in Jesus, existed then and for several centuries after the NT. The CEB translation implies that they were teaching him how God does things and wants them to be done by his missionaries. There is a big difference here hinging on whether to capitalize one word. I'm going with the NRSV on this one. 

Please note that Priscilla's name is mentioned before Aquila's here, as it is in 4 of the 7 times the couple are mentioned in the NT. This is rare in the first century. Only if the wife is the more well known or more important member of the couple is her name mentioned first. I think we can unequivocally say that Priscilla was Apollos's teacher. Fundamentalist churches, which do not allow women to teach men or boys, because of 1Timothy 2:12, might consider that in fact a woman did teach a man in the NT.

Apollos would go on to Achaia, a region of central Greece, specifically to Corinth, where he would become a leader in the Church at Corinth and figure prominently in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. Priscilla and Aquila remained in Ephesus from this time (52 A.D.) until the death of the emperor Claudius in 54. Claudius had expelled all Jews (including Christians) from Rome in 49. His successor, Nero, rescinded the edict of Claudius and allowed Jews to return. Priscilla and Aquila would take that opportunity to return to their hometown, Rome. Paul mentions them in his final greeting to the Romans in Romans 16, which he wrote in 56 or 57. 

Accurate teaching about the Christian faith is important, then as well as now. Priscilla provided it. We need to provide it too.

God of our holy and complex faith,

We give you thanks for Apollos, Priscilla, and Aquila, and for all those who have taught a clear and Godly understanding of our faith down through the ages. In the name of Jesus, our ultimate teacher. Amen.

Faithfully,

Chfristian