Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
CHAPTER XVIII.
1. After Paul’s rejection by the grave council of the Areopagus, leaving Athens, he traveled on
southwest eighty miles to the beautiful and magnificent city of Corinth, standing on a rich plain
immediately south of the Isthmus of Corinth, separating the Ægean Sea on the east from the Ionian
Sea on the west, thus giving the city access through these two seas to the commerce of the world.
Consequently, Corinth was the great commercial emporium, not only of Greece but Eastern Europe,
becoming immensely wealthy, and at the same time adorned with magnificent temples to the Grecian
gods, in splendor and majesty second only to Athens. Corinth was also a grand emporium of Grecian
learning. When I was there in 1895, the old site was a great wheat-field, except a small dirty village
hugging the base of the Acrocorinthus, New Corinth on the railroad, three miles distant on the Ionian
Sea, containing about five thousand, and rapidly growing. Paul was evidently much discouraged over
his failure at Athens, rejected by the council of the Areopagus, even though he quoted their own
poets, Aratus of Tarsus and Cleanthus of Troas. Paul’s condemnation of the splendid, gorgeous and
universal idolatry of Athens, along with his advocacy of the purely spiritual worship of the true God,
and especially his doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, utterly disgusted the profound philosophy
of the cultured Athenians. Now how much better will it be at Corinth, almost the peer of Athens in
the artistic display, intellectual and polytheistic idolatry? Therefore he goes back to his old trade of
manufacturing tents out of goat’s hair — a very lucrative employment in the great East, where
millions spend all their lives in tents.
2, 3. Fortunately Aquila and Priscilla, devout Jews, driven from Rome by the Emperor Claudius,
also experts in tent building, fall in with him, becoming his first converts to the Christhood of Jesus
and sweeping quickly into full salvation, responding to the call of the Holy Ghost, become efficient
preachers of the living Word.
4. Felicitously, there is a large synagogue of Jews at Corinth, and it is too far from Northern
Greece for his persecutors to follow him. So he works all the week and preaches every Sabbath in
the synagogue.
5. When Silas and Timothy arrive from the North, Paul was straightened in the Word, testifying
to Jews and Greeks that “Jesus is the Christ.” The meaning of that statement is simply this: he has
preached till he has developed a positive issue, so that something has to break, and the prophetic eye
of Paul saw what was coming, as we have described in the next verse.
6. You see the rupture long brewing and sorrowfully anticipated by Paul is bound to come: He
divides the church. They drive him out of the synagogue, just like you see going on all around you
this day: some receive the gospel of holiness and others reject it. So the church is divided; some go
into holiness and others oppose it. Paul is fortunate. Titius Justus, one of his converts, owns a house
adjoining the synagogue, into which he invites Paul and all of the holiness people.
8. Even Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, with all his family and quite a crowd, go with
him.