As was the case in most other cities, the Greek populace of C. disliked the Jews ; and the marked reprimand administered to the latter by Gallio, in refusing to entertain the case against St. Paul, seems to have been popular in the city (Ac IS''). Tlie Greeks took and beat Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue (who had apparently succeeded Crispus when the latter became a Christian);* and Gallio took no notice of an act which he may probably have considered as a piece of rough justice, and also as a mark of popular approval (which was always grateful to a Rom. official). At this time there can be no doubt that in the popular mind Christianity was looked on merely as an obscure variety of .ludaism.
In C. at his first arrival °t. Paul became aci:|uainted with two persons who played an im- portant part in subsequent event,s ; these were I'riscilla and .Vquila (to follow the noteworthy order ob.served by St. Luke, .\c 18'*- '^.t and by St. Paul himself, Ro lti>, 2 Ti 4'9). Aijuila, a Jew of the province Pontus, had left Iv/nu> in consequence of Claudius' edict (perhaps issued in the latter part of AD. oO); t and the commercial advantages of C. attracted hini thitlier. St. Paul resided in their house during his long stay in C. ; and they accom- panied him to KphesLis, where they were still resid- ing when he came thither after visiting Pal., Syrian Antioch, and the Galatian churches. PrisciUa bears a good Rom. name, and was probably a lady of good family (which would explain why she is so often mentioned before her husband); and Aquila doubtless had acquired a wide knowledge of the Rom. world during his life ; and they would there- fore be well suited to suggest to St. Paul the central importance of Rome in the development of the Church, and form a medium of communication with the great city. We may fairly as.sociate with this friendship the maturing of St. Paul's plan for evangelizing Rome and the West, which we find already fully arranged a little later (Ac 192>,
• So in AV ; but in TtV it seems to be implietl that the Jews beat Sostlienes (implying tliat he was a Christian, as either lie or another Sosthenes afterwards was. 1 t'o IM. but it seems in- conceivable that Gallio should have permitted such an act on the part of those whom ho had just snubbe<l so emi>hatically.
+ So in RV ; biU .\V has the wronir order in 1S*«.
* The dates assigned vary. Orosius names 49 as the year; and it has been contended that his dates at this nerlod are all uniformly one year too early (Kamsay. St. Paul t/te Trtirellur^ pp. (>S, 2Mi. Liphtfoot t'ives the date o-i, lU-nan 51, Lewin 6-.i.
Ro 15-*). In this respect, also, the Corinthian residence was an epoch in St. Paul's conception of the development of the Church in the Rom. world.
In C. the development of the Church might be expected to move rapidly. East and West met there, where Rom. colonists, (ireek residents, and Jewish settlers all dwelt ; and thought progressed in the contact of race with race. But rai)id de- velopment always implies dissension and conflict of opinions ; and hence we find the existence of warring factions mentioned far more emphatically in C. than in any other Church ; some were of Paul (the founder), some of ApoUos (Paul's eloquent succes.sor), some of Cephas (i.e. the Judaizing party), some of Christ (presumably per- sons who claimed to be above mere apostolic partisanship), as we read in 1 Co 1^^. t)f these parties it is perhaps a permissible conjecture that the Rom. colonists, and the freedmen who natur- ally agreed with them, formed the bulk of the first, while the Greek residents had been more attracted by the Alexandrian philosophy, and perhaps the mysticism of ApoUos ; the Jews and some proselytes ■would comprise the Judaizing adherents of Cephas. St. Paul, when he came to C, seems to have been moved by the want of success that had attended his very philosophic style of address in Athens ; and he deliberately adopted a specially simple style of address. As he says (1 Co 2i--, cf. Ac 18*), he came not with oratorical power or philosophic subtlety, expounding the mysterious nature of God ; he did not declare to the Corinthians, as he had done to the Athenian audience, ' the Divine Nature' (Ac 17-^- -^); he determined not to know anything among his he.arers at C. save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. To the Greeks, who sought after philosophy, such preaching must have seemed imeducated and unintellectual (1 Co 1— --s); and we might conjecture that, as a rule, they would prefer the message as delivered by Apollos. But there is no evidence to confirm this conjecture ; and in the only slight description of ApoUos' preaching in Achaia, he is said to have been specially successfid among the Jews (Ac 18'^^). It seems, therefore, not possible to feel any confidence in the details of an hypothesis connecting the parties in the Church with the nationalities that were mingled in the population of C, though we admit the strong probability that the variety of races contributed to cause the variety of parties, and that there would be a tendency for each race to become concentrated in one party.