Acts 18

Corinth is about a 50-mile (80-km) walk southwest of Athens—two long days of hard walking or three days at a more comfortable pace. It was a day trip by boat. Paul left the thinking man’s town of Athens for the working man’s town on a narrow strip of land with harbors in two seas. It was a bustling town. Ships sailing in either the Adriatic Sea or the Aegean Sea would unload their cargo in Corinth and have it hauled across the four-mile-wide (6 km) isthmus and reloaded into another ship. This shortcut saved merchants from having to sail their goods around the southern tip of Greece, where storms could suddenly whip up the waves and sink the boat.

Pontus was a territory in what is now northern Turkey, on the southern coast of the Black Sea. It was roughly 350 miles (560 km) north of where Paul grew up in Tarsus, a city in southern Turkey.

Roman Emperor Claudius banned the Jews from Rome in AD 49. Roman writers said he did that because the Jews were causing trouble throughout the city over someone called “Chrestus.” The most common guess is the writers were talking about Christ, either misspelling his name or using an alternate spelling based on their Latin pronunciation of the title Christians applied to Jesus. Christ is the Greek version of the Hebrew word Messiah. Both words, in English, mean “Anointed One,” a leader that many Jews said would be coming on assignment from God, to save them from their enemies and to restore the nation of Israel to its former glory.

At least during his stretch in Corinth, Paul seemed to work as a bi-vocational pastor. It seems he paid his own way by making tents. He mentioned this in a letter he wrote to the church in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 2:9). Many rabbis in ancient times had a job aside from teaching their Bible (Old Testament) to Jews. Some Bible experts say Paul was probably making his tents out of leather. Others say he may have been working with goat hair.

Shaking his clothes (Acts 18:6) sounds a bit like the instructions Jesus gave his followers when people refused to welcome them: “Wherever the people don’t welcome you, don’t stay. Shake the dust of that town off your feet. Use that to send your message of disapproval” (Luke 9:5).

Gallio held the Roman title of proconsul. He ruled Achaia, a Roman district that covered what is now the southern half of Greece, including the cities of Athens and Corinth.

This seems implied by the context.

Cenchreae was a port town about a seven-mile (11-km) walk east of Corinth. Ships leaving Corinth would sail from this port if they were headed for countries east of Greece, such as Turkey, Syria, Israel, and Egypt.

Bible experts can only guess what kind of vow Paul took. One guess relates to a Nazirite vow, which is famous for the order against cutting hair (Numbers 6:1-21). But it also orders people to shave their hair and start over if they come into some ritual contamination. For example, they were to keep themselves ritually pure by staying away from any food product made from grapes. Perhaps, some speculate, Paul wanted to make sure tradition-minded Jews didn’t think he had contaminated himself by his contact with non-Jews. Another guess is that Paul simply made a promise to God about something private, and shaving his head was one way of expressing his commitment to the promise. One more guess comes from the idea that Paul had just spent a year and a half among sailors in a Greek culture. After a dangerous voyage, Greek sailors grateful to still be alive would sometimes “shave their heads and . . . tell the story of their perils” (Satires 12, by Juvenal).

Ephesus was one of the four largest cities in the Roman Empire, possibly the third-largest. It sat on the west coast of what is now Turkey. Its port served as Rome’s main gateway into and out of what is now the Middle East. It was a melting pot of cultures and religions and was already 1,000 years old by the time Paul got there. It was also home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World: the Temple of Artemis, four times larger than the Parthenon of Athens.

Caesarea was a port city that King Herod the Great built on the Mediterranean coast about 30 miles (48 km) north of what is now Tel Aviv. He designed it after Roman cities and named it after Caesar because he knew who was really the boss. Romans used Caesarea as their capital in the Middle East for 600 years.

Galatia and Phrygia were neighboring Roman districts in what is now western Turkey.

Apollos, it seems, had not heard about baptism in the Spirit, when God gave his Spirit to human beings. Yet the phrase describing him, “with energy and excitement,” is more literally “fervent in Spirit.” Some Bible experts say the writer of Acts was making the point that even though Apollos didn’t know about the Spirit, his gift for speaking came from the Spirit.