Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 645. Preparation

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Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 645. Preparation

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Preparation

1. It is open to question, whether Priscilla and Aquila were Christians when they left Rome; and seeing that Aquila is still called a Jew, the weight of authority appears to be on the negative side. The inference, however, is precarious, inasmuch as a Jew who became a Christian would still be regarded politically as a Jew. Race and not faith would determine the matter. Still, one inclines to the view that it was in Corinth that, through the preaching of Paul and the testimony of his life, Priscilla and Aquila came to embrace Christianity. By whatever means they were led to the faith it matters little, but it is beyond dispute that, having accepted it, they adorned it with singular grace; and among the group of Paul's helpers, while many have been more illustrious, few were more consistent or more timely with their aid.

2. Aquila came from Pontus, a remote Roman province, by the shores of the Euxine. Priscilla is not traced back to that distant province. Her name, appearing sometimes in its shorter form, as Prisca, is often met with in monuments at Rome.

One of the oldest of the catacombs at Rome, situated outside the Porta Salaria, is known as “the burial-place of Priscilla” (Coemeterium Priscillae). The name Prisca has been found in association with an aristocratic family, the Acilian gens, some members of which were buried in this catacomb. From these facts it has been inferred that Priscilla was a member of this high family, and that has been taken as the reason why, of the six places where she and her husband are mentioned in the New Testament, four have the wife's name first. If she “married beneath her,” it is supposed the difference of rank might be indicated by this exceptional precedence. The primitive Church may not have been socialistic or communistic with regard to property; but certainly it was a great leveller of distinctions with reference to persons. It refused to “respect persons,” knew no precedence of rank. Besides, is it likely that a high-born Roman lady would have married a Jewish artizan and travelled about with him, working with her hands at the rough toil of tent-making? If she had made so exceptional a sacrifice, should we not have met with some reference to the fact? That this working woman, wife of a working man, was a lady of the blue blood of Rome's proud aristocracy, a member of a Patrician house, is most improbable. But Priscilla does not need the poor worldly distinction to gain our respect. She stands high among the honourable women of the primitive Church on much more solid grounds.^{1 [Note: W. F. Adeney.]

3. “They were tent-makers.” Paul's association with them began in a purely commercial partnership. But as they abode together and worked at their trade, there would be many earnest talks about the Christ, and these ended in both husband and wife becoming disciples.

Many a time would the needles become still and silent as Paul told the story of Nazareth, and Calvary, and Olivet, and his own solemn experiences on the way to Damascus, until at last the tent-makers' house became a sanctuary, and all three were on their knees together in adoration of a common Lord.

Many of the earliest churches were “house-churches.” The believers frequently met in the house of some prominent member, and, until the fellowship grew too large for it, the meetings were held, and the common meal was eaten, in the large family room of a private house.^{1 [Note: R. M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, 22.]}} Memory goes back to the little room, where, the day's toil done, a few men and women met together to hold a simple service. The one candle stuck in a bottle and placed on the mantelpiece, and the pail with its pennyworth of coal at the fireside ready for use, were the pathetic touches, among the little things which the gentle old woman had done to make her room comfortable. And, as the neighbours entered, bringing their chairs, and in the half-light hymns were sung, verses repeated, and prayer ascended, one felt that surely it was just in such gatherings of the “two or three,” that Jesus had promised to be “in the midst.”^{2 [Note: J. Goodfellow, The Print of His Shoe, 38.]}4. Such a couple, and a couple in which the wife took the foremost place, was an absolute impossibility in heathenism. They are a specimen of what Christianity did in the primitive age, all over the Empire, and is doing to-day, everywhere-lifting woman to her proper place. These two, yoked together in “all exercise of noble end,” helping one another in Christian work, and bracketed together by the Apostle, who puts the wife first, as his fellow-helpers in Christ Jesus, stand before us as a living picture of what our sweet and sacred family life and earthly loves may be glorified into, if the light from heaven shines down upon them, and is thankfully received into them.

Marius felt, felt amid the stirring of some wonderful new hope within himself, the genius, the unique power of Christianity. The nature of the family, for which the better genius of old Rome itself had sincerely cared, of the family and its appropriate affections-all that love of one's kindred by which obviously one does triumph in some degree over death-had never been so felt before. Here, surely! in its genial warmth, its jealous exclusion of all that was opposed to it, to its own immaculate naturalness, in the hedge set around the sacred thing on every side, this development of the family did but carry forward, and give effect to, the purposes, the kindness, of nature itself, friendly to Man_1:1^{[Note: Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, ii. 82.]}