Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 644. Priscilla and Aquila
Subjects in this Topic:
Literature
Adeney, W. F., in Women of the Bible: Rebekah to Priscilla (1904), 247.
Baring-Gould, S., A Study of St. Paul (1897), 243.
Burrell, D. J., The Unaccountable Man (1901), 262.
Connell, A., The Endless Quest (1914), 52.
Conybeare, W. J., and J. S. Howson, The Life and Epistles of St. Paul (1870), 299, 330.
Deane, A., Friends and Fellow Labourers of St. Paul (1906), 72.
Farrar, F. W., The Life and Work of St. Paul (1897), 317.
Gaebelein, A. C., The Acts of the Apostles, 310.
Goodman, J. H., The Lordship of Christ (1901), 131.
Goulburn, E. M., The Pursuit of Holiness (1870), 221.
Howson, J. S., The Companions of St. Paul (1874), 243.
Howson, J. S., Scenes from the Life of St. Paul (1909), 135.
Luckock, H. M., Footprints of the Apostles as traced by Saint Luke in the Acts, ii. (1905) 156.
Mackay, W. M., Bible Types of Modern Women (1912), 258.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans (1909), 357.
Maclaren, A., Leaves from the Tree of Life (1899), 74.
Maurice, F. D., The Acts of the Apostles (1894), 293.
Moule, H. C. G., The Second Epistle to Timothy (1905), 177.
Neander, A., History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church (tr. J. E. Ryland), i. (1880) 197.
Robertson, F. W., Expository Lectures on St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians (1873), 1.
Seekings, H. S., The Men of the Pauline Circle (1914), 97.
Young, D. T., Neglected People of the Bible (1901), 224.
British Congregationalist, Sept. 17, 1908 (J. H. Jowett).
Christian World Pulpit, lxv. (1904) 363 (F. Paget); lxxxiv. (1913) 425 (H. Jeffs).
Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, i. (1915) 87 (J. E. Roberts).
Dictionary of the Bible, i. (1898) 129 (G. Milligan); iv. (1902) 102 (A. C. Headlam).
Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus.- Rom_16:3.
The reasons which determined him to come to Corinth (over and above the discouragement he seems to have met with in Athens) were probably twofold. In the first place, it was a large mercantile city, in immediate connexion with Rome and the west of the Mediterranean, with Thessalonica and Ephesus in the Ægean, and with Antioch and Alexandria in the east. The gospel, once established in Corinth, would rapidly spread everywhere. And, again, from the very nature of the city, the Jews established there were numerous. Communities of scattered Israelites were found in various parts of the province of Achaia-in Athens, in Argos, in Bœotia and Eubœa. But their chief settlement must necessarily have been in that city, which not only gave opportunities of trade by land along the isthmus between the Morea and the Continent, but received in its two harbours the ships of the Eastern and Western seas. A religion which was first to be planted in the synagogue, and was intended to scatter thence its seeds over all parts of the earth, could nowhere find a more favourable soil than among the Hebrew families at Corinth.
The efficiency of Paul's ministry at Corinth was doubtless much promoted by his meeting with a friend and zealous advocate of the gospel, at whose house he lodged, and with whom he obtained employment for his livelihood-the Jew Aquila from Pontus, who probably had a large manufactory in the same trade as that by which Paul supported himself. Aquila appears not to have had a fixed residence at Rome, but to have taken up his abode, at different times, as his business might require, in various large cities situated in the centre of commerce, where he found himself equally at home. But at this time he, with many others, was forced to leave Rome against his will, by a mandate of the Emperor Claudius, who found in the restless, turbulent spirit of a number of Jews resident at Rome (the greater part freed-men), a reason or a pretext for banishing all Jews from that city.
Think of the complicated chain of circumstances, one end of which was round Aquila and the other round the young Pharisee in Jerusalem. It steadily drew them together until they met in that lodging at Corinth. Claudius, in the fulness of his absolute power, said, “Turn all these wretched Jews out of my city. I will not have it polluted with them any more. Get rid of them!” So Priscilla and Aquila were uprooted, and drifted to Corinth. We do not know why they chose to go thither; perhaps they themselves did not know why; but God knew. And while they were coming thither from the west, Paul was coming thither from the east and north. He was “forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia”; and, driven across the sea against his intention to Neapolis, hounded out of Philipp and Thessalonica and Berœa, and turned superciliously away from Athens, he at last found himself in Corinth, face to face with the tent-maker from Rome and his wife. Then one of the two men said, “Let us join partnership together, and set up here as tent-makers for a time.”
Why does the swallow migrate? How does the swallow know when to turn its face to the ocean? How does it know in which direction to go? I do not know. And, what is more, the swallow does not know! Yes, that is the beauty of it-the swallow does not know. You tell me that the swallow knows instinctively. But what is instinct? You do not explain a thing, or lessen its mystery, by giving it a name.
A fire mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And a cave where the cave-men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
A face turned from the clod-
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.
It is better-far better-to call it God and be done with it. And, in exactly the same way, there is this wondrous force that guides the swallow:
Some people call it instinct,
And others call it God.
It is better, I repeat, to call it God. Far better. Now at this point the study of the swallow becomes of vast importance to me. For in many respects I am very like the swallow. I move through life guided by a force that I cannot explain. By what strange impulse was I impelled to follow this profession-this and no other? By what freak of fate did I marry this wife-this and no other? By what stroke of fortune did I settle in this land-this and no other? Looking back on life, it seems almost like a drift; we seem to have reached this position by the veriest chance. And yet it has all turned out too well to be the result of chance. The fact is that like the swallow we acted instinctively. And that instinct was God! We say with Browning's Paracelsus:
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God send His hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, His good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In His good time!1 [Note: F. W. Boreham, The Golden Milestone, 42.]