What impact did Claudius Caesar have on Christian history?

THE CHAPTER OPENS with Paul at Corinth, and there he met Aquila and Priscilla. The harsh decree of Claudias worked to throw them across Paul's path, and this led to their conversion and then their subsequent service, which earned the high praise of Romans 16:3-4. God overruled the decree of expulsion, for good, making the wrath of man to praise Him; and we may hope and pray that He will work in just the same way in regard to modern decrees against the Jews. With this couple Paul abode, and began his work in the synagogue. Here Silas and Timothy joined him, and Paul's testimony became stronger and more direct. Then, the Jews opposing, he turned to the Gentiles.

The occasion of their coming from Italy at this time was because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Suetonius, the Roman biographer of the Caesars, states that this emperor, because of a Jewish outbreak, 'impulsore Chresto', expelled them from Rome. The Latin words cited are probably an error on his part, but may allude to violence on the side of unbelieving Jews against those who believed, or may be a confusion (owing to Roman jealousy) with the preaching of the Messiah elsewhere. Bp. Pearson is of opinion that this expulsion happened about A.D. 52, in which year Tacitus (Ann. xii. 52) puts the Senate's decree for expelling the 'mathematici' or 'Chaldaei'; but whether they were identical or connected is uncertain. It is known that Claudius was deeply indebted to Herod Agrippa the First for his nomination to the empire, and did not forget him but rewarded the Herod family: so one could hardly suppose so hostile an attitude towards the Jews, while Herod Agrippa was in Rome; and we can easily understand that, if enacted in his absence, the decree soon fell through. This consideration clears up the statement of Dio Cassius (lx. 6), which some have supposed to contradict St. Luke, as well as Suetonius, that the emperor did not expel them, but ordered them not to congregate in Rome. If we distinguish the times, all is clear and true.

But God made use of the edict to bring Aquila and his wife into lifelong communication with the apostle. Whether they were converted or not before they first met is not quite certain. Much stress has been laid on Aquila's description as 'a certain Jew', rather than as a disciple; but this may be satisfactorily enough accounted for, both as qualifying the place of his birth, and as furnishing the ground of his quitting Rome for Corinth. Then we must bear in mind that, as the Romans and strangers in general did not in these early days distinguish Christian Jews from their brethren after the flesh, so Paul repeatedly designates himself a Jew afterwards in this Book (Acts 21:39; Acts 22:3). The apostle never speaks of them as his children in the faith, however warmly he may greet or characterize them. Certain it is that they were abundantly blessed through him, as he graciously owns the large debt due to them, not by himself only, but by all the assemblies of the Gentiles.

Fourth Roman emperor, A.D. 41-54. His full name was Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus. Herod Agrippa I: used his influence in favour of Claudius being chosen as emperor, and in return for these efforts the emperor added to Agrippa's territories Judaea, Samaria, and some parts of Lebanon. It was Claudius who, on account of a tumult of the Jews, banished all Jews from Rome. He was poisoned by his fourth wife Agrippina, the mother of Nero. Acts 11:28; Acts 18:2.

Paul appears to have travelled alone to Corinth. If Timotheus came to him when at Athens (1 Thess. 3:1), he was sent back again to Thessalonica; which place, as we shall soon see was much on the apostle's heart at this time. Soon after his arrival he unexpectedly found two friends and fellow labourers in Aquila and his wife Priscilla. At this particular time there must have been a greater number of Jews in Corinth than usual; "because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome." The Lord thus used the banishment of Aquila and Priscilla to provide a lodging for His lonely servant. They were of his own country — of his own trade — of his own heart and spirit. And being "of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought, for by their occupation they were tent makers." (Acts 18)

Paul leaves Athens and is directed to Corinth, a city as loose and licentious as Athens, but where the gospel nevertheless found a response. There he found a Jew named Aquila who had come with his wife Priscilla from Italy. They had been forced out of Rome by an edict of Caesar against Jews. There is no indication of whether they were Christians at that time, but because Aquila and Paul were both tentmakers, they worked together, Paul staying with the couple in their home. At least they were certainly Christians before Paul left Corinth.

In any case, there seems to have been an assembly in Rome towards the end of the 5th decade. For in the year 49 AC the Emperor Claudius published an edict that all Jews had to leave Rome. Aquila and Priscilla, who certainly were Christians already when Paul met them in Corinth (Acts 18:2; Rom. 16:3), had to leave then as well.

At Corinth nobody did set on Paul to hurt him. His experiences at Lystra, Philippi, and Thessalonica were not at this time repeated. Opposition, however, was organised, and an appeal to the newly-arrived proconsul the Jews were determined to make. The new proconsul, we say, for Gallio had just come to take charge of the province of Achaia. Here, then, we get another note of time. We have seen that the famine predicted by Agabus, and the awful end of Herod Agrippa I., had thrown light on the period that had elapsed between the Crucifixion, Ascension, and Pentecost, and that visit of Paul and Barnabas with supplies from the brethren at Antioch to their brethren in Judæa. We can now estimate the length of time that elapsed between that visit and the attempted prosecution of Paul at Corinth before the proconsul's tribunal. In the thirteenth year of the reign of Claudius Caesar, AD 53, Gallio arrived at Corinth as the new proconsul. In the fourth year of Claudius Caesar, Herod Agrippa died, AD 44. Nine years, then, had passed during which we have had recounted the first missionary journey, and the second so far as it conducts us to the Apostle at Corinth and the prosecution attempted there. But as he had been labouring in that city for eighteen months previously, we must fix Paul's arrival at Corinth at about the beginning of AD 52, at which time the edict banishing Jews from Rome was issued, which sent Aquila and Priscilla to Corinth. As little did Claudius know what he was doing by that decree for Paul and the Church of God, as did Augustus what he was doing for the fulfilment of the word of prophecy, when he issued his decree for that enrolment which took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for the birth of Christ.

Paul had first encountered Prisca and Aquila in Corinth, not long after their ejection with the Jews (Acts 18:2). After the death of the fourth Emperor, Claudius, in October 54 A.D., his edict (issued between 50 & 52 A.D.) against the Jews (and any perceived sect of Jewry) had probably lapsed. This meant they could return to Rome, possibly leaving their business affairs in Ephesus and Corinth in the hands of local managers. Their work in tent manu­facture was a reason for the tentmaker from Cilicia to labour with them in their trade. Cilicium felt not only made good weatherproof tent material but also good warm clothing. The trade required commodious accommodation and this would enable the couple to provide a place for saints to meet on the first day of the week.

9 There is another remark to be made here: God's candlestick. His government in the world was no longer at Jerusalem. God will govern the world by His Firstborn, and will prepare the way for Him by these judgments. But judgment begins at the house of God. The light - the candlestick of God - was there, and His name was upon them in the sight of the world. And whatever be its unfaithfulness, and however God may act in raising a testimony elsewhere before the world, until such a system be judged, as a system established of God, it bears its responsibility, and God acts in judgment towards it. Jerusalem was the seat of God's testimony. His candlestick had been there. I need not insist amongst Christians that the light and the presence of God were spiritually dwelling in the midst of Christians. Nevertheless, Jerusalem's responsibility and her position before the world only ceased in her destruction by the judgment of God. After this, God's candlestick, in a terrestrial sense, was in the professing church. Till then, Christians had been, to the eye of the world, a sect of the Jews. Thus we see Aquila and Priscilla at a distance from Rome, because Claudius had commanded that every Jew should depart from it. At Antioch, in the midst of the Gentiles, which was the starting-point of the labours of Paul, apostle of the Gentiles, the believers begin to have a peculiar name. They were first called Christians at Antioch; Acts 11:26.

A converted Jew of Pontus, husband of Priscilla, whom Paul first met at Corinth. Acts 18:2. He and Paul worked together as tent-makers. Aquila and Priscilla had been driven from Rome as Jews by an edict of the emperor Claudius. They travelled with Paul to Ephesus, where they were able to help Apollos spiritually. Acts 18:18-26. They were still at Ephesus when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 16:19); and were at Rome when the epistle to the saints there was written, in which Paul said they had laid down their necks for his life, and that to them all the churches, with Paul, gave thanks. Rom. 16:3-4. In Paul's last epistle he still sends his greeting to them. 2 Tim. 4:19.