NOTES ON THE FIRST READINGS FOR THE SIXTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE
(if a festal day falls on any of these days, the readings of the feast are used instead)
The reading of the Acts of the Apostles continues. Paul, Silas and Timothy are engaged in the second Missionary Journey, and we find them at the point when they cross for the first time from (to use modern terms) Turkey to Greece.
Monday: Acts 16: 11-15. Paul and others arrive in Philippi, a town settled by Roman veteran soldiers after 42BC. There was no synagogue here; Jewish prayer meetings were held in the open air. The first European Christian convert is named as Lydia; she was a “God-fearer” (who as we have already discovered were non-Jews who nevertheless sympathised with Judaism and attended Jewish worship while not taking on the full obligations of the Law of Moses). The stress on Lydia’s hospitality is a typically Lukan feature, and the style of her invitation recalls the two disciples to the Risen Jesus on the Emmaus road.
Tuesday: Acts 16: 22-34. Opposition in Philippi results in Paul and his party being imprisoned. There follows their miraculous release and the jailer’s conversion. There are several miraculous releases from prison in Acts, and it is generally felt that Luke is providing a conventional narrative framework for what is the ‘real’ miracle of the occasion: the conversion of the jailer to Christ. As with the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip, the jailer is catechised in response to his initial question. There is then a common thanksgiving meal.
Wednesday: Acts 17: 15, 22-18: 1. Paul temporarily leaves his entourage and begins his mission to Athens alone. In the heartland of Greek philosophy he proceeds to give his speech, the “Areopagus” speech. The Areopagus, or Hill of Ares (=Mars’s Hill) was where the supreme council of Athens once met. By Paul’s time they had a different function and met elsewhere, so that despite what Luke seems to say, Paul probably gave the speech not to the council but at the traditional spot and to any who cared to listen.
Paul’s speech is carefully tailored to the thought pattern of Greek philosophy. He first says that he had noticed on a walk round Athens an altar to an ‘Unknown God’. In actual fact, there was traditionally an altar to the ‘Unknown Gods’; Paul deliberately changes this to suit the following argument. Then he blends biblical concepts with traditionally Greek ones: the unity of the cosmos (Greek) set against the duality of heaven and earth (Bible). Stoic philosophers saw God and the cosmos as being co-extensive, so could accept that God did not need to dwell in a Temple (this is a Biblical concept too, but not starting from the same principle). Paul says that God created the whole human race from one single stock: the Biblical viewpoint would refer this to Adam, the Stoic viewpoint to the one unified stock of the world. The Greeks sought God from the foundation of philosophy, so Paul can use the quotation “We are all his children” which comes from the Greek poet Aratus.
Then comes the expected call to repentance, followed by a mention of the resurrection (the nearest this speech gets to proclaiming Jesus). It is the practice in the Acts for speeches to be interrupted at their most crucial point; here the crowd ridicules Paul either because the idea of resurrection seemed preposterous, or because in naming Resurrection (Greek ‘anastasis’) they think Paul is actually giving the name of a god – or rather, goddess.
Thursday [if the Ascension Day readings are not read]: Acts 18: 1-8. Paul proceeds to the great port of Corinth. Here he meets Aquila and his wife Priscilla (Paul’s letters call her Prisca). We are told they are Jews, but to judge from Paul’s letters and the fact that they follow him in his mission without any mention being made of conversion, they had probably already converted to Christianity. At any rate they had recently been expelled from Rome by the anti-Jewish decree of the Emperor Claudius, which was passed in 49AD. Paul rebukes Jewish opposition to his mission in Corinth in traditional Old Testament style: “Your blood be on your own heads”.
Friday: Acts 18: 9-18. As before, Luke uses a dream sequence to describe the strengthening in the Spirit which Paul receives at this moment of crisis. Jewish opposition to Paul in Corinth came to a head while Gallio was proconsul (we can date this: 51-52AD). Gallio is too shrewd to be taken in by the accusation against Paul; after all, which Law is Paul supposed to be breaking, Jewish or Roman? Gallio’s reaction is what Luke wishes to show of every proper official: he is concerned purely with wrongdoing against the state. The Jewish leader is then beaten up outside the courthouse; it is not clear by whom (fellow Jews, frustrated that the case has not prospered? Gentile opponents?)
Paul is now about to sail back to Antioch, his starting point, and makes his way to Cenchreae, the docks of Corinth. We are told he had his hair cut off because of a vow. We have little insight into this mystery. The Nazirites, who consecrated themselves to God in particularly rigorous ways (Samson was one, as was Samuel) went through this ritual, but in a Temple ceremony. Maybe once again Luke is stressing, as with the circumcision of Timothy last week, that Paul is faithful to the Mosaic Law – in which case Luke has here made an error of detail.
Saturday: Acts 18: 23-28. The second Missionary Journey ends in Antioch, but Luke barely allows Paul time to take breath before sending him off on the third Journey, overland through Turkey once more, but this time heading due west to Ephesus, with no northerly diversion to Europe. Luke runs ahead of Paul momentarily in the story to tell of the arrival in Ephesus of the learned Jewish convert from Alexandria, Apollos. In 1 Corinthians, Paul seems to present Apollos as something of a rival, but in Luke’s smoother picture there is none of that. Apollos’ meeting with, and further instruction by, Aquila and Priscilla introduces him at least indirectly into the circle of the Apostles, which is always a concern of Luke’s, as we have seen.
In chapter 19 we will read of another group who, like Apollos, had received the ‘repentance baptism’ of John the Baptist but not the ‘Spirit baptism’ of Jesus Christ. These, as we will see, have to be rebaptised. Apollos, however, is not; possibly Luke regarded him as too important a missionary figure to describe him undergoing this process.