The Bible Study Podcast, Episode 155.

Today, the Bible Study podcast continues this study of Acts with chapter 18.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host Chris Christensen.

As we get back into Acts 18, again, we go to a place

that is familiar to readers of the New Testament, Corinth, to which two different letters will be

written, the first and second Corinthians. And I want to pause here for a second and talk about

Corinth, because we don't get a historical overview from this particular text. Corinth is a city

that was on a narrow isthmus between the northern part of Greece and the Peloponnese

or the southern part of Greece.

Nowadays, there is a canal that cuts through that isthmus so you don't have to sail all the way around Greece.

In the time of Paul, you needed to either sail all the way around, which was treacherous because

sailing was still something that we were learning how to do, or you could park your boat at one end

of the isthmus and then have slaves carry the goods across that little passage of land

to another boat which was waiting on the other side. And so because of that, Corinth was a city with

some very wealthy merchants and a lot of slaves to do this dirty work. And that affects some of

what we learn about the church that is established there. So, Acts 18. After this, Paul left Athens

and went to Corinth. There he met a June named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had come recently from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all of the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue,

trying to persuade the Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted

himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. But when the

Jews opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them,

Your blood be on your own heads. I am clear of my responsibility. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.

So in this section, Paul meets Priscilla and Aquila, as they're normally listed, her first rather than

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