Acts 18:12Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

See how they attack after a year and six months, when they no longer had the right to use their own laws.

The gentleness of some and the insolence of others showed that a judicial decision was needed for all this. Yet they did everything disorderly. He did not say, "It must not be done," lest they beat him another time. Rather, he said, "I do not wish it."

In the same way Pilate also said concerning Christ, "Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your law" (Jn 18:31). He wanted them to judge according to the law. But they acted like drunken and frenzied men.

"The Jews rose up with one accord." How, then, did they attack, someone will ask? By suddenly seizing him. Yet they dared do nothing, but brought him to the proconsul.

Meanwhile, the zeal with which the Gospel was received by the Gentiles stirred still stronger hatred among the Jews. They took advantage of the arrival of the new proconsul, Annaeus Gallio, brother of the famous philosopher Seneca, in order to accuse Paul before him.

Since they had been granted the right to perform all religious actions according to their own statutes, they drew a conclusion from this. Whoever spread among them a teaching contrary to their statutes and caused divisions among them was, as a violator of their rights, guilty of transgressing the laws of the empire.

But at last the Jews rose up against him, seized him, and brought him before the tribunal. They accused him of teaching about God contrary to the Jewish Law. The proconsul, however, refused to give the accusers his attention. He said that he was ready to examine only matters of a political nature and had no desire at all to enter into the Jews' religious disputes.

Meanwhile Paul's fears came true. Yet the word of the Lord also came true, that no one would do him harm. The Jews rose up against Paul, but their uprising ended in nothing, without injury to the apostle.

"During the proconsulship of Gallio in Achaia": according to the Roman division of provinces, Achaia included all so-called Greece, with the Peloponnese included. At first it was a senatorial province and, like all such provinces, was governed by proconsuls.

Tiberius made it an imperial province, and like all imperial provinces it was governed by procurators. Claudius again returned it to the Senate, and it was once more governed by proconsuls.

Paul's year and a half stay in Corinth was filled with many labors and struggles in his preaching of Christ. Yet the author of Acts speaks of this only in general terms. Events such as Paul's being brought before the proconsul Gallio could not go unmarked.

This event is important both for its historical indications of time and for its content. It is especially important for the nature of the charge with which Paul's accusers came before the representative of Roman justice.