Acts 18:24

An Episode relating the Spread of the Teaching of John the Baptist and his School, with a short Account of one famous Disciple of the Baptist, A polios of Alexandria, Acts 18:24 to Acts 19:7.

Acts 18:24. And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria. Embedded in that portion of the ‘Acts of the Apostles' which dwells exclusively on the mission and work of Paul among the Gentiles, we find a brief narration (Acts 18:24-28) concerning a certain learned and eloquent Alexandrian Rabbi who had been a pupil either of John the Baptist or of one of the great forerunner's disciples. He comes, during a visit to Ephesus, under the influence of two of Paul's most devoted followers, Priscilla and Aquila the tentmakers, then dwelling in that city. Paul was then either at Antioch or already engaged in his Third Missionary Journey. The Alexandrian pupil of the Baptist, convinced by the arguments of the two friends of the Gentile apostle, associates himself with Paul's school of Christianity, and consecrates henceforth his great powers and learning to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus as taught by Paul A second narrative (chap. Acts 19:1-7) relates how Paul, closing his third missionary campaign at Ephesus, finds there a small knot of the Baptist's disciples. These he carefully instructs in all that happened subsequently to the death of the Baptist, and they too join his congregation at Ephesus.

Among a mass of materials of early Christian history, the writer of the ‘Acts,' under the direction of the Holy Ghost, no doubt selected this little episode to show how the disciples of John the Baptist, widely scattered evidently, and perhaps fairly numerous, were won to that broad, worldwide school of teaching of which Stephen the Deacon was the first master and Paul of Tarsus the second master, and in some points of view the real founder. No doubt, what Luke relates as having taken place at Ephesus happened in Alexandria and Corinth and in many another great commercial centre. What Priscilla and Aquila took upon themselves to do in their master's absence, no doubt many another of the apostle's pupils undertook, and with like success.

It is highly probable that the disciples of the school of the Baptist during the third decade of the ‘faith' considerably swelled the number of Christian congregations. In later days, a few of John's disciples, under the name of Zabeans, established a sect of their own, falsely asserting that, contrary to his own declaration, the Baptist was Messiah.

Apollos Apollonios in one great MS., Apelles in another; perhaps the name was a contraction from Apollodorus. A native of Alexandria and a disciple of the Baptist or one of his followers, he had been no doubt a hearer, possibly a pupil, of the great Alexandrian teacher Philo, and had come some time in Paul's Third Missionary Journey to Ephesus, and as a stranger Rabbi of distinguished culture was allowed to speak publicly in the Ephesian synagogue. There he met with the Christian Jews Aquila and Priscilla, who took up and told him the story of Jesus Christ where his first master had left it.

An eloquent man. The Greek word λο ́ γιος, rendered here accurately ‘eloquent,' also has the signification of ‘one learned in history,' or one generally highly cultured. The next sentence, however, shows us that ‘eloquent' is here the best and most likely sense.

Mighty in the Scriptures. That is, of the Old Testament. This is exactly the characteristic we should look for in an able and learned pupil of Philo the Alexandrian.