Acts 18 tells the story of Paul’s visit to Corinth sometime in the late 40s to early 50s. This date is fairly secure, given that Luke refers to Claudius’ expulsion of the Jews from Rome, which is known from other sources to have taken place around 49 AD.1 Later in that same chapter, Luke goes on to say that while Paul was in Corinth, certain Jews sought to have him arrested and brought before the tribunal of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia.2 Sometime in the mid-1850s, Cambridge scholar J.B. Lightfoot gave a series of lectures on the book of Acts in which he argued that the reference to Gallio was “Another instance of St. Luke’s accuracy.”3 How so? First of all, he argues that Achaia, which is the specific region in Greece where Corinth was situated, “had originally been a senatorial province. Tiberius took it from the Senate in A.D. 15.4 Claudius in A.D. 44 gives it back to the Senate.5 Thus between A.D. 15-44 the term that Luke uses here, ‘proconsul’ (anthupatos)…would be inappropriate.” In other words, if Luke had used this word to describe a proconsul of the region less than a decade earlier, Lightfoot is saying that would have been the wrong title for a person in Gallio’s position. But by the time that Paul arrived in the region, it was a perfect fit.
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