Chronology of Paul’s Life

Famine during reign of Claudius Caesar

“One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.)” Acts 11:28

Cladius reigned from 41 AD – 54 AD. We get further delineation from Josephus.

“Luke’s earlier reference to Claudius need not detain us: we know from other sources that his reign was marked by a series of droughts, and the particular famine mentioned in Acts was probably that which Josephus places in the procuratorships of Cuspius Fadus and Tiberius Julius Alexander (i.e. between A.D. 44 and 48), when Helena, queen-mother of Adiabene and a Jewish proselyte, bought grain in Egypt and figs in Cyprus for distribution to the distressed inhabitants of Jerusalem. Since the Church of Antioch at the same time raised a famine-relief fund for the Church of Jerusalem, and entrusted its administration to Barnabas and Paul, the correlation of Luke with Josephus at this point provides us with one approximate chronological indication for apostolic history.” (309)

F.F. Bruce, “Christianity Under Claudius,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 44 (March 1962): 309-326.

Claudius exiles Jews from Rome

“After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome.” Acts 18:1-2

Suetonius references this event in his biographical account of Emperor Claudius.

“Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.” Suetonius in Life of Claudius (Loeb 25.4)

F.F. Bruce gives further information about this situation.

“When did this expulsion of Jews from Rome take place? Paul’s residence of eighteen months in Corinth can be dated within fairly narrow limits by inscriptional evidence for the date of Gallio’s proconsulship of Achaia; we shall not be far out if we say that Paul arrived in Corinth in the late summer or autumn of A.D. 50. But when he arrived, Aquila and Priscilla were already in residence there; the decree of expulsion therefore cannot be dated later than A.D. 49. This, as it happens, is precisely the year to which Orosius dates it. “In his ninth year”, says Orosius, “Josephus reports that the Jews were expelled from the capital by Claudius.” The reference to Josephus is strange; our extant texts of Josephus contain no mention of Claudius’s expulsion of the Jews, although Josephus does record Tiberius’s similar action thirty years before. Perhaps Orosius’s memory played him false; but his dating of Claudius’s edict is probably right.” (317)

F.F. Bruce, “Christianity Under Claudius,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 44 (March 1962): 309-326.

Gallio’s proconsulship of Achaia

“While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews of Corinth made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment…”  Acts 18:12

“In a rescript of Claudius to the Delphians dated to Claudius’s 26th acclamation as imperator (W. Dittenberger, Sylloge lnscriptionum Graecarum ii.3 801), Gallio is mentioned as proconsul of Achaia. The evidence of other inscriptions (CIL, iii. 476, vi. 1256) points to the first seven months of A.D. 52 as the period of Claudius’s 26th imperatorial acclamation. As a proconsul normally entered on his office on July 1, it is just possible that Gallio became proconsul of Achaia on 1 July, A.D. 52, but more probable that he did so twelve months earlier.” (fn 21, 317)

“Sir William Ramsay regarded Gallio’s ruling as ‘the crowning fact in determining Paul’s line of conduct’, because it provided a precedent for other magistrates and thus guaranteed Paul’s freedom to prosecute his apostolic mission with the assurance of the benevolent neutrality of the imperial authorities for several years to come. One thing at least is certain: if Gallio had given an adverse verdict against Paul, it would have been pleaded as a precedent by Paul’s opponents for the rest of his life; and a precedent established by so exalted and influential a magistrate as Gallio—a much more important personage than the politarchs of Thessalonica—would have carried great weight. The mere fact that Gallio refused to take up the case against Paul may reasonably be held to have facilitated the spread of Christianity during the last years of Claudius and the earlier years of his successor.” (326)

F.F. Bruce, “Christianity Under Claudius,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 44 (March 1962): 309-326.

The durative references matched with these three datable events lead to the following proposed chronology of Paul’s life.