Gallio and the Letters

When Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews bring Paul before the tribunal in Corinth and charge him with persuading people to worship God contrary to the law. Gallio says that if it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime he would have reason to bear with them, but since it is questions about words and names and their own law, they should see to it themselves. He drives them from the tribunal. Acts 18:12 Acts 18:15 Paul stays many days longer and then sails for Syria.

A proconsul of Achaia served a term of about a year. A letter of the emperor Claudius, found at Delphi, mentions Gallio by name in a way that dates his proconsulship to AD 51 or 52. The inscription is fragmentary. The dating uses Claudius's titles and the number of his acclamation, which is why a careful statement says "about" even here. It is still the firmest outside date in the book of Acts. Paul is in Corinth, a year and six months into his stay or near it, when Gallio is in office. The stay therefore covers about AD 50 to 52.

From that peg the rest is arithmetic plus the book's own durations, and it should be labeled as such. Work backward: the second journey's earlier cities, the council before the journey, the first journey before the council. You arrive in the middle and late 40s. Work forward: a third journey with about three years in Ephesus, a last voyage to Jerusalem, two years in Caesarea, a voyage, two years in Rome. You arrive about AD 62, with Paul still preaching. Change one duration, or let a "about three years" be two and a half, and the end moves by a season. That is why the timeline says "stepped from Gallio" instead of printing the later years as if each had its own inscription.

The letters follow the same peg. 1 and 2 Thessalonians belong to the Corinth stay, after Timothy comes back. 1 Corinthians is written from Ephesus before a Pentecost, on the third journey. 2 Corinthians comes after the painful visit, from Macedonia. Romans is written when he is about to carry the collection to Jerusalem. Those are the books' own settings, dated by where Acts says he was. They are estimates of a year or two, not of a decade.

Claudius's order expelling Jews from Rome, which Acts gives as the reason Aquila and Priscilla are in Corinth, is usually dated AD 49 from one sentence in Suetonius. That is a weaker peg than Gallio. It fits the same window. It is not required to make the window true.

What this peg cannot do is date the cross, or James's letter, or Revelation. Gallio never met those questions. He only, by refusing a case, left his name on a stone and on a page of Acts, and tied a missionary's year and a half to the Roman calendar.