Charles Ellicott Commentary Titus 3:13

"Set forward Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently, that nothing be wanting unto them." — Titus 3:13 (ASV)

Bring Zenas the lawyer.—A name, it seems, contracted from Zenodorus. The term “lawyer” might possibly indicate that this friend of Paul’s was a Roman jurist, but it is more likely that the law in which he was an expert was that of Moses. Hippolytus numbers him among the seventy disciples and relates that in later years he was Bishop of Diospolis. He is never mentioned by name in the New Testament, except in this place.

And Apollos.—This famous teacher appears often in the New Testament records, in the Acts and several of the Epistles. A distinguished Alexandrian scholar and a disciple of John the Baptist, he was converted to Christianity through the devoted Priscilla and Aquila, the tent-makers. He became the friend and intimate associate of St. Paul, and might, had he chosen, have rivaled or even superseded St. Paul in his supreme authority over the churches planted along the Mediterranean seaboard.

But Apollos seems resolutely to have declined any such rivalry and to have lived always as the loyal and devoted friend of the great Apostle, who, however, always seems to have treated the learned and eloquent Alexandrian as an equal power in the Church of Christ, classing Apollos with St. Peter and himself.

Luther’s well-known suggestion that Apollos was the unknown writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (his reasoning being, “auctor Epistolæ ad Hebros ... ut ego arbritror Apollo”), the authorship (though not the canonicity) of which has been a disputed point as far back as the days of Origen in the first half of the third century, has been adopted by many, though, of course, with much reserve.

Attention has been called to the somewhat remarkable fact that the names of these three friends of St. Paul, who were classed among his most faithful adherents in this, almost the last Epistle he wrote, were derived from three of the most famous heathen deities: Zenas from Zeus; Artemas from Artemis, the famous tutelary goddess of Ephesus; Apollos from the well-known sun-god.