Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 18:3

"and because he was of the same trade, he abode with them, and they wrought, for by their trade they were tentmakers." — Acts 18:3 (ASV)

Entering this large and thriving city, Paul probably asked a passerby where he could find a master tentmaker or leather worker to seek a job from so that he could support himself. On his missionary journeys Paul earned his living in this occupation (cf. 20:34; 1 Corinthians 9:1–18; 2 Corinthians 11:7–12). So he came in contact with the Jewish Christian couple Aquila and Priscilla, with whom he lived and worked, presumably alongside other journeymen. Aquila was a native of Pontus, a region in northern Asia Minor on the south shore of the Black Sea. Priscilla is the diminutive of the more formal name Prisca. Since Priscilla is often listed before her husband (18:18–19, 26; Romans 16:3; 2 Timothy 4:19), we may conclude that she came from a higher social class than her husband or was in some way considered more important. Perhaps Aquila was a former Jewish slave who became a freedman in Rome and married a Jewess connected with the Roman family Prisca, which possessed citizenship rights. Together they owned a tentmaking and leather-working firm, with branches of the business at Rome, Corinth, and Ephesus (see texts listed above). Lately Aquila and Priscilla had been forced to leave Rome because of the Edict of Claudius, an expulsion order proclaimed during the ninth year of Emperor Claudius’s reign (i.e., January 25, A. D. 49 to January 24, 50). It was directed against the Jews in Rome to put down the riots arising within the Jewish community there “at the instigation of Chrestus” (according to the Roman historian Suetonius). Many take this to be a reference to Christ (Gk. Christos), where the dispute in the Jewish community was between those who accepted his messiahship and those did not. We do not know whether Aquila and Priscilla had any part in the riots—either as agitators or victims.