3.18. Priscilla — The Woman Missionary

CHAPTER XVIII Priscilla — The Woman Missionary

ONE of the oldest churches in Rome, situated on the Aventine hill, and giving his title to a Roman Cardinal, bears the name of St. Prisca. The legendary “Acts of St, Prisca”! — which are as late as the tenth century — state that the saint’s body was brought from Ostia to the church of “St. Aquila and St. Prisca” on the Aventine, evidently referring to this very building. De Rossi, the archaeologist, has suggested that this church stands on the site of the house of Priscilla and Aquila. In the year 1776 a bronze tablet was found in the garden of the church bearing the name C. Marius Pudens Cornelianus. Now, in the legendary “Acts of Pudens,” Priscilla is said to be his mother. It is argued that the tablet was found in this garden because here was originally the home where Pudens lived with his parents Aquila and Priscilla.

Further, there is also a burial-place at Rome outside the Porta Solaria, which is called “ the cemetery of Priscilla.” That there is some justification for the title has been shown from an examination of the inscriptions. The origin of this cemetery has been traced to the tombs of Acilius, Glabio, and other members of the Acilian gens; and it has been discovered that a name for ladies of the Acilian gens is Priscilla, For example, there is an inscription which runs thus —

M’ACILIUS V... c.v.

PRISCILLA... C

These various data taken together point to the association of the New Testament Priscilla with Rome. But when we disentangle the legendary matter and separate this from the authentic evidence of inscriptions, we discover that it is only the late and unreliable tradition that definitely connects our Priscilla with these Roman sites, while the inscriptions point to a Priscilla, or various women bearing the name without any identification with the New Testament personage. Still the discovery of the name is of some moment, since it is common for particular names to run in families. Accepting these various points on their merits, and making full allowance for the uncertainty of what is merely legendary matter, we still have some curious evidence for the association of the Priscilla of St, Paul’s time with Rome, and that goes to confirm what we read in the New Testament,

Turning to our Christian Scriptures we find that there we have two sources of information about Priscilla — the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul’s Epistles, and they are mutually illustrative and confirmatory the one of the other. We first meet with Priscilla and her husband Aquila at Corinth, where they were found by St. Paul,i and the historian traces their lives further back. Aquila was a Jew of Pontus, a remote part of the Roman empire bordering on the Black Sea, Another Aquila, the author of the literal translation of the Old Testament into Greek, was also of Pontus, But there was a Pontian gens at Rome in association with which more than one Pontius Aquila has been found.^ Accordingly it has been suggested that our Aquila may have been a freedman associated with that Roman house. Still, St, Luke says that he had come from Pontus, a statement which, if correct, carries us out of relation to these Roman family names, and leaves us to infer that the Jew instinct for travel in the course of trade had led Aquila to leave his native region and settle down in the imperial metropolis.

Nothing is said as to the origin of his wife; but the inference drawn from the inscriptions would lead to the conclusion that Priscilla was a native of Rome whom Aquila had met after coming to live in the city. Dr. Hort has suggested that she may have been a member of the Acilian gens, in which her name is frequently found. In that case we must think of her as a lady of aristocratic birth. It has been noticed that a certain importance is attached to lier by the fact that at two or three places in the New Testament she is named before her husband.

Perhaps she was one of those women of rank and position who had become proselytes to Judaism in these times when the conquered people were giving their religion to their victors. On the other hand it has been pointed out as not very probable that a lady of such connections would marry a Jew artisan. It may be that, like so many of the early Christians at Rome who bore the names of the principal families, Priscilla was a freedwoman of the Acilian gens.

These two were living at Rome when the tyranny of an imperial edict broke up their home and drove them into exile. “Claudius,” says St. Luke, “had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome.” ^ This edict is mentioned by Suetonius, the gossipy historian of the Caesars, who tells us that the reason for it was the disturbances the Jews were continually making at the instigation of “ Chrestus.” ^ There is much probability in the idea that “Chrestus” is a misspelling of “Christus” — it is met with in some pagan references to Christ; so that the sentence contains the Latin historian’s distorted view of some troubles in the ghetto concerning the Christ. The only troubles on that ground of which we know anything were occasioned by the advent of the Christian gospel, when the Jews who rejected it were ready to rise in riotous opposition against the preachers of the unacceptable doctrine and their converts. This was the usual consequence wherever St. Paul preached to a Jewish community. No doubt the same thing occurred elsewhere.

Here then a faint ray of light falls on Christianity at Rome when it was still ignored by the government or at most contemptuously handled as the last-born turbulent child of the ghetto. Even if Aquila had been previously in good circumstances this exile would have thrown all his affairs into confusion. Sufferance being the badge of all their tribe, the Jews of these uncertain times made a practice of bringing up their sons to a trade even if they did not intend to pursue it, so that they might have something to fall back upon if they should chance to fall into adverse circumstances. Therefore we cannot be certain that Aquila had worked for his living at Rome in the trade of tent-making to which he now resorted, and if his wife was of the aristocratic family it is probable that he also was well off till as a Jew he was attacked by this imperial edict. Yet we have no sufficient reason to think this was the case, and it is likely enough that from the first husband and wife were both of the artisan class. The place selected by them for residence in their exile was Corinth, chosen doubtless as being the most important commercial city in Greece, and one in which there was a good-sized community of Jews.

We cannot say for certain whether Aquila and Priscilla were already Christians when they came to Corinth, or whether they were converted there under the influence of St. Paul. One would think that if they were disciples of the apostle some reference would be made to the fact. But we read nothing of their conversion and baptism. This rather points to the conclusion that they were members of that Christian community at Rome which must have been in existence at the time, although the origin and early history of it are lost in obscui’ity. Possibly they were subject to Jewish persecution while at Rome, in some degree the victims of those very disturbances in the ghetto which Suetonius tells us were the occasion for Claudius’s decree of banishment. If so, their exile was also a deliverance. But on the other hand Aquila is introduced simply as a “Jew,” not as a “brother.” This is not at all the usual way of mentioning a Hebrew Christian. His connection with the edict concerning the Jews may account for it here, even if he were a Christian. Still the absence of any allusion to his Christianity leads to the inference that he was not yet a convert. The evidence pointing both ways, the question must be left in uncertainty. If, however, the pair were not Christians when they arrived at Corinth, it could not have been long before they were won over to the faith preached by the apostle. The narrative does not allow of the lapse of any considerable amount of time before they appear as the intimate friends of St. Paul. The apostle found the exiles, apparently soon after their arrival. He visited them, gave them a welcome, and cheered them in their painful position as people about to make a fresh start in life among strangers. Such kind behaviour would go far to incline them to listen favourably to his message, even if they wei*e not already of his Christian faith. The friendship quickly ripened, and St. Paul came to live in the same house with Priscilla and her husband. The obvious reason for doing so was that they might work together, as they were all three of the same craft. It is to be noted here that St. Luke does not confine the tent-making to Aquila, but writes of it as practised also by his wife — they were tent - makers. “ Priscilla would help at the loom in weaving the goat hair, or with Acts 18:3. her needle in sewing the thick course fabric, and the three would ply their trade together as partners. So intimate was their friendship or so convenient their partnership, that when the apostle left Corinth for Ephesus, Priscilla and Aquila accompanied him.^ We find them there when St. Paul writes his first epistle to the Corinthians; and the allusion to them in that epistle shows that there was a “church in their house.” ^ This phrase, which we meet with in other connections, may refer only to the household, with workpeople and perhaps servants. But more probably it points to some small gathering of Christians, a church within the Church, either an inner circle of intimate friends, or it may be the Christian disciples resident in one locality.

Aquila and Priscilla show themselves hospitable and active in Christian service by having such a church in their house. When the riot in the theatre hastened St. Paul’s departure from Ephesus, Priscilla and her husband remained behind, still working at their business which they were getting together after their second removal, and very probably helping to maintain the healthy life of the Ephesian Christians during the absence of their great leader. If, as we have seen to be probable, the 16th chapter to the Romans is a fragment of an epistle addressed to Ephesus, that shows us Priscilla and Aquila stUl resident in the capital of the province of Asia.^ Still later they are there when the second epistle to Timothy is sent to that city. The three scattered references to Priscilla and Aquila — in 1 Corinthians, Rovians xvi, and 2 Timothy — furnish the strongest reasons for supposing that Romans xvi. was intended for Ephesus. Thus we must regard this city as the final halting-place of the exiles.

Now in all these changes and travels Priscilla is the constant companion of her husband. Moreover, her name is pointedly associated with his in Christian work, and frequently it is mentioned first. We cannot attach much weight to the proposed explanation of the latter fact on the hypothesis that, as a daughter of a good Roman family, Priscilla was of higher social position than the Jew from Pontus, whom in some unaccountable way she had condescended to marry. Would both St. Paul and St. Luke put her first on such gi-ounds? In the free democracy of a Christian Church she was but a sister among brothers and sisters. It is much more likely that her name stands before her husband’s because she was the more prominent in the service of the gospel. Certainly she did take an active share in that work. The most brilliant convert to Christianity — with the solitary exception of St. Paul — owed his enlightenment in no small degree to her skilful teaching.

ApoUos is introduced to us as an Alexandrian Jew both learned in general culture (and that meant much in the city from which he hailed) and mighty in the Scriptures, who came to Ephesus while Priscilla and Aquila were there. Lending himself to Christian influences, he was partially trained in the gospel, but he had not received Christian baptism, and therefore had not identified himself with the Church, when he began to argue with his Jewish brethren and preach about Jesus in the synagogue according to his light. It would have been no easy task to take in hand a man of Apollos’s intellectual attainments and independence of character, and lead him on to the views more generally held among the Christians. But Priscilla and Aquila undertook this difficult task and succeeded in it. And here, it is to be observed, Priscilla’s name occurs first. ^ We are not merely to understand that she joined her husband in his conferences with Apollos —which would have been remarkable in itself. The pointed way in which her name stands first makes it clear that she took a leading part in those conferences. “With this before us we may venture to go further and risk the conjecture that it was really Priscilla who influenced the scholarly and gifted Alexandrian, while her husband accompanied her in a secondary position.

Priscilla then appears in the Church of the Apostles as an evangelist. Her influence over Apollos would incline us to think that she must have been a woman of intellect. When intellect is given to woman what is to hinder her from consecrating it to the service of Christ? Unhappily a narrow social prejudice has too often compelled this precious talent to be buried. For ages it was supposed that woman’s one sphere was the home, and in the home her function was too much that of a family drudge. It was not supposed that she required culture, seeing that her work was to cook her husband’s food, make his garments, keep his house in order.

Now it will be an ill day for the world when woman comes to despise her home duties. The home is the most sacred spot on earth, and it is the woman in the heart of it that preserves its sanctity. But the duty of the wife to her home need not be in every case all-absorbing, so that she has no room for any interest beyond the four walls of the house. A woman is not a better help-meet to her husband for scrupulously narrowing down her interests to the things in which, as Christ teaches us, life does not consist, nor is she called to be only his help-meet. That is a most inequitable idea of marriage which would limit the concern of the wife to her household, while her husband is free to engage in a variety of interests without being accused of neglecting his wife and family. Surely it is well when a married woman — especially a gifted Priscilla — can come with the ripeness of matronly experience added to her natural womanly endowments, and give her services in some measure for the good of her fellow-creatures.

After all, a woman does not cease to be a member of the great human family by becoming the mother of one particular family. And then there are the women who do not marry, and who are proportionately more free for public service. In the middle ages the domestic drudge theory of woman’s duty was assiduously inculcated in spite of the poetry of chivalry with which it was glaringly in conflict. Then many women of brains and spirit who desired a career of intellect or influence escaped by avoiding marriage and seeking refuge in a monastery. There, if given to study, they found leisure and freedom for the cultivation of their intellects, if endowed with governing power they rose to places of command in their order. Surely that was a monstrous state of society in which women could only find liberty while preserving their virtue by entering the walls of a convent.

We live in larger days as regards the liberties and duties of women. It is no small part of the missionary progress of our age that is seen in the dedication of earnest, capable Christian women to the spread of the gospel in heathen lands. In the East, where woman is secluded, if she is to be enlightened at all this must be by the coming to her of her sister from the West. But then it is only just to acknowledge that while the single women who go forth expressly dedicated to Christian work are recognised heralds of the gospel, the wives of missionaries are in most cases not less missionaries themselves. Priscilla was all the more useful a teacher of Christian truth owing to the fact that she was a married woman accompanying her husband. This it was that enabled her to bring her influence to bear on the great convert Apollos.

Though Priscilla may be regarded as the prototype of the woman missionary, it is not to be forgotten that she set about her work in a much more simple way than her sister at the same task to-day. There was no missionary society in the first century; or perhaps we should say, every true and healthy Church was then a missionary society. Priscilla and Aquila were not commissioned by any organised agency. They supported themselves by their tent-making. The modern missionary has an advantage derived from the principle of the division of labour applied to Church affairs when he is supported in the foreign field by the gifts of his brethren who work in their secular avocations at home, because he is thus able to give himself without distraction to the one grand task of his life. But then, on the other hand, the success of PrisciUa and Aquila who worked for the gospel while they also supported themselves by their trade — not to mention the wholly exceptional case of St. Paul — shows what may be done by those who are not called to give up their worldly business in order to devote themselves to missionary work. It would be possible for others like these tent-makers to find their mission brought to their very doors.

Lastly, Priscilla’s share in the mission she carried on with her husband must not be thought of as simply parallel to his, or superseding his merely because she was the more gifted of the two. They co-operated. Here was the charm of their ministry. It was a truly wedded ministry. They were one in their highest aims. What closer, sweeter, nobler union than this can be imagined 1 And it was in the blending of their several contributions to the common end that their success was attained. Both took part in conferences with Apollos. If the chief influence was with Priscilla, her husband also had his share. When womanly sympathy and quickness of perception are wedded to manly steadfastness and perseverance we have the ideal missionary. ’No doubt there is work for celibate missionaries in carrying on dangerous expeditions and holding difficult outposts; but the example of Priscilla and Aquila should show that when the true union can be found a rare power may be developed in the combined labours of the wife with her husband.