Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

Gallio declared that the charges had nothing to do with actual illegal or vicious conduct. They were matters internal to the Jewish community, “a dispute,” he says, “about words, names, and laws within your own customs.”28 As far as Gallio was concerned, if Paul wanted to adapt Jewish styles of prayer by adding this or that name or title, that was up to him. Gallio refused to be a judge of such things. They would have to sort it out themselves. This was a momentous event in the history of the church, and one wonders if even Paul had seen it coming. What it meant was that, unlike the authorities in the other territories he had visited, the official Roman governor of southern Greece (“Achaea”) had declared that being a Jesus-follower was to be seen as a variation of the Jewish way of life. At a stroke, this drew the sting that had been part of the pain in Galatia. It meant (among other things) that when non-Jewish Jesus-followers absented themselves from the civic cult—which, we note once more, could hardly remain hidden in a proud Roman city—they would be able to claim the same exemption as their Jewish neighbors.