Apollos

Apollos was a first-century Alexandrian Jew who became an important Christian teacher and missionary during the apostolic age. The Book of Acts identifies him as a native of Alexandria in Egypt, an eloquent man who was mighty in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord and spoke with burning enthusiasm, teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, although at first he knew only the baptism of John. His public activity belongs to the middle decades of the first century, overlapping the missionary work of the Apostle Paul in the eastern Mediterranean, especially in Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia and in Corinth in Achaia.

When Apollos came to Ephesus he spoke boldly in the synagogue. There Priscilla and Aquila, Jewish Christians and close co-workers of Paul who had recently arrived from Corinth, heard him. Recognizing that his knowledge of the Christian message was incomplete, they took him aside and explained the way of God to him more accurately. After receiving this fuller instruction, Apollos desired to cross over to Achaia. The brothers in Ephesus encouraged him and wrote letters of recommendation to the disciples so that they would welcome him. Upon his arrival in Corinth he greatly helped those who through grace had become believers, for he powerfully and publicly refuted the Jews, demonstrating from the Scriptures that the Messiah is Jesus.

In the church at Corinth, Apollos's rhetorical skill and scriptural learning made a strong impression. Some believers formed a faction around him, saying "I belong to Apollos," while others aligned themselves with Paul, with Cephas (Peter), or with Christ alone. Paul devoted a substantial portion of the First Letter to the Corinthians to this party spirit. He insisted that he and Apollos were merely servants through whom the Corinthians had come to faith: Paul had planted, Apollos had watered, but God gave the growth. Paul presents Apollos as a fellow worker, not a competitor, and later remarks that he had strongly urged Apollos to visit Corinth again with the other brothers, but that Apollos was quite unwilling to go at that time and would come when he had opportunity. A further New Testament notice occurs in the Letter to Titus, where Paul instructs Titus to do his best to speed Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way and to see that they lack nothing, showing that Apollos continued to travel in the network of Pauline churches.

Beyond the New Testament, later ecclesiastical writers and church orders offered various, mutually inconsistent accounts of Apollos's subsequent career. Some traditions numbered him among the Seventy Apostles. Sources such as the Apostolic Constitutions assigned him episcopal sees such as Caesarea or Corinth, but these claims cannot be verified from first-century evidence. From the Reformation onward, a number of scholars, including Martin Luther, have suggested that Apollos may have been the anonymous author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, on the grounds of the letter's polished Greek, its Alexandrian style of scriptural argument, and its author's association with the Pauline circle; the hypothesis remains unproven. Neither the year nor the place of Apollos's death is recorded in any reliable ancient source. He is venerated as a saint in several Christian communions: the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod commemorates him together with Aquila and Priscilla on 13 February; the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 30 March and 8 December; and the Coptic Orthodox Church commemorates him on 5 February.