Who was Apollos, and why did Paul have to share Corinth with him? Apollos was a Jew of Alexandria, a trained speaker who knew the scriptures well, and he preached in Corinth after Paul had left it. Within a few years the church there had split into parties, and one of them carried his name.
Paul heard about it from a household he names. Members of Chloe’s household told him there were quarrels in the church, and that each man had his slogan: one belonged to Paul, one to Apollos, one to Cephas, one to Christ.1 He comes back to it two chapters later, now with only two names. When one says he follows Paul and another says he follows Apollos, Paul asks whether they are behaving like ordinary men.2
So Paul’s own church had a second teacher, and some of its members preferred him. That is the plain fact behind the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians. Set it next to the picture of Paul as the one founder of the Gentile churches.
Who Apollos was #
Everything about his background comes from Acts. Luke calls him a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, eloquent and competent in the scriptures. He had been taught the way of the Lord and spoke accurately about Jesus, yet he knew only the baptism of John.3 He spoke boldly in the synagogue at Ephesus. Priscilla and Aquila heard him, took him aside and explained the way of God to him more accurately.4
Then he crossed to Achaia, the province of Corinth, with a letter of recommendation from the believers at Ephesus. There, Luke says, he refuted the Jews in public and showed from the scriptures that the Messiah was Jesus.5
Notice who teaches him: two of Paul’s co-workers, and Luke treats him as a man who arrived with his own knowledge and needed only a fuller account of it. Where he learned it, Acts never says.
Alexandria matters here. It was the city of Philo, the Jewish philosopher who read the Torah through Greek learning, and its Jews were known for their schooling in rhetoric. I would not claim that Apollos read Philo, since no source says so. But a learned Alexandrian speaker arriving in Corinth after Paul would have sounded very different from him.
Paul knew how he sounded. He tells the Corinthians that he came to them without fine words or a show of wisdom, weak, afraid and trembling.6 In the second letter he quotes what his critics said: his letters are heavy and strong, but in person he is weak and his speaking counts for nothing.7 Read beside Luke’s “eloquent” Apollos, those lines tell you which of the two men the Corinthians found easier to listen to.
What Paul said about him #
Paul’s answer to the parties is a farming picture. He planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the growth. Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything; only God, who gives the growth.8
I agree with that sentence, and I say so without reserve. It puts every preacher on the side of the creature and leaves the result to God alone. A Muslim reader will hear in it the line al-Fārūqī draws between Creator and creature, the first principle of al-tawḥīd.9
The difficulty lies in what comes next. Paul goes on to say that he laid the foundation as an expert builder, and that someone else is building on it.10 He says he has applied all this to himself and Apollos for their sake, so that none of them will swell with pride for one teacher against the other.11 A few lines on, he tells them they may have many guides in Christ but few fathers, because he became their father through the gospel.12
The farmer who was nothing has become the father and the master builder, and the other worker is now the one who builds on his ground. Paul keeps the first place for himself in the same passage where he gives the growth to God. The letters of a man traces that habit through the other letters.
Did they fall out? #
Probably not in the way the Corinthian slogans suggest. Paul never attacks Apollos by name, and he never accuses him of another gospel, as he does the men he calls false apostles in 2 Corinthians.13 Those rivals are the subject of “Them which say they are apostles, and are not”, and Apollos is not among them.
At the end of the letter Paul says he strongly urged Apollos to visit Corinth with the brothers, but that it was not at all his will to come now; he would come when he had the opportunity.14 That is the last word on Apollos in Paul’s undisputed letters. Paul asked, and Apollos said no. The letter to Titus, written in Paul’s name, later asks Titus to speed Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way, so in the church’s memory the two men stayed on working terms.15
What the evidence shows is a church that compared two teachers and ranked them, and a letter in which Paul answers by ranking himself first while saying rank means nothing. The fruit of that church is weighed in The fruit at Corinth.
One more piece of history belongs here. Martin Luther suggested that Apollos wrote the Letter to the Hebrews, a book that names no author.16 It is a guess, and Luther gave no evidence for it. It shows how quickly the learned Alexandrian dropped out of the record. A man whose preaching drew a party at Corinth left no writing that carries his name.
Paul and Apollos: questions readers ask #
Who was Apollos in the Bible?
A Jew of Alexandria, eloquent and learned in the scriptures, who knew only the baptism of John until Priscilla and Aquila taught him more (Acts 18:24–26). He preached at Corinth after Paul (Acts 18:27–19:1).
Why did the Corinthians divide over Paul and Apollos?
Paul says the church had parties named after Paul, Apollos, Cephas and Christ (1 Corinthians 1:12; 3:4). The letters do not give the cause. Luke’s account of Apollos as a fine speaker, and Paul’s account of his own weak speech, suggest one.
Did Paul and Apollos disagree?
Paul never criticises Apollos by name. He urged him to visit Corinth, and Apollos declined for the time being (1 Corinthians 16:12).
Did Apollos write Hebrews?
Martin Luther thought so, but Hebrews names no author and no early source names Apollos. It remains a guess. Allāhu aʿlam.
- 1 Corinthians 1:11–12. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 3:3–4. ↩
- Acts 18:24–25. ↩
- Acts 18:26. The Greek has Priscilla’s name first here, as in Acts 18:18; Paul calls her Prisca (Romans 16:3). ↩
- Acts 18:27–28. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 2:1–4. ↩
- 2 Corinthians 10:10. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 3:6–7. ↩
- Isma’il Raji al Faruqi, Al Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life, 2nd ed. (Herndon, Virginia: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1992), chapter 1, section II, on the first principle, the duality of Creator and creature. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 3:10. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 4:6. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 4:15. ↩
- 2 Corinthians 11:4–5, 13. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 16:12. ↩
- Titus 3:13. On the letters written in Paul’s name, see How Paul came to own the New Testament. ↩
- On Luther’s suggestion and the other names proposed for the author, see Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), introduction, on authorship. On Hebrews, see also How Paul came to own the New Testament. ↩