It’s the classic story: The Arch persecutor and enemy of the Christians Saul transforming to be their most powerful representative and advocate Paul (showing the power of the religion), indeed the prophesied one who would bring the message to the nations at the end of the age. If you were just making Paul up, this is how you’d do it.

Lucius Junius Gallio is considered the single most important chronological anchor for dating the life and missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul.

Historians use Paul’s encounter with Gallio in Acts 18:12-17to construct the timeline of the early Church. This intersection of biblical narrative and secular history provides a precise date because of an external archaeological discovery.

                [ AD 50-51 ]                 [ AD 51-52 ]                 [ AD 52 ]
=====================|============================|===========================|====================
             Paul arrives in              Gallio arrives as           Delphi Inscription written;
            Corinth (Acts 18)            Proconsul of Achaia           Paul leaves for Ephesus

The Delphi Inscription

In 1908, archaeologists discovered nine stone fragments at Delphi, Greece, known as the Delphi Inscription (or Gallio Inscription).

• The artifact contains a copy of a letter from Roman Emperor Claudius.
• The letter explicitly mentions “Lucius Junius Gallio, my friend and proconsul of Achaea”.
• Crucially, the inscription references Claudius being acclaimed as imperator for the 26th time. This specific designation narrows down the document’s date to late April or early May of AD 52.

Establishing Paul’s Timeline

Roman proconsuls typically served fixed, one-year terms starting in the summer. Because the Delphi letter was written in early AD 52, historians confidently place Gallio’s tenure in Corinth from summer AD 51 to summer AD 52.

According to Acts 18:11-12 Paul had already spent 18 months ministering in Corinth before the local Jewish leaders brought him before Gallio’s judgment seat. Working backward from Gallio’s arrival, scholars can lock in the following timeline for Paul:

Event	Estimated Date	Source
Paul arrives in Corinth	Early AD 50	Acts 18:1–2
Gallio takes office as Proconsul	Summer AD 51	Delphi Inscription
Paul brought before Gallio	Fall AD 51	Acts 18:12
Paul departs Corinth	Mid AD 52	Acts 18:18

By establishing this fixed point in Corinth, historians can count backward and forward to estimate the timing of Paul’s other missionary journeys, his imprisonment in Rome, and the writing of his major epistles (such as 1 Thessalonians, which was written from Corinth).

This methodology is of course flawed. If there was evidence of a mass Jewish exodus from Egypt (which there isn’t), this wouldn’t establish the superstitious parts of the narrative. For some reason apologists want to think that archaeology somehow lends credence to biblical stories, while mainly it just establishes the setting. Gallio is simply part of the setting or historical background the character of Paul is being placed in. Whether Paul met Gallio or even really existed needs to be established on other grounds. If we know the Gospels and Acts are heavily mythologized historical fiction, and the letters may also be epistolary historical fiction like Seneca’s moral epistles or Plato’s letters. Writers could simply be adding things like dates and historical landmarks at their fancy.

Seneca said that all historians were liars. So it was known in antiquity that pious fictions would be promoted as truths if they were beneficial for society, or simply because the author felt justified in taking liberties. Robert Wood reasons that “Seneca’s ironic assumption that historians are all liars is a response, presumably, not only to their economies or extravagances with the truth but to their very assertions of truthfulness, their claim to be writing history at all” (1993, p. xv).

T. P. Wiseman illustrates how Lucian (in De Historia Conscribenda 7) and Josephus (in Jewish Antiquities 20.154-155) complained about the outrageous biographies of such figures as Nero, which had little historical verisimilitude. Lucian felt that the historian needed to avoid panegyric (tribute) and muthoi (tales) (Wiseman, 1993, p. 127). Similarly, E. L. Bowie points out that Hesiod in Works and Days seems to have invented having a brother for himself in the midst of an otherwise truthful account, a deception that his audience would have been aware of! (1993, p. 23)

Bowie also points out that the Muses who met Hesiod on Helicon (in a meeting that Hesiod’s contemporaries hardly would have regarded as the narrative of a historical event) notoriously claimed to be purveyors of both truth and falsehoods (pseudea) that are ‘like what is real’ (etumoisin homoia)—just the phrase used by Homer of Odysseus’ lies to Penelope at Odyssey 19.203: “Field-dwelling shepherds, evil disgraces, mere bellies, we know how to say many falsehoods that are like the truth (etumoisin), and we know, when we wish, how to voice what is true (alethea), ‘Hesiod, Theogony, 26-28′” (Bowie, 1993, p. 19). Odyssey 19.203 (referred to above where Homer characterizes Odysseus) says: “he said [or made] many falsehoods in his tale like what is true” (Bowie, 1993, p. 18).

This was even more so when the stakes were high, like establishing religion. Regarding Numa Pompilius, Livy wrote:

And fearing lest relief from anxiety on the score of foreign perils might lead men who had hitherto been held back by fear of their enemies and by military discipline into extravagance and idleness, he (Numa) thought the very first thing to do, as being the most efficacious with a populace which was ignorant and, in those early days, uncivilized, was to imbue them with the fear of Heaven. As he could not instill this into their hearts without inventing some marvellous story, he pretended to have nocturnal meetings with the goddess Egeria, and that hers was the advice which guided him in the establishment of rites most approved by the gods, and in the appointment of special priests for the service of each. (Livy 1:19)

Also, Plutarch suggests that Numa played on superstition to give himself an aura of awe and divine allure, in order to cultivate more gentle behaviors among the warlike early Romans, such as honoring the gods, abiding by law, behaving humanely to enemies, and living proper, respectable lives. See Plutarch, “The Parallel Lives, Numa Pompilius” §VIII.

Berman notes Paul’s letters use imagery that are comparable the temple destruction imagery of Mark 13 and so should push the letter composition dates mostly post 70 CE:

 According to the grace of God given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Let each builder choose with care how to build on it. ¹¹ For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. ¹² Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— ¹³ the work of each builder will become visible, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. ¹⁴ If the work that someone has built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a wage. ¹⁵ If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.¹⁶ Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? ¹⁷ If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3)

14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone 16 by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins, but wrath has overtaken them at last. (1 Thessalonians 2:14-1)

The second passage is sometimes disputed but it fits nicely with the idea that many around the time of Jesus saw the Jewish elite as corrupt (mentioned in the New Testament and Josephus), and we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that the various Jewish groups were going after one another. Mark parodies the Jewish trial of Jesus to have the experts in the law find loophole after loophole to try to make the trial of Jesus seem respectable. It was a common theme that the Jews became sinful and so God used ruling powers to correct them, like the Babylonian destruction of the first temple. The destruction of the second temple by the Romans was blamed on the Jews for killing Jesus.

Bibliography

(1993) Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World ed. Christopher Gill and Timothy Peter Wiseman. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press.