Acts 18:17

Acts 18:17. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment-seat. The better MSS. simply read, ‘Then all took,' etc.; the Greeks was a later interpolation. There is little doubt that ‘all' refers here to the Gentile or Greek populace, who, ever ready to show their hatred to the Jews dwelling among them, took this opportunity, when the despised people were being driven ignominiously out of court, of venting their dislike upon the Jewish leader. Some commentators have, however, supposed that the ‘all' refers not to the Greek populace, but to the Jews themselves, who, angry at finding their designs against Paul frustrated, fell upon their own leader, to whose want of skill or perhaps to whose treachery in the cause they ascribed their present failure before Gallio. This supposition is based in great measure on the possible identification of this Sosthenes with the Sosthenes mentioned in 1 Corinthians 1:1, and upon the hypothesis that he was already a secret friend of Paul's, and at heart a Christian.

And Gallio cared for none of those things. The utter indifference of these great Roman officials to all religion is well painted in these few words. Such questions as had been brought before his tribunal that day were, to one trained in Gallio's cheerless school, having, as he thought, no bearing direct or indirect on the present life, entirely without interest. Like Pilate, when One greater than Paul stood before him similarly accused, this Roman seemed to favour the accused, possibly owing to the popular dislike of the Jewish race. Pilate's celebrated words, ‘What is truth?' betray the same utter carelessness and indifference to religion and religious truth.