Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PRISCA

(Gk. Príska),

PRISCILLA

(Prískilla)

A woman Christian missionary, teacher and leader of the Pauline missionary circle. She was probably freeborn, and married Aquila, a Jewish tentmaker from Pontus in Bithynia. Prisca and Aquila were Christians in Rome when Christians still worshipped alongside Jews in the synagogues. Controversy between Jews and Christians in Rome about the gospel led the emperor Claudius to expel Jews from Rome (49 c.e.), and Prisca and Aquila moved to Corinth (Acts 18:2). There they met Paul, and he stayed with them over a year and a half, working alongside them as a tentmaker (Acts 18:1-3, 11).

At the end of Paul’s stay at Corinth Prisca and Aquila moved to Ephesus (Acts 18:18-19). There they hosted a house church (1 Cor. 16:19). One notable event was their further instruction of the Alexandrian Jewish Christian, Apollos (Acts 18:26).

Prisca and Aquila returned to Rome in the mid-50s and founded another house church. Paul sends them and their congregation greetings in his epistle to the Romans and calls them missionary co-workers (Gk. synergoí; Rom. 16:3-5). They may have returned to Ephesus in the early 60s (2 Tim. 4:19).

Prisca’s name in most instances precedes that of her husband, indicating that she was the more prominent of the two in missionary activity. Together they were partners with Paul and partners with one another in the missionary work of the early Church, heading churches and gathering worshippers in their homes in the urban centers of Rome, Corinth, and Ephesus.

JoAnn Ford Watson

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PRISCA

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)