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APOLLOS
Native of Alexandria (Egypt), a Christian Jew who was an eloquent preacher at the time of the apostle Paul’s missionary journeys. The chief biblical passage about Apollos is Acts 18:24–19:1. From Alexandria, Apollos went to Ephesus in Asia Minor. Enthusiastic in spirit, learned and cultured in his ways, well versed in the OT Scriptures, and instructed in the way of the Lord, he began to speak boldly and openly in the synagogue there. Apollos knew and preached accurately about the coming of Jesus but knew of it only from the message of Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist. Priscilla and Aquila, Paul’s friends and former associates, heard Apollos speak in Ephesus and realized that he had not heard what had happened to Jesus. They took him aside privately and explained the way of God to him more accurately. Before that, he had been convinced of the value of John’s baptism and John’s message that Jesus was the Messiah. He was evidently uninformed, however, about such teachings as justification by faith in Christ or the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation. At such points, Priscilla and Aquila, having lived and worked with Paul, were able to help Apollos.
Soon after this instruction, Apollos left Ephesus for the Roman province of Achaia in Greece with letters from the Ephesian Christians, urging the disciples in Achaia to welcome him as a Christian brother. On arrival, he vigorously and publicly refuted the Jews, using his great knowledge of the OT Scriptures to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Paul considered Apollos’s work in Corinth, capital of Achaia, so valuable that he described him as waterer of the seed that Paul had planted as the founder of the church (1 Cor 3:5-11). From 1 Corinthians it is also clear that one of the factions dividing the Corinthian church was a clique centered around Apollos, although he was not directly responsible for it (1 Cor 1:12; 3:1-4). Paul had difficulty convincing Apollos that he should return to Corinth, perhaps because Apollos did not want to encourage the continuance of that little group (1 Cor 16:12).