The Gallio Inscription — the clock of Paul's life
A named Roman official in Acts can be dated to within a year from a stone in Greece — which is why Paul's letters can be placed on a calendar at all.
Fixed dateInscriptionAD 52
A copy of a letter from the emperor Claudius that mentions Lucius Junius Gallio as proconsul of Achaia, and can be dated from Claudius's titles to the first half of AD 52. Since proconsuls served one year, Gallio was in office from about mid-51 to mid-52 — which dates Paul's hearing before him in Corinth, and with it the whole framework of Paul's travels.
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus… as Lucius Junius Gallio, my friend, and proconsul of Achaia, wrote…
- Found
- Temple of Apollo, Delphi, Greece — Recovered in fragments from the Delphi excavations; published from 1905
- Now held at
- Archaeological Museum of Delphi
- Language
- Greek
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
The dating to AD 51/52 is the mainstream reconstruction; a shift of one year is possible depending on how the proconsular term is counted.
How historians use it
The standard fixed point of Pauline chronology in secular New Testament scholarship, regardless of the scholar's own convictions.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Gallio inscription — text, photographs and discussion
- Murphy-O'Connor, St. Paul's Corinth: Texts and Archaeology, 3rd ed.
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.