Claudius: The Emperor Named Twice in Acts

An emperor named twice

Claudius belongs to the era of the New Testament, an era placed at around 4 BC to AD 33 on Ussher's chronology (1650). He is a Roman Emperor, and Scripture treats him the way it treats most of the machinery of empire: as a fact of the world the church was born into. He is named by name only twice, both times in Acts, and both times not as an actor in the scene but as the man whose reign supplies the date and the decree. Eleven verses in one book, the first at Acts 11:28. He never speaks. Nobody speaks to him. He is background, and yet the background presses hard on the people in the foreground.

The famine in his days

The first mention is a time stamp attached to a prophecy. "One of them named Agabus stood up, and indicated by the Spirit that there should be a great famine all over the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius" (Acts 11:28). The emperor's name is used to fix the event in real history. The Spirit spoke through a prophet, and the thing spoken came to pass under a datable administration. Claudius contributes nothing to the famine and nothing to the church's response to it; his name simply marks the calendar. Notice how the text works: the reign of an emperor becomes a footnote to the word of the Spirit.

The decree against the Jews in Rome

The second mention has teeth. Paul "found a certain Jew named Aquila, a man of Pontus by race, who had recently come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome. He came to them" (Acts 18:2). This is the only recorded action of Claudius in Scripture: a command that uprooted an entire people from the capital. The text does not tell us why the order was given, does not describe how it was enforced, and does not report what became of those who obeyed it beyond this one couple. What it does report is the result in the life of the mission. A married pair displaced by imperial policy came from Italy, and Paul found them. The edict moved the pieces; the text lets us see who was actually playing.

Caesar in the courtroom

The rest of the passages gathered under Claudius speak of "Caesar" and "the emperor" without giving a name. The charge against the believers was political: "These all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus!" (Acts 17:7). Paul answered his accusers, "Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar, have I sinned at all" (Acts 25:8). Then came the appeal: "I am standing before Caesar's judgment seat, where I ought to be tried. I have done no wrong to the Jews, as you also know very well. For if I have done wrong and have committed anything worthy of death, I don't refuse to die; but if none of those things is true that they accuse me of, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar!" And the answer came, "You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you shall go" (Acts 25:10-12). Festus reported it in the same terms: "But when Paul had appealed to be kept for the decision of the emperor, I commanded him to be kept until I could send him to Caesar" (Acts 25:21). The thread continues at Acts 26:32, Acts 27:24 and Acts 28:19, which the dossier lists without quoting. Whether the Caesar of these scenes is Claudius, the text in front of us does not say. The office is named; the man is not.

The failure Scripture records

There is no scene in which Claudius is praised and none in which he is condemned. What stands on the page is a command that all the Jews depart from Rome (Acts 18:2), an act of expulsion aimed at a whole people, including Aquila and Priscilla, of whom no wrongdoing is reported. Scripture states it flatly and moves on. No repentance is recorded, no faith, no encounter with the gospel, no word from God addressed to him.

What we do not know

Scripture does not name his parents. No children are named. No tribe or people is given. Nothing is said of his character, his end, or his response to the message spreading through his empire while he reigned.

Another king

The line from Claudius to Christ runs through the accusation in Acts 17:7. Against the decrees of Caesar stood the claim "that there is another king, Jesus!" The accusers understood the stakes better than they knew. An emperor could date a famine (Acts 11:28) and empty a city of its Jews, and the effect of that second act was that Paul found Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:2). The decree scattered; the gospel gathered. Claudius appears in the Bible only in the shadow of a greater throne.