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Bible Dictionaries
Claudia
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Κλαυδία)
Claudia was a Christian lady of Rome who was on friendly terms with the Apostle Paul at the date of his second imprisonment, and who, along with Eubulus, Pudens, and Linus (qq.v. [Note: v. quœ vide, which see.] ), sends a greeting to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:21). This is all we know with any certainty regarding her. The name suggests that she belonged to the Imperial household, and various conjectures have been made as to her identity, though there is very little in the nature of certain data. Probably she was a slave, but it is not impossible that she was a member of the gens Claudia. In the Apostolic Constitutions (vii. 46) she is regarded as the mother of Linus (Λίνος ὁ Κλαυδίας). An inscription found on the road between Rome and Ostia (CIL [Note: IL Corpus Inscrip. Latinarum.] vi. 15066) to the memory of the infant child of Claudius Pudens and Claudia Quinctilla has given rise to the conjecture that this was the Claudia of St. Paul and that she was the wife of the Pudens of 2 Timothy 4:21. Another ingenious but most improbable theory identifies Claudia with Claudia Rufina, the wife of Aulns Pudens, the friend of Martial (Epigr. iv. 13, xi. 34), and thus makes her a woman of British race. This Claudia of Martial has again been identified with an imaginary Claudia suggested by a fragmentary inscription found at Chichester in 1722 which seems to record the erection of a temple by a certain Pudens with the approval of Claudius Cogidubnus, who is supposed to be a British king mentioned in Tacitus (Agricola, xiv.) and the father of the Claudia who had adopted the name (cognomen) Rufina from Pomponia the wife of Aulus Plautins, the Roman governor of Britain (a.d. 43-52). E. H. Plumptre in Ellicott’s NT Commentary (ii. 186) confidently asserts the identity of the Claudia of St. Paul with the friend of Martial and the daughter of Cogidubnus. All such identification is, however, extremely precarious. The theory that Claudia is the daughter of the British prince Caractacus who had been brought to Rome with his wife and children is a product of the inventive imagination. Lightfoot (Apostolic Fathers, I. i. 76-79) discusses the whole question of identification, and decides that, apart from the want of evidence, the position of the names of Pudens and Claudia in the text 2 Timothy 4:21 disposes of the possibility of their being husband and wife-a difficulty which Plumptre evades by the supposition that they were married after the Epistle was written. The low moral character of Martial’s friend Pudens can hardly be explained away sufficiently to make him a likely companion of St. Paul (cf. Merivale, St. Paul at Rome, 149).
Literature.-E. H. Plumptre, in Ellicott’s NT Com., 1884, vol. ii. p. 185: ‘Excursus on the later years of St. Paul’s life’; J. B. Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, 1890, I. i. 76-79; C. Merivale, St. Paul at Rome, 1877, p. 149; T. Lewin, Life and Epistles of St. Paul3, 1875, ii. 397; articles in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) and Encyclopaedia Biblica ; Conybeare-Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, new ed., 1877, ii. 582, 594.
W. F. Boyd.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Claudia'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/c/claudia.html. 1906-1918.
