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Titus Justus

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

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• Titus, Justus; Titius Justus

(so in the Manuscripts אE.; B reads ‘Titius Justus’ as do the Vulgate and the Memphitic Versions)

The name is mentioned only once in the NT, Acts 18:7. He was a Gentile who had been brought under the influence of the Jewish synagogue in Corinth. As a proselyte, he heard St. Paul preach there. Evidently he was favourably impressed; and, when the opposition of the Jews drove St. Paul ‘to the Gentiles,’ Titus offered him the use of his house (which was practically next door to the synagogue) as a meeting-place. It is extremely likely that he became a convert to Christianity. Attempts have been made to identify him with several people, as, e.g., with Titus (the recipient of St. Paul’s Epistle), and-by W. M. Ramsay, on much better grounds-with Gaius. Gaius was an early convert in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:14); and St. Paul refers to him in Romans 16:23 as ‘my host and of the whole church,’ which might mean the person in whose house the church met. But no identification can be established.

A. C. Headlam describes Titus Justus as ‘evidently a Roman or a Latin, one of the coloni of the colony Corinth’ (Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 829^b)-i.e. a descendant of the colonists ‘established there in b.c. 46, who would on the whole constitute a sort of local aristocracy’ (W. M. Ramsay, ib. i. 481^a). Evidently his social position was good; and probably St. Paul accepted the offer of his house not because it was so near the synagogue as to be a rival meeting-house, but because it afforded the Apostle access to the more educated classes of the Corinthian population. Although St. Paul used an exasperating gesture when he broke with the Jews in the synagogue, there is no need to charge him with being deliberately non-conciliatory. But the opportunity of preaching in the house of such a citizen as Titus Justus overbore all other considerations. Codex Bezae describes St. Paul as leaving the house of Aquila to lodge with Titus; but this is due to the reviser’s misunderstanding of the text.

Literature-A. C. Headlam, article ‘Justus’ In Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 829^b; W. M. Ramsay, article ‘Corinth,’ ib. i. 481-482; W. Lock, article ‘Titus,’ ib. iv. 782^a; W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, London, 1893, p. 158, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, do., 1895, pp. 256-257; Expositor , 8th ser., i. [1911] 341, v. [1913] 354 n. ^{[Note: . note.]} ; Expositor’s Greek Testament , ‘1 Corinthians,’ do., 1900, p. 730; C. von Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age, Eng. translation , i.², do., 1897, pp. 308-309.

J. E. Roberts.