Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also.
All Commentaries on Galatians 2:1 Go To Galatians 2
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem. Are these years to be reckoned from the date of Paul"s conversion, or from the end of the three years spent in Arabia and Damascus? S. Jerome takes the latter, and so gets a date of seventeen years after the conversion, or A.D54 , the twelfth of the Emperor Claudius, for this journey of S. Paul. But since Claudius ceased to reign in the next year, and was succeeded by Nero, in whose second year Paul was sent bound to Rome (Acts xxvii.), it would follow that all the history of Paul that is contained in Acts 15-27—I shall show directly that the journey alluded to here and that described in Acts 15 are the same—must be compressed into two years, which, considering the number and importance of the events recorded, seems very improbable. Moreover, it is clear, from Acts 18:11, that Paul, after what took place at Jerusalem, spent a year and a half at Corinth and then three years at Ephesus ( Acts 20:31). Accordingly, the opinion of Baronius and others seems better founded, by which these fourteen years are reckoned from S. Paul"s conversion. He treats that as an illustrious event from which to reckon, just as we treat a call to the Papacy, to the Episcopate, or to religion as the beginning of a new era.
That this journey of Paul to Jerusalem is the same as that described in Acts xv, when he went up to the council, is evident from the identity of cause, place, and persons in both. This is the opinion of the Fathers in general, except Chrysostom, who argues as follows: In Acts xv. Paul appears as sent to Jerusalem by his fellow-Christians; but here (ver2) he says that he went up to Jerusalem by Revelation , hence the two journeys are distinct. My answer is: I deny the consequence. For both may be true, viz, that he went up by Revelation , and that he was sent by the Christians of Antioch; because, as Bede remarks, he was warned by a voice from heaven to undertake the embassy entrusted to him by the people of Antioch, and went up, both for the sake of obtaining a decision of the common question about the observance of the law, and also for his own private purpose, viz, that he might compare his own teaching with that of the chief of the Apostles (ver2). From what has been said it follows, as Baronius holds, that the Council of Jerusalem was held fourteen years after Paul"s conversion, in the sixteenth year after the Crucifixion of Christ, in the ninth year of Claudius, A.D51.
