Priscilla Meaning in the Bible

Priscilla is the Latin diminutive of Prisca, from priscus, 'ancient, venerable, of former times.' Paul uses the formal Prisca in his letters; Luke uses the affectionate Priscilla in Acts. Both refer to the same woman, married to Aquila, a Jewish couple expelled from Rome when Claudius banished the Jews around AD 49 (Acts 18:2).

They meet Paul in Corinth, where he stays and works with them because they shared his trade of tentmaking. They then travel with him to Ephesus, and this is where the couple's most significant act occurs. Apollos arrives — 'an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures' — but knowing only the baptism of John. Acts 18:26: 'whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.' Two working-class tentmakers privately corrected the theology of the most gifted public speaker in the early church, and did it without humiliating him.

The detail scholars keep returning to is word order. In four of the six New Testament references, Priscilla is named first — unusual enough in first-century writing to be significant, and generally read as indicating that she was the more prominent of the two in ministry. Paul says in Romans 16:3–4 that they 'have for my life laid down their own necks,' and that a church met in their house (1 Corinthians 16:19).

Priscilla peaked in the mid-twentieth century and has fallen far enough to feel fresh again. Three syllables, with Prisca as the formal biblical alternative and Cilla or Prissy as short forms.