Almost every year in this dataset before about 60 is calculated backwards or forwards from one broken slab found at Delphi. It is a rescript of Claudius, and it names Lucius Junius Gallio as proconsul of Achaia while giving the emperor's tribunician acclamation — which fixes the text to the first half of 52, and therefore Gallio's single year in the province to 51-52. Acts 18 puts Paul in Corinth for eighteen months and has him hauled before Gallio near the end of that stay. Those two facts together are the only firm peg in the whole apostolic chronology: from them the second journey, the letters written at Corinth, the Jerusalem council before it and the arrest at Jerusalem after it can all be placed within a year or two. Everything else in the first century floats relative to this stone. It is worth saying plainly what it does not do. It does not mention Paul, or Christians, or anything Christian at all; it is an administrative letter about the depopulation of Delphi. The chain from it to a Pauline date runs through Acts, and it is only as strong as the assumption that Luke put the hearing in the right part of the stay. This project records the inscription and does not pretend it proves more than it does — the same treatment given to the Erastus pavement at Corinth and to the Pilate stone at Caesarea.
The Early Church · the Delphi rescript of Claudius, and Acts 18:12-17