CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 16
Church Extension in Cyprus and Asia Minor
1. Barnabas and Paul in Cyprus
The antiochene ministry of barnabas and paul was not confined to the city or church of Antioch. Antioch had a vast hinterland, which might be as ripe for evangelization as Antioch itself was. The missionaries who first brought the gospel to Antioch had preached it in Syria and Phoenicia on the way there: Paul had preached it in Cilicia before Barnabas brought him to Antioch. But beyond Cilicia there was the main land-mass of Asia Minor, through which ran the road to Ephesus and the west. And west-by-south-west from Antioch, some 90 miles (150 kilometres) out in the Mediterranean, at its nearest point, lay the island of Cyprus. The men of Cyprus who had taken part in the evangelization of Antioch did not neglect their native island, but there was in Antioch one man of Cyprus who was set on evangelizing it more systematically, and that was Barnabas. Paul, for his part, may already have seen in his mind’s eye the possibilities which Asia Minor presented for gospel penetration and expansion, and the time was to come when he and Barnabas would part company, Barnabas devoting himself to his native Cyprus and Paul to Asia Minor and the lands farther west.
To begin with, however, they undertook their project of missionary outreach together. Luke tells how the leaders of the church of Antioch were directed by the Holy Spirit—presumably through a prophetic utterance—to release Barnabas and Paul for this further ministry to which they had been called. The two men went down to the port of Seleucia and set sail for Cyprus with the blessing of the church and its leaders.1 The church regarded them as its representatives and commissioners; it was their home base, and to it in due course they returned to report “all that God had done with them” (Acts 14:27).
When they set out, they took as their attendant Barnabas’s young cousin, John Mark of Jerusalem. The house of John Mark’s mother Mary was the meeting-place of one group in the Jerusalem church—the group which was led by Peter.2 Barnabas and Paul took John Mark back to Antioch at the end of their famine-relief visit to Jerusalem: Barnabas in particular discerned in him qualities which could be developed and profitably exercised in the Christian mission.
Cyprus was settled in antiquity by Phoenicians and Greeks: from one of the Phoenician settlements, Kition (modern Larnaka) on its south-eastern shore, it derived the name Kittim by which it was known to the Hebrews. Since the sixth century B.C. it had been controlled by the Persians and the Ptolemies, among others. The Romans annexed it in 58 B.C. and two years later added it to the province of Cilicia. After various changes it became a separate imperial province, governed by a legatus pro praetore, in 27 B.C., but five years later Augustus handed it over to the jurisdiction of the Roman senate, and from that date it was, like other senatorial provinces, administered by a proconsul. At the time of Barnabas and Paul’s visit the proconsul was Sergius Paullus, member of a noble Roman family with a record of public service over several generations. We know, for example, of one Lucius Sergius Paullus who was a curator of the Tiber in the principate of Claudius;3 we know of another of the same name (probably his son) who occupied an important office in Galatia (perhaps the governorship of that province) a generation later,4 and of yet another of the same name who was consul at Rome about A.D. 150 and again in 168.5 It has been widely supposed that the proconsul of Cyprus could have been identical with the first of these,6 but he is more probably to be identified with the Quintus Sergius Paullus whose name has been deciphered in fragmentary form on a Greek inscription from Kythraia in North Cyprus.7
The missionary party landed at Salamis, a Greek settlement on the east coast, founded in the sixth century B.C. and for long the principal city of Cyprus. Like most other Cypriot cities, it had a Jewish community. Barnabas and Paul visited the synagogues of Salamis and preached the gospel in them, with unrecorded results. The preaching of the gospel in synagogues would be largely a matter of expounding the scripture lessons in terms of their Christian fulfilment.
From Salamis they made their way by the road which ran along the southern shore of the island, until they arrived at New Paphos, the provincial seat of government. (New Paphos was a Greek settlement; Old Paphos, originally a Phoenician settlement, lay about seven miles or twelve kilometres to the south-east. Old Paphos was a traditional centre of the cult of Aphrodite, who was hence referred to as “the Paphian”.)8 Here they were summoned before Sergius Paullus, who presumably wished to satisfy himself that their activity presented no threat to public order. In several parts of the empire around this time unrest was being stirred up in Jewish communities by travelling agitators.9 Evidently the proconsul was satisfied on this score; indeed, he was quite favourably impressed by the missionaries and their message, despite the attempts of a Jewish member of his entourage to dissuade him from paying them serious attention.10 (Luke describes this Jew as a “false prophet”, which might simply refer to his speaking against the gospel, but the fact that he goes on to call him a magos suggests that he had a reputation for some form of esoteric wisdom.)11
2. The gospel comes to Phrygia
From Cyprus the missionary party sailed north-by-north-west to the mainland of Asia Minor, to the port of Side, perhaps, or Attaleia (modern Antalya) farther west, and made their way to the city of Perga, about six miles inland, situated on the coastal road from Ephesus to Tarsus. It was the chief city of Pamphylia (the territory between the Taurus range and the Mediterranean), which at this time was joined with Lycia on its western frontier to form a united Roman province. There were Jewish settlements in Pamphylia, so some evangelistic activity in Perga may be implied in Luke’s mention of the place, but the only incident he records is John Mark’s departure here from his two senior companions and his return to Jerusalem. The reason for his departure and return is not stated, but perhaps he had not reckoned on the more extended journey into the highlands of the province of Galatia on which Paul and Barnabas were about to embark.
The Roman province of Galatia covered a large area in the heart of Asia Minor. It derived its name from the former kingdom of Galatia, founded by the Galatians or Gauls who in the third century B.C. invaded the peninsula and settled in territory which had formerly belonged to Phrygia. In due course the Galatian kings became allies of Rome. When in 25 B.C. the last of these kings, Amyntas, fell in battle against raiders from the northern Taurus, Augustus reorganized the kingdom as an imperial province, in which he incorporated a good deal of territory to the south which had never belonged ethnically to Galatia—the regions of Eastern Phrygia, Pisidia, Isaurica and Western Lycaonia. The principal cities of the former kingdom of Galatia lay in the northern part of the Roman province: Pessinus to the west, Tavium to the east, and between them Ancyra (modern Ankara), the capital of the kingdom and then of the province, as it is today of the Turkish Republic. Whether or not Paul ever visited those northern cities we have no means of knowing for certain: we have abundant evidence for his interest in cities of South Galatia—that is, of that part of the Roman province which Augustus added to the realm of King Amyntas when he took it over.
It was to one of these cities, Pisidian Antioch, that Paul and Barnabas came after travelling north from Perga for 100 miles and more. Pisidian Antioch is referred to more precisely by Strabo as “Antioch near Pisidia”; it was actually situated in the region of Phrygia, over the border from Pisidia. The ancient kingdom of Phrygia was now divided between the Roman provinces of Asia and Galatia: it was in Galatic Phrygia (as we may call it in distinction from Asian Phrygia) that Pisidian Antioch lay. It lies near modern Yalvaç, on a plateau some 3600 feet high. Sir William Ramsay conjectured that Paul had caught malaria in Pamphylia and sought to recuperate in this highland region: he linked this conjecture with Paul’s reminder to his Galatian converts that it was “because of a bodily ailment” that he first came to them with the gospel (Galatians 4:13).12 This can be neither proved nor disproved.
As its name indicates, Pisidian Antioch was a Seleucid foundation (early third century B.C.), although the site was inhabited long before Seleucid times. The position was well chosen by the Seleucids to serve as a border fortress, and the same strategic advantages probably moved Augustus in 6 B.C. to give the city the status of a Roman colony, under the new designation Colonia Caesarea. Army veterans were settled there among the local population, the city became the military centre for the surrounding territory, new roads were built leading deep into Pisidia for the more effective romanization of that region. The name Pisidian Antioch reflected the rôle marked out for the city by Roman imperial policy.
A Roman colony was a settlement of Roman citizens, designed to safeguard and promote Roman interests in an environment of non-Roman inhabitants (incolae). The administration of a Roman colony was modelled on that of Rome itself, with two annually appointed collegiate magistrates at its head. Epigraphic evidence in and around Pisidian Antioch shows that one of the principal Roman families of the colony bore the name Caristanius Fronto. One member of this family, about a quarter of a century after the time with which we are here concerned, married a Roman lady called Sergia Paulla, possibly a daughter of that Lucius Sergius Paullus who held a responsible post in the provincial administration.13
As in other Phrygian cities, there was in Pisidian Antioch a considerable Jewish community, dating from the reign of Antiochus III (223–187 B.C.).14 In accordance with their practice in cities where there were Jewish communities, Barnabas and Paul visited the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch on the first sabbath after their arrival in that city, and were invited by the governing body of the synagogue to address a “word of exhortation” or homily to the worshippers after the reading of the first and second lessons.15 At this point Luke ascribes to Paul the outline of a homily, which probably summarizes the way in which the gospel was presented to a synagogue congregation, comprising Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, against the familiar background of the history of Israel. Paul, perhaps in allusion to the contents of the scripture lessons for the day, reminds his hearers of the mighty acts of God in the Old Testament narrative from the Exodus to the reign of David, after which he goes on: “Of this man’s posterity God has brought to Israel a Saviour, Jesus, as he promised” (Acts 13:23). In this retrospect, though it begins with Moses and the Exodus, there is no mention of the law: it is the fulfilment of promise that is emphasized—even if here it is not the promise made to Abraham (as in Galatians 3:6–18) but to David. The link between David and Jesus is mentioned by Paul in the preamble of his letter to the Romans, where Jesus is said to have been “descended from David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3).16 After proceeding straight from David to Jesus, Paul enlarges on the climax of salvation-history—the preparatory witness of John the Baptist, the mighty acts of God in Christ, crowned by his resurrection, in fulfilment of psalm and prophecy.
It may be said that there is not much difference between what Paul says in Pisidian Antioch and what Peter is reported to have said in Jerusalem on the first Christian Pentecost. This is so, but perhaps there actually was but little difference in substance between the Petrine and Pauline presentations of the gospel to Jewish audiences. If Paul, faced with a synagogue congregation in the dispersion, did not speak as Luke makes him speak at Pisidian Antioch, then let us be told how he did speak. True, there is less “theology of the cross” in the account of Jesus’ death in this speech than might be expected from Paul, whether he was addressing Jews or Gentiles. And when the Paul of Acts tells how the risen Christ “appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people” (Acts 13:31), the historical Paul would certainly have added, and (we may be sure) did add, “Last of all … he appeared also to me” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:8). But a Pauline touch is introduced at the end of the homily. Where other preachers in Acts proclaim that “forgiveness of sins” is available through Jesus (cf. Acts 2:38; 10:43), Paul at Pisidian Antioch not only says that “through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you”, but adds that “by him every one that believes is justified from all things, from which you could not be justified by Moses’ law” (Acts 13:38 f.). From these words as they stand, indeed, the full Pauline doctrine of justification by faith could not be deduced,17 but the words are quite in line with Paul’s teaching in Romans 3:20–26, that God “justifies him who has faith in Jesus” whereas “no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law”. The language of Acts 13:39 need not be construed to mean that faith in Christ takes over responsibility for a man’s salvation when Moses’ law has done all that it can and can do no more—a most un-Pauline sentiment, to be sure, but probably a non-Lukan one too.18
The God-fearers in the congregation were specially attracted by Paul’s message, and spread the news abroad among their fellow-Gentiles. The result was that a week later there were more Gentiles than Jews present at the synagogue service. The leaders of the Jewish community were displeased and visited their displeasure on the two missionaries. But many of the Gentiles accepted the salvation through faith in Christ which the missionaries proclaimed and formed a Christian group in separation from the synagogue—the first of the churches of Galatia.
From Pisidian Antioch the missionaries moved on to Iconium (modern Konya), nearly ninety miles (about 150 kilometres) east-by-south-east, then as now an important road-junction. Xenophon (c. 400 B.C.) knew it as “the last city of Phrygia”19 and into the second and third centuries A.D. its inhabitants considered themselves Phrygians,20 but it lay at the western end of the Lycaonian Plain, so near to the frontier between the regions of Phrygia and Lycaonia that several Greek and Roman writers of this period refer to it (inaccurately) as a city of Lycaonia.21 The Emperor Claudius had recently permitted the city to use his own name as an honorific prefix, so it was called for a time Claudiconium (we may compare the use of “King’s” as a prefix or “Regis” as a suffix with same English place-names).
The missionaries’ experience in Iconium appears to have been almost a carbon copy of that in Pisidian Antioch, except that they were able to stay longer in Iconium than in the other city. At last a riot of such intensity was stirred up against them that they had to leave Iconium and cross the regional border into Lycaonia, but not before a distinct Christian community had been established there as earlier in Pisidian Antioch. The memory of Paul in particular impressed itself on the people of Iconium: Iconium, a century later, is the centre of the fictitious adventures recounted in the Acts of Paul and Thekla.22
3. Problems of Gentile evangelization
At the conference which Barnabas and Paul attended with the Jerusalem leaders it was probably no part of the agreement that the two missionaries to the Gentiles should abstain from visiting synagogues in the cities to which they came. But it may not have been envisaged on either side that events would turn out as they did in Pisidian Antioch and Iconium, so that it would be necessary to detach Gentile God-fearers from the synagogues which they attended and form them into separate congregations.
Certainly many more Gentiles than Jews were converted to Christianity under Paul’s preaching, but if he regularly made the synagogue his first base of operations, more Jews than Gentiles would probably hear the gospel from him at the outset, in one city after another. He himself takes it for granted that the gospel is to be presented “to the Jew first” (Romans 1:16). Was there not the possibility that in some synagogue the whole congregation would respond positively to his preaching? Would the Jerusalem leaders not have regarded this as a breach of the agreement, in spirit at least? (Two or three years later the synagogue congregation at Beroea in Macedonia gave him a favourable hearing, but it is implied that this was an exceptional occurrence.) Paul might have said that, if only the Jews accepted the gospel themselves, it would be for them to evangelize the neighbouring Gentiles; but in fact he knew that the direct evangelization of Gentiles was his prime vocation. According to Luke, he and Barnabas claimed at Pisidian Antioch that in this respect they were discharging the commission laid by Yahweh on his Servant (Isaiah 49:6):
I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth.
As for Luke’s report of the hostile response of the Jewish leaders in Pisidian Antioch and Iconium, it is consistent with Paul’s own account of those Jews who “drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved” (1 Thessalonians 2:15 f.).23
Conscious as he was of his call to be the Gentiles’ apostle, Paul looked on the God-fearers who were in the habit of attending synagogue services as a providentially prepared bridgehead into the wider Gentile world. By listening to the reading and exposition of the scriptures those Gentiles learned to worship the “living and true God” and became familiar in some sense with the hope of Israel. But they were told that they could not participate in this hope, or share the privileges of the people of God, unless they were prepared to become proselytes to Judaism—an issue to which, no doubt, their Jewish friends confidently looked forward. Now, however, these Gentiles were assured by Paul that the hope of Israel had been fulfilled by Jesus, and that through faith in him they could receive the saving grace of God on equal terms with Jewish believers, and become members of the new messianic fellowship of the people of God in which the religious distinction between Jew and Gentile was obliterated. It was as natural for God-fearing Gentiles to embrace the blessings of the gospel on these terms as it was for Jews to decline them on these terms. Only by visiting the synagogue could Paul establish contact with these God-fearers, but the almost inevitable result of his policy was a breach with the synagogue. It was probably impossible for one who concentrated on Gentile evangelization to be at the same time an effective missionary to Jews; hence the division of mission-fields agreed upon at the Jerusalem conference was a wise decision.
Paul came to accept this situation, but he did not find this acceptance easy. While he knew himself to be apostle to the Gentiles by divine vocation, yet the salvation of his own kith and kin was specially close to his heart, As he put it later, in his epistle to the Romans, if their salvation could be bought at the cost of his own, he would willingly pay the price—willingly be “accursed and cut off from Christ” for their sake (Romans 9:3). In time, however, he found reassurance in the hope that his very activity in Gentile evangelization might serve indirectly to expedite the salvation of his fellow-Jews. There came to his mind a passage in the Song of Moses where God says to his rebellious people, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation” (Deuteronomy 32:21), and he interpreted it in the light of the new gospel situation. “Those who are not a nation”24 were Gentiles. When, through Paul’s own ministry, Gentiles were availing themselves in ever-increasing numbers of the blessings brought to mankind by Israel’s Messiah—blessings which fulfilled the promises made to Israel’s ancestors and were applicable, in the natural course of events, “to the Jew first”—this spectacle would stir the Jews to jealousy. It would suddenly dawn upon them that they had a prior claim to those blessings which Gentiles were so eagerly enjoying, and they would assert their own right to a share in them. The ingathering of the Gentiles would thus lead, in the unfolding of the divine purpose, to the salvation of Israel, and Paul learned to “magnify his ministry” because of this more remote sequel over and above its immediate effect in producing among other nations “the obedience of faith” (Romans 10:19; 11:13–27; 16:26).
4. Cities of Lycaonia
The first city of Lycaonia to which Barnabas and Paul came was Lystra, now the mound of Zostera, near Hatunsaray, about 18 miles (30 kilometres) south-by-south-west from Iconium.25 Like Pisidian Antioch, Lystra was made a Roman colony by Augustus; the two colonies were linked by a military road which did not pass through Iconium and although they were separated by 100 miles they appear to have maintained cordial relations with each other.
There were some Jewish residents in Lystra, with whom the missionaries had dealings—Timothy, for example, the son of a Jewish mother and a Greek father, seems to have been one of their converts during this visit26—but the one incident recorded by Luke brings Barnabas and Paul into direct contact with pagan Lycaonians, not the Roman citizens of the colony but the indigenous incolae. These latter, impressed by Paul’s healing of a congenitally lame man, concluded that their city was being favoured with a visit by two gods in human form: “Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they called Hermes” (Acts 14:12). The conjoint worship of these two deities, or of their Anatolian counterparts, is variously attested in legend and inscription for that part of Asia Minor.27 The local priest of Zeus Propolis—Zeus whose temple stood facing the city gate—initiated appropriate sacrificial rites in honour of the two visitors. For a time they did not realize what was afoot, because everyone was speaking Lycaonian—a language which they did not understand (though they may have recognized that it was different from the Phrygian speech which they had left behind in Iconium). But when the truth of the situation dawned on them, they were horrified and (addressing the people in Greek) urgently begged them to desist (Acts 14:14–17):
Men, what is this you are doing? We are only human beings, with the same nature as yourselves, but we have come to bring you good news. Turn away from this futile worship; seek the living God, He is the God who made heaven, earth and sea with all that is in them. In the ages that are past he has allowed all nations to follow their own ways; yet he has not left you without any clue to his being and character: he sends you rain from heaven and seasons of fruitfulness, and satisfies you with food and joy.
If Luke, in his account of the synagogue service at Pisidian Antioch, has given us a sample presentation of the gospel to Jews and God-fearers, here he has given us, in still more summary form, a sample of the approach to untutored pagans (later he gives a sample of the approach to “tutored” pagans when he brings Paul to Athens).28
Barnabas and Paul’s protest to the men of Lystra takes them up in the midst of their religious practice and points them to a worthier form of worship—the worship of the living God, who created the universe and makes provision for man’s need. The terms in which God is presented as Creator had been used for generations in Jewish testimony to pagans: “I am a Hebrew”, said the prophet Jonah to the storm-tossed mariners; “and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9). “He gives food to all flesh”, said the psalmist, “for his steadfast love endures for ever” (Psalm 136:25).
No attempt was made on this occasion, as later by Paul at Athens,29 to identify the Creator with Zeus: the Zeus who was worshipped at Lystra was too anthropomorphically conceived to provide the link with monotheism that the Zeus of Stoic poets and philosophers provided. Zeus and Hermes alike had to be displaced by the God who made heaven and earth and sent seasonal rain and harvests year by year.
In the summary given by Luke no expressly Christian note is struck, but preparation is made for the gospel by the statement that God “in the ages that are past” had allowed all nations to follow their own ways—that is, their own religious ways. Now, it is implied, a change has taken place—the change accomplished by the saving work of Christ. What is only implied in this summary is stated plainly in Paul’s later speech at Athens, as it is also stated plainly and at greater length in his letter to the Romans, where God, who had given the Gentile world over to the consequences of its idolatry,30 is shown to have provided by the self-offering of Christ a new way of approach to himself in which Gentiles as well as Jews might enjoy the forgiveness of sins previously committed in the time of God’s forbearance together with the righteous status open to all who had faith in Jesus.31
If some of Barnabas and Paul’s converts at Lystra had been involved in the attempt to pay divine honours to the two missionaries it could have been said of them, as was said later of Paul’s Gentile converts in Thessalonica, that they “turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9).
For all the enthusiasm with which they were greeted at first, Barnabas and Paul found public opinion at Lystra turning against them. Apart from those who believed the good news they brought, the people who had tried to offer them sacrifice must have been offended when their worship was refused. Accordingly, when Lystra was visited by some of the people who had stirred up trouble for the missionaries in Pisidian Antioch and Iconium, it was not difficult for them to exploit this sense of grievance. In the ensuing riot Paul in particular was badly knocked about: when, years later, he says to his friends in Corinth, “once I was stoned” (2 Corinthians 11:25), this was the occasion he had in mind. He must have been knocked unconscious, for those who stoned him “dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead” (Acts 14:19). But as the new converts gathered round to see what could be done for him, consciousness returned and he went back into the city with them. Whatever his physical disabilities were, Paul had an extraordinarily tough and resilient constitution and remarkable staying-power: “often knocked down but never knocked out” (as his words in 2 Corinthians 4:9 have been paraphrased). When he speaks of bearing on his body “the marks of Jesus”—the stigmata which indicated who his master was, just as slaves sometimes had their owner’s name branded in their flesh (Galatians 6:17)—it is very probable that he includes among them the indelible scars resulting from his ill-treatment at Lystra.
Next day Barnabas and he set out for Derbe, situated on the mound of Kerti Hüyük, about 60 miles south-east of Lystra, or else (as some think) at Devri Şehri, about two and a half miles south-east of Kerti Hüyük.32 According to the lexicographer Stephanus of Byzantium, the name of Derbe was derived from the Lycaonian word for “juniper”. Like Iconium, Derbe had the name of Claudius as an honorific prefix; well into the second century at least it was known as Claudioderbe. It lay near—perhaps even beyond33—the frontier between the Roman province of Galatia and the client kingdom of Commagene (governed by Rome’s ally Antiochus IV from A.D. 41 to 72), a frontier which cut the old territory of Lycaonia in two. This was the farthest stage of Barnabas and Paul’s present journey: having preached in Derbe and made some converts there they retraced their steps, visiting and encouraging the members of the newly-planted churches of Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch. Luke’s statement that they now “appointed elders” in those churches (Acts 14:23) has been questioned, as presupposing a stage of church administration more characteristic of the Pastoral Epistles.34 Luke may use the terminology of the Pastoral Epistles, but if Paul, some years later, could tell the Thessalonian church to give due respect to its “leaders and counsellors” (1 Thessalonians 5:12 f.) and indicate to the Corinthian church which of its members were worthy of recognition because of their “special service to the people of God” (1 Corinthians 16:15–18), there is no reason why Barnabas and he should not have taken appropriate action at this earlier date in respect of those who had begun to develop the qualities of leadership in the young churches of South Galatia. In addition to giving them what help was necessary in this regard, they urged them to stand firm in their new-found faith and not to be dismayed by hardship and persecution, for these were inseparable from Christian existence in this age: “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
They then continued their journey to the coast, back through Perga to Attaleia, where they took ship for the mouth of the Orontes, and so returned to Syrian Antioch. Thanks to their enterprise since they had set out, the church of Syrian Antioch was now a mother-church in her own right, with several flourishing daughter-churches, mainly Gentile in composition like herself.