PAUL THE APOSTLE
hundred miles from Perga to Antioch, through
the wild ranges of the Taurus, Paul may well have met some of those ‘ perils of rivers’ and ‘ of robbers’ which he associates in 2 Co 11%, For the route see Ramsay, Church in Rom. Emp. ii. 2 and map. At Antioch, and onwards, Paul takes the lead in speech and action (14%), ‘Barnabas and Saul’ set out on the expedition ; *Paul and Barnabas’ will return (Ac 13! 15%).
St. Paul’s address in the Antioch synagogue (Ac 13!) holds a place in Ac 13-28 corresponding to that of St. Peter's Pentecost sermon in Ac 1-12; it is a typical specimen of his preaching to Jews of the Dispersion. As on subsequent occasions, he is listened to at first with attention, and ‘many of the Jews and devout proselytes’ are favourably affected, until ‘on the next Sabbath’ the syna- gogue is crowded with Gentile hearers, whose presence excites Jewish rancour. The courage of the apostles rises with the storm; denied a further hearing, they solemnly exclaim, ‘Lo, we turn to the Gentiles!’ So the inevitable rupture takes place. The Jewish leaders are enraged to hear their Messianic hopes and the privileges of the chosen race extended to heathen ‘dogs,’ and to see the Gentile frequenters of the synagogue sana to the preachers of this scandalous g gospe > and admitted by baptism into their schismatic ‘congregation.’ They cast about for means, usually not far to seek, of exciting the city magistrates, or the mob, ree the missionaries, who appear in the light of disturbers of the public
ace (Ac 17°) and are, in one way or other, be- ore long expelled, to pass on to the next city, repeating this experience and finding themselves not infrequently pursued thither by their previous assailants. ‘ Perils from’ their ‘countrymen, perils from the heathen,’ followed immediately on those ‘perils of rivers’ and ‘perils of robbers’ through which the missionaries had arrived at S. Galatia. They were hunted in turn from Antioch to Iconium, and from Iconium to Lystra and Derbe; and this was a foretaste of what became with St. Paul the familiar order of things. Still he persisted in appealing to ‘the Jew first,’ and made the syna- pogue in each new city his starting-point. Though
e might win only a handful of his compatriots, he always found prepared hearers in the a dig and Gentile synagogue worshippers, amongst whom were many pious Greek women of the educated classes (Ac 174).
Driven from Antioch, the missionaries travelled (some 80 miles E. by 8.) to Iconium (mod. Konieh), a flourishing commercial city, with a synagogue, where, despite persecution, they preached for ‘a considerable time’ (‘the whole winter,’ thinks Ram- say) and with much success, till Jewish intrigues compelled their oe ‘to the cities of Lycaonia, Lystra and Derbe’ (14'”). The four towns enumerated lay within the province of Galatia, and were all places of importance in the Roman administration,—Antioch and Iconium within Phrygian, and Lystra and Derbe in Lycaonian Galatia. Lystra (20 miles S. of Iconium) was, like pretehe 4 a colonia, a link in the chain of lurtresses planted by Augustus to secure the Pisidian and Isaurian frontier. Derbe (50 miles S.E. of Iconium) was the border town of Galatia in this direction. Here the Jewish persecution, organized from Antioch, appears to have ceased. At Lystra ‘the multitudes,’ who deified Barnabas and Paul on the healing of the lame man, shouted ‘in the Lycaonian tongue’; but they gave the visitors the names of Greek gods, and understood Paul’s Greek speech (147), in which we have an example of his preaching to the simpler sort of heathen audiences. Throughout the missionaries kept to the track of Greco-Roman civilization and
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rule, and Jewish settlement. It was the local trates, not the Roman officials, with whom the came into conflict ; hence it was possible to escape by moving on,—possible also after a lapse of time, probably in the new year under new magistrates (see Ramsay, Ch. in Rom. Emp.* pp. 70-72), to return to the cities previously visited. The two travellers retraced their steps from Derbe to Antioch, ‘confirming the souls of the disciples’ and ‘ appointing elders in every Church’ (vv.™ 3), At Lystra Paul underwent the single stoning of his experience (2 Co 1135), which left on him probably some of the ‘stigmata of Jesus’ referred to in Gal 617, Although no synagogue is mentioned in Lystra or Derbe, Jews certainly resided in the former place, or the ‘Jews from Antioch and Iconium’ could not have stirred up the murder- ous assault they did. The half-Jewish Timothy sprang from Lystra (Ac 16'-*). Returning home- wards, Paul and Barnabas ‘spake the word in Perga,’ and then sailed from the neighbouring pe of Attalia (14%) to Syrian Antioch. They ad been absent, as Ramsay calculates, above two years, leaving Antioch in spring and returning in the third summer or autumn following. Navi tion, and travelling in the interior of Asia Minor, were possible only from March to October. On the topography, and the political and social con- ditions of the regions traversed, Ramsay has superseded all other authorities (Ch. in Rom. Emp. ch. ii., and St. Paul the Trav. chs. iv. v.). wo things were made clear by this experi- mental mission from Antioch. First, that the