Literature. — H. Gunkel, Schopfung und Chaos, Gottingen,
1895 ; W. Bousset, The Antichrist Leoend, Eng. tr., London,
1896 ; W. O. E. Oesterley, The Evolution of the Messianic Idea, do. 1908 ; C. Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish Sources, Eng. tr., Bkiinburgh, 1912; artt. 'Anti- christ' in PRE 3, ERE, and EBi, and ' Man of Sin ' in HDB ; H. Cramer, Bib.-Tlieol. Lex., s.v. ; J. Moffatt, ' Revelation ' in EGT; ExpT xvi. [1904-6] 472, xxiii. [1911-12j 97.
J. C. Lambert. ANTINOMIANISM.— See Law.
ANTIOCH ('AjTt^xem).— 1. In Syria.— About 20 miles from the Mediterranean, the Orontes, turning abruptly westward, enters a fertile plain, 10 miles long ana 5 wide, which separates the great Lebanon range from the last spurs of the Taurus. Here Seleucus Nicator, after his defeat of Antigonus at Issus in 301 B.C., discovered an ideal site for the capital of his Syrian kingdom, the Asiatic portion of the vast empire of Alexander the Great, and here he built the most famous of the 16 Antiochs which he founded in honour of his father Antiochus. Planned by Xenarius, the original city occupied the level ground between the river and Mt. Silpius, and, like all the Hellenistic foundations in Syria, it had two broad colonnaded streets intersecting at the centre, or Omphalus. The Seleucid kings vied with one another in extending and adorning their metropolis. A second quarter was added on the eastern side, perhaps by Antiochus I. ; a third, the ' New City,' was built by Seleucus Callinicus on an island — similar to the island in the Seine at Paris — which has since disappeared, probably owing to one of those seismic disturbances to which the region has always been peculiarly subject ; and a fourth, on the lowest slopes of Silpius, was the work of Antiochus Epiphanes. Henceforth the city was known as a Tetrapolis, or union of four cities (Strabo, XVI. ii. 4). Such was the magnificent Greek substitute for the ancient and beautiful but
too essentially Semitic capital of Syria — Damascus. A navigable river and a fine seaport: — Seleucia of Pieria — made it practically a maritime city, while caravan roads converging from Arabia and Meso- potamia brought to it the commerce of the East. It attained its highest political importance in the time of Antiochus the Great, whose power was shattered by the Romans at Magnesia. In 83 B.C. it fell into the hands of Tigranes of Armenia, from whom it was wrested by the Roman Republic in 65 B.C. Thereafter it was the capital of the pro- vince of Syria, and the residence of the Imperial legate. Pompey made it a civitas libera, and such it remained till the time of Antoninus Pius, who made it a colonia. The early emperors often visited it, and embellished it with new streets and public buildings.
During the Jewish wars (69 B.C.) ' Vespasian took with him his army from Antioch, which is the metropolis of Syria, and without dispute deserves the place of the third city in the habitable world that is under the Roman Empire, both in magnitude and in other marks of prosperity ' (Jos. BJ iii. ii. 4). In the 4lh cent. Chrysostoni estimated the population at 200,000, of whom 100,000 were then Christians, and probably he did not reckon slaves and children.
Antioch was called ' the Beautiful ' (tj koKt) [A then. i. p. 20]), but its moral repute was never high. ' In no city of antiquity was the enjoyment of life so much the main thing, and its duties so incidental, as in "Antioch upon Daphne," as the city was significantly called' (Mommsen, Prov.'^, 1909, ii. 128). The pleasure-garden of Daphne, 5 miles from the city, 10 miles in circumference, with its sanctuary of Apollo, its groves of laurel and cypress, its sparkling fountains, its colonnades and halls and baths, has come down through history with an evil name. Daphnici mores were proverbial, and Juvenal flung one of his wittiest jibes at his own decadent Imperial city when he said that the Orontes had flowed into the Tiber {Sat. iii. 62), flooding Rome with the superstition and immorality of the East. The brilliant civilization and perfect art of the Greek failed to redeem the turbulent, fickle, and dissolute character of the Syrian. In- stead of either race being improved by the contact, each rather infected the other with its characteristic vices. Cicero flattered Antioch as a city of ' most learned men and most liberal studies' {pro Arch. iii.), but tlie sober verdict of history is diflerent.
' Amidst all this luxury the Muses did not i3nd themselves at home ; science in earnest and not less earnest art were never truly cultivated in Syria and more especially in Antioch. . . . This people valued only the day. No Greek region has so few memorial-stones to show as Syria ; the great Antioch, the third city of the empire, has — to say nothing of the land of hiero- gljTjhics and obelisks — left behind fewer inscriptions than many a small African or Arabian village ' (Mommsen, op. cit. 130, 131f.).
No city, however, after Jerusalem, is so closely associated with the Apostolic Church. From its very foundation it had in its population a strong Jewish element, attracted by the offer of ' privileges equal to those of the Macedonians and Greeks ' (Jos. Ant. XII. iii. 1). The Jewish nation ' had the great- est multitudes in Antioch by reason of the size of the city. . . . They made proselytes of a great many of the Greeks perpetually, and thereby, after a sort, brought them to be a portion of their own body ' {BJ\ll. iii. 3). While the Judaism of Antioch did not assimilate Hellenic culture so readily as that of Alexandria, and certainly made no such con- tribution to the permanent thought of the world, it yet did much to prepare the city for the gospel. ' Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch,' who was early won tu Christianity, and is named among the Seven of the Jerusalem Church (Ac 6^), was evidently one of that great number of Antiochene Greeks who had previously felt the spell of the Jewish faith. And it was the mixture of national elements in the Churcli of Antioch — pure Greeks with Greek-speaking Jews — that peculiarly fitted her to play a remarkable