relief to the poor in Judaea, which he and Barnabas fitly administered
in person (Acts xi. 30, xii. 25). This relief visit took place
about 45–46.[1] Having now reached an understanding with the
leaders in Jerusalem as to his mission to the Gentiles Saul felt
The Field Broadens.
anxious to break fresh ground, and probably broached
the subject to the local leaders. As they waited on
God for guidance, the Spirit through one of the
“prophets” directed that Barnabas and Saul be set apart for
such an enterprise; and this was done in solemn form (xiii. 1–3).
Naturally Barnabas thought of his native Cyprus; and thither
they sailed, about spring A.D. 47, with Mark (q.v.) as their
assistant. That they had at least one other companion is
probable not only from the phrase “Paul and his company”
(xiii. 13), but also from the traces of eyewitness in the narrative
of Acts (see Luke). Their work lay at first in synagogues.
But at Paphos an unparalleled event occurred, to which due
prominence is given. The Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus,
a man whose wide religious interest showed itself in having
about his person a Jewish “prophet” with magical pretensions,
sent for the new preachers. Barjesus, the magus or wizard
(as his surname, Elymas, probably denotes), opposed the rivals
to his patron’s attention; and this brought Saul decisively to
the front. His fitness for his part, as no mere Jew but in a
sense Roman facing Roman, is indicated by the pointed description,
“Saul, who is also Paulus.” His intervention procured
the confusion of the magus and the conversion of the proconsul.
This incident—so significant of the future in many ways—marked
the beginning of a new prominence of Paul in the conduct
of the mission (cf. “Paul and his company”). Further, on
leaving Cyprus the mission entered the region where Paul, not
Barnabas, was most at home. At Perga in Pamphylia a fresh
decision was reached as to the route now to be taken, and this
led to Mark’s withdrawing altogether (see Mark).
It does not seem that the personal factor weighed most with Mark; rather it was the nature of “the work” itself (xv. 38). Perhaps it had been tacitly assumed that the mission would not cross the Taurus range to the different world beyond, but keep to the coast-lands south of that great natural barrier, which were in close relation with Antioch and Syria generally. Accordingly, when Paul at last outlined the larger scheme, which had perhaps lain in principle in his own mind all along, Mark recoiled from its boldness. The natural thing indeed was to evangelize in Pamphylia, a country in close relations with Cilicia and Syria. Why then did Paul insist on pushing inland straight for the Taurus range and the high table-land some 3600 ft. above sea-level? Not to evangelize Pisidian Antioch, and the other cities in the south of Roman Galatia lying to the east of it; for Paul himself says that his preaching there was due to sickness (Gal. iv. 13), seemingly when on his way to other fields. These would be in the first instance certain cities in the south-east of the Roman province of “Asia,” where Jews abounded and had a large Gentile following. Had the great cities of western Asia, and particularly Ephesus (cf. xvi. 6), been his primary aim, he would have taken the easier and more direct route running west-north-west through Laodicea. Sir W. M. Ramsay thinks that Paul sought the Galatian highlands on purpose to get rid of malarial fever, contracted in the lowlands of Pamphylia. But Mark would hardly have left under these conditions. It seems better to suppose that it was only on the arduous journey to Antioch, amid “perils of rivers, perils of robbers,” or even after his arrival there, that the malaria (if such it was) so developed as to reduce Paul to the pitiable state, as of one smitten by the wrath of some deity, in which he preached to the Galatians in the first instance (Gal. iv. 13 seq.).
It was in the late summer or autumn of A.D. 46 or 47 that Paul arrived in the Pisidian Antioch, a considerable Roman colony. Its population was typical of the Graeco-Oriental part of the empire. It included the native Anatolian, the Greek, and the Jewish elements,[2] so frequently found together in Asia Minor since the days of the South Galatia. Seleucid kings of the Hellenistic period, who used Jews as colonists attached to their cause. The Anatolian ground-stock had marked affinity with the Semitic peoples, though it was Hellenized in speech and education. It is in this light that we must view the enthusiasm with which Paul’s gospel was received (xiii. 44 sqq.; Gal. iv. 14 seq.), and which marked an epoch in his ministry to the Gentiles. It was here and now that he uttered the memorable exclamation: “It was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to you: seeing ye thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles” (xiii. 46). Yet even so he did not here and now give up all hope that the Jews of the Dispersion with their more liberal conception of Judaism, might be won over to a spiritual rather than a national fulfilment of “the promise made to the fathers” by “the voices of the prophets” (xiii. 26–28, 32 seq., 38 seq.). Primarily this “turning to the Gentiles” had for Paul only a local meaning, as he continued to begin in each city with the synagogue.[3] But the emphasis laid on the incident in Acts shows that to one looking back it had a more far-reaching meaning, since, henceforth Paul’s work was in fact to lie mainly among Gentiles.
Paul’s experiences were much the same at Iconium, whither he and Barnabas betook themselves when expelled from Antiochene territory (probably after being scourged by the lictors, 2 Cor. xi. 25). There, too, Jews were at the bottom of the tumult raised against the missionaries (“apostles,” xiv. 4, 14), which forced them to flee into the Lycaonian regio of the province. In this district, marked by the native pre-Greek village system, they made Lystra and Derbe successively their headquarters. In the former occurred the healing of the lame man at the word of Paul (cf. Rom. xv. 9; 2 Cor. xii. 12; Gal. iii. 5), with its sequel in the naive worship offered to the strangers as gods manifest in human form. The story, told in a few graphic touches, sets before us Paul as the tactful missionary, meeting the needs of the simple Lycaonians with an elementary natural theology. Again his work was disturbed by Jews, this time his old foes from Antioch and Iconium, and he barely escaped death—one of those “deaths oft” to which he refers in 2 Cor. xi. 23, a passage which shows how far Acts is from exhausting the tale of Paul’s hardships and dangers, either in Galatia or elsewhere (with xiv. 1 cf. 2 Tim. iii. 11). At Derbe, the frontier city of Galatia to the south-east, Paul was within easy reach of Tarsus, his old home. But the needs of his young converts drew him back to face fresh dangers in Lystra, Iconium and Antioch (where, however, new magistrates were now in office), in order to encourage “the disciples.” To give them the support of responsible oversight, the apostles procured the election of “elders” in each church, probably on the model of the synagogue: for Paul had a due sense of the corporate life of each local brotherhood (Rom. xii. 4 seq.), and of the value of recognized leaders and pastors (1 Thess. v. 12 seq.; 1 Cor. xvi. 15 seq.; cf. Acts xx. 17, 28). Then, passing through Pamphylia they returned to Antioch, and reported to a church meeting “all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith unto the Gentiles.”
So ended Paul’s first missionary journey known to us in detail, the very first wherein his vocation as apostle of the Gentiles took marked effect. So far Gentile believers had been a mere minority, not essentially affecting the Jewish character and atmosphere of the Messianic Ecclesia, any more than the presence of proselytes was thought The New Issue Raised. to affect Judaism even outside Palestine. But all this was menaced by the work accomplished, apparently under divine auspices, in Galatia. There uncircumcised Gentiles formed the majority of the heirs to Messianic salvation; and if expansion continued on these lines, the like would be true of the new Israel as a whole. Nay, a definite check to Jewish conversions would result from the prejudice created by a large influx of men not committed to the Law by their baptism into Christ. Now that the logic of facts was unfolding so as to jeopardize the Law
- ↑ Sir W. M. Ramsay would identify the visit of Gal. ii. 1–10 with the relief visit itself (a view differing but little in effect from that given above); but most scholars identify it with Acts xv., in spite of Gal. i. 22 seq. compared with Acts xi. 30, xii. 25.
- ↑ For these, their history and significance in connexion with each of the cities studied, see Sir W. M. Ramsay, The Cities of St Paul (1907).
- ↑ Naturally Paul would have a regular address which he used with minor variations in beginning his mission in any local synagogue; and this Luke has in substance preserved for us here. For its authenticity, see Sir W. M. Ramsay, op. cit. 303 sqq.; compare A. Sabatier, L’Apôtre Paul (3rd ed., 1896), p. 89, for disproof of dependence on Stephen’s speech.
