Meanwhile, the believers who had been scattered during the persecution after Stephen’s death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch of Syria. They preached the word of God, but only to Jews. However, some of the believers who went to Antioch from Cyprus and Cyrene began preaching to the Gentiles about the Lord Jesus. The power of the Lord was with them, and a large number of these Gentiles believed and turned to the Lord. When the church at Jerusalem heard what had happened, they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw this evidence of God’s blessing, he was filled with joy, and he encouraged the believers to stay true to the Lord.
Acts 11:19-23
Let’s turn our attention now to Antioch, this place that became the centre of Christian missionary endeavour and the symbol of outreach to Gentiles. Paul and Silas used Antioch as a base and the focus of the activity in this segment of Acts that we are analysing.
Why is this city mentioned above called Antioch of Syria? Simply because there were two Antiochs. There was an Antioch in Syria and there was an Antioch in Pisidia. I have included another map for you to examine with the two Antiochs shown clearly. Actually there were many cities named Antioch by Seleucus Nicator who named them after his father Antiochus.
To give you the information below I have simply gone to the International Bible Encyclopaedia in E-Sword and typed Antioch in the search bar. Then clipped and pasted the information in this Gems. It is that easy.
1. Antioch in Syria
In 301 bc, shortly after the battle of Ipsus, which made him master of Syria, Seleucus Nicator founded the city of Antioch, naming it after his father Antiochus. Guided, it was said, by the flight of an eagle, he fixed its site on the left bank of the Orontes (the El-‘Asi) about 15 miles from the sea. He also founded and fortified Seleucia to be the port of his new capital. The city was enlarged and embellished by successive kings of the Seleucid Dynasty, notably by Seleucus Callinicus (246-226 bc), and Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 bc). In 83 bc, on the collapse of the Seleucid monarchy, Antioch fell into the hands of Tigranes, king of Armenia, who held Syria until his defeat by the Romans fourteen years later. In 64 bc the country was definitely annexed to Rome by Pompey, who granted considerable privileges to Antioch, which now became the capital of the Roman province of Syria. In the civil wars which terminated in the establishment of the Roman principate, Antioch succeeded in attaching itself constantly to the winning side, declaring for Caesar after the fall of Pompey, and for Augustus after the battle of Actium. A Roman element was added to its population, and several of the emperors contributed to its adornment. Already a splendid city under the Seleucids, Antioch was made still more splendid by its Roman patrons and masters. It was the “queen of the East,” the third city, after Rome and Alexandria, of the Roman world. About five miles distant from the city was the suburb of Daphne, a spot sacred to Apollo and Artemis. This suburb, beautified by groves and fountains, and embellished by the Seleucids and the Romans with temples and baths, was the pleasure resort of the city, and “Daphnic morals” became a by-word. From its foundation Antioch was a cosmopolitan city. Though not a seaport, its situation was favourable to commercial development, and it absorbed much of the trade of the Levant. Seleucus Nicator had settled numbers of Jews in it, granting them equal rights with the Greeks. Syrians, Greeks, Jews, and in later days, Romans, constituted the main elements of the population. The citizens were a vigorous, turbulent and pushing race, notorious for their commercial aptitude, the licentiousness of their pleasures, and the scurrility of their wit. Literature and the arts, however, were not neglected.
In the early history of Christianity, Antioch occupies a distinguished place. The large and flourishing Jewish colony offered an immediate field for Christian teaching, and the cosmopolitan nature of the city tended to widen the outlook of the Christian community, which refused to be confined within the narrow limits of Judaism. Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch, was one of the first deacons (Act_6:5). Antioch was the cradle of Gentile Christianity and of Christian missionary enterprise. It was at the beginnings of the church at Antioch that the council at Jerusalem decided to relieve Gentile Christians of the burden of the Jewish law (Acts 15). Antioch was Paul’s starting-point in his three missionary journeys (Act_13:1; Act_15:36; Act_18:23), and he returned from the first two to Antioch as his headquarters (Act_14:26; Act_18:22). Here also the term “Christian,” doubtless originally a nickname, was first applied to the followers of Jesus (Act_11:26). The honoruable record of the church at Antioch as the mother-church of Gentile Christianity gave her a preeminence which she long enjoyed. The most distinguished of her later sons was John Chrysostom. The city suffered severely from earthquakes, but did not lose its importance until the Arab conquest restored Damascus to the first place among Syrian cities. Antioch still bears its ancient name (Antakiyeh), but is now a poor town with a few thousand inhabitants.
2. Antioch of Pisidia
Antioch of Pisidia was situated in a strong position, on a plateau close to the western bank of the river Anthios, which flows down from the Sultan Dagh to the double lake called Limnai (Egerdir Göl). It was planted on the territory of a great estate belonging to the priests of the native religion; the remaining portions of this estate belonged later to the Roman emperors, and many inscriptions connected with the cult of the emperors, who succeeded to the Divine as well as to the temporal rights of the god, have survived. The plateau on which Antioch stood commands one of the roads leading from the East to the Meander and Ephesus; the Seleucid kings regularly founded their cities in Asia Minor at important strategical points, to strengthen their hold on the native tribes. There is no evidence that a Greek city existed on the site of Antioch before the foundation of Seleucus. Ramsay must be right in connecting Strabo’s statement that Antioch was colonized by Greeks from Magnesia on the Meander with the foundation by Seleucus; for it is extremely unlikely that Greeks could have built and held a city in such a dangerous position so far inland before the conquest of Alexander. Pre-Alexandrian Greek cities are seldom to be found in the interior of Asia Minor, and then only in the open river valleys of the west. But there must have been a Phrygian fortress at or near Antioch when the Phrygian kings were at the height of their power. The natural boundary of Phrygian territory in this district is the Pisidian Mts., and the Phrygians could only have held the rich valley between the Sultan Dagh and Egerdir Lake against the warlike tribes of the Pisidian mountains on condition that they had a strong settlement in the neighborhood. We shall see below that the Phrygians did occupy this side of the Sultan Dagh, controlling the road at a critical point.
That there were Jews in Antioch is proved by Act_13:14, Act_13:50, and by an inscription of Apollonia, a neighboring city, mentioning a Jewess Deborah, whose ancestors had held office in Antioch. In 189 bc, after the peace with Antiochus the Great, the Romans made Antioch a “free city”; this means that it ceased to pay tribute to the Seleucid kings. Antony gave Antioch to Amyntas of Galatia in 39 bc, and hence it was included in the province Galatia formed in 25 bc out of Amyntas’ kingdom. Not much before 6 bc, Antioch was made a Roman colony, with the title Caesareia Antiocheia; it was made the capital of southern Galatia and the chief of a series of military colonies founded by Augustus, and connected by a system of roads as yet insufficiently explored, to hold down the wild tribes of Pisidia, Isauria and Pamphylia.
Latin was the official language of Antioch, from its foundation as a Roman colony until the later part of the 2nd century ad. It was more thoroughly Romanized than any other city in the district; but the Greek spirit revived in the 3rd century, and the inscriptions from that date are in Greek. The principal pagan deities were Men and Cybele.
Antioch, as has been shown above, was the military and administrative center for that part of Galatia which comprised the Isaurian, Pisidian and Pamphylian mountains, and the southern part of Lycaonia. It was hence that Roman soldiers, officials, and couriers were dispatched over the whole area, and it was hence, according to Act_13:49, that Paul’s mission radiated over the whole region. The “devout and honorable women” (the King James Version) and the “chief men” of the city, to whom the Jews addressed their complaint, were perhaps the Roman colonists. The publicity here given to the action of the women is in accord with all that is known of their social position in Asia Minor, where they were often priestesses and magistrates. The Jews of Antioch continued their persecution of Paul when he was in Lystra (Act_14:19). Paul passed through Antioch a second time on his way to Perga and Attalia (Act_14:21). He must have visited Antioch on his second journey (Act_16:6) and on his third (Act_18:23).
Difficulties unravel between the lips and the fingertips.
Ian Vail
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
Plato
Don’t compare your beginning with someone else’s middle.
Thorin Klosowski
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.
Albert Einstein