“804. PAUL AND BARNABAS AT LYSTRA—ACTS 14”

Paul and Barnabas at Lystra—Acts 14

From Antioch in Pisidia, the apostolic travellers turned their steps eastward in the direction of Lycaonia, and traversing the barren uplands, at length, after a journey of ninety-three miles, descended into the plain in which Iconium, the capital of that province, stood. Here mountains, whose summits he in the region of perpetual snow, arise on every side, except towards the east, where a plain as flat as the desert of Arabia extends far beyond the reach of the eye. The town was pleasantly situated in a delightful climate, and in the midst of luxuriant gardens and fertile fields. Iconium was not, however, a city of great ancient importance, or of any historical renown. It rose to greatness in far later times, when, under the name of Konieh, it became the residence of the Seljukian sultans of Roum, who rebuilt the walls, and enriched it with numerous public buildings—reigning here in great splendor, till their power was broken by the irruptions of Genghis Khan and his grandson Hulokoo. Since the reign of Bayazid, it has belonged to the Osmanli Turks, and under them it flourished for a long time as the capital of the extensive province of Karamania, and the seat of one of the most powerful pashalics of the empire. But in recent times it has suffered much decline, and shows an aspect of decay and desolation. The city has, indeed, still an imposing appearance, from the number and size of its mosques, colleges, and other public buildings. But these stately evidences of Seljukian splendor are seen, on the nearer view, to be crumbling into ruins, while the actual dwellings of a large proportion of the inhabitants consist of a number of small buildings of sun-dried bricks, and wretched hovels thatched with reeds. The wall of the city, which is thirty feet high, with a circumference of nearly three miles, has eighty gates, and is strengthened by upwards of a hundred square towers, which are now, however, suffered to molder away, without any attempt to arrest their ruin. Although so much declined, Konieh is still one of the most considerable inland cities of Asia Minor, the population rather exceeding 40,000 souls. Of Greek and Roman Iconium there are scarcely any traces, unless in the inscribed stones and fragments of sculptures which are built into the walls.

At Iconium nearly the same course was taken by Paul and Barnabas, and nearly the same incidents occurred, as at Antioch. They began their labors in the Jewish synagogue; and their preaching was so blessed of the Spirit that “great multitudes both of Jews and Greeks believed.” The Jews who did not believe, however, now excited the minds of the Gentiles against the converts; and it was natural enough that attention should be paid to their calumnies, since the Jews might be supposed to know something of the designs and objects of a religion which was connected with and grew out of their own. The result was the formation, of two parties in the city, the one for and the other against the apostles and their doctrine. The post had thus become one of danger; but reluctant to quit it, seeing that so much good might be done and that they were greatly sustained by the miracles which attested the truth of their mission, the apostles lingered for some time, and only retired when they had certain information of a conspiracy being laid to destroy them.

They then proceeded to “Lystra and Derbe”—Lystra first, and Derbe after. The sites of both these places are unknown; but Colonel Leake Note: Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor, p. 102. London: 1824. was inclined to think that “the vestiges of Lystra may be sought for, with the greatest probability of success, at or near Wiran Khatoun, or Khatoun Serai, about thirty miles to the southward of Iconium.” Mr. Hamilton, however, prefers to find Lystra in a site of extensive ruins, called by the Turks Bin-bir-Kilissek (1,001 churches), at the northern base and side of a remarkable insulated mountain called Kara-Dagh (Black Mountain). This is about forty three miles south-east of Konieh. Some fifteen miles east of this is a site called Devli, and from the resemblance of names, together with the presence of some ruins, Mr. Hamilton thinks this may have been Derbe. Note: Journal of Geographical Society, viii. pt. ii. 154.

Lystra is the first place the apostles visit, at which we hear nothing of resident Jews, or of any synagogue. The transactions are with the heathen, until certain Jews come from Antioch and Iconium, purposely to stir up the people against them. There were probably, however, some Jews, if not many; and it is doubtless because the principal transaction commemorated in this visit was with the Gentiles, that the presence of Jews is not conspicuously denoted.

Here Paul and Barnabas seem to have addressed the people in the places of public resort, or in those open spaces where a fit audience could be found or gathered. On one of these occasions Paul perceived among the auditors a poor cripple listening with eager attention to his discourse. This man had an infirmity of the feet from his birth, and had never walked. Such persons are usually well known in the localities which they inhabit, and anything that happened to him would attract the more attention. Paul, therefore, feeling probably that it was desirable some signal and intelligible miracle should in such a place as this avouch the authority—not of men, nor by men—by which they spoke, and being also moved with compassion for this poor creature’s state, looked steadfastly upon him, and perceiving by his spiritual gifts, or by the answering look of the cripple’s eyes, or by both, that “he had faith to be healed,” he called to him with a loud voice. “Stand upright on thy feet!” and instantly the man sprung to his feet, and leaped, and walked. This miracle is parallel to those of the same kind wrought by our Lord himself, and to the one wrought by Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate; and the same remarks which were offered with respect to them apply equally to this.

This prodigy attracted fully as much attention as might have been expected; but the admiration it excited had a result upon which the apostles had not calculated. It centered in their own persons; and it may be that some little occasion may have been given for this, by the remarkable fact that Paul, for some reason or other, or, perhaps, without any particular reason, omitted the usual formula, expressive of agency merely, as, “In the name of Jesus;” “Jesus maketh thee whole;” and the like. If this was an oversight, they were painfully reminded of it soon. For the people, in the first burst of their enthusiasm, took them to be gods visiting the earth in human form: “they lifted up their voices, saying, in the speech of Lycaonia, the gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.” By this pointed reference to the speech or dialect of Lycaonia, it seems probable that in these rude outlying districts a kind of low Greek was spoken, greatly changed by pronunciation, and by the intermixture of old native words, from the more correct and polished language of the larger cities nearer the coast.

The notion that these wonder-workers were gods—that they were gods who had taken upon them human shape in visiting the earth—was one that would be naturally enough suggested under the older and more credulous forms of Gentile belief, which still held their ground in remote quarters like this, though nearly obsolete in the more refined and skeptical circles of heathendom. That the gods did often visit earth in the likeness of men was a cherished belief, and indeed the popular mythology abounded in instances of this, not all of them, nor indeed many of them, creditable to the gods themselves.

Jupiter as the Tutelary Deity of a City

Taking Paul and Barnabas to be gods, the Lystrians soon settled what gods they were. Jupiter (Zeus) was the tutelary god of their city, and they had a temple, or at least a statue dedicated to him. It was natural, therefore, to suppose that one of the two was Jupiter, who had come to visit and bless his own place. One might imagine that since Paul was the more active and prominent person of the two, and that it was indeed at his word the cripple had been healed, they would have selected him for Jupiter. They did, however, fix on Barnabas, perhaps because he was of huge athletic person and venerable presence, answering better than Paul to that idea of “the father of gods and men,” which the sculptors had embodied in marble. The curious cut here introduced represents Zeus under that aspect—as tutelary or guardian deity (Jupiter Custos)—in which he was worshipped by the Lystrians. Their image of him, to which they found a resemblance in Barnabas, must have been like this. Having concluded that Barnabas was Jupiter, it was easy to conceive that Paul was “Mercurius,” the Hermes of the Greeks. And the reason is, in this instance, given. It is, “Because he was the chief speaker;” and probably, also, because, as Mercury was the messenger of the gods, and particularly of Jupiter, it might be naturally concluded that it was he who now appeared in his company. In fact, notwithstanding the active prominence of his friend, these Lystrians seem throughout to assign the superior place to Barnabas, probably not only on account of Paul’s comparatively insignificant bodily presence, but from conceiving that he, as Mercury, may have been acting and speaking instrumentally for Jupiter, as it was often his vocation to do. Mercury, as every one knows, was, in his higher quality, the god of eloquence; and, in his lower quality, was the frequent companion of Jupiter in his rambles upon the earth. It is in that capacity, as the attendant or messenger of Jove, that he is represented in the fine intaglio from which the cut we introduce is taken.

Mercury, from an Antique Intaglio

When the news had spread that Zeus and Hermes had honored Lystra with their presence, the priest of Jupiter hastened to take his part in the proceedings. Soon he and his attendants appeared, with “oxen and garlands,” to lead the sacrificial devotions of the people to the descended gods. The use of the “garlands” has been considered uncertain. From the sculptures it, however, appears that on the occasion of a sacrifice, the party of sacrificers were usually crowned with garlands, and the attar hung with festoons of flowers, and that sometimes the victims also were thus decorated. In the sculpture at Rome, which furnished to Raphael that correct idea of an ancient sacrifice, which he has embodied in his well-known cartoon of the event before us, these particulars are represented, except that, instead of garlands, the victim (or rather, one of the two) has the head decorated with a string of beads or jewels. The garlands were composed of plants supposed to be appropriate or acceptable to the god to whom the sacrifice was made.

No sooner did the apostles perceive the object of these proceedings, than they rent their clothes and rushed, horrorstruck, among the people, imploring them to desist. “Men,’’ said they—or rather Paul, for be was manifestly the speaker—“Men, Note: So in original, which is certainly better than the “Sirs” of the Authorized Version. why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God,” and so on, in a short discourse, which is probably an epitome of a more ample address; although, indeed, on such occasions, a few emphatic sentences are often more cogently impressive than a longer remonstrance. The people were reluctant to abandon a delusion so gratifying to themselves; and it was not without difficulty that Paul and Barnabas at length succeeded in averting the intended sacrifice.

A revulsion of feeling then took place in the Lystrian mind, for which we can readily account; for men have always been apt to turn vindictively upon those on whose account they have stultified themselves, and to treat as less than men those whom they have been ready to worship as gods.

It had at this time become known, at the Pisidian Antioch and at Iconium, where the apostles were to be found; and some Jews went from both places with the express object of stirring up the Lystrians against them. The apostles were, before and after, persecuted often by the Jews in the places to which they came; but this is the first instance of their being followed from one city to another, for the express purpose of persecution.

The disappointed Lystrians were in a frame of mind to listen to the calumnies of these Jews. They readily grasped at the opportunity of recovering their self-esteem by regarding themselves as the innocent victims of impostors. So strongly was their wrath kindled, that they stoned Paul on the spot, and dragging him through the streets, cast him forth, as one dead, beyond the city. The Jews would first have hurried him beyond the walls, and stoned him there, as they did in the case of Stephen; but these heathen stoned him in the city tumultuously, and then cast his body forth. These small characteristic differences are well entitled to our notice.

Stoning was not a regular punishment among the Gentiles, as among the Jews, but was sometimes the result of a tumultuary excitement, as it might be among ourselves. It was, therefore, not performed with those precautions to insure a fatal result which were observed among the Jews. In this case, it seems that Paul had not been killed, but only rendered insensible by some one of the blows he had received. So, as the believers stood lamenting around his apparently dead body, he came to himself, and returned with them into the city. It would, however, have been unwise to make any longer stay in Lystra, and therefore he departed the next day with Barnabas. They proceeded to Derbe; and having preached the gospel there, they returned through all the towns they had visited in the outward journey, till they came to Perga in Pamphylia, where they had landed on their arrival from Cyprus. But now, purposing to return to Syria, they did not proceed down the river Cestrus, but went twelve miles across to Attalia, the seaport of Perga, where they might therefore reckon upon finding a ship bound for the Syrian coast. Here accordingly they embarked, and in due time reached Antioch the Great, thus completing the first great missionary tour of Paul and Barnabas.

Autor: JOHN KITTO