Sherman E. Johnson
[Sherman E. Johnson is Dean Emeritus, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, CA.]
I
“.. . and in Antioch the disciples were first dubbed Christians” (Acts 11:26). The ending -ianos in Greek, ianus in Latin, meant a partisan or follower of someone, possibly in a good sense but not necessarily so. People in Antioch of Syria heard of a group who were enthusiastic about someone called Christos. This word that once had been an adjective (“an anointed one”) had now become a surname for Jesus, and the Antiochenes fastened the title “Christians” on this group. Soon the followers of Jesus accepted it as a title of honor, as it seems to be in I Pet. 4:16, and we find Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, early in the 2nd century, using it so.
The text in Acts shows, at any rate, that the Christians were noticed.
We know much more about Antioch and the story of Christianity in that city than we do about Paul’s ministry there. The notices in the Book of Acts are sparse, but its tradition is that in the early part of his apostleship the city was Paul’s base of operations. This book pictures him as returning there after two missionary journeys and then setting out again.
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II
With the exception of Paul’s ministry, we have abundant knowledge of the history of Antioch. This comes first of all from ancient Greek and Roman historians, Church Fathers and chroniclers, and especially the great orator Libanius who lived in the city in the 4th century A.D.
These sources have been supplemented in the most extraordinary way by archaeology, in particular by the excavations conducted by Princeton University from 1932 through 1939, plus aerial photographs and the study of coins, inscriptions and other artifacts. The magnificent mosaic floors uncovered by the archaeologists in Antioch and its suburbs, Daphne, throw a flood of light on the appearance of the city and the daily life of its inhabitants. Since the mosaics are mostly copied from paintings and rug designs, they enrich our knowledge of pictorial and non-representational ancient art, and can be compared with mosaic floors from Carthage and other places in the Mediterranean. Many of the floors are preserved in the museum at Antioch (Antakya), but several are to be found in the Princeton University Art Museum, other American museums, and the Louvre.
A large floor from Daphne pictures, around its borders, a woman leading a child, a man driving donkeys, and even two men playing a game like backgammon. Although this dates from the 5th century A.D., scenes in St. Paul’s time would not have been very different, and we do in fact have some mosaics from the 1st century, the floor of a public bath and a representation of the mythical judgment of Paris, who was required to say which of three goddesses was the most beautiful.
III
In antiquity Antioch was the third largest city of the Roman empire; today Antakya is a relatively small Turkish provincial town, populated by Turks and Arabs. It is part of the sanjak of Alexandretta (Iskenderun) which France ceded to the Turks after after World War II, but is still claimed by Syria and included in the official maps of that country. It lies in the fertile Amuk plain through which the Orontes flows. To the east it is hemmed in by Mount Silpius to the east. The ancient port of Antioch, Seleucia Pieria, lay a little north of the mouth of the Orontes, and north of this was Mount Casios, now known as Musa Dagh, visible from Cyprus, a place of worship in antiquity, and famous in modern
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times for the events related in The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.
Antioch was an important centre for commerce and communications, with easy access to the sea. Roads ran north to Alexandretta, Tarsus and the whole of Anatolia, and east to Aleppo (ancient Beroea, not the one mentioned in Acts), whence other routes ran to Mesopotamia, the Lebanon, Damascus and Palestine. This is significant for Paul’s travels.
Before the time of Alexander the Great there were small settlements in this region. Then after Alexander’s death, one of his generals, Seleucus I Nicator (“the conqueror”), who reigned 305/304–281/280 B.C., seized much of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Persia to form what we call the Seieucid monarchy. He first founded the port of Seleucia Pieria in 300 B.C. and soon afterward Antioch, which he named for his father Antiochus. This lay between the river and what was later the colonnaded main street and was divided into two quarters, one for the native Syrians and the other for his veterans and followers, Macedonians, other Greeks, and even Jews who had been mercenaries in his army. Under later rulers the city was greatly expanded. One feature of Seleucus’ foundation in Antioch was a famous statue of the Tyche (good fortune) of the city. This spirit soon became a goddess, worshipped along with Greek and Syrian divinities.
Five miles south of Antioch is the grove of Daphne. It was here, according to the myth, that the nymph, fleeing from Apollo’s embraces, was changed into a laurel tree (daphne) in answer to her prayer. It was believed that one of these trees was the actual laurel; the spot became sacred to Daphne and Apollo, and was in time surrounded by a luxurious suburb. Springs from this place furnished much of the water supply of Antioch.
Since our interest is in the background of St. Paul’s life, it would be tedious and unnecessary to trace the wars, dynastic struggles, and decline and fall of the Seieucid monarchy. Only a few of the kings will be mentioned here.
In the time of Antiochus III the Great, great-grandson of the founder (223-187 B.C.), Syria’s power began to decline. By now the Roman republic was vitally interested in the Near East, and Antiochus incurred Rome’s hostility by giving aid to Hannibal, its Carthaginian foe. The Syrian king lost most of Asia Minor at the battle of Magnesia (190). Many of his veterans and supporters now found refuge in Antioch and were settled on an island in the Orontes. At the same time, there was general prosperity in
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Antakya as seen from the south with Mount Silpius in the background.
Syria and royal revenues were increased.
Like most Hellenistic kings, Antiochus fostered learning and art, and now we hear for the first time of a great public library in Antioch. In the 3rd century B.C. at least one significant poet lived in this city, Aratus, who came from Soli (not far from Tarsus), a Stoic whose poem Phaenomena was quoted in the speech attributed to Paul (“for we also are his [God’s] offspring” (Acts 17:28).
The younger son of this man, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“God manifest,” 175-163 B.C.) is infamous in Jewish history because he carried on the first strictly religious persecution of Judaism. All the successors of Alexander the Great had promoted Hellenistic culture and religion, but Epiphanes was fanatical in this respect, and by his program he sought to bring unity and stability to his realm. At first he had some success in Jerusalem because he gave privileges to those who adopted Greek customs, but opposition arose. He was angered because a Roman envoy forbade him to invade Egypt, and at this moment resistance to Hellenism increased in Palestine. Antiochus marched on Jerusalem, established
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the worship of Zeus Olympics in the Temple, and sacrificed pigs on its altar (167 B.C.). This led to the revolt headed by Mattathiah and his son Judas Maccabaeus, which culminated in the virtual independence of Judaea and the dynasty of Maccabaean high priests and kings.
Antiochus Epiphanes was nevertheless a man of great energy, intelligence and imagination. Glanville Downey, the historian of Antioch, says that he brought his capital to a point of luxury and magnificence that placed it among the foremost cities of antiquity.” The athletic games that he arranged on one occasion were marked by a procession or men arrayed lavishly in purple, gold and silver. But alter his death Syria was never again a world power.
Rome finally put an end to the Seleucids, and Pompey, after having cleared the pirates out of the eastern Mediterranean, came to Antioch in 64 B.C. Syria was now made a province under a proconsul sent by the senate. Pompey had additional public buildings constructed in Antioch, and Julius Caesar added even more. After Caesar’s assassination the city, because of its importance, was involved in the struggles that followed. Cassius had seized the property of the Antiochene Jews; Mark Antony restarted it, and it was in Antioch that Antony married Cleopatra.
When Augustus finally came to power in 31 B.C. it was good news for Antioch, as it was for Asia Minor and much of the Greek world. The city increased in prosperity. Further building took place, and Herod the Great made contributions toward this. Syria was changed from a senatorial province to an imperial one, ruled by a legate. Augustus’ successor, Tiberius, during whose reign (A.D. 14-37) Jesus carried on his ministry, constructed new public buildings, and a great colonnaded street, two Roman miles long. The roadway was about 31 feet wide, and the arcades on either side slightly wider. This made Antioch one of the most beautiful cities of the Mediterranean world.
IV
Before discussing the relation of the Apostle Paul to Antioch I should like to emphasize the importance of the city in the later history of Christianity. Alongside Rome, Alexandria, Ephesus and (later) Constantinople, it was one of the great sees of Christendom. There is an ancient ecclesiastical tradition that Peter was its first bishop, but there is hardly any evidence to support this. Peter
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is the only one of the Twelve known to have visited Antioch (Gal. 2:11), and this may be the basis of the tradition.
The first bishop of Antioch who emerges clearly into historical light is Ignatius, who passed through Asia Minor on his way to be martyred in Rome early in the 2nd century. He wrote letters to six Asian churches and to Polycarp of Smyrna. These show that, on the one hand, he insisted on a threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters and deacons and taught that the bishop must be the centre of unity for every local church. Ignatius also warned against the tendency to conform to Judiasm and the teaching that Christ only seemed to have a human body. On the other hand, he was a fiery, prophetic spirit, eager to end his ministry in martyrdom. Ignatius had some knowledge of traditions contained in the Gospel of Matthew and perhaps also in that of John. Paul was his great hero, and he said to the Romans, “I do not command you like Peter and Paul.”
There seem indeed to have been in Antioch people whom the later Church regarded as heretics; for example, Menander, a follower of the Simon Magus of Acts 8:9–24, and two of Menander’s pupils, Satornilus of Antioch and the great gnostic Basilides of Alexandria. Theophilus, bishop of Antioch later in the 2nd century, was orthodox and wrote a defense of Christianity addressed to someone named Autolycus. But a 3rd century bishop of the city, Paul of Samosata, was condemned by other Christians for teaching that Jesus was a man adopted by God to be his Son.
Antioch was certainly an important centre of Christian theological learning. In the 3rd century Lucian attempted to produce an accurate critical edition of the Scriptures. The greatest days of Antiochene theology were, however, in the 4th and 5th centuries. Whereas the theologians of Alexandria in Egypt were prone to interpret the Bible allegorically and emphasized the divinity of Christ, sometimes to the detriment of his true humanity, the school of Antioch held to a more literal and natural interpretation of the Bible, and although it accepted Jesus’ divine nature it helped to preserve for later Christianity the truth of Jesus’ human nature.
This was in large part possible because some great Christian writers made use of the best of Greek education. It was while Theodosius I the Great was emperor in Constantinople (379–395) that the orator and educator Libanius taught in Antioch. To him we owe much of our knowledge of the history and monuments of the city. He was a pagan, but among his pupils were John Chrysostom,
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Antioch mosaics in the Antakya Museum.
bishop of Antioch, “golden-mouthed” preacher who later became Patriarch of Constantinople; the commentator Theodore of Mopsuestia; and Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus, two of the “Cappadocian Fathers.”
In a sense, the Apostle Paul made all of this possible, but he would never have dreamed how many controversies and errors, and how much sainthood and constructive thinking, came out of the movement that partly began in Antioch.
V
Paul was a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a region that had close contacts with Syria; he had also been educated in Jerusalem (Acts 22:3). Thus he probably knew something about the character of the Jewish community in Antioch. Jews had lived in the city since its founding, and perhaps some of them were farmers in the surrounding country.
The Jews were not full citizens of Antioch, for citizenship required belonging to one of the “tribes,” and this involved taking part in pagan worship. Like other non-Greek peoples, they probably constituted a politeuma or community (the same Greek word
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is used in Phil. 3:20, in which Paul says that the commonwealth of Christians is in heaven). Here, as in Alexandria, they no doubt were allowed to regulate their internal affairs, and were of course exempted from worship of gods other than Yahweh.
It is interesting that the Antiochene Jews called themselves “Hebrews,” and referred to their fellow-religionists in Palestine and Egypt as Ioudaioi, Jews or Judaeans. They may have thought of themselves as descendants of the northern tribes of Israel. In this connection, we note that Paul described himself as a member of the tribe of Benjamin and a Hebrew born of Hebrews (Phil. 3:5), though this latter may only mean that he and his ancestors could speak Aramaic or Hebrew.
On the whole, Antiochene Jews must have lived peaceably among their neighbors. The first indication of trouble that history records comes in 145 B.C., when Demetrius II, who had just come to the Syrian throne, asked Jonathan Maccabaeus, successor of his brother Judas, to send Jewish troops to put down a revolt (I Mace. 11:41–51). Other mercenaries became involved as well; the city was sacked and the Jewish soldiers returned to Judaea with much plunder. This contributed to the unpopularity of the Jews of Antioch. Even before this, Greeks in Palestine and Egypt had resented the privileges of the Jews and the fact that they kept themselves separate.
These tensions were still present in the time of St. Paul, and the Jews in turn had grievances because heavy Roman taxation made agriculture unprofitable. As in Palestine at the same time, some men resorted to brigandage. During the emperor Caligula’s reign, about A.D. 39-41, there was an outbreak in Antioch which resulted in the massacre of many Jews. The next emperor, Claudius, in 41, confirmed the privileges of the Jewish community, but unrest continued for some time.
Christianity began as a movement within Judaism. This being so, how would it fare in Antioch? It seems to have had considerable success, and this was partly because the Jewish religion allowed much variety. The Judaism that existed in the Greek-speaking world could use philosophical language, and it was not only given grudging respect but it actually attracted many converts. Its proclamation that there is only one God made sense to thoughtful people, and Jewish family life was wholesome, but the drawbacks were circumcision, strict food laws, and the fact that this was a national religion; one cut off certain ancestral associations in becoming
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An early Christian church, St. Peter’s, built into a mountainside at Antakya.
a Jew.
VI
Antioch first comes into Christian history when we are told that one of the seven men appointed by the Jeursalem apostles “to serve tables” was an Antiochene convert to Judaism named Nicolaus (Acts 6:5). All these seven had Greek names, and Acts 6:1 says that the occasion of their appointment was difficulty between “Hellenists” and “Hebrews” over care of the widows. There are difficulties in this story. At least one of the seven, Stephen, preached and did not confine himself to the administration of alms, which later tradition assigned to deacons.
It was often been thought that Acts contains an “Antiochene” source of great value (perhaps underlying 6:1–6; 11:19–30; 13:1–3). Even if Peter had the honor of converting the first Gentile, Cornelius (10:1—11:18), Antioch was the place where the first significant number of Greek pagans came into the Church. A persecution followed the martyrdom of Stephen, and Hellenistic Jewish Christians fled to Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch. At first they preached only to Jews, but some men from Cyprus and
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Cyrenne converted Greeks also.
The author of Acts believed that the church in Jerusalem supervised and approved all new developments. Modern scholars doubt that this is accurate, but the story is that Barnabas was sent to Antioch, and was so pleased by what he discovered that he went to Tarsus and brought Saul (Paul) to Antioch to assist in the mission.
Christian prophets also came from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of these, Agabus (who is also mentioned in Acts 21:10–11), predicted a famine. We know from other historical sources that there was a severe shortage of grain in Judaea and all of Syria in A.D. 46-47. Apparently the church in Antioch was not governed by a board of presbyters or elders on the Jewish model; instead the leaders were “prophets and teachers.” Barnabas and Saul were among these, together with Simeon Niger (“the black”), Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, a courtier of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee. Herod had beheaded John the Baptist and threatened Jesus (Luke 13:31); nevertheless, our Lord must have made a considerable impression among Herod’s entourage, for Joanna, the wife of the prince’s steward, was among the women who followed Jesus to Jerusalem (Luke 8:3).
The Holy Spirit instructed the prophets of Antioch to send Barnabas and Saul on what is known as the first missionary journey, to Cyprus and parts of Asia Minor. Thus the earliest church in Antioch was unusual in three respects: it was prophetic in character, it may have reached into rather high social circles, and it encouraged missionary activity.
We have to remember, however, Paul’s claim that his conversion and call to apostleship did not come from or through any other human being but directly from the risen Christ (Gal. 1:1) and that it was only after three years that he went to Jerusalem and there consulted only Peter and James the Lord’s brother. His ministry for some time afterward was in Syria and Cilicia (2:15–22).
Thus if Barnabas and Saul were sent out by Antiochene prophets, this was not an ordination but commissioning for a specific mission.
It is difficult to trace Paul’s journeys from the evidence of his letters, and almost impossible to reconcile what he says with all the narratives in Acts. The letters are the primary source and must be given preference. For example, in Acts 15 we are told of a
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council in Jerusalem which endorsed the mission to Gentiles but laid certain restrictions, including food laws, on the converts. Paul nowhere suggests in any way that he knows of this decree, and he certainly would not have accepted its terms. The letter was addressed to the brethren in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia and may have been enforced to some extent in those regions. In any case, Paul no longer worked in Syria and Cilicia.
Galatians tells a story very different from that of Acts. “After 14 years” (perhaps dating from his conversion) the Apostle went to Jersualem with Barnabas and Titus, and he claims that the “pillars” of the church, James, Cephas (Peter) and John accepted his mission completely. It was agreed that Paul and Barnabas should go to the Gentiles, and the Jerusalem leaders to the Jews. The “pillars” urged Barnabas and Paul to “remember the poor, as I was very eager to do” (Gal. 2:1–10).
Then the Apostle mentions Antioch, the only time that he does so in the letters preserved to us. Before Cephas came there, Jews and Gentiles had eaten together, but some other man who evidently came from James tried to forbid this table-fellowship. When Peter gave in to these strict Jews, Paul “opposed him to his face.” Even Barnabah was carried away by what Paul called hypocrisy. The result would have been to split the church into two groups not in communion with one another (Gal. 2:11–14).
Acts 15:36–41, however, gives a different account of the falling out of Barnabas and Paul, namely that Mark had deserted the apostles in southern Asia Minor and that therefore Paul did not wish to take him along on another journey.
Both the statements of Galatians and Acts could be partial explanations of the difficulty. Many of these details are not interesting except to historians, but some important points emerge. It was in Antioch that non-Jews were welcomed into the Christian fellowship with no restrictions whatever, and Paul never compromised on the essential issue, that Jews and Gentiles are equal before God, because it is faith in God through Christ that gives them the new life.
It is also clear, both from Acts and especially from Paul’s letters, that the Apostle regarded his collection for the poor in Jerusalem as an essential part of his ministry. He believed deeply that those who gave generously would receive spiritual blessings through the prayers of those who received the gifts, and that each side gave and received (Rom. 15:25–27; II Cor. 9:6–15). Evidently
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he hoped that this bounty would bind the two parts of the Church together. This was especially necessary because of the questions that had arisen in Jerusalem and the bitter dispute in Antioch.
The church in Antioch probably accepted the sort of compromise embodied in the decree of Acts 15, and thus for a time took a middle position between those of Paul and the strict Jewish Christians of Jerusalem. The Jewish community of Antioch remained large and powerful for several centuries, and the Christians were by no means insulated from its influence. Ignatius of Antioch spoke against Judaizing tendencies in Asia Minor, but he had no doubt previously combatted them in Antioch itself. John Chrysostom, late in the 4th century, delivered sermons against the Jews in Antioch and condemned the practice of Christians who joined in celebration of the Jewish festivals.
For Further Reading
Glanville Downey, “Antioch (Syria),” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, I, 145–148; Supplementary Volume, 27.
Glanville Downey, Ancient Antioch (Princeton University Press, 1963).
Jack Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Mediterranean World of the Early Christian Apostles (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 63-71.
Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L. Wilken, Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978).
(Reprinted by permission from Lexington Theological Quarterly 18, 1983, pp. 64-73.)
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