The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2Stokes, George Thomas
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2
Stokes, George Thomas
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries; Bible. Acts -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Then after a time, when the disturbances which the Jews persistently
raised wherever they came had subsided, the apostles returned back
over the same ground, no longer indeed publicly preaching, but
organising quietly and secretly the Churches which they had founded
in the different towns through which they had passed, till they
arrived back at Perga, where perhaps, finding no ship sailing to
Antioch, they travelled to the port of Attalia, where they succeeded
in finding a passage to that city of Antioch whence they had been sent
forth.[113] This brief sketch will give a general view of the first
missionary tour made in the realms of paganism, and will show that it
dealt with little more than two provinces of Asia Minor, Pisidia and
Lycaonia, and was followed by what men would count but scanty results,
the foundation and organisation of a few scattered Christian
communities in some of the leading towns of these districts.
[113] It is well perhaps to note that the ι in this name
is long, representing the diphthong ει, the Greek name of
the town being Ἀττάλεια.
III. Let us now more particularly notice some of the details recorded
concerning this journey. The apostles began their work at Cyprus,
where they proclaimed the gospel in the Jewish synagogues. They were
attracted as we have said to this island, first, because it was the
native land of Barnabas, and then because its population was in large
degree Jewish, owing to the possession of the famous copper mines of
the island by Herod the Great.[114] Synagogues were scattered all over
the island and proselytes appertained to each synagogue, and thus a
basis of operations was ready whence the gospel message might operate.
It was just the same even at Paphos, where St. Paul came in contact
with the proconsul Sergius Paulus. The Jewish element here again
appears, though in more active opposition than seems to have been
elsewhere offered. Sergius Paulus was a Roman citizen like Cornelius
of Cæsarea. He had become dissatisfied with the belief of his
forefathers. He had now come into contact with the mystic East, and
had yielded himself to the guidance of a man who professed the Jewish
religion, which seems to have charmed by its pure morality and simple
monotheism many of the noblest minds of that age. But, like all
outsiders, Sergius Paulus did not make accurate and just distinctions
between man and man. He yielded himself to the guidance of a man who
traded on the name of a Jew, but who really practised those rites of
weird sorcery which real Judaism utterly repudiated and denounced.
This alone accounts for the stern language of St. Paul: "O full of all
guile and all villany, thou son of the devil, thou enemy of all
righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the
Lord?" St. Paul never addressed a lawful opponent in this manner. He
did not believe in the efficacy of strong language in itself, nor did
he abuse those who withstood him in honest argument. But he did not
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