Cyprus and the Mission

The first stage of the first missionary journey carried the gospel to Cyprus, the homeland of Barnabas: landing at Salamis, preaching through the synagogues, crossing the island to Paphos, and there confronting the magician Bar-Jesus, called Elymas, who was struck blind, so that the proconsul Sergius Paulus believed (Acts 13:4–12). This file examines the Cypriot mission in detail and what it meant that the gospel first reached the island through its own son.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Crossing to Cyprus

When the Holy Spirit set apart Barnabas and Saul, the first destination of their mission was Cyprus (Acts 13:4). The choice was natural: Cyprus was Barnabas’s homeland (Acts 4:36), a near and accessible island with a substantial Jewish diaspora and synagogues in which to begin, and already the recipient of the gospel through the Cypriot Hellenists who had carried it to Antioch (Acts 11:19–20). Sailing from Seleucia, the port of Antioch, the company landed at Salamis on the island’s eastern coast — the great commercial city facing the Syrian mainland — and “when they were at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they had John to assist them” (Acts 13:5, RSV). The plural “synagogues” indicates the size of the Salaminian Jewish community; Barnabas the Cypriot Levite was leading the gospel into the very synagogues of his native island, with his cousin John Mark as their attendant (hypēretēs).

Across the Island to Paphos

From Salamis in the east the company traversed the whole length of the island: “when they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos” (Acts 13:6, RSV). Paphos, on the southwestern coast, was the administrative capital of the Roman province of Cyprus and the seat of the proconsul. The journey across the island — through its towns and presumably its synagogues — is passed over by Luke in a single clause, but the later Cypriot tradition would fill it with the labors of Barnabas in his homeland, and the Acts of Barnabas would make this and a later visit the seedbed of the island’s Church (see The Apostle of Cyprus). What Luke records is the climactic encounter at the capital.

Sergius Paulus and Elymas

At Paphos the mission met both its highest-ranking inquirer and its sharpest opposition in a single scene. “They came upon a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet, named Bar-Jesus. He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God” (Acts 13:6–7, RSV). Sergius Paulus, the Roman governor, was a man of standing and curiosity who wished to hear the apostles; but attached to his entourage was a Jewish magician and false prophet, Bar-Jesus, also called Elymas — “for that is the meaning of his name” (Acts 13:8) — who “withstood them, seeking to turn away the proconsul from the faith” (Acts 13:8, RSV). The scene is a contest between the gospel and the magic and false prophecy that infested the Hellenistic world, fought for the soul of a powerful man.

The decisive word here is Paul’s, not Barnabas’s, and the narrative marks the shift: “But Saul, who is also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, ‘You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind and unable to see the sun for a time’” (Acts 13:9–11, RSV). Immediately a mist and darkness fell upon Elymas, and he went about seeking someone to lead him by the hand (Acts 13:11). The blinding is a judicial sign — the man who sought to keep another in spiritual darkness is given over to physical darkness for a time, an echo of Paul’s own temporary blinding on the Damascus road turned to judgment rather than conversion. “Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord” (Acts 13:12, RSV).

The Shift to Paul

It is at this Paphos episode that Luke’s narrative makes its quiet but permanent change. Up to Acts 13:9 the missionary is “Saul”; from this verse — “Saul, who is also called Paul” — he is “Paul,” and the order of the partnership begins to reverse. After Paphos the company is “Paul and his company” (Acts 13:13), and soon “Paul and Barnabas” (Acts 13:43, 46, 50). Several explanations are offered: that Paul, now moving in the Roman Gentile world, takes up his Roman cognomen; that the conversion of the Roman Sergius Paulus, a man of the same name, marks the symbolic turn to the Gentile mission; that Paul’s leading role in the Elymas confrontation signals his emergence as the chief speaker (Acts 13:9; Bruce, Acts, 1988; Keener, Acts, on 13:9). Whatever the cause, Cyprus is the threshold across which “Barnabas and Saul” becomes “Paul and Barnabas.” That this transition happens in Barnabas’s own homeland is one of the quiet ironies of the narrative: the senior apostle leads the mission to his native island, and there yields the lead to the colleague he had recruited.

The Meaning of the Cypriot Mission

That the gospel first reached Cyprus through its own son gave the island a claim no other early Church could quite match in the same form. Cyprus did not merely receive a missionary; it received its own native apostle, a Cypriot Levite set apart by the Holy Spirit, returning to plant the faith among his own people (Acts 4:36; 13:2–5). This is the foundation on which the later Cypriot tradition built. When the Acts of Barnabas and the Byzantine sources narrate Barnabas’s return, labor, and death on the island, and when the Church of Cyprus claims apostolic foundation and independence from Antioch, the bedrock is this first mission of Acts 13: the apostle of Cyprus was Cyprus’s own (see The Apostle of Cyprus and The Autocephaly of Cyprus).

For the journey itself, the Cypriot leg established the pattern that would hold on the mainland: begin in the synagogues, meet both belief and opposition, confront the powers of false religion and magic with the power of the Spirit, and win Gentiles of standing. The blinding of Elymas and the faith of Sergius Paulus are the firstfruits of a mission that would carry “Paul and Barnabas” across Asia Minor and back, “a door of faith to the Gentiles” opened first on the island of the son of encouragement (Acts 13:12; 14:27).

See Also

References

  • The Acts of the Apostles 13:4–13; 11:19–20; 4:36; 14:27. (RSV consulted; Elymas blinded at 13:11; Sergius Paulus believes at 13:12.)
  • Bruce, F. F. The Book of the Acts. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988. (On Acts 13:4–12, Cyprus, Sergius Paulus, and the name “Paul.”)
  • Keener, Craig S. Acts: An Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012–2015. (On the Cypriot mission and the Saul–Paul transition.)
  • Hackett, John. A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus. London: Methuen, 1901. (On the apostolic mission to Cyprus.)