Acts 13:6

ὅλην added before τὴν νῆσον with אABCDE. Vulg. ‘universam insulam.’

6. διελθόντες δὲ ὅλην τὴν νῆσον ἄχρι Πάφου, and when they had gone through the whole island unto Paphos. Probably teaching at other places in the same way as they had done in Salamis. Paphos was the capital of Cyprus, and therefore the residence of the Roman governor. It was the more modern city, not the old city of Paphos, to which Paul and Barnabas came. See Dictionary of the Bible.

εὗρον ἄνδρα τινὰ μάγον ψευδοπροδήτην Ἰουδαῖον, they found a certain man, a magician, a false prophet, a Jew. That there were living among the Jews persons well known as pretenders to magic powers we can see from a story told T.B. Berakhoth 59 a, of a certain Rab Katina who, in his walk, as he was passing the door of one who was known as a professor of witchcraft and magic arts, felt a slight shock of an earthquake. He thereupon called out and asked ‘Does this wizard diviner know what that shock is?’ Upon this the man cried with a sanctimonious promptness worthy of his profession, ‘In the hour when the Holy One, blessed be He, remembers His children who dwell in sorrow among the nations of the world, He lets fall two tears into the great sea, and that is the cause of the tremor of the earth.’ Chaldæan astrologers and impostors are mentioned by Juvenal (VI. 562, XIV. 248) and Horace (Sat. I. 2. 1) and by many other Latin writers, and these were probably Babylonian Jews. So also Lucian, Necromantia, where a wonderful story is told of a magician named Mithrobarzanes. Also Lucian, Philopseudes, where one of the wonderworkers is called ‘A Syrian from Palestine.’

Βαρϊησοῦς, Bar-Jesus. This was his Jewish name. The Arabic name or title, Elymas = wise, was a self-assumed designation; and for that reason he is called ‘Magus’ = the magician, a name originally applied to the Persian priests, who were deemed the wise men of the realm both in policy and religion, though their title in after times was degraded to baser arts and persons.