2 Timothy 3:11

afflictions, which came unto me It is better to make the -afflictions" go with the preceding, and make a new clause commence with the relative. So R.V. sufferings; what things befell me; what persecutions.

The Antioch meant is that in Pisidia, originally planted by the Magnesians. Seleucus the son of Antiochus re-settled it, and called it Antioch after the name of his father: which name it kept, though under Augustus made a colony with the additional name of Cæsarea. Plin. N.H. v. xxvii. 24 -Pisidæ … quorum colonia Cæsarea, eadem Antiochia." Its ruins are still to be seen, one of the most striking objects being a very perfect aqueduct of twenty-one arches. See Lewin, Life of St Paul, i. 137. For the work and sufferings at Antioch see Acts 13:14-50. The place usually understood by Antioch would be the large and important city of Antioch in Syria; but in writing to Timothy, whose home was in that district, St Paul would use the word with its well-known local meaning.

Iconium lies S.E. of Antioch at a distance of sixty miles, on the dusty highroad connecting Ephesus with Antioch of Syria. It is still called Cogni, and, like Damascus, is an oasis in the desert, by the dry plains of Lycaonia. See Acts 13:51 to Acts 14:6.

Lystra lies about forty miles to the south of Iconium, on the same road, in a hollow, on the north side of which rises Kara Dagh or the Black Mountain. Its ruins remain and are called -the thousand and one churches," it having been an episcopal see under the Byzantine emperors. This was Timothy's birth-place. See Acts 14:6-20.

St Paul mentions these places and his sufferings there, (1) because they were the first, in his first period of ministry, (2) they were well known to Timothy and may well have led him to cast in his lot with the Apostle. See Introduction, pp. 57, 59, 62.

but out ofthem all Rather, and, yet with an ascending force which marks a contrast, so that -and yet" is hardly too strong; though the more exact rendering is to lay stress on -all" and on -delivered," cf. Winer, iii. § 53, 3.