Acts 13:6

And when they had gone through the isle 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 Bible.

they found a certain sorcerer[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. Berakhoth59 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. See Lucian, Necyomantia, where a wonderful story is told of a magician named Mithrobarzanes. Also Lucian, Philopseudes, where one of the wonder-workers is described as "a Syrian from Palestine."

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 wisemen of the realm both in policy and religion, though their title in after times was degraded to baser arts and persons.