Acts 11:20

ἄνδρες Κύπ. καὶ Κυρ., cf. Acts 4:36; Acts 21:16; Acts 2:10; Acts 6:9. Ἑλληνιστάς, see critical notes. εὐαγγελιζόμενοι τὸν Κ. Ἰ.: on construction with accusative of the message, Simcox, Language of the N. T., p. 79. We can scarcely take the phrase given here, instead of “preaching that Jesus was the Christ,” as a proof that the word was preached not to Jews but to Gentiles. Ἀντιόχειαν : on the Orontes, distinguished as Ἀ. ἡ πρός, or ἐπὶ Δάφνῃ, and bearing the title μητρόπολις. There appear to have been at least five places in Syria so called under the Seleucids. For the Arabs Damascus was the capital, but the Greeks wanted to be nearer the Mediterranean and Asia Minor. The city built in 500 B.C. by Seleucus Nicator I. became more and more beautiful, whilst all the trade of the Mediterranean was connected with it through its harbour Seleucia. All the varied elements of the life of the ancient world found a home there. From the first there were Jews amongst its inhabitants. But in such a mixed population, whilst art and literature could gain the praise of Cicero, vice as well as luxury made the city infamous as well as famous. Josephus calls it the third city of the empire, next to Rome and Alexandria, but Ausonius hesitates between Antioch and Alexandria, as to the rank they occupied in eminence and vice. The famous words of Juvenal: “in Tiberim defluxit Orontes,” Sat., iii., 62, describe the influences which Antioch, with its worthless rabble of Greeks and parasites, with its quacks and impostors, its rivalries and debaucheries, exercised upon Rome. Gibbon speaks of the city in the days of Julian as a place where the lively licentiousness of the Greek was blended with the hereditary softness of the Syrian. Yet here was the μητρόπολις, not merely of Syria, but of the Gentile Christian Churches, and next to Jerusalem no city is more closely associated with the early history and spread of the Christian faith. See “Antioch” (G. A. Smith) in Hastings' B.D.; Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chaps. xxiii., xxiv.; Renan, Les Apôtres, chaps. xii., xiii. ἐλάλουν : “used to speak,” so Ramsay.