Acts 13:6

διελθόντες δὲ (ὅλην) τὴν ν.: “and they made a missionary progress through the whole island,” Ramsay, St. Paul, pp. 72 and 384, and “Words demoting Missionary Travel in Acts,” Expositor, May, 1896; on ὅλην, see critical notes. Ramsay gives nine examples in Acts of this use of διέρχεσθαι or διελθεῖν with the accusative of the region traversed, the only other instance in the N.T. being 1 Corinthians 16:5. In each of these ten cases the verb implies the process of going over a country as a missionary, and it is remarkable that in 1 12 this construction of διέρχομαι never occurs, though there are cases in which the idea of a missionary tour requires expression. Ramsay therefore sees in the use of the word in the second part of the book a quasi technical term which the writer had caught from St. Paul himself, by whom alone it is also employed. Πάφου : Nea Paphos the chief town and the place of residence of the Roman governor some little distance from the old Paphos (Παλαίπαφος, Strabo) celebrated for its Venus temple. The place still bears the name of Baffa, Renan, St. Paul, p. 14; O. Holtzmann, Neutest. Zeitgeschichte, p. 101; C. and H., smaller edition, p. 125. μάγον, cf. Acts 8:9; “sorcerer,” A. and R.V. margin, cf. Matthew 2:1, but word used here as among the Greeks and Romans in a bad sense. Wycl. has “witch,” and this in its masculine form “wizard” has been suggested as an appropriate rendering here. On the absurd attempt to show that the whole narrative is merely introduced as a parallel to St. Peter's encounter with Simon, chap. 8, see Nösgen, p. 427; Zöckler, in loco, and Salmon, Introduction, p. 310. The parallel really amounts to this, that both Peter and Paul encountered a person described under the same title, a magician an encounter surely not improbable in the social circumstances of the time (see below)! For other views see Holtzmann, who still holds that the narrative is influenced by Acts 8:14 ff. The word is entirely omitted by Jüngst, p. 120, without any authority whatever. Elymas, according to the narrative, says Jüngst, was either a magician or a false prophet. But the proconsul is styled ἀνὴρ συνετός, and this could not have been consistent with his relation with a magician: Elymas was therefore a kind of Jewish confessor. But neither supposition does much to establish the wisdom of Sergius Paulus. ψευδοπροφήτην like ψευδόμαντις in classical writers, here only in Acts; and Luke 6:26, by St. Luke. But frequently used elsewhere in N.T., and in the LXX, and several times in Didaché, xi. On the “Triple beat,” Magian, false prophet, Jew, see Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 415. Βαρϊησοῦς, on the name see critical notes.