Antioch

It is appropriate to begin the description of the biblical sites of the New Testament with Antioch, the most southern of those in Turkey, because this is where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. After the stoning of Stephen for blasphemy in Jerusalem in about 33 or 34 A.D., the fairly sizeable Jerusalem congregation of the followers of Jesus dispersed, and many of the people returned to their native cities. Nicholas of Antioch, a convert to Judaism and one of the “seven men of good reputation” (Acts 6:3-5) appointed to take charge of the practical arrangements of the bilingual communal body of believers, may well have been one of those. With the addition to the Antioch community of many who were not Jewish, a distinguishing name was needed, and so the new name, Christian, came into use, perhaps about 40 A.D.
Antioch had been refounded and named by one of Alexander the Great‘s generals, Seleucus Nicator, who obtained this area (along with a great deal more) after the Battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C. He named the city for his father, Antiochus. The capture of the land around Antioch had been one of the steps in Alexander’s grand strategy of uniting Europe and Asia into one Hellenic civilization under one ruler. As Antioch lay on the Orontes (Asi) River and on the main road between Asia Minor and the lands to the south, Seleucus Nicator was here in an excellent position from which he could further that Hellenization which Alexander had envisioned. Antioch thus was his capital of the kingdom of Syria.

By the time of Paul, Peter, and Barnabas, Antioch had long been an important city. There was a large Jewish community in good standing in the city, and in some of the synagogues the people used the Greek language in their services, reading from the Septuagint. The size of the capital and the use of Greek in the Sabbath service suggest that the people in Antioch were not as conservative as those in the church in Jerusalem. This is part of the reason why it was from Antioch rather than from Jerusalem that Christianity spread out to the world. A grotto at the foot of the hills a bit east of the city is known as St. Peter’s Grotto. It was discovered by Crusaders and is reputed to be the cave church where early Christians met in secret.

In the pre-Christian era there were the beginnings in Antioch of a Gentile community attracted and influenced by the high ethical and spiritual Jewish conception of God and by the code of morals of the worshippers. But even before Paul and Barnabas began preaching to them, a precedent had been set in Samaria: the centurion Cornelius, his relatives, and his close friends who had gathered with him in Caesarea to meet and to listen to Peter had been so moved that they began speaking in tongues of ecstasy and were baptised into the faith (Acts 10). Peter had been prompted to speak with them because of a vision he had seen; in contravention of his Jewish religion he had visited these men of another race. With his recital of the outcome of his visit the members of the church in Judaea accepted that ecstasy as evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Out of this developed one of the decisive changes in history, the beginning of the universal church. Jesus of Nazareth was no longer the savior of Orthodox or Hellenized Jews alone, he was the Savior of all mankind.

In connection with this inclusion of outsiders, in Antioch a fierce dispute arose over whether “those who were not circumcised in accordance with Mosaic practice could… be saved”. (Acts 15:1). Paul and Barnabas took the liberal point of view; some visitors who had recently come from Judaea argued strongly against it, and to settle the argument Paul and Barnabas were sent to Jerusalem to put their case before the apostles and elders there. Paul and Barnabas told the assembly about the miracles that had been happening in Asia Minor. After Peter and James advised accepting the gift of the Holy Spirit rather than circumcision as proof of God’s choice, two representatives, Judas and Silas, were sent back with Paul and Barnabas to deliver a letter welcoming the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia into the Christian fellowship.

It was from the church in Antioch that Paul and Barnabas set out on their first journey and to which Paul returned at the end of it and of his second journey. Although Tarsus was Paul’s family home, Antioch became his home base for his missionary work.

The later history of Antioch parallels the history of the area: between 252 and 300 A.D. ten assemblies of the church were held there, and it became the residence of the Patriarch of Asia. St. Jerome, the one who later prepared the Vulgate, believed he saw Jesus in a vision when he was in Antioch in 373 A.D. The saint most associated with the area was Simeon Stylites, one of a number of ascetics who removed themselves from the world by perching on a column. Simeon Stylites gathered around himself a monastic settlement on a hill about forty miles west of Antioch in what is now Syria; on his death in 459 A.D he was buried in Antioch. The area was devastated by earthquake and thousands of people were killed in 526 just when a large group of Christians had gathered in Antioch for a church meeting. Two more bad earthquakes occurred soon thereafter. Crusaders held the city from 1098 to 1268; except for a few years between the two world wars, since then it has been Turkish.

Two of the bishops of Antioch are famous in church history: Peter is supposed to have been the first. Ignatius was the “second successor of Peter” according to Eusebius. His letters, among them one to Polycarp, are among the earliest pieces of Christian literature we possess. He is strong in placing his belief in the supre¬macy of Christ above any other basis, including the Old Testament, for faith. Ignatius is supposed to have died a martyr to Christianity in Rome in about 110 AD. St. John Chrysostom, the fearless, outspoken Patriarch of Constantinople (398-404) was. born in Antioch in 345 (?) and got his early training there.