Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And yesterday we were talking about Springfield from The Simpsons and how funny it is that there are bajillion Springfields in the United States of America, and that's part of the joke that The Simpsons was going for. Likewise, we've been talking about how there are a whole lot of Antiochs in the Bible world. And one of those Antiochs comes up a ton because it's the home base of all of the Apostle Paul's missionary journeys. It's where Christians were first called Christians, according to the Bible. But we've been looking at a slightly less well-known Antioch. This is Pisidian Antioch, where Paul went with the gospel, and it looks like it initially caught on. We're hot on the trail of figuring out whether that initially held up for the long term or not. We started on that project yesterday. We're going to pick up where we left off right now after my close personal friend Jeffrey Foote plays some music. Here we go. And it goes on. This is very relevant to our quest to figure out whether Christianity stuck here, whether Galatians worked here. It goes on. It says in verse 49 of Acts 13, then the word of the Lord spread throughout the whole region, but the Jews incited the God-fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from their region. So they, Paul and Barnabas, shook the dust from their feet. There you go, there's your dust. In keeping with what Jesus said to do back in Matthew 10, you know, go stay at the house. If it's people of peace, stay with them. Great. If they're not into it, just bang the dust off of your sandals and go on to the next town. So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them. I don't even want your dirty dirt on my shoes. I'm out of here. And then protest against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. And then, of course, in chapter 14, they go to Iconium, which we talked about for the last couple of days, and they did miraculous signs. Iconium didn't know quite what to do with it. And then they find out that the Jews are gonna kill them or rough them up. So Paul and Barnabas go on to Lystra and Derby. So they end up in the little towns as a result of pressure in the big towns. And there's a healing in Lystra, and the people of Lystra, of course, are like, oh, you're our Greek gods. Here's some sacrifices. And then Paul and Barnabas are like, What? No, what are you doing? We are not that, nay, we are but men. And then they're like, Well, if you're not the gods we want you to be, we will hit you with rocks and beat you. And so Paul, this is where he gets dragged out of the city, and everybody thinks that he's dead. And so then, verse 1421, after some real mishaps and adventures in the little towns of Lystra and Derby, then it says, Paul and Barnabas preach the good news in Derby and won a large number of disciples, and they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and back to Pisidia in Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God, they said. Then Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church with prayer and fasting. They committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. Then after going through Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia, and when they'd preached the word in Perga, they went down to Italia. I never know how to say that one. It's not like Italia, it's Atal A-T-T-A-L-I-A. From Italia, they sailed back to regular Antioch, not to be confused with Pisidian Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. And then, of course, Paul and Barnabas report back to Antioch, and everybody in Antioch is like, that's pretty cool. But then some people in chapter 15 come up from Jerusalem and they're like, No, we are going to Judaize. You got to get circumcised. And Paul and Barnabas, again, they're in regular old Antioch, like home base Antioch, Syrian Antioch, they're like, you are wrong about that. And probably right there at the beginning of chapter 15, my theory is that that's when Galatians gets written, because as soon as Paul gets back to old Syrian Antioch, Derby, Lystra, Iconium, and Pisidian Antioch have already been thrown into confusion in this coordinated strike from people who came up from Jerusalem preaching circumcision. Then after Paul sends off that letter to the four churches we've been talking about, he goes down to Jerusalem and meets with all of the Jerusalem leaders who had walked with Jesus, and they all agree that the gospel is for the Gentiles and they don't have to get circumcised. And that's the timeline of how all of that works out. So it's really interesting how much Poseidon Antioch comes up in there. And really, in terms of pure word count, Poseidon Antioch gets the most press. And it looks like they were the most, we hear the most about how receptive they were. But did you catch there at the end of chapter 14 when I was reading? Paul and Barnabas, in all four of these towns, they appointed elders in each church with prayer and fasting, and they committed them to the Lord. So these are real churches in these towns, even though the leaders, you know, just necessarily by default are rookies. Now they're probably not theological rookies. I mean, they were, you know, largely from the synagogues. There would have been people who knew the existing Old Testament scriptures who could have been tapped on the shoulder for these roles, and no doubt there were some very enthusiastic Gentile converts. We hear about that. Remember, when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. So in our quest to figure out whether Galatians worked in each of these towns, the first question we've asked is what does the Bible say? Well, the trail goes cold on Poseidon Antioch. It gets one little reference in a letter to Timothy later on, but that's a recollection of how things went when Paul went through there before. The trail goes cold biblically on Pisidian Antioch, but what we see biblically, I mean, it sure looks like it worked out. Paul went back three times or two more times, at least after his initial visit. At least on one of those visits, Pisidian Antioch would have already received the letter to the Galatian churches, and they apparently still welcomed Paul, so I guess the letter went over well enough. They weren't like, you aren't welcome here because of that letter you sent us. We're all sore from our adult circumcisions, and we don't want you rubbing it in. So don't come to our town, buster. No, they seem to have welcomed him with open arms, and the churches seem to have all still been going on those next two missionary journeys. So in terms of biblical evidence, I mean there's nothing to say it didn't work. It looks like it did. But then the second thing we've looked at with all of these churches is the textual evidence, the literary evidence, the documentation evidence from outside the Bible. And we don't really get a lot in that regard. It's not like Iconium. I guess I should tell you now that of the four cities, Iconium is the biggest. Lystra and Derby are maybe kind of tied for the smallest. Maybe Derby was a little smaller than Lystra even. And Pisidian Antioch was the second biggest. It was a good-sized town. It was a very pro-Roman town. It was founded by one of Alexander the Great's generals after Alexander died in like 330-ish BC. His generals, you'll remember, carved up Alexander's empire, and the general Seleucus ended up with this part of Alexander's empire in what we call Galatia. And one of the first jobs of Seleucus and his son, Antiochus, get it? Antiochus Antioch. One of the first jobs of these two, you know, Greek-ish generals descended from Alexander the Great culturally was to wipe out the stubborn Frenchies. The Gauls were dug in in Gaulatia in the early two hundreds BC, and Antiochus was ultimately the guy who beat them down, pacified the region, Greekified the region culturally against the begrudging French colonists, the Gauls, who had migrated here and still lent their name to the region. And thus this town that was right on one of the main roads was named Pisidian Antioch, or Antioch in Pasidia, after Antiochus, son of Seleucus, general of Alexander the Great, who was the emperor in this area. And then, of course, because Antiochus was a really common family name for those descended from Seleucus, that's why you see Antioch as a town name all over the place in the part of the world that was ruled by the Seleucids before the Romans finally came to town and took over everything. So initially, this is a stubbornly, reluctantly Greekified town, but then the Romans show up and they revitalize Pisidian Antioch by making it a military colony. There was a huge crisis, a big part of the reason that the Roman Republic fell apart, like the old Roman government, you know, with Julius Caesar and Pompey and all of those people. Part of the reason it fell apart was because they didn't know what to do with their veterans. They did so much war and so much conquering, and these veterans served such long terms that they would come back to Rome and the police couldn't control them. Like, what are you gonna do? You having like your 20-year-old police boy go out and correct these hardened veterans.
SPEAKER_00You can't stand there, sir. There are rules in Rome. You can't fly flags like that or run your business that way. I'll call my police manager on you.
SPEAKER_01And the you know, the hardened, grizzled veterans who fought the Gauls and the Celts and are 50 years old and muscled and tattooed and scarred up and have the one eye just laughing.
SPEAKER_02So they couldn't control their own legions when they came back and they formed gangs in Rome, and entire hills of Rome got taken up by these veteran gangs. And so one of the reforms of Augustus and the early empire was we got to get these guys land. We have to make colonies where we can send them, and they get gigantic properties, and they can live out their days and build something for their family there, or we're not gonna be able to keep law and order in Rome. So that's what Pisidian Antioch is when Paul shows up with the gospel in Acts chapter 13. It's a bunch of Jews, it's a bunch of native Phrygians wearing their little smurf hats, it's some leftover grumpy Gauls, probably not wearing their little smurf hats, with little dashes of Gaulic culture still there, but they've been pretty Greekified. And then it's these former Roman legionnaires and their descendants who are setting up these villas and stuff in the Roman style. So it's a pretty weird town, and yet this weird town from people from all over the world with totally diverse views, they responded to the gospel early on, and it looks like what records we have indicate that it stuck. I'm gonna need one more day on Passidia and Antioch for to round out the stuff we're talking about here, but also I need to remember to go and actually look and see what you can still see there today. I don't know that yet. We're gonna find that out together, and that's gonna be fun. And then it's proclamation time, and the proclamation is taking shape. We're about to answer a historical question about whether or not Galatians worked and how Christianity played out in the ensuing centuries after the book of Galatians was written, which I think is really fun. So proclamation inbound tomorrow. It's very important, and I shall proclaim something. In the meantime, we're gonna pause right now and then we'll pick up where we left off next time around. Cool. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.