Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Acts 14:1-20, Iconium and Lystra: taken for Zeus and Hermes
After a plot in Iconium, Paul heals a lame man at Lystra and the crowd hails him and Barnabas as Hermes and Zeus. When they refuse the sacrifice, the crowd is turned against them and Paul is stoned.
Acts 14:1-20, in every translation this tool compares.
In Iconium the message divides the town, and a plot to stone them sends Paul and Barnabas on to Lystra. There Paul heals a man unable to walk since birth, and the locals, speaking their own language, decide the gods Zeus and Hermes have come in human disguise. The priest from the nearby temple of Zeus arrives to sacrifice, and the two men, horrified, insist they are mortals and point the crowd to the living Creator who sends rain and harvest. Opponents from earlier cities then turn the crowd, Paul is stoned and left for dead, yet he gets up and goes back into town.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/blasphemy\/","n":"Blasphemy","s":"Speech that dishonored God, including claiming what belonged to God alone. Under the law the penalty was death.","r":""}
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In Lystra the landowning citizens spoke Latin, while the crowd spoke Lycaonian, which is why the apostles grasp late what is happening (Keener and his notes). A local legend told how Zeus and Hermes once visited the region in disguise and only an old couple, Baucis and Philemon, took them in (Keener and his notes); Wright notes that Ovid tells the story, and inscriptions and a temple near Lystra honor the two gods together (Price and House). Hermes was the messenger who spoke for Zeus, which Arnold takes as the reason Paul, the main speaker, became Hermes. A sacrifice was a rite, a party and a shared meal at once, which helps explain why the crowd was hard to stop (Wright). The speech calls the gods worthless things, a common Jewish term, not demons (Arnold), and needs no Bible, speaking of the God who sends rain and harvest (Keener and his notes). Stoning went beyond the law and was mob action (Keener and his notes); though Lystra was a Roman colony, the Zondervan atlas remarks, justice there bent to local prejudice. Wright notes that a crowd's stones could stun without killing, as here.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Acts 14:1, 14:5, 14:8, 14:11, 14:12, 14:13, 14:14, 14:15 and 14:17
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Acts 14:1-4, 14:5, 14:8, 14:9-11, 14:12, 14:13, 14:14, 14:15-16 and 14:17
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Acts 14:6
- N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part Two, comment on Acts 14:8-20
- N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography, ch. 5, Cyprus and Galatia
- Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness, ch. 2, Greco-Roman and Oriental Religions, section Gods and Goddesses in the Book of Acts
- J. Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, ch. 15 chart of discoveries (Lystra)
- Carl G. Rasmussen, Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, The Journeys of Paul, Paul's First Missionary Journey
