Ac 11:19-24. THE GOSPEL BEING PREACHED TO GENTILES AT ANTIOCH ALSO BARNABAS IS SENT THITHER FROM JERUSALEM, WHO HAILS THEIR ACCESSION AND LABORS AMONG THEM.
19. they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose
about Stephen--and who "went everywhere preaching the word"
(Ac 8:4).
travelled as far as Phenice--that part of the Mediterranean coast
which, commencing a little north of Cæsarea, stretches northwards for
upwards of one hundred miles, halfway to Antioch.
and Cyprus--(See on
Ac 4:36).
An active commercial intercourse subsisted between Phenice and Cyprus.
and Antioch--near the head of the northeast coast of the Mediterranean,
on the river Orontes, and containing a large colony of Jews, to whose
religion there were there numerous proselytes. "It was almost an
Oriental Rome, in which all the forms of the civilized life of the
empire found some representative; and through the two first centuries of
the Christian era it was what Constantinople became afterwards, 'the
Gate of the East'" [HOWSON].
JFB.
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