The life and work of St. Paul

ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 205
which communicated southwards with Perga and Attaleia, westwards with
Apamea, northwards with tho great towns of Galatia, and eastwards with
Iconium and the Cilician gates, made it a great commercial emporium for the
trade of Asia Minor in wood, oil, skins, goat's hair, and Angola wool. Its
triio position for- it had long been confused with Ak-sher, tho ancient Philo-
raclium was discovered by Mr. Arundell in 1833. 1
Conspicuous among its
ruins are the remains of a noble aqueduct, which shows its former importance.
Its coins are chiefly remarkable for the prominence given on the one hand to
its colonial privileges, and on the other to its very ancient worship of the moon
as a masculine divinity under the title of Men Archaios. This worship had in
former days been very flourishing, and the temple of Men had been thronged
with Hieroduli, who lived on its estates and revenues. Strabo tells us that,
some seventy years before this time, on the death of King Amyntas, to whom
Pisidia had been assigned by Mark Antony, this temple had been abolished ;
but though tho worship may have been entirely shorn of its ancient splendour,
it probably still lingered among tho ignorant and aboriginal population.
But the message of the Apostles was not in the first instance addressed to
the native Pisiilians, nor to the Greeks, who formed the second stratiiin of the
population, nor to the Romans, who were the latest occupants, but primarily to
the Jews who had come thither with the stream of Latin immigration, which
secured them equal privileges with the other inhabitants. Doubtless the first
care of the Apostles and this was the work in which Mark might have been
specially useful was to repair to the " strangers' rooms " attached to ther
synagogue, and then to find convenient lodgings in the Jews' quarter, and to
provide means of securing a sale for the cilicium, by the weaving of which
Paul honourably lived. The trade only occupied his hands, without interrupting
either his meditations or his speech, and we may reasonably suppose that
not a few of the converts who loved him best, were won rather by the teach-
ing and conversations of the quiet rooms where he sat busily at work, than by
the more tumultuous and interrupted harangues in the public synagogues.
But the mission of Paul and Barnabas was not meant for the few alone.
They always made a point of visiting the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, and
seizing any opportunity that offered itself to address the congregation. The
visit to Antioch in Pisidia is rendered interesting by the scenes which led to
tho first sermon of St. Paul of which the record has been preserved.
The town possessed but a single synagogue, which must, therefore, have
been a Large one. The arrangements were no doubt almost identical with
those which exist in the present day throughout the East. As they entered
the low, square, unadorned building, differing from Gentile places of worship
by its total absence of interior sculpture, they would see on one side the latticework
partition, behind which eat a crowd of veiled and silent women. In front
of these would be the reader's desk, and in its immediate neighbourhood,
1 It is near the insignificant modern town of Jalobatz, and its identity is rendered
certain by coins and inscriptions. (See Arundell, Asia Mi'iwr, ch. xii. ; Hamilton,
Rcteaarche* in Asia Minor, i., ch. xxrii. ; in Con. and Hows. i. 182.)