The Apostle Paul Goes to Europe

Paul Visits the Place of the Tall People

In the years following the death of Alexander, his four leading generals fought among themselves as they divided up his empire. And while their struggles dragged on for generations, Greek culture and language spread rapidly across the region.

Two centuries later, when the Romans conquered the world, they created provinces, sub-provinces and districts in the occupied countries as governmental administrative units. At Paul’s time, Macedonia, located in the northern half of today's Greece, was one of these provinces. The smaller province of Achaia occupied much of the southern part of the country.

Centuries earlier, the original kingdom of Macedonia had been established in this region by Perdiccas of Macedon, the kingdom grew rapidly in power and influence under Alexander’s father, King Philip. Then, when Philip died, Alexander expanded Macedonia’s influence across the eastern Mediterranean world.

Almost every Greek name has a meaning, and Macedonia is no exception. The word literally means, “the place of the tall people.” It’s possible that in ancient times the southern Greeks were shorter than the northern Greeks. This is because the northern Greeks were called, makedhos, “the tall ones.”' It was in this “place of the tall people” that the Apostle Paul would begin to preach the gospel of Christ in Europe.

Luke’s record of Paul’s first visit to Macedonia and Achaia begins at Acts 16:8, where we learn that, after being directed by the Holy Spirit to pass through Asia Minor (today’s Turkey), Paul and his co-workers arrived at the city of Troas on the coast of the Aegean Sea. There, Paul saw a vision during the night of a “man of Macedonia”^[1] crying out for help. Acts 16:10 says, “After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.” This biblical statement is significant also because it is the first use of the first-person plural “we” in the Acts narrative, possibly indicating that the writer of Acts, traditionally regarded as Luke, now joins and accompanies Paul on this portion of his travels. (However, this also was a common device of ancient travelogues.)

The Church of St. Nicholas (Agios Nikolaos) in Kavala, Greece, features a prominent mosaic mural depicting the arrival of the Apostle Paul in Neapolis (the ancient name for Kavala). This 377 square-feet (35 square-meter) mosaic, titled "The Arrival of the Apostle Paul in Neapolis of Philippi," is located next to the church and is considered a significant attraction in the area. This open-air mosaic contains inset gold making it glisten in the sunlight and commemorates the Apostle Paul's journey to Europe to spread Christianity, prompted by a vision of a Macedonian man asking for help.

Paul’s Party Sets Foot on European Soil

After stopping overnight on the island of Samothrace, Paul stepped on continental European soil for the first time when his ship reached the port of Neapolis on the following day. That’s when this “new city” (neos new polis city) became the gospel's gateway to the Western world.

Neapolis was founded in the 7th century BC by the Thasians, people who lived on the nearby island of Thasos, two miles off the coast of Greece. These people were famous ship builders^[2] and built this little seaport as a place to transfer the pine wood they gathered from the mainland to their island for their ships. Some years later, while the Thasians were searching the hills near Neapolis for high quality wood, they discovered gold deposits. They decided to build a second town closer to the gold and negotiated with the local people to do so. Because this town was near an underground water supply, they called it “Springs.” In 356 BC, a dispute arose between the Thasians in Springs and the locals over nearby cultivated lands. King Philip II was asked to resolve the dispute. When he found the gold, he kicked the Thasians out, remodeled the town and renamed it Philippi after himself.

In the 8th century AD, when Philippi was destroyed, many of its inhabitants moved to Neapolis. As the city grew, it became a Christian center, as Philippi had been years before. For this reason, the residents changed its name to Christopolis, “the City of Christ.” Neapolis bore this name until the 15th century when the Ottoman army came and settled their cavalry there and renamed the city Kavala, its modern name.

The Roman road, Via Egnatia, connected Neapolis with Philippi and would have been the road Paul walked on when he traveled inland from the seaport. (Visitors to Kavala can still walk on this road today.) Philippi may have been the home of the physician Luke who traveled with Paul on occasion. As a result, Luke may have taken special interest in his description of the city as the "capitol of first district of Macedonian Rome" (Acts 16:12) a reference to the historical division of Macedonia earlier in the Roman period. A famous school of medicine existed in Philippi, where the gospel writer Luke may have studied.

A Small Colony – Not “The Chief City”

The years that followed the Roman invasion of Macedonia were troubled times. Quite often, the Macedonians organized rebellions against their unwanted visitors. For this reason, the Romans divided Macedonia into four smaller districts^[3] and placed restrictions on the people. For a time, residents of one district were not allowed to communicate with, marry or do business with those of other districts.

The Romans gave each district its own name, number and capital. District number one was Eastern Macedonia. Its capital was the city of Amphipolis. District number two, Central Macedonia, had as its capital Thessalonica, which was also the capital of the entire province. Western Macedonia, the third district, was home to Mount Olympus and had the city of Pella as its capital. Pella was also the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia and the birthplace of Alexander. District number four was Northern Macedonia with the city of Heraclea as its capital.

Philippi was a small farming village located in Macedonia’s first district.^[4] In 42 BC, a famous Roman battle took place nearby as Mark Antony and Octavian’s armies fought against the armies of Brutus and Cassius in the plains south of town. When the war ended, as a reward for their faithful service, the Roman commanders gave their retired veterans plots of farmland near Philippi, and the town became a Roman colony At Paul’s time, a colony was like a miniature Rome.^[5] The city was governed by Roman law, used Latin as its primary language and held Roman currency.

In Acts 16:11-12, the wording of the King James Version makes Philippi seem much more important than it really was. First, Philippi was not “the chief city” of that part of Macedonia – that was Amphipolis, the capital of the province. Also, according to history and to the literal Greek text of the New Testament, Philippi was a very small town, “a city colony of the first district of Macedonia.”

The Macedonian Man Was an Asian Woman!

Wherever Paul traveled, he seemed to be well informed about the location of scattered Jewish populations. When Paul came to Philippi, since there was no synagogue in town, he knew that there must be a very small Jewish community. According to Jewish law, a place had to have a minimum of ten Jewish men to have a synagogue. Because of this requirement, the few faithful Jews in town met outside the city walls by the river for prayers.

This is where Paul and his party went on the Sabbath – on the banks of the Zygakti River, a place commonly known as “Lydia’s River.”^[6] When Paul reached the river, he found a group of women gathered there. So, he and his co-workers sat down and began to speak with them. One of these women was Lydia, a businesswoman^[7] from the city of Thyatira in Asia Minor, a seller of purple goods. When the Lord opened her heart to hear Paul’s speaking, Lydia became the first Christian convert in Europe. The irony of the vision of the Macedonian man that brought Paul to Macedonia was that his first recorded convert was a Thyatiran saleswoman! (cp. Acts 16:4, 21-33). An inscription found in Philippi for her craft says the “city honors among the purple dyers, one Antiochus the son of Lyfos, a Thyatiran as a benefactor,” evidence that this trade was represented at Philippi.

Do you know how cloth merchants made purple dye in those days? The purple color came from a few drops of a liquid produced by the snails who lived in seashells found in the Eastern Mediterranean. Hundreds of snails were required to make the dye for one garment. And while this liquid dye worked well on animal fabrics like wool or silk, it did not work on plant-based fabrics like linen or cotton.

Because the dyeing process^[8] was complicated, purple garments were very expensive. For this reason, over time, purple became the color of royal families and rulers. In the Bible, the rich man in Luke 16:19 was clothed in “purple and fine linen.” And Roman soldiers put a purple robe on Jesus, mocking him as “King of the Jews” (John 19:2). Purple also became the official imperial color of the Romans, which is probably the main reason why Lydia came to Philippi, a Roman colony, to sell her purple goods.

Endnotes

[1] “This man has been variously interpreted by Bible commentators as referring to Luke, Lydia or ‘the cry of Europe for Christ.’” Robertson, Word Pictures, Vol. Ill, 248.

[2] Thirlwall, History of Greece, 72.

[3] “Macedonia was unusual as a Roman province in being divided into four sub-provinces, of which Philippi belonged to the first ... it’s capital city was Amphipods.” Marshall, Acts, 266.

[4] “And this epithet of first would belong to it not only as regarding the journey of Paul and Silas, but as lying furthest eastward, for which reason also the district was called Macedonia prima.” Alford, New Testament, Vol. 1, 760.

[5] The 2nd century Roman writer Aulus Gellius says that Philippi was “a portrait of the mother city on a small scale.” Jamieson, Commentary, 359.

[6] Fant, Guide, 110.

[7] A.J. Maclean, Hastings Dictionary, 560.

[8] “The purple dye was obtained from a conchylium, the shellfish Murex trunculus of Linneaus, and the waters of Thyatira produced the brightest and most permanent hues.” Lenski, Acts, 656.