Aq – Syria and Cilicia during the Time of Paul

Syria and Cilicia during the Time of Paul

Together with Phoenicia, Syria was a major Jewish center in the Second Temple period. Its proximity to the Land of Isra’el meant that Jewish life there closely resembled that in the Land, the Syrian Jewish community acting as good allies and partners. Jewish settlement in Syria in general was very ancient and was probably augmented by further immigration following the Seleucid conquest of Judea shortly after 200 BC (Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 12.119, Jewish War 2.463, 7.43). The book of Obediah, verse 20, witnesses the colonization of Jews as military settlers in Syria, possibly subsequent to the annexation of Judaea by Antiochus III in 187 BC. Josephus asserts that Syria possessed the largest percentage of Jewish inhabitants in the diaspora and that both Jews and Judaizers (to see link click Ag – Who Were the Judaizers?) were to be found in every city (Jewish War 2.463, 7.43). Rabbinic literature records the existence of Jewish tenants, the mortgaging of land to Jews by Gentiles (Tosefta Terumoth 2:10-11), and various types of tenures on Jewish land – suggesting that some Jews might have held large estates (Tosefta Terumoth 2:13).

Cilicia consisted of two major regions on the southeast Anatolian coast: Cilicia Trachea (or Aspera) in the mountainous region west of the Lamus River reaching to Pamphylia, and Cilicia Campestris (or Pedias) the fertile plain south of the Taurus and west of the Amanus range. The province is mentioned in the book of Judith (a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles, but excluded from the Jewish Apocrypha), where Nebuchadnezzar dispatched Holofernes, the head of his army, to punish the inhabitants of Cilicia for insubordination (Judith 1:12, 2:21-25). A further rebellion is recorded in First Maccabees 11:14.

The region having become so infested with bandits that “Cilicia” became a virtual synonym for “pirate,” Pompey was forced to action against those bandits. The defeat of the “Cilician pirates” resulted in Cilicia Trachea being incorporated into the Roman Empire, both Cilician districts being joined to the already-existing province, which consisted of Pamphylia and Isauria. Tarsus became the capital of Cilicia under Pompey in 66 BC, the provincial territory initially extending from the Chelidonian Isles to the Gulf of Issus, with Cyprus being added in 58 BC. While constituting a district administrative unit, Cilicia Pedias constituted a dependency of the Legate of Syria, while Cilicia Aspera was joined to the province of Lycaonia.³⁴