Paul's First Missionary Journey

Of the three great missionary journeys that the Acts of the Apostles ascribes to the Apostle Paul, the first is the shortest and, in some respects, the most consequential. It is the journey on which the mission to the gentile world took its decisive shape; on which Saul of Tarsus begins to be called Paul; and on which the working pattern of the whole apostolic enterprise — arrival, synagogue preaching, division, opposition, and the founding of a settled congregation with its own appointed leaders — was first tried and proven. This article follows that journey stop by stop, drawing on the continuous narrative of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 13:1 – 14:28), and keeping three kinds of statement distinct throughout: (Scripture) for what the New Testament text states, (Tradition) for what later Christian memory holds, and (Scholarship) for the reconstructions of modern historians and archaeologists. Dates are given as ranges, because Pauline chronology is a careful reconstruction resting on only a handful of fixed points, and the ancient sources give no absolute year. Scripture is quoted here from the public-domain Douay-Rheims translation.

A journey framed by Acts alone

The first journey is narrated continuously in a single stretch of Acts, chapters 13 and 14. It is confined to the island of Cyprus and the southern and central highlands of Asia Minor — the regions the ancients called Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia, in what is now southern Turkiye. (Scripture) Paul's own letters never describe the itinerary directly. Many scholars read his letter to the Galatians as addressed to the very congregations founded here — Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe — under what is called the "South Galatian" hypothesis, though this identification is debated and not universally held. (Scholarship) A single verse, "through infirmity of the flesh, I preached the gospel to you heretofore" (Galatians 4:13), is sometimes connected to the move inland from the malarial Pamphylian coast to the higher Anatolian plateau; but that connection is an inference, not something the text states. (Scholarship)

The conventional dating of the journey to roughly AD 46–48 is itself a scholarly estimate, derived by counting back from the one near-fixed anchor of Paul's whole career — his later appearance before the proconsul Gallio at Corinth, independently datable to about AD 51–52 — and from the Council of Jerusalem that follows the journey (Acts 15). (Scholarship) A fuller sense of where this journey sits in Paul's life can be found in the biographical reference on the Apostle Paul and in the chronological timeline.

The sending from Antioch

The journey is commissioned not by Jerusalem but by the church at Antioch on the Orontes, the great Roman-Syrian metropolis where, Acts records, "the disciples were first named Christians" (Acts 11:26). This is a point the narrative treats as deliberate: the gentile mission is launched from the gentile city that had become its base. (Scripture) "As they were ministering to the Lord, and fasting, the Holy Ghost said to them: Separate me Saul and Barnabas, for the work whereunto I have taken them" (Acts 13:2). The community laid hands on the two men and sent them off. (Scripture)

Paul's companion is Barnabas, a Cypriot-born Levite — "a Levite, a Cyprian born" (Acts 4:36) — who had earlier vouched for the newly converted Saul before the wary Jerusalem believers and had sought him out in Tarsus to help lead the Antioch church. (Scripture) With them travelled a younger assistant, John, also called Mark, a kinsman of Barnabas (Acts 13:5; Colossians 4:10). (Scripture) At the outset the order of names is "Barnabas and Saul"; by the middle of the journey it will have reversed. Antioch is the hinge to which the travellers will return, and from which the second and third journeys will likewise depart.

Cyprus: from Salamis to Paphos

"So they being sent by the Holy Ghost, went to Seleucia: and from thence they sailed to Cyprus" (Acts 13:4). Seleucia Pieria, the harbour of Antioch at the mouth of the Orontes, is only a point of embarkation in the narrative — no preaching is recorded there. (Scripture) The natural first landfall by this route is Salamis on the island's east coast, and it is there that the mission's preaching begins: "when they were come to Salamina, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they had John also in the ministry" (Acts 13:5). The plural "synagogues" points to a substantial Jewish community, and the choice of Cyprus is usually explained by Barnabas's family origins on the island. (Scholarship)

Crossing the whole island, the travellers reached its southwestern administrative capital, Paphos. "When they had gone through the whole island, as far as Paphos, they found a certain man, a magician, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-jesu: Who was with the proconsul Sergius Paulus, a prudent man" (Acts 13:6–7). The magician, also called Elymas, opposed them, and Paul pronounced him temporarily blind; "then the proconsul, when he had seen what was done, believed, admiring at the doctrine of the Lord" (Acts 13:12). (Scripture) Two details of this episode are much noted by scholars. First, Luke's title for the governor — *anthypatos*, "proconsul" — is precisely the correct term for the governor of a senatorial province such as Cyprus, a mark of the author's accurate provincial vocabulary. (Scholarship) Second, it is exactly here that the narrative quietly changes the apostle's name: "Then Saul, otherwise Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, looking upon him" (Acts 13:9). From this point Luke calls him Paul, and speaks of "Paul and they that were with him" rather than of Barnabas first — the leading role has passed to Paul. (Scripture) Sergius Paulus is the first named Roman official presented as a convert in Acts.

Into Asia Minor: Perga and the departure of John Mark

"Now when Paul and they that were with him had sailed from Paphos, they came to Perge in Pamphylia. And John departing from them, returned to Jerusalem" (Acts 13:13). (Scripture) Perga lay a short way inland from the Pamphylian coast. No preaching there is reported on the outbound leg, though some is implied on the return. The narrative offers no reason for John Mark's withdrawal, but it will later matter: when Paul and Barnabas plan a second journey, "Barnabas would have taken with them John also, that was surnamed Mark. But Paul desired that he (as having departed from them out of Pamphylia, and not gone with them to the work) might not be received" (Acts 15:37–38), and the two apostles parted company over it. (Scripture) That the loss of a single helper at Perga should later divide the two founders of the gentile mission is one of the more humanly candid notes in the whole account.

Pisidian Antioch: the programmatic sermon

From the coast the travellers climbed to the Anatolian plateau. "They passing through Perge, came to Antioch in Pisidia: and entering into the synagogue on the sabbath day, they sat down" (Acts 13:14). (Scripture) Pisidian Antioch — more exactly "Antioch toward Pisidia," a Roman *colonia* in the border country of Phrygia — is not to be confused with the Syrian Antioch that sent them. Here Luke records Paul's first and longest reported sermon (Acts 13:16–41), a survey of Israel's history culminating in the resurrection of Jesus and in a claim that reaches beyond the Law: through him "forgiveness of sins is preached to you: and from all the things, from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:38–39). (Scripture)

The response follows a pattern that will repeat across the journey. At first the interest is wide — "the next sabbath day, the whole city almost came together, to hear the word of God" (Acts 13:44) — but opposition hardened, and it is at Pisidian Antioch that the mission's programmatic turn is announced in words that echo through the rest of Acts: "To you it behoved us first to speak the word of God: but because you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold we turn to the Gentiles" (Acts 13:46). (Scripture) The apostles were then driven out of the district, and "they, shaking off the dust of their feet against them, came to Iconium" (Acts 13:50–51). (Scripture) Scholars often read this scene as the theological heart of the first journey: the moment at which the gentile mission is not merely practised but declared. (Scholarship)

Iconium

At Iconium, the well-watered plateau city that continues unbroken as modern Konya, the same rhythm recurred. Paul and Barnabas "entered together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spoke, that a very great multitude both of the Jews and of the Greeks did believe" (Acts 14:1). (Scripture) Again the city divided; a plot formed "to use them contumeliously, and to stone them," and, learning of it, "they... fled to Lystra, and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the whole country round about, and were there preaching the gospel" (Acts 14:5–6). (Scripture) It is worth a note of caution that Iconium is also the setting, in the second-century apocryphal *Acts of Paul and Thecla*, of the popular Thecla legend; that text is later, non-canonical, and best labelled tradition rather than history. (Tradition)

Lystra: acclaim and stoning

Lystra, a Roman *colonia* in Lycaonia, is the scene of the journey's most vivid episode. Paul healed "a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked" (Acts 14:8–10). (Scripture) The crowd, astonished, cried out in their own tongue that "the gods are come down to us in the likeness of men" (Acts 14:11), "and they called Barnabas, Jupiter: but Paul, Mercury; because he was chief speaker" (Acts 14:12). (Scripture) The Douay-Rheims here uses the Roman names Jupiter and Mercury for the deities a Greek text calls Zeus and Hermes; the priest of the local Zeus even brought oxen to sacrifice to the two men, who tore their garments and protested in a speech aimed at pagan polytheists rather than synagogue Jews. (Scripture)

The mood then turned with brutal speed. "There came thither certain Jews from Antioch, and Iconium: and persuading the multitude, and stoning Paul, drew him out of the city, thinking him to be dead" (Acts 14:19). (Scripture) He survived: "as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up and entered into the city, and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe" (Acts 14:20). (Scripture) Lystra would matter again, for on the second journey it is named as the home of Timothy, who became one of Paul's closest companions (Acts 16:1–2). (Scripture)

A word about the site itself. Lystra's location is regarded as secure on the strength of an inscribed Roman colonial dedication stone recovered from the Zoldera mound near Hatunsaray, south of Konya, in 1885; the stone, now in the Konya museum, gives the city's full colonial name. (Scholarship) But the mound has never been excavated, so its precise limits are not established, and it should not be confused with the nearby rock-cut Byzantine village of Kilistra, a distinct Christian site sometimes conflated with Lystra in popular writing. (Scholarship)

Derbe: the turning point

Derbe was the easternmost point of the journey, lying near the Roman provincial frontier and, notably, the one stop with no recorded hostility. "When they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again" (Acts 14:21). (Scripture) From Derbe the travellers were within reach of the road home through the Cilician Gates toward Paul's native Tarsus, yet they deliberately turned back the way they had come. Derbe later gave Paul the companion Gaius (Acts 20:4). (Scripture)

The identification of Derbe is reasonably settled but carries genuine uncertainty, and is worth stating carefully. For centuries the site was simply lost. In 1956 the scholar Michael Ballance proposed the mound of Kerti Hoyuk, northeast of Karaman, on the basis of a stone inscription (dated AD 157) naming the council and people of Derbe found in the vicinity; a later find naming a bishop of Derbe corroborated the general area. (Scholarship) The identification is now widely accepted, but the mound is essentially unexcavated, a rival nearby site has been discussed, and published coordinates for Derbe are therefore approximate rather than precise. It is a good example of the honest limits of biblical geography: the city is located to within a small area, not pinpointed. (Scholarship)

The return: consolidation, not retreat

What the apostles did next is, for the history of the church, as important as anything on the outbound leg. Rather than take the short road home, "they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch: Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith" (Acts 14:21–22). (Scripture) At each place "they had ordained to them priests in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord" (Acts 14:23). (Scripture) The return thus establishes a pattern the later journeys will follow: not hit-and-run preaching but the planting of congregations with their own appointed leadership, revisited and strengthened.

The travellers then descended from the plateau, "passing through Pisidia, they came into Pamphylia. And having spoken the word of the Lord in Perge, they went down into Attalia" (Acts 14:24–25). (Scripture) From Attalia, the Pamphylian port that survives as modern Antalya, "thence they sailed to Antioch, from whence they had been delivered to the grace of God, unto the work which they accomplished" (Acts 14:26). (Scripture) Reporting to the sending church, they "related what great things God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles" (Acts 14:27). (Scripture) In outline, the whole circuit runs: Antioch on the Orontes → Seleucia → Salamis → Paphos → Perga → Pisidian Antioch → Iconium → Lystra → Derbe, then back through Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch to Perga, Attalia and home to Antioch.

What followed, and why the journey matters

The first journey led directly to the crisis that the Acts of the Apostles treats as the turning point of the whole early movement. The success of the gentile mission forced the question of whether gentile converts had to be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses, and that question was taken to the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), usually dated to about AD 48–50. (Scripture) Many scholars identify this meeting with the one Paul recalls in his own words in Galatians 2, though the identification is debated. (Scholarship) The council's decision — that gentiles need not be circumcised — is widely regarded as the hinge on which the movement turned from a Jewish sect into a universal faith; and it was the first journey that had made the question unavoidable. (Scholarship)

Seen whole, the first journey is where several patterns of Paul's later career are set. The name Paul supplants Saul; leadership passes from Barnabas to Paul; the sequence of synagogue-first preaching, division, opposition and turning to the gentiles becomes the template; and the practice of appointing local elders and revisiting young churches is established. For all its brevity — a single loop through Cyprus and the Anatolian highlands — it is the seedbed of everything the New Testament goes on to record of the apostle's work. Short answers to common questions are gathered on our questions and answers page, and the sweep of the journeys is set out on the timeline.

The journey and St Paul Global Week

The first journey begins and ends far from Tarsus, yet it belongs to the same life that Tarsus honours: it is the outward turn of the man born in that Cilician city, sent from Antioch, whose road would in time reach Rome. It is that whole arc that St Paul Global Week marks. On 28–30 June 2027, around the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June, a faith-tourism gathering organised by Funny Tourism will bring pilgrims to Tarsus and Mersin, in the birthplace of the Apostle, with the Feast Day prayer programme broadcast live worldwide. You are warmly invited to explore the programme; church and community leaders who wish to bring a group can read about the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme; and anyone with a question is welcome to contact the organiser.