Silas (Silvanus): Paul's Companion on the Second Journey

Among the companions who travelled with the Apostle Paul, Silas stands out as the man Paul chose to replace Barnabas at the very start of his second great missionary journey. He was already a person of standing in the Jerusalem church before Paul recruited him, and he shared with Paul both a Roman citizenship and a prison cell at Philippi. He is almost certainly the same man the letters call Silvanus, co-named with Paul at the head of the earliest surviving Christian letters. This article gathers what the sources say about him in a neutral and cited register, labelling each claim by its evidentiary weight -- (Scripture) for what the New Testament text states, (Tradition) for what later Christian tradition holds, and (Scholarship) for the reconstructions of modern historians -- and giving dates as ranges, since the chronology of Paul and his circle is a careful reconstruction anchored on only a few fixed points.

Identity: Silas and Silvanus

The New Testament refers to this companion by two names. The narrative of the Acts of the Apostles always calls him Silas; the letters that name him as a co-sender always call him Silvanus. The prevailing scholarly conclusion is that these are the same person -- "Silas" being a shortened or Semitic form and "Silvanus" a Latin name of the kind a Roman citizen would carry -- because the two names occupy exactly the same role at the same points in Paul's mission and are never distinguished. (Scholarship) This equation is a near-universal conclusion of historians rather than an explicit statement of the text, and it is worth flagging as an inference, however secure.

Silas first appears as one of the "chief men among the brethren" of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:22, Douay-Rheims). (Scripture) He is also described, alongside Judas Barsabas, as a prophet: "But Judas and Silas, being prophets also themselves, with many words comforted the brethren, and confirmed them" (Acts 15:32). (Scripture) He therefore comes into Paul's story not as a junior recruit but as an established and trusted figure of the mother church.

Era and dates

No birth or death year is recorded for Silas anywhere. He can be placed only by the events he shares with Paul, whose chronology is reconstructed outward from the near-fixed anchor of the proconsul Gallio at Corinth (about AD 51-52). On that framework, Silas is active from roughly AD 48 to 52 and after -- from the Council of Jerusalem through the whole of Paul's second journey. (Scholarship) His later movements are not traced in Acts, and the sources fall silent on his death; any date beyond this active window is inference.

Relation to Paul

Silas entered Paul's orbit at the Jerusalem Council (c. AD 48-50), the meeting that decided gentile converts need not be circumcised. He was one of the two men the Jerusalem church chose to carry its decision, in writing, back to Antioch: "Then it pleased the apostles and ancients, with the whole church, to choose men of their own company, and to send to Antioch, with Paul and Barnabas, namely, Judas, who was surnamed Barsabas, and Silas" (Acts 15:22). (Scripture)

Soon afterward, Paul and Barnabas parted company in a sharp disagreement over whether to take John Mark with them again (Acts 15:36-39). It was at this hinge that Paul turned to Silas: "But Paul choosing Silas, departed, being delivered by the brethren to the grace of God" (Acts 15:40). (Scripture) Silas thus became Paul's principal partner for the second journey (c. AD 49-52), through Asia Minor and into Macedonia and Greece, where the younger Timothy soon joined them (Acts 16:1-3). To understand why this journey mattered so much, see the fuller account of the Apostle Paul.

Imprisoned at Philippi

The best-known episode involving Silas is the imprisonment at Philippi. After Paul cast a spirit of divination out of a slave-girl, her owners dragged the two missionaries before the magistrates, who had them beaten and jailed (Acts 16:19-24). The scene that follows is one of the most vivid in Acts: "And at midnight, Paul and Silas praying, praised God. And they that were in prison heard them" (Acts 16:25), after which an earthquake shook the prison and led to the conversion of the jailer and his household (Acts 16:26-34). (Scripture)

What happened the next morning is significant for Silas's own status. When the magistrates sent word to release them quietly, Paul objected that they were Roman citizens who had been beaten publicly and without trial: "They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men that are Romans, and have cast us into prison: and now do they thrust us out privately? Not so; but let them come, and let us out themselves" (Acts 16:37). (Scripture) The plural "men that are Romans" implies that Silas, like Paul, held Roman citizenship, a detail scholars regularly note. (Scholarship) From Philippi the two went on to Thessalonica and Beroea, where the local Jews' hostility forced Paul to move ahead while "Silas and Timothy remained there" (Acts 17:14); the pair later rejoined Paul at Corinth (Acts 18:5). (Scripture)

Silas in Paul's letters

Under the name Silvanus, Silas appears as a co-sender at the very opening of the letters to the Thessalonians -- among the earliest Christian documents that survive: "Paul, and Silvanus, and Timothy: to the church of the Thessalonians" (1 Thessalonians 1:1; cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:1). (Scripture) Paul also names him when recalling the preaching at Corinth: "For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me, and Silvanus, and Timothy, was not, It is, and It is not, but, It is, was in him" (2 Corinthians 1:19). (Scripture) A Silvanus is likewise named as the bearer of the First Letter of Peter -- "By Sylvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as I think, I have written briefly" (1 Peter 5:12) -- and many scholars take this to be the same man, though the identification is less certain than the Silas-Silvanus equation itself. (Scholarship)

History versus tradition

Silas's partnership with Paul is firmly attested, because it is supported both by the narrative of Acts and, under the name Silvanus, by Paul's own undisputed letters -- a convergence that historians treat as strong evidence. (Scholarship) The Silas = Silvanus identification, while near-universally accepted, is a scholarly conclusion drawn from the pattern of the texts rather than an explicit New Testament statement. (Scholarship)

Beyond the New Testament, later Christian tradition assigns Silas episcopal offices and a martyr's death -- he is variously remembered as a bishop (in some accounts of Corinth) and honoured as a saint. These commemorations are traditional, appearing well after the events and outside the canonical record, and they should not be read as established historical fact. (Tradition) What the sources give us with confidence is the figure of Acts and the Thessalonian letters: a respected man of the Jerusalem church, a prophet and a Roman citizen, who stepped into the gap left by Barnabas and shared Paul's road, his preaching, and his prison at the decisive turn of the gentile mission.

The apostolic circle to which Silas belonged is the reason Tarsus, Paul's birthplace, remains a place of pilgrimage today. St Paul Global Week marks that legacy on 28-30 June 2027 in Tarsus and Mersin, organised by Funny Tourism, with the Feast Day prayer programme built around the 29 June Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul and broadcast live worldwide. You are warmly invited to explore the programme, to learn why Tarsus matters, and -- for church and community leaders who wish to bring a group -- to read about the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme.