Derbe: The Easternmost Point of Paul's First Journey

Derbe was an ancient city of Lycaonia, in what is now south-central Türkiye, and the easternmost point Paul reached on his first missionary journey. Unlike Tarsus or Iconium, it has left no living town: the site is identified with an unexcavated settlement mound, and its exact position is known only approximately. In the New Testament it is remembered as the one stop on that journey where Paul met no hostility — a place of quiet, fruitful preaching after the violence that had gone before.

Where it is, ancient and modern

In antiquity Derbe lay in Lycaonia, a district of the high, dry Anatolian plateau, within the Roman province of Galatia. (Scholarship) It stood near the eastern edge of that province, not far from the roads that led on toward Paul's native Cilicia. The city itself is long gone; for centuries its location was simply lost, and older atlases placed it in several different spots. (Scholarship)

The identification generally accepted today rests on inscriptions rather than on standing ruins. In 1956 the site was proposed to be the mound called Kerti Höyük, about 24 km (15 mi) northeast of the modern town of Karaman, on the strength of a stone inscription — dated to AD 157 — naming the *council and people of Derbe*, which had been found there. A later find naming a *Michael, bishop of Derbe* corroborated the vicinity; both inscriptions are kept in the Karaman Museum. (Scholarship) The identification is widely accepted, but it should be stated carefully: the mound has essentially not been excavated, a nearby alternative site has been discussed, and so the coordinates given for Derbe are approximate — good enough to place it on a map, not to survey it. The pin used here (about 37.35° N, 33.36° E) should be read in that spirit.

Derbe in the story of Paul

Derbe belongs to the first missionary journey (c. AD 46–48), narrated in Acts 13–14. Driven out of Iconium by a plot to stone them, Paul and Barnabas "fled to Lystra, and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the whole country round about, and were there preaching the gospel" (Acts 14:6, Douay-Rheims). (Scripture) At Lystra Paul was stoned and dragged out of the city for dead; having revived, "the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe" (Acts 14:20). (Scripture)

What follows is brief but striking in its calm. "And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch" (Acts 14:21). (Scripture) Derbe is the turning point of the outbound route: the easternmost city reached, and the one place on the journey where Acts records no opposition, no riot, and no expulsion — only preaching and "many" disciples made. From here, rather than pressing on east through the Cilician Gates toward his home city of Tarsus, Paul turned back the way he had come, to strengthen the young congregations he had planted. (Scripture)

The city reappears twice more. On the second journey, Acts notes that Paul "came to Derbe and Lystra" (Acts 16:1), the region where he took Timothy as a companion. (Scripture) And in the list of those who travelled with Paul toward Jerusalem near the end of the third journey, one is named "Gaius of Derbe" (Acts 20:4) — a small but concrete sign that the church at Derbe endured and sent out its own. (Scripture) You can follow the whole itinerary in our reference on Paul's first missionary journey, and read more about his companion in the entry on Timothy.

Key scripture references

The Derbe passages are few and easily gathered: Acts 14:6 (the flight from Iconium to Lystra and Derbe); Acts 14:20–21 (the arrival and the fruitful mission, then the turn back); Acts 16:1 (the return with Timothy on the second journey); and Acts 20:4 (Gaius "of Derbe"). Paul's own letters do not name the city. Under the widely held "South Galatian" reading of Galatians, the congregations of Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch may be among the "churches of Galatia" that letter addresses — but this is an interpretation of the geography, not a statement of the text. (Scholarship)

What remains, and what a visitor sees

Here honesty matters more than at almost any other Pauline site. There is nothing to visit at Derbe in the ordinary sense. The place is an earthen mound in open country, unexcavated, with no standing church, monument, or ruin to see; the two inscriptions that fix its identity are displayed not on the site but in the Karaman Museum in the nearby city. (Scholarship) A traveller who goes looking for Derbe finds a field and a low hill, and the meaning of the place has to be supplied by the text of Acts rather than by anything visible on the ground. This makes Derbe a useful corrective to the assumption that every Pauline place has become a shrine: some survive only as a name fixed to a mound by a chance-found stone.

Fact and tradition

The firm facts about Derbe are those the Acts of the Apostles states: that Paul and Barnabas preached there, made many disciples, and turned back from there; that Paul returned on the second journey; and that a man of Derbe named Gaius later travelled with him. (Scripture) The location is a matter of scholarship — reasonably secure, but resting on inscriptions rather than on excavation, and therefore approximate. Beyond that, Derbe has attracted little of the later legend that gathered around larger sites; there is no significant body of tradition to weigh, which is itself part of its character. To set the city within the wider journey and region, see Paul's first missionary journey, the neighbouring town of Lystra, the apostle's home city of Tarsus, and the reference on the Apostle Paul himself.

It is the world of these first churches — Tarsus, Derbe and their neighbours on the Anatolian plateau — that St Paul Global Week recalls. On 28–30 June 2027, a faith-tourism gathering organised by Funny Tourism brings pilgrims to Tarsus and Mersin, around the 29 June Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, with the Feast Day prayer programme broadcast live worldwide. You are warmly invited to explore the programme, to learn why Tarsus, and — for church and community leaders who wish to bring a group — to read about the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme.