Antioch

Two cities named Antioch appear in the New Testament. Antioch of Syria, the more prominent, was built on the Orontes River about sixteen miles from the Mediterranean coast and three hundred miles north of Jerusalem. Founded by Seleucus I around 300 B.C. and named for his father Antiochus, it grew to become the third largest city of the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria. It was here that followers of Jesus were first called Christians (Acts 11:26), making it the birthplace of the Christian name and the strategic base from which Paul launched all three of his missionary journeys.

Antioch of Pisidia, in Asia Minor, was a Roman colony in the province of Galatia. Paul and Barnabas visited it on the first missionary journey, preaching in the synagogue with significant initial success before being expelled by Jewish opposition (Acts 13:14–52). This Antioch appears again in Acts 14:19–21 and in Paul's account of his sufferings in 2 Timothy 3:11. Both cities illustrate the urban strategy of early Christian mission, targeting population centers with established Jewish communities as initial points of contact.