Tarsus

Tarsus was the capital of the Roman province of Cilicia, about 10 miles from the Mediterranean coast. The city was first conquered by Alexander the Great and then by Rome under the great general Pompey10 about 65 B.C. Tarsus was made a free city by Antony because of its loyalty to him in the rivalry between Antony and Octavian, and Cassius and Brutus. Thus, Tarsus was able to govern itself by its own laws, which included freedom from paying taxes on import and export trade. Paul’s ancestors may have been among those who received Roman citizenship from either Pompey, Julius Caesar, Antony, or Augustus.

The setting of Tarsus was described by Ramsay:

Tarsus (which still bears its ancient name slightly modified, Tersous) is situated in the Cilician plain, 70 to 80 feet above sea level, and about ten miles from the southern coast. Behind it towards the north, full two miles distant, the hills begin to rise gently from the level plain; and they extend back in undulating and gently swelling ridges, intersected by deep water channels, until they lean against the vast and lofty range of Taurus, about thirty miles distant to the north.

In the 1st century B.C., Tarsus was frequently attacked by the notorious Cilician pirates. Pompey defeated the pirates in 67 B.C., just before he created the province of Cilicia and made Tarsus its capital.

Tarsus commanded the highway between Rome and Syria through the “Cilician Gates.” Ramsay opined that the history of Tarsus was determined by three geographical conditions:

Its relation to the rest of the Cilician plain; its connection through the river Cydnus with the sea; and its position commanding the end of the principal pass across the Taurus mountains to the central plateau and the western and northern parts of Anatolia, one of the great routes which have determined the history of the Mediterranean world, the pass of the Cilician Gates. Elsewhere in his description, Ramsay called the Cilician Gates “one of the most famous and the most important passes in history”

Tarsus is also renowned as the meeting place of Antony and Cleopatra in 41 B.C., when the latter sailed her gilded barge along the Cydnus river and into the middle of the city. According to Strabo, the Cydnus river cut through the center of Tarsus.

Strabo also commented that the people of Tarsus were highly interested in education and philosophy, even surpassing “Athens, Alexandria, or any other place that can be named where there have been schools and lectures of philosophers”. Its most well-known Stoic philosophers in the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century A.D., were Athenodorus Canaanites and his successor Nestor. Athenodorus tutored Augustus as a youth and was his adviser in Rome from 44 B.C. to 15 B.C. This partly accounts for the imperial favors Tarsus received from Roman administration. Nestor tutored Augustus’ nephew, Marcellus, from 26 to 23 B.C.

When Athenodorus returned to Tarsus in 15 B.C., he came invested with authority to reform the government. He exiled the city fathers and established an oligarchy that curtailed the power of common people. For example, voting rights were restricted to men with certain property qualifications. There was also a patrician inner class that consisted of Roman citizens. Paul was probably part of this group. As Ramsay and others have pointed out, when Paul was beaten and bound in Jerusalem, the first thing he said in his defense after asking permission to speak was “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city” (Acts 21:39). One would have expected him to claim the Roman rights, as indeed he did a few moments later; but the first words that rose to his lips came direct from his heart and expressed the patriotism and pride in his fatherland, his patria, that lay deep in his nature. The city that was his fatherland and his home mattered much to Paul. It had a place in his heart. He was proud of its greatness. He thought of the men who had made it and bequeathed it to his time as men connected by certain ties with himself (Rom. 1:14). (Ramsay 3, p. 115)

It is probably true that a Judean Jew could not have met the Greeks on their own level, familiar with their philosophers and the common elements of their society, such as athletic contests. Paul’s birth and citizenship made him uniquely qualified to take the gospel to the gentiles.

Bible Study (Tarsus)

Acts 9:11; 21:39; 22:3. Paul was born in Tarsus.
Acts 22:28. Paul’s father was a citizen of Tarsus: “Paul said, ‘But I was born a citizen.’”
Acts 9:30. Paul escaped from Jerusalem to Tarsus after “preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.” The Hellenists with whom he disputed “were seeking to kill him.”
Acts 11:25-26. Barnabas went to Tarsus and brought Saul back with him to Antioch. The missionaries stayed in Antioch for a year, where they taught “a large company of people.”
Acts 15:41; 18:22-23. Paul probably visited Tarsus on his second and third missionary journeys.

Acts 9:11, 30
11: And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth,
30: Which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus.

Acts 11:25
25: Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul:
26: And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.
27: And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch.
28: And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.
29: Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea:
30: Which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

Acts 22:1-3
1: Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you.
2: (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith,)
3: I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.