Acts
20:1 ¶ And after the uproar was ceased,
Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and
departed for to go into Macedonia. 2 And
when he had gone over those parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece,
3 And there abode three months.
And when the Jews laid wait for him, as he was about to sail into Syria, he
purposed to return through Macedonia. 4
And there accompanied him into Asia Sopater of Berea; and of the
Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timotheus; and
of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus. 5 These
going before tarried for us at Troas. 6
And we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and
came unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven days.
Aristarchus the
Macedonian had been mentioned in verse 29 of chapter 19. He will be mentioned
again as a fellow-prisoner with Paul in Rome;
Acts
27:2 And entering into a ship of
Adramyttium, we launched, meaning to sail by the coasts of Asia; one Aristarchus,
a Macedonian of Thessalonica, being with us.
Colossians
4:10 Aristarchus my fellowprisoner
saluteth you, and Marcus, sister’s son to Barnabas, (touching whom ye received
commandments: if he come unto you, receive him;)
Philemon
1:24 Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas,
my fellowlabourers.
Due to the context in a
few verses there appears to be more than one Gaius which may have been a
fairly common name. There is Gaius and Aristarchus who are said to be men of
Macedonia in Acts 19:29. Derbe was in Galatia where this Gaius was from. There
is a Gaius from Corinth in 1Corinthians 1:14. Finally, Gaius was Paul’s host in
Rome in Romans 16:23 where he awaited this fate before Caesar.
According to tradition
Tychicus wrote Ephesians as Paul’s amanuensis or secretary. He also was
co-writer of Colossians with Onesimus as per the postscript added to early King
James Bibles. He is mentioned in the letters to the Ephesians, Colossians, and
to Timothy.
Trophimus will be part
of the scandal in the next chapter and in 2Timothy 4:20 he is left at Miletum,
not far from Ephesus, sick.
Troas is mentioned
twice before in Acts 16 and will be referred to again. Troas is also called
Troad in its Anglicized version and means ‘The Land of Troy’ and is on the
extreme west of the Asian mainland. The ruins of the ancient city of Troy,
subject of Homer’s Illiad, the ancient Greek’s “Bible”, are in that region.
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