And when they had gone through the isle unto
Paphos
The Alexandrian copy, and the Vulgate Latin and Syriac versions
read, "the whole isle"; for through the midst of the whole island
they must go, to go from Salarnis to Paphos; for Salamis was on
the east, and Paphos on the west of the islands F17: it
had its name from the Phoenician word, (twap tap) , "peathpaoth", "the corner of
corners"; because both old and new Paphos were situated in the
extreme part of the island; and not from Paphus, the son of
Pygmalion, by any ivory statue which he had made, whom Venus, at
his request, according to the fables of the Heathens, turned into
a woman: some say F18, that Cinyras, a king of the
Assyrians, coming into Cyprus, built Paphos; but Pausanias
F19 affirms, that Agapenor, who came
hither after the Trojan war, was the builder of this place, and
also of the temple of Venus in it, for which it was famous
F20; and in a certain area of which,
Pliny F21 says it never rained; and from this
place, Venus was called Paphia: according to Chrysostom, it was
the metropolis of Cyprus; and it is indeed mentioned by Pliny
{w}, first of the fifteen cities that were in it; and seems at
this time to have been the seat of the Roman deputy Paulus
Sergius, afterwards spoken of: concerning this place Jerom says
F24,
``Paphus, a city on the sea coast, in the island of Cyprus, formerly famous for the sacred rites of Venus, and the verses of the poets; which fell by frequent earthquakes, and now only shows, by its ruins, what it formerly was:''so Seneca F25 says, "quotiens in se Paphus corruit?", "how often has Paphus fell within itself?" that is, by earthquakes: the ruins of many goodly churches and buildings are to be seen in it; and the walls of a strong, and almost impregnable tower, situated upon a hill in the middle of the city, supposed to be the habitation of Sergius Paulus; there is also shown, under a certain church, a prison divided into seven rooms, where they say Paul and Barnabas were imprisoned, for preaching the Gospel; what remains of it, is now called Bapho: here
they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew,
whose name
was Barjesus,
or the son of Jesus; Jesus was a name frequent among the Jews,
and is the same with Joshua, and was in use long before our
Saviour's time; there was Jesus the son of Sirach, the author of
Ecclesiasticus, and who had a grandfather of the same name, the
Syriac version here calls him "Barsuma", which some render "the
son of a name"; that is, a man of note, a famous person, of great
renown; others, "the son of a swelling", or "the son of ulcers";
he professing to be a physician, and to cure them, with which
they make the name of Barjesus to agree, deriving it from a root,
which signifies to heal: Jerom F26 pronounces this name Barieu,
and observes, that some corruptly read it Barjesu; and he makes
it to signify an evil man, or one in evil; and Drusius says, he
found the name (barihou) ,
"Barjeou", in some papers of his; and a very learned man
F1 of later years says, it is the same
with Bar-Jehu, the son of Jehu; and affirms, that the Greek word
is (barihouv) , "Barjeus",
which others wrongly turn into "Bar-jesus"; the Magdeburgensian
Centuriators call him, "Elymas Barjehu"; the reason Beda gives,
why it should be so read, and not Bar-jesus, is because that a
magician was unworthy to be called the son of Jesus, the Saviour,
when he was a child of the devil; but the Greek copies agree in
Barjesus; his name shows him to be a Jew, as he is here called:
and he was one of those false prophets our Lord said should
arise, and deceive many; he pretended to foretell things to come,
and practised sorcery, and was given to magic arts.