Silas

Silas, known also by the Latinized name Silvanus, was a leading figure in the earliest Christian community at Jerusalem in the first century. The Acts of the Apostles presents him as one of the leading men among the brethren whom the apostles and elders selected, together with Judas called Barsabbas, to go to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas after the Council of Jerusalem. They carried the apostolic letter that freed Gentile converts from the obligation of circumcision and the full Mosaic Law, while asking them to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality. Acts further describes Silas as a prophet; he and Judas spent time in Antioch exhorting and strengthening the disciples. When Paul and Barnabas later parted company over John Mark, Paul chose Silas to accompany him on a new missionary journey through Syria and Cilicia.

On that journey Paul and Silas passed through Derbe and Lystra, where they enlisted Timothy, whose mother was a Jewish believer and whose father was Greek. Prevented by the Spirit from preaching in Asia and Bithynia, they came down to Troas. There Paul received a vision of a Macedonian appealing for help, and the party crossed the Aegean into Europe. At Philippi, a Roman colony, they spoke to women gathered at a place of prayer by the river; Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from Thyatira, was baptized with her household. After Paul commanded a spirit of divination to leave a slave girl, her owners, deprived of their profit, dragged Paul and Silas before the magistrates. The two missionaries were beaten with rods and thrown into the inner prison, their feet fastened in stocks. Around midnight they were praying and singing hymns to God when a violent earthquake shook the prison, opened the doors, and unfastened the chains. The jailer, about to kill himself, was stopped by Paul; he and his household believed and were baptized. The next day the magistrates, learning that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, came to apologize and asked them to leave the city.

From Philippi they traveled to Thessalonica, where Paul argued from the scriptures in the synagogue for three Sabbaths. Opposition from some of the Jews led to a riot, and the missionaries were sent on by night to Beroea. There the Jews were more receptive and examined the scriptures daily, but agitators from Thessalonica followed, and the believers immediately sent Paul away while Silas and Timothy remained. They later rejoined Paul, and Silas is associated with the founding of the church in Corinth. The First and Second Letters to the Thessalonians open in the names of Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. In the Second Letter to the Corinthians Paul recalls that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was proclaimed among them by himself, Silvanus, and Timothy. These notices, together with the general scholarly consensus that Silas and Silvanus are the same person, place Silas at the heart of Paul’s Aegean mission.

The First Letter of Peter likewise mentions Silvanus as a faithful brother through whom the author has written briefly, indicating that Silas also served in the Petrine circle, whether as secretary, courier, or both. Beyond the New Testament, later ecclesiastical tradition supplies details that cannot be confirmed historically. Some writers make him bishop of Corinth, others of Thessalonica; Eastern lists include him among the Seventy Apostles sent out by Jesus. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 13 July and associates him with Macedonia; the Byzantine tradition keeps his memory on 30 July. No contemporary source records the year or place of his birth or death, whether he was married, or where he was buried. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and various Protestant calendars, remembered above all as the prophet, Roman citizen, and steadfast companion who shared Paul’s hardships and the preaching of the gospel among Jews and Gentiles in the first Christian generation.