Silvanus

Silvanus, known in the Acts of the Apostles under the Semitic form of his name as Silas, was a leading member of the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem in the mid-first century. The New Testament presents him as one of the “leading men among the brethren” and as a prophet. After the Council of Jerusalem, which deliberated on the obligations of Gentile converts with respect to the Mosaic law, the apostles and elders chose Silas, together with Judas called Barsabbas, to accompany Paul and Barnabas to Antioch and to deliver the council’s letter. In Antioch he is described as exhorting and strengthening the believers at length. When Paul and Barnabas later separated over John Mark, Paul selected Silas as his companion for a journey through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches. Nothing reliable is known of his parentage, birthplace, or year of birth; he is simply attested as a figure of standing in the Jerusalem church and, according to Acts, as a Roman citizen, a status that later affected his treatment at Philippi.

On the so-called second missionary journey Silas traveled with Paul through Derbe and Lystra, where Timothy joined them, and then through the Phrygian and Galatian country into Macedonia. At Philippi, after the conversion of Lydia and the expulsion of a spirit of divination from a slave girl, Paul and Silas were dragged before the magistrates, beaten with rods, and imprisoned with their feet in the stocks. Acts recounts that at midnight they prayed and sang hymns; an earthquake shook the prison, the doors opened, and the jailer, fearing the escape of his prisoners, was converted together with his household and baptized. The following day the magistrates ordered their release; Paul and Silas then invoked their Roman citizenship, which made the uncondemned public beating unlawful, and were escorted from the city. They continued to Thessalonica, where a church was founded amid opposition, and to Beroea. When agitation followed them, the brethren sent Paul on toward the sea, while Silas and Timothy remained behind for a time before rejoining him. Silas is associated with the preaching of Christ in Corinth; Paul later recalled that the Son of God had been proclaimed among the Corinthians by himself, Silvanus, and Timothy.

Silvanus appears as co-sender with Paul and Timothy of both surviving letters to the Thessalonians, which indicates his close collaboration in the Macedonian and Achaean mission and his recognized authority among those churches. The First Letter of Peter closes with the notice that the author has written “by Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him,” a phrase generally taken to mean that Silvanus either served as Peter’s secretary in the composition of the letter or carried it to the churches of Asia Minor addressed in its opening. Extra-biblical tradition is far less secure. Later ecclesiastical writers numbered him among the Seventy Apostles and claimed that he became bishop of Corinth, or of Caesarea, or that he remained in Macedonia until his death. These episcopal and local attributions are not found in the New Testament and cannot be confirmed from contemporary sources. His year and place of death, and the site of his burial, are unknown.

Veneration of Silvanus as a saint is ancient in both East and West and belongs to the pre-congregational period, before formal papal canonization. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 13 July, recalling his mission from the apostles to the Gentiles with Paul and Barnabas. Eastern calendars remember him among the Seventy Apostles, commonly on 30 July, and on other days associated with Paul’s companions. No historically verified list of patronages attaches to him, and there is no documentary evidence that he belonged to a later religious order, held the see of Rome or an Eastern patriarchate, or that he was married or had children. What can be said with confidence rests on the New Testament: that in the middle decades of the first century a Jerusalem Christian named Silas or Silvanus stood among the leaders of that church, prophesied, carried the decree of the Jerusalem Council, shared Paul’s hardships and preaching in Macedonia and Achaia, and was trusted by Peter as a faithful brother.