Silvanus

Silvanus, also known in the New Testament as Silas, was a leading figure of the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem in the first century. The Acts of the Apostles describes him as one of the leading men among the brethren who was chosen, together with Judas Barsabbas, to accompany Paul and Barnabas from the Council of Jerusalem to Antioch, carrying the apostolic letter that settled the question of Gentile converts and the Mosaic law. Acts further identifies him as a prophet who encouraged and strengthened the believers at Antioch. The same narrative presents him as a Roman citizen, a status that later proved significant when he and Paul were publicly beaten and imprisoned at Philippi. Nothing in the canonical texts records his parentage, birthplace, or year of birth.

After the disagreement between Paul and Barnabas, Paul chose Silvanus as his companion for a missionary journey through Syria and Cilicia and into Macedonia. At Philippi they were beaten and jailed; Acts recounts that they prayed and sang hymns at midnight before an earthquake opened the prison, an episode that led to the baptism of the jailer and his household. From Philippi they went to Thessalonica and then to Berea. When opposition arose, Paul left for the coast while Silvanus and Timothy remained for a time in Macedonia. They later rejoined Paul at Corinth, where Silvanus took part in preaching the gospel. The Pauline letters confirm this activity: Second Corinthians names Silvanus with Paul and Timothy as having proclaimed Christ among the Corinthians, and both First and Second Thessalonians are sent in the names of Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy.

The First Letter of Peter, addressed to Christian communities in Asia Minor, states that it was written through Silvanus, a faithful brother. Early Christian tradition and most modern interpreters have identified this Silvanus with the companion of Paul, though the identification, while long-standing and plausible, is not demonstrated by an explicit New Testament statement that the two names always refer to one man. In Greek the forms Silas and Silouanos appear; Latin usage likewise treats Silas and Silvanus as the same figure. The New Testament does not record a spouse, children, or the place and date of his death.

Later ecclesiastical tradition numbered Silvanus among the Seventy Apostles and assigned him an episcopal see, most often Corinth or, in some accounts, Thessalonica. These notices appear in later lists and menologia rather than in contemporary first-century sources, and they cannot be verified from the New Testament or from the earliest extra-biblical Christian writers. Western martyrologies commemorate Silas on 13 July; Byzantine calendars remember him on 30 July among the apostles of the Seventy, and he is also commemorated with the Seventy on 4 January in the Orthodox tradition. He was venerated from antiquity and was never the subject of a medieval papal canonization or beatification process.

Because the historical record is limited to the New Testament notices and a thin layer of later legend, many details often found in saints’ lives remain unknown. Other early Christian figures also bore the name Silvanus, including Silvanus of Gaza, an elderly bishop martyred with companions at the copper mines of Phaeno in the early fourth century, and they should not be confused with the apostolic companion of Paul. What can be said with confidence about the New Testament Silvanus is that he was a Jewish Christian of the Jerusalem church, a prophetic preacher, a Roman citizen, and a close co-worker of Paul in the mission to the Aegean in the mid-first century, whose name stands at the head of the Thessalonian correspondence and in the closing of First Peter.