Sergius Paulus

Luke gets the title exactly right – Cyprus was a senatorial province, so its governor was a proconsul – and inscriptions bearing the name Sergius Paulus confirm the family’s prominence. Luke also gives him a rarer credential: “a man of intelligence, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God” (Acts 13:7). A Roman aristocrat curious enough to summon traveling Jewish preachers was already unusual; what happened at the hearing made him unique.

His court magician, Bar-Jesus called Elymas, saw the threat to his position and worked to turn the proconsul from the faith. Saul – “who was also called Paul,” Luke notes at precisely this point – fixed his eyes on the sorcerer and pronounced temporary blindness on the man who was blinding others; “immediately mist and darkness fell upon him” (Acts 13:8-11). The intelligent Roman weighed the evidence in front of him: “Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord” (Acts 13:12) – astonished, Luke says carefully, at the teaching, not merely the miracle.

From this scene forward Luke writes “Paul,” never again “Saul” except in retrospect – as if the apostle to the Gentiles came fully into his name at the conversion of his first Gentile official.

In the New Testament

• The proconsul, the sorcerer, and the belief (Acts 13:4-12)