Paul revisits LystraHe takes Timothy with him He travels through Asia Minor, 1-11.

Acts 16:1. And behold. The interjection ‘behold' marks the importance which the writer of the ‘Acts' attaches to the solemn adoption of Timothy by Paul. Wordsworth happily speaks of the incident ‘as a gift from Heaven to Paul in the place of what he had lost in his separation from Barnabas and Mark.'

A certain disciple was there, named Timotheus. It was during the first visit of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra that Timotheus must have been converted. Paul speaks of him (1 Timothy 1:2) as ‘his own son in the faith.' His mother's name was Eunice. She appears to have belonged to a Jewish family, either connected with those Babylonian Jews whom Antiochus settled in Phrygia three centuries before, or else brought into Lycaonia by some of those mercantile or other changes which affected the movements of so many Jewish households at this period (see Conybeare and Howson, ‘Sketch of the Family,' St. Paul, chap. 8). Her unfeigned faith, as also that of the grandmother Lois, is specially commented upon in 2 Timothy 1:5.

His father was a Greek. These mixed marriages, although very rare in Palestine, were common enough in remote districts like Lycaonia. It is not improbable, however, that the ‘father' was a proselyte. The strict Jews regarded the offspring of such marriages as illegitimate.

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Old Testament