Antioch and the Birth of the Early Church

Few cities have shaped the story of the early Church as profoundly as Antioch. Known today as Antakya in southern Türkiye, ancient Antioch on the Orontes was one of the great metropolises of the Roman world — a crossroads of Greek, Roman, Syrian and Jewish life. It was here, according to the Acts of the Apostles, that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). And it was from Antioch that the Gospel was carried outward to the nations, with the Apostle Paul among its foremost messengers.

A great city on the Orontes

Antioch was founded around 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of the successors of Alexander the Great, and it grew into one of the largest cities of the ancient Mediterranean, ranked in antiquity alongside Rome and Alexandria. Set on the River Orontes near the Mediterranean coast, it lay at the meeting point of major trade routes linking Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia. Its population was cosmopolitan, its culture Hellenistic, and its significant Jewish community made it fertile ground for the earliest Christian preaching.

This same region — the ancient territory of Syria and, a little to the north-west, the plain of Cilicia — forms the wider landscape of Paul's early life. Paul himself declared that he was "a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city" (Acts 21:39). Though he was later brought up in Jerusalem and educated strictly in the traditions of his ancestors (Acts 22:3), Tarsus was the city of his birth and Cilicia the land of his roots. Tarsus and Antioch were neighbours in the fullest sense, connected by road and sea, and this proximity would prove providential for the mission of the Church.

Where the disciples were first called Christians

The pivotal moment comes in Acts 11. After the martyrdom of Stephen, believers scattered by persecution travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, at first preaching only to fellow Jews. But some began to proclaim the Lord Jesus to the Greeks as well, and "a great number who believed turned to the Lord" (Acts 11:21). The church in Jerusalem, hearing of this, sent Barnabas to Antioch. A good man, "full of the Holy Spirit and of faith" (Acts 11:24), Barnabas rejoiced at what he saw — and then made a decision that would change history.

He went to Tarsus to look for Saul.

Barnabas brought Paul from Tarsus to Antioch, and for a whole year the two of them taught great numbers of people. It was in this vibrant, mixed community that a new name was born: "it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians" (Acts 11:26). The name marked something genuinely new. These were no longer simply a movement within Judaism in the eyes of their neighbours; they were recognised as followers of Christ, a distinct people gathered around the risen Lord.

A mission base for Paul and Barnabas

Antioch did not merely name the Christians — it sent them. In Acts 13 we read of the prophets and teachers gathered in the church there. As they worshipped and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" (Acts 13:2). With prayer and the laying on of hands, the community sent them out. From this moment Antioch became the launching point of what we now call Paul's missionary journeys, the great arc of preaching that would carry the Gospel across Cyprus, Asia Minor, Greece and ultimately towards Rome.

Antioch remained Paul's home base between his travels. He returned there to report to the community that had commissioned him (Acts 14:26–27), and it was from Antioch that the momentous question of how Gentile believers should be received was carried up to the leaders in Jerusalem — the gathering often called the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15). The city was thus not only a birthplace of the Christian name but a working heart of the apostolic mission, a place of teaching, discernment and sending.

For the man who described his own calling in the opening of his letter to the Galatians — insisting that his Gospel came "not from any human source" but through a revelation of Jesus Christ (Galatians 1) — Antioch was the community within which that calling was tested, confirmed and set in motion. You can read more about the road from Damascus, near which Paul was converted (Acts 9), and the journeys that followed in our guide to the missionary journeys of Saint Paul.

Antioch, Tarsus and the heritage of Cilicia

The closeness of Antioch and Tarsus is more than a matter of geography. Together they frame the region where the early Church first learned to cross boundaries — between Jew and Gentile, between the traditions of Jerusalem and the wider Greco-Roman world. Cilicia, with Tarsus as its chief city, gave the Church its greatest missionary; neighbouring Antioch gave the Church its name and its first great sending community. To walk this region is to trace the very ground on which the word "Christian" was first spoken.

This early Christian heritage did not end with the apostolic age. Antioch became one of the ancient patriarchates of the Church, revered across the Catholic, Orthodox and other Christian traditions, and figures such as Saint Ignatius of Antioch carried its witness into the second century. The wider Turkish coast preserves this memory still, as our reflection on Mersin and Cilicia's early Christian heritage explores.

To understand why this corner of Türkiye matters so deeply to the Christian story, it helps to begin with the city of the Apostle's birth — a theme we take up in Where Is Tarsus? and in our pilgrimage guide to Tarsus.

A living memory, honoured together

The story of Antioch reminds us that the Church was, from the very beginning, a communion drawn from many peoples and sent out to many more. What was first spoken on the Orontes still shapes how Christians of every tradition understand themselves today.

It is in this spirit that pilgrims and communities look towards Tarsus and Mersin for the inaugural St Paul Global Week, from 28 to 30 June 2027. Centred on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June, the gathering turns towards the city of Paul's birth to honour his life, mission and enduring legacy — the same mission that once set out from neighbouring Antioch. The Feast Day programme will be broadcast live worldwide, so that those who cannot travel may still keep vigil in prayer. You can explore the programme and the meaning of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, and community and church leaders are warmly invited to learn about the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme. Wherever the Gospel first found its name, its journey continues still.