Bariah (Hastings' Dictionary)

A son of Shemaiah (1 Ch 3-). See Genealogy. BARJESUS (BaptTjffoCs), a man described in Ac 13' as ' niagian, prophet of lies, Jew,' whom Paul and Barnabas, travelling in Cyprus, found in the train of the proconsul Sergius Paulus, as one of the amid or coinites who always accompanied a Rom. governor. In Jos. Ant. XX. vii.

2 we find a similar case : Simon, ' a Jew, by birth a Cypriot, and pre- tending to be a magian' (observe the striking, though not exact, similarity of the triplet), was one of the ' friends ' of Felix, the procurator of Judiea, and was used by him to seduce Drusilla from her husband Azizus, king of Emesa. Such men, prob- ably Bab. Jews, ' skilled in the lore and uncanny arts and strange powers of the Median priests' (cf.

Mt 2'- '"), — not simply sorcerers and fortune- tellers, but ' men of science,' as they would now be called (being then beyond their age in acquaint- ance with the powers and processes of nature), and not mere isolated self-constituted pretenders, but representatives of an Oriental system and religion, — appear to have been numerous at that period, and to have exerted consideral>le influence on the Rom. world.

It was with a system, there- fore, rather than with a man, tliat the representa- tives of the system ('the way') of Christ, also struggling for "influence in the Rom. empire, came here into conflict. The proconsul, 'a man of practical ability ' ((TKirrAsi, interested, we may suppose, in nature and philosophy, but, as avrerli, BARJONAH BARNABAS 247 uot to be thought of as under ascendency, enjoyed ihi> societj' of this man. l!

ut, hearing that there wore just now two travelling teachers in Cj'prus, and taking them to be of the class that went about giving demonstrations in rhetoric and moral philo- sophy, and sometimes ended by settlinjj down as professors in the ^eat universities, he invited, or 'commanded,' their presence at his court.

The ex|)osilion of Christianity then given by I'aul and liarnalias clearly produced upon Sergius I'aulus a considerable impression ; for Barjesus found it necessary to oppose them openly, and divert the proconsul from the faith by ' perverting the waj-s of the Lord,' lest he should be supplanted in his position, his power and his gains ; because (accord- ing to the apt and interesting e.xpansion of the Codex Bezii") the proconsul ' was listening with much pleasure to them.'

Then ' Saul, who was also Paul,' — i.e. standing forth (for the first time in the narrative), suitably to the occasion, as a Rom. citizen named Paul, — faced the wonder-worker in a manner, so to say, after his own kind, yet sur- Eassing it, and wrought a wonder upon the worker imself, proving to the proconsul, already deeply impressed, that behind Paul stood a divine power. In ver. 8 the phrase ' Elj'mas, the magian, for so is his name translated,' is somewhat perplexing.

It certainly looks, at the outset, as though Elynuis (now first introduced as a second appellation of Barjesus) ought to be a tr. of that name ; but this cannot be. Elymas — which is the Gr. form either of an Aram, word alivid = strong, or, as is more probable, of an Arab, word 'alim, wise (cf.

the Arab, plural ulema, the order of the learned, and the 'wise men' and 'wise women' of our folk- lore)— is here more reasonably (thoufjh this solu- tion of the difficulty is not q^uite satisfactory) tr. by i^yos. Codex D (Bezse), with its Latin d, alone differs from other uncials, and reads 'Eroi^Ss, son of the rendu, a reading strangely accepted by Kloster- mann, Blass, and Ramsay (to whose St. Paul the Traveller this article is under special obligation ; see pp. 73 ff. ).

But neither will this do as a synonym for Barjesus, or for the Syr. Barshcmd, son of the Name (i.e. Jesus). The origin of tlie variant "EiTMiMf is a mystery ; perhaps it was itacism, oi = u. But the versional and patristic variants for Barjesus, such as Bariesouan (or -am), Bariesubam, and Barieu (maleftcus, Jerome), appear to be due to a desire of copyists to avoid associating the name of Jesua with one whom St. Paul calls son of the devil. J. Massie.