so that he made sweet to them all[1] the words of the Lord and the oracles of the gospel concerning the birth and resurrection of the Beloved; and he gave them an account, word for word, of the great deeds of Christ, how they were revealed to him [that Christ is born of the virgin Mary and of the seed of David].[2]
2. And a certain man, by name Onesiphorus,[3] hearing that Paul was to come to Iconium, went out to meet him with his children Simmias and Zeno, and his wife Lectra, in order that he might entertain him. For Titus had informed him what Paul was like in appearance. For he had not seen him in the flesh, but only in the spirit.
3. And he went along the royal road[4] to Lystra, and kept looking at the passers-by according to the description of Titus.<ref>In the Philopatris of Pseudo-Lucian of the 4th cent, Paul is contemptuously alluded to as "the bald-headed, hook-nosed Galilean, who trod the air into the third heaven, and learned the most beautiful things."
Malala of Antioch, of the 6th cent, describes Paul as being in person "round-shouldered, with a sprinkling of grey on his head and beard, with an aquiline nose, greyish eyes, meeting eyebrows, with a mixture of pale and red in his complexion, and an ample beard. With a genial expression of countenance, he was sensible, earnest, easily accessible, sweet, and inspired with the Holy Spirit."
Nicephorus of the 14th cent, says: "Paul was short and dwarfish in stature, and as it were, crooked in person and
- ↑ "All" omitted in the Coptic, but in many Greek MSS.
- ↑ The words in brackets are found in the Coptic; the MSS. differ here. As a rule we use [] where the texts differ; <> means additions to the text; () denote explanatory additions of the translator.
- ↑ See II Tim. I, 16.
- ↑ This royal road was abolished in 74 A. D., see Ramsay, p. 30.
