the Week of Christ the King / Proper 29 / Ordinary 34
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Bible Dictionaries
Chios
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (ἡ Χίος; now ‘Scio’)
The name was given to a beautiful island in the aegean Sea, separated from the mainland of Asia Minor by a picturesque channel, 6 miles wide, which is studded with islets. Its capital was also called Chios. In the 5th cent. b.c. its inhabitants were said to be the wealthiest in Greece. It produced ‘the best of the Grecian wines’ (Strabo, xiv. i. 35). Under the Roman Empire it was a free city of the province of Asia, till the time of Vespasian, who included it in the Insularum Provincia.
St. Paul passed Chios in his last recorded aegean voyage (Acts 20:15). Sailing in the morning from Mitylene in Lesbos, his ship, after a run of 50 miles, cast anchor at night near the Asian coast, opposite Chios (ἄντικρυς Χίου) and under the headland of Mimas. Next day she struck across the open sea (παρεβάλομεν) for Samos. Chios was one of the seven claimants to the honour of being the birth-place of Homer, and its pretensions received stronger support from tradition than those of any of its rivals. ‘The blind old bard of Chios’ rocky isle’ was familiar with the course pursued by St. Paul, for he represents Nestor as standing in his ship at the Lesbian Bay and doubting-
‘If to the right to urge the pilot’s toil …
Or the straight course to rocky Chios plough,
And anchor under Mimas’ shaggy brow’
(Od. iii. 168-172).
Josephus describes a voyage of Herod the Great in the opposite direction. ‘When he had sailed by Rhodes and Cos, he touched at Lesbos, as thinking he should have overtaken Agrippa there; but he was taken short here by a north wind, which hindered his ship from going to the shore, so he remained many days at Chios.… And when the high winds were laid he sailed to Mitylene, and thence to Byzantium’ (Ant. xvi. ii. 2).
Literature.-Conybeare-Howson, St. Paul, new ed., London, 1877, ii. 262f.; W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul, do. 1895, p. 292f.; T. Bent, in Eng. Hist. Review, iv. [1889] pp. 467-480; Murray’s Guide to Asia Minor.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Chios'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/c/chios.html. 1906-1918.
