Tarsus

Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia in Asia Minor, is known as Paul's birthplace, the city he was sent to from Jerusalem to escape assassination, and the city Barnabas later drew him out of to bring him to the work at Antioch. Every one of those references sits in the book of Acts, which UPDV does not carry. What survives in UPDV is the regional name — Cilicia, the province whose capital was Tarsus — and it survives in two places: Paul's own self-summary in Galatians 1, and a 1 Maccabees notice that fixes Cilicia on the Hellenistic political map a generation before Paul.

Paul's Return to the Cilician District

In the autobiographical defense at the head of Galatians, Paul lays out the sequence of his movements after the Damascus call without naming Jerusalem as his first stop. "But I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus" (Gal 1:17). Three years later he visits Cephas at Jerusalem, sees only James of the other apostles (Gal 1:18-19), and then leaves: "Then I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia" (Gal 1:21). Cilicia is the Roman province whose capital Tarsus was; UPDV here preserves the only surviving witness in its canon to Paul moving back into his home district. The verse closes the gap by adding that "I was still unknown by face to the churches of Judea which were in Christ" (Gal 1:22) — the Cilician years are the offstage years of Paul's early ministry, the period filled in from Acts.

Cilicia in the Hellenistic Map

The other UPDV mention of the province sits in 1 Maccabees. After Ptolemy of Egypt has entered Antioch and set two crowns on his head — that of Egypt, and that of Asia — the writer adds a single line locating Alexander Balas: "Now King Alexander was in Cilicia at that time: because those who were in those places had rebelled" (1Ma 11:14). Cilicia is here a Seleucid possession with its own history of revolt, the Asia-Minor anchor of a kingdom whose center had just been seized in Antioch. Alexander returns from Cilicia to give Ptolemy battle and is put to flight (1Ma 11:15). The notice gives the province a political weight — rebellious cities, royal counter-march — that the Pauline material on its own does not, and it is the closest UPDV gets to naming Tarsus's region as a place of consequence in the centuries before Paul.

Notes

The Acts material associated with Tarsus — Paul born there (Ac 9:11; 21:39; 22:3), sent there from Jerusalem when a plot against his life was uncovered (Ac 9:30), and brought from there to Antioch by Barnabas (Ac 11:25-26) — is not in UPDV, since UPDV does not carry Acts. The biblical name "Tarshish," which sounds similar, refers to a different place (a Phoenician trading partner reached by sea) and is treated separately in Tarshish.