Chapter 13 marks a most significant point in the history. Hitherto, Jerusalem and Judea have been the scene of the believers’ activities and Peter the most prominent figure. But now the base of operation moves (at least for Luke’s purposes, ignoring, perhaps, other spheres of activity) to Antioch in Syria, and Paul becomes the center of attention. The very phrase by which Luke refers to the church in Antioch—a quasitechnical term in the Greek—seems to indicate its new status. The Christians are no longer merely “a great number of people” (11:21), but are now “the church” in that place (cf. 11:22 where the same form of expression is used of the church in Jerusalem) and ready as such to carry the gospel another step farther toward “the ends of the earth” (1:8). We have in this chapter the f…