Silas

Silas, also called Silvanus, is a first-century Jewish Christian leader of the Jerusalem church who became a companion of Paul on his missionary travels and is named with him in several New Testament letters; "Silvanus" is the Latin form of the name used in the letters, and "Silas" the shorter form used in Acts, which most interpreters treat as the same man.

In Acts, Silas first appears as one of the men chosen by the Jerusalem church to carry its decision to Antioch along with Paul and Barnabas, described in the narrative as a leading figure among the brothers and himself a prophet who encouraged and strengthened the believers (Acts 15:22, 27, 32). The substance of the letter he carried is given in Acts 15:24 and 15:29, which deny any apostolic command to be circumcised and require only abstention from things sacrificed to idols, blood, things strangled, and sexual immorality. The text says he then travelled with Paul through Syria and Cilicia and into Macedonia.

At Philippi, Acts 16:25-26 records that Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God at midnight in prison when an earthquake opened the doors and loosed the bonds; the same chapter tells of the jailer's question and the answer given to him, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:30-31), and of his household rejoicing in belief (Acts 16:34). The narrative later has Paul identify both men as Roman citizens (Acts 16:37-38), which is why the magistrates were alarmed. Acts 17:5-6 places Silas with Paul in Thessalonica, where a crowd assaulted the house of Jason seeking them, and Acts 18:5 has Silas and Timothy arriving from Macedonia to join Paul at Corinth. Paul names Silvanus with himself and Timothy as preachers of the Son of God among the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:19), and the opening greetings of both letters to the Thessalonians list him alongside them (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1).

First Peter 5:12 calls him "our faithful brother" and says the letter was written "through Silvanus," a phrase Christians have read differently: some traditions take it to mean he served as Peter's scribe or amanuensis, others that he was the letter's courier, and others that he had a substantive hand in its composition, with the last view bearing on discussions of the letter's Greek style. Later tradition, attested only centuries afterward, makes Silas bishop of Corinth, and the New Testament itself gives no account of his later life or death. Interpreters also differ over Acts 16:25-26: some read the midnight singing as an expression of ordinary faith under suffering, while Pentecostal and charismatic traditions often cite it as a pattern of worship preceding divine intervention.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.