Above Time and Electrified: The Heavenly Joy of Barnabas in Acts 14
Like a lightning bolt, he must have struck them as someone timeless.
Ever since I read in Acts 14:11-13 how the people of Lystra mistook Paul and Barnabas for Greek gods after seeing a miraculous healing performed by Paul, I have been intrigued. They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes — because Paul was the chief speaker.
I could see why Paul would be called Hermes with his ability to wield words and arguments. But why was Barnabas called Zeus? Zeus is the king of the Olympian gods who hurls bolts of lightning. This doesn’t align very well with what we know about Barnabas whose name means “the son of encouragement.”
Between the two of them, Paul qualified more for the role of Zeus with his thunder-and-lightning statements. Yet, the Lystrans must have seen something in Barnabas that reminded them of Zeus, the king of the gods.
Zeus is a complex mythological figure. His father Kronos was known to eat his own children. When Zeus was born, Hera hid the child from his ever-hungry father and gave him a stone instead of the boy. Kronos swallowed the stone without noticing anything. Kronos ate his children not without a reason — he was chronological time. We are all born in chronological time, and we are consumed by it.
Zeus is a moment in time that was saved from being consumed by time. In the Greek lore, Zeus is someone who is above time. He prevails over his father Kronos and becomes king. In doing so he becomes electrified — a Source of divine electricity. People who are above time, shine with heavenly light and joy.
That’s why the Romans associated Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus, with heavenly joy (gaudium caeleste). He was often depicted as a triumphant figure with a ruddy face. Have you ever met people who are above time? They rule, and they radiate heavenly electricity.
You can read it in their eyes. They tread on earth as kings and queens. They rule over circumstances. They rise above the temporal. They live as if they were eternal. When you touch them, they pass their electricity to you, and you lighten up. You meet them and exclaim, “By Jove, I feel so jovial!”
Maybe that’s what the Lystrans saw in the eyes of Barnabas, “the son of encouragement.” Like a lightning bolt, he must have struck them as someone timeless, someone electrified with divine light, someone contagiously jovial. He was a walking encouragement.
The Lystrans wanted to bring sacrifices to both Paul and Barnabas, but the two men redirected their gazes toward the true Source of light. The light was not their own; they shone with a borrowed light. They were images of the Divine, not gods. And yet, the light shone through them to such a degree that people mistook them for gods. Here’s what C.S. Lewis wrote about this phenomenon:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship… There are no ordinary people.” The Weight of Glory
Thank you so much for this! It really does amaze me how you can tease out such meaning from just one word or a phrase or two. I have read that passage before but never really thought about why those two gods were chosen by the people. I love the quote from CS Lewis tho and I think if we could only open the eyes of our heart or clear some of the years and years of cobwebs from our brain and dust and dirt and distractions from our mind, not to mention shut off the constant screaming of our ego etc etc we would really be able to see the light of God in our brothers and sisters right here right now right next to us.
Brother, this is so enlightening (pardon the pun). I never made the connection regarding the "why" for Barnabas as Zeus, but that makes a great deal of sense to me. There are other indicators in the New Testament that support that kind of dynamic between them; Paul has some introvert tendencies; Barnabas' name is listed before Paul's initially in the Acts narrative, indicating primacy. Typically, dynamic duos have contrasting strengths. I could totally see Barnabas being the more outgoing, visibly joyful "son of consolation" of the two. It fits. Thanks for writing this, it's wonderful.