10 Facts About Lystra

Lystra was a city in central Anatolia, now part of present-day Turkey.

Lystra was visited several times by Paul the Apostle, along with Barnabas or Silas.

Lystra was included by various authors in ancient Lycaonia, Isauria, or Galatia.

Lystra is the ancient name of the village visited by Paul the Apostle.

Lystra is located on an ancient road which ran from Ephesus to Sardis to Antioch in Pisidia to Iconium and Lystra, to Derbe, through the Cilician Gates, to Tarsus, to Antioch in Syria, and then to points east and south.

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Timothy left Lystra to become the companion of Paul and Silas on the rest of the Second Missionary Journey.

Unlike other cities Paul visited, Lystra apparently had no synagogue, although Timothy's mother and grandmother were Jewesses, thus exposing him at an early age to the Holy Scriptures.

Lystra appears to have been the first location where the apostles reached the Gentiles with the gospel of Christ without approaching them through the common ground of Judaism.

Archaeologist and New Testament Scholar Sir William Mitchell Ramsay wrote in 1907: "Excavation at Lystra is urgently needed in the interests of history and New Testament study".

Lystra wrote in 1941: "One hopes that some enthusiast will spend the money needed to clear up the topography of Lystra; and some fragments, at present valueless, may be completed by his discoveries".