Lydia

A woman of Thyatira, for whose conversion Paul was called by a vision to preach at Philippi. (See Act 16:14 - 40.) Her name, it should seem, was taken from Ludim, births.

a woman of Thyatira, a seller of purple, who dwelt in the city of Philippi, in Macedonia. She was converted to the faith by St. Paul, and both she and her family were baptized. She offered her house to the Apostle, and pressed him to abide there so earnestly, that he yielded to her entreaties. She was not a Jewess by birth, but a proselyte, Act 16:14-15; Act 16:40.

2. LYDIA, an ancient celebrated kingdom of Asia Minor, which, in the time of the Apostles, was reduced to a Roman province. Sardis was the capital.

Lyd´ia, a province in the west of Asia Minor, supposed to have derived its name from Lud, the fourth son of Shem (Gen 10:22; see Nations, Dispersion of). It was bounded on the east by Greater Phrygia, on the north by Aeolis or Mysia, on the west by Ionia and the Aegean Sea, and on the south it was separated from Caria by the Maeander. The country is for the most part level. Among the mountains, that of Tmolus was celebrated for its saffron and red wine. In the palmy days of Lydia its kings ruled from the shores of the Aegean to the river Halys; and Croesus, who was its king in the time of Solon and of Cyrus, was reputed the richest monarch in the world. He was able to bring into the field an army of 420,000 foot and 60,000 horse against Cyrus, by whom, however, he was defeated, and his kingdom annexed to the Persian Empire (Herod. i. 6). Lydia afterwards formed part of the kingdom of the Seleucidae; and it is related in 1Ma 8:3, that Antiochus the Great was compelled by the Romans to cede Lydia to King Enmenes. In the time of the travels of the Apostles it was a province of the Roman Empire. Its chief towns were Sardis (the capital), Thyatira, and Philadelphia, all of which are mentioned in the New Testament, although the name of the province itself does not occur. The manners of the Lydians were corrupt even to a proverb.

A woman of Thyatira, residing at Philippi in Macedonia, and dealing in purple cloths. She was not a Jewess by birth, but had become a proselyte to Judaism and "worshipped God." She was led by the grace of God to receive the gospel with joy; and having been baptized, with her household, constrained Paul and his fellow-laborers to make her house their home while at Philippi, Mal 16:14,40 . See PHILIPPI.\par

Lyd’ia. (land of Lydus).

1. A maritime province, in the west of Asia Minor, bounded by Mysia on the north, Phrygia on the east, and Caria on the south. It is enumerated among the districts which the Romans took away from Antiochos the Great after the battle of Magnesia in B.C. 190, and transferred to Eumenus II, king of Pergamus. Lydia is included in the "Asia" of the New Testament.

2. The first European convert of St. Paul, and afterward, his hostess during his first stay at Philippi. Act 18:14-15, also Act 18:40. (A.D. 47). She was a Jewish proselyte at the time of the apostle’s coming; and it was at the Jewish Sabbath-worship by the side of a stream, Act 18:13, that the preaching of the gospel reached her heart.

Her native place was Thyatira, in the province of Asia. Act 18:14; Rev 2:18. Thyatira was famous for its dyeing works; and Lydia was connected with this trade, as a seller either of dye or of dyed goods. We infer that she was a person of considerable wealth.

Act 16:13-15. Paul’s first European convert. A Jewish proselyte ("which worshipped God".) In attending the means of grace at Philippi, Lydia received the blessing. Many women, and among them Lydia, resorted to the place by the river Gangites or Gaggitas "where prayer was wont to be made"; possibly a proseuchee was there, "the meeting place of Jewish congregations in Greek cities" (Winer), or "a place of prayer as opposed to a synagogue or house of prayer" (Conybeare and Howson, Life of Paul). For quietness and freedom from interruption it was "outside of the gate" (so the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus manuscripts read instead of "out of the city"), and "by the river side" for the sake of the ablutions connected with the worship. The seashore was esteemed by the Jews a place most pure, and therefore suited for prayer; at their great fast they used to leave their synagogues and pray on every shore in Tertullian’s (de Jejun. 16) time; see also Josephus Ant. 14:10, section 23.

Luke describes here with the vividness of an eye witness, Women, as in many of our own congregations, formed the greater part of the worshippers; their employment as dyers brought them together in that vicinity. Lydia belonged to Thyatira in Asia Minor, where inscriptions relating to a "guild of dyers" there confirm Luke’s accuracy. Paul arrived early in the week, for "certain days" elapsed before the sabbath. Paul, Silas, and Luke "sat down" (the usual attitude of teachers) to speak to the assembled women. Lydia was one of the listeners (eekouen), and "the Lord opened her heart (compare Luk 24:45; Psa 119:18; Psa 119:130) that she attended unto the things spoken of Paul" (Luke modestly omits notice of his own preaching). The Greek (elaloumen) implies conversational speaking rather than set preaching. Her modesty and simplicity beautifully come out in the narrative. She heartily yields to her convictions and is forthwith baptized, the waters of Europe then first being sacramentally used to seal her faith and God’s forgiveness in Christ.

She leads her "household" to believe in, and be baptized as disciples of, the same Saviour. This is the first example of that family religion to which Paul often refers in his epistles (1Co 1:11; 1Co 1:16; 1Co 16:15; Rom 16:5; Phm 1:2). First came her faith, then her leading all around her to Christ, then her and their baptismal confession, then her love evidenced in pressing hospitality (Heb 13:2; 1Pe 4:9; 1Ti 5:10), finally her receiving into her house Paul and Silas after their discharge from prison; she was not "ashamed of the Lord’s prisoners, but was partaker of the afflictions of the gospel." Through Lydia also the gospel probably came into Thyatira, where Paul had been forbidden to preach it at the earlier time, for God has His times for everything (Act 16:6; Rev 2:18). Thyatira being a Macedonian colony had much contact with Philippi, the parent city. Lydia may have been also one of "those women who laboured with Paul in the gospel" at Philippi (Php 4:3).

Lydia (lyd’i-ah). 1. A Jewish proselyte from the city of Thyatira, in Lydia, engaged in the purple trade, possessed of wealth, and temporarily residing at Philippi, where she heard Paul preach. Act 16:14. She accepted the gospel, was baptized together with her household, and Paul stayed at her house. 2. Eze 30:5, E. V. "Lud," where it probably refers to a people or place in Africa. It was also a coast region of Asia Minor, and formed in olden times the centre of a great empire under Crœsus; afterward it belonged successively to Syria, Pergamus, and the Romans. Its principal cities were Sardis, Thyatira, and Philadelphia. It is mentioned in 1Ma 8:8 among the provinces which the Romans transferred from Syria to Pergamus.

[Lyd’ia]

A disciple of Thyatira - a place noted for its dyes - a seller of purple, residing at Philippi, whose heart the Lord opened, and who became, as far as is known, the first convert in Europe. She received Paul, Silas, and Luke into her house. Act 16:14; Act 16:40.

LYDIA.—A seller of purple-dyed garments at Philippi, probably a widow and a ‘proselyte of the gate’ (see art. Nicolas), whom St. Paul converted on his first visit to that city, together with her household, and with whom he and his companions lodged (Act 16:14 f., 40). She was of Thyatira in the district of Lydia, the W. central portion of the province Asia, a district famed for its purple dyes; but was doubtless staying at Philippi for the purpose of her trade. She was apparently prosperous, dealing as she did in very fine wares. It has been held that Lydia is the proper name of this woman; but it seems more likely that it merely means ‘the Lydian,’ and that it was the designation by which she was ordinarily known at Philippi. She is not mentioned (at least, by that name) in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, and unless we identify her with Euodia or Syntyche, she had probably left the city when the Apostle wrote; for a conjecture of Renan’s, see art. Synzygus. The incident in Act 16:1-40 is one example out of many of the comparatively Independent position of women in Asia Minor and Macedonia.

A. J. Maclean.

lid´i-a (Λυδία, Ludı́a): An important country in the western part of Asia Minor bounded on the North by Mysia, on the East by Phrygia, on the South by Caria, and on the West by the Aegean Sea. Its surface is rugged, but along the valleys between its mountain ranges ran some of the most important highways from the coast cities to the distant interior. Of its many rivers the chief are the Cayster, the Lower Hermus, the Cogamos, the Caicus and, during a part of its course, the Meander.

Lydia was an exceedingly ancient and powerful kingdom whose history is composed chiefly of that of its individual cities. In 546 BC it fell into the hands of the Persians, and in 334 BC it became a part of Alexander’s empire. After the death of Alexander its possession was claimed by the kings both of Pergamos and of Seleucia, but in 190 BC it became the undisputed possession of the former (1 Macc 8:8). With the death of Attalus III, 133 BC, it was transferred by the will of that king to Rome, and Lydia, which then became but a name, formed, along with Caria, Mysia and Phrygia, a part of the Roman province of Asia (see ASIA). Chief among its cities were Smyrna and Ephesus, two of the most important in Asia Minor, and Smyrna is still the largest and wealthiest city of that part of Turkey. At Ephesus, the seat of the goddess Diana, Paul remained longer than elsewhere in Asia, and there his most important missionary work was done (Acts 19). Hence, Lydia figures prominently in the early history of the church; it became Christianized during the residence of the apostle at Ephesus, or soon afterward (see also LUD).

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Lydia, the fairest and richest country of western Asia Minor, was bounded by Mysia in the N., Phrygia in the E., Caria in the S., and the aegean Sea in the W. Long mountain chains, extending westward from the central plateau, divided it into broad alluvial valleys. The regions between the ranges of Messogis, Tmolus, and Temnus, watered by the Cayster and the Hermus, were among the most fertile in the world. The trade and commerce of Lydia contributed more to its immense wealth than the mines of Tmolus or the golden sand of Pactolus. In the time of Alyattes and Crœsus, who reigned in splendour at Sardis, the kingdom of Lydia embraced almost the whole of Asia Minor west of the Halys, but Cyrus subdued it about 546 b.c., and a succession of satraps did their best to crush the spirit of the race. After the triumphal progress of Alexander the Great, Lydia was held for a time by Antigonus, and then by the Seleucids. After Magnesia (190 b.c.) the Romans presented it to their ally Eumenes, king of Pergamos (1Ma_8:8). From 133 onwards it formed part of the Roman province of Asia. Before the time of Strabo (xiii. iv. 17) the Lydian language had been entirely displaced by the Greek.

The religion of the Lydians-the cult of Cybele-was a sensuous Nature-worship, perhaps originally Hittite; their music-‘soft Lydian airs’-was voluptuous; and the prostitution at their temples, whereby their daughters obtained dowries (Herod. i. 93), made ‘Lydian’ a term of contempt among the Greeks. Many Jewish families were settled in Lydia (Jos. Ant. XII. iii. 4), and it is probable that in the great centres of population not a few Gentiles turned to them in search of a higher faith and a purer morality. Among those was the purple-seller of Thyatira, who was St. Paul’s first convert in Europe (Act_16:14; Act_16:40). ‘Lydia’ was most probably not her real name, but a familiar ethnic appellation. She was ‘the Lydian’ to all her Philippian friends (E. Renan, St. Paul, 1869, p. 146; T. Zahn, Introd. to the NT, Eng. translation , 1909, i. 523, 533). See preceding article.

In Eze_30:5 the Revised Version has changed Lydia into Lud, and the country Lydia is never mentioned in the NT. The Roman provincial system created a nomenclature which most of the writers of the Apostolic Age habitually employ. Like many other geographical and ethnological names, Lydia ceased to have any political significance. St. Paul, the Roman citizen, uses the provincial name Asia, and never Lydia. John writes to five Lydian churches, along with one in Mysian Pergamos and one in Phrygian Laodicea, but all the seven are ‘churches which are in Asia’ (Rev_1:4; Rev_1:11). It is contended, indeed, by Zahn (op. cit. i. 187) that the Grecian Luke, to whom the unofficial terminology would come naturally, uses Asia in the popular non-Roman sense as synonymous with Lydia, to which F. Blass (Acta Apostolorum, 1895, p. 176) would add Mysia and Caria. J. B. Lightfoot, however, states good reasons for maintaining that ‘Asia in the New Testament is always Proconsular Asia’ (Galatians5, 1876, p. 19 n. [Note: . note.] ), and W.M. Ramsay strongly supports this view, refusing now to admit an exception (as he formerly did [The Church in the Roman Empire, 1893, p. 150]) even in the case of Act_2:9.

James Strahan.

(Acts 16)

- Her home-town of Thyatira in the province of Asia is one of the seven churches John later wrote to in Revelations 2:18-29. As a dealer in purple-dyed cloth - the dye, Tyrian purple, came from a rare sea-shell and the expensive cloth was only worn by the wealthy - she must have been a successful business-woman. Also, as a woman, she is the first named convert in Europe, and as there was no synagogue, and of course, no churches, her home may have served as the first church in Philippi, and thus Europe. Luke also appears to have stayed there during his time in Philippi. Unfortunately, this is the first and almost the last time we hear of her