Asia

(Acts 2:9) — the name of a country then unknown to the ancients, as one of the four great continents. This name was originally applied only to a small Lydian region, including perhaps Ionia and Aeolis. The name gradually broadened in meaning, until it came to designate the whole of Asia Minor, and at last, under this name, the entire vast eastern continent of the globe came to be understood. This vast part of the world was undoubtedly the setting of the most wondrous events, closely bound up with the origin, history, and destiny of the human race.

It is the place of man’s creation and his fall, the wanderings of the first patriarchs and the founding of the first colonies, planted upon the earth after the confusion of tongues at Babel, the various journeys, temptations, and glory of Abraham, the establishment, glory, and fall of the Hebrew kingdom; it is the most sacred place of the birth, life, miracles, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord. In Asia was Eden, and in it too the Divine Sufferer bore His cross to Golgotha.

Asia Minor is a peninsula on the western, or southwestern, shore of Asia, jutting into the Mediterranean, or Great Sea, extending eastward as far as the Euphrates, westward to the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, northward to what is now called the Black Sea, southward to the Mediterranean, or Great Sea. It consisted of the following twelve provinces: Bithynia, Pontus (Galatia), Cappadocia, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Pisidia (Lycaonia), Paphlagonia, Lycia, Phrygia, Mysia (Troas), Lydia, and Caria, and along the coast the Greek colonies of the Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians.

But in the sense in which this word is used in the Book of Acts (2:9; 6:9; 19:10, 22, 26, 27, and elsewhere), it already means the Roman proconsular province of Asia, and encompasses only the concept of that part of Asia Minor which included Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, and Lydia. Within its bounds were the seven churches of Asia (Rev. 1:4–11). In the Book of Acts (27:2), the name Asia may refer to Asia Minor, but even then only to its southwestern shores. In all other mentions it is so distinguished from the other parts of Asia Minor, or so closely connected with Ephesus, that one cannot help thinking that under this name is meant precisely that Asia whose chief city was Ephesus, or, in other words, proconsular Asia.