Why did the people of Lystra call Paul Hermes? Because they thought two gods had walked into their town. Barnabas and Paul had healed a man lame from birth, and the crowd took them for Zeus and Hermes come down in human form. Paul got the name Hermes because he did the talking.1
What happened next is the best moment Paul has in Acts, and I want to give it its full weight.
The day at Lystra #
Lystra was a small Roman colony in Lycaonia, in the south of what is now Türkiye. Luke sets the scene in a few lines. A man sat there who had never walked. Paul looked at him, saw that he had faith to be made well, and told him in a loud voice to stand up on his feet. The man sprang up and walked.2
The crowd shouted in Lycaonian, their own language, so the two visitors may not have followed it at first. The priest of Zeus, whose temple stood in front of the town, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and made ready to sacrifice with the people.3
A Greek reader would have known the story the crowd had in mind. Ovid tells of Jupiter and Mercury, the Roman names of Zeus and Hermes, walking through Phrygia disguised as men. Every house turned them away except the hut of an old couple, Baucis and Philemon, and the gods destroyed the rest.4 A town that knew that tale would not want to make the same mistake twice.
When the apostles heard what was being prepared, they tore their clothes and rushed into the crowd, crying out:
15καὶ λέγοντες· Ἄνδρες, τί ταῦτα ποιεῖτε; καὶ ἡμεῖς ὁμοιοπαθεῖς ἐσμεν ὑμῖν ἄνθρωποι, εὐαγγελιζόμενοι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τούτων τῶν ματαίων ἐπιστρέφειν ἐπὶ θεὸν ζῶντα ὃς ἐποίησεν τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐν αὐτοῖς·
15Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.5
The Greek word is homoiopatheis: men who feel what you feel, who suffer what you suffer. Paul and Barnabas go on to say that God let the nations walk in their own ways, and yet left a witness to Himself in the rain from heaven and the seasons of harvest.6 Even with those words, Luke says, they barely stopped the sacrifice.7
Creator and creature #
This is the first principle of al-tawḥīd as al-Fārūqī set it out. Reality is of two kinds, God and what is not God, and the two can never be merged, mixed or confused. No creature rises to become God, and God does not become a creature.8
Paul and Barnabas say it with their hands before they say it with their mouths. They tear their clothes, the sign of horror at blasphemy. Then they say what every prophet said. The Qur’an gives the Prophet Muḥammad (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam, peace be upon him) the same words to speak: “I am only a man like you, to whom has been revealed that your god is one God.”9 Of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him and his mother it says simply: “They both used to eat food.”10
A man who eats, tires and bleeds is a man. The crowd at Lystra wanted a god in human form, and the two missionaries told them they had the wrong idea of both.
Acts tells a second story the same way. When Herod Agrippa spoke at Caesarea, the people shouted that it was the voice of a god and not of a man. An angel of the Lord struck him at once, Luke says, because he did not give God the glory.11 Luke wants his reader to see the difference: Herod took the honour, and Paul and Barnabas refused it.
What came after #
The same crowd turned within days. Jews from Antioch and Iconium arrived, won the people over, and they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the town, thinking he was dead.12 Paul himself counts it in his list of sufferings: once he was stoned.13 The parting of Barnabas and Paul, a few chapters later, is the subject of The parting with Barnabas, and open conflict with Peter, and the route Paul took is in Paul’s missionary journeys: the routes Acts records.
Then there is Malta. After the shipwreck a viper fastened on Paul’s hand, and when he did not swell up or fall down dead, the islanders changed their minds and said he was a god.14 This time Luke records no torn clothes and no speech. The story moves straight on to the chief man of the island and his hospitality. I do not want to build too much on a silence. But a writer who gave Lystra a full speech gave Malta none.
The man and the God #
At Lystra, Paul drew the line exactly where the prophets drew it. Within a century of his letters, the church that read them had moved it. Ignatius of Antioch, writing on his way to Rome early in the second century, speaks of “our God, Jesus the Christ”.15 At Nicaea in 325 the bishops called ʿĪsā “true God from true God”. How that happened, and how much of it rests on Paul’s own letters, is the subject of Adapting the message to the pagans.
I hold Paul to his words at Lystra. “We also are men, of like nature with you” is true of Paul and Barnabas, and the Qur’an says it is true of every messenger God sent, ʿĪsā included. A Christian reader who honours that scene has no quarrel with tawḥīd on that point. On the Abrahamic Religions site, Abrahamic monotheism traces the same line through the three traditions.
Lystra: questions readers ask #
Why was Paul called Hermes at Lystra?
Luke says the crowd called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes, since Paul was the one who did the speaking (Acts 14:12). Hermes was the messenger and speaker of the Greek gods.
What did Paul say when the crowd tried to worship him?
That he and Barnabas were men of the same nature as the crowd, and that the people should turn from these things to the living God who made heaven and earth (Acts 14:15).
Was Paul stoned at Lystra?
Yes. Acts says Jews from Antioch and Iconium won over the crowd, who stoned Paul and left him for dead (Acts 14:19). Paul says he was stoned once (2 Corinthians 11:25).
Did Paul accept being called a god anywhere else?
On Malta the islanders said he was a god after he survived a viper’s bite. Acts records no reply from Paul (Acts 28:6).
- Acts 14:8–12. ↩
- Acts 14:8–10. ↩
- Acts 14:11–13. ↩
- Ovid, Metamorphoses 8, the story of Baucis and Philemon. ↩
- Acts 14:15 (SBLGNT; ESV). ↩
- Acts 14:16–17. ↩
- Acts 14:18. ↩
- Isma’il Raji al Faruqi, Al Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life, 2nd ed. (Herndon, Virginia: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1992), chapter 1, section II. ↩
- Sūrah al-Kahf 18:110. Qurʾānic verses are rendered after Saheeh International. ↩
- Sūrah al-Māʾidah 5:75. ↩
- Acts 12:21–23. ↩
- Acts 14:19. ↩
- 2 Corinthians 11:25. ↩
- Acts 28:3–6. ↩
- Ignatius, To the Ephesians 18.2, in J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers. ↩
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved.