BARIAH (ba-ri'ah), (Het). kh, fugitive), son of Shemaiah, descendant of the royal family of Judah (I CilYIK1. 111:22), B. C. about to.
(brer'je'zus), (Gr. gapnyroi.s, a)' save , son of Joshua).
A man described in Acts xiii :6 as 'magian, prophet of lies, Jew,' whom Paul and Barnabas, traveling in Cyprus, found in the train of the proconsul Sergius Paulus, as one of the amici or comites %silo always accompanied a Roman gov ernor. In Josh. Ansig. xx : vii: 2 we find a similar case: Simon, 'a Jew, by birth a Cypriot. and pretending to be a magian' (observe the striking, though not exact, similarity of the triplet), was one of the 'friends' of Felix, the procurator of Juthea, and was used by him to seduce Drusilla from her husband, Azizus, king of (?mesa. Such men, probably Babylonian Jews, 'skilled in the lore and uncanny art, and strange p(wErs of the Median priests' (Comp. Matt. ii :7-to), not sim
ply sorcerers and fortune tellers, but 'men of science,' as they would now be called (being then beyond their age in acquaintance with the powers and processes of nature), and not mere isolated pretenders, but representatives of an Oriental system and religion appear to have been numerous at that period. and to have ex erted considerable intluence on the Roman world. It was with a system, therefore, rather than with a man, that the representative., of the system ('the way') of Chrtst, also struggling for influence in the Roman empire. cline here into ( j Hastings' Bib. t.) 1 See arstAs.) (Gr bar'er-oh ltilf , son of the pat ton) (uic appellation of the Apost r Petit (Matt. comp, John i .12). (lice Mk and l'I•Tt K.)