CAPPADOCIA (Kari-raw/la). Among those who were present on the day of Pentecost, when the apostles received the miraculous gift of tongues, were dwellers in Cappadocia.' They with others exclaimed, How hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were horn?' (Acts ii. 8, 9.) Peter also addressed his First Epistle, among others, to the `strangers scattered throughout Cap padocia' (I Pet. i. I). In ancient times the Cappa docians occupied the whole eastern section of the great plateau in the centre of Asia Minor, and also the lower plains between that plateau and the Euxine. The latter portion was subsequently cal led Pontus (Rawlinson's Herodot. i. 653, 659, 399). Ptolemy makes Cappadocia extend as far north as the shores of the Euxine (Geag. vi. I). The pro vince mentioned in the New Testament is more limited in extent, because Pontus is also named. It was bounded on the north by Pontus, on the west by the river Halys, on the south by Mount Taurus, which separated it from Cilicia, and on the east by the Euphrates.
The Cappadocians were a mixed race, descended from the Moschi, a Scythian tribe, and another tribe of Persian origin. Their language was therefore partly Scythian and partly Persian. It bore no analogy to the Semitic, and it was thus the more wonderful to hear Jews speak it with accuracy and fluency (Bocharti Opp. 1. 535).
Christianity took deep root in Cappadocia at a very early period, and it continued to flourish there for many centuries. Some of the most eminent fathers of the early church were natives of this pro vince. The celebrated Gregory Thaumaturgus flourished here in the middle of the third century. Gregory Nazianzen (so called from Nazianzus, a town of Cappadocia), Gregory Nyssen, and his brother Basil the Great, were born in Cappadocia, and lived there together during a part of the fourth cen tury (Connyb. and Howson, Life of i. 267).—J. L. P.