---
title: Acts 13:1
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-13-1/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-13-1.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Acts 13:1
testament: NT
section: Acts
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Acts 13:1

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch), and Saul.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (1984 edition): "in the local congregation... Manaen, who was educated with Herod the district ruler"
- NWT (2013 revision): "in the local congregation... Manaen who was educated with Herod the district ruler"

## JW Usage

JWs treat Acts 13:1 as background detail establishing the Antioch congregation as the launch point for Paul's missionary journeys. The verse is named in JW publications when discussing early Christian organisation and the appointment of teachers and prophets. There is no distinctive doctrinal handling.

## Protestant Usage

The verse names five specific men in the church at Antioch — Barnabas, Symeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who was raised with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. Luke is writing historical narrative — proper names, civic identifications, political relationships. This matters for the next verse: when Acts 13:2 reports the Holy Spirit saying "set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them," the "me" and "I" arrive in the middle of a paragraph that has just named real people in a real city. Personification is a poetic device with rules; it does not belong to historical prose. The genre of v.1 governs the genre of v.2 — and the Spirit's first-person speech cannot be smuggled into the category of figurative language without shredding the paragraph.

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders ekklēsia as "local congregation" and tetrarchēs as "district ruler" — both standard NWT terminological choices that prefer plain modern English over the consensus "church" and "tetrarch." Neither is doctrinally decisive on its own; they fit the wider NWT pattern of preferring functional substitutes for traditional terms. The apologetic weight of v.1 is in the historical-narrative genre it establishes for the verses that follow.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Spirit Says 'I'](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/paraclete-personal-pneumatology.md) — Acts 13:2 — First-Person Verbs in Narrative Prose [Holy Spirit]