Acts 15:39

39. The contention was so sharp There was a sharpness, παροξυσμος , or excitement. The principal word may signify an excitement, whether good, bad, or indifferent. It has been adopted as a medical term, paroxysm, which, however, would not rightly express the mental term. The excitement of a purely ethical emotion, in opposition to a wrong collision from another, may be in a high degree right. Such was very probably the case here with Paul, but certainly not with Barnabas. There was equally a παροξυσμος in Paul’s rebuke of Peter at Antioch; but the Church has ever pronounced Paul wholly right and Peter wholly wrong. The same sharpening pervades Paul’s utterance to Elymas, the sorcerer, and indeed the whole epistle to the Galatians. But it is a sharpening against error and wrong.

Took Mark An abruptness of leaving, indicating passion. He loses the honour of bearing the banner of the cross with Paul into Europe. Barnabas henceforth disappears from all authentic history, being mentioned by Paul alone, 1 Corinthians 9:6. As it was to his native Cyprus he went with his young relative, in Cyprus he seems to have remained. Very possibly the quietude of approaching age had some influence in separating him from the young and too active Paul. Legends alone pretend to relate his subsequent life and his martyrdom in Cyprus. An epistle, early as the second century, bears his name, but is neither worthy of his fame, nor accepted as indisputably genuine by the early Church.