Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia: and John departing from them returned to Jerusalem.
Now when Paul and his company loosed, х anachthentes (G321)] - 'had set sail' "from Paphos." Observe the mode of expression here, showing clearly that henceforward our historian has to do chiefly with Paul. Barnabas is already in the background.
They came to Perga in Pamphylia. The distance, in a north westerly direction, from Paphos; on the west side of the island of Cyprus, to Attaleia, on the Gulf of Pamphylia (see the note at Acts 14:25) is not much greater than from Seleucia to Salamis, on the east side of the island. What induced our missionaries now to proceed there, we can only conjecture. But we may naturally suppose that Barnabas having persuaded Paul to begin at Cyprus, with which he was so well acquainted, Paul, in turn, might plead for their trying next the regions lying westward of his own Cilicia, as he himself had already broken ground to the east of it. At all events, the issues of this movement abundantly justified it. Perga was the metropolis of the region of Pamphylia, situated on the river Cestrus, about seven miles due north from Attaleia.
And John departing from them returned to Jerusalem. Since Paul afterward peremptorily refused to take Mark with him on his second missionary journey, because he had departed (or 'fallen off') from them from Pamphylia, and had not gone with them to the work (Acts 15:38), we must infer that he had either wearied of it, or been deterred by the difficulties and dangers which he anticipated in it. This unhappy affair was the occasion of the separation of Paul and Barnabas when they resolved on a second missionary journey. (See the notes at Acts 15:37-40.)
At Antioch, in Pisidia, Paul Preaches in the Synagogue-His Discourse (13:14-41)