BAR IESU (Βαριησούς: “son of Jesus”). — A Jew devoted to magic, a “false prophet” surnamed Elymas ('Εὐχάς'), a term of Arabic origin ('alim', “wise man,” plur. 'ulamā'). He lived at Paphos with Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus, where Paolo and Barnaba encountered him.
The proconsul was inclined to accept the evangelical message, but B. dissuaded him and, through intrigues and impostures, “resisted” the Apostles. Paolo, fixing his gaze upon him, struck him with this sentence: “Man full of all deceit and all fraud, son of the devil”; and inflicted blindness upon him as punishment: “For a certain time he shall remain blind,” which happened immediately. This miracle converted the proconsul (Act. 13, 6-12). Crisostomo (Hom. in Act., 28, 2: PG 60, 211) observes that this punishment was temporary, in order to lead B. to faith; Origene states (in Exod.: PG 12, 276) that the magician did in fact believe in Christ.
F. C. Bauer and E. Zeller denied the historicity of this narrative, considering it a duplicate of Pietro’s dispute with Simon Mago (Act. 8, 18-24); but the sole point common to the two passages is the presence of a magician.
B. belonged to that category, then beginning to develop, of Jewish adventurers who cultivated and propagated a theosophical occultism. Μάγος had lost its primitive Persian sense and meant “sorcerer.” The patronymic “son of Jesus” is not surprising, since “Jesus” was then a very common name: more than ten figures of that period bear it in the writings of Flavio Giuseppe. But s. Efrem and the Ρεβίτσα have Βαγανόμαι.
From Act. 13, 8, it would appear that Ἐλύμας is the equivalent (μεθερηνεύεται) of the magician’s name. Th. Zahn accordingly identifies the meanings of the two names and, with cod. D and other “Western” witnesses, reads Ἐντομᾶς (with the meaning of ἔτοιμος, “ready”) and Βαργοδῶν (which derives from the Hebrew Ἐντομᾶ, a form of Ἐντομᾶ “made ready”), so that the magician would have had two names, Greek and Aramaic, of equivalent meaning (like Thomas-Didymos).
If the “Western” reading Ἐντομᾶς (or Ἐντομᾶς: Lucifero and late codices of the Old Latin: “Paratus”) is admitted, the identification of B. with the magician of Cyprus whom Flavio Giuseppe calls Ἀντομᾶς (Antiq. Ind., XX, 7, 2; in various codices Simon) is plausible. He acted as intermediary between the Roman procurator Felice and Dzusilla, separating the latter from her husband Aziz, king of Emesa.
Among the Latins the form Barieu (“maleficus,” s. Girolamo) appeared; it entered four codices of the Old Latin and five of the Vulgate. s. Beda supports it, out of respect for the sacred name of Jesus. Strange is the conjecture of F. C. Burkitt that Ἐλύμας is a corruption of ὁ λομῶς, “the pestilence.”