BAR-IESU (Βαρυησούς: “son of Jesus”). — A Jewish magician, a “false prophet” surnamed Elymas (Ἐλῡμας), a term of Arabic origin ('alim “wise man,” pl. 'ulamā). He lived at Paphos with Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus, where he was encountered by Paul and Barnabas. The proconsul was inclined to welcome the evangelical message, but B. dissuaded him and, through intrigues and impostures, “resisted” the Apostles. Paul, fixing his gaze upon him, struck him with these words: “O man full of all deceit and villainy, son of the devil,” and as a punishment inflicted upon him blindness: “For a time you shall be unable to see,” which happened instantly. This miracle converted the proconsul (Acts 13:6–12). Chrysostom (Hom. in Act., 28, 2: PG 60, 211) observes that this punishment was temporary, in order to lead B. to faith; Origen affirms (in Exod.: PG 12, 276) that the magician did in fact believe in Christ.
F. C. Baur and E. Zeller denied the historicity of this narrative, considering it a duplicate of the altercation between Peter and Simon Magus (Acts 8:18–24); yet the only common point between the two passages is the presence of a magician.
B. belonged to that emerging class of Jewish adventurers who cultivated and propagated a theosophical occultism. Μάγος has lost its primitive Persian sense and means “sorcerer.” The patronymic “son of Jesus” is not surprising, since “Jesus” was then a very common name: more than ten persons of that time bear it in the writings of Flavius Josephus. But St. Ephrem and the Peshitta have Barasamā.
From Acts 13:8 it would appear that Elymas is the equivalent (μεθερμηνεύεται) of the magician’s name. Th. Zahn accordingly identifies the sense of the two names and, with Codex D and other “Western” witnesses, reads βιοςμίας (with the sense of ἔτοιμος “ready”) and Βαριγουάν (which derives from the Hebrew סִטְוָן, piʿel form of סָטָן “he made ready”), so that the magician would have had a double name, Greek and Aramaic, of equivalent sense (as Thomas–Didymos).
If one accepts the “Western” reading Ἐτοιμίας (ὁ Ἑτοιμός); Lucifer and late Old Latin manuscripts: “Paratus,” it is plausible to identify B. with the magician of Cyprus whom Flavius Josephus calls 'Ατομος (Antiq. Jud., XX, 7, 2; in various manuscripts Simon), who acted as intermediary between the Roman procurator Felix and Drusilla, separating her from her husband Aziz, king of Emesa.
Among the Latins the form Barieu appears (“sorcerer,” St. Jerome), which penetrated into four Old Latin manuscripts and five of the Vulgate; St. Bede substituted his own, out of respect for the sacred name of Jesus. Strange is the conjecture of F. C. Burkitt, that Ἐλόμας is a corruption of ὁ λοιμός “the pestilence.”