DEBÉ. – A town in Lycaonia, visited several times by St. Paul.
Stephanus of Byzantium erroneously calls it a fortress and places it in Isauria. It lay to the north of the Isaurian region of the Taurus, about 40 km southeast of Lystra and west of Laranda. The identification of D., given the many but faint traces of a city in the area, is uncertain, and it is not excluded that it may have arisen subsequently in different locations. Following J. R. S. Sterrett, scholars have tended to favor Losta (or Zosta). W. M. Ramsay has more precisely identified it with Gudelissin, about 4 km northwest of Losta.
Amyntas of Galatia, after killing Antipater, the tyrant of D. and a friend of Cicero (Epistolae ad familiares, XIII, 73), seized the city and incorporated it into his kingdom, which was already a Roman vassal. Upon his death (25 BC), it was united, along with other territories, to the Roman province of Galatia, from which it appears to have been detached again in AD 38, when Caligula ceded it to Antiochus IV of Commagene (Dio Cassius, LIX, 8, 2), though only for a short time. In honor of Claudius, it took the name of Claudio-Debé. Its position on the great imperial road connecting Ephesus to Syrian Antioch gave it a certain commercial importance.
On the first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas, persecuted by the Jews of Iconium and Lystra, took refuge in D. (Acts 14:6, 20), where they preached the Gospel, apparently without disturbance and with abundant fruit (Acts 14:21). On the second journey, Paul and Silas, coming from Syria and Cilicia, visited D. and Lystra first (Acts 16:1), where Timothy joined them, having been known to Paul probably from the previous journey in Lystra. In the account of the third missionary journey, an explicit visit to the community of D. is not recorded. Gaius, who accompanied Paul on the return from the third missionary journey (Acts 20:4), was originally from or a resident of D.