³⁴ He read it and then asked Paul what province he was from. “Cilicia,” Paul answered.

³⁹ “No,” Paul replied, “I am a Jew and a citizen of Tarsus in Cilicia, which is an important city. Please, let me talk to these people.”

Paul Appears before Festus

25 Three days after Festus arrived in Caesarea to take over his new responsibilities, he left for Jerusalem,

⁴¹ Then he traveled throughout Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches there.

⁹ But one day some men from the Synagogue of Freed Slaves, as it was called, started to debate with him. They were Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and the province of Asia.

⁶ “Oh, is he a Galilean?” Pilate asked.

Daniel in the Lions’ Den

6 ^[a]Darius the Mede decided to divide the kingdom into 120 provinces, and he appointed a high officer to rule over each province.

⁴⁹ At Daniel’s request, the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be in charge of all the affairs of the province of Babylon, while Daniel remained in the king’s court.

⁹ So on June 25^[a] the king’s secretaries were summoned, and a decree was written exactly as Mordecai dictated. It was sent to the Jews and to the highest officers, the governors, and the nobles of all the 127 provinces stretching from India to Ethiopia.^[b] The decree was written in the scripts and languages of all the peoples of the empire, including that of the Jews.