Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark, "Paul and his company," set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia on the coast of Asia Minor. There the young John Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem (see Acts 13:13). Had he simply reached the end of his agreed term of service, or was he apprehensive about the inevitable challenges that the future would hold for pioneers taking a new faith into strange pagan lands? No explanation is given. But it is clear that Mark's action deeply affected Paul's judgment of his usefulness as a fellow worker, for later he refused the companionship of Mark, giving as his reason that he "departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work" (15:38).
Mark's departure was in fact the immediate cause of an unfortunate quarrel between Paul and Barnabas on this later occasion; for while Barnabas was eager to reinstate his young kinsman Mark, Paul would hear none of it. Much later on, however, Paul and Mark were apparently to become reconciled. (See Col. 4:10; Philem. 1:24.)
Perga was not an inconsiderable town, but the apostles appear to have made no stay there at this time, pressing on to Antioch in the uplands of Pisidia, some ninety miles inland. The reason for their not preaching in Perga is not stated, but some commentators have calculated that they arrived there in early summer when the heat of that low-lying district is extreme and practically the entire population would have moved to the hills.
