First, a note on references, it looks like this travel-site, Christian Pilgrimage Journeys cited below, is out of Greece, so maybe connections towards the Orthodox faith though, no exact faith seems to be linked to. We just had the feast day of Titus and Timothy, companions of Paul: Sts. Timothy and Titus (catholicnewsagency.com) Cale Clark gave a discourse on Relevant Radio the other day on some of the companions of Paul during this year, here is a good listing: The Companions of Paul & Biblical Persons Related to Paul (christian-pilgrimage-journeys.com) A number of these are "gentiles", so it is interesting to see how early Christianity is forming, he went into a slight scholarly dissertation on Epaphras: Epaphras He was a colleague of the Apostle Paul mentioned twice in the New Testament epistle of Colossians and once in the New Testament letter to Philemon. In the first instance he is described as a "fellow servant" (Colossians 1:7) of Paul in his ministry. At the end of the same letter to the Church in Colossae, it is noted that Epaphras is "one of them" and that he sends "greetings" (Colossians 4:12) from his current location to the recipients of the letter. There is a similar refrain in Paul's letter to Philemon, where a person of the same name passes on his "greetings" to Philemon (Philemon 23). Little is known about him, though we can infer that he was a native of Colossae and that he was perhaps converted by Paul himself during the apostle's ministry in Ephesus. The mention of a co-worker at this point in a Pauline epistle is unusual, and the strength of Paul's endorsement of him is also striking (note also Colossians 4:12-13). And Cale went quite a bit more into it. An intriguing topic along with the others.
