Lives of Scripture

Epanetus is named only once, in Paul's long list of personal greetings that closes his letter to the Romans: "Greet Epaenetus, my beloved, who is the first convert to Christ from Asia" (Romans 16:5). The title Paul gives him -- "first fruits of Asia" in some translations -- marks him as the earliest known believer from the Roman province of Asia (the region of western Asia Minor, including cities like Ephesus), a distinction Paul evidently considered significant enough to note by name among the many Roman believers he greets in this chapter. Nothing else is recorded about him: no words of his, no further deeds, no additional appearances elsewhere in the New Testament. He stands as one small, concrete data point in the larger story of the gospel's spread from Jerusalem outward -- someone who, at some point in the earliest years of the church, was the very first in an entire province to believe in Christ, and whom Paul still remembered and called "beloved" by name years later.