The large Roman province stretching from the Taurus Mountains to the edge of the Arabian desert, governed from Antioch — its own capital and, by this chapter, the base of the mission this council's decree is written to settle a dispute for. The letter is addressed to the congregations ‘throughout Antioch and Syria and Cilicia’ (v23), and Paul closes the chapter walking back through the same two named regions, delivering it in person (v41). Quirinius's Syrian governorship, tied to the census of Luke 2:2 (not yet on these pages), places the same province at the very start of Luke's two-volume history; here, decades later, it is where that history's center of gravity has moved.