The Greek proper noun Antiocheia is the city of Antioch — specifically Syrian Antioch on the Orontes River. Appearing about 18 times in the New Testament (primarily in Acts), Antioch was the third-largest city in the Roman Empire and the birthplace of Gentile Christianity and cross-cultural mission.
Antioch is arguably the most strategically significant city in the NT outside of Jerusalem. Acts 11:19–26 records how Jewish believers, scattered by persecution after Stephen's death, came to Antioch and began preaching to Greeks — the first deliberate Gentile outreach. The result was a large church, and it was 'in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians' (Acts 11:26). The city became the sending church for all three of Paul's missionary journeys (Acts 13:1–3; 15:36; 18:23). It was at Antioch that Peter's hypocrisy in withdrawing from Gentile table fellowship provoked Paul's famous confrontation (Galatians 2:11–14) — a crisis that forced the church to clarify the gospel's implications for Jew-Gentile unity. Antioch represents the gospel breaking out beyond ethnic and geographic boundaries — the beginning of the church's centrifugal mission to all nations.