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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

THE
ACTS OF THE APOSTLE
A COMMENTARY
FOR ENGLISH READERS
BY
WILLIAM MORDAUNT FURNEAUX, D.D.
I V *
DEAN OF WINCHESTER

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1912

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

INTRODUCTION
FEW problems in connexion with the New Testament have
been more keenly debated in the last half century than that
of the date and authorship of the Acts. And the reason is
evident. The book bridges the gulf which separates the
Church of the Upper Chamber from the Churches of Europe.
' Without it there would be such a break in the continuity of
the New Testament that we should with difficulty recognize
in the spiritual Christ of the Epistles the Jesus of Nazareth
of the Gospels. We open the Acts, and all is clear. We
perceive at once that it traces all through this interval the
continuous action of the Risen Lord.' 1 But it is obvious that
the strength of this bridge depends very largely on the question
whether it was built by a contemporary or by a later hand.
What, then, are the reasons which have led so many critics,
from Baur and Zeller onwards, to assign the book to a second-
century writer? They would appear to be, in the main, four
in number.
I. Most of these critics distrust, in varying degrees, the
miraculous element. They start with a prejudice against
miracles, which are, they hold, the legendary accretions which
grew round the historical facts, and which require something
like a century to explain their growth. And rejecting the
miraculous element, they have usually regarded the whole
narrative as vitiated by it.
On the other hand, the great majority of those who believe
that the book was written by Luke in the first century have
accepted the miraculous element as a record of events which
actually happened, and have been uncritical in their examina
tion of the historical narrative.
The great value of Harnack's work 2 lies in the fact that he
rejects the miraculous element (a) without postulating a long
1 Norris, Introd., p. x.
' The Acts of the Apostles (Williams & Norgate, 1909).
lass a 2

iv INTRODUCTION
period of time for its growth— he notes 1 that the accretion of
legends would be facilitated by the absence of the Apostles
from Jerusalem after the first twelve years, and (6) without
denying the genuinely historical character of the main part
of the narrative. He regards it as ' historical tradition handed
down by enthusiasts '.2
It can scarcely be questioned that all parts of the book are
not of equal historical value. In some instances we cannot
avoid the suspicion that incidents may have been duplicated,
or have received a wrong significance ; in others, that a growth
of legend has attached itself to a real incident.3 For instance,
the account of the death of Judas suffers by comparison with
the account in St. Matthew's Gospel i ; so too the story of
speaking in foreign languages at Pentecost can hardly be
maintained by the side of the description of the phenomenon
in I Cor. xiv. or even in Acts x. 46.6 There are difficulties in
the narrative of the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira which
cannot be satisfactorily explained.6 But it is not justifiable
to reject a narrative merely on account of its miraculous
character. It is abundantly clear, not only that the early
Christians believed in miracles, but that St. Paul claimed, in
letters which are accepted as genuine by practically all critics,
to have himself worked miracles, and appealed to them as
among the credentials of his Apostleship.7 That fact remains,
even if the author of the Acts wrote in the second century.
And in the ' we '-sections, which all critics regard as the travel-
diary of a contemporary, the miraculous element is found
where, as at Philippi, the writer was a witness and an actor.
II. Baur and Zeller held that the book was written with
a doctrinal object. It was the work of a second-century writer
who held strong views about the controversies of his own day
and wrote a coloured history of the early Church in order to
influence those contemporary controversies. The existence
of a fundamental opposition between St. Paul and the Twelve
was, they held, concealed, and their relations idealized and
harmonized. Hence Peter was represented as liberal in his
i Harnack, Acts, p. 156. 2 Ibid., p. 298. * RopeS; v_
4 See note on chap. i. iS. c See introduction to chap, ii.'
0 See note on chap. v. 1. ? See introduction to chap. ii'i.

INTRODUCTION

views, as the first to admit Gentiles to the Church, as declaring
that the Law was an intolerable yoke : while Paul was pictured
as a Jew who observed the Law and always preached in the
first place to Jews. Schneckenburger, who regards the book
as a defence of Paul against the attacks of the Judaizers,
traces throughout a parallelism between Peter and Paul, the
aim being to make the difference between them trifling and
unessential. Paul is the author's hero : he wishes to show his
Apostolic rank— that he was not a whit behind the very
chiefest Apostles. So he takes Peter as the foremost repre
sentative of the Twelve, and proves Paul's complete equality
with him. His choice of incidents is largely determined by
this object.1
Now there is unquestionably an element of truth in this
parallelism, as is clearly proved by the following examples : — ¦

St. Peter.
Heals a man lame from birth.
iii. 2.
Denounces judgment on Ana
nias, v. 5.
His shadow heals, v. 15.
Is persecuted by Sadducees and
supported by a Pharisee, v. 1 7,
34-
Rebukes a sorcerer, viii. 20.
Heals Aeneas, ix. 34.
Raises Dorcas, ix. 40.
His first Gentile convert a mem
ber of the noble Cornelian
house, x. 1.
Is led by a vision to preach to
Gentiles, x. 20.
Is reverenced by the Centurion.
x. 26.
The Holy Spirit falls upon his
converts, x. 44.
Is delivered from prison by an
angel, xii. 7.

St. Paul.
Heals a man lame from birth.
xiv. 8.
Denounces judgment on Ely-
mas, xiii. ri.
His aprons heal. xix. 12.
Is persecuted by Sadducees and
supported by Pharisees, xxiii.
6, 9.
Rebukes a sorcerer, xiii. 10.
Heals father of Poplius. xxviii. 8.
Raises Eutychus. xx. 10.
His first Gentile convert a mem
ber of the noble Aemilian
house, xiii. 12.
Is led by a vision to preach to
Gentiles, xxii. 17.
Is reverenced by the jailor, xvi.
29.
The Holy Spirit falls upon his
converts, xix. 6.
Is delivered from prison by an
earthquake, xvi. 26.

1 Baur, i. 6 ; Weizsacker, i. 239.

vi INTRODUCTION
These instances— and the number might be increased— show
that the author is to some extent influenced in his choice
of incidents by the desire to divide the Apostolic honours
between St. Peter and St. Paul, as the representatives respec
tively of Jewish and Gentile Christianity ; just as he is un
questionably anxious to show the cordial agreement of the
two party leaders on essential points.1 But the existence ot
such an aim is no proof of the late date of the book. A
personal friend of Paul might well desire to defend him from
the charge, which he himself says (xxi. 21) was brought
against him, of disloyalty to the religion of the Old Testament,
and to supply evidence that his principles were sanctioned by
the Apostle of the Circumcision.2 Indeed, such an aim is
a mark of early date, since Jewish influence waned with the
influx of Gentiles into the Church.3
But, after all, this object was by the way. The writer's main
aim was not doctrinal, but historical — to tell how the Church
spread from Jerusalem to Antioch ; how from Antioch it made
a fresh start and took a new departure ; and then spread over
the provinces of the Roman Empire till it reached the Capital
itself.4 III. A third ground on which a late date has been assigned
to the author is the alleged discrepancies between the Acts
and St. Paul's letters. The extraordinarily clever argument
of Paley's Horae Paulinae is somewhat weakened by being
carried beyond its just limits, and is further impaired by the
failure to estimate the cumulative force of seeming inconsis
tencies.5 Nor is Paley ready enough to make an honest
admission of discrepancies where they undoubtedly exist.
The difficulty of fully reconciling the account of the visit to
Jerusalem recorded in Galatians ii with the visit to the
Conference narrated in Acts xv is admitted even by those
who identify the visits.6 But a yet more irreconcilable dis
crepancy, though it is not so often dwelt upon, is found in
Luke's account of Paul's first visit to Jerusalem after his
1 Balmforth, p. 171 ; Reuss, ii. 300; Pfleiderer, Paulinism, ii. 229.
2 Simcox, p. 122. 3 Rendall, Acts, p. 8. « Iverach, p. »-
5 Jowett, The Epistles of St. Paul, i. 202 seq.
6 See introduction to chap. xv.

INTRODUCTION vii
conversion as compared with Paul's own words in his Epistle
to the Galatians.1 There is no honest course here but to
admit the discrepancy and our inability to explain it satis
factorily. It has been too often the custom, when the Acts
and the Epistles conflict, instead of admitting the superior
credit of St. Paul's own statements, to attempt to explain away
the discrepancies or at least to minimize their importance.
We may admit them, and yet decline to draw from them the
inference which Baur drew. He thought that they prove the
Acts to be a work of the second century. Rather they prove
that the author of the Acts was not acquainted with the
Letters. But a second-century writer of Church history could
not conceivably have been ignorant of the Letters, and would
have endeavoured to bring his narrative into agreement with
them. And if it be objected that no contemporary writer
could betray so inexact a knowledge of Apostolic history, the
obvious answer is that, if the author be Luke, he admittedly
joined Paul late in his career, and had only second-jhand know
ledge of earlier events.2
IV. A further ground on which a late date has been
assigned to the book is the remarkable omissions in the
narrative. It is true that one of the most remarkable has
disappeared. Since Professor Ramsay has so triumphantly
shown the correctness of Renan's identification of the Galatian
Churches with those of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and
Derbe, we have no longer to ask how the writer of the Acts
could possibly have failed to record the foundation of such
important Christian communities. But plenty of omissions
remain. Inseparably connected with the journeys of St. Paul
are the perils enumerated in % Cor. xi. 23 seq. Yet of these
very few are recorded in the Acts — the stoning at Lystra and
the scourging at Philippi — those are all.3 Again, why is there
no mention of the three years in Arabia (Gal. i. 17)? — of the
dispute with Peter at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11)?— of Titus, Paul's
constant companion ? And there are a score of similar omis-

1 See note on chap. ix. 30.
2 A. C. Headlam, Hastings' Diet., art. Acts.
s Weizsacker, i. 238.

viii INTRODUCTION
sions. But it does not necessarily follow that these omissions
are all due to ignorance ; that the writer was inadequately
informed, and therefore cannot have been a companion of
St. Paul. A contemporary is not always the best judge of the
relative importance of events. Some of the omissions occur
in the ' we '-sections, and may be explained by the fact that
to one who was himself an actor many circumstances, which
it would greatly interest us to be told, were matters of course
which seemed to need no recording.1 Further, the omissions
may be largely explained by the aim of the writer. If that
aim had been to write a biography of St. Paul, we might well
have expected many omitted incidents to have been narrated.
But if his aim was wholly different ; if he wished to trace
the development of the Church under the guidance of her
Ascended Lord ; then Peter or Paul were instruments only
in the Divine hand, and events needed to be recorded only as
they bore on the history of that development.
If, then, there are no conclusive reasons for assigning a
second-century date to the book, what are the arguments in
favour of an earlier date ?
Four facts are admitted by practically all critics : — (i) that
the Third Gospel and the Acts are by the same hand. Not
only does the author of the Acts claim to have written
a previous work on the Life of Jesus, but both books are
addressed to Theophilus, and the identity of style, vocabulary,
and treatment of materials is clear and unmistakable. Hence
all the arguments in favour of a first-century date for the
Third Gospel are available to prove an early date for the
Acts, (ii) That the ' we '-sections of the Acts are derived
from memoranda by a companion of St. Paul, (iii) That
there is no difference of style or diction between those sections
and the rest of the book, (iv) That according to an early
and persistent tradition the name of the author was Luke.
How do the advocates of a later date deal with this tradition ?
They adopt one or other of two hypotheses. Either they
hold that the author was a second-century Luke, who was
wrongly identified by tradition with Luke the companion of
Paul ; or they hold that Luke the companion of Paul was the
1 Ropes, p. 294.

INTRODUCTION ix
author of the ' we '-diary, and that his name thus became
attached to the work in which it was incorporated by a later
writer.1 As regards the first of these hypotheses, the Luke who was
St. Paul's companion was a physician (Col. iv. 14) ; and the
evidence that the author of both the Third Gospel and the
Acts was a physician is very marked. It is, says Harnack,2
' of overwhelming force '. Hence we are driven to assume the
existence not only of a second Luke, but of a second Luke
who was also a physician : and such an assumption is quite
unreasonable. As regards the alternative hypothesis, if the second-century
author of the Acts incorporated the diary of Luke the
physician, how came so accomplished a writer to leave the
first person unaltered ? There is, as has been said, no differ
ence of style or diction between the ' we '-sections and the rest
of the book. Is it credible that any writer could have been
so skilful as to recast the diary in such a way as to obliterate
all original marks of style, and at the same time so clumsy as
to leave the first person in awkward contrast to the rest of
the narrative ? 3 If it be said that the writer, desiring to pose
as a companion of St. Paul, deliberately retained the use of
the first person, the question at once suggests itself, why did
he not adopt the use of the first person at many more points
of his narrative ?
The conclusion would seem to be (i) that the book is by
a first-century author. He makes correct references to scores
of facts with a sure touch and hardly a single mistake : and
his references are found to be correct, not merely for the
conditions which persisted to a later time, but for the special
and rapidly changing conditions of the precise time in which
St. Paul lived and worked.4 (ii) That Luke the physician was
the author ; that he worked into his history passages from his
own travel-diary ; and that he retained the first person as
a modest method of indicating his presence.6 Not merely is he
the only one of St. Paul's known companions who fulfils all the
1 McGiffert, p. 434 seq. 2 Luke, p. 198.
3 E. L. Hicks, Expositor, IV. i. 415 ; Ramsay, Expositor, Nov. 1907, p. 122.
4 Ropes, p. 29. 5 Hicks, loc. cit.

x INTRODUCTION
conditions, but it is hard to see why, unless he was really the
author, the authorship came to be ascribed by tradition to
one who fills so small a place in St. Paul's letters. His name
occurs but three times (Col. iv. 14 ; Philem. 24 ; 2 Tim. iv. 11),
and without any suggestion that he was a writer.
To what period, then, is the book to be ascribed ? The
Third Gospel cannot have been written earlier than A.D. 70,
the year of the destruction of Jerusalem, since a comparison
of Luke xxi. 20 with Mark xiii. 14 and Matt. xxiv. 15 appears
to prove that the fall of Jerusalem had already occurred.
Hence the Acts cannot have been written much before A.D. 75.2
If, as Professor Sanday thinks, it was written somewhere
between A.D. 75 and 80, the occasional discrepancies with the
Epistles and the puzzling omissions may be due to the fact
that Luke had not conceived the idea of writing much earlier.3
He tells us in the Preface to his Gospel that he was stirred to
write by the existence of other narratives ; and such narratives
were not likely to be numerous before the latter part of the
first century. It was not till the expectation of the speedy
coming of ' the end of the ages ' and of the return of the Lord
to establish His kingdom had begun to weaken that a formal
record of the Church's history would be contemplated.4 Writ
ing years after the events happened, Luke may easily have
lost the clue to some dates and to the bearing of some incidents,
or have put them into wrong relations.5 And if the work was
not planned till after the death of St. Paul, mistakes and
omissions become intelligible, which are inexplicable if Luke
had been able to refer to so first-rate an authority at points
where his own sources of information were defective.

It is impossible for me to give credit to all to whom I am
indebted in the following commentary. But wherever I have
consciously derived ideas or expressions from others, I have
given the reference at the foot of the page. And as regards
the translation, I have to acknowledge my frequent obligation
to the scholarly rendering by the Rev. F. Rendall.
1 McGiffert, p. 433 seq. 2 M. Jones, p. 170.
3 W. Sanday, Expositor, v. iii. 89. * Balmforth, p. 166. s Chase p. 25.

CONTENTS PAGES
Introduction  iii
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES:
Text and Commentary .... 1-415
List of Authors to whom reference is made 416
Index  422

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

CHAPTER I
i-3
1 My first book, Theophilus, was concerned with all
that Jesus both did and taught from the beginning,
2 until the day on which he was taken up, after he had
through the Holy Spirit given commandment to the
apostles whom he had chosen : 3 to whom he also pre
sented himself alive after he had suffered, revealing
himself to them by many proofs from time to time
during forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining
to the kingdom of God.
The prologues of St. Luke's Gospel and of his Acts are obviously
parallel, and the methods said to have been used in the one book
may be applied to the other. Since the Gospel is declared to depend
upon written sources, we may assume the same to be true, in some
measure at least, of the Acts. And the fact that we possess the
earlier Gospel of St. Mark enables us to form a judgment as to
the manner in which St. Luke dealt with his materials.3-
The materials for the early history of the Church recorded in
chapters i-xv. 35 may have been gathered by St. Luke at Caesarea
during St. Paul's two years' imprisonment there, i-viii. 4 and xii.
1-24 were probably derived from a Petrine source (perhaps through
Mark) : viii. 5-40 and ix. 26-xi. 18 from a Caesarean source (perhaps
through Philip) : ix. 1-25 from a Pauline source : and xi. 19-30 and
xii. 25-xv. 35 from an Antiochean source (perhaps through Silas).b
And as regards many portions his informant was probably a woman.
There are indications both in the Gospel and in the Acts of his
special interest in the part played by women during the Lord's
a Hainack, Luke, p. 27. b Harnack, Acts, ch. v.
1320 B

2 THE ACTS. I. 1-3
ministry and in the early days of the Church. It is clear from
internal evidence that the two first chapters of his Gospel were
derived from a woman, and the twelfth chapter of Acts was probably
derived from a similar source. We may even conjecture her identity.
Since there is evidence of his acquaintance with some one connected
with the Court of the Herods (see on xiii. i), his informant may
have been Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward.8-
i. My first book. The superlative may be loosely used for
the comparative, but it may, on the other hand, imply that Luke
intended to write a third book, dealing with the closing years of
St. Paul's life. (But see on xxviii. 31.)
Theophilus. The epithet 'most excellent', applied to him in
Luke i. 3, usually refers not to character but to station (cf. xxiii. 26,
xxiv. 3, xxvi. 25), and may denote that he was of equestrian rank.
In that case it was probably his baptismal name, since it could
hardly have been the birth-name of a Roman official in the first
century. b
Jesus. The traditional title, 'The Acts of the Apostles,' can
scarcely be due to Luke himself. It suggests a lower aim than that
which he here sets before himself. The Acts of the Ascended Lord
were his theme. To Him everything is referred throughout the
narrative. Peter and Stephen, Philip and Barnabas and Paul, are
only instruments. Luke writes not of men and their doings, but of
Christ's doings through men.0
from the beginning. Cf. Luke i. 2, 'which from the beginning
were eyewitnesses.' Commentators, translating literally, ' began both
to do and teach,' usually lay an emphasis on ' began '. The Gospel,
they say, tells of Jesus' work before His Ascension, the Acts of His
work after His Ascension ; the one of what He did in person while
on earth, the other of what He did by the ministry of His chosen
witnesses. But if St. Luke had intended this contrast, he would
almost certainly have expressed it more clearly. At the same time,
it is true that the history of our Lord's earthly life and the history of
His Church are in a very real and deep sense two parts of one
whole. The withdrawal of His visible presence did not relegate
Him to a place of inaction, whence He only sees, and no longer
co-operates with, the work done on earth by His servants.d
a Professor Sanday, Sermons on Critical Questions, p. 123 seq.
b Ramsay, Paul, p. 388.
0 Maclaren, i. 12. <* Dykes, p. 7.

THE ACTS. I. 1-3 3
2. through the Holy Spirit. In these words the author recog
nizes the complete humanity of the Eternal Son. In the actions of
His manhood He required the assistance of the Divine Spirit."-
3. revealing himself. ' The mystery of these appearances his
torical criticism is not likely ever to penetrate fully. There can,
however, be no doubt that the first disciples passed though real
experiences which they believed to be the appearance to them of the
crucified and risen Christ. This is demonstrated by St. Paul's inclu
sion of his own vision with these appearances, and by the unbroken
agreement of the early Christians in this faith. They were real events,
and their effect was momentous. It is not at all surprising, in view
of the excitement of the disciples in those days and of the mysterious
nature of the appearances, that the accounts should vary widely, and
that it should be impossible to frame a complete and satisfactory
narrative from the several statements of the Evangelists.' *>
by many proofs. There is a frank ring of honesty in the words.
Luke has no doubt about the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus. And,
indeed, few facts in history are better attested. The disciples were
not predisposed to believe it. When Jesus died their hopes had died,
and they received the first tidings with incredulity (Luke xxiv. 11).
But the appearances were repeated, they grew familiar with His
look and aspect : they could never suppose that they had been
deceived, or had mistaken a phantom for a reality. He spoke with
them, conversed with them, showed them that He was unchanged in
thought and heart. The most incredulous of them all was con
vinced by touch. No Thomas doubted now. Never did men pro
claim so great a truth with such unhesitating boldness. The glad
fact that He was alive had become real to them, a thing to die for.c
from time to time. He did not, as before, live with them, but
'manifested himself (John xxi. 1) at intervals and under altered
conditions. Thus they were led to realize that a new order had
begun. These withdrawals and appearances accustomed them to
the thought of an invisible, yet active, Lord.
during forty days. This period is only mentioned here. The
natural conclusion to be drawn from Luke's Gospel (ch. xxiv) would
be that the Resurrection and the Ascension took place on the same
day. Here he separates the two events by forty days. The apparent
contradiction is explained by the different points of view. The Gospel
dealt with the Lord's earthly life, which was closed by the Ascension.
a Stokes, i. 21. b Ropes, p. 67 seq.
0 J. Thomas, p. 17 ; Dykes, p. 10.
B 2

4 THE ACTS. I. 1-3
The Acts deals with His work through His disciples, for which the
Forty Days were the preparation. But, since both accounts are by
the same writer, it is a wholesome warning against the assumption
that an author is necessarily ignorant of circumstances which he does
not mention. a
On the other hand, it is a possible view that the Ascension did
take place on the same day as the Resurrection, and so at the begin
ning, and not at the end, of the Forty Days. Then ver. 3 will be
a parenthetical summary of the appearances of the Risen Lord,
giving the period of time within which they occurred. This view is
borne out by John xx. 17, 18, according to which the only appear
ance before the Ascension was to Mary Magdalene—' Touch me not,
for f am not yet ascended to my Father ; but go unto my brethren
and say to them, I ascend to my Father and to your Father.' The
other appearances would seem to be subsequent to the Ascension.
For in John xx. 19-29 (with which occurrence Luke xxiv. 39, 40
should probably be identified) the doubting Thomas was invited to
touch Him. Further, St. Paul, after speaking (1 Cor. xv. 5 seq.) of the
appearances to Cephas, the Twelve, the Five Hundred, James, and
all the Apostles, mentions the appearance to himself as the last in
a series, unbroken by any mention of the Ascension.0
the Kingdom of God. The new Society, that is, to be founded
in Christ's name. This had been His constant theme during His
earthly ministry, but it was not to be fully established while He was
still on earth. He taught His disciples to pray, ' Thy Kingdom come ' ;
and said (Mark ix. 1) that some should not taste of death till they
had seen ' the Kingdom of God come with power '. Now in these
forty days He taught them more fully, inspiring them with glorious
hopes for the world's conversion.0 4-1 1
4 And having assembled them with him, he charged
them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the
promise of the Father, of which, said he, ye heard from
me; ° that, whereas John baptized with water, ye shall
be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence.
0 They therefore that were come together asked him,
a Rendall, 1. c. ; Baumgarten, i. 1 3 ; Maclaren, i. 3.
b B. W. Bacon, Expositor, March 1909, p. 254.
c L. Merivale, p. 1 seq.

THE ACTS. I. 4-1 1 5
saying, Lord, art thou at this time restoring the Kingdom
to Israel ? 7 And he said to them, It is not for you to
know times or seasons which the Father hath appointed
by his own authority. 8 But ye shall receive power,
when the Holy Spirit hath come upon you ; and ye
shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all
Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of
the earth. 9 And when he had said these things, while
they looked, he was lifted up, and a cloud received him
from their sight. 10And while they were intently
gazing into heaven, as he went, behold two men in
white apparel were standing before them ; u who also
said, Galilaeans, why stand ye looking into heaven ?
This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven,
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him going
into heaven.
The Acts makes no mention of the return of the Eleven to Galilee
after the Passover, as narrated by Matthew (xxviii. 16) and John
(xxi. 1 seq.). Their stay there may have been brief. However
welcome the repose of the country might have been after the strain
of their Lord's Crucifixion and the excitement caused by His
Resurrection, nowhere could they secure such an audience for their
' witness ' as at Jerusalem.*
4. the promise of the Father. The gift of the Spirit had been
promised by God in the Old Testament through the prophets,
e. g. Joel iii. 1—5.
of which ye heard from me. Cf. John xiv. 16, 26; xv. 26.
This is a valuable hint by one of the synoptic writers of a knowledge
of the discourses preserved in the fourth Gospel.
6. Lord, art thou. The many questions recorded in the
Gospels as put by St. Peter make it probable that he was the
mouthpiece of the others on this occasion also.
The Apostles shared, it is plain, the expectation of their times.
Trained from their earliest years to connect the Advent of the
Messiah with the restoration of the lost dominion of Israel, they
found it impossible to grasp the thought of a kingdom 'within the
a Swele, 91 ; Maclaien, i. 4.

6 THE ACTS. I. 4-1 1
soul '. The Gospels show how persistently they clung to the political
conception of Jesus' mission. After three years of intimate com
panionship with Him, they could' still dream of high offices for
themselves and dispute which of them should be greatest in His
Kingdom (Luke xxii. 24). These hopes, dashed by His death
(Luke xxiv. 21), had been revived by His Resurrection; and even
His fresh instructions 'concerning the Kingdom of God' (ver. 3) had
been imperfectly grasped by their preoccupied minds.
The question is valuable evidence of the early date of the source
from which this chapter is derived. Such a misconception could
not have survived the destruction of Jerusalem ; and a later genera
tion would be unlikely to attribute it to the Apostles.
7. It is not for you. He does not say that there will be no such
restoration. Nor does He correct their misconception as to the
nature of the Kingdom : that the promised Spirit would do. But He
does say, Leave the future alone : turn from speculation to work. As,
on previous occasions, He had answered the curious question, ' Are
they few that be saved ? ' (Luke xiii. 23) with the call to duty, 'Strive
to enter in by the narrow door ' ; and had met St. Peter's speculation
about his friend's fate with, ' If I will that he tarry till I come, what
is that to thee? follow thou me' (John xxi. 22); so now He warns
them against idly seeking to penetrate the future which God had
veiled. They were not at the mercy of an impersonal fate, but in
the hands of a wise and tender ' Father '.
8. ye shall receive power. The power which had been in their
thoughts was not for them. But something far better, for which
they had not asked — a power infinitely greater than that of any
material kingdom — this was for them. How truly that power was
given is presently seen in the marvellous change in the mind and
conduct of St. Peter.
ye shall be my witnesses. He has put aside their speculative
inquiry, but He assigns them a great practical work. He leaves His
cause in their hands; the spread of the knowledge of Him and of His
Kingdom is to depend on them. ' Ye shall be my witnesses.' They
are royal words of magnificent and Divine assurance. How deep
an impression they made on the minds of the Apostles is shown by
their constant use of the word 'witnessing' (ver. 22, ii. 32, iii. 15, iv. 33,
v. 32, &c.) as a description of their work.
in Jerusalem, &c. The words are a summary of the Acts.
Luke evidently regarded them as having a special significance, and
took them as defining the plan and scope of the task which he set

THE ACTS. I. 4-1 1 7
himself. But to him ' the uttermost part of the earth ' meant the
capital of the Roman Empire.3- No man in the first century could
have realized, as we can, the true range of our Lord's words. None
the less, in them lay the rebuke to their Jewish dreams. They were
to bear their witness, and the kingdom with it, all over the world.
9. he was lifted up. It is remarkable that so momentous an
event as the Ascension, and one which has always been so prominent
in the creed of Christendom, should not be mentioned in the
Gospels of Matthew, John, or Mark (Mark xvi. 19 is a later addition),
but only by Luke, who, unlike Matthew and John, was not an eye
witness. Moreover, the brevity of Luke's account in his Gospel
(xxiv. 51, 52) must be yet further curtailed in the light of modern
criticism. ' And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted
from them, and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped
him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.' The words italicized
are regarded by the best critical authorities as a very early inter
polation. The fact of the Ascension is, however, implied in Matt. xxvi. 64,
' Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of
power, and coming on the clouds of heaven '; in John vi. 62, 'What
if ye shall behold the Son of man ascending where he was before?' ;
in John xx. T7, 'Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended unto the
Father : but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my
Father,' &c. (cf. also John xvi. 5 seq.). Similarly, while there is no
direct reference to the occurrence in any of the Epistles, the fact is
implied in Eph. iv. 10, 'He that descended is the same also that
ascended far above all the heavens ' (cf. also Eph. ii. 6, and
Phil. hi. 20) ; in 1 Tim. iii. 16, ' he who was . . . received up in glory ' :
in 1 Pet. iii. 22, ' who is on the right hand of God, having gone into
heaven.' It will be noted that, while in all these passages the fact of the
Ascension is implied, there is no implication of the elevation of the
Lord's body. That is stated here only; and it constitutes a real
difficulty. 'A cloud received him from their sight ' — if that were
all, there is no difficulty for the Christian. 'From their sight'—
not from hearing of their prayers, not from sympathy with their

1 The Invader described in the Psalms of Solomon is said to come ' from the
uttermost part of the earth' (Ps. viii. 16). If that Invader was Pompey, as is held
by Ryle and James (Introd. to Psalms of Solomon, p. xl seq.), the words denote
Rome.

8 THE ACTS. I. 4-1 1
needs ; not from the range of helpful ministry ; only from their sight.
But the elevation of the body — what is to be said about this ?
On this point some excellent remarks by Professor Swete may
be quoted in a slightly condensed form : ' The Ascension presents
to many minds a difficulty even greater than the Resurrection.
It seems to conflict with even an elementary knowledge of physics.
Is it to be believed that, in defiance of the laws of nature, the
Lord's body rose through the air till it reached the bounds of the
earth's atmosphere ; and then, passing through the spaces of the
universe, attained by this process of physical translation to the pre
sence of the Infinite Life ? Such a way of conceiving the Ascension
is at once a misreading of the historical fact and a misappre
hension of the inner truth which it represents. It is a fact that the
Lord finally withdrew His risen body from the eyes of the disciples,
and that, at the moment of His disappearance, He was engulfed by
a cloud which travelled upwards. And this fact was the symbol of
a vital Christian truth. . . . The mind naturally connects the higher
life which is beyond our present comprehension with the blue
heights that are above us. . . . In condescension to this weakness we
are permitted to think of our Lord as having "ascended into the
heavens". . . . But the highest heavens may be nearer to us than the
nearest object in the physical world. . . . Any view of the Ascension
which locates His presence in some distant world would leave out
of sight His action upon the living Church to the end of time.' a
A few words to the same effect by the Bishop of Gloucester may
be added : ' We have to guard against thinking of the Ascension as
a mere change of position from one place to another. As heaven is
a state rather than a place, so the Ascension involves a change of
the mode of existence rather than a change of position.' b
10. as he went. The Greek word is the usual one to denote
a man going on a journey. No Elijah's chariot of fire swept Him
away. The Ascension was the crowning act of His humanity.
two men in white apparel. So two men in dazzling apparel
are said (Luke xxiv. 4) to have recalled the women at the Tomb
from seeking the living among the dead.
On the visible appearances of Angels. The existence of
angels, that is, of intelligent beings intermediate between man and
God, presents no difficulty. While it cannot be questioned by those
who accept the Bible revelation, even those who reject that revela
tion may see reason for believing in the existence of an order of
• Swete, p. 105 scy. b Gibson, The Thirly-nine Articles, p. 190.

THE ACTS. I. 4-1 1 9
beings superior to man.a Naturalists have made out a continuous
ladder of ascent from vegetable life to man. Is it likely that the
ladder ends there ? Is man ' to suppose that the hierarchy of beings
which rises by such gradual steps from the lowest zoophite to the
race of Newton and Shakespeare does in truth rise no higher ; that
it stops abruptly at the link which he himself forms between an
animal and a personal spirit ? Is it not more reasonable to suppose
that the upward series continues, and that above man there are
beings stretching, in rank beyond rank of ascending excellence,
upward towards the throne of the Uncreated and the Eternal ? ' b
And while the existence of angels is thus conformable to analogy,
it has abundant confirmation in our Lord's words. To go no further
than St. Matthew's Gospel, we have ' The harvest is the end of the
world ; and the reapers are angels ' (xii. 39) ; ' The Son of man
shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels' (xvi. 27) ; ' See
that ye despise not one of these little ones ; for I say unto you,
that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father
which is in heaven' (xviii. 10); 'In the resurrection they neither
marry nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven ' (xxii.
30) ; ' He shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a
trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four
winds '(xxiv. 31); 'When the Son of man shall come in his glory,
and all the angels with him ' (xxv. 31) ; ' Then shall he also say unto
them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal
fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels' (xxv. 41);
' Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall even
now send me more than twelve legions of angels ?' (xxvi. 53).
Few would wish to explain these utterances as mere accommoda
tions to Jewish methods of thought. At the same time they must
be studied in connexion with those methods. The better know
ledge now available of the background of later Jewish thought,
which lies behind the ideas of New Testament writers, enables us
to bring new light to bear upon the problem.0
In the last three centuries b.c. the angelology of the Jews was
greatly developed. The names of the angels were brought from
Babylon, and with the names not a few of the notions regarding
them.d This development is marked in the Apocalyptic literature
* Godet, Studies on the Old Testament, p. 2.
1 E. P. Liddon, University Sermons, 2nd series, p. 152.
c Ropes, pp. 9, 19.
d Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. ii, App. 1 3.

io THE ACTS. I. 4-1 J
of the century preceding the Christian era, notably in the Book of
Enoch, which had considerable influence in shaping the thoughts
of the early Christians. As the awe of the Name of God deepened
among the Jews and they conceived of Him as removed to an
inaccessible elevation above the world, the more pressing became
the need to fill the gap by interposing intermediate beings,a 'Those
who passed from Judaism to Christianity, and they were almost
everywhere the nucleus of the Church, brought with them a full,
one might almost call it a monstrous angelology.' b The denial of
angels by the Sadducees was probably less a denial of their exist
ence than a repudiation of the extravagant angelology current in
their day.
It is therefore important to distinguish carefully between the
statements of our Lord about angels and the statements about their
visible appearances in the narrative portions of the Gospels. ' Our
Lord declares the fact of the existence of angels, but He never
countenances the idea that they influence human life in the present.
All that He says of them has reference to themselves alone or to
their relations to men in another life. In particular, He breaks
away from the prevailing tendency to make them the intermediaries
of revelation. He Himself becomes the sole Revealer ; He will be
always with His disciples ; He will instruct them directly or through
the Spirit whom He sends. Thus this part of the doctrine of angels
was bound to give way to the Christian doctrine of the abiding
presence of Christ and of the Holy Spirit.' °
But it did not give way at once. While visible appearances of
angels are conspicuously absent from the narratives of the life of
Christ [the unique passage, 'there appeared unto him an angel
from heaven strengthening him ' (Luke xxii. 43) is badly attested],
they abound in the narratives of the Nativity and the Resurrection.*
Yet there is good reason for reserve in accepting them. Thus,
while St. Matthew says (xxviii. 2) ' Behold, there was a great earth
quake ; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came
and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it,' in St. Mark (xvi. 4) and
in St. Luke (xxiv. 2) the women find the stone already rolled away.
St. Matthew does not say that the descent of the angel was witnessed
" Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, p. 66.
D E. H. Plumptre, Dictionary of Christian Biography, art. Angels.
c G. B. Gray, Encycl. Biblica, art. Angels.
d G. B. Gray, ibid.

THE ACTS. I. 4-1 1 n
by any one. It looks like a later tradition, or an assumption on
his part to explain a known fact.a
Again, the appearance of an angel at the Sepulchre (Matt, xxviii.
2), of ' a young man' (Mark xvi. 5), and of two angels (Luke xxiv. 4,
John xx. 12) rests on the testimony of the women. * In the law-courts
it is a common experience that even educated and dispassionate wit
nesses have difficulty in distinguishing between what they actually saw
and what they inferred. They are apt, quite honestly, to give their
inferences as facts.' Still more is this the case with uneducated and
excited witnesses. These women, excited by the extraordinary occur
rences, would hardly know themselves what it was that they had
perceived. ' Still more certainly those to whom each of them told
her experiences would not repeat the story with perfect accuracy.'
Very easily might a tradition arise which was due to notions current
among the Jews rather than to experience of what actually
happened.1" Similarly visions, dreams, and appearances of angels in the Acts
may be only Luke's own interpretation of what took place, or have
been found by him in his sources as the interpretation- of others.
They and he believed that what happened occurred under divine
guidance. That the events were divinely ordered is the essential
thing ; the manner in which God's will took effect is of small
moment.0 Any person or any thing may be employed by God to
intimate His will, to convey His messages to men, or to perform
any other service to them.'1 And whoever or whatever was so em
ployed was regarded by the Jews as His angel or ' messenger '. It
is to be noticed that the definite ascription of events to angelic
agency is confined to those portions of the Acts (v. 19, viii. 26,
x. 3, xii. 7, 23) which Luke derived from Jewish sources.
The men of the early Church were, like ourselves, of flesh and
blood. We must try to think of them as real, governed by human
motives, thinking and acting like the human beings round us.e It
is no gain to us to have to believe that they were utterly unlike
ourselves in their experiences (see further on viii. 26).
ir. why stand ye looking into heaven? Not a rebuke,
but a call to action. Gazing into heaven would not bring back their
Master, nor was the visible heaven His dwelling-place. 'This
a Plummer, St. Matthew, p. 416.
b Plummer, ibid., p. 418. c Plummer, ibid., p. 16.
d Archbishop Whately, Scripture revelations respecting Angels, p. 5.
c Ropes, p. 34.

12 THE ACTS. I. 4-1 1
Jesus ', the same whom they had known and loved, and not another
— the same Divine Friend and Brother— would one day come again
in visible form. And for a generation they clung to the belief that
the coming would be in their own day. The great watchword of the
brethren was ' Maran-atha '— ' the Lord cometh '. To this they looked
forward in eager expectation. 12-14
13 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount
called Olivet, which is nigh to Jerusalem, a sabbath
day's journey off. 13 And when they were come, they
went into the upper chamber, where they were abiding ;
namely, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip
and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the
son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the
son of James. 14 These all continued with one accord
in prayer, together with women and Mary the mother
of Jesus, and his brethren.
12. they returned. 'With great joy,' Luke adds in his Gospel
(xxiv. 52) ; though, when the Lord had first spoken of going away,
' sorrow had filled their hearts ' (John xvi. 6). They were beginning
to understand that ' going away ' might mean, not separation, but
nearer presence.
called Olivet. The expression shows that Luke was writing for
one who was a stranger to the locality. In his Gospel he says (xxiv.
50), ' He led them out until they were come over against Bethany.'
But Bethany is more than twice 'a sabbath-day's journey' from
Jerusalem. The discrepancy, however, is only in appearance. The
last scene could not have taken place among human dwellings, and
some place half-way between Jerusalem and Bethany would suit the
description."1 a sabbath day's journey. A Greek, writing for Gentiles,
would not naturally employ such a measure of distance, so that its
use suggests a Jewish source. Chrysostom thinks that the mention
of the distance and the method of reckoning imply that the Ascen
sion took place on the sabbath, and not, as we observe it, on the
a Swete, p. 103.

THE ACTS. I. 12-14 13
Thursday. There would be a symbolical fitness is His entering into
His rest on the day of rest.a In this case we must assume that the
forty days did not include the final gathering on the Saturday.
13. the upper chamber. Luke tells us in his Gospel (xxii. 12)
of ' a large upper room ' where the last supper was eaten. When he
speaks of ' the upper chamber ', our first impulse is to suppose that
he is referring to the room which he had mentioned in his previous
work and which was hallowed by such tender associations ; and
Professor Sanday takes this view.0 But the Greek words are not
the same ; that in the Gospel describes the guest-chamber on the
first floor, this the loft on the second floor. It is, therefore, prob
able that this was the room in which Jesus had appeared to the
disciples on the evening of the Resurrection (Luke xxiv. 33), and it
may have been in the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, where we
hear later of a gathering of Christians (xii. 12).
John and James. Matthew (xvii. 1) and Mark (v. 37, ix. 2)
put James, the elder brother, before John. Luke, in the corre
sponding passages of his Gospel (viii. 51, ix. 58) has the order
reversed, as here. It must be remembered that, when the Acts was
written, James was dead, and John was not only living but was a
more prominent figure than his elder brother in the Gentile churches
for which Luke wrote.
Simon the Zealot. So in Luke's Gospel (vi. 16). In Matthew
(x. 4) and Mark (iii. 18) he is called 'Simon the Cananaean'. The
meaning is the same, but Luke substitutes the Greek for the Aramaic
form, as more intelligible to a Gentile reader. The name describes
Simon as belonging before his call to a well-known sect among the
Jews, and it was retained, after he became a disciple, to distinguish
him from the other Simon among the Apostles.
Judas the son of James. Called Thaddaeus in Matthew (x. 3)
and Mark (iii. 1 8), probably to distinguish him from the other Judas.
He is referred to in John (xiv. 22) as 'Judas, not Iscariot '. The
A. V. here translates ' brother of James ', identifying him with the
author of the Epistle who calls himself (Jude, ver. 1) ' brother of
James '. But there is no evidence that they are the same person, and
there are obvious objections to supplying the same ellipse differently
in the same verse—' son of Alphaeus ' and ' brother of James '.
14. in prayer. Hitherto the Temple had, for the Jew, mono
polized the formal worship of Jehovah. Now a new era had begun.
" Plumptre, Acts. b Sacred Sites of the Gospels, p. 17.

14 THE ACTS. I. 12-14
The hour was come when men would worship the Father without
regard to locality or consecrated place.
These ten days of quiet prayer must have been needed. The
awful trial of the Crucifixion, the transcendent wonder of the Resur
rection, the solemn intercourse of the Forty Days, the crowning
marvel of the Ascension— these experiences must have wrought the
disciples to an intensity of excitement and expectation.8- But then,
as now, those into whom the Spirit is to breathe His power must be
still and prayerful. Outwardly all might seem ready for His coming,
but the true preparation must be within.
with women. Again, a new era had begun. Among the Jews
women were lightly esteemed. In Temple and synagogue they wor
shipped apart. They took no part in public life. The disciples had
marvelled (John iv. 27) that their Master talked with a woman. A
Jew might not greet a woman, might not speak even to his wife or
daughter, in the street. In his daily prayer he thanked God that he
was not a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. u But at the very birth of
the new Society they have their place ; an equality of privilege never
before dreamt of. Jesus' words to the woman who came to Him for
healing of the body only, ' Woman, thou art loosed from thine infir
mity' (Luke xiii. 12), was pregnant with deeper meaning for the
whole sex. Because the world's Redeemer was ' born of a woman '
(Gal. iv. 4), Christianity broke the woman's fetters. In Christ Jesus
there is ' neither male nor female ' (Gal. iii. 28).
Mary the mother of Jesus. Legend and tradition have their
stories about her, but she appears for the last time in the sacred
record as an honoured Christian woman, and no more.
his brethren. Here, as in 1 Cor. ix. 5, they are distinguished
from the Apostles, showing that ' James, the Lord's brother ' is not
to be identified with ' James, the son of Alphaeus '. The mention of
them in connexion with the Lord's mother (cf. Matt. xii. 46, Mark
vi. 3) naturally suggests that they were His real brothers, and not
His cousins or sons of Joseph by a previous marriage.
We know from St. John's Gospel (vii. 5) that at one time ' his
brethren did not believe on him '. It is, perhaps, not surprising that
those who had grown up with Him in boyhood should find it hard
to accept His claim to be Divine. It is commonly supposed that
James was won over by the appearance of the Risen Christ to him
(r Cor. xv. 7), and that he convinced his brothers.0 But this would
* Geikie, p. 20. " David Smith, In the Days of His Flesh v 11
° McGiffert, p. 549 seq. If'"'

THE ACTS. I. 12-14 15
be contrary not only to the Divine method of inspiring faith, which
is not to be got by signs, but to the other appearances of the Risen
Lord, which were confined to believers. It is more likely that the
doubts of His brothers had been gradually yielding, and that they
were finally convinced by the events of the Crucifixion, which so
profoundly moved even the Roman Centurion.11
A position of honour appears to have been accorded them in the
early community. We know that James exercised later the chief
authority in the Church at Jerusalem. Some twenty years after this
date they were engaged in missionary work (1 Cor. ix. 5).
The speeches in the Acts — how far are they historical?
We must not at once dismiss the possibility that they may be due to
the literary fashion of the time — that Luke may have conformed to
the practice of other ancient historians and put speeches into the
mouths of his chief personages. We know, for instance,, that
Herodotus and Thucydides, Sallust and Livy, habitually composed
speeches to embody the arguments which might have been used on
any given occasion. When they wished to sum up the pros and cons
of any disputed question, their method was to write two speeches giving
the arguments on the respective sides." That this historical method
was in vogue in Luke's day is shown by the fact that his contemporary
Josephus puts into the mouth of Moses a long speech, beginning,
' Fellow soldiers,' which is in the main a paraphrase of chapters of
the Book of Deuteronomy.0 It is scarcely a paradox to say that it
would be more strange if a literary artist, such as Luke undoubtedly
was, had discarded the fashionable methods of his day than that he
should have employed them. His bona fides as an historian is not
affected. If the method appears strange to us, we must remember
that historical composition was with the ancients part of the art of
rhetoric. Hence, it is legitimate to ask— without in any way prejudging the
answer— How far are the speeches recorded in the Acts to be
regarded as speeches actually delivered ? It is legitimate, because it
is quite consistent with the acceptance of the Acts as a trustworthy
historical record, and also as a product of Divine inspiration, to
recognize that it is a literary work, bearing the impress of the literary
fashions of the age which produced it.d Inspiration does not eman-
a Adeney, Men of the New Testament, p. 252 seq.
b Gardner, p. 393 ; Eraser, p. 2 seq. ° Simcox, p. 41.
A Simcox, p. 39.

i6

THE ACTS. I. 15-26

cipate a writer from the literary conventions of his own day ; nor does
it reveal historical facts any more than it reveals scientific facts. No
poorer compliment can be paid to the Bible than to say that, in a
matter of history, one set of critical canons must be applied to a
secular writer and another set to a Biblical writer.
There are, then, certain points which appear to be practically
indisputable : —
1 . It is not likely that any one would have" made, or preserved,
notes of the earlier speeches, in view of the fact that ' the end of the
ages ' was universally believed by the first Christians to be near at
hand. (See on iii. 12.)
2. The speeches are, without exception, too short to have been
delivered in their present form. They are, at any rate, condensed.
3. The language, which is always (though not in all cases to the
same extent) Lukan, both in vocabulary and style, proves that Luke
edited, if he did not compose, them.
4. Luke constantly throws his narrative into the form of a speech
on occasions when no bystander is likely to have taken notes, e. g.
the speeches of Gallio at Corinth, of Demetrius and of the Recorder
at Ephesus.
5. Parallel passages in the Synoptic Gospels show that Luke felt
himself at liberty to deal freely with his materials. In regard to the
sayings of Jesus, he becomes, as we should expect in one with so fine
a sense of spiritual things, far less of a composer and more of a com-
piler.a Yet he has no scruples in introducing graphic touches. It
will suffice to give one clear example of this :

No man can enter
into a strong man's
house and spoil his
goods, except he will
first bind the strong
man, and then he will
spoil his goods.
Mark iii. 27.

Else how can one
enter a strong man's
house and spoil his
goods, except he first
bind the strong man ?
and then he will
spoil his goods.
Matt. xii. 29.

When a strong man
armed keepeth his
palace, his goods are
in peace ; but when a
stronger than he shall
come upon him and
overcome him, he
taketh from him all
his armour wherein
he trusted, and
divideth his spoils.
Luke xi. 21.
Here Matthew's record is almost verbatim the same as Mark's,
but Luke's is greatly amplified. As Bishop Chase points out,b the

Gardner, p. 394.

" Credibility of the Acts, p. 108 seq.

THE ACTS. I. 15-26 17
man who changed in form, and to some extent in substance, the
traditional words of Christ, would not hesitate to mould the report
of Apostolic speeches.
Hence, we cannot escape the conclusion that the speeches are
Luke's compositions, in the sense that he edited them and gave
them their literary form. But the question still remains, Are they
merely rhetorical compositions? Or had Luke materials for the
matter of them ? Did he take pains to ascertain the drift of what
was actually said, and then clothe it in his own language ? The
answer to this question may be gathered from the notes on the
several speeches. It will be enough at this point to give the general
conclusion : The speeches are not entirely rhetorical compositions,
but Luke had in some cases either written memoranda or oral
traditions, preserving the general substance of what was said ; while
in other cases he had either personal recollections or conversations
with St. Paul or St. Philip to guide him.
With regard to the present speech, it is almost certain (and this
consideration applies to the subsequent speeches by Peter) that it
was spoken in Aramaic. (The early tradition, preserved by Papias,
that Peter took Mark with him, as his interpreter, on his missionary
journeys, suggests that, though he must, of course, have been
acquainted with Greek, he was not capable of making a speech in
that language." The fact, however, that the Greek of Mark's Gospel
shows less polish than the Greek of 1 Peter makes it possible that
Papias meant by the word which he uses, not ' interpreter ', but
' catechist ', i. e. a teacher for the further instruction of converts won
by Peter's preaching.) Hence the form of the speech must be due
to Luke. Also it must be condensed. It is, for instance, scarcely
conceivable that Peter could have spoken of the treachery of Judas
without one word of reference to his own fall only a few hours later.
But, on the other hand, if verses 18-20 be regarded as a parenthesis
by Luke, there is not only nothing that might not have been said by
Peter, but at least one thing which Luke, the companion of St. Paul,
would have been very unlikely to have put into his mouth ; namely,
the conception (ver. 22) of an Apostle's qualifications."
15-26
16 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of
the Brethren (there was a multitude of persons, about
1 Chase, p. 114 seq. h McGiffert, p. 44.

18 THE ACTS. I. 15-26
a hundred and twenty, gathered together), and said,
1B Brethren, it was necessary that the scripture should
be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit by the mouth of
David foretold concerning Judas, who became guide
to them that took Jesus, " that he had been numbered
among us and had obtained his portion in this minis
try. (18 Now this man acquired a field with the price of
his iniquity ; and falling on his face he burst asunder
in the midst and all his bowels gushed out. 10 And it
became known to all the dwellers at Jerusalem; inso
much that that field was called in their language
Akeldama, that is, Field of blood. 20 For it is written
in the Book of Psalms,
Let his habitation become desolate,
And let there be no man to dwell therein,
and His office let another take.)
21 Therefore of the men which companied with us all
the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among
us, 2- beginning from his baptism by John unto the
day that he was taken up from us, of these it is neces
sary that one become a witness with us of his resurrec
tion. 23And they put forward two, Joseph called
Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias.
24 And they prayed and said, Thou, Lord, who knowest
the hearts of all men, declare which one thou hast
chosen of these two, 23 to take the place in this ministry
and apostleship, from which Judas fell away to go to
his own place. 26 And they gave them lots ; and the
lot fell upon Matthias ; and he was elected to be the
twelfth apostle.
15. Peter stood up. Peter, as our Lord Himself recognized,
possessed those natural gifts of character and temperament to which
men instinctively concede the leadership : and his claim to lead was

THE ACTS. I. i5-2(

19

now enhanced by the fact that he had been the first of the Apostles
to see the Risen Lord (1 Cor. xv. 5). Nor can we doubt that he
had also been the first to kindle the faith of the others in His
Resurrection. Only on some such supposition can we understand
how the disciple, who but a few short weeks before had shamefully
disowned his Master, could so soon have recovered the confidence
of his brother Apostles. He must also himself have felt the
completeness of his Lord's forgiveness and of the restoration of his
commission, as told in John xxi.
In the reaction from the extravagant claims made for him by
Roman Catholicism, he has not always received the honour which
is his due. Though there is no trace of primacy — 'The elders
among you I exhort, who am a fellow elder', he says himself
(1 Pet. v. 1) — he is unquestionably the most important personage
in the early Church.
He is also the Apostle who most attracts us. He is so human :
at once, a saint and a blunderer; a generous soul, ardent and
impulsive, swept along by a splendid enthusiasm and faith; ever
rising on stepping-stones of his dead self to higher things. We
know him, as we know no other Bible character, except perhaps
St. Paul, and we love him as we love no other.
in the midst of the Brethren. We come now to the first
corporate act of the new Society. And it is worthy of note that
even in a matter so important as the choice of an Apostle the Eleven
did not employ the method of co-optation, but sought the co-opera
tion of the general body of disciples. It is the same with the
subsequent appointment of the Seven (vi. 2-5). The later division
between Clergy and Laity is not found in the early Church. All
believers had their part in the decisions of the community.
Whether we have in the proposition to appoint a successor to
Judas another instance of Peter's impetuosity, or whether he was
divinely directed, has been much discussed/ It has been argued
that the injunction to act thus may have been among the commands
of Christ during the Forty Days. But this is only conjecture, and
no such command is pleaded by Peter. What is certain is that
the Lord had not Himself filled the vacant place. In 'speaking
of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God ', He appears not
to have prescribed the form which its constitution should take. The
Church was endowed with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in order
J- Green, p. 65.
C 2

20 THE ACTS. I. 15-26
that she might be able to legislate for herself, and the after-history
shows that she did so as occasion arose. We should have expected
the Apostles to take no step of importance before they had received
the promised Spirit, for whom they had been told to wait, and who
was to guide them into all truth. We cannot fail to note that they
show no trust in the rightfulness of their own judgment as inspired
by God, but look for a revelation of their Lord's will by the
mechanical expedient of casting lots.3-
It may be further urged that later events seem to show that God
had His own time and way for filling the vacant place. Paul's
Apostleship is beyond question. Either, therefore, Matthias' ap
pointment was premature and void, or we must give up the necessity
of the symbolical number twelve, which was made prominent by
Christ Himself, who said that the Apostles should one day ' sit upon
twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel ' (Matt. xix. 28).
It is true that Paul never claimed to be one of the Twelve, but
distinguished himself from them (1 Cor. xv. 5) ; yet he cannot be
classed separately on the ground that he was an Apostle to Gentiles,
for he was commissioned to preach to Jews also (ix. 15), and the
limitation of the preaching of the Twelve to Israel is contrary to our
Lord's command that they were to ' make disciples of all the nations'
(Matt, xxviii. ig).b
Finally, it should be noted that, when the Apostle James was
killed by Herod, we do not hear of any attempt to fill the vacant
place. The cases, however, are perhaps not parallel, since it may
be said that it was not Judas' death, but his fall from the Apostleship,
which necessitated the filling of his place. It was his ' portion in
the ministry' (v. 17), which had to be provided.0
What happened was probably this : As the Apostles pondered
on their charge to be ' witnesses ', their thoughts dwelt on the gap
in their number, and they wondered who would sit, according to
their Master's promise, on the twelfth throne. To these thoughts,
perhaps only half expressed, Peter, ardent, impulsive, born to be
spokesman and leader, gave a voice. The eagerness to act without
a command would only be in accordance with his unreflecting
enthusiasm. He was a great Apostle, a good and lovable man;
but certainly he was not infallible. If on this occasion, as on so
many others recorded in the New Testament, he erred through hasty
0 Chase, p. 42. i< Schaff, i. 275.
c A. W. F. Blunt, p. 72.

THE ACTS. I. 15-26 21
impulse, we need not hesitate to say so ; any more than Paul
hesitated to withstand him to the face at Antioch, when he was to
blame (Gal. ii. 11 seq.). The Apostles were not supernatural beings,
who could neither be swayed by prejudices nor be mistaken in
judgment. If we exalt them above our human standards, the
beauty and nobility of their lives cease to be realities and to be
helpful to our own lives.a In the words of St. Paul (xiv. 15), they
were ' men of like passions ' with ourselves. ' Stand up ; I myself
also am a man', were St. Peter's own words (x. 26) to one who would
have paid him undue reverence.
These is so little power of checking the historical accuracy of
these earlier chapters, since they are our only authority for the
events narrated, that it is well to note the evidence for the historical
character of the narrative. That a choice was made to fill the place
of the traitor is confirmed by the fact that both Barsabbas and
Matthias are otherwise unknown to us, and it is hard to see any
motive for inventing a story in honour of one who has no place in
Christian tradition.11
of persons. Greek, 'of names,' which suggests that Luke may
have seen a list. But it is a common Hebraism ; cf. Rev. iii. 4, ' Thou
hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their
garments.' This fact, however, suggests in its turn that Luke had
some written account before him.
a hundred and twenty. According to St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 6),
the Risen Lord ' appeared to above five hundred brethren at once '.
That, however, probably occurred in Galilee, and it is not likely
that all the five hundred had come to the holy city for Pentecost.
But there must have been in Jerusalem more than one hundred and
twenty who were in a sense adherents of the new faith. So far, the
disciples were not marked off by name or organization into a regular
society. The events of Pentecost show (ii. 41) that others were
prepared to come forward and join their ranks.0
But what a strange disparity between the work and the available
working force ! Universal conquest, and a hundred and twenty
men and women of the humbler class ! This little gathering of
fishermen and peasants, unlettered and unknown, was the mustard
seed, from which was to grow a mighty tree overshadowing the
world !
16. it was necessary. This had not been Peter's view a few
J J. Robertson, p. 193. b Ropes, p. 77; Church Quarterly, cxx, July.
" L. Merivale, p. rr.

22 THE ACTS. I. 15-26
months before (Matt. xvi. 22). Then, he had refused to admit the
necessity that the Messiah must suffer, and had sought to dissuade
Jesus from going to Jerusalem to finish His course. Now, we find
him interpreting the old scriptures in the light of the new faith,
seeing in Judas the antitype of Ahitophel, and lifting the whole
matter from the level of a wicked man's free act to its place in the
higher purposes of Providence. Whence had come this sudden
enlightenment? Though Jesus had Himself declared (John xiii. 18,
xvii. 12) that the traitor had 'fulfilled the scripture', the psalms
which Peter quoted contain no obvious reference to Judas, and the
promised Spirit had not yet been given. The fact of the Resurrection
had, doubtless, done much to enlighten him ; the teaching of the
Lord during the Forty Days had done more. Christ had ' opened
their mind, that they might understand the scriptures' (Luke
xxiv. 45).
We may not see the need for arguments from prophecy in such
a matter as the filling of a vacant office. But we must place
ourselves in the position of the Apostles. Their Lord had fulfilled
the scripture, and they felt that they too had their part to do in
completing the fulfilment. a
which the Holy Spirit, &c. The words give a key to the
interpretation of prophecy. David did not speak these words about
Judas : he had no such thought in his mind when he spoke them.
But the Holy Spirit spoke them by David's mouth. b
by the mouth of David. We need not trouble whether this
particular psalm was written by David or not. It is enough that
it was thought to be his by the men of Peter's generation. What
was important to Peter was its Divine authorship : the psalm had
been spoken by the Holy Spirit. So we read (2 Pet. i. 20) that
' no prophecy ever came by the will of man : but men spake from
God, being moved by the Holy Spirit'. Again, it matters little
whether the Second Epistle of Peter is by Peter, or not. These
words accurately represent his feeling.
became guide, &c. The speech must be greatly condensed.
It was a strange irony which laid on Peter, whose own conduct had
in its external features come so near to that of Judas, the task of
speaking of the latter's treachery. There was, of course, between
the two cases, not merely the vital difference of motive, but the
difference between a deliberate act and a fall under sudden tempta
tion0; but he could scarcely have spoken thus summarily. At first
-1 Fraser, p. 14. " Alford, Homilies, p. 45. • Dykes, p. 30.

THE ACTS. I. 15-26 23
sight, we might see in the lenient description of Judas, as ' guide to
them that took Jesus ', a mark of authenticity, as though the
memory of his own grievous fall would not allow him to speak in
harsher terms.8- But the words seem to betray a later origin. The
traitor's name usually has some descriptive addition to distinguish
him from the other Judas 'the son of James'. This, however,
would be neither necessary nor natural on the present occasion and
at this early date.
17. that he had been numbered. The allusion is to Ps. xii. 9.
Peter does not quote the passage, because the Lord's words, ' that
the scripture might be fulfilled, He that eateth my bread hath lifted
up his heel against me' (John xiii. 18), had stamped it upon the
memory of them all.b
18-19. These verses are perhaps a subsequent insertion of early
date.0 If original, they must be a parenthesis by the historian. No
one, speaking in Jerusalem, would narrate details, probably well
known to his audience, of an event which had taken place only two
months before. Nor would he speak of ' the dwellers at Jerusalem ',
as if he were a hundred miles away; or translate Akeldama to
hearers who knew its meaning. On the other hand, Luke might
naturally give such explanations to Theophilus.'1
It is quite impossible to reconcile this description of Judas' end
with that given in Matthew's Gospel (xxvii. 3-8). There, Judas
restores the money ; here, he retains it ; there, the priests buy the
field ; here, Judas is the purchaser ; there, he commits suicide ; here,
his death may be accidental. The only point common to the two
accounts is that the field was called ' the field of blood ', and even
of this fact a different explanation is given. There, it comes from
the use made of the blood-money ; here, it comes from Judas' bloody
end. It has been suggested e that Akeldama may be a corruption
of an Aramaic word meaning ' Cemetery '. In this case, Matthew's
statement that the field was bought with blood-money, and Luke's
that it was so called from the bloody death of Judas, may be different
explanations of the corruption; while Matthew's statement that
the field was bought as a burial-place for foreigners would be
confirmed. It is obvious that we have before us two traditions, of which that
"• Dykes, p. 34. " F- Recall, Expositor, III. vii. 355.
c P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. Bill., p. 2627.
<i Fraser, p. 10. " Plummer, Matthew, p. 385.

24 THE ACTS. I. 15-26
in the Gospel, though it may have been partially shaped by the
wish to bring it into conformity with prophecy,3- appears to be
the earlier and more correct. Popular abhorrence gradually invested
the doom of the traitor with lurid circumstances, which later legends
further developed into all kinds of horrible details.1* This process
had begun, when Luke wrote some thirty years after the event.
The whole spirit of the parenthesis is in marked contrast to Peter's
reticent reference to Judas' act as a mysterious catastrophe, ordained
and foretold of old.0
20. Let his habitation. The original passage (Ps. lxix. 25) has
' their habitation '. The historian changes the plural to the singular,
in order to make the quotation applicable to Judas. It is a good
illustration of the free method of quotation and interpretation of the
scriptures by New Testament writers.
It is clear that this verse is part of the parenthesis by the
historian, since the Greek words translated ' habitation ' and ' office '
refer to the pastoral and semi-episcopal functions of an Apostle
which could not have been realized at this date. Thus Peter's
speech is resumed with ver. 2r, and the 'it is necessary' of ver. 22
picks up the 'it was necessary' of ver. 16 A
21. which companied with us. The Lord had Himself laid
down this qualification for His witnesses. 'Ye also bear witness,
because ye have been with me from the beginning' (John xv. 27).
22. it is necessary. Twelve was a number with sacred associa
tions. Christ Himself had chosen it, and had spoken of twelve
thrones ; and now one was missing. But the limitation of the name
' Apostle ' to the Twelve soon passed away. Paul, after saying that
Christ appeared to ' the Twelve ', adds that later He appeared to ' all
the Apostles' (1 Cor. xv. 5, 7).
a witness. Peter thinks less of the vacant throne than of the
defective witness.e
of his resurrection. The fact was so incredible, and so
clashed with popular prejudice, that no one could proclaim it in that
age with sufficient conviction who had not himself received irre
sistible evidence of its truth. f
23. they put forward two. The whole body of disciples
" The passage quoted by Matthew as from Jeremiah is really from Zech. xi,
12, 13, though the Hebrew text does not agree with the quotation.
b D. Smith, In the Days of His Flesh, p. 474.
0 Rendall, Acts. a Rendall, Acts.
" Fraser, p. 9. < j. Thomas, p. 33.

THE ACTS. I. 15-26 25
(ver. 15), and not the Apostles only, selected two candidates. As
Joseph is mentioned first, he was probably the more prominent.
24. Thou, Lord. The first recorded prayer to the Risen and
Ascended Lord. They turn instinctively to Him ; as confidently,
as naturally, as if He were still visibly with them. Peter was
probably the spokesman, and it is interesting to note the use of the
words ' who knowest the heart ', since he employs it later (xv. 8).
It was, too, he who had said (John xxi. 17), 'Lord, thou knowest all
things ; thou knowest that I love thee.'
which one thou hast chosen. They may have remembered
their Master's own words, ' Did not I choose you the twelve ? ' (John
vi. 70), and ' Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed
you ' (John xv. 16).
25. his own place. Contrasted with ' the place in this ministry '.
He had been chosen for one place ; he had chosen otherwise for
himself. There is a natural reserve in the words : no judgment is
pronounced : the sinner is left in the hands of God.
26. they gave them lots. The erroneous translation 'gave
lots for them ' has led to the conclusion that this was not an election
by lot, but by ballot, that is, that the disciples voted for one or other
of the candidates, after praying that God would inspire their choice.
But voting by ballot was not a Jewish custom and would not har
monize with the words 'declare which one thou hast chosen of
these two '. What they did was to give to each candidate a tablet,
bearing his name, to place in the urn : and that which fell out, on
• the urn being shaken, determined which was successful.3-
The use of the lot must not be criticized from our point of view.
It was the O.T. method of learning the will of Jehovah ; and to the
Jew it suggested, not a decision by chance, but by the Divine
ordering. Nevertheless, it is startling to find the Apostles resort
ing to it. It is thought by some that it was not the difficulty of
choosing between the two candidates which led to its employment,
but the unwillingness to appoint a new Apostle on their own authority
after they had been themselves appointed by Jesus ; just as we see
later St. Paul's anxiety to have it understood that he had received
his Apostleship, not from men, but from Christ Himself. But the
natural inference from verses 22 and 23 is that, if there had been but
one candidate, they would have proceeded to make the appointment.
Since there were two, they thought that the man chosen by God
a Rendall, Acts.

26 THE ACTS. I. 15-26
might be pointed out by lot, as had been Saul, the chosen King of
Israel (i Sam. x. 20, 21).
This is the only occasion when the lot was used in the history of
the Apostolic Church ; and it is significant that it occurs between the
Ascension and Pentecost. Subsequently, when the Community had
to appoint the Seven Almoners, they elected them by vote (vi. 5);
and later still (xiii. 2) we find the voice of the prophets recognized as
the voice of the Holy Spirit.
It can scarcely be necessary to add that this solitary example of
the employment of the lot before Pentecost can furnish no precedent
for its use by Christians to relieve them from the responsibility of
exercising the powers of judgment given them by God. It is
' unchristian to use any material means for finding out God's will,
and unfaithful to do so rather than to pray God to enlighten our
souls.' »

CHAPTER II
On the Speaking with Tongues. There are four passages in
which this phenomenon is described, viz. : —
Acts ii. 4-13- The disciples at Jerusalem.
Acts x. 44-7, xi. 15-17. Cornelius and his friends at Caesarea.
Acts xix. 6. The disciples of John at Ephesus.
1 Cor. xiv. 1-33. The disciples at Corinth.
The last of these accounts is the fullest : it is also the earliest in
point of date, and is by a writer who not only had personally wit
nessed the phenomenon, but himself possessed the gift in an
exceptional degree (1 Cor. xiv. r8). What, then, do we gather from
his account as to its character?
It would seem to have been an ecstasy, which at moments of great
religious fervour seized the early believers. This fervour vented
itself in incoherent expressions of praise and thanksgiving, which to
the speaker conveyed a sense of communion with God ; and to the
hearer an impression of some extraordinary manifestation of power,
but not necessarily any instruction, and sometimes had the appear
ance of wild excitement like that of madness or intoxication. b
That this is the correct view is confirmed by experience. It is
a historical fact that, in times of greatly quickened religious feeling,
emotion finds expression in the utterance of sounds, poured forth
-1 Benson, p. 17 seq. h A. P. Stanley, Corinthians, p. 246.

THE ACTS. II 27
in an ecstasy of praise, but without rational consciousness on the
part of the speaker. As St. Paul says (i Cor. xiv. 14), 'his under
standing is unfruitful '. Human language fails ; the ordinary forms
of speech are broken through ; the man becomes the involuntary
organ of the Spirit ; and he speaks, not to men, but to God (1 Cor.
xiv. 2).
Analogies may be adduced from both earlier and later times. We
read (1 Sam. x. 5 seq., xix. 20 seq.) of prophets wrought upon by
music to a state of frenzy. In early Christianity we read of the
Montanists displaying ecstatic excitement of a similar kind. Epipha-
nius preserves a an utterance of Montanus speaking in the name
of God : ' Behold, the man is as a lyre, and I play over him
like a plectron.' ll And there have been similar experiences in quite
modern times, which it is in no way irreverent to bring forward, if
they appear to explain what is recorded in the Bible.0
Now, the phenomenon described by Luke as happening at Caesarea
and at Ephesus appears to be identical with that which St. Paul
describes as happening at Corinth. But these occurrences cannot
be placed in a different category from the occurrence at Pentecost,
in view of Luke's own words (x. 45), ' On the Gentiles also was poured
out the gift of the Holy Spirit ', and St. Peter's words (xi. 15), 'the
Holy Spirit fell on them, even as on us at the beginning' ; and they
entirely agree with the account here given in verses 4 and 13. The
natural meaning of the Greek expression, translated 'strange tongues '
(ver. 4), is ' utterances of an unusual kind ' — utterances differing from
ordinary speech. And the statement that these utterances made no
appeal to unsympathetic hearers, so that they were ascribed to intoxi
cation (ver. 13), is in harmony with St. Paul's words (1 Cor. xiv. 23),
' If there come in men unlearned or unbelieving, will they not say
that ye are mad ? '
But we are undoubtedly confronted with a difficulty when we turn
to verses 5-1 1. No fair and honest reader can question that Luke
says, and means to say, that the disciples at Pentecost spoke in
foreign languages, ' Every man heard them speak in his own language '
(ver. 6). ' How hear we, every man in our own language, wherein
we were born ? ' (ver. 8).
This assertion is, however, inconsistent, not merely, as has been
already pointed out, with x. 45 and xi. 15, but also : —
a liter, xlviii. 4. " P. YV. Schmiedel, Encycl. Bibl., p. 4762.
c Giles, p. 133.

28 THE ACTS. II
(a) With St. Paul's description of the Gift of Tongues in i Cor.
xiv. He there ranks the gift of prophecy as higher because more
useful (ver. 5) : the speaker with tongues does not edify others (ver. 4):
he speaks, not to men, but to God, and no man understands him
(ver. 2) : his utterance is like the inarticulate notes of a musical
instrument (verses 7-9) : it is useless without an interpreter (ver. 13),
and the power of interpretation is itself a spiritual gift (ver. 26 seq.).
All this is wholly inconsistent with the idea that the gift lay in the
power to speak foreign languages. Such speech would edify those
who understood the language, and could be interpreted by any un-
spiritual person who knew the language. Finally, St. Paul, by com
paring it to a foreign language (ver. n), implies that it was not one.
(b) With other parts of this very chapter of the Acts.. That some.
of the hearers charged the speakers with drunkenness does not
suggest the intelligible use of foreign languages. And St. Peter
makes no reference to such use of foreign languages — though the
fact would have been a convincing refutation of the charge— but
refutes it quite differently by showing that the speakers were fulfilling
Joel's prophecy.
(c) With historical facts. It is sometimes said that the miraculous
gift was meant to enable the first evangelists to address the people
of each country in their own tongue. But nothing could have been
more needless. Greek was at this time understood throughout the
civilized world. Certainly all the Hellenistic Jews enumerated in
verses 9-1 r understood it. When some years later (xxii. 2) there
was a similar gathering at Pentecost, the mob of fanatics expected
St. Paul to address them in Greek, and was surprised when he spoke
in Aramaic. Clearly they understood both languages.
(d) With the Divine method of working. It would be a miracle
incompatible with the constitution of the human mind. An acquired
capacity cannot be instantaneously given. a The way in which the
Apostles used Greek in their writings shows that they learnt the
language in the ordinary way.
If then, we cannot, on the one hand, deny that Luke states that
foreign languages were spoken and wishes his statement to be taken
literally, and cannot, on the other hand, accept the literal interpreta
tion of his words,b we are driven to the conclusion that he had
before him two traditions as to what occurred at Pentecost, one
earlier and historical, the other later and containing unhistorical
elements. Can we trace the origin of the latter ?
" Zeller, i. 174 seq. i> Idem, i. p. 191.

THE ACTS. II 29
It was a Jewish tradition that at Sinai the Voice which spoke the
Ten Commandments sounded through the whole earth, accompanied
by fiery tokens, and was heard in the seventy tongues of the heathen.1
The strange expression in Ex. xx. 18 — 'All the people saw the
thunderings and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet' — gave
rise to all kinds of vague speculations. Philo, for instance, describes
(ii. 185 seq.) a stream of fire, out of which a voice spoke to each
hearer in his own language.*" But, since the Jews regarded the
Feast of Pentecost as the Anniversary of the giving of the Law,0 and
the Sinaitic legislation as a type of the Messianic era, it is not
surprising if an attempt were early made by Jewish Christians to
represent this decisive event in the history of the Christian community
as a counterpart of the great event which was said to have happened
on the same day.d
The earlier tradition is contained in verses 1-4, 12, i^, and the
phenomenon is then identical with that described by St. Paul. The
later tradition is contained in verses 5-1 1, which state that foreign
languages were spoken. In favour of regarding these verses as
a later account, incorporated by St. Luke in the earlier, is the fact
that verse 12 joins naturally on to ver. 4, and that the words in ver. 12,
' And they were all amazed, and were perplexed, saying ', appear to
be an echo of ver. 7. Further, since verses 2 and 3 recall the
legendary phenomena attending the giving of the Law, they too
appear to be, at any rate, coloured by, if they are not part of, the later
tradition, and the word ' strange ' in ver. 4 may also be imported.6
After all, the Speaking with Tongues is only one element in the
record of this momentous event. The essential fact is the communi
cation of the Spirit, and that He was then really given we cannot
doubt.f Any one who believes that at this time the body of every
Christian became the temple of the Holy Spirit will look at the out
ward wonders as the least marvellous part of the day of Pentecost.s
From that day forward a new strength, which was not their own,
marked all the sayings and doings of the Apostolic Church. It is in
this great change of mental and spiritual attitude, rather than ' in the
external signs of wind and fire or in the strange powers of utterance,
that we recognize the supreme miracle of the day '. h And it is well
* Thiersh, p. 65 ; Zeller, i. p. 203 seq. b Hausralh, ii. 117.
c See the Babylonian Talmud, Pes. fol. 68 b.
'' Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, p. 14 seq.
e P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. Biol., p. 4767.
' A. Robertson, Hastings' Diet., art. Gift of Tongues.
e Farrar, i. 91. " Swete, The Holy Spirit, p. 77.

3o THE ACTS. II
to emphasize this. For ' if it were only a gift of language, then the
miracle has nothing to do with us. But if it was the elevating of
the natural faculties by God's Spirit to a higher and diviner use, then
we have a marvel and a truth which belongs to all ages '. a Happily,
whatever view we take of the miraculous features in the account, its
substantial veracity remains. The historian intends to tell the truth.
If in minor details he has erred, he has not thereby thrown discredit
on his narrative as a whole. b
1-4
1 And when the day of Pentecost was now come,
they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly
there came from heaven a sound, as of a mighty wind
borne onward, and it filled all the house where they
were sitting. 3 And tongues, like as of fire, were seen
by them parting among them, and it sat upon each one
of them ; 4 and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit,
and began to speak with strange tongues, as the Spirit
o;ave them utterance.
o i. the day of Pentecost. The second great Festival of the
Jewish year, the day for offering two loaves from the firstfruits of
the harvest. Itwas to prove, ere nightfall, a day of firstfruits to the
Christian Church.0 God honoured Passover and Pentecost, festivals
of an economy which was passing away, by making them the starting
points of a larger history."1 Whether the fulfilment of their Lord's
promise was definitely looked for by the disciples on this day, we
cannot say; but, at any rate, they had assembled 'all together' very
early in the morning — it was only 9 a.m. when Peter made his
speech — probably with a tenser strain of expectation than on any
of the previous nine days.
all — not only the 120 of i. 15, for the number would be swelled
by large additions. All males were required to attend the Feast, and
we know that there were more than 500 disciples in Galilee (1 Cor.
xv. 6).
in one place. Bishop Chase points out e the reasons for thinking
that they met in the precincts of the Temple.
i F. W. Robertson, Sermons, iv. 151. b Leathes, p. 7 seq.
* Norris, p. 7. " Djkes, p. 44.
8 Credibility oj the Acts, p. 30 seq.

THE ACTS. II. 1-4 31
{a) Josephus says {Atitiq. xviii. 2. 2) that at Pentecost, as at the
Passover, it was the custom of the priests to open the gates of the
Temple at midnight.
(b) The Greek for ' in one place ' is the very phrase used by
St. Paul (1 Cor. xi. 20) of assembling for worship.
(c) ' house ' is the term used in the LXX (Jer. xxxv. 4) and by
Josephus {Antiq. vii. 14. to) for chambers in the Temple.
(d) ' The multitude came together ' (ver. 6) is the phrase used by
Luke (Luke i. 10 ; Acts xxi. 36) of the crowd of worshippers in the
Temple. (e) It would explain the presence of large numbers of Jews of the
Dispersion (verses 9, 10).
(/) If the ' house ' were not in the Temple, but in one of the
narrow streets of the city, it is difficult to see how so vast a multitude
could have assembled to hear St. Peter's words.
2. a sound. It was not ' wind ', but ' a sound as of a mighty
wind ', and some of those present could scarcely fail to recall the
Lord's words, ' The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest
the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh and whither it
goeth' (John iii. 8). He had used the unseen and mysterious wind
as a symbol of the Spirit's operation, its sovereign might, its invisible
action, its pervasive life-giving power. Similarly, in Ezekiel's vision,
we have the same association of the wind with spiritual influences :
' Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain
that they may live' (Ezek. xxxvii. 9).
3. tongues. Again, it was not ' fire ', but ' like as of fire '. Fire
had always been, with the Jews, the symbol of the Divine presence
(cf. Ex. iii. 2 ; Deut. v. 4). No symbol could be more fitting to
express the Spirit's purifying energy and refining virtue. Once more
they must have recalled their Master's words, ' He shall baptize you
with the Holy Spirit and with fire' (Matt. iii. 11). And the form —
' tongues, like as of fire ' — was also symbolic. It suggests the chief
mode of the Spirit's operation, the practical purpose of His presence,
the consecration of speech, He would make those who received
Him witnesses to the truth. Together, the fire, and the tongue
promised die burning zeal — the living, conquering energy — with
which they should preach the Gospel and spread the Kingdom.
upon each one of them. Not upon the Apostles only, but on
the entire assembly. This is clear from Peter's application of Joel's
prophecy. 2-3. It has been shown above that the imagery of these verses

32 THE ACTS. II. 1-4
may be due to the Jewish tradition of the appearances at the giving
of the Law at Sinai. It may be, also, that a later generation, recalling
our Lord's comparison of the new birth of the Spirit to the wind,
and His promise of a Baptism of the Spirit and of fire, treated the
metaphors as literal facts.
Those who feel grave difficulties in the way of understanding these
two verses literally may be helped by the following reverent words ;
' Some, who do not dream of questioning a miraculous element, as
we speak, in the history of the Lord's Ministry and of Apostolic
times, read these few words not without a distressing sense of per
plexity and misgiving  It may be — I dare not question the possi
bility— that at this supreme crisis of revelation God willed to " create
a new thing in the earth ", fiery shapes in the semblance of tongues
diffusing themselves on the heads of men. But, to speak with
reverent frankness, such a manifestation seems to be a wonder of
a different order from the miracles of the New Testament. It would
stand alone. . . . May not He, who, by what we call natural means,
shrouded the Cross of the Son of God in darkness, have ordained that,
at the moment when the illuminating Spirit was poured upon the
Church, the sunlight of a new day smote upon the Apostles? And,
if so, was it unnatural that Christians should see a deeper meaning
in the sun's rays streaming through the colonnades of the temple and
resting upon the Apostles ? . . . Thus the two outward and visible
phenomena in the physical world — the rush of the wind and the
apocalypse of the sunlight — marked that morning hour of the day of
Pentecost as the supreme crisis of the Church's inspiration and of
the Church's enlightenment. In the compressed narrative St. Luke
has blended the language of history and the language of the alle
gorical interpretation of history.' a
4. began to speak. Realizing that the promise had been fulfilled,
they burst under one uncontrollable impulse into praise of God ! b
And who does not feel that the power of speaking foreign languages
without the drudgery of learning them would have been a far less
fitting result of the gift of the Spirit than this intensity of joy, which
found expression in a rapt outpouring of jubilant praise and thanks
giving for which language proved altogether inadequate ?
5-13
6 Now there were sojourning at Jerusalem Jews,
" Chase> P- 33 seq. b puryeS) p< 2?_

THE ACTS. II. 5-! 3 33
devout men, from every nation under heaven. G And
when this voice was heard, the multitude came together,
and were confounded, because every man heard them
speaking in his own language. 7 And they were all
amazed and marvelled, saying, Behold, are not all these
which speak Galilaeans ? 8 And how hear we, every
man, in our own language wherein we were born ?
9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers
in Mesopotamia ; in Judaea and Cappadocia, 10 in Pontus
and Asia, and in Phrygia and Pamphylia ; in Egypt
and the parts of Libya about Cyrene ; and the visitors
from Rome, both Jews and proselytes; " Cretes and
Arabians ; how hear we them speaking in our tongues
the great things of God ? 12 And they were all amazed,
and were perplexed, saying one to another, What
meaneth this ? 13 But others mocking said, They are
full of sweet wine.
5. sojourning, i. e. staying temporarily for the Feast. Pentecost,
falling at a season of the year when travel by sea was safest, was more
largely attended by pilgrims than any of the other Feasts.
6. voice. The confused sound produced by the disciples is spoken
of as one voice. So in Rev. v. n, ' I heard a voice of many angels.'
came together. The people would be assembling for the Temple
service at the third hour of the day.
9-1 1. The list presents numerous difficulties. It is made on no
discoverable principle as regards either the order of enumeration or
the inclusions and omissions. It is quite different in style from
Luke's work, and must be derived from some early authority."- The
strange inclusion of Judaea may be due to an error in the MSS.,
since Tertullian quotes the passage as ' Armenia and Cappadocia';
but the omission of such countries as Syria, Cilicia, and Cyprus,
where Jews were numerous, is inexplicable. It is significant that,
whereas the passage is adduced as evidence that the disciples at
Pentecost spoke in foreign languages, it really lends no support
whatever to that theory. It is a list of countries, not of languages ;
and the Jews from those countries did not all speak different languages,
a W. M. Ramsay, Hastings' Diet., art. Phrygia.
1329 D

34 THE ACTS. II. 5-13
but would all have understood Greek : would, indeed, have under
stood Greek better than the native language of the country in which
they lived. a
13. The multitude fall, as usual, into two classes, the serious
inquirers and the flippant mockers. So, when there came to Jesus
a voice from heaven, some ' said that it had thundered ; others said,
an angel hath spoken to him' (John xii. 29).
14-36
This is the earliest Christian apology, and its grand characteristic
is power. ' Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit hath come
upon you,' had been Christ's promise, and there is no delay in the
fulfilment. Who can read the speech and not feel that, if the gift of
Tongues was proof that the Spirit had come, the greater proof was in
Peter's words ? His life hitherto had shown no little inconsistency,
not to say cowardice. Only seven weeks before he had disowned
his Lord. But he had spent nine days, in prayer and had received
the Spirit, and we recall the Master's words, ' It is not ye that speak,
but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you ' (Matt. x. 20).
The speech is sufficiently like that of St. Paul at Pisidian Antioch
(ch. xiii) to show that it is a free composition ; and since it is in its
literary shape Lukan, it is not safe to lay too much stress on the
details. But probably it is substantially what Peter said. The
truths here proclaimed must have become at once the subject of the
regular teaching of the Apostles, emphasized again and again in the
oral instruction given to the disciples. The Aramaic form would
later assume a Greek dress, and this may have been the basis of
Luke's record b ; and he would have opportunities of supplementing
it by personal inquiry.
14 But Peter, standing up with the Eleven, lifted up
his voice and spake forth to them, Men of Judaea, and
all ye that are sojourning at Jerusalem, be this known
to you and give ear to my words. 16 For these men
are not drunken, as ye surmise, seeing it is but the
third hour of the day. le But this is that which hath
been spoken through the prophet Joel,
" Neander, p. 10 seq. ; A. Robertson, Hastings' Diet., art. Gift of Tongues.
" Gardner, p. 398; Chase, p. 117 seq.

THE ACTS. II. 14-36 35
17 And it shall be in the last days, saith God,
I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh ;
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
And your young men shall see visions and your
old men shall dream dreams :
18 Yea, even on my bondservants and on my hand
maidens in those days
will I pour .forth of my Spirit, and they shall
prophesy.
19 And I will show wonders in the heaven above,
and signs on the earth beneath,
bloodshed and conflagration and vapour of smoke :
20 the sun shall be turned into darkness,
and the moon into blood,
before the Day of the Lord come, the great and
notable day.
21 And it shall be that whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord shall be saved.
22 Men of Israel, hear these words : Jesus of Naza
reth, a man proved to be from God to you by mighty
powers and wonders and signs, which God did by
him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know ;
23 him, being delivered up by the settled counsel and
foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of men without
law crucified and slew : 24 whom God raised up, loosing
the travail-pangs of death, because it was not possible
that he should be holden by it. 25 For David saith in
reference to him,
I saw the Lord before my face always,
for he is on my right hand, that I should not be
moved.
20 Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue
rejoiced ;
moreover even my flesh shall tabernacle in hope :
d 2

0

6 THE ACTS. II. 14-36

27 because thou wilt not leave my soul to the grave,
neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see
destruction.
28 Thou hast made known to me ways of life ;
thou shalt make me full of gladness in thy presence.
29 Brethren, I may speak to you with freedom of the
patriarch David, that he both died and was buried ;
and his tomb is with us unto this day. 30 Being there
fore a prophet, and knowing that God had solemnly
sworn to him that of the fruit of his loins he would set
one upon his throne ; — 31 he, foreseeing this, spake of
the resurrection of the Christ, that neither was he left
unto the grave, nor did his flesh see destruction. 32 This
Jesus hath God raised up ; whose witnesses we all are.
83 Being therefore exalted by the right hand of God,
and having received from the Father the promise of the
Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth this, which ye see
and hear. 34 For David did not ascend into the heavens ;
but he saith himself,
The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit thou on my right hand,
35 till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet.
EC Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly
that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this
Jesus whom ye crucified.
15. it is but the third hour. Drunkenness belonged to the
night (1 Thess. v. 7), and in the daytime was a mark of exceptional
depravity (Is. v. n). And at 9 a.m. on a Festival no Jew would
have broken his fast.
18. on my bondservants. Of old, the light shone only on the
highest peaks — prophets, and psalmists : now the lowest valleys were
flooded by it.a
19. And I will show wonders. If Peter's object had been
merely to identify the ancient prediction with the present event, he
a Maclaren, i. 45.

THE ACTS. II. 14-36 37
might have stopped with the last verse. The association of the
prodigies which were to attend the end of the dispensation with
those which marked its beginning was probably due to his idea that
the Lord was speedily to reappear a ; but he may have quoted the
words of terror for the sake of the promise with which they end.b
22. of Nazareth. As Jesus was not an uncommon name among
the Jews, the epithet was added for the sake of distinction. But it
never occurs in the Epistles, and its use is evidence of the early date
of Luke's source. The same early date is shown in the use of
' Christ ' (ver. 36 ; cf. iii. 6, 20) as a designation and not a personal
name.0 23. by the settled counsel. Were these signs of His Messiah-
ship irreconcilable with His death upon the Cross? No; it was
God's purpose that the Christ should suffer. The death of Jesus,
like the treachery of Judas (i. 16), had been foreordained. But that
was no justification of the actors; their guilt remained. They had
acted in moral freedom, though they had been the means of accom
plishing the Divine purpose. Peter does not touch on the meta
physical difficulty, any more than our Lord did when He said, ' The
Son of man goeth as it hath been determined ; but woe unto that
man through whom he is betrayed' (Luke xxii. 22).d
Though the fact of the Resurrection was more prominent in the
early teaching of the Apostles than the spiritual significance of Christ's
death, these words show that His death was seen to be a definite
part of the Divine purpose of redemption.6
men without law, i. e. the Romans, who were outside the pale
of the Mosaic Law. Cf. ' To them that are without law (i. e. Gentiles),
as without law' (1 Cor. ix. 21).
24. whom God raised up. So far he might have seemed to be
merely charging them with the judicial murder of a righteous man
But this righteous man was One whom death could not hold.f
This was probably the first public assertion of the resurrection of
Jesus. (The announcement on the Easter morning had been met
by the report, circulated by the authorities, that His disciples had
removed the body.e) And the assertion is made, not to men who
lived long after the reputed rising from the dead, but to contempo
raries, within two months of the event, in the very city where it
" Briggs, Pentecost, p. 107. " Plumptre, Acts.
0 A. C. Headlam, Hastings' Diet., art. Acts.
d Briggs, Pentecost, p. 113 seq. e J- A. Beet, Expositor, iv. v. 184.
' Maurice, p. 23. B F'aser> P- 3' ; Dykes, p. 72-

38 THE ACTS II. 14-36
occurred ; and it is not controverted. At a time when it was still
possible to test the statement, to examine witnesses, to expose fraud,
the Apostle openly proclaimed the Resurrection as a fact, needing
no evidence, but known to his hearers. a
the travail-pangs of death. The Kingdom of Death is pictured
as labouring in pain to bring the dead to birth. But for the soul of
Jesus, the first-begotten from the dead, there were no labour-throes,
just as for His body there was no corruption, because in neither His
soul nor His body was there stain of sin.1'
because it was not possible. How different this speaker from
the Peter who seven weeks before had looked into the empty tomb,
and gone away, ' knowing not the scripture, that he must rise again
from the dead ' (John xx. 9) !
25. I saw the Lord. The psalm depicts the saint of God as in
peril of death, but with an unshaken confidence in God, not for
return from death, but for maintenance in life.c This fact is obscured
by the common mistranslation of ver. 27. None the less, Peter was
justified in reading into the words a deeper meaning than any of
which the Psalmist was himself conscious, and claiming them as
evidence that prophecy had pointed to a resurrection of the Messiah.
30. had solemnly sworn. In words, the full meaning of which
Solomon could not exhaust, God had sworn to David that He would
raise up one of his seed to sit for ever on his throne.d
31. foreseeing this, i. e. using through the Spirit language which
foreshadowed Christ's resurrection. It does not mean that the Psalmist
himself foresaw the fact ; though there may be in his words some
dawning hope of immortality, some idea that God could not permit
the good man to suffer the same fate as the wicked.6
32. This Jesus. The psalm referred to the Christ, but that fact
did not prove that Jesus was the Christ. If, however, Jesus rose
from death, that would be conclusive, and he now proceeds to prove
this by the testimony of eyewitnesses/
33. Being therefore, &c. He carries the argument one step
further. Not only had Jesus risen from the dead, but the risen
Jesus had been exalted by the right hand of God. And for proof
of the fact he appeals, not to the Ascension which only the Apostles
had witnessed, but to the evidence of their own senses. The proof
a Rendall, Acts; Milligan, The Resurrection, p. 32. b Stier.
0 Rendall, Acts. a Dykes, p. 73.
" Rendall, Acts ; Lewis, Petros, p. 167. ' Fraser, p. 32 seq.

THE ACTS. II. 14-36 39
was before their eyes in this new energy from heaven. ' This which
ye see and hear ' was the crowning demonstration that Jesus was the
Christ.3- 34. to my Lord. And this exaltation also was in conformity
with Old Testament prophecy, which had said that One, entitled to
be addressed as 'Lord', should sit at God's right hand. As the
dead Psalmist's words could not apply to his own immunity from
death, so it was not David who was called by Jehovah to sit as
' Lord ' at His right hand.b
36. whom ye crucified. The pronoun is emphatic in the Greek.
He sets in sharp contrast what God had done to Jesus and what man
had done. From God He had received the highest honour; from
man the lowest infamy.0
If this speech is substantially what Peter said, we may note, first,
the courage with which he, who had declared ' I know not the man ',
proclaims that God had made Him 'both Lord and Christ'; and
this in the city in which He had so recently been condemned to
death as a malefactor. The Jewish rulers had shown no signs of
remorse for their action, and the rancour with which they had
pursued the Master was likely to be exercised against His followers.
Yet there is no shrinking on Peter's part. If all had ended in the
Crucifixion, if there had been no Resurrection, his conduct is in-
explicable.d And, secondly, we may note the grasp of Biblical truth.
We know what Peter had been but seven weeks before. Now he
has grasped the Divine purpose in history, and sees that the ages are
not unrelated days, but are all one in the scheme of God. The
fisherman might know the letter of the Scriptures ; but whence came
this insight into their spirit ? The only possible explanation lies in
the fact that between his past and this speech comes the Pentecostal
gift-9 If, on the other hand, the speech in its present shape owes much,
as is certainly the case, to Luke, it is admirable alike in matter and
in manner. With what tact the advance is made under cover of
quotations from the Scriptures, which the audience would receive
with deference, to points of attack ! With what ability side-issues
are ignored, and every effort concentrated on the proof of the main
proposition ! With what oratorical skill it begins with ' Jesus, a man ',
and ends with the grand climax, 'Jesus, both Lord and Christ' !
a Fraser, p. 34 seq. ; Briggs, Pentecost, p. 128 ; Dykes, p\ 74 seq.
b Maclaren, i. 61. ° Maclaren, i. 62 ; Slater, p. 21.
d Dodd, pp. 18, 47. ° Parker, i. 62 seq.

40 THE ACTS. II. 37-41
37-4i
37 Now when they heard this, they were sore troubled,
and said to Peter and the rest of the Apostles, Brethren,
what shall we do ? 38 And Peter said to them, Repent,
and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus
the Christ for remission of your sins, and ye shall
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For to you is the
promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar
off, as many as the Lord our God shall call. 40And
with many other words he testified, and exhorted them,
saying, Save yourselves from this perverse generation.
41 They then that received his word were baptized : and
there were added on that day about three thousand
souls. 38. Repent. They could not undo their act, but they could
' repent ' — could, that is, change their whole attitude of mind towards
Jesus. Peter's words show that in his view at this time Christianity
was simply Judaism with the belief added that Jesus was the
Messiah. Baptism in connexion with the name of Jesus no more
involved disloyalty to Judaism than John's baptism had done.8-
in the name of Jesus. This is not inconsistent with the
Trinitarian formula given in Matt, xxviii. 19, since the words here
denote the confession of faith made by the baptized, and not the
form used by the baptizer.b There is, however, no evidence that
the words in Matthew's Gospel were understood by the early
Church to be a form prescribed by Christ for baptizing, though
they have been so used ever since the second century. The verse
is found in every MS. of the First Gospel, and there is no sufficient
ground for questioning its genuineness. But though Matthew wrote
the words, it does not necessarily follow that our Lord spoke them.
He may have said, 'Baptizing them into my name'; and while
Luke found in his sources, and preserved in his history (viii. 16,
x. 48, xix. 5), the formula of the first Christian generation, Matthew
may have unconsciously put into Jesus' mouth the Trinitarian
formula of the next generation with which he was himself familiar.0
11 McGiffert, p. 58 seq. b Rackham, Ads.
c Swete, pp. 74, 77; McGiffert, p. 61 ; Hummer, St. Matthew's Gospel, I.e.

THE ACTS. II. 37-41 41
39. to all that are afar off. It is sometimes said that these
words refer to the Jewish Dispersion among the Gentiles. But
St. Paul's words to the Ephesians (Eph. ii. 13), ' Ye that once were
afar off are made nigh in the blood of Christ,' show that the
Gentiles may be meant. Still, at this time, Peter could have
had no right conception of the mode in which Gentiles were to
be admitted. All nations were to be blessed in the seed of
Abraham, and he expected Gentiles to come in as proselytes through
the gate of circumcision. We see later that the difficulty felt even
by the Apostles was not the admission of the Gentiles to the
Church, but their admission as Gentiles, by baptism alone, without
circumcision. And at this early date, when they looked for a speedy
return of their Lord, a world-wide extension of the Kingdom must
have been wholly beyond their thoughts.11
40. with many other words. This shows that Luke did not
profess to give more than the substance of what was said.
41. were baptized. Private instruction was not needed; their
Jewish education sufficed. To the first disciples the Gospel was
not a new religion opposed to Judaism, but the fulfilment of Judaism.
Any Jew who accepted the truth that Jesus of Nazareth was the
Christ was admitted to the Church.1'
three thousand souls. They need not have been all admitted
on the actual day of Pentecost. ' On that day ' may mean, accord
ing to regular Biblical usage, ' at that time.' c But the number need
cause no surprise. The death of Jesus was recent, and the con
sciousness that a national crime had been committed might easily
be roused. Moreover, the remembrance of His teaching and of His
miracles was still fresh ; and many of these new converts may have
been, in a sense, believers already, but have been restrained by
timidity or irresolution from an open profession of their faith.a
We must not credit the Church in Jerusalem with this full in
crease. Probably many of the three thousand were pilgrims who
returned to their homes after the Feast.6 Nor must we assume that
all became genuine Christians. The episode of Ananias and
Sapphira shows that men might, as in other revivals, be carried away
by their feelings without any real and permanent transformation of
character.? a Alford, Homilies, p. in; Pressense, p. 23; Rackhatn, Acts; J. Thomas,
p. 352. b Wernle, i. 133; Reuss, i. 242 seq.
c Rackham, Acts. d Purves, p. 30 ; L. Merivale, p. 17.
0 Lechler, i. 31. f Neander, p. 22.

42 THE ACTS. II. 42-47
42-47
42 And they clave to the Apostles' teaching, and to
the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread, and to the
prayers. 43 And fear came upon every soul : and many
signs and wonders were wrought through the Apostles.
44 And all that believed were together, and held all
things common, 45 and sold their possessions and goods,
and parted them to all, according as any man had
need. 46 And day by day, continuing stedfastly with
one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home,
they took their meals with gladness and singleness of
heart, 47 praising God, and having favour with all the
people. And the Lord added to them day by day
those that were seeking to be saved.
42. the Apostles' teaching. The ignorance of many of the
new converts, drawn to Jerusalem from all parts of the Roman
world, must have been great. Some of them may have known
nothing of Jesus and His ministry beyond what they had learnt
from Peter's speech. In the absence of any written records, the
testimony of the Apostles to His life and words naturally formed
the basis of the common faith, and was probably the first beginning
of that oral narrative which was ultimately embodied in our Synoptic
Gospels. a
the fellowship. This denotes, not the community of posses
sions, which is mentioned later (ver. 44), though that was one form in
which it was manifested, but the sense of unity which bound them
together. The believers were as one family. During the Lord's
ministry the little band of disciples had been a brotherhood with
a common purse (John xiii. 29), recruited by the gifts of women and
others, who ' ministered to him of their substance ' (Luke viii. 3).
The Twelve had been steeped in the spirit of this life. By Christ's
command they had practised its principles in the earliest mission
journey (Mark vi. 8), and they naturally sought now to realize on a
large scale the perfect type of all society, the family, as a true ex
pression of the new bond of brotherhood. This ' fellowship ' was
a Maclaren, i. 80 seq. ; Pressense^ p. 42.

THE ACTS. II. 42-47 43
chiefly shown in their common meals, but was the note of all their
social life.a
the breaking of the bread. This phrase had become, at the
time when Luke wrote, the regular designation of the Lord's Supper
(1 Cor. x. 16, xi. 24), and he clearly uses it in this sense in xx. 7.
Also the double article, ' the breaking ' and ' the bread ', implies
something special.13 We cannot, however, say that it here refers
directly and exclusively to the Lord's Supper. The allusion is to
meals taken in common. The disciples did not at this early date
partake of a special Communion meal. But their ordinary meals
were meals of fellowship with their Lord. The natural inference
from Luke xxiv. 30 is that Jesus had habitually given by the act of
breaking the loaf a sacramental character to their common meals.
He had consecrated table intercourse to be a badge of unity among
themselves and a memorial of Himself. So, whenever they ate
together, they ate the Lord's Supper. Every meal was sacramental,
was a reminiscence of days when men ate and drank with the
Eternal God in human flesh.0
the prayers. They differed, as yet, from their countrymen only
in holding Jesus to be the Christ, and they did not feel that this
required them to withdraw from the national worship. Thus their
prayers were primarily in the Temple (ver. 46, iii. 1). But not ex
clusively ; they gathered for prayer in private houses also (iv. 2 3).d
43. signs and wonders. St. Paul's confident assertions in his
letters (1 Cor. v. 5, 2 Cor. xii. 12) testify to his consciousness of
himself possessing such powers.e
45. according as any man had need. In ancient states,
where no provision was made by the government for the poor and
aged, their support was always a difficult problem. But Jerusalem
was an exceptionally poor town. It had become the capital from its
strength as a fortress, and had none of the advantages which make
most capital cities the focus of the national wealth. Shut out
geographically from the natural current of commerce, with a territory
far from fertile, it afforded little opportunity for the inhabitants to
rise to affluence. There was also the demoralization caused by the
a J. Armitage Robinson, Hastings' Diet., art. Communion ; E. L. Hicks,
Expositor, Nov. 1906 ; Dykes, p. 105.
b S. C. Gayford, Hastings' Did., art. Church.
° Rendall, Acts ; Lechler, i. 45 seq. ; McGiffert, p. 68 seq. ; Weizsacker, i.
52 seq. ; Dykes, p. 108.
J Dykes, p. 106 seq. e Baumgarten, p. 28.

44 THE ACTS. II. 42-47
vast crowds of pilgrims who periodically thronged the city for the
great Festivals, alternating employment and profit with idleness and
pauperism. a Thus the poverty was not confined to the Church : it
was a chronic feature of the city. But it was doubtless found in an
aggravated form among the Brethren. The expectation of the
Lord's speedy return dominated all their life. They felt themselves
to be citizens, not of the present order of things, but of another ;
and all their interests centred in the future. Looking shortly to
receive greater things than could be acquired by human effort, they
devoted themselves, not to the ordinary occupations of life, buying and
selling, marrying and giving in marriage, but to prayer and praise.b
The inevitable result was distress. There were widows, and aged
or sickly brethren, to be supported ; while many of the new converts,
whose homes were in Galilee or elsewhere, probably remained at
Jerusalem, without means of earning a livelihood. But there were
also well-to-do disciples, and these formed a common fund for the
relief of the poor. Belief in the nearness of the Second Advent
may have influenced some of them ; if the time was so short, it was
not worth while to retain provision for the future. Others may have
been moved by certain utterances of Jesus, such as ' Sell that thou
hast, and give to the poor ; and thou shalt have treasure in heaven '
(Matt. xix. 21); 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the
earth . . . but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven ' (Matt. vi. 19,
20); 'It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God' (Matt. xix. 24). But
the dominant motives were clearly the feeling of brotherhood, which
would be enhanced by the feeling of isolation from the outside
world, and love, born of the joy of their great salvation.0 In the
second century we find in the Epistle of Barnabas (19), 'Thou
shalt share with thy neighbour in all thou hast, and must not call
anything thine own ; for if ye share in incorruptible things, how
much more should ye share in corruptible things.'
The plain statements of ver. 44 cannot, however, be regarded as
merely a description of Christian brotherhood, which levelled the
inequalities of property by unbounded benevolence. d Luke's sym
pathy with religious poverty was strong [compare the way in which
he reports our Lord's saying, 'Blessed are ye poor'(vi. 20), with
Matthew's version (v. 3), ' Blessed are the poor in spirit ' e], and he
0 Simcox, p. 8 ; J. Thomas, p. 42 ; E. L. Hicks, Expositor, Nov. 1896.
b Ropes, p. 172 ; McGiffert, p. C5 seq. ; Wernle, i. 130.
0 Purves, p. 3S ; Geikie, p. 18. d Zeller, i. 212. ° Simcox, p. 123.

THE ACTS. II. 42-47 45
has a little idealized the picture of the early Church. The facts
which he himself records confute him. If all members of the
Church put the whole of their property into the common stock,
there was no need to mention the case of Barnabas (iv. 36). It
was obviously exceptional, and, as such, attracted particular atten
tion. Nor is it said that even he made over the whole of his
property. And while Barnabas sold his farm, his cousin kept her
house, but used it for the benefit of the community (xii. 12).
Similarly, during our Lord's ministry, though the wants of the
Apostles were supplied from a common purse, they had not sur
rendered their private property. They had their boats, to which
they returned after the Crucifixion (John xxi. 3), and St. John took
the Lord's mother to 'his own home' (John xix. 27). Clearly, a
complete community of goods was not established. But Luke's
account has a sound historical basis. Though all who possessed
property did not literally renounce their private interest in it, all
did cease to feel that they held it for their own exclusive benefit.
They felt that they were trustees and stewards, bound to consider
the community rather than the individual. What was any brother's
was the brethren's. To men so enthusiastically ' of one heart and
soul ' separate interests seemed treason and coldness. a
Thus the feature of the early Christian community here described
cannot be strictly called Communism. It was rather an example of
abounding charity. None the less, it approaches unwisely near to
an experiment in communism. The Church very soon learnt that
to set herself above the material conditions of life was to run the
risk of being disastrously recalled to them. Her idealism was early
brought into contact with stern reality, when a struggle over the
support of the poor grew out of this very community of property
(vi. 1). And the impoverished condition of the Church at Jeru
salem in later years, which St. Paul sought to relieve by contributions
from his Gentile converts, may perhaps be traceable to this ex
periment.13 So far is this example of the early Christians from being obligatory
on later generations, that it was not followed in their own age. We
find no trace of it elsewhere than in Jerusalem. The Epistle of
St. James speaks (ii. 1-4, v. 1-5) of the contrast among the Jewish
Christians between the rich and poor as being of a marked character.0
a Briggs, Pentecost, p. 260 ; Olshausen, p. 414 ; McGiffert, p. 67 ; Pfleiderer,
Primitive Christianity, p. 31 ; Dobschiitz, p. 143 seq.
h Hausrath, ii. 134 seq. ° Row, p. 41.

46 THE ACTS. II. 42-47
Only the spirit, not the special form, of the sacrifice is a model for
the Church of after ages. Christianity recognizes social inequalities,
but draws from them opportunities for the exercise of Christian virtues.
It says to the rich man, not ' Sell, and rid yourself of the responsi
bilities of wealth ', but ' Use the responsibilities, as a steward of God '.
46. in the temple. In spite of the close ties by which they were
united, there was no rupture with the national worship. Rather must
the Temple service have been filled with fresh meaning to those
who understood that Christianity was the spiritual interpretation of
Judaism. On the other hand, they were conscious of having saved
themselves ' from this perverse generation ' (ver. 40), and, in separating
themselves from other Jews in order to meet by themselves in private
houses, they were paving the way for the independence of the Christian
community.'*1 breaking bread at home. A meal is meant, as in ver. 42 ; but
here, as there, the context shows that the meal was a religious act.
The partial repetition of ver. 42 in ver. 46 looks as though Luke
had incorporated from some other sources the passage about com
munity of property, verses 43-46. Similarly in ch. iv, he appears to
have introduced from the same source ver. 32 between verses 31 and
33, which cohere well without it.b
with gladness. A trumpet-note of joy and triumph, which sounds
through the whole Lukan history. ' Vexilla Regis prodeunt.' °
47. having favour. Their piety was bright and attractive, not
repellent. the Lord added. Christ was working for His Church. Peter
might plant, but God gave the increase.
seeking to be saved. Salvation, in the New Testament, gene
rally means something present, not final.d It is a process going on
throughout life. So St. Paul says (1 Cor. i. 18), 'The word of the
Cross is to them that are perishing foolishness ; but unto them which
are being saved it is the power of God '.

CHAPTER III
The Miracles in the Acts. To many persons in our day the
miraculous element in the Bible constitutes a grave difficulty, whereas
" direct interposition, even arbitrary interference, was no difficulty to
1 Purves, p. 39 ; Lechler, i. 45 seq.
b P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. Bib!., p. 877.
" Harnack, Luke, p. 163. <* Norris, p. 18.

THE ACTS. Ill

47

the Jew, to whom Jehovah was the absolute Sovereign of the world,
not acting, so far as he could see, according to any established order,
. . . the observed uniformity of nature, the indissoluble chain of cause
and effect, the absolute certainty of the laws by which all visible
phenomena are governed — these are now the stumbling-blocks even
to devout minds '.a To such persons it is often an intense relief to be
assured that it is possible to question the reality of a large number
of miracles recorded in the Old and New Testaments, and yet to
accept the general truth of the narratives in which they are contained.
' A historian of the eighth to the thirteenth century ', says Bishop
Stubbs of Oxford,b 'will record the current of history with names
and dates of incontrovertible authority, and we believe in him so
thoroughly that we would risk a good deal on his exact accuracy.
And the same man on the same page . . , will tell us a miracu
lous story of something which he saw with his own eyes, but which
we should never think of accepting as possible, and the narration
of which we can only receive with the kind assumption that he has
told us what he thought he saw. , . . Such episodes constitute no
objection at all to the credibility of the author who has introduced
them. . . . The intermixture of what is incredible to us is no bar to
the acceptance as certain of that which is credible on the same
evidence . . . We give a different kind and degree of faith to different
sorts of narration.'
What is to be said of the miracles recorded in the Acts ?
(a) They do not stand alone. They must be considered in their
relation to the advent of Christianity and to the superhuman powers
of the Founder of the Church.0 No one who accepts such stupen
dous miracles as the Incarnation and Resurrection, who believes that
miracles were wrought by Jesus during His ministry, and remembers
that He referred to those miracles as evidence of His Divine mission
¦ — ' Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me ; or
else believe me for the very works' sake' (John xiv. ir) — will be
prepared to assert that it is incredible that, when the Apostles went
on their mission in His name, He went with them, ' confirming the
word by the signs that followed' (Mark xvi. 2o).d
(b) They receive valuable corroboration from St. Paul. Many
years before Luke wrote the Acts, he says : ' In nothing was I behind
the very chiefest Apostles, though I am nothing. Truly the signs of an
1 J. J. S. Perowne, The Psalms, Introd. to Ps. lxxiii.
b The Miraculous in the Bible, Ordination Addresses.
0 J. H. Bernard, Hastings' Diet., art. Miracle. a West, p. 258.

48 THE ACTS. Ill
Apostle were wrought among you in all patience, by signs and wonders
and mighty works ' (2 Cor. xii. 12). Here St. Paul not only appeals
to miracles wrought by himself, but declares that miracles were wrought
by the other Apostles. And there are other passages in his Epistles
which conclusively prove that the Christians of the first century
believed in miracles. ' To another gifts of healings in the one Spirit ;
and to another working of miracles' (1 Cor. xii. ro), 'He therefore
that supplieth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you '
(Gal. iii. 5) ; cf, too, Rom. xv. 18, 19. Similar is the testimony of
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews — ' God also bearing witness
with them, both by signs and wonders and by manifold powers and
by gifts of the Holy Spirit ' (ii. 4).
(c) While the narrative of the Acts, apart from the miraculous
element, is stamped as authentic, that element is an integral part of
it, inextricably involved in the Book, so that it cannot be entirely
cut out by any critical process that will bear scrutiny.0-
(d) Though this miraculous element cannot be eliminated, and
though it is found in the narrative of events at which Luke was him
self present (xvi. 26),13 it does not follow that in the earlier chapters,
the materials for which he must have gathered from many sources,
the miraculous element may not have received a degree of legendary
embellishment. (e) When we speak of Luke as a physician we must be on our
guard against assuming that he would employ such methods of
critical investigation as we associate with one who has received
a scientific education. The training of a Greek physician was not
scientific, nor was the line between medical treatment and faith-
healing rigidly drawn. It is evident that miracles had a strong
attraction for Luke; and we can scarcely acquit him of the charge
of heightening a marvel by his way of narrating it. This would seem
to him a small matter, for he is exceedingly careless in regard to
dates and facts.0 'There is scarcely', says Harnack,d 'another
writer in the New Testament who is so careless a historian. Like a
true Greek . . . he is an artist in language ; but in regard to subject-
matter, in chapter after chapter when he is not an eyewitness, he
affords extreme instances of carelessness.' I-IO
There can be little doubt that Luke derived this narrative, directly
or indirectly, from Peter. It is marked by the graphic touches
" Ramsay, Paul, pp. 87, 339. 1= Ramsay, Expositor, Dec. 1906.
c Gardner, p. 386. a Luke m Physician> p_ II2

THE ACTS. III. i-io 49
characteristic of Mark's Gospel, which is usually held to be based on
Peter's recollections. Compare, for instance, the narrative of the cure
of the demoniac child (Mark ix. 14 seq.). The same picturesque
details are seen in the narratives of the death of Ananias (vi. 1 seq.),
of the raising of Dorcas (ix. 36 seq.), of the conversion of Cornelius
(x. 1 seq.), and of the deliverance from Herod's prison (xii. 6 seq.),
which must all have come ultimately from Peter himself.* Luke,
with all ' his genuine Greek delight in telling stories ',b gives us no
similarly graphic details even in his description of events at which he
was himself present.
1 Now as Peter and John were going up into the
temple for the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour,
2 a certain man was being carried, that was lame from
his mother's womb, whom they used to lay daily at the
Beautiful door of the temple, to ask alms of them that
entered into the temple : 3 who, seeing Peter and John
about to go into the temple, asked an alms. 4And
Peter, fastening his eyes upon him, with John, said,
Look on us. 5 And he gave heed to them, expecting
to receive something from them. 6 But Peter said,
Silver and gold have I none ; but what I have, that
give I thee. In the name of Jesus the Christ of
Nazareth, walk. 7 And he took him by the right hand
and raised him up; and immediately his soles and
ankles were made firm. 8 And leaping up he stood
and began to walk ; and he entered with them into the
temple, walking and leaping and praising God. 9 And
all the people saw him walking and praising God :
10 and they began to recognize him as the man who sat
for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple ; and they
were filled with wonder and amazement at that which
had happened to him.
1. Peter and John. Andrew and Peter, James and John, had, it
is likely, been boys together on the shore of Lake Tiberias. But the
a J. R. Lumby, Expositor, I. iii. 264. b Harnack, Luke, p. 164.
132B E

50

THE ACTS. III. i-io

bond between the respective brothers was less strong than that
between the friends, Peter and John. They were probably about the
same age, for the idea that Peter was older rests only on the fancy of
artists. They may have gone together, when the Lord sent out His
disciples 'by two and two' (Mark vi. 7), just as they were sent
together to prepare the last Passover (Luke xxii. 8). Their close inti
macy is shown by many passages in John's Gospel (xiii. 24, xviii. 15,
xx. 3, xxi. 7, 21). The contrast in character and disposition— the
one ardent and impulsive, the other quiet and thoughtful— may, as
often happens, have drawn them together. Their close companion
ship at the close of the Gospel story and at the beginning of the
Apostolic history is a connecting link of great value."-
were going up. Clearly the words describe their daily practice.
The impression, created by the narration of special episodes in these
early chapters, that the disciples passed their days in a blaze of pub
licity, is probably contrary to the real facts. There is no clue to the
time that had elapsed since the events recorded in the last chapter,
but the excitement of Pentecost had subsided, and the Church had
settled down in peace and quiet. Luke, however, having mentioned
(ii. 43) that miracles were wrought by the Apostles, singles out, after
his manner, one by way of example, either as the most remarkable,
or because it led to the first outbreak of persecution.15
into the temple. There was, as has been already pointed out
(see on ii. 46), little at this date to distinguish the disciples from the
Jewish Church. They were simply a new and very earnest sect, all
the more enthusiastic Hebrews for believing that Israel's Messiah
had already come. Years after, we read (xxi. 20) of ' many thousands
which have believed ', who were ' all zealous for the Law '. So strong
among the early Christians were the old Jewish associations that they
called their place of meeting a ' synagogue ' (James ii. 2). The chief
effect of their new faith was to make them more devout Jews than
they had ever been. They would recall such utterances of Jesus as
' Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven '
(Matt. v. 2o).«
2. lame from his mother's womb. The infirmity was not the
result of accident or disease, but was congenital. He had been born

a Howson, Horae Pet. pp. 46, 53; Plurriptre, Acts ; Dodd, p. 124; Arnot,p,
h J. C. Jones, p. 52 ; Norris, p. 12 ; McGiffert, p. 81.
c Watson, p. 31 ; Dobschiitz, p. 141 ; Purves, p. 17 ; McGiffert, p. 65.

THE ACTS. III. i-io 51
a cripple, and was so helpless that he could not even use crutches,
but had to be carried to his station.
daily. So that he would be well known by sight to all who lived
in Jerusalem.
at the door. Where hundreds would pass daily, of whom some
would give under the influence of religious feeling, and others that
they might be seen of men (Matt. vi. 2).11
the Beautiful door. It is of no importance that this door cannot
be identified ; but it is important to remember that, when an event is
related with definite particulars of time and place and circumstance,
there is a presumption of its truth. Fiction does not court investiga
tion, when eyewitnesses might still be living. b
3. asked an alms. He had long ceased to hope for anything
else. How could a lifelong cripple dream of a cure ?
5. expecting to receive something. Peter's words would do
no more than lead the man to expect some larger alms than usuaL
Though mental emotion may unquestionably have a powerful influence
on the physical system, there was in the present case no excitement
or highly wrought imagination. The beggar looked for nothing but
what he was accustomed to receive from the charitable.0
6. Silver and gold have I none. We can see the man's face
fall at the words, as he turned away in disappointment, if not in
resentment at the seeming mockery. But Peter was one who could
use St. Paul's words (2 Cor. vi. to), ' as having nothing, and yet
possessing all things ' ; and the beggar was to learn how God often
answers prayer, refusing the lower blessing asked for, and giving the
higher blessing neither asked for nor deserved.
Silver and gold ! The poor man is he who has only these ; the
rich man is he who has high ideals and warm sympathies, whose
wealth is in his thoughts, his aims, his plans for good. ' Silver and
gold have I none.' ' Then,' says the shallow man, who looks only on
the surface, ' you can give nothing.' But the poverty which can give
nothing may be combined with the power which can give much. Many
who, as regards temporal things, can use the Apostle's language, are
dowered by God with His richest spiritual things. They give kind
looks and pleasant words and spare half-hours, and, not least, their
prayers. When Christianity fails to give these, silver and gold are
poor substitutes."1
"¦ West, p. 257. b Dick, p. 147. <¦ West, p. 263 seq.
d Parker, i. 85 ; Lewis, Petros, p. 174; Gurney, p. 49 seq.
E 2

52 THE ACTS. III. i-io
In the name. Peter claims no authority inherent in himself. How
different are the imperial words of Peter's Master 1 ' Peace, be still.'
' I will : be thou whole.' ' Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.' Forth
went the omnipotent fiat, and storms were hushed, and lepers cleansed,
and death uncrowned ! a
of Jesus. The cripple must have known the name of Jesus. He
may often have longed to hear spoken to himself the word which had
proved so efficacious for others. The man ' blind from his birth '
had ' sat and begged ' at the temple (John ix. i, 8), and the healing
at the pool of Bethesda of the man who had been a cripple 'for
thirty and eight years ' (John v. 5) can scarcely have been unknown
to a fellow sufferer.0
the Christ, of Nazareth. See on ii. 22.
walk. Since the command would naturally seem to one so help
less, not only absurd, but a mockery, it is clear that the man's own
faith must have been a concurrent factor of the cure. Had he been
sceptical, he would not have made a serious effort to obey.0
7. his soles. The unusual Greek word is a medical term, found
in Hippocrates. It is one of the details which betray Luke the
Physician. See how he notes in the word ' immediately ' that the
months of the ordinary cure were compressed into a moment ; that
the man was lame from his birth, so that it was no case of nervous
debility; that he had reached an age (iv. 22) when such cures no
longer occur. In the same way he marks with exactness the dura
tion of Aeneas' illness (ix. 33) ; and describes the complaint of the
father of Poplius in technical terms (xxviii. 8).d A similar professional
feeling may be traced in many passages of his Gospel. Notice his
use of the technical expression ' a great fever ' (iv. 38) ; his quota
tion of the proverb 'Physician, heal thyself (iv. 23); his statement
that 'the power of the Lord was with him to heal' (v. 17); the
peculiar phrase, twice repeated, 'Power came forth from him and
healed them all ' (vi. 19) and ' I perceived that power had gone forth
from me ' (viii. 46) ; and his significant substitution (viii. 43) of ' could
not be healed of any' for the words of Mark (v. 26), 'had suffered
many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and
was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.' e
8. leaping — a natural touch. The new-found power was so
delightful, that sober walking would not serve. It was a literal fulfil-
a Macduff, Peter, p. 309 ; West, p. 271. b Plumptrc, Acts.
0 Spence, p. 148 ; Dykes, p. 124 seq. « Harnack, Luke, p. 191.
e Hovvson, Companions, p. 61 seq.

THE ACTS. III. i-io 53
ment of Isaiah's prophecy (xxxv. 6), ' Then shall the lame man leap
as a hart.' One of the predicted signs of the Messiah's advent was
exhibited on the most public stage.8-
10. began to recognize him. He must have been for years
a familiar figure to those who lived at Jerusalem and frequented the
Temple. 11-26
11 And as he held Peter and John, all the people ran
together to them in Solomon's cloister, greatly wonder
ing. 12 And when Peter saw it, he answered the people,
Men of Israel, why marvel ye at this man ? or why
gaze ye at us, as though by our own power or piety we
had made him to walk ? 13 The God of Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his
servant Jesus, whom ye delivered up and disowned in
face of Pilate, when he had given sentence to release
him. 14 But ye disowned the Holy and Righteous One,
and asked for a murderer to be granted to you ; 15 and
killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the
dead, whose witnesses we are. 16 And by faith in his
name his name made this man strong, whom ye behold
and know ; yea, the faith which came through him
gave him this perfect soundness in the presence of you
all. "And now, brethren, I wot that in ignorance ye
did it, as did also your rulers. 18 But the things which
God before announced by the mouth of all the prophets,
that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent
ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be
blotted out, that so there may come seasons of revival
from the presence of the Lord ; 20 and that he may send
the Christ who was foreordained for you, even Jesus :
21 whom the heaven must receive until the times of
reconstitution of all things ; of which times God spake
by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been since
a Gurney, p. 38.

54 THE ACTS. III. 11-26
the beginning. 22 Moses said, A prophet shall the
Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren,
as he raised up me ; him shall ye hear in all things
whatsoever he shall speak to you. 23 And it shall be
that every soul which shall not hear that prophet shall
be utterly destroyed from among the people. 24 Yea,
and all the prophets, from Samuel and them that fol
lowed after, as many as spake, they too told of these
days. 25 Ye are the sons of the prophets, and of the
covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to
Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the families of the
earth be blessed. 2G To you first God, raising up his
servant, sent him forth to bless you, by turning every
one of you from your iniquities.
n. Solomon's cloister. On the east side of the Court of the
Gentiles ; so called because the foundations on which it was built
were a remnant of the ancient Temple. For the Apostles it would
have sacred associations, as the scene of Jesus' teaching at the Feast
of Dedication (John x. 23),
12. Peter answered. It is impossible to say to what extent
Luke may have had before him some written record of what Peter
said now and on subsequent occasions. The words in verse 13, 'The
God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers,' are
the formula with which the first of the 'Eighteen Benedictions;
begins ; and this looks as though he had had access to some
Hellenistic tradition of this speech.8- But, as Hausrath has pointed
out,b the five years after the Crucifixion were years of unparalleled
excitement. One storm after another passed over Palestine. The
destruction of the Samaritans, the fall of Pilate and of Caiaphas,
rumours of war on the Euphrates and the Jordan, the overthrow of
Herod, the conquest of Damascus, the death of the Emperor, the
fall of the Tetrarch and the rise of Agrippa, the attempt to set up
Antichrist in the Temple — all these things happened in five short
years. Such a period of excitement would not be favourable to the
chronicling of contemporary speeches, especially on the part of men
who looked for the speedy coming of the Last Day. (See on i. 15.)
a Chase, p. 124 seq. b Vol. ii, p. 127.

THE ACTS. III. n-26

55

Why gaze ye at us ? To most men the situation would have
been one of temptation. Admiration is dangerous, and these were
men who had spent their lives in a humble station and now found
themselves regarded as superior beings. But Peter's one feeling is
jealousy for his Lord's honour. The servant disclaims the power
which the Divine Master had claimed for Himself. ' That ye may
know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then
saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, and take up thy bed, and go
unto thy house ' (Matt. ix. 6).
13. glorified, not 'hath glorified by this miracle'; but Peter
points, as in ii. 23, to God's exaltation of Jesus as the Messiah in
contrast to his hearers' rejection of Him.
his servant. So again in ver. 26 and in iv. 27, 30. Evidently
the thought of Jesus as 'the servant of the Lord' (Is. xiii. 1) was
specially present to the early disciples. But they soon passed on to
a deeper perception of what He was in relation to God. The
designation never occurs again in the New Testament.*
delivered up, viz. to the Roman power. That was the lowest
depth of Israel's degradation. They had handed over their Messiah
to the Gentiles. And the Gentile magistrate would rise in the Judg
ment to condemn them, for he, at any rate, had recognized His
innocence.11 15. the Author of life. Jesus was the source of all life ; to the
bodies, as well as to the spirits, of men, as the cure before their eyes
showed.0 17. in ignorance ye did it. They had acted wickedly, but they
had not wittingly crucified the Messiah. So St. Paul says (r Cor. ii. 8),
' Had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.'
The word ' brethren ' marks a change of tone. Peter had not softened
the stern truth : the death of Jesus was murder, and those concerned
in it were murderers : but in offering for their conduct the very
defence which the dying Lord had suggested—' Father, forgive them ;
for they know not what they do ' (Luke xxiii. 34)— he opens the door
of hope, the blessed opportunity of a new start, when the scales of
ignorance had fallen from their eyes.d
your rulers. The pronoun betrays the Greek historian. Peter
would almost certainly have said ' our rulers '.
18. he thus fulfilled. By their crime they had been, all un
knowingly, working out the purposes of God (cf. ii. 23). The death
1 Maclaren, i. 124. " Maclaren, i. 103.
« Maurice, p. 42, d Parker, i. 93 seq.

56 THE ACTS. III. 11-26
of Jesus, so far from invalidating his claim to be the Messiah, con
firmed it, since prophecy had declared that the Christ should suffer.
Peter speaks of Jesus' death upon the Cross as another proof of
His Messiahship, in addition to His Resurrection and Exaltation.
There is no sign here that he regarded it as having an independent
value of its own. St. Paul's words, however (i Cor. xv. 3), 'That
which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to
the Scriptures,' imply that this conception of His death did not
originate with himself. a
19. that so. The mistranslation ' when ' (A.V.) defers the forgive
ness to some future period, whereas Peter's meaning is that ' seasons
of revival ' are inseparably connected with the penitent's return to
God. 20. that he may send the Christ. Peter still thinks of the
Kingdom as a national kingdom, the second advent depending on
the conversion of the Jews. He has as yet no conception of the
union of Jew and Gentile in one Church. The return of the Lord
would inaugurate the happy age for Israel, and he calls upon his
hearers to hasten that return by accepting Him.11
21. reconstitution of all things. A common phrase in Jewish
apocalyptic literature, conveying the idea of the restoration of the
world to its original condition when God pronounced it to be ' very
good '—the new heaven and new earth of Revelation (xxi. 1).
22. A prophet. In the original context (Deut. xviii. 14, 15) there
is no reference to the Messiah. It is a promise that God would raise
up inspired prophets for the chosen people, in contrast with other
nations who depended on sorcery.0 But the application of the words
which Peter makes here was current among the Jews. It is the
explanation of the question put to the Baptist (John i. 21), ' Art thou
the prophet ? '
26. To you first. Gentile Christians have learnt to give to
the splendid promises of the Hebrew prophets the larger interpreta
tion which was at this time hidden from Peter. To him those
promises were national. Not till years later, not without special
vision to teach him, did the Apostle of the Circumcision learn to
' call no man common or unclean 'A
raising up. The Greek word shows clearly that the reference is
not to the Resurrection, but to ver. 22, ' a prophet shall the Lord
your God raise up.'
a McGiffert, p. 57. b McGiffert, p. 63; Fraser, p. 54 seq.
0 Rendall, Acts. d Dykes, p. 133 seq.

THE ACTS. III. n-26

57

to bless you. The word is borrowed from the promise to
Abraham (Gen. xxviii. 14), 'In thy seed shall all the families of the
earth be blessed.'

CHAPTER IV
i-4
1 And as they were speaking to the people, the priests
and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came
upon them, 2 being sore troubled that they were teach
ing the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection
from the dead. 3And they laid hands on them and
put them in ward until the morrow ; for it was now
eventide. 4 But many of them that heard the word
believed, and the number of the men came to be about
five thousand.
1. came upon them. This was the first occasion of collision
between the new sect and the national authorities. The Captain of
the Temple was a Jewish officer of high rank — Josephus {Bell. Jud.
vi. 5. 3) names him next to the High Priest — in charge of the Levites
who guarded the Temple. Being responsible for maintaining order
in the sacred precincts, and seeing an excited crowd in the Temple
court, he may have been justified in his action. And the priests
might not unnaturally assist in the interests of order, though their
motive probably was, as is implied in the next verse, jealousy that
men not trained in the Rabbinical schools should be teaching in
public. It was a more serious matter when they were backed by
members of the Sadducean party, which held all the chief offices of
state.a The Sadducees at this time formed a wealthy oligarchy, and
were opposed to all enthusiasm, as endangering the existing order ;
and they were not likely to view with indifference a recrudescence of
that preaching of the Kingdom which they had crushed in the case
of Jesus.b
The Pharisees, on the other hand, did not display the animosity
which they had shown to Jesus. His denunciations of their hypocrisy
and formalism had brought Him specially into conflict with them.
But the members of the new sect were pious and strict in their
a Dykes, p. 143 seq. " Rendall, Acts ; Hausrath, ii. 146.

58 THE ACTS. IV. 1-4
manner of life, as the Pharisees themselves were. If we may judge
from Gamaliel's speech (ch. v. 34), the tendency at present among
the Pharisees was in the direction of toleration, if not approval.
Their opposition was to be roused later by the teaching of Stephen."-
2. proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection. It is doubtful if
Luke, though correct in saying that the Sadducees were responsible
for the attack, gives a right explanation. Probably he assigns the
motive which seemed to him the likely one. But it is not mentioned
at the trial on the following day ; and the Sadducees were not bigoted
theologians, who desired to stop the mouths of those who differed
from them. They were politic ecclesiastics, not intolerant dogmatists.
If they took active steps against the Christians, it was because the
latter were creating excitement and unrest in the city, and needed to
have their liberty of speech curtailed.11
3. in ward. Probably in one of the chambers of the Temple.
The Apostles must have recalled the night when their Master had
been arrested, brought before the Council, and pronounced worthy
of death ; and they must have realized their danger.
4. But — a significant ' but '- The leaders might be imprisoned,
but God's word was not bound.
five thousand. The meaning probably is, not that five thousand
were now converted, but that the total number of disciples in Jeru
salem now amounted to that number. 5-12
"' And it came to pass on the morrow that their
rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in
Jerusalem, ° and Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas,
and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the
kindred of the high priest. 7 And when they had set
them in the midst, they inquired, By what power, or in
what name, have ye done this ? s Then Peter was
filled with the Holy Spirit, and said to them, Rulers
of the people and elders, 9 if we are this day examined
concerning an act of beneficence done to an impotent
man, by whom this man hath been made whole, 10be it
1 Green, p. 75 ; Renan, Apostles, p. 131.
|J Weizsiicker, i. 27; McGiffert, p. 83.

THE ACTS. IV. 5-12 59
known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that
by the name of Jesus the Christ, of Nazareth, whom
ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead — by that
name doth this man stand here before you sound. "He
is the stone which was set at nought by you the builders,
which was made the head of the corner. 12And by none
other is salvation ; for there is no second name under
heaven that hath been given among men, whereby we
must be saved.
5. in Jerusalem. The insertion of these words marks the Greek
historian. It is obviously out of place in a narrative of events which
happened at Jerusalem and in the mention of a Council which always
met there.
6. Annas. He had been appointed in a. d. 6 by the Roman
Governor Quirinius, but was not now holding the office, having been
deposed by the Romans in a. d. 14. The inaccuracy is, however,
more apparent than real; for, though others were high priests by
Roman appointment, Annas' deposition was not recognized by the
Jews. Thus St. John, though he calls Caiaphas high priest, says
that Jesus was led to his 'father-in-law Annas first' (xviii. 13). It is
possible that the Jews kept themselves on the safe side, so far as the
Romans were concerned, by giving them a joint presidency in the
Sanhedrin. This would explain the expression in Luke's Gospel
(iii. 2), ' In the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.' Moreover,
the age of Annas, the fact that he had been high priest (Josephus
gives the title to all ex-high priests), had seen his son in the office,
and was father-in-law of the existing high priest, Caiaphas, would
account for his retaining power after he had lost the formal position.*-
Annas and Caiaphas had been mainly responsible for the condemna
tion of Jesus, and His two followers must have had an increased
consciousness of their peril. b
7. set them in the midst. Peter and John would recall the
last occasion on which they had been together in the Council-hall
(John xviii. 16), and who it was who then stood in the place of the
accused.0 1 Stokes, i. 182 ; N. J. D. White, Hastings' Diet., art. Annas; J. R. Lumby,
Expositor, 1. ix. 480.
b Fraser, p. 60. ° Maclaren, i. 131.

60 THE ACTS. IV. 5-12
By what power. The fact of the miracle was not denied : it
was incontestable. The object of the question was to entrap the
Apostles into an admission that it was a cure wrought by some other
name than that of Jehovah ; just as Jesus had been charged (Matt.
ix. 34) with casting out devils ' by the prince of the devils '. In such
a case, the penalty under the Mosaic Law was death (Lev. xx. 27).
8. filled with the Holy Spirit. The place must have recalled
to Peter the unworthy part which he had once played there, and he
may have felt that now was the opportunity to make what reparation
he could for that hour of cowardice. Then he had been ' full ' of
himself and his fears : now he was full of the Holy Spirit. a He was
to find his Lord's promise (Luke xii. 11, 12) fulfilled, 'When they
bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities,
be not anxious how or what ye shall answer, or what ye shall say ;
for the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought
to say.'
9. an act of beneficence. There is a touch of quiet irony in
the words, ' Since we are charged with no crime, but with a kindly
action.' b
10. Jesus the Christ. Peter's defence is that he had employed
the name of no false god. It could not be treason to Jehovah to
say that the cure had been wrought through Jehovah's predicted
Anointed.0 whom God raised from the dead. Much as the rulers must
have heard of the Resurrection since the day when they bribed the
Roman soldiers to keep silence, this was probably the first occasion
on which it had been formally proclaimed before them. It would
have been easy to silence the Apostle, if they could have pointed to
an occupied and undisturbed grave. Since they did not do so, the
inference is that they could not.d
ri. He is the stone. This verse from Ps. cxviii. occurs in the
great Hallel hymn, sung at the Feasts of Passover and of Tabernacles,
and so was familiar to the Jews from their childhood. Peter had
heard Jesus quote it of Himself (Matt. xxi. 42), and the chief priests
had then perceived that it was directed against them : now he applies
it expressly to them—' set at nought by you the builders.' Thirty
years later, Jesus was still to Peter 'the head of the corner'
(1 Pet. ii. 6-8). The passage may have had a special attraction for
a Macduff, Peter, p. 331 ; Parker, i. 103. b Stifler, p. 38.
° Dykes> P- r5'- d Dykes, p. 151 ; Maclaren, i. 133.

THE ACTS. IV. 5-12 61
him as he thought of the significance of his own name (Matt.
xvi. i8).a
12. by none other is salvation. The prisoner had arraigned
his judges. Now, standing at their bar, he offers them mercy. The
original question had not been one of salvation, but of healing a
cripple. But to Peter the miracle was only a text. He has passed
from the healing of the body to the healing of the soul. Salvation
from bodily evil was but an earnest of the one salvation from both
physical and moral evil, which Jesus came to work. By His name
the cripple had been saved from lameness ; by the same name and
by no other, could any man be saved from sin and death. b
13-2 2
13 Now when they beheld the boldness of Peter and
John, and understood that they were common men
without learning, they marvelled ; and they began to
recognize them as having been with Jesus. "And
seeing the man that had been healed standing with
them, they had nothing to say against it. u But when
they had commanded them to go aside out of the
Council, they conferred among themselves, saying,
16 What are we to do to these men ? For that a notable
miracle hath been wrought through them is manifest
to all that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.
17 But that it spread no further among the people, let us
threaten them that they speak no more to any man
about this name. 18 And having called them, they
charged them to utter no single word nor teach about
the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John answered
and said to them, Whether it be right in the sight of
God to hearken to you rather than to God, be the
judges : 20 for we cannot but speak the things which we
saw and heard. 21 So they, when they had further
threatened them, let them go, finding no way of punish-
3 Fraser, p. 66; Howson, florae Pet. p. 20; Plumptre, Acts.
" Parker, i. 104: Arnot, p. S7; Fraser, p. 68 ; Dykes, p. 150.

62 THE ACTS. IV. 13-22
ing them, because of the people ; for all men were
glorifying God for that which had been done. 22 For
the man on whom this miracle of healing had been
wrought was more than forty years old.
13. when they beheld the boldness. Peter's speeches to the
people had been followed by conversions. But these sceptical Sad-
duces and self-righteous Pharisees were not so stirred. They turn to
side-issues. How dared these ignorant laymen to be so bold in their
presence ?
and John. Apparently both Apostles had spoken, but Luke has
told only what Peter said (cf. iv. 1). If a record had been kept of
one speech, a record would surely have been kept of both. The
inference is that Luke was dependent on oral tradition, and embodied
its substance in the above speech.a
common men without learning — men, that is, without official
position and untrained in the Rabbinical schools. They were not
'unlearned and ignorant' (A.V.), for the Jews prized education;
and John, at any rate, the son of a master-fisherman, would not be
illiterate. began to recognize them. The two Apostles may have been
seen together in that very hall by some members of the Council on
the morning of the Crucifixion.13 And St. John was personally
known to Caiaphas (John xviii. 15). Further, Peter's appeal
(ver. 11) to the very passage in the Psalms by which Jesus had
roused their resentment (Matt. xxi. 42) may have helped the recog
nition.0 But the words mean more than this. Peter's inspired reply
was so like the answers of Him who ' spake as none other spake '
(John vii. 46), that they were startled. They perceived a likeness
between their courage and dignity and the bearing of the Master.
They recalled how He had stood, meek but unawed, at that very bar.
The same combination of apparent ignorance and of wisdom had
marked Him of whom they asked, ' How knoweth this man letters,
having never learned?' (John vii. 15). These untrained men, who
had followed Jesus and taken in the words which fell from His lips,
were somehow able to see further into the heart of things than the
scribes and doctors of the law. It was ' like master, like servant '.
a Ramsay, Paul, p. 372. *> Plumptre, Acts.
0 F. H. Chase, Hastings' Diet., art. Simon Peter.

THE ACTS. IV. 13-22 63
Not for nothing had they been with Jesus. They had caught His
spirit, and spoke and bore themselves like Him.
14. seeing the man. We are not told whether he too had been
arrested or whether he had voluntarily taken his stand by his bene
factors. At any rate, ' the man that had been healed ' was the best
Christian apologist.
nothing to say against it. The Greek word is that of their
Master's promise (Luke xxi. 15), 'I will give you a mouth and
wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to withstand or
to gainsay.' 16. What are we to do ? Jesus' miracles had presented the same
problem. ' What do we? for this man doeth many signs. If we let
him thus alone, all men will believe on him ' (John xi. 47, 48).
17. that they speak no more. They reach the impotent con
clusion that the matter must be hushed up. Professing to be
religious men, having before them what seemed to be strong evidence
of the Divine origin of Christianity, their one idea is, not to probe
the matter to the bottom, but to silence all discussion of it. Is there
no lesson for us, who live in days when much that our fathers
accepted seems to be upset ? We, too, may fear the touch of light,
and seek to smother facts that they ' spread no further '.a
19. Whether it be right. These two men can claim spiritual
descent from the Three Children before Nebuchadnezzar — ' Our
God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us . . . But if not, be it
known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods ' (Dan. iii.
17, 18). So Socrates had declared to his judges : ' I will obey God
rather than you, O Athenians. If you would dismiss me and spare
my life, on condition that I should cease to teach my countrymen,
I would rather die a thousand times than accept the proposal.'b
20. we cannot but speak. They had not been required to
unsay what they had affirmed, but only to desist from affirming it in
the future. But they accept no such compromise.0 In this first
conflict between the Church and earthly authority, they assert a great
principle— that the Christian conscience is the supreme court of
appeal. They say with Micaiah (1 Kings xxii. 14), 'As the Lord
liveth, what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak.' So their
words have become sacred watchwords, to which men, who had
powers, civil or ecclesiastical, arrayed against them, have turned for
comfort.d The answer of Bunyan, when imprisoned and forbidden
"- Dick, p. 67 ; Dykes, p. 152. b Xenophon, Apol. xi.
c Dodd, p. 11. d Maurice, p. 56.

64 THE ACTS. IV. 13-22
to preach, was, ' I am at a point with you. If I were out of prison
again to-day, I would preach the Gospel again to-morrow, by the help
of God.' ' The powers that be are ordained of God,' says St. Paul
(Rom. xiii. i), and it is a duty to obey them ; but if there comes
a time, when the soul is hemmed in between the mandate of an
earthly ruler and the word of God — when the alternative is to follow
Babylon, or to refuse to bow at the sound of cornet, flute, and dul
cimer — then to the Christian man a higher duty overrides the lower.
21. further threatened them. Weak as their decision had
been, their further action was weaker still. It was a lame con
clusion to forbid them to preach ; when obedience was refused, it
was yet lamer to do no more than repeat the prohibition.*
22. more than forty years old. The physician notes the fact
which made the case plainly miraculous.
23-31
23 And being let go, they went to their own people,
and reported all that the chief priests and elders had
said to them. 24 But they, when they heard it, lifted up
their voice to God with one accord, and said, Master,
who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea
and all that in them is ; 25 who through the Holy Spirit
by the mouth of our father David, thy servant, didst say,
Why did the Gentiles rage,
And the peoples imagine vain things ?
-° The kings of the earth set themselves in array,
And the rulers were gathered together
Against the Lord and against his Anointed.
27 For of a truth against thy holy servant Jesus, whom
thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with
the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered
together in this city, 28 to do whatsoever thy hand and
thy counsel foreordained to come to pass. 2a And now,
Lord, look upon their threatenings ; and grant to thy
bondservants that they may speak thy word with all
" Dykes, p. 154.

THE ACTS. IV. 23-31 65
boldness ; 3n and that signs and wonders may be done
through the name of thy holy servant Jesus. 3l And
when they had prayed, the place was shaken in which
they were gathered together ; and they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit, and proceeded to speak the word
of God with boldness.
24. lifted up their voice. The Council had been too weak to
show the courage of its opinions. Still, it had decided against the
new faith, and that fact must have been a grievous blow. It meant
that the hope of a national recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, by
a formal reversal of the national judgment which had condemned
Him, was at an end. The Apostles could not but foresee that
perilous times were before them. They had declared their intention
of disobeying the express command of the Council, and they were
not likely to receive again the same indulgence as on the present
occasion. Yet a hymn of triumphant thanksgiving follows the report
of the two leaders. They pray only for courage.8-
and said. Luke gathers the concordant feeling of all into one
common expression. The reporting at length of this noble utterance,
the earliest recorded Christian hymn, shows how critical the moment
was felt to be for the infant Church.0
Master. Corresponding to the ' bondservants ' of ver. 29.
who didst make. Only the same creative Power which made
the world can now make a way for them.0
25. David. Neither in the Hebrew text nor in the LXX is
Psalm ii. ascribed to David, but the disciples follow the usual prac
tice of the Jews, who ascribed to him all the Psalms not definitely
marked otherwise."1
Why did. From the particular case of the present persecution
they rise to the general law of religious history which it illustrated—
the opposition between the powers of this world and the Son of God,
as set forth in the Second Psalm. e
27. Herod. It should be noted that Luke alone of the Evan
gelists records Herod's connexion with the Crucifixion.
28. thy counsel foreordained. Nothing ' happens ' ; all is
ordained. They rise above sight and sense to see the Hand which
' shapes men's ends, rough-hew them how they will '.f
1 Dykes, p. 157 : L. Merivale, p. 62. " Olshatisen, p. 412 ; Zeller, i. 220.
c Stifler, p. 40. d Olshatisen, p. 41 2. ° Pressense, p. 18. ' Vaiighan, i. 177.
1329 F

66 THE ACTS. IV. 23-31
29. speak thy word. Their prayer is not for their own
safety — that could be purchased only by silence ; nor for the con
fusion of their enemies — that was in the Lord's hand : but for courage
to persevere in the path which led certainly to danger, and possibly
to death. a
30. signs and wonders. The stress here laid on the external
aid of miracles, to open a way for the word into the hearts of the
people, is evidence that this prayer belongs to the early days of the
Church. 31. the place was shaken. He who shakes the earth must be
its maker. They had cried to God the Maker, and he answers in
that character,13 giving them a token that Almighty power was at
hand for their protection. The earthquake is a frequent symbol in
the Old Testament of the Divine presence. Cf. Ex. xix. 18,
Ps. cxiv. 7 ; and especially Is. vi. 4 — a passage which may have
influenced the form of the present narrative.
32-35
32 And the multitude of them that believed had but
one heart and soul, and not one of them said that aught
of the things which he possessed was his own, but all
things were common to them. 33 And with great power
gave the Apostles their witness of the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all.
34 For there was not among them one in need ; for as
many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them,
and brought the price of the things that were sold,
35 and laid them at the Apostles' feet : and distribution
was made to each, according as any had need.
The statement of ii. 44, 45 is repeated without material addition.
It may have belonged to the oral tradition of the early Church ; and
Luke may have found it inserted at different places in the narra
tives which formed his sources, and incorporated it twice in his own
history. It will be noticed that ver. 32 interrupts the sequence of
verses 31 and 33. 1 Gurney, p. 75. b Stifler, p. 42.

THE ACTS. IV. 36 -V. 11 67
CHAPTER V
iv. 36 -v. 11
36 And Joseph, who by the Apostles was surnamed
Barnabas (that is, ' son of Exhortation '), a Levite, a
Cyprian by birth, 37 having a field, sold it, and brought
the money, and laid it at the Apostles' feet. Y- 1 But
a certain man, named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife,
sold a property, 2 and kept back part of the price, his
wife also being privy, and brought a certain part, and
laid it at the Apostles' feet. 3 But Peter said, Ananias,
why did Satan fill thy heart, to deceive the Holy Spirit,
and to keep back part of the price of the land ? 4 While
it remained, did it not remain thine own ? and after it
was sold, was it not in thine own power ? How is it
that thou hast conceived this thing in thy heart ? Thou
hast not lied to men, but to God. 5 And Ananias, as
he heard these words, fell down and died : and great
fear came upon all them that heard them. 6 And the
younger men rose up, wrapped him round, and carried
him out, and buried him.
7 And it was after a space of about three hours that
his wife came in, not knowing what had been done.
8 And Peter answered her, Tell me whether ye sold
the land for so much. And she said, Yea ; for so much.
9 But Peter said to her, How was it that ye agreed
together to make trial of the Spirit of the Lord ?
Behold, the feet of them who buried thy husband are
at the door, and they shall carry thee out. 10 And she
fell down straightway at his feet, and died; and the
young men came in, and found her dead, and carried
her out, and buried her by her husband. " And great
fear came upon the whole Church, and upon all who
heard these things. F 2

68 THE ACTS. IV. 36 -V. 11
36. by the Apostles was surnamed Barnabas. The name was
probably given later, and is here mentioned by anticipation. It may
have marked the authoritative recognition of Joseph as a prophet.a
of Exhortation. The Greek word denotes exhortation, consola
tion, encouragement— all three. There is no English equivalent
which covers the same ground, so that the translator must employ
different words according to the context. But since the Hebrew
word 'nabas' denotes exhortation, that is certainly the meaning
here. a Levite. Though Levites were originally assigned no land in
Palestine (Numb, xviii. 20), the case of Jeremiah (xxxiii. 7 seq.)
shows that they could buy or inherit it. But there was a feeling that
the possession of land by a Levite was an irregularity which had
crept in ; and Luke, who does not usually mention the tribe to which
a disciple belonged, may have wished to show that the Christian
Church presented a truer picture of what Israel ought to be, even
according to the Law, than Israel itself did.b But his motive for
mentioning the tribe is more likely to have been the same which led
him (vi. 7) to record that ' a great company of the priests ' joined the
new society.
a Cyprian. He may have been one of the converts gained at
Pentecost. If his land was in Cyprus, it might be valuable, since
the island was at this time a favourite place of residence.
37. sold it. One reason, no doubt, for recording the action of
Barnabas was the prominent part which he afterwards played in the
history. But there seems to be a further reason. The first converts
were probably won, almost without exception, from the lower orders,
so that the conversion of a man of substance was an event of
importance. And though the sale of property was voluntary and
not always complete (ver. 4), and though Barnabas is not expressly
said to have given his all, there is little doubt that he did so. We
know that later, when travelling with St. Paul, he had to work for
his own support (1 Cor. ix. 6). Thus, his case is singled out as one
of conspicuous generosity and self-denial ; and it was apparently
the applause which his act evoked from the Church that tempted
Ananias and Sapphira to try to win the same admiration without the
same self-sacrifice.
The awkward division of chapters obscures the contrast, which
Luke evidently intended to point, between the action of Barnabas and
that of Ananias. " Rackham, Acts. b Alford, Homilies, p. 165.

THE ACTS. IV. 36 -V. n 69
v. 1-11. Ananias and Sapphira. There is no serious diffi
culty in the first part of this narrative, The sudden death of
Ananias is explicable on physiological grounds, as the consequence
of a violent revulsion of feeling. The motive of his lie was the
desire to win credit; and the disclosure of his hypocrisy, at the
very moment when he was expecting to be greeted with applause,
might easily produce a fatal shock. His doom is not said to have
been pronounced by Peter, and may have befallen by natural
causes. The difficulties begin when we pass to the account of the death
of Sapphira. And here it is not the pronouncement of her doom
by Peter which is the most serious obstacle in the way of an un
reserved acceptance of the narrative, since St. Paul states plainly
(1 Cor. v. 4, 5) that the power of inflicting temporal judgments for
spiritual offences was committed to the rulers of the Church. The
difficulties lie elsewhere. Is it conceivable, after making all allow
ance for the rapidity of burial in the East (due partly to the climate,
partly to the fear of defilement by contact with the corpse), that
a man of substance, possessed of land, in a country where funerals
were conducted with much ceremonial, should be carried off to
immediate burial without any communication with his family or his
friends ? Such action would be, not only a violation of oriental
custom, but cruel and heartless in the highest degree. Three hours
after his death even his wife had heard nothing. Apparently she
had not intended to go herself to the meeting, but was alarmed by
the delay in her husband's return. And when she did appear, she
was not even then informed of what had happened. It is said by
some a that Peter's question (ver. 8) was meant as a merciful oppor
tunity for her to separate herself from her husband's sin. Others
will rather feel that an Apostle was not likely to put, without any
merciful caution, a question the answer to which would, if true,
convict her husband of fraud, and, if false, involve her in his guilt.
And, once more, when it is said *> that the punishment for this first
fall from the ideal was the same as was meted out to Achan
(Joshua vii), who first troubled Israel after the entrance into the
promised land, it is sufficient to reply that the New Testament is
not the Old, and to recall our Lord's rebuke (Luke ix. 55) to those
who looked to it for precedents to guide His followers.
Hence it is difficult to resist the conclusion that, while verses 1-6
a e.g. by Maclaren, i. 17S. " Rackham, Acts.

70 THE ACTS. IV. 36 -V. 11
contain a true record of the death of Ananias, which was regarded
as a divine visitation on an act of signal meanness, and made a pro
found impression on the Church, the fact that his wife was known
to be ' privy ' led later to her death being linked with his by tradi
tion ; and that this tradition is found in verses 7-1 1. (It will be
noticed that ver. n is an echo of ver. 5.) The significance of the
death of Ananias is not affected by a legendary growth in the details.
Luke no doubt found the account, as he gives it, in his sources :
and it represents the ideas of the primitive Christians. a
It has been well said that 'one can no more apply one set of
considerations to a Biblical, and another to a profane, author in
a historic question than one can use different measures for a church
and a dwelling-house. . , . How does inspiration act upon a writer?
In two ways : first, by strengthening and intensifying his natural
powers ; and, secondly, by producing in him ... an inrush of the
superconscious. It makes a man a vehicle of deep-lying forces, so
that he builds better than he knows. He may think that he is
writing for a society or even for an individual, when he is really
writing for future ages and to meet needs of which he is unconscious.
But in some aspects the writers of inspired works are as fallible as
other men. Inspiration does not reveal to them physical and
scientific fact. ... It does not reveal historic fact.'b
1. But. One example has been given of genuine self-sacrifice.
With it Luke proceeds to contrast the counterfeit. The Acts, like
the Bible generally, is marked by its candour. Nothing is kept
back. There is no attempt to make men appear better than they
really were. Even in the freshness of their enthusiasm, the dis
ciples were not exempt from commonplace temptations and liability
to fall before them. The rapid growth of the Church was itself
a source of danger. So popular a movement was likely to attract
many whose faith was not very real or strongly rooted. The
religious emotions might be stirred, without any corresponding
quickening of the moral sense.0
2. kept back part. If their motive had been avarice, they would
never have joined a community whose principles and practice had
nothing to attract them. They must have joined for reasons not
all unworthy. And very possibly it was a pure impulse which led
them to sell the land ; though it may be that they feared that their
* Ropes, p. So; McGiffert, p. 72 ; Ramsay, Paul, p. 370, and Expositor, April,
1909. b Percy Gardner, p. 417. « Parker, iii. 293 ; Purves, p. 40.

THE ACTS. IV. 36-V. 11 71
reputation would suffer, if they, being known among the disciples
to be possessed of property, did not follow the generous example
of others. But, after the sale, the sight of the money tempted their
covetousness, and they decided to keep back part of it. There was,
it was true, no compulsion on them to give to the common fund ;
nor, if they gave, to give all : but they could not forgo the credit
which they had expected to gain for a liberality equal to that of
Barnabas, and they agreed together to give a part as the whole.8-
his wife also being privy. He did not yield to a sudden
temptation, but had concocted the plan with his wife.
brought a certain part. Expecting, doubtless, to be welcomed
with high commendation of his zeal and liberality.111
at the Apostles' feet. Apparently the gifts, devoted to the relief
of the poor brethren, were solemnly presented as an act of worship.
3. why did Satan fill thy heart? An awful contrast to
' filled with the Holy Spirit '.
to deceive. His act was a challenge thrown out to the God
of truth.
4. Thou hast not lied to men. This is true not merely of sins
of falsehood, or of sins in apostolic days, but universally, as David
long before had recognized : ' Against thee, thee only, have I
sinned' (Ps. Ii. 4).
5. great fear. The Church had scarcely realized its own holi
ness, and the responsibility involved in membership.0
6. the younger men. The Greek word cannot denote definite
officials, since a different word is used in ver. 10. At the same
time, it is possible that we have here the germ of the diaconate.
Certain younger men may have regularly discharged active duties,
as certain elders discharged duties of government. On this occasion
they certainly seem to have carried out, unsummoned, functions
customarily assigned to them/1
9. make trial of. As the Israelites 'tempted God in their
hearts ' by questioning His omnipotence, saying, ' Can God furnish
a table in the wilderness?' (Ps. lxxviii. 18, 19), so Ananias and
Sapphira had questioned His omniscience.6
11. the whole Church. This is Luke's first mention of the
Church. It seems as though this Divine visitation served to bring
to clear consciousness the solidarity of the Community. Though
1 Schaff, ii. 166. b Dick, p. 77. ° Banmgarten, i. 116.
d Olshausen, p. 420; Row, p. 63. e Dick, p. S4.

72 THE ACTS. IV. 36 -V. 11
we cannot be sure that he is not transferring to an earlier period
the language of his own time, it may be noted that St. Matthew
twice uses the word in reporting utterances of our Lord— 'I will
build my Church ' (xvi. 18), and 'Tell it unto the Church' (xviii. 17),
and that St. Paul uses it in what is perhaps his earliest extant letter,
'I persecuted the Church of God' (Gal. i. i3).a
n-14. That Luke is here employing the same source from
which he had previously taken ii. 43, 47 is clear from a comparison
of the two passages : —
ii. 43. fear came upon every soul.

43. and many signs and won
ders were wrought
through the Apostles.
47. having favour with all the
people.
47. And the Lord added to
them day by day those
that were seeking to be
saved.

11. great fear came upon the
whole Church.
12. And by the hands of the
Apostles were many
signs and wonders
wrought.
13. the people magnified
them.
14. and were more and more
added to them, be
lieving in the Lord.

I2-I6
12 And by the hands of the Apostles were many signs
and wonders wrought among the people. [And they
were all with one accord in Solomon's cloister. 13 But
of the rest durst no man join himself to them ; howbeit
the people magnified them, 14and were more and more
added to them, believing in the Lord, multitudes both
of men and women :] 15 insomuch that they would even
carry out the sick into the streets, and lay them on
couches and pallets, that, as Peter passed, at least his
shadow might fall on one or other of them. 16 There
came together also the multitude from the cities round
about Jerusalem, bringing sick folk, and men vexed
with unclean spirits ; who were healed every one.
12. And they were all. The latter half of ver. 12 to the
end of ver. 14 is almost certainly an interpolated fragment which
does not fit in with the context.11
" Lechler, i. 90. b P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. Bib!., p, 45.

THE ACTS. V. 12-16

73

Solomon's cloister. So far were they from obeying the pro
hibition of the Council against public teaching that they made the
scene of the arrest of Peter and John (iii. n) a recognized rendezvous
for the Church.
13. of the rest. That is, the non-Christians, 'all' in ver. 12
being the Christians. To understand 'all' to mean the apostles,
and ' the rest' other believers, is to make a gulf of awe and timidity
between apostles and believers which is inconsistent with the
brotherly fellowship elsewhere depicted.11
durst no man. The meaning is, not that conversions were
checked (the opposite is immediately stated), but that those who
were not genuinely of them dared not pretend to be of them, or join
the Church for the sake of such help as would come from the
community of property, h
14. and women. The altered position of women under the
Gospel seems to have had a special interest for Luke. (See on i. 14.)
15. that, as Peter passed. It is not expressly said that they
were healed, but the fact may be inferred from the analogous cases
of cure effected by touching the hem of Jesus' garment (Mark vi. 56)
and by aprons from St. Paul's person (xix. 12). The healing power
lay, of course, not in the shadow or the apron, but in the faith of
the sufferers — a faith little removed from superstition, for it degraded
God's gift to responsible agents into a magical influence seated in
their bodies ; and it is not said to have been sanctioned by either
Peter or Paul. Still, it was faith in the truth of a Divine power
working in their midst ; and, as such, was higher than the materialism
which denies the reality of a spiritual world intersecting the physical
world at every point.0
16. from the cities. This would seem to show that there were
believers in the neighbouring villages. At any rate, they would,
on their return to their homes, help to form bodies of believers. d
17-32
17 But the high priest rose up and all they that were
with him (which was the sect of the Sadducees), and
were filled with jealousy, 18 and laid hands on the
" Lechler, i. 68. '' Arnot, p. 124; Benson, p. S7.
" Kitto, p. 40; Bishop Woodford, Sermons on subjects from the New Testament,
p. 79. d Olshatisen, p. 422.

74 THE ACTS. V. 17-32
Apostles and put them in public ward. 19 But an angel
of the Lord opened by night the door of the jail, and
brought them out, and said, 20 Go, stand, and speak in
the temple to the people all the words of this Life.
21 And when they heard this, they entered into the
temple about daybreak and taught. But the high priest
came, and they that were with him, and called the
Council together and all the senate of the children of
Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought.
22 But the officers when they came found them not
in the jail : and they returned and told, saying, 23 The
prison we found shut in all safety, and the jailors
standing at the doors ; but when we opened we found
no man within. 2i Now when the captain of the temple
and the chief priests heard these words, they were much
perplexed about them, what this might grow to. 25 But
there came one and told them, Behold the men whom ye
put in the jail are standing in the temple and teaching
the people. 26 Then went the captain with the officers,
and brought them without violence, for they feared the
people, lest they should be stoned. 2T And when they
had brought them, they set them before the Council.
28 And the high priest asked them, saying, We strictly
charged you not to teach in this name : and behold,
ye have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and are
minded to bring this man's blood upon us. 29 But Peter
and the Apostles answered and said, We must obey
God rather than men. 30 The God of our fathers raised
up Jesus, whom ye hanged on a tree and slew. 31 Him
did God exalt with his right hand to be a Captain and
a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and remission
of sins. 32 And we are witnesses of these things, and
so is the Holy Spirit, whom God hath given to them
that obey him.

THE ACTS. V. 17-32 75
17. But the high priest. A noticeable feature of this period,
as during Jesus' ministry, is the contrast between the attitude of the"
common people and that of the influential classes."1 Luke implies
that this fresh action of the rulers was due to the rapid growth of
the Church, but it is more likely that it was in connexion with the
death of Ananias than with works of beneficence. It will be noticed
that ver. 17 coheres well with ver. n; and Luke may have placed
verses 12-16, which he found in his sources, in a wrong connexion.
the Sadducees. The statement that they were the chief oppo
nents of the early Church (cf. iv. 1) is a mark of historical accuracy,
since later on, at the time when Luke wrote, it was legalists, that is
the Pharisaic party, who most obstinately opposed the Gospel.b
18. the Apostles. Apparently the whole Twelve are meant.
in public ward. They were not merely detained in custody, as
on the former occasion (iv. 3), but were treated as common
criminals. 19. an angel. A Hebrew way of describing what we call the
action of Providence ; and probably what is meant is some Divine
intervention by natural means, such as connivance on the part of
some official.0 There would be nothing strange if a movement so
popular among the people had sympathizers, or even adherents,
among the jailors. To question the dress in which the fact is
presented is not to deny its providential character. Those who
believe in God will see His hand in the usual and regular, as well
as in the unusual and unique.11 Luke, no doubt, found the mention
of an angel in his source : but that need mean no more than that
angelic aid was the natural way in which the unexpected release of
the Apostles would be described by any pious Jew of that day.
It may be further said that a miraculous interposition would be
objectless, since the prisoners were at once rearrested, tried, and
scourged. The usual answer to this objection is e that the miracle
was designed, not to extricate the Apostles from danger, but to
encourage their confidence in the Divine care and protection. It
will, however, be noticed that at the subsequent trial no reference
whatever is made to a miraculous deliverance. The accused do not
appeal to it : the Court do not investigate it.f And the entire history

1 Dykes, p. 192. b Renss, i. 245 ; Baumgarten, i. 119.
c Rackham, Acts. d Ropes, p 110.
0 Dykes, p. 194 ; Alford, Homilies, p. 181 ; L. Merivale, p. 68 ; Baumgarten, i.
[21, 127. ' Zeller, i. 222.

76 THE ACTS. V. 17-32
of the Acts shows that the Apostles required no miracle to sustain
their belief in the Divine protection. (See on ver. 41.)
20. of this Life. It is a good description of the Gospel — of the
new life manifest in the Risen Jesus and in His followers. The
resistance of the Sadducees was to be met in its very central point.
21. the council and all the senate. Probably merely a tauto
logical expression. In 2 Maccabees the Sanhedrin is invariably
called by the Greek word here translated ' senate '.
28. strictly charged. The Greek is^a literal rendering of an
Aramaic idiom ; and this shows that Luke had before him some
authority for this speech.
this name. The high priest did not consider it compatible with
his dignity to name Jesus. It is ' this name ', and ' this man's
blood '.
have filled Jerusalem. A significant admission. The preachers
of the Gospel receive a testimonial from their enemies.
to bring this man's blood upon us. Once they had cried to
Pilate, 'His blood be on us and on our children' (Matt, xxvii. 25).
But it would be a mistake to read too solemn a meaning into their
words here. They may betray an uneasy conscience, but their
primary meaning is that the Apostles intended to bring, not ven
geance from God upon them, but vengeance from the people. The
Sadducean aristocracy were no favourites with the populace, and
there was a real danger to them in the popularity of Jesus' disciples,
if they were to demand vengeance for His death.
29. "We must obey God. The words contain a noble assertion
of the liberty of conscience and the right of private judgment.
They are in no conflict with the principle laid down in 1 Pet. ii. 13,
' Be subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake.' Civil
rulers have a claim to be obeyed when that which they enjoin is
within the sphere of civil government; but not when what they
order is opposed to the will of God and is within a sphere to which
their jurisdiction does not extend. (See on iv. 20.) a
30. raised up. The reference is to the Incarnation, as the
Greek word shows, and not to the Resurrection.
on a tree. The word is characteristic of Peter (x. 39, 1 Pet. ii. 24),
and so is a mark of authenticity. The only other passage where it
occurs in the New Testament is in a quotation by St. Paul (Gal.
iii. 13). " Taylor, Peter, p. 221,

THE ACTS. V. 17-32 77
3r. remission of sins. Here connected with the exaltation, not
with the death, of Jesus. The Apostles had not yet realized that
His death, the great offering for sin, superseded the sacrifices of the
old Covenant. Their insight into truth was progressive. The com
munication of the Spirit at Pentecost was not a magical bestowal of
all knowledge, but the implanting of the living principle of truth,
which was to work out its results according to the laws of the human
mind.a 32. and so is the Holy Spirit. There is a quiet sublimity in
this coupling of themselves with the Holy Spirit as witnesses.1'
They may have remembered Jesus' words (John xv. 26, 27), 'the
Spirit shall bear witness of me ; and ye also shall bear witness.'
33-42
33 But they, when they heard this, were rent with
anger, and were minded to put them to death. M But
there stood up one in the Council, a Pharisee, named
Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, held in honour by all the
people, and commanded to put the men forth a little
while. 35 And he said to them, Men of Israel, take heed
to yourselves as touching these men what ye are about
to do. 3C For before these days rose up Theudas, giving
himself out to be somebody ; to whom a number of
men, about four hundred, joined themselves ; who was
slain ; and all, as many as listened to him, were dis
persed and came to nought. 37 After him rose up Judas
of Galilee in the days of the enrolment, and drew away
people after him : he also perished ; and all, as many
as listened to him, were scattered abroad. 38 And now
I say to you, Refrain from these men and let them
alone — for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will
be overthrown : 39 but if it is of God, ye will not be able
to overthrow it — lest haply ye be found even to be
fighting against God. 40 And to him they agreed : and
when they had called the Apostles, they beat them, and
"• Watson, p. 61; Scliaff, i. 258 ; Goulburn, p. 231. b Stifler, p. 53.

78 THE ACTS. V. 33-42
charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and
let them go. 41 They therefore departed from the
presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been
counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the Name.
42 And every day, in the temple and at home, they
ceased not to teach and to declare the glad tidings of
Jesus the Christ.
33. to put them to death. On the previous occasion, when
Peter and John were before the Council, the point to be determined
was a theological one — whether the cure of the cripple was due to
demoniac power (iv. 7) ; and the penalty on conviction was death by
stoning. The Council had, however, shirked a decision on that
point, but had forbidden them to continue teaching (iv. 8). Now
the charge was disobedience of that prohibition (ver. 18), which could
not possibly be a capital offence. But, blinded by their rage, they
were on the point of committing a grave judicial blunder.8-
Strictly speaking, the Jews under the Roman government had no
power of life and death. It is sometimes said that the disability
mentioned in John xviii. 31 — ' For us it is not lawful to put any man
to death' — applied only to the Feast day. But in that case they
would have kept Jesus in custody till the conclusion of the Feast,
and then carried out the sentence. If they had possessed the legal
power of execution, they would not have imperilled it by an appeal
to the Roman Governor for his co-operation. Moreover, the high
priest Annas was deposed by the Procurator in a. d. 14 for carrying
out capital sentences. And the Talmud says that the Romans took
away the power of execution forty years before the fall of Jerusalem."
On the other hand, the statement here is precise, and Luke is very
accurate in such details. The explanation may lie in referring both
this trial and the execution of Stephen to a. d. 37, when Vitellius
sought to gain the support of the Jews during his expedition against
Aretas by giving them a much freer hand than they had enjoyed
under Pilate's stern rule.0
34. Gamaliel. Luke must have had authority for the substance,
at any rate, of this speech, since no forger would have put it
into the mouth of the teacher of Saul the persecutor.11 It is possible
" Dykes, p. 197. l' Buss, p. 183 seq.
r Rendall, Acts, p. 18 seq. ;1 Baumgarten, i. 125.

THE ACTS. V. 33-42 79
that Saul was himself present at its delivery, and was Luke's
informant. Gamaliel may have been one of the doctors in the midst of whom
the boy Jesus had sat, hearing and asking questions (Luke ii. 47).
Some have thought that he believed in His Messiahship, but dared
not openly avow his opinion. There is, however, no trace of this.
His attitude is that of a wise, cool-headed man — one who believed
that a temporizing policy would accomplish the desired end better
than oppression a At the same time, his opposition as a Pharisee to
the ruling party may have inclined him to look with more indulgence
on the Christians. The latter had not yet begun to speak of the
abrogation of the Mosaic law. It was the teaching of Stephen which
led Gamaliel's pupil to adopt a course so inconsistent with his
master's advice.b
36. before these days. The parallel cases which he proceeds
to quote show that he regarded Christianity rather as a political
agitation than as a religious movement. He points out how other
pretenders had arisen, trading on the current Messianic expectation,
and had all been destroyed without any action on the part of the
Sanhedrin.0 Theudas. Luke puts into the mouth of Gamaliel in the year
{circa) a. d. 37 a reference to a revolt which, according to Josephus
{Antiq. xx. 5. 1), occurred in a.d. 46. It would be a strange coinci
dence if two men of the same name, and that not a very common
one, were leaders of insurrection within a short period of time.
Moreover, we have a repetition, not only of the name, but of the
whole occurrence. Both pretend to be prophets, and both are over
taken by the same doom. The only point of difference is in the
number of their adherents. The agreement is too striking to allow
us to believe that different episodes are referred to. There is no
reason for doubting the accuracy of Josephus' chronology at this
point ; and the remarkable accuracy of Luke's historical narrative is
no sufficient ground for denying the possibility of inaccuracy in
a speech composed, at least to some extent, by himself. It is unlikely
that he could have obtained so full a report of the proceedings
before the Sanhedrin as to be able to give the exact words of
Gamaliel's speech. If he knew that historical parallels were quoted,
he may have supplied one of the illustrations wrongly, and yet have
1 L. Merivale, p. 70 ; McGiffert, p. 84. " Taylor, Paul, p. 32,
c Maclaren, i. 198 ; Stokes, ii. 235 ; L. Merivale, p. 71.

8o THE ACTS. V. 33-42
given faithfully the general purport of the speech. Such a mistake
in no way impairs the general credibility of the Acts.a
37. of Galilee. Josephus usually calls Judas a Galilaean, but in
one passage he calls him a Gaulonite, from Gamala, which lay east
of Galilee. This may be correct, and the title ' of Galilee ' may have
been given him because the insurrection broke out in Galilee.0
the enrolment. This was the census taken by Quirinius in
a. d. 6. As it was intended to be the basis of Roman taxation, it
roused fierce opposition on the part of the Jews, and gave rise to the
fanatic sect of the ' Zealots'.
38. Refrain, &c. The utterance is that of a man who wanted to
find an excuse for temporizing, rather than that of an earnest inquirer
after truth. As a broad law characterizing the Divine government,
his statement holds good. The survival of the fittest is a funda
mental fact in the moral, as well as in the physical, world. But
immediate success is no criterion of truth. Success in the long
run is ; but in the beginning the right more often lies with
minorities.0 40. to him they agreed. But only, partially. They 'refrain'
from putting the Apostles to death ; but so far from ' letting them
alone ', they scourge them, as a punishment for their disobedience,
and repeat their futile prohibition against preaching.
41. rejoicing. Doubtless they remembered their Lord's beati
tude (Matt. v. 11, 12). To be inspired to meet shame and pain thus
was a more wonderful thing than to have their prison bolts with
drawn by an angel's hand.cl

CHAPTER VI
i-7
1 But in those days, as the disciples multiplied, there
arose a murmuring of the Hellenists against the
Hebrews, that their widows were neglected in the daily
ministration. 2 And the Twelve called the company of
* Chase, p. 297 seq.; Zeller, i. 222; McGiffert, p. 84; Simcox, p. 43; A. C.
Headlam, Hastings' Diet., art. Theudas.
h G. T. Ptirves, Hastings' Diet., art. Judas of Galilee.
" Taylor, Paul, p. 225; Burrell, p. 82 ; Maclaren, i. 201.
d Dykes, p. 201.

THE ACTS. VI. 1-7 8t
the disciples to them and said, It is not fitting that we
should forsake the word of God to minister at tables.
3 Wherefore, brethren, look ye out from among you
seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of
wisdom, and we will appoint them to be over this
business. 4 But, as for us, we will devote ourselves to
prayer and to the ministration of the word. a And the
saying pleased the whole company : and they chose
Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and
Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and
Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch : 6 whom
they set before the Apostles ; and they prayed and laid
their hands on them. 7 And the word of God continued
to spread, and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem
multiplied exceedingly ; and a great crowd of the priests
were obedient to the faith.
i. Hellenists. These were Jews who were either resident abroad
or had, after living abroad, settled in Palestine. The Hebrew, or
Palestinian Jew, looked down, with the pride of a purer patriotism
and of a stricter observance of the Law, upon those of his race who
had adopted the language and manners of the Greeks. The Hellenist,
with a wider range of ideas and a larger appreciation of Gentile civiliza
tion, met the pride of the Hebrew with the countercharge of narrow
ness and bigotry a The difference of language intensified their mutual
dislike. Aramaic was the sacred tongue of Palestine. Though not
the language of Moses and David, it was that of Ezra and Nehemiah ;
while Greek was the language of idolaters.1' We see the disfavour
with which the Hebrews viewed the Greek language from the way in
which the fury of the mob, who thought that they had to do with
a Hellenist, was at once quieted when Paul began to address them
in Aramaic (xxii. 2).0 We have no means of knowing what pro
portion the Hellenists bore to the Hebrews in the Christian Church,
but their influence would be out of proportion to their numbers.
They were, on the average, men of higher intelligence and energy,
and were not likely to acquiesce in any neglect which they might
a Shirley, p. 16. b Conybeare and Howson, i. 34.
c Hausrath, ii. 157.
1329 G

82 THE ACTS. VI. 1-7
suffer at the hands of the majority. Whether they had a real, or
only a fancied, ground of complaint is immaterial. The complaint
was a symptom of deeper elements of severance.8-
a murmuring. It is startling to find the spirit of jealousy and
discontent breaking out in a Society where the feeling of brotherhood
had been so strong that no man ' said that aught of the things which
he possessed was his own' (iv. 32); and to discover that a religion,
destined to abolish national distinctions between Jew and Gentile,
could fail to draw together divergent members of the same race.
While the community was small, and during the fervour of its first
enthusiasm, the peace and harmony lasted : but, as it expanded, old
grudges returned. In the ordinary life of the city, the Hellenists
kept to themselves and worshipped in their own synagogues : in the
Christian Church the daily contact with the Hebrews brought out
the latent antagonism.11
It is, however, well for us to know that the early Church was com
posed of men of the same flesh and blood as ourselves. The first
Christians lived in no rarified atmosphere. They were exposed to
the same temptations as other men, and retained their old inclina
tions to be selfish, false, and contentious. What they had learnt was
that these inclinations need not be indulged ; that there was a new
Power to which they might appeal, to enable them to resist them.0
their widows. The daily ministration was to all needy Christians
(lv- 35)> 'he widows only being mentioned because in their case a
difficulty arose. In the seclusion to which Oriental custom con
demned women, the lot of a widow, with none to plead her cause,
might be very bitter/1
There is no necessity to assume intentional unfairness : but since
the earliest Christians were almost exclusively Hebrews, the almoners
were probably all Hebrews, who found it easier to discover the poor
living in their own quarters of the city and speaking their own
language. On the other hand, the Hellenist widows may have been
numerous, since they would be likely, when their homes abroad were
broken up by the death of the husband, to return to end their days
in the Holy City.6 In the treatment of widows as a separate class
the Church followed the synagogue. The First Epistle to Timothy
(v. 4-10) implies the systematic classification of widows at Ephesus;
and the fact that the instructions about them are inserted into a
a Dykes, p. 211 ; Lechler, i. 113. " Dobschutz, p. 147.
° Maurice, p. 73 seq. * Purves, p. 38 ; Farrar, i. 131.
" Fouard, Peter, p. 59 ; Simcox, p. 23.

THE ACTS. VI. 1-7 8

o

passage about elders suggests that they were required to render some
services in exchange for maintenance.*
2. the company of the disciples. This must mean a repre
sentative body of some kind, since the numbers were now far too
great to meet in any one place. b
and said. The Apostles admit the grievance and take steps to
remedy it. It is clear that they had not been themselves responsible
for the distribution of alms, since the murmuring was not against
them but against the Hebrews, and they say at once that they cannot
be expected to undertake it. The almoners had probably been certain
of the elders — officials, whose existence at Jerusalem Luke mentions
later, as a matter of course (xi. 30), and whom Paul, also as a matter
of course, appointed in all the Churches which he founded.0 (The
fact that elders were no new institution, but an inheritance from the
organization of the synagogue, explains Luke's silence about their
appointment.) The change now made consisted, not in the trans
ference to the Seven of the work previously done by others, but in
the appointment of seven Hellenist almoners in addition to the
existing Hebrew ones. This is shown by their names (ver. 5). That
they came to be known as ' The Seven ' (xxi. 8) was probably due to
the exceptional prominence, as regards both character and ability, of
the Hellenists selected. Luke, it may be, records their appointment,
not in order to give information about the organization of the early
Church, but only as an introduction to the history of Stephen.11
minister at tables. Whatever the expression means — whether
the assistance was given in money or in food— it means secular work.
And it is just as ' unfitting ' now, as it was then, that those who are
called to the ministry of the word should ' forsake ' their spiritual
work in order to attend to secular matters.
3. look ye out. While the Apostles reserved to themselves the
formal appointment of the new almoners, they wisely left the choice
to the whole body, since it was essential that those elected should
possess public confidence. For this reason too much stress must not
be laid on the method here employed.
seven men. That ' the Seven ' are not to be identified with the
' deacons ' of a later date (Phil. i. 1) seems to be clear. There is no
indication that the Apostles were establishing a permanent order, and
the word ' deacon ' occurs nowhere in the Acts. There is a tempta-
a Ragg, p. 249. h Row, p. 62.
c Norris, p. 144. d Olshausen, p. 429.
G 2

84 THE ACTS. VI. 1-7
tion to import into early days the well-defined organization of later
times ; whereas, the further we go back in the history of the Church,
the more indefinite appear to be all ecclesiastical offices. 'The
Seven ' were appointed for a special purpose, and we hear no more of
them after their occupation was taken away by the dispersion which
followed Stephen's death. When alms were sent by the disciples at
Antioch for the relief of the poor in Judaea, they were sent to the
elders (xi. 30) ; whereas if the Seven had still existed as a body, we
should expect them to have been mentioned.
full of the Spirit. Their duties were connected with the relief
of the poor and required practical ability and good judgment — what
is here called ' wisdom '. But spiritual gifts were also needed. The
almoners must be able to reflect the mind of Christ in their treat
ment of His poor. The early Church did not regard even its secular
work as unspiritual. The new office and its duties were lifted up
out of the atmosphere of mere business into that of worship.a
5. they chose. The inference from the names that all were
Hellenists is not certain, since of the Twelve, who were all Hebrews,
two, Philip and Andrew, bore Greek names. But the fact that certain
Greeks, who wished for an interview with Jesus (John xii. 20 seq.),
applied to those two Apostles for an introduction looks as though
they had some family connexion with Greeks. Hence it is probable
that the Seven, if not all Hellenists, were all men who had special
relations with the Hellenists.^
Thus the result of their appointment was to give an official position
to those members of the Church who represented its more catholic
spirit. It is significant that two of them, Stephen and Philip, became,
the one a preacher of views far broader than those held by the Apostles,
the other an enthusiastic missionary. It seems clear that the great
questions of the relation of Christianity to the Law on the one hand,
and to the Gentile world on the other, were coming to the front.0
a proselyte. This is the first mention of a circumcised Gentile
as a member of the Church. The interest, which this early recogni
tion that the Church was wider than the Jewish race would have for
the Gentile Luke, may account for his insertion of the word. Further,
he may have been personally known to Luke, who had, it is clear,
some special connexion with Antioch (see on xvi. 10). The selection
"¦ Swete, p. 114; Dykes, p. 216.
b Arnot, p. 152 ; Alford, Homilies, p. 201.
0 Dykes, p. 218 seq. ; Balmforrh, p. 127.

THE ACTS. VI. 1-7 85
of a proselyte shows that the Church at Jerusalem was at this date
less in bondage to Jewish prejudices than at a later time. Indeed, it
may imply a that many proselytes had joined the Church, and that
Nicolas had the duty of looking after their needs.
of Antioch. The fact that the native of Antioch is the only one
of the Seven whose place of origin is given makes it likely that the
source of this narrative is Antiochean.11
6. laid their hands. There is no indication that this act was
what we call ' ordination '. Rather it was a solemn blessing upon
their entry on office.
7. the word of God continued to spread. This summary looks
like an irrelevant interpolation into the original source. It interrupts
the narrative, since the increase of the Church has nothing to do with
what precedes, nor the conversion of priests with what follows.0
of the priests. The statement is startling, but there is no reason
for questioning its accuracy. They were doubtless poor, ill-paid priests
from the ranks of the people, in contrast to the wealthy families who
monopolized the higher offices.d There is no hint that they regarded
their functions as obsolete or ceased to minister in the Temple. They
had come to recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah foretold in
the Scriptures, and they looked for His speedy return to fulfil all
things ; but nothing was to be changed till then. Not one jot or one
tittle was to pass from the Law. Hence they would be shocked by
the teaching of Stephen. The breach between Christianity and
Judaism was still to come.6 8-15
8 Now Stephen, full of grace and power, was working
wonders and great miracles among the people. 9 But
there rose up certain of the synagogue which is called
the Synagogue of the Freedmen, both Cyrenians and
Alexandrians, and men of Cilicia and Asia, disputing
with Stephen. :o And they were not able to withstand
the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spake. ll Then
they suborned men who said, We have heard him speak
blasphemous words against Moses and against God.
" Ramsay, Pictures, p. 44. " Harnack, Acts, p. 170.
0 J. Moffatt, Encycl. Bibl.,p. 17S7. d Rendall, Acts.
e Simcox, p. 4;- Johnston, p. 27.

86 THE ACTS. VI. 8-15
12 And they stirred up the people and the elders and
the scribes, and came upon him and seized him, and
brought him before the Council, 13and set up false
witnesses who said, This man is ever speaking words
against this holy place and the Law : 14 for we have
heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy
this place, and will change the customs which Moses
delivered to us. 15And all that sat in the Council,
looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been
the face of an angel.
8. Stephen. We know nothing of his antecedents, except that he
was a Hellenist : we have the story of but one day in his life, the
last : yet there is no man in the New Testament of whom we are
told so much without one blemish being revealed. A John might
wish to call down fire upon his enemies, a Peter deny his Lord,
a Thomas doubt, a Saul persecute : Stephen's character is summed
up in the w:ords ' a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit '.
He must have been already prominent in the Church to have been
chosen one of the Seven. But, as often happens, official position
called out his energies and developed his powers. Appointed to be
an almoner, he soon showed himself to be something more and
greater — the first member of the Church to grasp the full meaning of
the Gospel, to understand that Christianity was to supersede Judaism,
and to see with clear eyes the coming of a time when Jerusalem
should no longer be the religious capital of the world, or the Temple
the one centre of the worship of God. Humanly speaking, it was his
teaching, and the antagonism which it provoked, that saved the Church
from becoming merely another Jewish sect.a
9. But there rose up certain. It must be borne in mind that
under the common name of Hellenists were included men of two
very divergent types. Foreign residence acts in two ways. It narrows
some natures and broadens others ; makes some more devotedly
attached to their old country, emancipates others from national
prejudices. Thus, while the Jew of Palestine shrank from the defiling
touch of heathenism and built higher the wall of separation, becoming
ever more proud, more bitter, more narrow, the foreign Jew often
grew more liberal and cosmopolitan. He abandoned Aramaic for
11 Shirley, p. 17 seq.; Pfleiderer, Hibbert, p. 28.

THE ACTS. VI. 8-15 87
the Greek language, came under the influence of Greek thought and
culture, and learnt to appreciate God's wider purposes in history.
His religion became a faith rather than a ritual. Unable to worship
in the Temple, he magnified the synagogue and welcomed to its
services all who cared to come. Hellenists of this type — Jews by
birth and Greeks by training, Hebrews in their acknowledgement of
Jehovah, and Gentiles in their habits of thought — formed a bridge of
communication between the Eastern world in which Christianity was
cradled and the Western world where its manhood was to grow to
strength.0- But while the wider horizon and the intercourse with Gentiles made
many Hellenists more tolerant than the Hebrews, the effect on others
was very different. They entertained the same prejudices, and ob
served the same isolation, as the Jews of Palestine : stood outside all
the social, political, and intellectual life of their adopted country ;
and, deeply attached to the traditions of their fathers, looked with
suspicion on their more speculative brethren. Hellenists of this type
paid their annual visit to Jerusalem as pilgrims to the Feasts : and,
as soon as circumstances permitted, returned to make their home
there. Hence the average Hellenist in Jerusalem was no less bigoted
and fanatical than the native Hebrew. Rather, he was eager to atone
for his foreign taint by uncommon zeal. This is the explanation of
the fact that it was Hellenists who persecuted Stephen, just as it was
the Hellenist Saul who persecuted the Church, the Hellenists of
Jerusalem who sought to kill Paul after his conversion (ix. 29), and
Hellenists from Asia who sought to slay him later (xxi. 27).b
the Synagogue. The Apostles preached in the Temple cloisters,
and not, so far as we know, to unwilling hearers in the synagogues.0
But Stephen, whose duties as almoner would bring him into daily
contact with Hellenist Christians and through them with other
Hellenists, appears to have aimed at the conversion of the latter,
and with this object to have taught in their synagogues.
the Freedmen. The Greek word, if the text is sound, can only
mean this. But we should expect a word denoting the inhabitants of
some town or country. Some Armenian versions read ' Libyans ', which
might describe the Greek towns to the west of Cyrene.d Taking the
text as it stands, it is not clear whether the members of five synagogues
a F. B. Meyer, p. 38 ; Dykes, p. 211; Goulburn, p. 6.
b McGiffert, p. 77; .Baring Gould, p. 49; Geikie, p. 61; Purves, p. 51;
Sabatier, p. 40 ; Hausrath, ii. 161.
c Baring-Gould, p. 121. d Encycl. Bibl., p. 2793.

88 THE ACTS. VI. 8-15
are meant — Roman freedmen, Cyrenian, Alexandrian, Cilician, and
Asian : or of three — European, African, and Asian : or of one —
freedmen of Africa and Asia. Nor is it material to decide. It is of
more interest to remember that among the ' men of Cilicia ' was Saul
of Tarsus, a man, so closely akin to Stephen in heart, as the future
was to show, though now so far divided from him,a who, if present,
was certain, with his ardent spirit, his intellectual ability, and his
dialectical skill, to have taken a prominent part in the debates.
10. not able to withstand. Luke seems in these words to be
glancing back to the promise which he alone of the Evangelists
records (Luke xxi. 15), 'I will give you a mouth and wisdom which
all your adversaries shall not be able to withstand or to gainsay.13
Stephen was the first to use the weapon of argument and debate in
the cause of the Gospel. The Apostles were ' witnesses ', and preached
by bearing witness. They stated their doctrine. He defended it,
parrying the blow and pushing the attack.0
n. suborned men. Foiled in argument, they grasped at other
weapons. blasphemous words. The penalty for which was death by
stoning. against Moses. No such complaint had been made of the
previous teachers. They had charged the Jewish people and their
rulers with the rejection and murder of Jesus, whose Messiahship was
proved by His Resurrection and Ascension. But they had been
regular frequenters of the Temple, and had said no word about the
abrogation of the Mosaic system.d
1 2. stirred up the people. There was no need, as before at
the arrest of Peter and John, to avoid all semblance of violence from
fear of the people. The popular favour was alienated by the first
rumour of defective patriotism,6 added to which the offender was one
of the unpopular Hellenists. Hence the Pharisees, who had hitherto
been lukewarm in their opposition, no sooner found the same ten
dencies which they had dreaded in the teaching of Jesus showing
themselves among His followers, than they were as ready to take the
lead in persecuting Stephen as they had been in regard to Christ/
before the Council. Harnack thinks s that Luke has wrongly
placed the scene in the Council chamber; that Stephen was the
a F. B. Meyer, p. 40. b Goulburn, p. 43.
r Fouard, Peter, p. 65. cl Kitto, p. 57.
8 Farrar, i. 153. r J. Robertson, p. 31,
u Act% pp. 220, 2^(5.

THE ACTS. VI. 8-15 89
victim of a riotous mob in the Temple ; and that the real circum
stances can be discerned in the 'this place' of verses 13 and 14, and
in the tumultuous scene of vii. 54 seq.
13. false witnesses. No doubt they distorted his words, just
as the witnesses at the trial of Jesus had distorted similar words
of His (Mark xiv. 58) ; but there must have been some ground for
the charge, since nothing similar had previously been urged against
the preachers of the Gospel. Indeed, Stephen in his defence does
not repel the charge as wholly false.a It is clear that he had definitely
raised an issue not previously discussed — the bearing of the new faith
on the old system of Moses. The teaching of the Apostles had gained
a favourable hearing, just because the new faith did not profess to be
more than the completion of the old. Stephen was the first to grasp
the progressive character of revelation, and to teach that the Gospel
was a Divine step forward — a new Economy of God, which the Mosaic
institutions might refuse to accept, but which would in that case not
only dispense with them, but in the end overthrow them.b
14. heard him say. The fact that tradition preserved, in almost
identical words, the accusation against both Jesus and Stephen is clear
evidence of the close connexion between their teaching.0 Stephen may
have remembered such sayings of Jesus with regard to the Temple,
as that not one stone should be left upon another (Matt. xxiv. 2) ; that
He would destroy the old Temple and build a new one (John ii. 19) ;
that the hour was coming when men would no longer worship the
Father in Jerusalem (John iv. 21); and, with regard to the Law, such
pregnant and far-reaching words as that new wine could not be put
into old wine skins (Matt. ix. 17). The Hellenist Stephen, who had
learnt from experience that truth and honour and piety were no
Jewish monopoly, was much less likely than the Palestinian Jew to
confound what was eternal with what was temporal in his national
religion.01 Living far from the Temple, and worshipping the God of
Israel without bloody sacrifices, he was prepared to understand words
of Jesus, many of which remained veiled even to the Apostles.6 But
to teach publicly that the observance of ritual ceremonies was un
essential as compared with purity of heart and holiness of life, though
it was only what the prophets of old had taught before him, was to
doom him to the fate of his Master. To have used words which
could even be twisted into the assertion that the Temple was to
a Neander, p. 51 ; J. Robertson, p. 31.
b Dykes, p. 233 seq. ; Reuss, i. 256 seq. c Prleiderer, Ilibbert, p. 30.
a J. Robertson, p. 2S. ° Fouard, Peter, p. 63.

90 THE ACTS. VI. 8-15
be destroyed and the customs of Moses changed was shocking to
men who believed that Jerusalem was to be the capital of Messiah's
kingdom, the Temple the centre of the world's worship, and the
Mosaic institutions of authority and sanctity for all time.0-
r5. the face of an angel. Whether Stephen's teaching had
startled his fellow-Christians as well as the unbelieving Jews, we cannot
say. Certainly, throughout the nairative, we read of none who came
forward to offer sympathy and counsel. He seems, like his Lord, to
have stood at his trial alone, with no friendly countenance on which
his eyes could rest. Yet not alone, because his Lord was with him.
And men, looking on him, saw his face transfigured. Commentators
say that it was a supernatural glory. It is more helpful to ourselves
to think that it was the natural effect of inward peace and victorious
faith and blessed hope, which so lifted him above the world that the
light of heaven seemed to shine in his face. God had not forsaken
His servant. The radiant countenance was but the outward index of
a soul glad and fearless, ' as seeing Him who is invisible.' If it was
a miracle, it was such a miracle as is still seen among us. Have we not
all known Christian men of whom the words might be used? — men,
like Stephen, ' full of faith and of the Holy Spirit ' — whose faces tell
of a heart at peace with God and of a hope full of immortality ?

CHAPTER VII
The Speech of Stephen. The absence of obvious connexion
between the speech and the occasion out of which it rose is a proof
of its authenticity. The historian, if it had been solely his composi
tion, would have made it a more direct answer to the charges brought
against Stephen. Moreover, the Old Testament story is supplemented
by Jewish traditions which must have been unfamiliar to a Gentile
writer. Further, the style is less Lukan than in other speeches in the
Acts, and the Greek diction is inferior.15 Hence it is probable that at
least the spirit and general argument are Stephen's. Though a report
taken on the spot is out of the question, the speech would, from its
historical treatment and chronological order be easily recalled ; and
the martyrdom of the speaker, and its consequences to the early
Church, would lead the Christians to remember and hand down his
words.0 What Luke gives is probably a summary as recollected in
Q Dick, p. 114. b Plumptre, Acts; Simcox, p. 44 ; Gardner, p. 397.
0 Lange, Acts.

THE ACTS. VII. 1-53 91
after years by St. Paul, supplemented perhaps by a version from
Philip.a How deep and indelible an impression the speech made on
St. Paul's mind is shown by the many coincidences between it and
passages in his own speeches and letters. Years after at Pisidian
Antioch (xiii. 16 seq.) he adopted the same historical method; and
at Athens he quotes the same scripture with the same application
(cf. xvii. 24 with ver. 48). The coincidences in the letters are even
more striking. Rom. ii. 29 seems to bean echo of ver. 51 ; Gal. iii. 19
of ver. 53 ; and 2 Tim. iv. 16 (if that letter is genuine) of ver. 6o.b
1-53
1 And the high priest said, Are these things so ?
2 And he said, Brethren and fathers, hearken. The
God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he
was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, 3and
said to him, Get thee out from thy land and from thy
kindred, and come into the land which I shall show
thee. 4 Then went he out of the land of the Chaldaeans
and dwelt in Haran : and thence, when his father was
dead, God removed him into this land wherein ye now
dwell. 5 And he gave him none inheritance in it, no,
not so much as to set his foot on : and he promised
that he would give it to him in possession and to his seed
after him, at a time when he had no child. ° And God
spake on this wise, that his seed should sojourn in
a strange land, where they should be brought into
bondage and treated evilly four hundred years. 7 And
the nation to which they shall be in bondage will I
judge, said God : and after that shall they come forth
and serve me in this place.
8 And he gave him the covenant of circumcision : and
so Abraham begat Isaac and circumcised him the
eighth day: and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat
the twelve patriarchs. 9 And the patriarchs, moved
"¦ Baring Gould, p. 75.
b Farrar, i. 163 ; E. C. S. Gibson, Expositor, II. iv. 421.

92 THE ACTS. VII. 1-53
with jealousy, sold Joseph into Egypt ; and God was
with him, 10 and delivered him out of all his afflictions,
and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh,
king of Egypt ; and he made him governor over Egypt
and all his house. " Now there came a famine over all
Egypt and Canaan, and great distress ; and our fathers
found no provender. 12But when Jacob heard that
there was corn in Egypt, he sent forth our fathers
a first time. ,3And at the second time Joseph dis
covered himself to his brethren ; and Joseph's kindred
were made known to Pharaoh. M And Joseph sent, and
called to him Jacob his father and all his kindred, three
score and fifteen souls. 15 And Jacob went down into
Egypt, and died, himself and our fathers ; 10 and they
were carried over to Shechem, and laid in the tomb
that Abraham bought for a price in silver of the sons
of Hamor in Shechem.
17 But as the time of the promise which God had
covenanted with Abraham drew nigh, the people grew
and multiplied in Egypt, 18 till there arose another king
over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. 19 He brought low
our race by craft, and treated our fathers evilly, in that
he cast out their babes, to the end they might not
live. 20At which season Moses was born, and was
exceeding fair ; and he was brought up three months
in his father's house. 2I And when he was cast out,
Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and reared him to be
a son to herself. 22 And Moses was trained in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians ; and he was mighty in his
words and works. 23 But when he was nigh forty years
old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the
children of Israel. 2i And seeing one of them suffer
wrong, he retaliated, and avenged him that was being
oppressed, smiting the Egyptian. 26 And he supposed

THE ACTS. VII. 1-53 93
that his brethren understood how that God by his hand
was giving them deliverance ; but they understood not.
26 And on the following day he appeared to them as
they strove, and would have made peace between them,
saying, Sirs, ye are brethren ; why do ye wrong one to
another ? 27 But he that did his neighbour wrong thrust
him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge
over us ? 28 Wouldest thou kill me, as yesterday thou
killedst the Egyptian ? 2S) And Moses fled at that saying,
and became a sojourner in the land of Midian, where he
begat two sons. 30 And when forty years were ended,
there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai
an angel in a flame of fire in a bush. 31 And when
Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight : and as he
drew near to behold, there came a voice of the Lord,
32 saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of
Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. And Moses
trembled, and durst not behold. 33 And the Lord said
to him, Loose the shoes from thy feet ; for the place
whereon thou standest is holy ground. si I have surely
seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and
have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver
them. And now come, I am sending thee into Egypt.
36 This Moses, whom they refused, saying, Who made
thee a ruler and a judge ? — him God sent to be both
a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who
appeared to him in the bush. 36 This man brought
them out, working wonders and signs in Egypt, and in
the Red Sea, and in the wilderness forty years. 37 This
is the Moses who said to the children of Israel, A prophet
shall God raise up to you from among your brethren,
as he raised up me. 38 This is he who was in the con
gregation in the wilderness with the angel that spake
to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers : who

94 THE ACTS. VII. 1-53
received living utterances to give us : 39 to whom our
fathers would not be obedient, but thrust him from
them, and turned in their hearts to Egypt, 40 saying to
Aaron, Make us gods who shall go before us ; for as
for this Moses who led us forth out of the land of Egypt,
we wot not what is become of him. 4I And they made
a calf in those days, and brought sacrifices to the idol,
and were for rejoicing in the works of their own hands.
42 But God turned, and gave them up to serve the host
of heaven ; as it is written in a book of the prophets : —
Did ye offer slain beasts and sacrifices to me
Forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel ?
43 And ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch
And the star of the god Rephan,
the figures which ye made to worship :
And I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
44 Our fathers in the wilderness had the tabernacle of
the testimony, as he appointed who spake to Moses,
that he should make it according to the pattern that he
had seen : 46 which also our fathers in the next genera-
tion brought in with Joshua, when they entered on the
possession of the nations, whom God drove out before
the face of our fathers, unto the days of David : 46 who
found favour in the sight of God, and asked to provide
a habitation for the God of Jacob. 47 But Solomon
built him a house. 48 Howbeit the Most High dwelleth
not in buildings made with hands, as saith the prophet: —
49 The Heaven is my throne, and the earth my
footstool :
What manner of house will ye build me ? saith the
Lord;
or what shall be the place of my rest ?
60 Did not my hand make all these things ?
51 Stiffnecked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears,

THE ACTS. VII. 1-53 95
ye do always set yourselves against the Holy Spirit :
as your fathers did, so do ye. 52 Which of the prophets
did not your fathers persecute ? And they killed them
who foretold the coming of the Righteous One ; of
whom ye are now become betrayers and murderers ;
53 who received the Law as ordinances of angels, and
kept it not.
i. Are these things so? A formal question, answering to our
' Do you plead guilty, or not guilty ? a Stephen could not answer
directly either ' yes ' or ' no ' : not ' yes ', for in his eyes the Gospel was
the fulfilment of the Law : not ' no ', for there was just so much truth
in the accusation as would have made an unqualified denial an
equivocation. He must explain ; and what better explanation could
he offer than to display at large the scheme of God's dealings with
His people ? b At first sight, he seems to be giving no answer to the
charges against him. And, indeed, his aim was to vindicate the truth
rather than himself : to testify rather than to defend. But when we
look below the surface, we see that he is defending his teaching under
the veil of a historical review. His defence is a new reading of the
national history. Here, again, he appears at first sight to be merely
sketching the leading incidents of that history ; but really he is making
history do the work of argument. Just as the prophecies of the Old
Testament had been illuminated to Peter by Christianity, so Stephen
read the history of the Old Testament with new eyes in the light of
the life and death of Jesus. The history of the Hebrews is shown to
be a process of Divine education, of which Christianity was the in
tended goal.0
2. And he said. There are two distinct, yet parallel, lines of
argument which run through the speech : —
(i) That the limitation of worship to a single locality was no
essential thing, but had been late in origin and temporary in
purpose.01 He begins with Abraham (verses 2-8). The call of God was sent
to the founder of their race, not in Palestine, but in Mesopotamia.
When he did come to Palestine, he had no inheritance in it. And
his seed, though they were the chosen people, were for centuries
slaves in a foreign land.
" Farrar, i. 156. b Sabatier, p. 42 ; L. Merivale, p. 81.
c J. C. Jones, p. 151; Taylor, Paul, p. 13; Purves, p. 52; Iverach, p. 9;
Dykes, p. 237 seq. d Dykes, p. 238.

96 THE ACTS. VII. 1-53
He passes to Joseph (verses 9-16). It was to Egypt that God's
overruling providence carried him, when sold by his brethren;
and his family sought refuge there from Palestine.
He passes to Moses (verses 17-43)- The great Lawgiver was
born in Egypt. And when he was driven into exile, it was in the
wilderness that God called him, declaring the place to be holy
ground. He passes to the Temple (verses 44"5°)- The Tabernacle, the
germ of the Temple, was in the wilderness. There was no Temple
in Moses' day, none in David's, much as he desired it. And when
at last Solomon built it, the spirituality of God and of His worship
was solemnly affirmed at the very moment of its consecration.
(2) That at every crisis in their history Israel had mistaken the
leading of God, and rejected those whom He sent to save them.
Ever since He had chosen them for His people they had been
a rebellious people.
It was so with Joseph. His brethren sold him to the foreigner
(ver. 9). It was so with Moses. As individuals, and as a nation,
they rejected him (verses 27, 39). And when God gave them the
Temple, that blessing produced no better result than previous
blessings. Their carnal temper turned it to a curse. They made
external worship a substitute for spiritual obedience.
51. Stiffnecked. Throughout the speech there had run the
thought that God's revelation to His people was progressive. From
the beginning, and through the ages, was a gradual development,
one blessing growing out of another, and all pointing to something
yet better and nobler in the future. While the Jews in their blind
ness thought that the end had been reached in the Law and in the
Temple, and expected the Messiah merely to restore what had been,
Stephen had read the history of his nation with other eyes. Under
all the changes he had learnt to trace a Divine progress, a slow, but
blessed, unfolding of the gracious thoughts of God towards some still
unaccomplished end. And as he saw his countrymen repeating the
old mistake — clinging to the present and the material, while God
was calling them to higher spiritual levels — and still, as ever, resisting
the Holy Spirit, treating the Messiah as the patriarchs had treated
Joseph, and the Hebrews Moses — the pity of it overwhelmed him,
and his mingled grief and indignation broke out in words of fire,
such as burned of old on the lips of the prophets. a
* Taylor, Paul, p. 15 ; Stifler, p. 61 ; Dykes, p. 236 seq.

THE ACTS. VII. 1-53 97
In one sense only is it true that at this point his speech was
interrupted. His audience at last perceived the point to which his
argument was tending. The accused was arraigning his judges.
They, not he, were the blasphemers — had been from ancient times
the blasphemers— of Moses, of the Law, of the Holy Place, of God
Himself. And as they realized this, their fury broke all bounds.
But in another sense there was no interruption. Stephen had said
all that he meant to say. He had spoken of the fathers ; he was
speaking to the sons. Before his voice was silenced for ever, he
would sum up the teaching of their history in one comprehensive
sentence of stern denunciation.
uncircumcised. No epithet could have been more galling and
abhorrent to his audience.
52. Which of the prophets. He echoes the Lord's words
(Matt. v. 12).
53. as ordinances of angels. The origin of the tradition
connecting the giving of the Law with angels is probably to be found
in the convulsion of the elements which was thought to have
attended its delivery on Sinai. This will be seen if Hebrews
xii. 18, where 'blackness and darkness and tempest ' are dwelt upon
as the accompaniments, be compared with the words of Psalm civ. 4,
' who makest his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.' a
There are several passages in the speech (e.g. verses 4, 7, 16, 43)
where Stephen either makes misstatements, or quotes inaccurately,
or follows traditions inconsistent with the Hebrew Scriptures. He
had apparently been trained in the spirit of that Alexandrian Judaism
which, for all its reverence, sat wonderfully free from the letter of
the Old Testament13 Only those who make claims for the Bible
which it never makes for itself will be troubled by such small
matters. Inspiration is not dictation by the Spirit. Stephen spoke
in the fulness of the Spirit ; but that fact did not make him a
different man intellectually, or divest him of his education, training,
and associations. Sketching the history in broad outlines, he was
careless of exact chronology or verbal accuracy. His argument was
in no way affected by superficial errors in statements which were
essentially and spiritually true.
Stephen has sometimes been called 'the forerunner of Paul',
But there is not much in the speech to show that he had grasped
that the Jewish system was to prepare the way for a wider Church,
a L. Merivale, p. 85. b J. Moffatt, Encycl. BUI., p. 4791.
1829 H

98 THE ACTS. VII. 1-53
where all men would be equal in the sight of God. He nowhere
suggests the call of the Gentiles. He regards Christianity as the
natural development of the Divine purpose for Israel. Though his
argument that God's election of Abraham was prior to and inde
pendent of the Law furnishes the key-note of the theology which
we associate with St. Paul, Stephen nowhere asserts, as Paul did,
the provisional character of the Law. He accepts the Jewish
valuation of it. He calls it ' living utterances ' (ver. 38), the Divine
character of which was attested by its connexion with angels
(ver. 53). His contention is that it was the Jews, and not he, who
were really its violators. a
CHAPTER VIII
vii. 54 -viii. 4
54 Now as they heard these things, they were rent with
anger, and gnashed their teeth at him. 65 But he, being
full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven,
and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the
right hand of God, 56 and said, Behold, I see the heavens
opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand
of God. m But they cried out with a loud voice, and
stopped their ears, and rushed upon him with one
accord ; 58 and they cast him out of the city and stoned
him : and the witnesses laid down their garments at the
feet of a young man, named Saul. 69 And they stoned
Stephen, calling upon the Lord and saying, Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit. co And sinking on his knees, he cried
with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.
And when he had said this, he fell asleep. viii'1 And
Saul was approving of his death.
And there broke out on that day a great persecution
against the Church which was in Jerusalem ; and they
were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of
" McGiffert, p. 86; A. Grieve, Hastings' Diet., art. Stephen; Simcox, p. 30;
J. Moffatt, Encycl. BUI., p. 4797.

THE ACTS. VII. 54 -VIII. 4 99
Judaea and Samaria, except the Apostles. -And devout
men buried Stephen, and made great lamentation over
him. 3 But Saul ravaged the Church, entering house
after house, and dragging forth men and women com
mitted them to prison. 4 They therefore that were
scattered abroad went about preaching the glad tidings
of the word.
55. But he. He knew what was coming. That fierce gnashing
of the teeth meant death. And so he was full of— what? of fear?
of indignation at the injustice meted to him ? No : he was ' full of
the Holy Spirit '. That is how he is described (vi. 8), when he was
chosen to be an Almoner. It was not for the first time, when death
was near, that he knew the comfort of the Spirit.'1 He ceased from
rebuke, which brought no penitence, but only rage. The faith,
which had before transfigured his face (vi. 15), now pierced the veil
of matter ; and the cruel crowd of enemies melted away. He saw
the glory of God, and standing at the right hand of God— standing
to welcome him with open arms — Him in whose cause he was about
to die. It was no empty phantom of the brain. It cannot be that
the dying martyr was granted a vision of something that was not
real. He saw Jesus— the Jesus whom Saul was to see on the road
to Damascus : and his instant recognition of His person — so unlike
Saul's ' Sir, who art thou ? ' (ix. 5) — and his description of Him as
'the Righteous One' (ver. 52), make it likely that he had known
Him during His life on earth ; while his use of the title ' Son of
man ', employed by Jesus some years earlier before the same Council
(Matt. xxvi. 64), and his echo of the Lord's prayer for His murderers
and of His commendation of His spirit to God, render it almost
certain that he had seen Him die.
57. stopped their ears. It was counted blasphemy in him, as
it had been in his Master's case (Matt. xxvi. 65), to speak of the
Son of man as being at God's right hand.b There had been nothing
in his speech to justify his condemnation on the formal charge
against him. But blasphemy was punishable by death, and his
judges caught at the justification, which these words supplied, for
stoning him. They felt, as Caiaphas had felt (Matt. xxvi. 65), ' What
further need have we of witnesses ? ' There seems, however, to
have been no formal sentence, though the method of his death was
s Ramsden, i. 145. D Simcox, p. 37.
H 2

ioo THE ACTS VII. 54-VIII. 4
that which the Law prescribed for blasphemy (Levit. xxiv. 14);
and it was carried out, not by the crowd, but by the accusers in the
appointed way (Deut. xvii. 7). Too much must not be made of the
absence of formal sentence, since it was the intention of the Law
that the death of a blasphemer should be the expression of the
national indignation. a
58. out of the city. In accordance with the Law (Levit.
xxiv. 14). If Stephen passed, as is likely, through the same gate
by which Jesus had been led to Calvary, the associations may well
have shaped his thoughts and recalled to his memory his Lord's
dying words.
stoned him. This cruel punishment was, like many other
Jewish customs, learned in Egypt (Ex. viii. 26). If Stephen's
execution took place in a. d. 37, the year of the recall of Pilate and
of the death of the Emperor (see note on v. 33), the high-handed
procedure may be explained. At the Passover of that year the
Proconsul removed the newly appointed high priest, possibly on
account of this very usurpation of authority during the interregnum.13
a young man, named Saul. This is the first mention in history
of the man who has exercised as wide an influence on human
thought and action as any one of the race. Little could he have
dreamt that, while the clothes of the stoners were being laid at his
feet, the mantle of the stoned was falling upon his shoulders.0
Some twenty-five or thirty years later Paul called himself (Philem.
9) an ' old man '. But the Greek word there employed would denote
a man over fifty rather than one of seventy ; and his laborious life
may well have aged him prematurely. He was probably, at this
time, at least thirty, since the responsible commission shortly after
wards entrusted to him (ix. 2) precludes the idea that he was
younger. It has been inferred from xxvi. 10 — 'I gave my vote
against them '— that he was a member of the Sanhedrin : but the
words need imply no more than the moral 'approval' of viii. 1. And
it is obviously unlikely that a Hellenist, who was neither a priest
nor a Sadducee, and who, though educated at Jerusalem, had been
for some time absent from the city (since he cannot have been at
Jerusalem during Jesus' ministry, nor could he have learnt there
a Cilician trade), should have been given a seat in that august body.
Further, it is not certain that he was married ; and though there is
"¦ McGiffert, p. 90; Simcox, p. 29. b Pressense, p. 38; Hausrath, ii. 163.
" Noble, p. 277.

THE ACTS. VII. 54-VIII. 4 101
no clear evidence that marriage was an indispensable qualification
for membership, it was undoubtedly a condition usually enforced.
The natural inference from his words in i Cor. vii. 8, ' I say to the
unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I,
is that he was at that time a widower ; for though the word trans
lated 'unmarried' may mean either 'bachelor' or 'widower', the
word translated ' widows ' cannot denote ' spinsters '.
59. and saying. Both these utterances of Jesus, which Stephen
adopts, are recorded only in Luke's Gospel (xxiii. 34, 46).
Lord Jesus. It is well to note how clearly the Church, within
a few years of Jesus' death, recognized His Divinity.
60. lay not. The dying prayer of the Old Testament martyr,
Zechariah, had been a malediction on his murderers. ' The Lord look
upon it, and require it' (2 Chron. xxiv. 22). Not so had Stephen
learned Christ.8- There was one present who was ever after haunted
by the memory of that upturned face and those dying words. (See
xxii. 20; and compare vii. 5-8 with Rom. iv. 10-19; vii. 51 with
Rom. ii. 29 ; vii. 53 with Gal. iii. 19 ; and vii. 60 with 2 Tim. iv. 16.11)
It may be that Stephen's eyes fell on the young man standing by,
with the clothes of the accusers at his feet. He had met him in
argument in the Cilician synagogue ; he knew his ability and learn
ing and zeal ; knew that, like himself, he was a man with the
courage to face a mob : and his prayer may even have been specially
for him.0
fell asleep. So Stephen won the crown which his name fore
shadowed. ' P'ell asleep ' may seem a strange description of the
death of one who fell bruised and crushed under the murderous hail
of stones. But beautiful as the expression is for the peace of the
dying Christian, it has been responsible for a serious misconception.
For death is not a sleep, but the entry on a larger life.
What might not Stephen, with his rare gifts of mind and character,
have achieved for the early Church, if his life had not been prematurely
cut off! It is the common cry, whenever the useful worker is struck
down. But his early martyrdom may have profited Christendom more
than long labours and a natural death could have done. Who
can say how far Paul's life was not due to Stephen's death ? ' The
Church owes Paul ', says Augustine, d ' to the prayer of Stephen '. And
who can tell how many Christians have been braced in the arena or
a Goulburn, p. 181. b Conybeare and Howson, i. 70.
0 Binney, p. 65. d Sermo 94.

102 THE ACTS. VII. 54-VIII. 4
at the stake by the example of the first of the noble army of martyrs ?
or how many have been led to Christ by the story of his faith and
courage and Christlike death ?
viii. 1. approving. The Greek word expresses, not passive
consent, but hearty approval. Luke is probably recording a con
fession which he had himself heard from the lips of St. Paul, who
uses the same word in this connexion (xxii. 20). A passage in his
letters, where it also occurs (Rom. i. 32), suggests that he regarded
his guilt in abetting as in no way less than that of those who cast the
stones. Yet he acted under a sense of duty, however mistaken. ' I
verily thought ', he says (xxvi. 9), ' I ought to do many things contrary
to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.' He was fulfilling the Lord's
prediction, ' The time cometh when whosoever killeth you will think
that he doeth God service ' (John xvi. 2).
And his action was natural enough . His knowledge of Jesus' minis
try was probably derived exclusively from the Pharisees, who had so
bitterly opposed His teaching. The new sect acknowledged as the
Messiah a man who had been condemned by the Sanhedrin and
crucified as a criminal by the Roman Governor, making the highest
hopes of his people to become a byword. To Saul it must have
seemed sheer madness to suppose that the crucified Nazarene could
be the long-looked-for Messiah, and that He had risen from the
dead.a on that day. The Greek will bear the general sense of 'at that
time ', but it is more natural to understand it literally. The excited
crowd rushed straight from the stoning, their passion fed rather than
appeased by the deed of blood, to attack the Christians. The
Apostles had previously come into collision with the Jewish authori
ties, but now for the first time Christianity came into conflict with
Judaism. The result upon the Church was twofold. Externally,
persecution forced it to take up an independent position. Internally,
it rendered the former attitude of Christians to the Law untenable.
New questions were forced to the front — Was the Law still binding
on the new Society, or was it abolished through Christ? Was
Christianity the true Judaism, or was it something different and new ?
Was circumcision an essential door into the Kingdom, or was faith in
Jesus sufficient? These questions, though not yet formally raised,
were henceforth in the air ? The Christians might still cherish the
feeling that they were members of the Jewish Church, but the
a Farrar, i. 82 ; Weinel, p. 66; Meyer, p. 39,

THE ACTS. VII. 54-VIII. 4 103
rejection of Christianity by the Jewish authorities was the first step
to a severance between the two bodies.a
they were all scattered. The ' all ' must be understood with
some limitation. It is clear that the rage of the Pharisees was
mainly directed against the Hellenist section of the Church, leaving
the narrower Jewish section unmolested. That those who were
scattered were chiefly Hellenists is implied in xi. 20 ; while, on
the other hand, we learn from ix. 26 that there were other disciples,
besides the Apostles, at Jerusalem. The consequence was important.
The difference between the Hebrews and the Hellenists was em
phasized ; and the Church in Jerusalem became henceforth almost
purely Hebrew.
The word translated 'scattered ' is the same as in xi. 19, and its
use is significant — the regenerate Israel takes up the ministry of the
unfaithful Israel, and becomes in the Providence of God a ' Dis
persion' among the Gentiles.0 Luke does not dwell upon the
details of the persecution, since its importance to him lay in its
bearing on the spread of the Gospel.0 The action, which threatened
the existence of the new faith, served only to place it on a surer and
wider basis, to extend its range of influence and enlarge its ideals.
except the Apostles. Special courage on their part will not
explain their immunity. No bravery would have protected them
from the zeal of Saul. It is clear that Stephen's teaching was quite
different from any heard from the Apostles.cl They were Hebrews,
constant in their attendance at the Temple ; and a sharp line was
drawn between them and the Hellenists, with whose views they
probably had little sympathy. They were men of narrower ideas
and more restricted education. The presence of the Spirit in their
hearts was quite consistent with intellectual slowness and mental
inability to recognize at once the leadings of Divine Providence. It
is further likely that we overestimate their prominence in the public
gaze. The title ' Apostle ' connotes for us an extraordinary office and
dignity. But the Sanhedrin knew them only as ' common men with
out learning' (iv. 13), and would pay much less attention to them
than to brilliant and cultured Hellenists like Stephen and Philip.6
2. devout men. If Christians had been meant, they would have
been called ' disciples ' ; if Gentile proselytes, the Greek word used
in xiii. 43, 50 ; xvi. 14 ; xvii. 4, 7, would have been employed. The
a Weizsacker, i. 75 seq. ; Dobschiitz, p. 149 seq.
b Chase, p. 65. c Maclaren, i. 236.
d Geikie, p. 6r ; Hausrath, ii. 159. c Stokes, i. 347 seq.

io4 THE ACTS. VII. 54-VIII. 4
epithet used here is elsewhere applied to Jews (Luke ii. 25 ; Acts
ii. 5, xxii. 12), and Hellenist Jews are probably meant. The Hellen
ist Christians had fled, the Hebrew Christians had little sympathy
with the views for which Stephen had died. But certain Hellenists,
who were not avowed Christians but were favourably impressed by
Christianity, showed their respect for their brother Hellenist by giving
honourable burial to his body ; as Joseph and Nicodemus had under
similar circumstances done in the case of Jesus (John xix. 38 seq).
This involved some courage, since Stephen had been stoned for
blasphemy. made great lamentation. The formal Jewish wailing for the
dead. This implied, under the circumstances, a protest against the
action of the Sanhedrin, which may not have been unanimously
approved by the Jews.
3. But Saul. On several occasions Paul refers to his action at
this time (xxii. 4, xxvi. n ; Gal. i. 13, 23 ; 1 Cor. xv. 9 ; Phil. iii. 6 ;
1 Tim. i. 13). These statements show him to have pursued a course
of steady and cruel repression, but in ignorance and mistaken zeal.
He was not, before his conversion, any more than after it, a man to
do things by halves, or from any but the highest motives. That he
had the Jewish authorities at his back is shown by the words ' com
mitted to prison '.
This verse concludes the first of the three stages of the programme
mapped out in i. 8. Luke does not again refer to the progress of
evangelistic work in Jerusalem. a
4. went about preaching. The Apostles had been charged
'not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the
Father ' (i. 4). But Pentecost had come and gone, and still they
tarried there.0 So far they had done nothing to carry out their
Master's commission to preach beyond Jerusalem (i. 8). And now
it was not by any deliberate plan of missionary work or by any
conscious action of theirs, but through causes which they could not
control, that the Church began her aggressive march. When those
whom He had commissioned failed to undertake the duty laid upon
them, God fulfilled His purposes through the very means which man
employed for their defeat. He brought good out of evil, making ' the
wrath of man to praise him' (Ps. lxxvi. 10). One, who was destined
to do a splendid work for Christianity as Paul the Apostle, conferred
his first service, as Saul the persecutor, by teaching the Church her
,L McGiffert, p. 95. b Burrell, p. 96.

THE ACTS. VII. 54 -VIII. 4 105
missionary vocation. Like Cyrus, he 'performed the pleasure of
God, howbeit he meant not so, neither did his heart think so '
(cf. Is. xliv. 28, x. 7). The knowledge of the Gospel had, no doubt,
been previously carried beyond the limits of Judaea by pilgrims
returning to their homes. But they were not travelling evangelists.
Luke is right in representing this persecution as constituting an epoch
in the history of missionary effort.a
Note. The above section (vii. 58— viii.4) looks like an unskilful com
bination of two sources, as though Luke interpolated the references
to Saul into a narrative in which he was not named. b This is clearly
shown if the passage be printed with portions enclosed in brackets : —
' And they cast him out of the city and stoned him [and the
witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
And they stoned Stephen], calling upon the Lord and saying, Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit. And sinking on his knees, he cried with
a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he
had said this, he fell asleep. [And Saul was approving of his death.]
And there broke out on that day a great persecution against the
Church which was in Jerusalem ; and they were all scattered abroad
throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the Apostles.
And devout men buried Stephen, and made great lamentation over
him. [But Saul ravaged the Church, entering house after house,
and dragging forth men and women committed them to prison.
They therefore that were scattered abroad went about preaching the
glad tidings of the word.] '
It will be seen that the first sentence within brackets contains
a clumsy repetition of the previous ' stoned him ' ; while the third
section repeats the previous statement about the persecution ; with
the result that the mention of Stephen's burial comes very awkwardly
between the two statements.15 5-8
6 And Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and
proclaimed to them the Christ. e And the multitudes
gave heed with one accord to the things that were
spoken by Philip, hearing him and seeing the miracles
which he wrought. 7 For unclean spirits came with a
loud cry out of many who were possessed ; and many
a McGiffert, p. 94. " Harnack, Acts, p. 221.

106 THE ACTS. VIII. 5-8
that were paralytic and that were lame were healed.
8 And there was much joy in that city.
5. Philip went. Luke, after his manner, gives by way of
illustration the details of one particular case — the preaching of Philip ;
from whom he may have derived his information, when he was his
guest many years later (xxi. 8). And how unlike the forecast was
the actual course of events ! The Apostles had destined the Seven
for secular work, and regarded preaching as their own special task
(vi. 3, 4). But Stephen saw and proclaimed wider truths than they,
and Philip was the first to carry the Gospel as a missionary beyond
Jerusalem. These two men had more to do with the expansion of
the Church than the whole body of the Twelve.8- But would not
any writer who was drawing on his imagination have assigned the
chief part in this act of the drama to St. Peter, or at least to an
Apostle ? b
The persecution may have been specially directed against Philip,
whose name comes next to Stephen's in the list of almoners, and who
was almost certainly, like him, a Hellenist. The early tradition that
he had been one of the Seventy is inherently likely to be true, since
old disciples, rather than recent converts, would be chosen for the
responsible office of almoner. And since the Seventy were sent by
Jesus ' into every city and place whither he himself would come '
(Luke x. 1), they would have worked in Samaria, through which He
journeyed later (Luke xviii. 11). This may explain why Philip went
to Samaria, when driven by persecution from Jerusalem.0 But, apart
from such a consideration, if his home was at Caesarea, where he
ended his preaching-tour (ver. 40) and where he was living twenty
years later (xxi. 8), his choice of Samaria may have been determined
by his familiarity with the district. Moreover, he was probably safer
there than in more distant places, for the Jews had no synagogues
there, nor the Sanhedrin any power. And the very opposition which
Stephen's teaching had excited among the Jews would incline the
Samaritans to give a refuge and a welcome to one who taught on the
same lines.
The Samaritans worshipped Jehovah, practised circumcision, and
observed the Sabbath ; but rejected all the Scriptures except the
Pentateuch, and regarded Gerizim, not Jerusalem, as the Holy City.cl
The Jews looked upon them with abhorrence. The Gentiles they
a Amot, p. 169; Maclaren, i. 238, 256. b Chase, p. 66.
0 E. H. Plumptre, Expositor, 1. vii. 22. rt McGiffert, p. 95,

THE ACTS. VIII. 5-8 107
regarded only as exiles from the Covenant, the Samaritans as
schismatics and apostates. 'Thou art a Samaritan' was the most
injurious reproach which they could utter against Jesus (John viii. 48).
Though the Lord had forbidden the Apostles (Matt. x. 5) to preach
to the Samaritans during His ministry, which was specially directed
to the Jews, the prohibition had been removed by Him before His
Ascension (i. 8) ; a and the parable of the Good Samaritan and the
episode of the Samaritan leper (Luke xvii. 16) may have helped Philip
to conquer any religious antipathy which, as a Jew, he may have felt.
But as a Hellenist he would be comparatively free from the bitter
prejudices of the native Jews.
the city of Samaria. The article shows that the capital is
meant. Though the town had been renamed ' Sebaste ' in honour
of Augustus by Herod the Great, the old name was still also used.b
Philip would naturally go to the chief city, and such a man as Simon
would be likely to make his residence there.
proclaimed to them the Christ. He met them on the common
ground of their hope of a Messiah.0 The words of the Samaritan
woman (John iv. 25) show their Messianic expectations.
6. gave heed. Political considerations did not, as in the case of
the Jews, obstruct the right conception of the Messiah on the part of
the Samaritans. There must also have been some among them who
had come into contact with Jesus and remembered Him; who had
perhaps recognized Him as the Messiah. cl In any case, the servant
was reaping where the Master had sown. Samaria was the mission-field
' white for the harvest ' (John iv. 35). And the soil had been further
prepared by very different influences. Simon had accustomed the
people to look for miracles as the attestation of a new doctrine.6
seeing the miracles. The news of a great Deliverer was
accompanied by tokens that He was a deliverer from torments of the
body and mind. This was the purpose of Our Lord's miracles, and
of those which His followers wrought in His name.f
8. much joy. These are not solitary words. The Ethiopian
'went on his way rejoicing' (ver. 39). The Philippian jailor 're
joiced, believing in God ' {xvi. 34). Joy is the word associated from
the first with Christianity. The announcement of the angels had
been, ' I bring you tidings of great joy ' (Luke ii. 10)." Paul tells us
that ' the fruit of the Spirit is joy ' (Rom. xiv. 17). Those who think
a Row, p. 72 seq. b Josephus, Antiq., xx. vi. 2.
0 Shirley, p. 23. d McGiffert, p. 96 ; Baumgarten, p. 57.
8 Shirley, p. 25. f Maurice, p. 100. e Parker, i. 182.

108 THE ACTS. VIII. 5-8
that religion is a gloomy thing, and that faith in Christ makes men
morose and sad, must go elsewhere than to the New Testament to
prove their case. 9-13
9 But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who
beforetime practised sorcery in the city, and amazed
the people of Samaria, giving out that he was some
great one. 10 To whom they all gave heed, from the
least to the greatest, saying, This man is that power of
God which is called great. "And they gave heed
to him, because he had long amazed them with his
sorceries. 12 But when they believed Philip preaching
glad tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the
name of Jesus the Christ, they were baptized, both
men and women. 13 And Simon also himself believed ;
and having been baptized he continued with Philip ;
and beholding signs and great miracles wrought he
was amazed.
9. Simon. The writings of the second and third centuries are
full of the achievements and evil deeds of this man. He came to be
regarded as the father of all heresy. That no trace should here be
found of the second-century tradition is evidence of the early date
of the Acts. In his person Christianity was for the first time con
fronted with superstition and religious imposture, of which the
ancient world was at this period full.a
amazed. The repetition of this word in verses n and 13 shows
that the Samaritans were a superstitious people ; and the prevailing
expectation of the Messiah, with the consequent religious excitement,
predisposed them to delusion. On this expectation Simon traded,
' giving out that he was some great one.'
10. that power of God. An emanation, that is, from the God
head ; incarnate, according to a common Oriental doctrine, in the
person of a man.15
12. the kingdom of God. The expression has not been used
since the question of i. 6, which showed such a misapprehension of
1 McGiffert, p. 99 ; Stokes, i. 355 ; Purves, p. 62. b Row, p. 76.

THE ACTS. VIII. 9-13 109
its real nature. Its use now may imply an onward step in Christian
teaching on the part of Philip.a
13. Simon also himself believed. He was probably half victim
of self-delusion, half conscious impostor. The sincerity of his belief
at the moment need not be questioned. He believed that Jesus, and
not himself, was the true Incarnation of the Godhead. Recognizing
in the works of Philip a power above his own, he gave up influence
and gain to become his disciple. But he accepted Jesus as Divine,
without realizing his personal need of Him as a Saviour. So the
change was superficial, and the old nature speedily reasserted itself.0

H-25
14 Now when the Apostles who were at Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had received the word of God,
they sent to them Peter and John : 15 who, when they
were come down, prayed for them that they might
receive the Holy Spirit: 16for as yet He was fallen
upon none of them : only they had been baptized into
the name of the Lord Jesus. "Then laid they their
hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
18 Now when Simon saw that through the laying on
of the Apostles' hands the Holy Spirit was given, he
offered them money, 19 saying, Give me also this power,
that on whomsoever I lay my hands, he may receive
the Holy Spirit. 20 But Peter said to him, Perish thy
silver, as thou art perishing, because thou hast thought
to acquire the free gift of God with money. 21Thou
hast neither part nor lot in this word : for thy heart is
not right in the sight of God. 22 Repent therefore
of this thy wickedness and pray to the Lord, if the
thought of thy heart shall indeed be forgiven thee.
23 For I see that thou art as gall of bitterness and bond
of iniquity. 2i And Simon answered and said, Do ye
pray for me to the Lord, that none of the things which
a Ramsay, Pictures, p. 56. b Dykes, p. 262 seq.

no THE ACTS. VIII. 14-25
ye have spoken come upon me. 2r' They therefore,
when they had testified and spoken the word of the
Lord, turned back to go to Jerusalem, and preached
the glad tidings to many villages of the Samaritans,
14. when the Apostles . . . heard. The simplicity of the state
ment must not be allowed to obscure its importance. To the Apostles
this was the dawn of a new day — the day when others than Jews or
proselytes were first admitted to the Church.a
they sent. The step implied no jealousy of Philip, nor any idea
that his ministry was defective. When, shortly after, he ' went about
preaching the glad tidings to all the cities ' (ver. 40), we hear of no
such commission to supplement his work. And, later still, it was
Barnabas, and not any of the Twelve, who was dispatched on a pre
cisely similar mission to Antioch (xi. 22). It is sometimes said that
we have in this passage: the origin of the later rite of Confirmation.
But Luke's language does not support the idea that the work of the
Evangelist needed to be supplemented by Apostles. The motive for
sending a deputation is expressly said to be that they ' had heard
that Samaria had received the word of God '. It is true that the
Samaritans were circumcised, and no such objection appears to have
been raised as was subsequently urged in the case of Cornelius. But
many Christian Jews would be scandalized by the admission of
Samaritans ; and, as the responsible leaders of the Christian Society,
the Apostles felt it to be their duty to examine and sanction the new
departure.1* Peter and John. The dispatch of the two leading Apostles
shows that the gravity of the occasion was realized. To John it must
have been a strange experience. He was sent to the very people on
whom, a few short years before, he had wished to call down fire from
heaven, to invoke the falling of another flame, which should burn
indeed, but not consume.0
1 5. prayed . . . that they might receive. The prayer was for
the resolving of their own doubts. Though their Master had commis
sioned them to be His ' witnesses in Samaria ' (i. 8), He had earlier
forbidden them to enter into ' any city of the Samaritans ' (Matt. x. 5).
How were they to know that these old enemies were now indeed one
a Parker, i. 195.
b Alford, Homilies, p. 247 seq. ; Stokes, i. 369 ; Maclaren, i. 241 ; Dykes, p. 263.
c Rackham, Acts ; Binney, p. 94; Vaughan, i. 316 ; Parker, i. 195 seq.

THE ACTS. VIII. 14-25 in
with themselves? They would leave the solution with their Lord.
If the Spirit descended on these converts, their doubt would be
answered. He would testify to the expansion of the Church, as He
had testified to its formation.8-
16. as yet. That is, the outward manifestation had not taken
place. There is no implication that the Holy Spirit had not been
given in Baptism.
into the name. Luke is not indicating any Baptismal formula,
but merely stating that at their Baptism they had acknowledged
Jesus to be the Christ.b
17. Then laid they. If this passage stood alone, it would be a
natural inference that the imposition of Apostolic hands could alone
impart the visible gifts of the Spirit. But other passages show such
an inference to be erroneous. In ii. 4, 33 ; iv. 31 ; x. 44, no human
agency is suggested; and in ix. 17 it is the hands of Ananias that
conveyed the gift to Saul.0
18. when Simon saw. He had seen Philip's miracles, but he
had not before seen power transferred to others. And his cupidity
woke again. Here was a prospect of obtaining unbounded wealth
and influence."1
he offered them money. He evidently thought that the
Apostles stood on the same plane as himself, and were only more
accomplished sorcerers, who might be bribed to share their secret
with him.6
Many legends have clustered round Simon, but the popular
instinct has judged rightly in connecting his name, not with those
stories, but with his offer to trade in sacred things. ' Simony ' is the
treatment of spiritual functions as a marketable commodity. It is
generally spoken of as a sin confined to the clergy — the purchase by
worldly wealth of a sphere for spiritual ministry. But in its essence
it is a very common sin. It consists in a false estimate of the pur
chasing power of money. Money can buy none of the intrinsically
best things. It can buy diamonds, but not wisdom, or sympathy, or
faith, or holiness. ' God hath chosen the poor of this world rich in
faith ' (James ii. 5). Not to understand this is Simony.f
20. Perish. Spiritual power is the free gift of God. Simon
a Norris, p. 37; Maurice, p. 104.
b A. Plummer, Hastings' Diet., art. Baptism.
c McGiffert, p. 97 seq. ; Maclaren, i. 242 ; Baumgarten, p. 60.
d Hackett, Acts. * Taylor, Peter, p. 235.
f Maurice, p. 106 ; Parker, i. 199 ; Burrell, p. 102 seq. ; Alford, Homilies, p. 251.

112 THE ACTS. VIII. 14-25
would have restricted it to those who could buy it : and the offer was
indignantly rejected. Yet it does not follow that, because the
answer came so promptly, there was no temptation to the man who
had once said, ' Silver and gold have I none ' (iii. 6). The tempta
tion fell off from him, because he was true and single-hearted. The
importance of the incident lies in its illustration of the clear moral
consciousness of the new faith amid the temptations of the larger
world into which it was now entering."
22. if the thought of thy heart. Peter may have felt that the
offence came perilously near to that sin against the Holy Spirit which
'hath never forgiveness' (Matt. xii. 31). But probably he doubted,
not so much the possibility of forgiveness, as the reality of Simon's
repentance.15 23. as gall. Peter foresees that such a sin as Simon's would be
as a malignant poison to the Church, and as an unholy chain fettering
her free action.0
24. Do ye pray for me. The words recall Exod. viii. 28,
' Entreat the Lord for me.' Like Pharaoh, Simon was frightened,
but not reformed. The denunciation by one in whom he recognized
a power above his own terrified him. And not recognizing that
penitence is a personal matter between the soul and God, he thought
that he could pray by deputy.d But he must not be condemned un
fairly. One man cannot rise so high as another. The lofty nature
loathes sin, and goes to God to escape it. The poorer nature fears
judgment, and goes to God to escape it. The prayer of the latter will
be less spiritual than that of the former, and yet God may accept it.6
It may be that our whole judgment of Simon is coloured by the
later untrustworthy legends. If we only look at this narrative, it is
possible to acquit him of hypocrisy. No doubt, his faith was not
strong ; but we are told that he ' believed ', and was ' baptized ', and
' continued with Philip ' ; and Peter's rebuke implies a relapse quite
as much as hypocrisy. In this case, the lesson which his story con
veys is no less valuable. It teaches the power of old habits and old
desires. Love of power and avarice were not rooted out, because he
had ' believed '.
25. to many villages. What they had seen convinced them of
the fitness of the Samaritans to receive the Gospel, and they felt that
¦l Maurice, p. 106 seq. ; Parker, i. 202 ; Purves, p. 63.
b Plumptre, Acts ; Rackham, Acts.
0 Rackham, Acts; Thiersch, p. 86. d Goulburn, p. 26S.
0 Parker, i. 207.

THE ACTS. VIII. 14-25 113
the time had come to act upon their Lord's command (i. 8).a But
the message cannot have been very widely accepted, since we find
the Samaritans later in collision with the Christians. They were so
severely punished by Zeno and Justinian for murdering Christians
and destroying churches, that they never afterwards recovered.15 One
fact, however, of importance we do know about the Christian Church
in Samaria — that it produced Justin Martyr, the first considerable
writer in the early Church.0 26-40
The authority for this charming missionary idyll can only have
been Philip himself, whose guest Luke was ' for many days ' at
Caesarea (xxi. 10). But certain peculiarities of style make it prob
able that the historian had before him a written account. The
language is obviously derived from the history of Elijah — com
pare ver. 26 with 2 Kings i. ' And the angel of the Lord said to
Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up,' &c. ; and ver. 39 with 1 Kings
xviii. 12, 'It shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that
the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee away whither I know not.'
The motive for its insertion was the wish to illustrate in another
direction the widening destiny of the Gospel. The Hellenism of
Stephen, the persecution of Saul, and the conversion of the
Samaritans were so many steps. The conversion of the Eunuch
marks a further advance, since the rite of circumcision, which bridged
the gulf between Jew and Samaritan, was wanting in his case.d
20 But an angel of the Lord spake to Philip, saying,
Rise and journey at noon on the road that goeth down
from Jerusalem unto Gaza (the same is desert). 27 And
he rose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia,
a eunuch, high in authority under Candace, queen of
the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasure,
and had been to Jerusalem to worship, 2S was returning ;
and sitting in his chariot was reading the prophet
Isaiah. 29 And the Spirit said to Philip, Go near and
join this chariot. 30 And Philip ran to him, and heard
a Neander, p. 64.
b C. W. Wilson, Hastings' Diet., art. Territory of Samaria.
0 Sadler, Acts. d Dykes, p. 272 ; Purves, p. 64 ; Shirley, p. 26.
1320 I

114 THE ACTS. VIII. 26-40
him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, Understandest
thou what thou readest ? 31 And he said, Why, how
should I, unless some one shall guide me ? And he
besought Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 Now
the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was
this : —
He was led as a sheep to the slaughter;
And as a lamb before its shearer is dumb,
So he openeth not his mouth.
33 In his humiliation his judgment was taken away :
His generation who shall declare ?
For his life is taken from the earth.
34 And the Eunuch answered Philip and said, I pray
thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this ? of himself,
or of some other ? 35 And Philip, opening his mouth,
and beginning at this scripture, proclaimed the good
tidings of Jesus to him. 36And as they were journey
ing, they came to some water : and the Eunuch said,
Behold, here is water ; what doth hinder me being
baptized ? 38 And he commanded the chariot to stand
still: and they both went down into the water, both Philip
and the Eunuch, and he baptized him. 30 And when
they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord
caught away Philip, and the Eunuch saw him no more,
for he went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip was
found at Azotus ; and he went about preaching the
glad tidings to all the cities till he came to Caesarea.
26. an angel. The use of ' angel ' here and of ' Spirit ' in ver. 29
shows that what is meant is not any external appearance, but some
inward communication. In Zechariah (i. 13) the prophetic spirit is
called ' the angel that spake with me '. The Jew ignored secondary
causes, and attributed results to Divine intervention. To him it was
a helpful and beautiful thought that the hand of God was to be seen
in all the events of life ; and he described His guidance, whether it

THE ACTS. VIII. 26-40 115
took the shape of dreams or human agency or natural circumstances,
as angelic ministry. We suffer grievous loss by understanding this
beautiful imagery literally. Angels, we say, no longer appear to us.
And so we ignore the presence of the Divine in common things and
ordinary processes, and look for it only in the extraordinary and
supernatural. We believe that the meeting between Philip and the
Eunuch was Divinely brought about, but think that God leaves our
meetings to the chapter of accidents.
at noon. The hour, as well as the route, was given. There is
no point in the translation 'towards the south', because no other
direction was possible if he was to go to Gaza.a
from Jerusalem. Jerusalem would be out of the way in travelling
from Samaria to Gaza ; so Philip appears to have returned with Peter
and John to the capital,1* in which case the excitement against the
Hellenists must have subsided.
the same is desert. Probably a parenthetical note by the his
torian. It must refer to the road, not to the city. The condition of
the city would have no relevance, but the loneliness of the road has.
He was to go in faith by the less frequented, less promising, route.0
27. he rose and went. After his successful work in a populous
city, the call to go upon a desert road must have seemed strange to
him. If he had sought for excuses, he could have found them in
abundance. But he obeyed, and obedience brought its reward.
Perhaps, after the ingathering of souls in bulk, he needed to be
reminded of the value of the individual soul. And one soul may
be of more value to the Kingdom than many. Had Jesus not thought
it worth while to utter some of His sublimest truths to a single
individual, we should have had no story of the Samaritan woman at
the well. And the Ethiopian may have been the germ of many con
verts. He carried the word of God to a new continent, and planted
the seed from the vantage ground of high stations1
a man of Ethiopia. The words denote his nationality : he was
not a Jew born in Ethiopia, but an Ethiopian. The point of the
narrative is that no distinction of rank or race or physical condition
was to bind the blessings of the Gospel. If the Ethiopian had been
a proselyte, there would have been nothing remarkable in his con
version : one of the Seven had been a proselyte (vi. 5). This man
belonged to a race descended from Ham, represented in the Scrip-
a Rendall, Expositor, III. viii. 21.
b Zeller, i. 268. ° Baumgarten, i. 200 ; Plnmptre, Acts.
d Vaughan, i. 31S ; Burrell, p. 106; Noble, p. 141 ; Goulburn, p. 293.
I 2

n6 THE ACTS. VIII. 26-40
tures as under a curse, and to a class which the Law excluded from
the congregation of the Lord. It may be true that the word ' eunuch'
is sometimes used to denote merely a court official ; but this man's
office is expressly stated, and his official description is preceded by
the statement that he was a eunuch.a
under Candace. A dynastic title, like Pharaoh, borne by the
queens of Ethiopia.
had been to Jerusalem. Devout Gentiles used to go as pilgrims
to the Feasts (John xii. 20). This man may have heard from Jewish
merchants something of the Hebrew religion, and in his dissatisfaction
with heathenism have travelled to Jerusalem hoping to find some
light to lighten his darkness.
28. was returning. The desert route would only be taken by
a traveller who was attended by a sufficient retinue to repel attacks.
The Eunuch may have chosen it for its quietness.
was reading. The soul-thirst, which had led to his pilgrimage,
remained unslaked. As he had left Ethiopia seeking, so he was
returning seeking. In this desert spot ' Ethiopia was stretching out
her hands unto God' (Ps. lxviii. 31).15
Isaiah. The passage (liii. 7) was apparently new to him. He
may have bought the roll in Jerusalem.0
29. the Spirit said. It was according to the custom of the desert
that a single traveller should attach himself to a caravan going in the
same direction ; but Philip recognized the impulse as the voice of
God.d The chariot marked a foreigner : it was almost unknown as
a mode of locomotion in Palestine ; 6 and the Evangelist's heart must
have leapt as he read the lesson that the Gospel was intended for all
the world.f
30. heard him reading. The Eunuch was reading aloud, as is
commonly done in the East. It was probably by no accident that
he was studying this passage. The Prophets were divided into fifty-
four sections. The section which begins with Isaiah Iii embraces
ch. lvi, which declares that under the new dispensation the artificial
distinctions of the Law (Deut. xxxiii) would be abolished ; and both
eunuchs and sons of the stranger would have admission to the
Church of God : and he may have been hoping to discover some
assurance as. to his own prospect of salvation.s
" Cotterill, p. 312 ; Baumgarten, i. 201. b Arnot, p. 184.
c Plumptre, Acts. a Maclaren, i. 250.
0 Renan, Apostles, p. 144. r Stiller, p. 72.
e Row, p. 79; J. C. Jones, p. 187; Goulburn, p. 341.

THE ACTS. VIII. 26-40 117
30. Understandest thou ? The abrupt question so chimed in
with his own thoughts that it did not startle or offend him."-
3 1 . how should I ? The African was of high rank and was travell
ing in state, but in his pathetic eagerness for light he was humbly
ready to learn of the lowly traveller on foot, if he could help him.
32. He was led. The quotation is from the LXX version, which
here differs considerably from the Hebrew. Both versions are obscure,
but it is enough to understand that the passage describes the sufferings
of the Messiah.
35. of Jesus. The touch of accuracy should be noticed. To
the Samaritans, who were expecting the Messiah, Philip had preached
the Christ (ver. 5) : to the Ethiopian, who was longing for a personal
Deliverer, he preached Jesus, ' the Saviour '.b
36. what doth hinder ? Philip may have spoken of the Lord's
command, ' make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them,' &c.
(Matt, xxviii. 19), and the question naturally followed, ' If all nations,
why may not I, an Ethiopian, be baptized?'0
[37. The Authorized Version inserts, 'And Philip said, If thou
believest with all thy heart, thou mayest. And he answered and
said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.' The words are
wanting in all the best MSS., and are a second-century interpolation
by some one who felt that the absence of any such formula was
a dangerous precedent. But the Eunuch's proposal of baptism was
itself a declaration of belief.d]
38. he baptized him. Peter, in the case of uncircumcised
Gentiles, needed the evidence of the gift of the Spirit before he
baptized (x. 47); and the agitation which followed their admission
to the Church shows how courageous the act of Philip was. The
Ethiopian was not only uncircumcised, but was a eunuch : still the
large-hearted Hellenist did not hesitate, although he had quite
recently had experience of an unworthy applicant for baptism in the
person of Simon.6
39. The Spirit of the Lord. The Bezan text has ' the Angel
of the Lord '. The words need mean no more than that Philip was
urged by an impulse, which he recognized as Divinely sent, to leave
the Eunuch after his baptism. That a miraculous disappearance is
not intended is shown by the ' for ' in the next clause. The ecstatic
joy of the Eunuch was the reason why he saw Philip no more. He
a Goulburn, p. 300. b J. C. Jones, p. 191 ; Goulburn, p. 344.
c Goulburn, p. 346. d Stifler, p. 74 ; Dykes, p. 284.
e Maclaren, i. 254; Iverach, p. 150; Fairar, i. 262.

nS THE ACTS. VIII. 26-40
had a vision of a new heaven and a new earth, and perhaps scarcely
realized that his instructor was gone.®
he went on his way — perhaps to plant in Abyssinia that Church
in which the lamp of Christian truth still flickers feebly. If so, it
may have been Divinely ordered that the bearer of the Gospel to
that distant region should have received it in its freer spirit from
a Hellenist in the desert, and not at Jerusalem from one of the
Apostles. b
rejoicing. It is the note struck again and again throughout the
Acts in the story of conversions. He had lost his master, but he
had also lost his burden.
40. all the cities. Not content with the accomplishment of his
special mission, he utilized his return journey to preach. Lydda
and Joppa lay on his route, and he may have prepared the soil for
Peter there (ix. 32 seq.), as he had before done in Samaria.0
Caesarea — where he is found settled many years later (xxi. 8).
As a commercial city and the seat of the Roman Government, it
offered an important sphere of missionary work.

CHAPTER IX
The conversion of Saul as an evidence of Christianity.
The fact that Luke gives three accounts of this occurrence shows
the importance which he attached to it. But it was its historical
importance which was chiefly present to his mind. He was writing
a history, not of Paul, but of the Christian Church ; and for his
purpose the significance of this incident lay in the fact that it won
for Christianity its greatest missionary. To us, on the other hand, it
is of supreme importance as one of the evidences of Christianity.
Christianity does not stand or fall with St. Paul ; but how much we
should miss of corroboration of our faith, if we had not the story of
his journey to Damascus ! Here we have, thirty years before the
earliest Gospel was written, a contemporary of Jesus, with the power
of questioning living witnesses, exceptionally able and sane-minded,
bitterly hostile to the new Faith and with no motive of self-interest
to lead him to adopt it, completely and permanently, on the strength

a Swete, The Spirit, p. 93 ; Chase, p. 67 ; Merivale, p. 1 14 ; Olshausen, p. 464 ;
irker, i. 215.
'' Norris, p. 39 ; Goulburn, p. 337. c Arnot, p. 199 ; Goulburn, p. 379.

THE ACTS. IX 119
of what occurred on this journey, reversing his whole life, sacrificing
all his earthly prospects of honour and advancement, and sinking
his own strong personality to be thenceforward but the reflection of
Jesus to the world, devoting his splendid gifts of intellect and spirit
to spreading that Gospel which he had striven to stamp out. If we
explain away the supernatural element, what was it which changed
the whole aim and direction of this man's life? If we say that he
was misled by a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, or that his
life was remoulded by a sunstroke, are we not substituting a miracle
more astonishing than that which he describes ? But if Jesus did,
as he believed, appear to him, shining with Divine glory, on the road
to Damascus, then all is explained. And it is significant that, as he
advanced in life, the miraculous vision became to him, not dim with
lapse of time, but only clearer and more certain in his memory. He
knew, not only whom he believed, but how he came to believe. Years
after (chaps, xxii and xxvi), when he wished to contrast what he was
with what he had been, he reverted to this vision as the miraculous
origin of his faith, as the Divine intervention which had in one
instant changed the persecutor into the Christian. a
The nature of the vision to Saul. The appearance of Jesus
to Saul cannot have been either a hallucination, or a merely subjective
vision. He was too sane a man to base the complete reversal of his
life, and the unswerving devotion to a living Person which sustained
him through years of danger and hardship and persecution, on a fancy
of the brain, apart from reality. True, he was a visionary as well as
an eminently practical man ; but he recognized his visions as such
(2 Cor. xii. 1 seq.), and uses very different language about this appear
ance. He told Barnabas ' how he had seen the Lord in the way, and
that he had spoken to him' (ix. 27). When he wished to establish
his Apostolic rank, and to prove that he was as well qualified as any
of the Twelve to be a witness of the Resurrection, he asks, ' Am I not
an Apostle? Have I not seen the Lord?' (1 Cor. ix. 1). In his
speech to Agrippa his main topic was the Resurrection. ' Why,' he
asks (xxvi. 8), ' is it judged incredible with you if God doth raise the
dead ? ' — and he narrates this appearance on the road to Damascus
as proof. Christ, he says, had appeared to him that he might be
a ' witness ' — able to testify to the world that he had ' seen ' Him
(xxvi. 16). When he enumerates the appearances of Jesus after His
a Roper, p. 107 ; Dykes, p. 292 ; Farrar, i. 202 ; Vanghan, ii. 14 ; Purves,
p. 181 ; Stalker, p. 7; Bungener, p. 2S ; Burrell, p. 286.

120 THE ACTS. IX
Resurrection, he places this vision on a level with the others : ' Last
of all he was seen of me also ' (i Cor. xv. 8). And there is a note of
personal conviction in his words to the Romans (viii. 34), 'It is
Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead,'
which is very significant.
The only passage which might seem to lend support to the view
that the vision was subjective only is Gal. i. 15, 16, 'When it was
the good pleasure of God, who separated me even from my mother's
womb and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that
I might preach him among the Gentiles.' But here the words ' in
me' do not mean 'in my heart', but 'in me as an instrument' —
' in my person, as a witness of the Gospel.' So he says to the
Corinthians (2 Cor. xiii. 3), ' Seeing that ye seek a proof of Christ
that speaketh in me.' a
Was there a psychological preparation for Saul's con
version ? It is often said by modern commentators h that there
was. We are told that, in the enforced leisure of the long journey,
in the reaction of solitude after the whirl of excitement in which he
had been living, misgivings, which he had found no time to face
before, crowded upon his mind : that, above all, the angel face of
Stephen and his dying prayer haunted him.
This theory was probably originated by those who wished to get
rid of the supernatural element by representing the vision of the
Lord as subjective only. But it has been adopted by others who
think that in the words of Jesus (xxvi. 14), 'it is hard for thee to
kick against the goad,' the goad was an awakened conscience which
Saul was trying to stifle. The word, however, need mean nothing
of the kind. It implies no more than that his resistance would be
of no avail. He was in the hands of One stronger than himself.
God had other plans for him than those which he had marked out
for himself. ' The goad,' that is, was not any inward misgiving, but
was external to him — the purpose of God concerning him.
But the whole theory is a gratuitous assumption which is contra
dicted by the plain statements of the Acts and the Epistles. Paul
himself knew nothing of the compunctious misgivings so freely
attributed to him by commentators. To him the change was
instantaneous. He had left Jerusalem a bitter persecutor; he
entered Damascus a humble disciple. Thus, while he blames him
self for having persecuted the Church, he never says that he was
a Lightfoot, Galatians. b e.g. by Farrar, i. 28r.

THE ACTS. IX 121
fighting down misgivings. On the contrary, he writes (Gal. i. 14),
in connexion with this persecution, that he was ' exceedingly zealous
for the traditions ' of his fathers. He was a persecutor from con
viction. 'I verily thought,' he says (xxvi. 9), 'that I ought to do
many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.' And, just
because he persecuted as a religious duty, he says (1 Tim. i. 13),
' Howbeit I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.'
And he refers to his conversion, not as a gradual process of develop
ment, but as an absolute change of direction. It was a sudden
overwhelming event. Christ, he says (1 Cor. xv. 8), 'appeared to
me also, as to one bom out of due time.' The Greek word means
'a child prematurely born owing to a violent shock', and clearly
expresses the suddenness and unexpectedness of his conversion.11
We can without difficulty construct Saul's conception of Chris
tianity as derived by him from its enemies. Could this Jesus, the
son of a Galilean carpenter, who had chosen twelve ignorant pea
sants for his special companions, who had consorted with publicans
and sinners, who had no condemnation even for open sin, who had
repeatedly broken the Law himself, who had blasphemously claimed
to forgive sins, who had publicly rebuked the orthodox leaders of
the nation, who had declared that Jerusalem and the Temple would
be destroyed, who had been condemned by the rulers and died
a felon's death— could he be indeed the Messiah? Had not God
Himself condemned his pretensions by setting on his life and work
the stamp of failure ? b And so far from the memory of Stephen,
which later influenced Paul so profoundly, having at this time
disposed him favourably to the new sect, it was precisely this which
specially irritated him. Before, he had hated Jesus as a blasphemous
impostor : now, he had learnt that the new teaching meant the
abolition of the Law and the ruin of the Temple ; the annihilation of
all that was dearest and most sacred to him. So he felt no hesita
tion about his course. The pestilent heresy must be suppressed ;
its extinction seemed to him the best offering which he could make
to God ; and of his own initiative he asked for special powers to
carry out this feeling.0 But in one instant all was changed. He
had never doubted that Jesus was dead. The revelation that He,
whom he had believed to be a dead impostor, was alive and was
God, shattered at a blow the very foundations beneath his feet.11
3 Saba tier, p. 60 seq. b Macduff, Paul, p. 36 ; Lyman Abbott, p. 28.
0 Godet, p. 80. d Ramsay, Pauline Studies, p. 72.

i22 THE ACTS. IX
But though he was not prepared for his conversion by any
misgivings about the policy of extirpating Christianity, a preparation
of another kind there had been. The seventh chapter of the
Epistle to the Romans shows that the young Pharisee, with his
deeply religious nature, had not found peace in Judaism. The
vivid representation there given of the condition of man under the
Law is no result of general inference, but is plainly drawn from
personal experience. He had been seeking from Judaism what
Judaism had not to give. His life of righteousness was a failure.
There was the real preparation for his conversion. He was not
satisfied with a righteousness of works. a
Saul a 'chosen instrument' (ver. 1 5). Rarely in history has
any man been fitted for his vocation in life, alike by outward circum
stances and by mental and moral equipment, as was St. Paul.
Born at Tarsus, a populous commercial city, thronged with sailors
and merchants and students from all parts of the world, reproducing
in itself the varied civilizations of the age, he learnt to understand
life under different aspects, to look with tolerance on diverse customs,
to adapt himself, as no Palestinian Jew could have done, to men of
every class and race.
Born of Jewish parents, who were Hellenists by accident, not by
conviction, to whom distance from the Holy City only made fidelity
to Judaism more imperative, he early learnt the treasure committed
by God to the Jewish people, and grew up 'a Hebrew of Hebrews '
(Phil. iii. 5).
Though he did not receive a Greek education, which the strict
Hebrews regarded as grossly immoral, he yet breathed in his boy
hood a Greek atmosphere, and learnt to speak with facility the
language which afterwards enabled him to preach without an
interpreter wherever he went.
Sent at an early age to Jerusalem to be trained under Gamaliel
as a doctor of the Law, he gained a profound knowledge of the
Scriptures, and an intimate acquaintance with the system of the
Pharisees, which were invaluable to him later in coping with
Judaizing opponents.
The possession of the Roman citizenship gave him a recognized
position, and afforded him protection, in every part of the Empire.
Nor was it an accident that the future Apostle to great cities was
a Purves, p. 74 ; Zeller, i. 294 ; Weizsacker, i. 88 ; McGiffert, p. 121 ; Gilbert,
p. 36.

THE ACTS. IX 123
a tent-maker of Tarsus, and not a Galilean fisherman.11 The craft
by which the other Apostles earned their livelihood in youth could
not be pursued everywhere. The trade which gave to Paul his
sturdy independence could be plied wherever he went, since, owing
to the mode of travelling in the East, there was a permanent demand
for tents.1"
To these external qualifications were added great personal gifts :
the manners of good society and the facile adaptability of a man of
the world; a physical constitution which was proof against the
strain of incessant travel by land and sea ; an intellect acute and
versatile, able to grasp great principles underlying accidental cir
cumstances ; a burning eloquence, combined with rare skill in seizing
on oratorical points ; a heroic courage, which no difficulty or danger
or persecution could daunt ; a heart full of warmth and love and
tender sympathy — all these were his before his conversion. And
after it they were but accessories to the perfect offering of self, to the
absolute devotion of the whole man to a personal Leader, which
enabled him to say, into whatever city or company he came, ' It is no
more I ' — with whatever honours you may crown me — ' no more
I that live, but Christ that liveth in me.' °
Thus all the experiences through which he had been brought before
his conversion were utilized in his life as a disciple of Jesus. Heredity,
environment, natural gifts, and the grace of God, all combined to
fit him for his work as an Apostle of that Gospel which stood at
the confluence of three great civilizations. For as a Hebrew of
Hebrews, yet a Hellenist and a Roman citizen, he combined in
himself, as no other single man has ever done, the three great
nationalities of the ancient world.cl And the combination served
him at every turn. If he had not been a Jew, he could not have
gained admission to the synagogues of the Jews ; and everywhere
he made the offer of salvation to them first. If he had not been
a Hellenist, he could not have reached foreign Jews at all. For such
work he alone of the Apostles was fitted. If ' Christ crucified ' had
not long and deeply offended him, he could never have realized the
stumbling-block which a crucified Messiah was to the Jews. If he
had not been a Pharisee, ' taught according to the perfect manner
of the Law of the fathers ' (xxii. 3), he could never have realized the
intolerable burden of its yoke, and the impossibility of finding peace
" Hausrath, iii. 15. " Neander, p. 181 ; Godet, p. 77.
r Huntington, p. 46. a Stanley, p. 163 ; Schaff, i. 68.

i24 THE ACTS. IX
in legal observances. Unless Paul the Pharisee had risen above the
Law through the Law, he could not have emancipated the Gospel
from Jewish particularism ; any more than Luther could have done
his work, if he had not had personal experience of the order of things
which he was called to reform. a What wonder that, looking back
upon his life, he saw that it had been all Divinely ordered, and
could say (Gal. i. 15), 'God, who separated me from my mother's
womb' ! 1-9
1 But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter
against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high
priest, 2 and asked from him letters to the synagogues
in Damascus, that if he found any that were of the
Way, whether men or women, he might bring them
bound to Jerusalem. 3 And as he journeyed and drew
nigh to Damascus, suddenly there flashed round him
a light out of heaven : 4 and he fell upon the earth, and
heard a voice saying to him, Saoul, Saoul, why art thou
persecuting me? 5And he said, Sir, who art thou?
And he said, I am Jesus, whom thou art persecuting.
6 But rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be told
thee what thou must do. 7 And the men who journeyed
with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but behold
ing no man. 8 And Saul rose from the earth ; and
when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing ; but they
led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus.
9 And he was three days without sight, and did neither
eat nor drink.
1. yet. The word seems to imply some lapse of time since the
death of Stephen.b
breathing threatening. Persecution was to Saul as the air
he breathed. Jacob's prophetic description of Benjamin (Gen. xlix.
27) — ' Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf — was fulfilled in the person of
the greatest of his descendants.0
* Pressens^, p. 71 ; Pfleiderer, Hibbert, p. 13 ; Bungener, p. 13.
b Plumptre, Acts. c Hovvson, Scenes, p. 3 ; Fouard, Paul, p. 101.

THE ACTS. IX. 1-9 125
went to. Perhaps persecution had done its work in Jerusalem,
where he had been armed with inquisitorial powers (xxvi. 10) :
perhaps his anger was intensified by learning that the hated
Samaritans had been admitted to the new Community.9
the high priest. This was Theophilus, who had been ap
pointed by the Roman Governor, Vitellius. As a Sadducee, he
may have been pleased by this application from one who was a
pupil of Gamaliel, and a rising man in the rival sect. But it is
more likely that he was glad to see the young enthusiast safely out
of Jerusalem. The Sadducees were not intolerant bigots, but time
serving politicians ; and place-holders are not usually inclined to
favour trop de zele.^
2. asked from him letters. It is interesting to see in the man
Saul the characteristics of the man Paul. It was the same restless
energy, which hurried him to Damascus to crush out Christianity,
that carried him to the ends of the earth as a missionary of the
Gospel. Conversion only changed the cause for which he lived.
There was no change in the moral region. He had not to turn
from a life of sin or love of the world : he had always striven to
make God's will his will. It was a change of conviction. Paul the
Christian was the same as Saul the Pharisee, zealous, fearless,
uncompromising ; yet not the same, since all things had become
new to him,0
to the synagogues. Probably the Christians of Damascus
maintained their connexion with the synagogues. Ananias is de
scribed (xxii. 1 2) as • a devout man according to the law ', and held
in honour by the Jews of Damascus.
in Damascus. Of the great cities which lay near Palestine
Damascus offered the most promising field. At Antioch or at
Alexandria the Roman authorities might not have permitted extreme
measures, whereas the Ethnarch of Aretas would be ready to allow
the Jews, who were numerous and influential at Damascus, to deal
with their own refractory members.0" But the words of xxvi. n,
'I persecuted them unto foreign cities,' imply, if they be not an
oratorical generalization, that this visit to Damascus was not Saul's
only journey as Inquisitor beyond the bounds of Palestine.
the Way. So the early Christians called their religion (xix. 9, 23 ;
xxiv. 22). The term may have arisen from 'the way of the Lord'
a Arnot, p. 199; Tlumptre, Acts. b Binney, p. 46 ; Lyman Abbott, p. 35.
<¦ Connybeare and Howson, ii. 140; Barnes, Scenes, p. 52; Wrede, p. 10.
d E. Hatch, Encycl. BUI., p. 1368.

126 THE ACTS. IX. 1-9
of Isaiah (xl. 3), or from the ' I am the Way' of Jesus (John xiv. 6).
In either case, it signified that they claimed to have found a new
and living way to God; and further, that they had grasped the
practical side of the Gospel, that it was something more than a
creed. a
or women. Woman, restored by Christianity to her proper
honour, was also counted worthy to suffer for the cause.
bring them bound. Damascus was entirely independent of
Judaea, but Julius Caesar had issued a decree,b permitting the Jews
everywhere to live under their own laws, and had ordered its pro
clamation in all the chief cities. As the authority of the high priest
at Jerusalem was universally admitted by the Jews, his jurisdiction
over Jews, wherever they lived, in things pertaining to their own
religion would not be disputed.0
3. And as he journeyed. If he took the usual route, he passed
through Samaria ; and the remembrance of the conversions there
recently made to Christianity would deepen his fanatic determina
tion to extirpate the heresy.
Three accounts of the Conversion are given in the Acts. They
differ in details ; they agree in substance. The differences are fatal
to any theory of verbal inspiration, but are no argument against the
general truth of the narrative. Indeed, its credibility is enhanced
by the fact that along with agreement in essentials are found un
important variations in accidents. It is not wonderful that in one
account men should be described as hearing a voice, but not seeing
the speaker ; in another as seeing a light, but not hearing the words
spoken. The same fact is conveyed — that the message reached
Saul and not his companions. That is the essential point : neither
the light nor the sound was more than an accident of the vision.
Luke's narrative is probably a summary of what he had learnt about
it from St. Paul, and he writes it from a purely historical motive.
The description in the two speeches in which St. Paul refers to his
conversion is controlled by the immediate purpose of the speaker.
In ch. xxii, addressing Jews, he emphasizes the part which the
devout Jew, Ananias, played. In ch. xxvi, addressing Agrippa, he
does not mention Ananias at all, but condenses the Lord's com
mands into one sentence. Luke may have heard both these speeches
delivered ; but whether this be so or not, he shows, by giving the
a Plumptre, Acts; Maclaren, i. 274. b Josephus, Anliq. xiv. 10.
c Norris, p. 149; Stokes, ii. 31.

THE ACTS. IX. 1-9 127
three accounts in the same book, that he saw no real discrepancies
between them. If a man of his education and intelligence had
written statements which were inherently contradictory, the fact
could scarcely have escaped his notice.11
How little the writers of the New Testament cared for verbal
accuracy is shown by the fact that of the four accounts of the Voice
heard at the Transfiguration three are different; — 'This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased' (Matt. xvii. 5; 2 Pet.
i. 1 7) ; ' This is my beloved Son ; hear ye him ' (Mark ix. 7) ; ' This
is my Son, my chosen; hear ye him' (Luke ix. 35). Even the
words of so solemn an inscription as that above the Cross are
different in all four Gospels : — ' This is Jesus, the King of the Jews '
(Matt, xxvii. 37); 'The King of the Jews' (Mark xv. 26); 'This is
the King of the Jews' (Luke xxiii. 38); 'Jesus of Nazareth, the
King of the Jews' (John xix. 19).
drew nigh. It was 'about noon' (xxii. 6), and the light was
•above the brightness of the sun' (xxvi. 13). as though to exclude
any natural explanation of the phenomenon. Some have argued b
that the fact that Saul was travelling at an hour when Eastern
travellers usually rest shows that he was ill at ease. But the journey
of 140 miles would occupy six days ; and, if he left Jerusalem at the
close of the Sabbath, he might be pressing on in order to reach
Damascus before the next Sabbath.
4. Saoul, Saoul. The Hebrew form agrees with the statement
(xxvi. 14) that the voice spoke in Hebrew. Probably Aramaic, not
Greek, was the language in which Saul habitually thought. The
repetition of the name is characteristic of the Jesus of the Gospels
— 'Martha, Martha' (Luke x. 41); ' Simon, Simon ' (Luke xxii. 31);
' O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ' (Matt, xxiii. 3). Here, as there, it marks
a mixture of reproof and tender pity. Men do not reiterate the
name when they speak in anger.0 To Saul it may have recalled
the declaration of old (Isaiah xiv. 4), ' I have even called thee by
thy name, though thou hast not known me.' He never ceased to
feel the impression here made of Christ's personal interest in him.
He felt that ' Love so amazing, so Divine,
Demands my life, my heart, my all ',
a E. Hatch, Encycl. Bibl., p. 136S ; Maurice, p. 128; Swete, p. 1 23 ; Olshausen,
p. 468 ; Purves, p. 75 ; Binney, p. 56,
b e.g. Farrar, i. 190. c Arnot, p. 209 ; Blunt, i. 22.

128 THE ACTS. IX. 1-9
and lived always as though he saw his Lord standing by him,
watching his actions and listening to his words.
why art thou persecuting me ? After this question came,
as we learn from xxvi. 14, 'It is hard for thee to kick against the
goad' — words which clearly show the mental attitude of Saul — no
predisposition to Christianity, but absolute antagonism — up to the
very moment of the vision.0- How human is the Ascended Lord,
who speaks thus in a common proverb ! b Was it not Said of Him in
His earthly ministry that ' without a parable spake he nothing unto
them' (Matt. xiii. 34)?°
5. Sir. The Greek word is the usual title of respect, and is trans
lated 'sir' in xvi. 30, and in John v. 7 ; xii. 21 ; xx. 15 ; and should
be so translated in John ix. 36. It is true that it is not an adequate
rendering here ; but, on the other hand, Saul could not have meant
' Lord ' in its full sense. He had not yet recognized Jesus, though
the thought that it was He must have flashed into his mind.d
who art thou ? That Saul saw a real Person, and not a mere
vision, is clear from the contrast in ver. 7, ' beholding no man,' as
well as from the language of verses 17 and 27, and xxvi. 16. The
Greek word used by Luke in xxvi. 19 is used by him in his Gospel
(i. 22, xxiv. 23) of supernatural appearances seen by men in awaking
state; and is different from the word which he employs (ix. 10, x. 3,
xi. 5, xii. 9) for visions seen in sleep or ecstasy.6 The natural infer
ence from the fact that Saul did not recognize Jesus, as Stephen did
(vii. 56), is that he had not seen Him in His life on earth.f
whom thou art persecuting. The words rang in Paul's ears
for life. They involved all his later teaching of the oneness of the
Head and the members. And the answer to the question which was
doubtless on his lips, ' When did I persecute thee ? ' had been given
by the Lord already (Matt. xxv. 40) — ' Inasmuch as ye did it unto
one of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.' s
6. But rise. The command was, as we learn from xxii. 10, pre
ceded by the question, ' What shall I do, Lord ? ' Overwhelmed by
the revelation of the Divinity of Him whom he had regarded as an
ordinary man who was dead, his resistance was in an instant ended :
a Swete, p. 125 ; Purves, p. 79.
b Pindar, P. ii. 174; Aesch. Again. 1624; Eur. Bacch. 795; Ter. Plwr. i.
2. 28; Plant. True. iv. 2. 55.
0 F. B. Meyer, p. 53.
d Plumptre, Acts ; Lyman Abbott, p. 37 ; Burrell, p. 1 20.
c Purves, p. 79. ' Farrar, i. 196.
B Arnot, p. 205; F. B. Meyer, p. 56 ; Macduff, Paul, p. 61.

THE ACTS. IX. 1-9 129
and, like another Thomas (John xx. 28), he was ready to cry, 'My
Lord and my God'; like another Samuel (1 Sam. iii. 9), to say,
' Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.'
it shall be told thee. There is no reproach beyond the first
tender remonstrance, ' Why art thou persecuting me ? ' The Lord,
who knows the heart, turns at once from the past to the future. But
now, what needed miraculous intervention having been done by
miracle, what could be effected by human instrumentality is left for
human agents to do.
7. beholding no man. So we read in Dan. x. 7, ' I, Daniel, alone
saw the vision, for the men that were with me saw not the vision, but
a great quaking fell upon them.'
8. he saw nothing. He gives the explanation in xxii. 11 — 'for
the glory of that light.' The blindness was a proof that the vision was
no hallucination, and did not rest on his own unsupported statement.
It was also a rebuke to his self-confident belief that he was a clear
sighted leader. He who had fancied himself able to guide others had
himself to be guided, like a helpless child. a
into Damascus. How different an entry from what he had con
templated ! No dreaded Inquisitor, at the head of his retinue, com
missioned to arrest the Nazarenes, but a humbled man, clinging
to the hand of his guide, himself a disciple of the Nazarene, he
passed through the gate.b We should like to know what he said to
his companions, with what words he gave up his letters of authority,
what his companions had to say. It must have been known in
Damascus that he had been blinded in his approach to the city, and
incapacitated, at least temporarily, for the work of inquisition ; but
that he had undergone a complete change of conviction had apparently
not yet been declared by him, since at the end of three days Ananias
had heard nothing of it.
9. three days. The Bible is reticent, as always ; but they must
have been days of terrible strain and conflict ; passed among com
panions who could give him no sympathy ; in ignorance whether
the darkness in which he was plunged might not be irrevocable, his
sight permanently scorched out by the heavenly glory ; with the
whole foundations, on which he had hitherto built, shattered ; his life
a mistake from first to last. What wonder that he was oblivious
of the needs of the body, and ' did neither eat nor drink ' 1 Yet
a Baring-Gould, p. 89 ; Schaff, i. 273.
b Farrar, i. 199 ; Ball, p. 22 ; Stalker, p. 59.
13211 K

130 THE ACTS. IX. 1-9
all the while the tender voice, ' Saoul, Saoul,' was in his ears, and
before his eyes the glorious form of Jesus. That was the primary
fact on which his new faith rested — the crucified Nazarene was living,
and was God. If the Divine strength had cast him down, the Divine
love encompassed him. Then and there, all that men hold dearest — ¦
worldly position, ambition, friendships, family ties, everything— was
given up, was ' counted but loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Jesus Christ ' (Phil. iii. 8).
IO-19 a
A single MS. of the old Latin Version omits the vision to Ananias.
The narrative is very similar to the apparatus of complementary
visions by which Peter and Cornelius are brought together ; and the
resemblance does not increase the probability that such visions literally
occurred. It is a characteristic of the Jewish-Christian sources to
point out the Providential ordering of events by the literary device of
a vision. This is found in the early chapters of Matthew's and Luke's
Gospels, and constantly in the Talmud. a Such a device is a beautiful
expression of the belief that events are Divinely brought about.
Human agents minister to the soul in need, but it is God who sends
them — to the Ethiopian, Philip ; to Saul, Ananias ; to Cornelius,
Peter. Indeed, the whole narrative is a witness to the faith of the early
Christians in their Lord's nearness to His Church, and in the intimacy
of the Divine knowledge of common human life — Saul's name is
known in heaven, the city where he was born, the street in which he
was staying, the man who was his host, the occupation in which he
was engaged, the vision which he had seen — all is known and marked.13
To them the Ascended Lord was the same Jesus of Nazareth who
had said to Nathaniel (John i. 48), ' When thou wast under the fig-tree,
I saw thee.'
10 Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus,
named Ananias ; and the Lord said to him in a vision,
Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord. n And
the Lord said to him, Arise, and go to the street which
is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for
one named Saul, of Tarsus ; for behold, he prayeth :
1 Bacon, p. 48. b Vaughan, ii. 10 ; Ball, p. 24 ; Blunt, i. 42.

THE ACTS. IX. 10-19 a, 131
12 and he hath seen a man named Ananias coming in
and laying his hands upon him that he may receive his
sight. 13But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard
from many of this man, how much evil he did to thy
saints in Jerusalem; 14and here he hath authority
from the chief priests to bind all that call upon thy
name. 15 But the Lord said to him, Go thy way ; for
this man is to me a chosen instrument, to bear my
name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of
Israel : 16for I will shew him how many things he must
suffer for my name's sake. l7 And Ananias went his
way, and entered into the house ; and laying his hands
on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord hath sent me,
even Jesus who appeared unto thee on the way as thou
wast coming, that thou mayest recover thy sight, and
be filled with the Holy Spirit. 18 And straightway
there fell from his eyes as it were scales, and he
recovered his sight, and rose, and was baptized : 1D and
he took food and was strengthened.
10. Ananias. There is no evidence that any serious breach
between the Jews and the Christians at Damascus had preceded
Saul's arrival, or that his visit as Inquisitor had been prompted by the
Jewish community there — Ananias, though a Christian, had not
forfeited the respect of the Jews (xxii. 1 2) ; and this fact made him
a fit envoy to go among the Pharisees with whom Saul was probably
staying."- 11. Straight. When the houses of ancient cities perish, the lines
of the main streets usually remain unaltered. A long straight street
still runs through Damascus.
the house of Judas. It is worthy of note that, while it is a
peculiarity of the author to mention throughout the Acts the houses
in which Paul or Peter lodged (e.g. Simon the tanner, x. 43.;
Jason, xvii. 5 ; Priscilla and Aquila, xviii. 3; Titus Justus, xviii. 7);
this trait is equally found in the ' we '-sections (e.g. Lydia, xvi. 13;
a Johnston, p. 25 ; Farrar, i. 200.
K 2

132 THE ACTS. IX. 10-190
Philip, xxi. 9; Mnason, xxi. 16; and at Rome, xxviii. 16, 31), thus
furnishing evidence of common authorship.0-
he prayeth. Saul the Pharisee had, we may be sure, been always
punctilious in praying. But old words acquire new meanings. He
had never before prayed in the Christian sense, approaching the
Father through the Son.b
13. I have heard. The Christians at Jerusalem had doubtless
sent to warn their brethren at Damascus, and three days had now
elapsed since Saul's arrival.
How simply natural is Ananias' answer. The hand of the Inquisitor
would probably have fallen early on him, as one of the leaders among
the Christians. To go to him seemed like venturing into the lion's
den. So, like others whom God calls to duty, he tries to instruct Him,
as though He were ignorant about the work to which He sends His
servants. And, all the while, it was he who was ignorant, seeing only
the man with the evil reputation, while Christ saw the man as His
Divine grace was to fashion him.
thy saints. This is the first occurrence of this name for the
followers of Christ. They were men ' set apart ' and dedicated ;
separated from the world ; in it, but not of it.
15. a chosen instrument. Literally, 'a vessel of selection.'
Saul had not chosen Christ, but Christ had chosen him. He was as
a potter's vessel (Rom. ix. 21 seq.), moulded by the great Artificer
for a special work.
16. he must suffer. ' What wilt thou have me to do ? ' Saul had
asked (xxii. 20). The answer was, 'Thou shalt bear my cross.'
When the Lord ordained the Twelve to go out into the world, He
warned them that they would be persecuted (Matt. x. 16 seq.). He
laid before them a dark picture, and kept back nothing of the dark
ness. Now, in ordaining a new Apostle, He repeats the same ordina
tion charge. Saul was not to be drawn into the service of his Lord
under a misapprehension of what lay before him. And in his case,
the sentence illustrates the Divine principle that ' whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap ' (Gal. vi. 7). ' They stoned Stephen '
(vii. 59) ; ' they stoned Paul ' (xiv. 19). ' Many of the saints did I shut
up in prison ' (xxvi. 10) ; ' When they had laid many stripes upon him,
they cast him into prison ' (xvi. 23). ' Saul, yet breathing threatening
and slaughter against the disciples' (ix. 1); 'The Jews banded
together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would
* Harnack, Acts, p. 109.
0 Parker, i. 229 ; Vaughan, ii. 18; Alford, Homilies, p. 295.

THE ACTS. IX. lo-iga 133
neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul' (xxiii. 12). So God
teaches that life is not a series of unconnected accidents, but a great
and solemn stewardship, with penalties and rewards.a
17. Brother Saul. Saul had probably known Ananias byname,
as a man prominent among the Christians at Damascus. And now
the first word spoken to him by one, whose friends he had persecuted
and who might himself so soon have been his victim, was ' brother '.
If he had not been thus met in a loving and trustful spirit, an
irreparable injury might have been done. As it was, he learnt that he
was not a solitary outcast. If his new convictions meant the severance
of old alliances, new friends were ready to welcome him. What, he
might well feel, must be the forgiveness and the love of God, when
the forgiveness and love of man could be so tender ! b
that thou mayest recover. Not to upbraid thee for thy past,
not even to remind thee of it, but that thou mayest receive love and
mercy.0 18. as it were scales. There was no literal falling of anything ;
but a sensation, when the light once more smote upon his eyes, as
though scales had fallen off.d The large size of his handwriting
(Gal. vi. n), and his custom of employing an amanuensis, may point
to some permanent effect of the blinding light upon his sight. This
may have been among ' the marks of the Lord Jesus ' (Gal. vi. 1 7)
which he bore in his body.
The restoration of bodily sight was a symbol of the gift of spiritual
sight ; the scales, that seemed to fall from his eyes, of the thicker
scales that had fallen from his soul.6
he recovered his sight. He himself describes (xxii. 13) the
incident with touching simplicity — ' In that very hour I looked up on
him.' The last sight which he had seen, before midday turned to
night, had been the face of Jesus : the first, when darkness turned to
light, was the face of the 'brother ' sent by Him.f
was baptized. Perhaps in Abana or Pharpar. Thus to Saul
the rivers of Damascus were ' better than all the waters of Israel '
(2 Kings v. 12).
Thus not even in the case of one miraculously called by Christ
Himself was Christ's own appointed rite of admission to the Church
a A. T. Robertson, p. 57 ; Parker, i. 236 seq.
b Taylor, Paul, p. 49; F. B. Meyer, p. 60; Gurney, p. 177.
0 Blunt, i. 55 ; Macduff, Paul, p. 74.
a Olshausen, p. 478. 8 Benson, p. 199 ; Macduff, Paul, p. 75.
f Dykes, p. 309 ; Thomas, Acts, p. 149.

134 THE ACTS. IX. 10-19 a
dispensed with.0- Perhaps to no convert has it ever meant so much
as to St. Paul. It was, surely, out of the remembrance of this hour of
crisis that he wrote to the Corinthians (2 Cor. v. 17), 'If any man be
in Christ, he is a new creature ; the old things are passed away ;
behold, they are become new.'
There is a curious, but probably accidental, parallelism between
Luke's account of the appearance to Saul and the narrative of the
appearance to Heliodorus in 2 Mace. iii. Heliodorus, we are told,
having been impiously commissioned by Seleucus to seize the Temple
treasure, was confronted by ' a great apparition ', so that those with
him ' fainted, and were sore afraid '. And when Heliodorus ' had
fallen suddenly unto the ground, and great darkness had come over
him, his guards caught him up, and put him into a litter, and carried
him — him that had just now entered with a great train . . . himself
now brought to utter helplessness, manifestly made to recognize the
sovereignty of God. And so he, through the working of God,
speechless and bereft of all hope and deliverance, lay prostrate '. But,
on the intercession of Onias, he recovered, and the same apparition
as before stood beside him, saying, 'Since thou hast been scourged
from heaven, publish unto all men the sovereign majesty of God . . .
And he testified to all men the works of the great God which he had
beheld with his eyes ' (2 Mace. iii.).
ig6-22
The retirement to Arabia. When we compare St. Paul's words
to the Galatians (i. 17, 18), 'Immediately I conferred not with flesh
and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were
Apostles before me ; but I went away into Arabia ; and again I
returned unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to
Jerusalem,' &c, the natural inference is that Luke knew nothing of
the sojourn in Arabia. He was narrating events which happened
more than a generation before he wrote, and of which he had no
knowledge until many years after their occurrence. But the omission
to mention facts does not necessarily imply ignorance on his part.
For instance, Paul's speech to the Elders of Ephesus, which Luke
records in ch. xx, contains details of his life there which Luke has
not given in ch. xix. It is characteristic of Luke to pass over long
intervals of time and proceed straight to the next event which he
"¦ Cotterill, p. 344 ; Olshausen, p. 479 ; Alford, Homilies, p. 300.

THE ACTS. IX. 19 £-22 135
deems of importance in the history.0- The life of the Church, not
the inner life of any individual, was the subject of his book. He
does not profess to give all the influences which moulded Paul's
development. St. Paul himself did not regard this retirement as of
importance to others. In neither of the speeches in which he tells
the story of his conversion does he allude to it, but he mentions his
journey to Jerusalem in direct connexion with his conversion, without
a hint of any long interval (xxii. 16, 17 ; xxvi. 20). b And his motive
for mentioning his retirement to the Galatians was simply to prove
that he was absent from Jerusalem.
Whether Luke knew of the visit to Arabia or not, it can be fitted
into the narrative in the Acts, for the language is such as to imply
two several stays at Damascus. There is one period which he
describes as 'certain days' (ver. 19) — a vague term, but usually
indicating a short time (x. 48; xv. 36; xvi. 12; xxiv. 24; xxv. 13);
and another which he describes as 'many days' (ver. 23)— a term
equally vague, but usually indicating a time of some duration : it is,
for example, the phrase used in 1 Kings ii. 38 for a period of three
years. Nothing could be more natural, or more consonant with
Saul's character, than that ' straightway ' after his baptism he should
make a public profession of his faith in 'Jesus' (ver. 20): should
then go into retirement for a season, to recruit after the exhausting
strain and to think out his position : and on his return should
preach his developed faith, 'endued with power' and proving that
Jesus was 'the Christ' (ver. 22). If we insert the sojourn in Arabia
after ver. 21, we have an explanation of the otherwise unexplained
increase of power.0
What is meant by ' Arabia ' ? Some d think that the country
adjacent to Damascus on the east is meant. But it is more likely
that St. Paul went to the Sinaitic peninsula. The name occurs in
two passages only in his letters (Gal. i. 27 and iv. 25); it certainly
means this in the latter, and therefore probably means it in the former
also.6 It was a spot hallowed by great memories. There Moses had
seen the burning bush, and had communed with God on the moun
tain : there Elijah had stood at the entrance of the cave, and heard
the ' still, small voice '. There would be a peculiar fitness in the great
a Johnston, p. 24 seq. ; Ramsay, Paul, p. 380.
b Baumgarten, i. 208.
0 G. G. Findlay, Hastings' Diet., art. Paul the Apostle; Row, p. 97.
d e. g. Ramsay, Paul, p. 380.
8 Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 88 ; Howson, Scenes, p. 19.

136 THE ACTS. IX. 19^-22
missionary being prepared for his work where the great Lawgiver
and the great Prophet had been prepared before him.a
What was the motive for the retirement? That Saul did
not go as a missionary is shown by his own words (Gal. i. 16) — 'I
conferred not with flesh and blood, but went into Arabia.' In other
words, he went to take counsel with God and with his own thoughts.
He must have felt the imperative need of solitude and leisure to
think out the meaning and the issues of that which had befallen him.
He had believed his former creed intensely, and to surrender it must
have shaken his soul to its depths. His conversion had not been
brought about by a process of argument or by a gradual weakening
of old convictions, but by an irresistible revelation. He was a born
thinker : the new gift of the Spirit did not render unnecessary the
concentrated activity of his own brain. He was intellectually incap
able of reversing his whole life without weighing all that such reversal
meant. The new must be reconciled with the old. The Scriptures
must be studied under another Teacher than Gamaliel, from the
fresh standpoint suggested by the suffering and death of the Messiah.b
It is important to remember that he had had no such gradual training
in the mind of Jesus as the Twelve, who had been led step by step,
in half-conscious ways, to a new position. He was separated from
his past by a sudden wrench ; his conversion was the negation of his
previous life. They came to Christ through the medium of the Old
Testament. To him the Law and the Gospel were absolutely opposed.
For them the appearances after the Resurrection had restored the
faith in the Messiahship of Jesus which the Crucifixion had shaken ;
but they remained good Jews, loyal to the Law. He had been a
persecutor because he saw clearly the irreconcilable opposition
between Jewish thought and a crucified Messiah ; and when he had
learnt that the Crucified was the Messiah, the one thing impossible
for him was to set up again what the grace of God had overthrown.0
What was the duration of the retirement? The 'three
years' of Gal. i. 18 throws no light on this point, since it refers, not
to his stay in Arabia, but to the interval before his return to Jerusalem.
And the expression itself may, according to the Jewish method of
reckoning, mean either three whole years or one year with portions
of two. We know that he was ' many days ' in Damascus, but this
phrase also is vague, and the after-history shows that Paul was never
a Rawlinson, p. 135 seq. ; F. B. Meyer, p. 62 ; Stalker, p. 71.
b Stalker, p. 69 ; L. Merivale, p. 101 ; McGiffert, p. 161 ; Rawlinson, p. 130.
c Lindsay, ii. 28; Pfleiderer, Primitive, p. 94; Sabatier, p. 68.

THE ACTS. IX. 19^-22 137
able to work long in any city where the Jews were as numerous
as they were in Damascus. Hence the probability is that the greater
part of the time, whatever its duration may have been, was passed in
Arabian
196 And he was with the disciples who were at
Damascus certain days. 20 And straightway he began
in the synagogues to proclaim Jesus as the Son of
God. 21 And all that heard him were amazed, and
said, Is not this he that made havock in Jerusalem of
them who call on this name, and came hither for this
intent) that he might bring them bound to the chief
priests ? 22 But Saul was more and more endued with
power, and confounded the Jews who dwelt at Damas
cus, proving that this was the Christ.
20. straightway. Retirement might be necessary ; but first, at
once, he would publicly declare that his life hitherto had been a
great mistake. No false shame should keep him silent on that point.
In the very synagogue where he had meant to arrest those who
believed in Jesus, he would proclaim his own belief in Jesus. He
would not preach ; he would not discuss — there must be thought and
reflection before he could do that : but he would at once proclaim
the fundamental fact of his conversion.
as the Son of God. Peter in his discourses had laid stress on
the Resurrection of Jesus. That was the glad thought in the minds
of the first disciples. But the Divinity of Jesus was the conviction
which the vision on the road had flashed upon the mind of Saul.
21. Is not this he? The old proverb, 'Is Saul also among the
prophets?' (1 Sam. x. 12) was revived with a new meaning.1' The
Jews of Damascus were not singular in being more concerned about
the inconsistency of the preacher than about the truth of his
message.0 22. endued with power. If the visit to Arabia is to be inter
polated here, Saul had now returned equipped by solitude and study
for the work of teaching. And he was at Damascus what Stephen
had been at Jerusalem. The words seem meant to recall vi. 8 and 10 ;
a Weizsacker, i. 95 ; Gilbert, p. 43.
b Arnot, p. 233. c Rawlinson, p. 108.

138 THE ACTS. IX. 19^-22
' Stephen full of grace and power ' ; ' They were not able to with
stand the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spake.' Saul's experi
ence as a Pharisee would help him. Knowing what were the strong
holds of Jewish prejudice, he would be able to anticipate and meet
every objection." 23-25
23 And when many days had passed, the Jews took
counsel together to kill him : 2i but their plot became
known to Saul. And they also watched the gates day
and night that they might kill him : 2S but his disciples
took him and let him down by night over the wall,
lowering him in a basket.
23. took counsel. Thus early were the words fulfilled, ' I will
show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake'
(ver. 16). He may perhaps have undergone at this time one of
those five Jewish scourgings of which he wrote later (2 Cor. xi. 24).
The same murderous spirit rose against him as had risen in himself
against Stephen. In these adversaries he saw his former self, and by
that self could measure their fury.0 But they had an additional
cause of resentment : they regarded him as the worst of apostates —
as one who had not only forsaken the faith of his fathers, but
betrayed the trust reposed in him by the high priest. No wonder
that in the Jewish quarter his life was not safe.0
24. their plot became known. Saul, never careless of his life,
though always ready, if need be, to risk it, resolved to flee. But it
was no private plot, hatched by irresponsible persons. The Governor
was privy to it, the gates were watched, and escape was not easy.d
they also watched the gates. St. Paul tells us (2 Cor. xi. 32)
that the Ethnarch under Aretas tried to seize him. The statement is
surprising, since Syria had long before this date become a Roman
province. But the series of Damascene coins bearing the heads of
Roman Emperors is found to be interrupted in the reigns of Caligula
and Claudius, a. d. 37-54. Aretas, king of Petra, who defeated his
son-in-law, Herod Agrippa, in a. d. 34, must have obtained tem-
1 Eadie, p. 16. b Eadie, p. 20. '
0 Bungener, p. 49 ; J. Robertson, p. 73 ; Hausrath, iii. 71.
a Iverach, p. 32.

THE ACTS. IX. 23-25 139
porary possession of Damascus. He died a. d. 40, about three years
after this time."-
It is possible that the escape from Damascus, which Luke here
places immediately after Saul's conversion, really took place later in
the period of missionary activity, of which we know nothing beyond
the brief statement of Gal. i. 22-4, that he 'came into the regions
of Syria and Cilicia'. Of that work Luke tells us nothing, though
many of the experiences alluded to in 2 Cor. xi. 23 seq. probably
belonged to it.b
25. his disciples. This unique expression is evidence of Saul's
strong personal influence. The very men whom he had come to
bind and imprison now save his life.0
over the wall. They adopt the course which the wit of a woman
had devised in the olden time (Joshua ii. I5).J
in a basket. This night escape in a basket remained with him
as a shameful memory (2 Cor. xi. 33). From the fact that he men
tions it among his ' weaknesses ' it might be thought that he felt some
misgiving whether he had not shunned suffering for Christ's sake.
But he probably meant only that the humiliating fashion in which he
had to leave the scene of his first ministry was evidence of his weak
ness. He had laboured without result, and had had to flee for his
life.6
26-30
26 And when he was come to Jerusalem, he essayed
to join himself to the disciples : and they were all
afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.
27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the
Apostles, and told them how he had seen the Lord on
the way, and had talked with him, and how at Damascus
he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 And
he was with them going in and going out at Jerusalem,
29 preaching boldly in the name of the Lord : and he
spake and disputed against the Hellenists; but they
sought to kill him. 30 But when the brethren knew it,
a Godet, p. 94; McGiffert, p. 64 ; C. H. Turner, Hastings' Diet., art. Chronology
of N.T.
b Bacon, p. 89. " Pask, p. 83. d Eadie, p. 23.
e Hausrath, iii. 72 ; Iverach, p. 32.

Ho THE ACTS. IX. 26-30
they took him down to Caesarea, and sent him away
to Tarsus.
26. when he was come. It must have been a memorable journey
for Saul. What a crowd of memories would throng upon him as he
passed the spot where the Lord had appeared to him ! And as he
neared the capital, how the contrast between the persecuting
Pharisee and the fugitive disciple would come home to him ! Would
he be called to account for the way in which he had failed to execute
the high priest's commission ? How would his old master Gamaliel,
and the friends whose belief he had abandoned, receive him ? And
the Christians, whose Gospel he had embraced — would they be able
to forget that he was the Saul who had approved of Stephen's murder
and taken the leading part in the persecution which followed ?a
they were all afraid of him. In his hurried departure, he
seems to have brought no letter of commendation from the Chris
tians of Damascus.1" If he had not anticipated the possibility of
this attitude, it must have been a bitter disappointment to him,
coming fresh from the persecution of the Jews, to find himself
repulsed by the Brethren. His bold profession of Christianity at
Damascus might at least, he would feel, have spared him this ! °
not believing. Though Luke does not say ' not knowing ', their
suspicion is only intelligible on the assumption of imperfect know
ledge ; and none of the suggested explanations of their ignorance
are wholly satisfactory. Ordinarily there was constant communica
tion between Jerusalem and Damascus ; but it is possible that this
had been somewhat interrupted during the occupation of the latter
city by Aretas. The disciples must have heard at least a rumour of
his conversion, but perhaps knew nothing of his preaching ; and his
absence in Arabia and his long silence did not make so improbable
a story more credible. Further, the Jewish authorities, angry at his
defection, may have spread reports discrediting the sincerity of his
conversion. Thus the disciples may have thought that he had
returned to his former faith and had some sinister motive in seeking
to join them — a desire to discover their meeting-places and who
belonged to their community."1
St. Paul says (Gal. i. 18) that his object in going to Jerusalem was
a Farrar, i. 229 ; J. Robertson, p. 74. b Eadie, p. 25 ; Thomas, Acts, p. 159.
c H. Blunt, Paul, i. 87 ; Bungener, p. 50.
d Plumptre, Acts ; Lechler, p. 74; Barnes, Scenes, p. 118; Kitto, p. 157;
Renan, p. 175.

THE ACTS. IX. 26-30 141
' to visit Peter '. His reasons for wishing to see him may be conjec
tured : (i) He must often have seen Peter, and had probably heard
him teach. And now he may have felt drawn to him by a special
sympathy. Had not Peter been forgiven and restored, after dis
owning his Lord ? And had not he himself, after persecuting his
Lord, been pardoned and placed among His chosen leaders ?a
(ii) It was natural that he should wish to hear from one who had
been an eyewitness from the beginning more than he yet knew of
the life and sayings of Jesus. No Gospels were yet written, and he
must have had much to learn about the historical facts of Christianity.
True, he says (Gal. i. 11, 22) that he did not receive his Gospel from
men, but directly from Christ ; but by ' his Gospel ' he did not mean
the details of Jesus' life, but his own manner of presenting the
truth. God does not work unnecessary miracles, or communicate
by supernatural means that which can be acquired without such aid.
St. Paul learnt historical facts by questioning those who were the
authorized witnesses ; his knowledge of the essential principles of
Christianity he received from no man, but from the Holy Spirit.b
(iii) But perhaps his main object was to discuss with the recognized
leader of the Church his own commission to the Gentiles, which had
been so clearly revealed to him, though many years were to elapse
before he realized its full meaning. However strongly he felt that
he must be independent and shape his course without human help,
he might naturally wish to come into touch with the leaders of
the Church and learn their attitude towards his mission. Thus this
interview with Saul may, by suggesting broader views of Christianity
to Peter, have served to prepare him in some degree for the vision at
Joppa.0 27. But Barnabas. His readiness, not only to believe in, but to
vouch for, Saul's sincerity suggests a previous friendship. They may
have known each other at Tarsus before either became a Christian.
Cyprus and Cilicia were closely connected by commerce. What is
more likely than that the Cyprian, possessed of landed property and
a man of ability, should be sent to study at the neighbouring Univer
sity of Tarsus ? Thus the two youths, the Levite and the Pharisee,
both Hellenists, but both loyal to the hereditary faith, may well
have formed a friendship.^
took him. He introduced him to Peter, who became his host
a Kitto, p. 155. b Baring-Gould, p. 103; Pressensi, p. 88; Schaff, i. 281,
c YVeizsacker, i. 14 ; J. Robertson, p. 98; McGiffert, p. 167.
d Howson, Companions, p. 4 ; Plumplre, Acts, p. 33.

142 THE ACTS. IX. 26-30
for 'fifteen days' (Gal. i. 18). A Galilean fisherman was not likely
to have a house of his own in Jerusalem, and Peter was probably
making his home with Mark's mother, who was a cousin of Barnabas
(Col. iv. 10). It will be remembered that he went straight to her
house on his liberation from prison (xii. 12).°-
to the Apostles. This is misleading in the light of Gal. i. 18, 19,
Where St. Paul says that he saw only Peter and James, the Lord's
brother. Some of the Twelve may have been absent among ' the
Churches in Judaea' (Gal. i. 22). But the whole tone of Gal. i
suggests that Saul did not wish to meet the Twelve as though he
needed consecration from them, but only to visit Peter as a brother
Apostle.b When he told Peter and James of the vision of Jesus at
his conversion, we can imagine Peter saying, ' He appeared to me
too on the day that He rose ' ; and James, ' And to me too after
wards.' °
29. preaching boldly. There are grave difficulties in the way. of
reconciling this account with Paul's own words in ' Galatians ' ; and
where there are discrepancies between the Acts and the Letters,
Paul's version must prima facie rank as of superior authority. Taking
the narrative as Luke gives it, Saul went, not to the Hebrews, but
to the Hellenists ; perhaps because he, like Stephen, felt that as
a Hellenist himself he understood them best ; or he may have hoped
that they would be more ready to listen to him, since he had, like
them, taken part in Stephen's death. But the sight of ' this rene
gade ', as they would term him, preaching the very doctrine which
he had helped them to crush, goaded them to fury.d
sought to kill him. The history of Stephen was repeated.
They could not answer his arguments, but they could kill him.
And Saul had only to recall how he himself had felt three years
before, to understand the passion which he roused.e
The vision recorded in xxii. 17 seq. is generally referred to this
time. If it occurred now, Saul had gone to the Temple, perplexed
and depressed. He had wished to prove his zeal as a disciple in the
very city where his zeal as a persecutor had been most conspicuous.
But the Hellenists of Jerusalem had rejected him and sought to kill
him, as the Jews of Damascus had done. Yet his Lord had bidden
him preach, and had promised to use him for great ends. What did
it all mean ? In this state of mind, he had taken his trouble, like
a Farrar, i. 236 ; Johnston, p. 29. b Bungener, p. 51.
c Swete, p. 88. d Eadie, p. 26; L. Merivale, p. 133; Bungener, p. 52,
0 Arnot, p. 234; F. B. Meyer, p. 69.

THE ACTS. IX. 26-30 143
Hezekiah (2 Kings xiv. i4\ to the Temple, to 'spread it before the
Lord'. And in a vision his Lord graciously disclosed to him a
clearer insight into the work for which he was destined. ' Depart ;
for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.'
Professor Ramsay, however, thinks that this vision took place at
Saul's next departure from Jerusalem (xii. 25). For Luke here dis
tinctly states that he left the city in consequence of a plot against his
life. And his definite ministry to the Gentiles did not begin till many
years later — immediately after his next visit to Jerusalem. Though
in the interval he did preach to Gentiles (see on verse 30) he appears
to have had no clear idea as to the Divine purpose with regard to
their conversion. He knew that he was called to minister to them ;
but not till later did he realize that Christianity was destined to
break down the partition wall between Jew and Gentile.a
But the generally accepted view is preferable. The natural mean
ing of St. Paul's Own words (Gal. i. 18), 'when I returned to Jeru
salem,' is ' when I returned after the experiences at Damascus which
I have just related', and not 'when I returned many years after
wards '. And while. he might naturally expect his testimony to appeal
to the Jews at a time when the memory of his former zeal was still
fresh, he could scarcely have expected this some twelve years later,
after his complete failure on this occasion.1-1 '
30. when the brethren knew it. The Church was only just
recovering from the shock of one persecution, and the disciples did
not care to face another. Apparently they were now tolerated —
Peter, James, and Barnabas seem to have been safe. But the
Jewish authorities were not likely to allow the propaganda of a
prominent Rabbi, who was a former leader of their own party.0
to Caesarea. Not the inland ' Caesarea Philippi ' of the Gospels,
but ' Caesarea Sebaste ', the seaport. The natural inference is that
he went by sea to Tarsus ; but his own words (Gal. i. 21), ' Then came
I into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,' would suggest that he went
by land, preaching perhaps at Tyre, where we hear later of disciples
(xxi. 2), and at Sidon, where later he had friends (xxvii. 3). It is,
however, possible that he went by sea to Tarsus, and then evan
gelized Cilicia and Syria ; and since his work was chiefly in Syria,
he names it first.d His entire reticence about his home has been
a Ramsay, Paul, p. 60 seq.; Taylor, Paul, p. 59; Dykes, p. 321; Baring-
Gould, p. 104 ; J. Robertson, p. 95.
b Johnston, p. 31. c Haweis, p. 61 ; Johnston, p. 30.
J Lechler, p. 77 ; Gilbert, p. 52.

144 THE ACTS. IX. 26-30
regarded a as a proof of the final disowning of him by his relations,
which followed his avowal of Christianity, and which would give
special significance to his words (Phil. iii. 8), ' for whom I suffered
the loss of all things.' But, on the other hand, it may be urged that,
if his family had been hostile, he would not have been likely to stay
so long in the district.13
Saul's life for the next eight years is wrapt in obscurity. In the
main, it was probably a time of waiting — of that waiting which is
often a providential discipline for those to whom exceptional work
has been appointed.0 But something may safely be inferred as to
the manner in which he was occupied : (i) It must have been
a time of study. He must have felt the need of further thinking out
the relation of the Christian faith to the old dispensation. We see
the result in the matured thought of his Epistles. And when, if not
now, did he, who had received an essentially Hebrew training under
Gamaliel, acquire his intimate knowledge of the LXX version, from
which he almost invariably quotes ? d (ii) It was a time of evan
gelistic work — those powers, which were afterwards to be displayed on
a wider field, were now trained and developed. We might be sure
of this from what we know of the man. It is inconceivable that he
did not begin the mission of his life till years later. But there is
evidence of the fact. We read (xv. 41) that Paul 'went through
Syria and Cilicia, confirming the Churches '. These must have been
founded by him, since he tells us (Rom. xv. 20) that it was his
principle not to build on another man's foundation. And it is not
easy to suggest any time but this in which he could have worked in
those parts. That they were Gentile Churches is shown by the
circular letter of the conference being addressed (xv. 23) to the
Gentile brethren in Syria and Cilicia. Further, this conclusion is
confirmed by the fact that in his first missionary journey, after visit
ing Cyprus, Barnabas' native land, he did not visit his own native
country ; which he would surely have done, if it had not been already
evangelized.e On the discrepancies between the above section and
Galatians, Ch. i. It is clear that Luke's information about the
years which followed Saul's conversion was very incomplete. The
evidence may not be conclusive, so long as the items are regarded
a e. g. by F. B. Meyer, p. 21.
'' G. G. Findlay, Hastings' Diet., art. Paul the Apostle.
0 Stalker, p. 91. ,] Ropes, p. 112 ; T. Zahn, Expositor, vi. viii. 234.
c Cone, p. 78 ; Lechler, p. 83 ; Iverach, p. 34; Gilbert, p. 55 ; Plnmptre, p. 29.

THE ACTS. IX. 26-30 145
separately, but their cumulative force is convincing, (i) He is
silent (ver. 19) about the retirement to Arabia, and curtails the three
years between the conversion and the visit to Jerusalem. a (ii) ' The
Apostles' (ver. 27) would naturally mean the Twelve. No one would
infer that Saul saw only two (Gal. i. 19). Though there is no
absolute contradiction, it is inconceivable that Luke knew the exact
circumstances.0 (iii) 'He was with them going in and going out'
(ver. 28) implies intimate fellowship with the Apostles. But the
account in ' Galatians ' is very different ; and Paul, in his anxiety to
show how little he had to do with them, confirms his statement with
a solemn asseveration, 'Behold, before God I lie not' (Gal. i. 20).0
(iv) The natural inference from verse 29 is that Saul had gone to
Jerusalem to preach the Gospel, and not exclusively to ' visit Peter '
(Gal. i. 18). Yet we learn (Gal. i. 22) that he had so little oppor
tunity of making acquaintance with the Christian community in,
and round, Jerusalem that he was ' still unknown by face unto the
Churches of Judaea 'A (v) The animosity of the Hellenists and their
plot to murder him suggest a much longer stay than ' fifteen days '
(Gal. i. 19). And though the 'fifteen days' may conceivably be in
terpreted to mean the length of his stay with Peter and not of his
sojourn in Jerusalem, the whole argument of ' Galatians ' is against
such an interpretation.
These discrepancies involve no charge of bad faith against Luke.
The most natural explanation is that he and St. Paul are referring to
different occasions. Luke had received an account, written or oral,
of Paul's preaching at Jerusalem ; and, writing at least a quarter of
a century later, ascribed to the time of the first visit to the city what
really took place at the second. On the other hand, it may be that
there is some error on St. Paul's part. Whereas it has been too much
the practice of English commentators, when the Acts and the Epistles
conflict, to ignore the discrepancy and accept both accounts as
accurate, ' if only we knew all the circumstances,' German commen
tators have usually rejected the Acts as untrustworthy, if its state
ments are in opposition to Paul's own words in his letters. But the
Epistle to the Galatians was written some seventeen to twenty years
after his conversion, and St. Paul's memory may not have been
a Zeller, i. 300. b Lange, Acts ; Gilbert, p. 49.
c Baur, i. 1 10.
d Baur, i. in ; McGiffert, p. 165 ; G. G. Findlay, Hastings' Diet, art. Paul the
Apostle. 1S29 L

146 THE ACTS. IX. 26-30
infallible. Luke too may have had access to sources much nearer
in date to the occurrences." ix. 31 -xi. 18 and xii
These ' Acts of Peter ' were probably derived by Luke from Mark,
whose mother's house appears to have been Peter's home at Jeru
salem, and who is said to have later travelled with Peter as his
interpreter. We know that he and Luke were together at Rome
during Paul's imprisonment (Col. iv. 10, 14). b
ix. 31-43
It is impossible to fix with any certainty the date of these occur
rences. They may have taken place soon after Peter's return from
Samaria (viii. 25), and during Saul's sojourn in Arabia. Otherwise
we should expect to find a Christian Church in Caesarea, since
Philip went there at that time (viii. 40). The fact that Saul's visit
to Jerusalem is recorded earlier may be due to Luke's wish to com
plete the story of his conversion before resuming the history of
Peter.0 Luke always chooses his subjects with a definite object, and Peter's
tour of visitation appears to be narrated in order to explain how he
came to be at Joppa and in the neighbourhood of Caesarea, thus
leading up to the account of the conversion of Cornelius, which he
felt to be an important point in the history of the development of
the Church. d
31-35
31 So the Church throughout all Judaea and Galilee
and Samaria had peace, being builded up, and walking
in the fear of the Lord ; and was filled with the comfort
of the Holy Spirit. 32 And it came to pass as Peter
went about throughout all quarters, he came down also
to the saints who dwelt at Lydda. 33And he found
there a certain man named Aeneas, for eight years
bedridden, being paralytic. 34 And Peter said to him,
Aeneas, Jesus the Christ healeth thee : rise, and make
a Giles, p. 322. b Chase, p. 21.
c Olshausen, p. 483; Rendall, Acts, p. 25. a Dykes, p. 330.

THE ACTS. IX. 31-35 147
for thyself thy bed. And straightway he rose. M And
all who dwelt at Lydda and in the Sharon saw him, and
they turned to the Lord.
31. the Church. Earlier in the book (v. n) the word means the
Christian community in Jerusalem. By this time there were churches
in Judaea (Gal. i. 7), which are here collectively called ' the Church ', a
though these local congregations were perhaps detached members of
the Church at Jerusalem rather than separate organizations.
Galilee. It is strange that Galilee, which in the Synoptic Gospels
is the chief scene of Jesus' ministry, should be mentioned in the Acts
here only, and never by St. Paul in his letters, as a centre of Christian
life. But in some passages, where we should expect Galilee to be
mentioned, it may be included in ' Judaea '. b
had peace. The context seems at first sight to suggest that
Luke connected this ' peace ' with the departure of Saul. But this
verse belongs, not to what precedes, but to what follows, being intro
ductory to the account of Peter's work. The cause of the peace is
to be found elsewhere, in events that were happening in the pagan
world. In a. d. 39 Caligula ordered his statue to be set up in the
Temple at Jerusalem, and the anger of the Jews against him diverted
their attention from the Christians. When, after his murder and the
accession of Claudius, Herod Agrippa became king, the persecution
was at once resumed.0
32. Lydda, see on viii. 40. Mnason (xxi. 16) may have lived at
Lydda, which would be a convenient stopping-place on the two
days' journey from Caesarea to Jerusalem. If he was Luke's
informant for this narrative, it may account for his name being
recorded.d 33. Aeneas. The name is a corrupt form of the classical Aeneas,
and it is interesting to remember that this coast was the scene of
many old Greek legends, such as that of Perseus and Andromeda.8
It is found as the name of a Jew in Josephus f ; but the description
of him as ' a certain man ' suggests that he was not a Christian.
34. Jesus the Christ healeth thee. This, like the following
miracle, is obviously moulded on a miracle of Jesus (Matt. ix. 6) — is
a Simcox, p. 58. ° Geikie, p. 7 ; J. Thomas, p. 73 ; Harnack, Acts, p. 73.
c J. Robertson, p. 93 ; Farrar, i. 243 ; Norris, p. 49 ; Stokes, ii. 94.
d Ramsay, Expositor, April, 1909. e Benson, p. 229.
' Antiq. XIV. ii. 22.
L 2

148 THE ACTS. IX. 31-35
an intentional imitation, with significant differences.0- Peter takes no
part of the honour to himself; he does not say in his own name to
the paralytic the imperial ' Rise ', as Jesus did. But what a vivid belief
these early Christians had ! It required no small faith in the reality
of the Lord's presence and of His power to heal, to say ' Rise ' to
a man who had been bedridden for eight years. b
make for thyself thy bed. The man on whom Christ performed
His miracle was out of his house, and the command, ' Take up thy bed
and go unto thy house ' was to show the completeness of the cure.
The command here is given with the same object, but the man was
in his house bedridden, and he is told to fold up his bedding and
put it away.0
35. the Sharon. The coast-plain between Joppa and Carmel.
they turned to the Lord. If Philip had prepared the soil, there
may have been many at Lydda who were inclined, before Peter's visit,
to accept Jesus as the Messiah. 36-43
30 Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple called
Tabitha (the same as the Greek name Dorcas) : this
woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which
she did. 37 And it came to pass in those days that she
fell sick and died : and when they had washed her, they
laid her in an upper chamber. 38 And as Lydda was
nigh to Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was
there, sent two men to him, entreating him, Delay not
to come on to us. L9 And Peter rose and went with them.
And when he was come, they brought him into the
upper chamber : and all the widows stood by him
weeping, and displaying tunics and cloaks which Dorcas
was accustomed to make while she was with them.
40 But Peter, putting them all forth, kneeled down and
prayed ; and turning to the body he said, Tabitha, rise.
And she opened her eyes ; and when she saw Peter, she
sat up. n And he gave her his hand, and raised her up ;
a Maclaren, i. 288. " Burrell, p. 125. c Kitto, p. 18.

THE ACTS. IX. 36-43 149
and calling the saints and widows, he presented her
alive. 42 And it became known throughout all Joppa!
and many believed on the Lord. 4:) And it came to
pass that he abode many days in Joppa with one
Simon, a tanner.
36. Joppa, the port of Jerusalem.
a certain disciple. The feminine form here employed is nowhere
found in classical Greek ; and the word is not found because the
thing was not known. Women were the toys or the slaves of men
until the Gospel made them equals.a
Tabitha. This Aramaic word, like its Greek equivalent Dorcas,
means ' Gazelle '. Since nothing is said of a husband or of widow
hood, she was probably unmarried. Though in a position to give
alms, she was not content with this, but actively worked for others.
Thus she is not only the first woman mentioned by name in the
Christian Church, but in her first came the recognition of woman's
work. While Jesus was on earth, woman had found her sphere in
ministering to His needs (Luke viii. 3) : now that He was no longer
visibly present, she found it in ministering to Him in the persons of
His poor.b
38. nigh. About 12 miles.
sent two men. The messengers must have been sent before
the death took place. No Apostle had yet raised the dead, so that
no hope of that kind could be the reason for summoning Peter. But
they had heard of the cure of Aeneas, and they hoped that Peter
might again exercise the same healing power. Hence they must
have been keenly disappointed when Dorcas died before his arrival.0
Ramsay thinks (1 that Dorcas was not really dead, though the
disciples may have believed her to be so ; and that the account as
we have it has legendary accretions. It may be so. A real case of
resurrection from death would have created an excitement throughout
the country of which the narrative gives no evidence. We are told
of the deep impression caused by the raising of Lazarus (John xii. 9,
18, 19), but nothing of the kind is mentioned here.
As an illustration of the rapidity with which accretions grew round
a J. C. Jones, p. 221.
b Arnot, p. 239; Baumgarten, i. 254; V. H. Stanton, Hastings' Diet., art.
Dorcas ; Dykes, p. 339.
c West, p. 297. d Expositor, April, 1909.

150 THE ACTS. IX. 36-43
the early Christian narratives, it may be pointed out that, whereas
Mark (xi. 20) says that the disciples did not notice the withering of
the fig-tree till the following day, Matthew (xxi. 19) enhances the
marvel by saying that the withering took place at once, and was
immediately noticed by the disciples. So too the dumb demoniac
of Luke (xi. 14) becomes blind also in Matthew (xii. 22). And the
' about four thousand ' of Mark (viii. 9) becomes in Matthew (xv. 38)
'four thousand men, besides women and children.' a
But if this narrative has received some embellishment from legend,
we may none the less, as in the subsequent story of Peter's liberation
from prison (xii. 6 seq.), admit the beauty and instruction which are
to be found in the form in which Luke has given it.
39. all the 'widows. Philip was one of the Seven, the reason
for whose appointment was the care of the needy widows. It looks
as if, in organizing the Christian society at Joppa, he had remembered
his own special work.11
was accustomed to make. Dorcas, being dead, yet speaketh.
Societies, formed to continue her work, bear her name.0
40. putting them all forth. Evidently he recalled the scene at
the raising of Jairus' daughter, of which he had been one of the three
privileged spectators (Mark v. 37) ; and, consciously or unconsciously,
followed the example which to him was so sacred. Since Luke's
information was probably derived from Peter through Mark, it is
interesting to note that the account tallies more closely with the
narrative of Jesus' miracle as given in Mark's Gospel, which is usually
thought to be derived from Peter, than as given in Luke's. In both
cases the room was crowded with mourners ; and in both the worker
required the absence of all distraction, and put them forth. Some
battles must be fought in public : others, and the sternest of all, in
solitude. ll
and prayed. As the Old Testament prophet had done in a like
case (1 Kings xvii. 20). There was nothing here of the self-confident
wonder-worker, but only a humble man, putting himself in the hands
of his Divine Master.13
and turning to the body. Now was the supreme test of his
faith. Only splendid faith, or insanity, could say to a lifeless corpse,
' Rise.'

a Plummer, St. Matthew, pp. 291, 175, 220. b Parker, i. 243.
c Arnot, p. 242. d Birks, p. 194 ; Vaughan, ii. 45 ; Maclaren, i,
* Burrell, p. 129.

THE ACTS. IX. 36-43 151
Tabitha, rise. Mark gives in his Gospel (v. 41) the Aramaic
words employed by Jesus, ' Talitha, cumi.' If Peter spoke in
Aramaic, he used the identical words, with the exception of a single
letter, 'Tabitha, cumi.'
41. gave her his hand. Jesus had taken the damsel by the
hand before He spoke the word of power. Peter waited till Dorcas
had shown signs of life by sitting up. He did not use any act which
might suggest power on his own part to restore the dead. Both in
what he did, and in what he did not do, there is a marked difference
between the Master's original and the servant's copy.a
It is instructive to compare the account of this miracle with that
of the restoration of Eutychus by St. Paul (xx. 10). Peter, in a sudden
emergency, fell back on his Lord's example. Paul, not having seen
the miracle of Jesus, recalled the story of the old Prophet (1 Kings
xvii. 21), with which he had been familiar from his boyhood. h
43. many days. Probably he found a promising field open for
his labours as a result of this miracle.
a tanner. The contact with unclean hides made the Jews regard
this trade with abhorrence. It was a ground for divorce, if a Jewess
discovered after marriage that her husband was a tanner. It was
a saying of the Rabbis, ' It is impossible for the world to do without
tanners ; but woe to him who is a tanner.' That Peter should lodge
with such a man shows that he must already have abandoned some
thing of Jewish scrupulosity. The revelation that in the new Kingdom
God had made all things clean fitly came to him in a tanner's house.
The lodging with the tanner was a step on the road to the eating
with the Gentile. So it is that in the Providence of God the things
that seem to us impossible to-day become the commonplaces of
to-morrow.0
CHAPTER X
This chapter marks a fresh advance in the development of
Christianity. The chief practical question in its early years was
the terms on which the Gentiles were to be admitted to the Church.
Up to this time the Apostles had limited their ministry to the
circumcised. Whether the conversion of the Ethiopian by the
Evangelist Philip preceded that of Cornelius is doubtful. Though
- Dodd, p. 135 ; Maclaren, i. 293. b Birks, p. 196.
0 Farrar, i. 264; Benson, p. 232; Parker, i. 251.

152 THE ACTS. X
it is narrated earlier, the order of events in the first ten chapters is
full of uncertainty. But if it occurred earlier, it was probably not
widely known, and had not the influence of this conversion upon
the opinion of the Church. a 1-8
1 Now a certain man in Caesarea, Cornelius by name,
a centurion of the Italian cohort, — z a devout man, and
one that feared God with all his house, who gave large
alms to the people, and prayed to God continually—
3 saw in a vision plainly, as it were about the ninth
hour of the day, an angel of God coming in to him, and
saying to him, Cornelius. 4 And he, fastening his eyes
upon him and being affrighted, said, What is it, sir ?
And he said to him, Thy prayers and thine alms are
gone up for a memorial before God. 6 And now send
men to Joppa and fetch one Simon, who is surnamed
Peter ; 6 he is lodging with one Simon a tanner, whose
house is by the sea shore. 7 And when the angel who
spake to him had departed, he called two of his house
hold servants, and a devout soldier of them that were
in constant attendance on him ; 8 and having fully
instructed them sent them to Joppa.
i. Caesarea. The contrasts are instructive — Joppa, the oldest
town in Palestine, and the modern Caesarea, built by Herod and
named Sebaste after Augustus ; the Galilean fisherman, lodging with
a tanner, and the Roman officer, quartered at the seat of govern
ment ; a member of the subject race, whom the Romans despised,
and a representative of that army which, as the emblem of worldly
power, was loathed by every true Jew.13
Cornelius. He may have been a scion of the noble Cornelian
house ; or, since Sulla enfranchised ten thousand slaves and gave
them all the name of Cornelius, a descendant of some freedman of
that family. Apparently he was not at Caesarea merely for a short
time on military duty, but was resident there, since his kinsfolk were
a Thomas, Ads ; Chase, p. 68. b Maclaren, i. 296 seq,

THE ACTS. X. 1-8 153
with him (ver. 24, but see note there) ; and from his large almsgiving
he seems to have been a man of means.a
a centurion. Five centurions are mentioned in the New Testa
ment, and they leave on the mind a favourable impression of the
high character of Roman officers. The centurion of Capernaum
showed a faith which moved Jesus to wonder (Luke vii. 9). The
temper of the centurion at the Crucifixion (Luke xxiii. 47) was in
marked contrast with that of the crowd round the Cross. The
centurion in the castle of Antonia (xxiii. 17) showed a courteous
readiness to oblige his prisoner. Julius behaved to Paul on the
voyage with a kindness that was more than courtesy (xxvii. 3, 43).
And Cornelius was a man whose life might put to shame many
professing Christians, as was fitting in one who not only was the
captain of a hundred Roman soldiers, but was destined to be the
leader of many millions gathered out of all nations. b
Italian cohort. Special names were not given to legionary
cohorts, so that this cohort was not attached to a legion. It was
probably formed of Italian volunteers, who were willing to serve in
any part of the Empire.0 An epitaph, circa a.d. 70, found at
Carnuntum on the Danube, commemorates one Proculus, a soldier
of the Second Italian Cohort, engaged on detached service from the
Syrian army. Thus there may well have been an Italian cohort in
Syria thirty years earlier.11 It was important that the Procurator
should have at Caesarea troops whose loyalty he could trust, and not
be entirely dependent on levies raised in the province.
2. a devout man. Some have thought that he was a proselyte,
but there is no trace of this, and a Roman officer could scarcely have
openly professed a religion which set aside all the other religions and
forms of worship which prevailed in the Empire.6 Moreover, we
hear of the admission of proselytes to the Church long before (vi. 5).
Cornelius was one of those Gentiles who were attracted by the
monotheism and pure morality of the Jews and often attended their
synagogues, but were not proselytes in a strict sense. (The word is
used loosely in xiii. 43, for it obviously means the same men who are
described in xiii. 16 and 26 as those 'that fear God'.f) Luke
nowhere says that he was more than a good and devout man whom
God was leading, through his obedience as a soldier, his care for the
a J. Thomas, p. 56.
u Ilowson, Companions, -p. i6Sseq. ; Gumey, p. 183.
c Buss, p. 344. d Ramsay, Expositor, v. iv. 124.
° Giles, p. 211. ' F. C. Porter, Hastings' Did., art. Proselyte.

154 THE ACTS. X. 1-8
poor, and his groping after light, to fuller knowledge." At the same
time, he may have heard something of the Christian teaching of
Philip (ix. 40) ; and the remarkable fullness of the narrative may be
due to information gathered by Luke when subsequently (xxi. 8)
staying with Philip.
with all his house. The domestic side of his religion is
strongly marked. The use of the humane word ' servants ' (ver. 7)
rather than ' slaves ' shows him to have been a considerate master,
and he was anxious (xi. 14) that they should share the help which he
desired for himself.
the people. The Greek word shows that the Jewish people is
meant. Probably such almsgiving was a rare act on the part of
a Roman living among another race.
and prayed. Almsgiving and prayer — he displays the cardinal
points of popular Hebrew piety (Matt. vi. 1 seq.). Indeed, fear of
God, love of his neighbour, and prayer imply a religious condition
in advance of many who are born to a knowledge of the Gospel. If
any one might be justified apart from faith in Christ, here surely was
the man. Yet the Word of God treats him as a sinner needing to
be saved by grace. b
3. as it were. The hour is part of the vision.
an angel of God. The expression is a mark of authenticity,
since a Jew would have been likely to use the usual phrase, ' an angel
of the Lord.' °
and saying. The importance which Luke attached to this event
is shown by his double repetition both of this vision (ver. 30 and
xi. 13) and of the vision to Peter (verses 10 and 28, xi. s).d
The parallelism between the accounts of this conversion and that
of Saul is remarkable (see on ix. 10). In both we have the same
evidence of the interest of heaven in the affairs of earth shown in
the knowledge of names and in the intimate description of the
respective abodes. Both men are prepared by visions for the coming
of the instructor. Both instructors are prepared by visions, and are
at first reluctant. Both are met by reiterated commands and then
obey.6 4. Thy prayers. It is clear that Cornelius was in great religious
anxiety ; and, longing for light, had carried his difficulties to God.
This is shown by the subsequent report (ver. 32) of what was said
to him by the angel — ' thy prayer was heard . . . send therefore to
a Maurice, p. 149. b Arnot, p. 253 ; Vaughan, ii. 69.
0 Rackham, Acts. a Thomas, Acts, p. 171. 6 Norris, p. 51.

THE ACTS. X. 1-8 155
Joppa.' So it pleased God long ago to answer one faithful man's
prayer. But the lesson is for all time. It teaches (i) that the way
to get light is to act up to that we have — ' unto the upright there
ariseth light in the darkness ' (Ps. cxii. 4) ; (ii) that prayer is needed,
as well as inquiry, in the search for truth. a
are gone up. The metaphor is from incense (Rev. v. 8).
5. fetch one Simon. The angel is the messenger, but a brother
man is the minister. Angels, who have not fallen, cannot preach.
The man, who had disowned his Lord and been forgiven, can tell
how salvation may be won. The treasure is put ' in earthen vessels,
that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of men '
(2 Cor. iv. 7).11
who is surnamed Peter. This addition occurs four times in
the narrative (verses 18, 32, xi. 13) to distinguish him from the Simon
with whom he was staying.
6. a tanner. This fact might reassure Cornelius by showing that
Peter was not a narrow illiberal Jew, but one who had learnt that what
defiled a man was not his occupation but his thoughts.0
by the sea shore. The Jews did not allow tanners to reside in
cities, and their occupation obliged them to live near water.d Possibly
Peter may have lodged here in order to support himself by his old
occupation as a fisherman. ' Many days ' (ix. 43) usually in the Acts
denotes a period of some length.
7. a devout soldier. The devout captain has a devout soldier
as his constant attendant. The soldier was sent as an escort for the
protection of the servants.
9-16
9 Now on the morrow, as they were on their journey
and drew nigh to the city, Peter went up upon the
housetop about the sixth hour to pray : 10 and he became
hungry and was minded to eat ; but, while they were
making ready, he fell into a trance ; nand he beheld the
heaven opened and a certain vessel descending, as it
were a great sheet, let down by four corners upon the
earth : 12 wherein were all the fourfooted beasts and
a Gurney, p. 186 ; Taylor, Peter, p. 268 ; Binney, p. 121.
b Arnot, p. 249; Dick, p. 183. c Stifler, p. 84; Lewis, p. 246.
d Hackett, Acts.

1 56 THE ACTS. X. 9-16
creeping things of the earth and fowls of the heaven.
13 And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter, kill and
eat. 14 But Peter said, By no means, Lord ; for never
have I eaten anything that is common or unclean.
16 And a voice came to him again a second time, What
God maketh clean, make not thou common. 16 And
this was done thrice ; and straightway the vessel was
taken up into heaven.
9. to pray. On the principle that we may discover from the
answer to prayer what the subject of prayer had been, it may be
assumed that Peter had been praying for light on a question which
must have been for some time in his mind — the relation of the
Christian Jews to the Gentiles. He was living in a half-Gentile city,
and its mixed population would bring home to him the urgency of
the problem. Joppa was a singularly appropriate town for the coming
revelation. If in Caesarea the West was looking to the East, in Joppa
the East looked forth to the West. Before Peter's eyes was the sea,
over which the Gospel was to travel to the isles of which prophecy
had told that they should ' wait for the Lord ' (Isa. xiii. 4). As he put
off in his fisherman's boat he would recall how the Lord had said
that he was to be 'a fisher of men' (Mark i. 17). And was it not
from Joppa that Jonah had sailed? And so his thoughts would
turn to Nineveh, the heathen city, where was no circumcision, no
Jewish Law, no temple of Jehovah, and yet the mercy of God had
rested on it. How was it to be with the heathen of his own day?
So he may have been musing, when on the roof at Joppa he knelt in
prayer, waiting for the answer to his thoughts."-
10. became hungry. It may have been a Tuesday or Thursday,
which were fast days with the pious Jew : cf. ' I fast twice in the
week ' (Luke xviii. 12). His hunger gave shape to the imagery under
which he was to learn the all-important lessen. In God's revelations
to man the human element plays its part. The natural and the
supernatural border closely on one another, with no definable limits ;
all that can be said is that man stands always on the brink of the
unseen world, and that the curtain may be sometimes lifted.0
11. a great sheet. The Lord, who on earth had revealed the
a Arnot, p. 250 ; Birks, p. 207 ; Maclaren, i. 300 ; Chase, p. 77 ; Stanley, p. 93.
b Noble, p. 215.

THE ACTS. X. 9-16 157
mysteries of heaven to His disciples in parables, reveals the truth to
Peter in a similar way. The Kingdom was to consist of men of every
race and every type from the 'four corners' of the earth (Isa. xi. 12).
12. wherein were all. The sheet containing clean and unclean
creatures symbolized the world containing Jews and Gentiles ; its
descent from heaven the Divine origin of both ; its ascent again to
heaven their common destiny. God had ' made of one every nation
of men ' (xvii. 26). Differing in colour ; differing in physical, mental,
and moral capacity ; as dissimilar as the diverse tribes of the irrational
world — all alike were children of the One Father ; and, sanctified by
Him, none could be common or unclean. a
14. By no means, Lord. It is, as the Greek shows, a protest,
not a refusal.0 And how the Peter of the Gospel starts up before us
in this quick rejoinder ! Even in trance the characteristics of the
man remain unchanged. In the old impulsive fashion he dares to
argue with his Lord, as he had done of old. ' Be it far from thee,
Lord : this shall never be unto thee !' (Matt. xvi. 22). 'Thou shalt
never wash my feet' (John xiii. 8).°
never have I. We are reminded of the remonstrance of Ezekiel,
when he was commanded from heaven to eat loathsome food. ' Ah,
Lord God, behold, my soul hath not been polluted ; for from my
youth up till now have I not eaten of that which died of itself
(Ezek. iv. 14). Similarly the Books of the Maccabees tell of the
privations and death to which the Jews submitted rather than pollute
themselves with forbidden food.d It must be remembered that the
Jew felt, by long heredity, a physical repulsion from unclean meats.
Peter's naive reason for protesting— that he has never yet done
what he is now bidden to do — is charmingly illogical and human.
God tells him to do a new thing, and he demurs because it is new.
He does not rise to the thought that a custom might have been
instituted by God, and yet be temporary — that there might be
progressiveness in the Divine revelation.6 This may have been narrow
on his part, but it was very natural. He had been taught from his
childhood to distinguish between clean and unclean animals. The
distinction had been part of the Divine education of the Jews. Their
separation from other races was only partially effected by circumcision,
since that rite was practised by the Arabians also, the descendants of
a Thomas, Acts, p. 173. b Page, Acts.
c Howson, Peter, p. 104; Birks, p. 208; Maclaren, i. 302; Benson, p. 252;
Farrar, i. 273.
d Chase, p. 79; Macduff, Peter, p. 460. e Maclaren, i. 301 ; Burrell, p. 139.

158 THE ACTS. X. 9-16
Ishmael. A more complete severance was effected by the laws
respecting food ; and such severance was assigned in the sacred
books as the object of those laws (Levit. xx. 24-26). Thus to give
up these distinctions must have seemed to Peter like surrendering
his faith in the Divinely appointed destiny of his race.a
15. maketh clean, that is, by inviting thee to eat them.
Under the old dispensation it was not that creation was clean, and
certain portions set apart as unclean. The rule was uncleanness,
and cleanness the exception. In a world under a curse the taint
was held to affect everything, and only by exception were certain
men and certain animals raised above the general defilement. Now
the ruin of the fall had been repaired by the Incarnation of God in
humanity — not in the Jew only, but in all men. Sin alone separates
man from God : uncleanness is not a physical, but a moral taint.11
It was Peter (Matt. xv. 15) who had asked the Lord to explain the
parable in which He had denounced a religion which was based on
a formal observance of externals. Mark alone adds (vii. 19), 'This
he said, making all meats clean ' (where the Greek word is the same
as that used here). Can we doubt that Mark derived those words
from Peter, and that they are Peter's interpretation of our Lord's
explanation in the light of this subsequent revelation ? °
16. thrice. The voice, not the vision, was thrice repeated. So
much iteration was needed to drive home the lesson.
17-23
17 Now while Peter was much perplexed in himself
what the vision which he had seen might mean, behold,
the men which were sent by Cornelius, having made
inquiry for Simon's house, stood before the gate, 18 and
calling, asked whether Simon which was surnamed
Peter were lodging there. 19 And while Peter pondered
on the vision, the Spirit said to him, Behold, three men
seek thee. 20 But rise, and get thee down, and go with
them, nothing doubting that I have sent them. 21 And
Peter went down to the men and said, Behold, I am he
whom ye seek ; what is the cause wherefore ye are
a Maurice, p. 153 ; Dick, p. 185.
b Pressens<5, p. 55 ; Alford, Homilies, p. 321 ; Plumptre, Acts.
° Howson, Hor. Pet., p. 38.

THE ACTS. X. 17-23 159
come ? 22 And they said, Cornelius, a centurion, a
righteous man and one who feareth God, and is so
reported of by all the nation of the Jews, was instructed
by a holy angel to send for thee to his house and to
hear words from thee. Z3 So he invited them in and
lodged them. And on the morrow he rose and departed
with them, and certain of the brethren from Joppa
accompanied him.
17. perplexed in himself. The primary meaning of the vision
was obvious. Peter must have understood that the law with regard
to clean and unclean meats was repealed. But when he asked him
self whether more were involved in the sweeping away of that distinc
tion — whether it extended to persons as well as to things — the answer
was not so clear. The object of that distinction had been to separate
the Jews from other nations. Had the purpose of God in that separa
tion been now fulfilled, and was He about to extend the privileges of
the chosen people to all ? We have no difficulty in answering. But
it was very hard for a Jew to imagine that the excluded and despised
Gentile was to be put upon an equality with himself. It was so vast
a change from the conditions which had existed for ages, and which
had been originally established by the Divine command, that to Peter
it was almost inconceivable.0
the men. Evidently Cornelius had enjoined haste. They had
travelled thirty miles on foot since the preceding afternoon, and were
not resting during the noonday heat.
19. the Spirit said. Peter recognized the coincidence of the
vision and the inquiry of these men as the Divine voice calling him.
20. I have sent them. Cornelius was the human instrument
who had sent them, but behind Cornelius was the Spirit of God.
2 1 . went down. Descending by the outside staircase from the
roof, without passing through the house, he met and admitted (ver. 23)
the men.
22. so reported of. The words recall the similar description of
that other centurion, whom the Lord had so highly commended
(Luke vii. 4, 5). And Peter had special cause to remember that
centurion, because the healing of his servant occurred immediately
before the healing of his own wife's mother (Matt. viii. 13).°
a West, p. 312 ; Dick, p. 186. b Howson, Hor. Pet., p. 32.

160 THE ACTS. X. 17-23
23. on the morrow. A grave crisis was impending, and he, no
doubt, spent the night in thought and prayer.8
certain of the brethren. They were six in number (xi. 12).
Peter's prudence, so unlike his usual impulsiveness, in wishing to
have the presence of Jewish witnesses, who might give a faithful
report of anything which might occur, shows that he felt that the
vision and the Divine summons to Caesarea might be the precursors
of some momentous event in the history of the Church. b
24-33
24 And the day following they entered into Caesarea.
And Cornelius was waiting for them, having called
together his kinsmen and his intimate friends. 2S And
when Peter came, Cornelius met him, and fell down at
his feet and worshipped him. 26 But Peter raised him
up, saying, Stand up : I myself also am a man. 27 And
as he talked with him, he went in, and found many
come together : 28 and he said to them, Ye yourselves
know how unlawful it is for a man that is a Jew to
associate with or visit one of another nation ; but God
hath showed me that I should call no man common or
unclean. 29 Wherefore also I came without gainsaying
when I was sent for. I ask therefore with what intent
ye sent for me. 30 And Cornelius said, Four days ago,
reckoning up to this hour, I was praying at the ninth
hour in my house. And behold, a man stood before me
in bright clothing, 31 and said, Cornelius, thy prayer
was heard, and thine alms were had in remembrance
in the sight of God. 32Send therefore to Joppa, and
call hither Simon, who is surnamed Peter ; he is lodging
in the house of Simon a tanner by the sea shore. 33 Forth
with therefore I sent to thee ; and thou hast well done
that thou art come. Now therefore are we all here
present in the sight of God, to hear all things that have
been commanded thee by the Lord.
" Vaughan, ii. 79. b Dykes, p. 367 ; Taylor, Peter, p. 262.

THE ACTS. X. 24-33 161
24. having called together. His house had perhaps been
before used as a meeting-place for serious Gentile inquirers who
shared his religious views.a
his kinsmen. The word may mean, not relations, but fellow
countrymen (Rom. ix. 3).
25. worshipped him. The Greek word does not necessarily
imply religious adoration, any more than the English ' worship ' does.
(Compare the official use of 'worshipful', and the words in the
marriage service, 'with my body I thee worship.') Cornelius was
not an idolator and would not have honoured Peter as a god. Nor
is it likely that a Roman officer would prostrate himself after the
servile manner of Orientals. At the same time, it is clear that he
showed a degree of reverence which Peter felt to be greater than was
due to any man. It must be remembered that the strict barrier,
which confined the adoration of the Jew to God alone, had among
Romans been broken down by the belief in demigods and by the
worship of the Emperor.
26. raised him up. It may be noted, by way of contrast, that
Jesus did not refuse a similar homage, when it was offered by this
same Peter (Luke v. 8), and by a leper (Matt. viii. 2).
27. many come together. A significant indication of the
attitude towards religious questions of thoughtful heathens at this
period. 28. Ye yourselves know. No law of Moses forbade to the
Jew all intercourse with Gentiles, but tradition had added this
burden as a safeguard against ceremonial defilement. These Gentiles,
quartered in a Jewish town, would know the practice of devout
Hebrews.1" call no man. Peter does not say ' no food '. He has grasped
the true meaning of the vision. It was meant to show that not
merely the distinction between meats was repealed, but also the
separation between men, which had been the aim of that distinction.
And yet there is a characteristic touch of rugged honesty in his ' God
hath showed me ' ; implying ' I would not otherwise have come '.
This combination of protest and obedience finds an exact parallel in
his earlier words (Luke v. 5), ' Master, we have toiled all night, and
taken nothing ; but at thy word I will let down the net.' °
33. to hear all things. So was the prophecy of Zechariah
" Dykes, p. 368. b Dykes, p. 371.
c Benson, p. 253 ; Birks, p. 209.
1S29 M

162 THE ACTS. X. 24-33
(viii. 23) fulfilled: 'In those days it shall come to pass, that ten
men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, even
shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go
with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'
34-43
34 And Peter opened his mouth and said, Of a truth
I perceive that God is no regarder of persons : 35 but in
every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteous
ness is acceptable to him. 3C Ye know the word which
he sent to the children of Israel, preaching glad tidings
of peace by Jesus the Christ (he is Lord of all) — the
thing which John proclaimed throughout all Judaea
beginning from Galilee about Jesus of Nazareth after
the baptism a — 38 that God had anointed him with the
Holy Spirit and with power : who went about doing
good and healing all that were under the tyranny of the
devil, for God was with him. 39 And we are witnesses
of all things which he did both in the country of the
Jews and in Jerusalem — whom they even killed, hang
ing him on a tree. 40 Him God raised the third day,
and manifested him openly, 41 not to all the people, but
to witnesses who had been chosen before by God, even
to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose
from the dead., 42 And he charged us to preach to the
people, and to testify that it is he who hath been
ordained by God to be the judge of living and dead.
43 To him bear all the prophets witness, that through
his name every one that believeth on him receiveth
remission of sins.
34. no regarder of persons. This was an old saying in Israel
(Deut. x. 17, 2 Sam. xiv. 14, 2 Chron. xix. 7). And Jesus had said
(John vi. 45), ' It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be
taught of God'; and had declared (John x. 16) that He had 'other
a The Greek text of verses 36 and 37 is dislocated.

THE ACTS. X. 34-43 163
sheep which are not of this fold ' Thus this was in one sense no
new truth to Peter ; but it was only now that he fully understood all
that was involved in it.a
35. in every nation. Peter does not say that a man's belief is
immaterial, provided his life be right ; but that his nationality matters
nothing. Salvation is not a matter of race. Hitherto he had thought
that only a circumcised Jew could be acceptable to God. Now he
sees that the essential thing is not whether a man be Jew or Gentile,
but whether he be a worker of righteousness.1'
acceptable. That is, eligible for the Kingdom — a proper person
for the work of conversion. The problem as to God's acceptance of
men who, like Cornelius, walk after such light as they have, without
hearing of Jesus Christ, is not touched here.0
36. Ye know. He appeals to facts which, as having happened
but a few years before and in their own neighbourhood, were already
known to his audience/1
40. God raised. To these Gentiles he does not appeal to the
evidence of prophecy, as he had done (ch. ii) in addressing Jews, but
to the evidence of living witnesses of the fact.
41. not to all the people. From the days of Celsus it has been
argued that the evidence for the Resurrection would have been
stronger if it had been offered to all, even to sceptics. The answer
usually made is (i) that the Jews had received in Jesus' miracles and
teaching sufficient evidence of His Divinity and had rejected it,
and were therefore denied more convincing proof; (ii) that identifica
tion of the Risen Jesus by those who knew His Person intimately
was alone trustworthy. It is, however, better, and more profoundly
true, to say e that it was not possible for the Risen Lord to come
again into contact with the world and its sin. To have done so
would have been to renew His Passion after the cup had been
drained and ' it was finished '.
did eat and drink with him. Though it is not expressly stated,
either here, or in Luke xxiv. 30, or in John xxi. 13, that the Risen
Lord Himself ate and drank, the words in all three passages naturally
suggest that He did, and in Luke xxiv. 42 it is definitely stated that
He did. It is difficult to avoid thinking that the fact that He was
present when the disciples ate was at an early date wrongly taken to
0 Fraser, p. 79; G. Milligan, Men of the New Testament, p. 281.
b Vaughan, ii. 83 ; Lewis, p. 259. ° Dykes, p. 374.
d Dykes, p. 375. e Milligan, The Resurrection, p. 33.
M 2

1 64 THE ACTS. X. 34-43
mean that He joined them in eating. Such a misunderstanding may
explain the early mistranslation of i. 4 (margin). For eating and
drinking imply a physical body with corporeal needs, and the Lord's
Resurrection Body was a spiritual body, invisible to the natural eye,
except when it was endowed with spiritual vision. He appeared
suddenly to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, and as suddenly
vanished from their sight. The veil was lifted for a while, and they
saw Him ; then it fell, and they saw only wrhat was visible to their
natural eye. So on the day of the Ascension, as He passed with the
Eleven through the city on the way to Olivet, none marvelled. To
the Eleven only was He visible : the people, though they saw the
Eleven, did not see the Form in their midst. a
42. the judge. To these Gentiles he preaches Jesus, not as the
Messiah — that they would not have understood — but as the Judge
of all men.
43. every one that believeth. To his hearers, who were familiar
with the demands made on proselytes by Judaism, it must have been
an intense relief to hear that they need not submit to circumcision
in order to enter the new Society. 44-48
44 While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit
fell on all them who heard the word. 46 And the Jewish
believers who had come with Peter were amazed, because
that on the Gentiles also the gift of the Holy Spirit
had been poured out. 4C For they heard them speak
with tongues and magnify God. Then answered Peter,
47 Can any man forbid the water that these should not
be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well
as we ? 48 And he commanded that they should be
baptized in the name of Jesus the Christ. Then prayed
they him to tarry certain days.
44. While Peter. He was interrupted (xi. 15) by a wondrous
thing. The Spirit of God, as with a Divine impatience, set aside
both messenger and message, and fell on these uncircumcised. As
twice before, the commencement of a new stage in the progress of
1 D. Smith, In the Days of His Flesh, p. 524.

THE ACTS. X. 44-48 165
the Gospel is signalized by the outpouring of the Spirit— on Jews
(ii. 4), on Samaritans (viii. 17), and now on Gentiles.a
45. the Jewish believers. The six Jewish Christians who had
accompanied Peter from Joppa.
were amazed. The word is significant of their ingrained
prejudices. on the Gentiles. The article implies that, for the moment at
least, they recognized a principle in the event.b
46. speak with tongues. It was the Gentile Pentecost, marked
by the same ecstatic utterance. Probably nothing short of this visible
manifestation would have convinced them that God was indeed
claiming these Gentiles as His own. Unless such extraordinary sign
had been given, Peter himself might have hesitated to admit them to
baptism ; and the Church at Jerusalem would certainly not have
recognized the propriety of his action.0
47. Can any man forbid. The baptism of the Spirit had
preceded the baptism of water. Therefore the outward and visible
sign could not rightly be withheld from those who had so manifestly
received the inward and spiritual grace. As in the case of Saul (ix. 18),
though the gift of God had flowed through another channel than the
appointed outward form, that fact did not supersede the duty of using
the ordained form.
48. he commanded. Like St. Paul (1 Cor. i. 14), he abstained
from himself administering the rite, as Jesus also had done (John iv. 2).
The object may have been to emphasize the fact that the rite was the
essential thing, and not the dispenser of the rite. But on this occasion
Peter may have preferred to use the ministry of the brethren who
accompanied him, as a proof of their concurrence.111
Then prayed they him. The subsequent charge of having ' eaten
with them ' (xi. 3) shows that Peter consented.

CHAPTER XI
1-18
' Now the Apostles and the brethren that were in
Judaea heard that the Gentiles also had received the
a Pierson, p. 86 ; F. H. Chase, Hastings' Did., art. Simon Peter.
l' Baumgarten, i. 280. ° Mauiice, p. 165 ; Kitto, p. 205.
d Macduff, Peter, p. 469 ; Kitto, p. 206.

166 THE ACTS. XI. 1-18
word of God. 2 And when Peter went up to Jerusalem,
they that were of the circumcision questioned with him,
3 saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and
didst eat with them. 4 And Peter began and set forth
the matter to them in order, saying, 6 1 was in the city
of Joppa, praying: and in a trance I saw a vision — a
certain vessel descending, as it were a great sheet, let
down from heaven by four corners, and it came even to
me : 6 upon the which when I had fastened mine eyes,
I considered, and saw the fourfooted beasts of the earth
and wild beasts and creeping things and fowls of the
heaven. T And I heard also a voice saying to me, Rise,
Peter, kill and eat. 8 But I said, By no means, Lord ;
for nothing common or unclean hath ever entered my
mouth. 9 But a voice answered a second time out of
heaven, What God maketh clean, make not thou com
mon. 10 And this was done thrice ; and all was drawn
up again into heaven. n And behold, forthwith three
men stood before the house in which we were, sent from
Caesarea to me. 12And the Spirit bade me go with
them, making no distinction. And these six brethren
also accompanied me. And we entered into the man's
house; 13and he told us how he had seen the angel
standing in his house and saying, Send to Joppa, and
fetch Simon, who is surnamed Peter, 14 who shall speak
to thee words whereby thou shalt be saved, thou and
all thy house. 16 And as I began to speak, the Holy
Spirit fell on them, even as on us at the beginning.
1G And I remembered the word of the Lord, how that
he said, John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall
be baptized with the Holy Spirit. "If then God gave
to them the like gift that he gave to us, because of
belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could
withstand God ? 18 And when they heard these things,

THE ACTS. XI. 1-18 167
they held their peace and glorified God, saying, Then
to the Gentiles also hath God granted the repentance
unto life.
1. heard. The rumour reached them from Caesarea, not from
Joppa. They had not heard of the vision which led Peter to act as
he did. They knew his impulsive character, and may have set down
the rash step to his hasty temperament. He appears to have come
straight from Caesarea to Jerusalem, evidently feeling the necessity
of explaining what had occurred to the Church at headquarters, and
bringing his witnesses with him (ver. i2).a
2. they that were of the circumcision. There is some
anachronism in the use of the phrase at this time. When Luke
wrote, it denoted either, generally, the whole body of Christian Jews
as opposed to Christian Gentiles ; or, specially, the Judaizing party.
But at this time all the converts had been circumcised. Apparently
Luke uses it here to describe, not the whole body of believers, but
that section which later became the Judaizers, and he contrasts them
with 'the Apostles and brethren'.0
questioned with him. It is clear that the early Christians did
not regard Peter as holding any position of supremacy. The Church
was a democracy, in which, while the Apostles exercised the chief
authority, the collective assembly claimed the right of private
judgment.0 3. didst eat with them. This was Peter's offence. They had
no quarrel with him for preaching to Gentiles — the Scriptures had
promised salvation to the heathen ; but he had actually been their
guest ! It was the old complaint which the Pharisees had urged
against Jesus — not that He preached to publicans and sinners, but
that He ate with them (Mark ii. 16). It is only fair to remember
(i) that association at meals means more in the East than it does to
us Westerners ; (ii) that the meat at a Gentile table had usually formed
part of an idol-sacrifice ; (iii) that the hated swine's flesh was a favourite
dish with the Romans. And before we cast a stone at them, we should
ask ourselves whether ' they of the circumcision ' are not with us
still, ready to limit God's love by saying, ' We must draw the line
somewhere.' d
4. set forth the matter. Peter claims no immunity from criticism
a Macduff, Peter, p. 471 ; Dykes, p. 3S7 ; Fraser, p. 96.
b Dykes, p. 390 ; Lechler, i. 173 ; Baumgarten, i. 284.
c Stokes, ii. 144. d Stifler, p. 92 ; Farrar, i. 274 ; Parker, i. 260.

168 THE ACTS. XI. 1-18
on the score of his Apostolic dignity. He applies himself to meet and
satisfy their objections.
The following speech bears plain evidence of authenticity. It is
no mere repetition of the preceding narrative, but is marked by
natural additions. Whoever it was who furnished Luke with the
account, Peter must himself be the ultimate source, since it contains
details which could be known to him alone — ' It came even to me '
(ver. 5) ; ' Upon the which when I had fastened mine eyes, I con
sidered' (ver. 6) ; 'As I began to speak' (ver. 15); 'And I remem
bered' (ver. 16). (Compare the similar features in xii. 9 and n.)
And the omissions are equally natural. He passes lightly over the
facts which his hearers already knew, and relates in detail the revela
tion to himself which was probably unknown to them."-
12. these six brethren. So far the narrative had been of his
personal experience resting on his own testimony. He passes to
events which his witnesses could corroborate.1'
the man's house. To unsympathetic hearers he avoids describing
Cornelius as a centurion, since the Roman officers were not viewed
with favour by the Jews.0
15. as I began. He gives no account of his preaching. He
rests his defence, not on what he said, but on what God did.d
16. I remembered. He saw in the words of Jesus (i. 5) a signifi
cance which he had never seen before. The difference between
John's baptism and that which Jesus promised did not lie in
the fact that one was with water, the other with the Spirit ; but
that one never went beyond the Jews, the other was to be world
wide.6 It is an encouraging thought that truths imperfectly grasped
may lie dormant for years ; and then, with growing powers and
increasing light, be understood and applied. So St. John writes
(xii. 16), 'These things understood not his disciples at the first; but
when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things
were written of him.'
1 7. because of belief. The Spirit had fallen on themselves at
Pentecost, not because they were Jews and circumcised, but because
they believed in Jesus. Peter is anticipating Paul's teaching (Gal. v. 6),
' In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor un-
circumcision, but faith.' f
who was I? If God treated Gentiles as equal to Jews, Peter
a Benson, p. 279 ; Dykes, p. 393. b Dykes, p. 394.
c Howson, Hor. Pet., p. 81. a Thomas, Acts, p. 18S.
e Stifler, p. 94. 1 Dykes, p. 394.

THE ACTS. XI. 1-18 169
would have denied that Divinely attested equality if he had refused
the hospitality of a Gentile.3-
It was by a strange irony that the man who thus defended himself
before the brethren at Jerusalem for the offence of eating with Gentiles
should years afterwards be arraigned before the brethren at Antioch
(Gal. ii. 1 1) for the opposite offence of refusing to eat with Gentiles.0
18. held their peace, &c. The words imply a half-grudging
acquiescence in what could not be gainsaid. It was the repentance
of these ' sinners of the Gentiles ' which was in their thoughts rather
than missionary zeal and joy. Nor was there any admission of the
equal standing of Jew and Gentile in the Christian Society. They
did not see in this event any abrogation of the Law. They probably
regarded it as wholly exceptional — a manifestation of God's mercy to
individuals, like the cleansing of Naaman in the Old Testament ;
and made no attempt to apply the principle involved by extending
their missionary labours to the Gentiles. So the Church at Jerusalem
missed its opportunity. If they had had more courage and generosity,
the way was open for them to carry the Gospel to fresh fields. But
they held back, and Antioch became the metropolis of the wider
faith.0 For Peter personally this incident settled the principle at issue, as
we see from his words at the Conference (xv. 8). But for a large
section of the Jewish Church it was no final settlement at all.
Ignorance and prejudice are not overcome by a single incident.
The Judaizers may have temporarily held their peace, but they soon
raised the question again. They were the predominant element in
the Church at Jerusalem, and it is likely that Peter's action led to
a diminution of his influence. Hitherto he had been the acknow
ledged leader. A little later we find the position which he had held
occupied by James, the Lord's brother, in whom the Judaizers found
a more congenial spirit.11
19-26
10 Now they who were scattered abroad after the
tribulation that ensued on the death of Stephen travelled
as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking
the word to none save Jews only. zo But there were
a Stifler, p. 95. b Dykes, p. 395.
c Chase, p. 80 ; Rackham, Ads ; Watson, p. 47. d Lewis, p. 266.

i7o THE ACTS. XI. 19-26
some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when
they were come to Antioch, spake to the Greeks also,
preaching the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus. 21 And
the hand of the Lord was with them, and great was the
number that believed and turned to the Lord. 22 And
the report concerning them came to the ears of the
Church which was in Jerusalem ; and they sent forth
Barnabas as far as Antioch : 23 who, when he was come
and had seen the grace of God, was glad ; and he
exhorted them all to cleave with purpose of heart to the
Lord. 24 For he was a good man and full of the Holy
Spirit and of faith : and a great multitude was added to
the Lord. 26 And he departed to Tarsus to seek Saul :
26 and when he had found him, he brought him to
Antioch. And it was so that even for a whole year
they were brought together in the Church, and taught
much people ; and that in Antioch the disciples first
received the name of Christians.
19. they who were scattered abroad. Luke takes up the
thread that was broken off at viii. 4 ; and the repetition of the words
of that verse suggests that the intervening narratives have been de
rived from a different authority, and that he is now returning to his
former source. That source is almost certainly Antiochean. The
association of a city, ' Antioch,' with two countries, ' Phoenicia
and Cyprus,' would of itself suggest this conclusion. How far the
four movements connected with the names of Samaria, Damascus,
Caesarea, and Antioch, all ultimately traceable to the dispersion which
followed Stephen's death, were synchronous or successive, it is im
possible to say. Though Luke relates the conversion of Cornelius
first, the close connexion of this verse with viii. 4 implies that this
preaching to Gentiles preceded that by Peter. On the other hand,
the way in which the news of the conversions at Antioch was received
by the Church at Jerusalem suggests that they must have been subse
quent to that of Cornelius. a
to none save Jews only. These evangelists were probably
1 Dykes, p. 403 ; Lechler, i. 117 ; Kitto, p. 215.

THE ACTS. XI. 19-26 171
Hebrews who preached to their own countrymen, until the arrival of
Hellenist preachers brought about a change.11
20. men of Cyprus and Cyrene. We are not told the names of
the men who began the new departure, to whom the question first
presented itself, ' Is this Lord, whom I believe to be the Son of God,
not a Lord for these Gentiles ? ' b But Lucius of Cyrene (xiii. 1) may
have been among the number, and also the proselyte Nicolas (vi. 5),
who was one of Stephen's colleagues, and who may have returned to
his native city.
Antioch. This was the third city of the Empire, second only to
Rome and Alexandria. Containing a population of half a million of
mixed nationalities, and connected commercially with both East and
West, it was specially fitted to be the mother Church of Gentile
Christendom. to the Greeks also. Internal evidence proves that the read
ing ' Hellenists ' is wrong, in spite of the MSS. evidence in its favour.
It entirely obscures the importance of the announcement made in
this verse, which obviously records, not something which had been
done long before, but a new advance in the history of Christianity.
[The reading ' Hellenists ' probably arose thus : the Sinaitic MS. has
' evangelists ' by an error of the copyist, who had the next word,
1 evangelizing,' running in his head. The scribes of the Vatican and
Alexandrian MSS., seeing that 'evangelists' made no sense, corrected it,
not to 'Hellenes,' but to 'Hellenists,' which was nearer to it in sound.0]
The Gentiles to whom they preached probably belonged to that
numerous class who had abandoned the worship of the pagan gods
and were seeking food for their religious hunger in the services of the
synagogue. Next to Alexandria, Antioch had the most magnificent
synagogue in the world. Josephus says that a very large number of
proselytes were attracted to it. And owing to the extreme mixture
of races at Antioch, Hebrew exclusiveness was likely to be some
what relaxed. Further, by these Hellenist preachers the heathen
would be better known and their natural virtues recognized. What
St. Peter did not learn without a vision — to call no man common or
unclean — they had learnt unconsciously from their surroundings in
an alien land.d
Thus at Antioch, as in Samaria, a momentous step was taken by

a Eadie, p. 36 ; Olshansen, p. 500.
b Maurice, p. 174. ° Norris, p. 136
4 Reuss, i. 259 ; Gilhert, p. 58 ; J

Blunt, p. 25

Norris, p. 136.
; J. Thomas, p. 385 ; Stifler, p. 98 ; A. F. W.

172 THE ACTS. XI. 19-26
others than the official leaders of the Church. A few large-hearted
men, without authority, probably without consciousness of the wide
significance of their action, began the process by which a Jewish sect
was transformed into a world-wide Church. To us the step seems
only natural ; but to the Jewish Christians, accustomed to regard all
Gentiles as without the range of the covenant blessing, it was a
departure of startling boldness. Whether it was deliberately resolved
on, or induced by circumstances, Luke does not state, but his narra
tive clearly shows that he was fully sensible of the importance of the
action as inaugurating a new epoch. a
21. the hand of the Lord was with them. So it was not a
mistake. In acting thus without official sanction they had not gone
beyond the mind of their Master. The evident blessing on their work
justified them. The expression bears witness to the conviction of the
author that Christ's active energy was with His servants and was the
source of all their success.11
turned to the Lord. It is clearly implied that these Greeks did
not first become proselytes to the Law and submit to circumcision.0
22. the report. We do not know how soon after Stephen's death
this work began, or how long it had continued before it attracted the
attention of the Church at Jerusalem. But the silence as to any contro
versy makes it likely that the decision in the case of Cornelius had
been already given. None the less, the news probably caused some
anxiety. The Jewish Christians, even if they did not disapprove,
must have been startled. These conversions were clearly the begin
ning of a vast change in the character of the Church. They called,
at any rate, for careful investigation. The inference, however, from
the choice of Barnabas, and from his subsequent action, would be
that those who sent him were anxious to show sympathy with the
movement and to encourage the new converts.11
Barnabas. The choice of commissioner was a wise one. That
his introduction had been regarded as sufficient voucher for Saul's
discipleship shows that he was high in the confidence of the Church
at Jerusalem : and this is further indicated by the fact that he was
now sent alone (contrast with viii. 14) on a mission of such responsi
bility. As a Cypriote, he would also command the confidence of his
countrymen who had been leaders in the new departure, and may
even have been a personal friend of some of them ; while, as a
a Briggs, p. 17 ; Maclaren, i. 356.
b Maurice, p. 174 ; Dykes, p. 406 ; Maclaren, i. 322.
c Weizsiicker, i. 106. d Purves, p. 102; Simcox, p. 56; Lechler, i. 190.

THE ACTS. XI. 19-26 173
Levite, he would be able to appreciate Hebrew prejudices. Further,
as a Hellenist, he had qualifications which none of the Twelve pos
sessed, being prepared by his training not only to sympathize with
the movement, but to understand its importance. But a yet stronger
qualification lay in his character, which is beautifully revealed in the
sequel.3- as far as Antioch. The expression implies that he was directed
to visit the various places where the Gospel had been preached by
the evangelists who were now at Antioch.1'
23. was glad. Here we catch the key-note of the whole narra
tive. A smaller man would have raised difficulties as to circumcision
or baptism. It was enough for Barnabas that the seal of God's bless
ing was on the work. When he marked the number of converts and
their changed lives, he raised no question, made no attempt to exact
conformity to Jewish law, but ascribed what he saw to the grace of
God, and rejoiced that the Gospel could achieve such conquests in
one of the strongholds of heathenism.0
exhorted them all. The first enthusiasm would pass, and the
temptations to lapse must have been many and serious in heathen
Antioch. ' Purpose of heart ' was needed. Gentile society was per
vaded by idolatrous customs : the convert would be reminded at
every turn of the religion which he had left. So Barnabas bent all
those powers of exhortation, from which he had derived his name
(iv. 36), to urging them to ' cleave to the Lord ' — not to their pro
fession of faith, not to an abstract Christianity, but to the living
personal Saviour/1
24. For he was a good man. It would not have been surprising
if his approval of facts so opposed to his prejudices, and even to his
former convictions, had been somewhat grudging. But he was ' a
good man ', and so was ready to welcome good work done by others ;
was ' full of the Holy Spirit ', and so was able to recognize the presence
of the Spirit when he saw it ; was full ' of faith ', and so was prepared
to carry out the work without misgivings as to the consequences. e
The natural, but not certain, inference from the past tense — ' he
was ' — is that Barnabas was dead when Luke wrote. In any case,
the tribute is remarkable, because such words of praise are unusual
in the Acts. It looks as though Luke, the friend and companion of
Paul, wished to show that he was not prejudiced against the man
a Purves, p. 103 ; Eadie, p. 37 ; Adeney, p. 315 ; J. Robertson, p. 101.
b Cotterill, p. 321. c A. T. Robertson, p. 97 ; Iverach, p. 37 ; Eadie, p. 38.
d Dykes, p. 408 ; Eadie, p. 40. " Iverach, p. 38.

174 THE ACTS. XL 19-26
whose sad quarrel with Paul he was about to narrate later, but highly
esteemed his character.3-
25. departed to Tarsus. It is possible that the Church at Jeru
salem had contemplated this step from the first, and so had deputed
Barnabas to visit Antioch alone, instead of sending a colleague with
him (as in viii. 14) ; instructing him, if he were satisfied with what
he had found, to invite Saul, of whose special commission to the
Gentiles they had heard and rumours of whose work in Cilicia had
reached them (Gal. i. 24), to become his fellow labourer.15 But it is
more likely that Barnabas could not see this stir of life in a Gentile
city without recalling the instrument chosen by God to bear His
name before the Gentiles (ix. 15) ; and conscious of his own limita
tions and of the fact that difficult problems had to be faced, such as
needed the presence, not merely of a good man, but of a master
mind, able to foresee issues and to lay down principles, bethought him
of his old friend.0 None the less, his action showed his unselfishness
and humility. He had been doing good work in Antioch and had
gained many converts ; but, when he saw a great door opened, he at
once enlisted the help of one whom he must have known to be abler
and more gifted than himself. He had none of the littleness which
cannot bear the presence of a possible rival. His only thought was
of the advancement of the cause, and for this he willingly effaced
himself. d
to seek Saul. Apparently Saul was using Tarsus as his head
quarters, and making missionary excursions thence to neighbouring
places ; and Barnabas, having no certain knowledge where he was
to be found, went to Tarsus as the most likely place in which to
hear of him.6
26. he brought him to Antioch. So Saul left, perhaps for the
last time, the home of his childhood, and entered on his life's work,
introduced to it by the same friend who had before introduced him
to the disciples at Jerusalem (ix. 27). It may be imagined how deeply
the news which Barnabas brought must have stirred him. At last
the opening, for which he had been so long waiting, had come !
for a whole year. Saul's recent experiences in Cilicia would help
him, and this year's work at Antioch would be still more valuable.
It taught him by the logic of facts that Jews and Gentiles could be
fellow members of the same Church.
11 Wordsworth, Acts; Plumptre, Acts. b Briggs, p. 3L
Q Fouard, Peter, p. 166 ; Iverach, p. 38.
d Eadie, p. 43 ; Macduff, Paul, p. 97. e Kitto, p. 218 ; Biiggs, p. 32.

THE ACTS. XI. 19-26 175
taught much people. Though the beginning of enlargement was
made (ver. 24) before Saul's appearance on the scene, decisive
movement came through his ability and enthusiasm. It can scarcely
be wrong to ascribe mainly to his energy the strong position which
Christianity acquired in Antioch. The 'much people' were without
doubt largely Gentiles — so largely that in the view of the outside
world the Church took a new aspect and a new character. Luke
evidently connects the new name with the final departure of Chris
tianity from Jewish ideals. At the same time, the attention which the
community attracted in Antioch must not be over-estimated. In so
vast a city the ' much people ' might be almost unnoticeable.3-
Christians. Hitherto they had called themselves ' disciples ',
' believers ', ' brethren ', ' saints ', or ' those of the Way ' : the Jews
had called them ' Galileans ' or ' Nazarenes ' : the general public
had not distinguished them from other Jewish sects. Now, when they
formed a society distinguishable from the Jews, a distinctive name
was convenient. And because one Name was constantly on their
lips, the outside world called them by it ; gave them, all unwittingly,
a name that was appropriate to a religion destined to be universal ;
a name that indicated neither locality nor nationality, but only a rela
tion to a Person. The Christians did not, however, themselves adopt
it till a much later date. It is not employed by Christian writers at
a time when it was familiar to the younger Pliny {Ep. x. 96) and to
Tacitus {Ann. xv. 44), but suddenly becomes of frequent occurrence
in the writings of the Apologists dealing with pagans.b
The emphatic position of the word at the end of the sentence is
clearly intended to mark the close of a chapter in the history of the
Church. Antioch was the birthplace of Christianity as distinguished
from Judaism.0
Two celebrated names are connected with Christian Antioch. Early
in the second century its bishop, Ignatius, after witnessing a good
confession there, was given to the lions at Rome. And in the fourth
century Chrysostom preached there the sermons which have made
his name illustrious.11
27-30
27 Now in those days there came down prophets from
Jerusalem to Antioch. 2S And there stood up one of
a Watson, p. 72 ; Binney, p. 101 ; S. C. Gayford, Hastings' Did., art. Christian.
b Dykes, p. 412 ; Barnes, p. 126 ; P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. BUI., p. 753.
c Rackham, Acts; Cotterill, p. 326. d Kitto, p. 224.

176 THE ACTS. XI. 27-30
them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that
there should be a great famine over all the world :
which came to pass in the days of Claudius. 29 And the
disciples determined to send, every man according to
his ability, relief to the brethren who dwelt in Judaea.
zn Which also they did, sending it to the elders by the
hands of Barnabas and Saul.
27. there came down prophets. We are not told why they
came ; whether for the instruction of the new converts ; or, in view
of the threatened scarcity, to represent the temporal necessities of
the brethren at Jerusalem. In either case their coming implies that the
Church at Antioch was regarded as a true Church. The relation
between the new and the old Church was later to become a delicate
question, but at first there was no thought of rivalry .a
We may gather from the first Epistle to the Corinthians (xii-xiv)
an idea of the functions of the prophet in the early Church. He was
one whom God used as a medium for the communication of truth to
men. The communication might be didactic or predictive ; but the
main idea is that he was an inspired teacher.13
28. stood up. Probably at a meeting of the brethren ; which,
again, shows that the Christians from Jerusalem were in a relation
of brotherly feeling with the Church at Antioch.0
named Agabus. The name is probably interpolated here from
xxi. 10, where Agabus is introduced as though he had not been
mentioned before. The close similarity of the words in the two
passages — ' there came down prophets from Jerusalem' (ver. 27) and
' there came down from Judaea a certain prophet, named Agabus '
(xxi. 10) — might easily suggest the interpolation. cl
signified. The word suggests the employment of some symbolical
action, as in xxi. 4.e
all the world. The author elsewhere uses this expression (Luke
ii. 1) to denote the Roman Empire.
came to pass in the days of Claudius. The words imply,
though the inference is not certain, that the prediction was made
before the death of Caligula and the accession of Claudius in January,
a. d. 41 ; and so may furnish a chronological datum. Luke tells of
a Briggs, p. 52; Lechler, i. 191 ; Dykes, p. 421.
b Iverach, p. 44; Purves, p. 105. ° Lechler, i. 191.
d Harnack, Luke, p. 38. ° Dykes, p. 422.

THE ACTS. XI. 27-30 177
the prediction and of its fulfilment, but not of the interval between
them. The collection was not taken to Jerusalem till the spring of
a. d. 44, the year of Herod's death — that is, three years and a half
later. The great distress in Judaea began in a.d. 45 ; so that, through
this prediction, the Christians were beforehand in their aid.3
29. determined to send. The suggestion may have come from
Barnabas, who had been foremost at an earlier period (iv. 37) in reliev
ing the necessities of the poorer brethren ; and who is so often brought
before us as performing some act of sympathy and tenderness. He
might also feel that such material help would be an effective report on
the character of the movement which he had been sent to inspect.1*
relief to the brethren. Perhaps the Christian Jews at Jerusalem
had ceased to share the benefit of contributions which were under
the administration of the Jewish leaders.0 It was usual for foreign
synagogues of wealthy Jews to remit aid at times of distress to their
brethren in the Holy Land. But the Church at Antioch does not
appear to have sent through the Synagogue. Thus it was the first
express recognition of the fact that the Church and the Synagogue
had parted company. And further, it was palpable evidence that a
new spirit of love and brotherhood was stirring in the world. Never
before had Gentiles held out hands of fellowship to Jews across
the gulf of separation, and called them ' brethren.' The action was
in principle the same as that induced at Jerusalem by the first
impulse of Christian spirit, but it now assumed a different shape.
The formal communism had broken down ; the spiritual commun
ism continued — the idea that in Christ there is the unity of a real
brotherhood/1 30. to the elders. Of the institution of elders no account is
given ; perhaps because the office, unlike that of the Seven, was not
called suddenly into existence, but grew up gradually, in imitation of
the office bearing the same name in the Synagogue. As the Seven
were broken up by death or absence, their duties would naturally
devolve on those whom age and tried qualities fitted to exercise
them.9 No inference can safely be drawn from the absence of any
mention of the Apostles. They may have been scattered by the
persecution of Herod before Barnabas and Saul arrived ; but the
matter of relief concerned the elders, and not the Apostles, whose
a Lechler, i. p. xxvi ; Iverach, p. 45 ; Dykes, p. 424.
b Adeney, p. 317 ; Stiller, p. 103. ° Johnston, p. 36.
d Dykes, p. 423 ; Baumgarten, i. 349; Colterill, p. 327.
0 Stanley, p. 63.
1329 N

178 THE ACTS. XI. 27-30
work was not to ' serve tables ' ; and it was at a meeting of the
elders that Paul presented his later collection (xxi. 18). Moreover,
the alms were intended for ' the brethren which dwelt in Judaea ' ;
and elders in Judaea, as well as in Jerusalem, may be meant. In that
case it may have been now that Saul preached in Judaea (xxvi. 20).

CHAPTER XII
1-4
1 Now at that time Herod the king laid his hands on
certain of the Church to do them hurt. 2 And he slew
James, the brother of John, with the sword. 3 And when
he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize
Peter also. Those were the days of unleavened bread.
4 And when he had apprehended him, he put him in
prison, committing him to the custody of sixteen soldiers,
four in each watch ; being minded to bring him forth
to the people after the Passover.
1. Herod the king. The title is a mark of accuracy. Not for
thirty years before, nor ever after, but only in the last three years of
Herod's life, was there a person exercising authority in Judaea with
the title of King.3-
Some eight years had passed since the persecution which followed
Stephen's death. The motive of that persecution had been theologi
cal ; the motive of this one, so far at least as Herod was concerned, was
political. The grandson of Herod the Great who murdered the
Innocents, the nephew of Antipas who murdered the Baptist, and
the father of Agrippa before whom Paul spoke (xxv), he had been
educated at Rome, and gradually obtained possession of all his
grandfather's dominions. Caligula gave him the tetrarchy first of
Trachonitis and then of Galilee and Petraea, and Claudius subse
quently added Samaria and Judaea. But he had many prejudices to
combat. Not only had he been made king by the hated Romans,
but the King of Israel was not to be a foreigner (Deut. xvii. 15);
and though he had in his veins, through his grandmother Mariamne,
the blood of the old dynasty of the Maccabees, Antipater, the founder
' Paley.

THE ACTS. XII. 1-4 179
of the Herodian family, was an Edomite, a descendant of Israel's pre
destined foe (Gen. xxv. 23 seq.) Hence the chief aim of his policy
was to ingratiate himself with his subjects. While he gratified the
Romanized section by building theatres and holding games, he
sought to conciliate the stricter faction by affecting zeal for the
national faith." According to Josephus ° he maintained close relations
with the high priest.
laid his hands. The extreme brevity of the narrative is best
explained by the assumption that Luke's source contained stories
about Peter, and only cursorily touched other subjects.0 No explana
tion is given of the cause of this attack. The recent step taken in the
admission of Gentiles may have led to popular excitement against
the Church ; or some utterance of Christians on the anniversary of
the Crucifixion may have provoked the fanatic pilgrims who thronged
the city for the Feast.
on certain of the Church. The first victims were apparently
persons of less note than the Apostles, and were probably subjected
to scourging or some lighter punishment than death.d
2. he slew James. It was not Luke's object to write biographies,
but to trace the progress of the Church. Still, it is clear that he did
not know the details of this murder. The choice of James as the
first to die looks as though he had been a more conspicuous figure
than even Peter, though Luke had no records of him as he had of
Peter. His prominent position in the Gospels, and the fiery temper
which earned him the name of ' son of thunder ', would lead us to
expect him to be among the foremost members of the Church.
with the sword. There was no trial before the Sanhedrin, fol
lowed by a sentence of stoning ; but, as in the case of the Baptist,
the sentence was arbitrarily pronounced by the king.6 Did there
come to James, as at this season of the Passover he was led, like his
Lord, to execution, the memory of the Lord's answer to his mother's
petition — that he should ' drink of His cup ' (Matt. xx. 23) ?
3. when he saw. His motive is rightly appraised by Luke.
Josephus says that the desire for popularity dictated Herod's whole
policy. Having crept to the throne by flattery, he kept his seat by
pandering to vulgar prejudices. His first attack on the Christians
had been tentative. He was not sure how the unjust and illegal
execution of James would be taken by the Jews. Though the Church
" Vaughan, ii. 113 ; Dykes, p. 429; Baumgarten, i. 161, 308.
b Anliq. xix. vi. 4. ° Harnack, Ads, pp. 125, 242.
d Dick, p. 194. e Renan, Atiostles, p. 202.
N 2

i8o THE ACTS. XII. 1-4
was evidently no longer 'in favour with all the people' (ii. 46), they
might resent the supersession of the national tribunal and the despotic
use of the Roman sword. And if James was a Christian, he was also
by name and birth and training a Jew.a
proceeded to seize. The Greek words are a Hebraism, and thus
point to an Aramaic source. Mark, who was now in Jerusalem
(ver. 25), may have been Luke's authority for the following narrative,
which is full of the vivid touches which characterize his Gospel.
4. sixteen soldiers. As by the execution of James with the
sword, so now by the use of soldiers and chains, Herod shows his
adoption of Roman customs. The extraordinary precautions were
doubtless due to Peter's previous escape (v. 19), possibly from the
same prison. That escape was probably ascribed to connivance on
the part of the jailors ; and Herod was determined that there should
be no second deliverance. But the scrupulous precautions, served
only to make the Divine intervention the more conspicuous, just as
the guard at the Tomb enhanced the certainty that the body of Jesus
had not been stolen by His disciples.15
6 Peter therefore was kept in the prison ; but prayer
was offered earnestly by the Church to God for him.
6 Now when Herod was about to bring him forth, Peter
was sleeping that night between two soldiers, bound
with two chains ; and guards before the door were
keeping the prison. 7 And behold, an angel of the Lord
stood over him, and a light shined in the cell : and he
smote Peter on the side and awoke him, saying, Rise
up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands.
8 And the angel said to him, Gird thyself, and bind on
thy sandals. And he did so. And he said to him,
Cast thy cloak about thee, and follow me. 9 And he
went out and followed ; and wist not that it was real
which was being done by the angel, but thought he saw
a vision. 10And when they had passed through the
a Weizsacker, i. 76 ; Hausrath.ii. 168; Pressense, p. 61 ; Macduff, Peter, p. 484.
b Taylor, Peter, p. 279 : West, p. 326 ; Stifler, p. 105.

THE ACTS. XII. 5-1 1 181
first and second ward, they came to the iron gate lead
ing to the city; which opened to them of itself; and
they went out, and passed through one street; and
forthwith the angel departed from him. n And when
Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a
truth that the Lord hath sent his angel, and delivered
me out of the hand of Herod and disappointed the
expectation of the people of the Jews.
5. but. An important little word, as in ver. 24. Peter was
safely guarded, but faith still prayed. Luke evidently means to
suggest a connexion between the prayer and his deliverance.8
prayer was offered. There was little to encourage hope of
Divine intervention. Another Apostle had been recently impri
soned, and God had not seen fit to save him from the sword
of the executioner. But the remembrance of Peter's former de
liverance, the report of which made Herod multiply precautions,
would make them more insistent in their prayers. And they were
doubtless praying, not only for his deliverance, but for the Divine
support for him — that he might be strengthened to witness a good
confession — and for the Divine consolation for themselves in their
hour of trial.0
earnestly. The Greek word is the same which Luke employs
in his Gospel (xxii. 44) to describe the praying of the Redeemer
in the Garden ; when, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
says (v. 7), He 'offered up prayers and supplications with strong
crying and tears '.
6. was sleeping. It was a grand instance of calm trust in
God. James had just died by the command of the same Herod ;
and now his own last night had come. In a dark cell, oppressed
by the heat which had made him lay aside his cloak (ver. 8), he
illustrated the words of the Psalmist (cxxvii. 2), ' So he giveth his
beloved sleep.' Soldiers might guard his body, but the grace of
God 'sentinelled his heart' (Phil. iv. 7). It is no detraction from
his faith to say that he may have remembered his Lord's prophecy
that he should die in his old age and by crucifixion (John xxi. 18),
whereas he was still in middle age, and was to die by the sword.
a Vaughan, ii. 119; Thomas, Acts, p. 201.
b West, p, 329; Taylor, Peter, p. 280; Spence, p. 20S.

182 THE ACTS. XII. 5-11
His sleep would in that case show his faith and trust in his Master's
words. But those words do not necessarily indicate more than
captivity, though St. John, looking back upon them half a century
later, saw in them a prophecy of the particular death by which
Peter in his old age had glorified God (John xxi. i9).a
7. an angel of the Lord. The hour must have been between
3 a.m., when the guards would be relieved, and 6 a.m., when they
would again be changed and the escape discovered (ver. 18). As
Peter and his guards were all asleep, it was probably some little
time after 3 a.m.
smote Peter. So sound was his sleep, that he was not roused
by the unwonted light. Probably his first idea, when he was
awakened by the blow on his side, was that it was the summons
to execution.0
8. Gird thyself. The angel does only what the man could
not do for himself. He snaps the chains, but does not gird the
prisoner. So when the guards were passed (ver. 20) and Peter
no longer needed supernatural help, he was left to find his own
way to Mary's house. The same economy of miracle is seen else
where. Jesus raised Lazarus, but human hands must ' loose him
and let him go ' (John xi. 44).0
Cast thy cloak about thee. It was not to be a flight. He
was to escape, not only with his life, but with every article of his
attire, that the Divine supremacy over Herod might be fully
manifest. The same orderly calmness and absence of hurry are
seen in the circumstances of our Lord's coming forth from His
prison of the grave, when Peter beheld 'the napkin, that was upon
his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but rolled up in a place
by itself (John xx. 7) A
9. thought he saw. An indication that the narrative was
derived ultimately from Peter himself. So below, ' when Peter was
come to himself (ver. 11).
10. passed through. The expression could not be used of
passing single sentinels, so that there were two pairs of prison
warders distinct from the four soldiers who guarded Peter, two
chained to him and two outside the door of his cell. On the other
hand, it is possible that the soldiers to whom he was chained, who

a Thomas, Ads, p. 201 ; Macduff, Peter, p. 491 ; Dodd, p. 18; Swete, p. 62.
b Dodd, p. 17 ; Dykes, p. 440. c Maclaren, i. 385.
d Baumgarten, i. 321 ; Spence, p. 211.

THE ACTS. XII. 5-1 1 183
would not require to remain awake and therefore to be relieved,
were distinct from the four special soldiers, who were posted in
couples outside the cell.a
opened to them of itself. Josephus mentions a number of
portents which preceded the destruction of the Temple, and among
them that at the Passover the heavy gates of the Temple, which were
shut with difficulty by twenty men and had bolts fastened deep
into solid stone, opened of their own accord in the night.b
12-17
12 And when he was aware of it, he went to the
house of Mary, the mother of John, surnamed Mark,
where many were gathered together and were pray
ing. 13 And when he knocked at the door of the porch,
a maid went to answer, named Rhoda. 14And when
she knew Peter's voice, she opened not the door for
joy, but ran in, and told that Peter stood before the
porch. ,5And they said to her, Thou art mad. But
she confidently affirmed that it was even so. And they
said, It is his angel. 6 Rut Peter continued knocking ;
and when they had opened, they saw him and were
amazed. 17 But he, motioning to them to hold their
peace, explained to them how the Lord had brought
him forth out of the prison. And he said, Tell these
things to James and to the brethren. And he departed,
and went to another place.
12. the house of Mary. It must have been of some size to
accommodate so many. This agrees with the fact that her cousin
(Col. iv. 10), Barnabas, was a man of substance. The upper room
mentioned in i. 13 may have been in her house, since few of the
early converts were socially in a position to own a large house.
Mark may have been the man ' bearing a pitcher of water ' (Luke
xxii. 10) whom the Lord bade His disciples follow, when they went
to prepare the Passover. Peter naturally went thither, as some
a Pace, Acts ; Walch, De vinculis Petri.
b Josephus, B. J. vi. v. 3 ; Plummer, St. Matthew, p. 402,

1 84 THE ACTS. XII. 12-17
special tie existed between him and this family. He calls Mark his
'son' (1 Pet. v. 13). a
13. Rhoda. That the name of the servant was known to Luke
suggests that the account was derived from Mark or Peter. The
name is Gentile, and the Greek word rendered ' maid ' usually
denotes a slave girl, and female slaves were often employed as
doorkeepers (John xviii. 16).
14. opened not the door. The narrative is singularly natural.
Instead of admitting Peter, she leaves him exposed to danger, while
she runs to gladden the others with the good news. Her joy is
evidence of the way in which differences of position were levelled
by the common faith. The slave reckons herself to belong to the
family.0 15. Thou art mad. Another very human touch. They had
been praying earnestly ; the appearance of Peter was proof of the
power of prayer : and they are slow to believe it. It must not,
however, be hastily assumed that their prayer had been for his
release. Neither Stephen nor James had been delivered from
death. It is more likely (see on ver. 5) that their prayer had been
that Peter might be strengthened to die as Stephen and James had
died. But God did exceeding abundantly above all that they asked
or thought, and gave him back alive. Such an answer to their
prayer was more than they could at first believe. But it was the
surprise of joy rather than the incredulity of unbelief: just as the
disciples, when the Risen Lord appeared to them, ' disbelieved for
joy ' (Luke xxiv. 41).°
It is his angel. The word has been variously explained. Some
understand a 'messenger' sent by Peter. The same Greek word
is used of the Baptist's messengers (Luke vii. 24) and of Christ's
messengers (Luke ix. 52). But they could scarcely have thought
that Peter would be able to send a messenger from his prison.
Others understand his ' apparition ' to be meant ; just as the disciples
supposed the Risen Lord to be 'a spirit' (Luke xxiv. 37). They
thought that Peter had been already executed in prison, as the
Baptist had been. It is, however, better to regard it as an illustra
tion of the Jewish belief in 'guardian angels', who on critical
occasions assumed the likeness of those committed to their care
and spoke with their voice. This belief may be thought to receive
a Thomas, Acts, p. 199 ; Dykes, p. 466.
" Thomas, Acts, p. 199 ; Dobschiitz, p. 144 ; Lechler, i. 87.
c Pressense, p. 62 ; Lewis, p. 278 ; West, p. 346.

THE ACTS. XII. 12-17 185
a sanction in our Lord's words in Matt, xviii. 10, but they mean
rather a that the angels which are nearest to the Throne are those
who have the childlike qualities.
16. when they had opened. The whole company had hurried
down to the courtyard.
17. to hold their peace. The loud exclamations of astonish
ment and joy endangered his safety, and every moment was
precious. to James and to the brethren. The members of the Church
were far too numerous to meet in any one place. It has been
suggested b that this gathering may have been of women only, the
men being in hiding on account of the persecution. But it is more
likely that, as this family were Cypriotes, the gathering was of
Hellenist Christians. ' James and the brethren ' had probably met
elsewhere for prayer. The silence as to the Twelve does not
necessarily prove their absence ; but Jerusalem appears to have
ceased by this time to be their settled home, and the presidency
of the Church had passed to the Lord's brother.
There are three main theories held as to the relationship to
Jesus implied in the expression 'the brethren of the Lord', (i)
They were sons of Mary by Joseph, and therefore His brothers as
truly as Mary was His mother, (ii) They were sons of Joseph by
a former wife, and therefore not His blood relations at all. (iii)
They were sons of the Virgin's sister, the wife of Alphaeus, and
therefore His cousins.
The subject is exhaustively discussed by Bishop Lightfoot ° who,
after conclusively refuting the third theory, adopts the second in
preference to the first. Those, however, whose judgment is not-
biassed by the doctrine, for which there is no foundation in Scripture,
of the perpetual virginity of Mary, will consider that the language
of the Gospels is decidedly in favour of the first. For the brethren
are associated with Jesus and His mother in such a manner as
naturally to imply that she was also their mother. ' His mother
and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him ' (Matt.
xii. 46) ; ' Is not his mother called Mary ? and his brethren James,
and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?' (Matt. xiii. 55).
to another place. Probably Luke did not know whither he
went. It was certain that Herod would be greatly exasperated and
would employ every means to recapture him. Consequently it
a Plummer, St. Matthew, p. 251. b H. Brinton, Expositor, II. i. 313.
0 Galatians, p. 247.

186 THE ACTS. XII. 12-17
would be prudent to keep his place of retirement secret at the time,
and later it was unknown. a
There are two ways in which the above story of the angel may
have originated. The exclamation 'It is his angel' (ver. 15) was
preserved, and was later misinterpreted. Or it may have grown h
out of the death angel of Herod (ver. 23). With the death of the
king, the prison doors opened for those whom he had confined
rather out of caprice than in the interests of justice.
Professor Ramsay points out ° that Peter had to think over the
situation (ver. 11) before he came to the conclusion that his deliverer
was a messenger from the Lord. Apparently he had not been
conscious of anything supernatural. That the gate opened of itself
(ver. 10) is to an Oriental mind an expression consistent with
natural agency. The deliverer had appeared to him in ordinary
human form ; and Peter only inferred his superhuman mission on
subsequent reflection. His language then was the natural expression
of the belief that God's hand is to be traced in all events ; and the
Oriental, more than the Western, habitually thinks and speaks of
God's presence and action in common affairs. Peter might well
have, had sympathizers at the court of Herod, since Manaen, the
king's foster-brother, was a Christian (xiii. 1); and if he knew that
his deliverer was a real human being, he might still speak of him
as an angel of the Lord ; and piously ascribe his escape to the
Divine intervention. Details might be subsequently elaborated.
In any case, no reader can be blind to the beauty of the dress
in which Luke has clothed the story, or to the deep moral teaching
which it conveys. 18-19
18 Now as soon as it was day, there was no small stir
among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter.
19 And when Herod had sought for him and found him
not, he examined the guards, and commanded that they
should be put to death. And he went down from Judaea
to Caesarea, and tarried there.
19. be put to death. This was no act of extraordinary cruelty,
but a simple application of the Roman military law, by which a
a West, p. 344 ; Weizsacker, i. 77.
b P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. BUI., p. 4566. c Expositor, April, 1909.

THE ACTS. XII. 18-19 187
soldier was answerable for a prisoner with his life. The method
of Peter's escape was not known : extraordinary precautions had
been taken for his custody ; and the natural inference was that the
soldiers had either slept at their post, or been bribed to connive
at his escape. a
But while the execution of the guards presents no difficulty if
Peter's escape was effected by human agency, it is not easy to
reconcile it with our idea of Divine justice, if his rescue was the
work of an angel. That Herod sought for Peter without success
points to the probability that the people took the Apostle's part ;
and in that ease his escape through the intervention of friends is
more possible.1'
Harnack ° regards the two narratives of Peter's release from prison
by an angel (v. 19 and xii. 7-11) as 'evidently doublets'. It may
be so. But he himself supplies01 an instructive warning against
hastily assuming that two stories are duplicates because they are
similar. In the third decade of the last century the son of one
Triimpi, a pastor in Schwanden, was drowned when bathing in the
Aar near Aarau. In the same decade the son of one Leuzinger,
a pastor in Schwanden, was drowned when bathing in the Aar
near Aarau. As Aarau is a long way from Schwanden, it might
well be assumed that the two occurrences were really one, a mis
take having been made in the name. Yet both events actually
occurred. from Judaea to Caesarea. Luke does not regard the Roman
Caesarea as belonging to Judaea in the strict sense of the word.
It is interesting to note the occurrence of the same expression in
a 'we '-section (xxi. 10). e
From the death of Archelaus in a.d. 6 to the fall of Jerusalem
Judaea was governed by a Roman Procurator, with the exception
of the three years of Herod Agrippa's reign. At this time, he
would be in power at Caesarea. 20-23
20 Now he was highly displeased with the people of
Tyre and Sidon : but they came with one accord to
him, and having secured the goodwill of Blastus, the
a Thomas, Acts, p. 200. b Giles, p. 214.
0 Acts, p. 160. d Ads, p. 247.
e Harnack, Acts, p. 74.

1 88 THE ACTS. XII. 20-23
king's chamberlain, asked for peace ; because their
country was dependent for its food on the king's
country. 21 And upon a set day Herod arrayed himself
in royal robes and sat on the throne and made a speech
to them. 22 And the people began to shout, The voice
of a god, and not of a man ! 23 And immediately an
angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God
the glory : and he was eaten by worms, and died.
20. with one accord. That is, envoys came jointly from the
two cities.
Blastus. The fact that this name and the incident of the
embassy do not occur in Josephus' account of Herod's death proves
the independence of Luke in the following narrative."-
was dependent. As in Solomon's day (1 Kings v. 9 seq., cf.
Ezek. xxvii. 17), these large commercial cities, without any pro
portionate territory, depended on Palestine for their food supply.15
Their desire for peace would be stimulated by the pressure of the
famine. 21. upon a set day. According to Josephus (xvii. vi. 8), Herod,
on the second day of a splendid festival, which he gave to com
memorate the triumphal return of Claudius from Britain, entered
the theatre, dressed in a robe of silver tissue, which flashed as
the sun's rays caught it ; and the people hailed him as a god. He
did not rebuke them ; but looking up he saw an owl perched above
his head, and took it for an augury of evil. Presently he was seized
with internal pains, and died after five days of acute suffering.0
Eusebius (ii. 18) makes a discreditable alteration of the 'owl' into
' an angel ', in order to bring the narrative into harmony with
the Acts.
22. The voice of a god. The theatre was thronged with the
idle mob, whose amusement he was supplying with profuse
liberality ; and they gave him what they knew would please him —
the adoration which the Roman Emperors received.11
23. smote him. Like Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. iv. 30), he was
doomed by heaven in the very hour of his pride and triumph.
because he gave not. As a Jew, he should have repelled the
a A. C. Headlam, Hastings' Did., art. Herod. b Page, Acts.
" Page, Acts. d Farrar, i. 316; Stifler, p. no.

THE ACTS. XII. 20-23 189
blasphemous homage with horror and indignation. Many modern
writers follow Eusebius in saying that his death was a Divine
judgment for his persecution of the Church. Why, it is asked,
did Luke mention his death here at all, if he did not mean to
suggest this ? It is impossible to say why he introduced the story
here, but it cannot be right to assign a reason which is disposed
of by his own words. He not only does not say that the death was
a judgment for the murder of James and the imprisonment of
Peter, but he does say that it was the punishment of Herod's vanity
and self-glorification. a
eaten by worms. Evidently Luke did not regard the angel
as the instrument of death in any such sense as to exclude the
operation of natural causes.0 The disease, from its loathsome
character, was looked on as a Divine chastisement. Antiochus
Epiphanes, the type of a godless prince (2 Mace. ix. 2 seq.), Herod
the Great (Josephus, Antiq. xvii. vi. 5), and Maximin, the persecutor
(Euseb. viii. 16), are all said to have died of it.
died. He was carried out of the theatre a dying man, though he
lingered in agony for five days. 24-25
24 But the word of God grew and multiplied. 25 And
Barnabas and Saul, having discharged their ministra
tion, returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John
surnamed Mark.
24. the word of God grew. Palestine reverted, at the death of
Herod, to government by a Roman Procurator, and the Jewish
fanatics could not so easily persecute.0
25. returned from Jerusalem. Professor Ramsay cl refers to
this time the vision to Saul in the Temple (xxii. 17). But see note
on ix. 29.
Mark. Peter, his chosen friend and teacher, was no longer at
Jerusalem; and so Mary consented to her son accompanying his
cousin, Barnabas. Barnabas and Saul had probably been staying
in her house, and the personality of Saul may have kindled the
young man's enthusiasm. But he had been living among the narrow
prejudices of the Jerusalem Church, and the sequel suggests that
a Maurice, p. 181 ; Baumgarten, i. 328.
b Hackett, Ads. ° Thomas, Acts, p. 61. d Paul, p. 60 seq.

190 THE ACTS. XII. 24-25
the relationship with Barnabas rather than his sympathy with Saul's
views led him to accompany them.
If Mark was the ' young man, having a linen cloth cast about his
naked body' (Mark xiv. 51), it looks as though the Traitor and his
posse had gone first to Mary's house, expecting to find Jesus there ;
and the young man had hurried away, covered only with a sheet
from his bed, to give the alarm in Gethsemane.'1 There is, how
ever, no absolute certainty that the John Mark of the Acts is the
same as the traditional author of the Gospel.

CHAPTER XIII
The section of the Book which begins with this chapter is
evidently based upon some fresh source, as is shown by the mention
of the presence of Barnabas and Saul in Antioch, as though there
had been no previous account of their work there. That the
document is an early one is proved by the position of Saul's name
at the end of the list of prophets, showing that it dates from a time
before his fame had eclipsed that of others. It must be Antiochean
in origin, and probably gave an account of the first mission to
Gentiles. Eusebius says b that Luke was a native of Antioch.
Whether this be correct or not, it is evident that he had exceptional
sources of information about the Church in that city (see on
xvi. 10).

1 Now there were in the Church at Antioch prophets
and teachers, Barnabas, and Symeon called Niger, and
Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, foster-brother of Herod
the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 And as they were worship
ping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said,
Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereto
I have called them. 3 Then, when they had fasted and
prayed, and laid their hands upon them, they let them go.
1. in the Church. The Christian society at Antioch must have
been large. ' A great number ' believed before the arrival of Bar
nabas ; ' much people was added ' after he came ; and after Saul
a Bacon, p. 94. b //. E. iii. 4, 6.

THE ACTS. XIII. 1-3 191
joined him, they laboured for a year 'and taught much people'
(xi. 21, 24, 26). a The organization would seem to have been more
democratic than at Jerusalem. There is no mention of elders.
When the missionaries returned, they rendered an account of their
work to the whole assembly (xiv. 27); and when Paul and Silas
started on the second journey, it was the whole body of ' brethren '
which commended them to God (xv. 40). Nor do we hear of
any one with presidential authority such as James exercised at
Jerusalem.1' prophets and teachers. The variation in the Greek connecting
particles appears to mark them off into two groups of three prophets
and two teachers.0 But there was little real distinction between
them. The essence of prophecy in the early Church, as in the Old
Testament, was not prediction, but the delivery of an inspired
message of instruction or exhortation. The Divine prompting
might take the form of prediction, as in the case of Agabus (xi. 28) ;
but normally it took the shape of authoritative declaration of the
Divine will with reference to duty. ' He that prophesieth speaketh
unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort' (1 Cor.
xiv. 3).d
It is significant that the five names represent five different
countries. The missionary enterprise may have originated in the
longing to offer the Gospel to their own people.e As regards the
order, Barnabas comes first, with the prestige attaching to his
standing in the Church at Jerusalem. Then come three men who
had probably been the pioneers of Gentile evangelization at Antioch
(xi. 20). Last comes Saul, as the latest to join the band.1
Symeon called Niger. He was probably either the son of
Jews settled in Africa, or an African proselyte who derived his
nickname from his swarthy complexion. The tradition may be
true which identifies him with the ' Simon of Cyrene ' who carried
the Saviour's Cross ; since the two sons of the latter, Alexander and
Rufus, were evidently well known in the Church (Mark xv. 21).
Jews from ' the parts of Libya about Cyrene ' were present at
Pentecost (ii. 10), and had a synagogue at Jerusalem (vi. 9).^
Lucius. There is no reason whatever for identifying him with
a Binney, p. 135. b A. F. W. Blunt, p. 47. ° Ramsay, Paul, p. 65.
d Briggs, p. 66 ; Stanley, Corinthians, p. 243 ; F. W. Robertson, Corinthians,
p. 1S9.
" F. B. Meyer, p. 82. f Briggs, p. 62 ; Pask, p. ill.
B Hausrath, ii. 210; Briggs, p. 63.

192 THE ACTS. XIII. 1-3
the author of the Acts, though such a mistaken identification may
have led to the tradition that Luke was a native of Antioch.0-
Manaen. The word translated ' foster-brother ' is sometimes
used in Hellenistic Greek merely in the sense of 'courtier', and
need not necessarily imply more.0 But probably it has here its
literal meaning. Josephus relates ° how an Essene, named Manaen,
told Herod the Great in his boyhood that he would one day be
king of the Jews. When, some twenty years later, the prediction was
fulfilled, Herod sent for him, and wished him to live at his court,
but the old man refused. At the birth of Antipas, the king may
have selected a grandson of this Manaen, bearing his name, to be
educated with his son. The fact that Herod the Great was a public
benefactor of Antioch, which he adorned with a stately colonnade,
may have attracted Manaen to the city and given him a position of
influence there.d
It may, further, have been through this Manaen, whose Essene
origin would predispose him towards the ascetic Baptist, that Herod
came under John's influence (Mark vi. 20). We read that ' John in
prison sent two of his disciples ' to Jesus (Matt. xi. 2). As a prisoner,
he was not likely to have had access to any of his disciples unless
they were members of Herod's court. Could the two have been
Manaen and Chuza (Luke viii. 3) ? Our Lord's words (Matt. xi. 8),
' But what went ye out for to see ? a man clothed in soft raiment ?
Behold, they that wear soft raiment are in kings' houses,' seem to be
suggested by the court dress worn by them. And, again, may not
Manaen be the ' nobleman ' of John iv. 46 ? The unusual Greek
word so translated denotes ' a royal personage ', and would well
describe the semi-royal rank of Herod's foster-brother.6 In any
case, it is interesting to mark the strange divergence of the two boys
nursed at the same breast.
The addition of the Roman name Niger to the Jewish Symeon, the
description of Lucius as of ' Cyrene ', and the mention of Manaen's
relation to the Idumaean Herod, imply that the position of the three
men in the Church at Antioch was not due to their Jewish origin,
but to their Gentile connexions.1,
2. as they were worshipping. Hitherto evangelistic work
"- Plumptre, Ads ; A. C. Headlam, Hastings' Did., art. Lucius.
b T. K. Cheyne, Encycl. BUI., p. 2917. ° Antiq. XV. a. 5.
d Briggs, p. 64 ; Ii. Cowan, Hastings' Did, art. Manaen ; Plumptre, p. 59.
8 Suggested in conversation by Canon J. M. Wilson.
r Baumgarten, i. 351.

THE ACTS. XIII. i-

i93

has been the result of circumstances or of the earnest zeal of
individuals. The Church had made no organized efforts to carry the
Gospel abroad. Now teachers were sent forth from Antioch with
that definite purpose. To her belongs the honour of inaugurating
the foreign mission work of the Church. She possessed special
qualifications to be a centre of missionary activity, in her geo
graphical position, her wide commercial relations, her population
of various races, and her amalgamation of Eastern and Western
civilization. But the movement was due to no external advantages,
but sprang, as all the best things spring, from prayer. Christ had
told His disciples (Matt. ix. 38) to 'pray the Lord of the harvest
that he would send forth labourers into his harvest '. Now the
Church prayed, and the Lord sent the labourers.*1
and fasting. The pious Jew fasted twice in the week (Luke
xviii. 12), and Christian Jews would naturally continue the custom.
But little emphasis is laid on the practice in the New Testament.
In several passages (Matt. xvii. 21 ; Mark ix. 29 ; Acts x. 20 ; 1 Cor.
vii. 5) the mention of it appears to be an interpolation.0 Here it
implies a sense that the occasion was specially solemn. The Church
was rising for the first time to the comprehension of the Master's
words (Matt. xiii. 38), 'The field is the world'; and under the
conviction that the hour had come for more aggressive action had
met in united prayer for guidance. And as they prayed, light came.0
the Holy Spirit said — that is, by the mouth of one of the
prophets, who, doubtless, like Agabus (xxi. n), prefaced his utterance
with the words, 'Thus saith the Holy Spirit.'
Separate. Both men had been called long before, but were now
to be solemnly set apart for the special work to which in the Divine
purpose they had been destined. Called by God, they received their
commission from the Church.cl
Barnabas and Saul. The Church followed the Master's
example (Mark vi. 7), when he sent out the Seventy in pairs.
Rarely was Paul without a companion. He was ' at Athens alone '
(1 Thess, iii. r), and there his ministry was less successful than
anywhere else. He began his work at Corinth alone, and we are
told (xviii. 5) of the change wrought in his spirits and activity by the
arrival of his friends.13
for the work. It was unnecessary to define its nature, since it
a Olshausen, p. 51 1 ; Briggs, p. 3 ; Pierson, p. 94.
" Rackham, Acts. c Piessense, p. 52 ; Briggs, p. 67 ; Iverach, p. 46.
d Binney, p. 137. " Arnot, p. 295 ; Briggs, p. 86.
1329 O

194 THE ACTS. XIII. 1-3
was implied in the object for which they had gathered together.
And Saul must often have spoken of his future work among the
Gentiles — work to which he knew that he had been appointed
(ix. 15 ; xxii. 21).
3. laid their hands upon them. This was not ordination, as we
understand the word, for they had both been long engaged in the
work of the ministry. Still less was Apostleship now conferred,
for St. Paul is careful to say (Gal. i. 1) that he had received his
Apostleship through no human agency. It was a solemn dedication
of them to a work on which they were to enter, not as a personal
venture, but as the accredited messengers of the Church. The act
is described afterwards (xiv. 26) as a committing of them 'to the
grace of God for the work ' ; and it was an act which might be, and
was (xv. 40), repeated whenever a new field of labour was entered
upon.a they let them go. The next verse states that the Spirit ' sent '
them. What the brethren did was to release them from their duties
at Antioch.0 And, in so doing, they set an example to the Church
for all time. To Barnabas they were under special obligations.
He must have held a place in their esteem and confidence which no
other could possess. And Saul could not have worked for a year
among them without impressing upon them the conviction that he
was no ordinary man.0 The removal of two such workers involved
a heavy sacrifice. But the Church gave of her best in faith that
God would supply their places. Nor did she argue that there were
heathen enough in Antioch — that it would be time to go to Cyprus
when they had been converted. The pleas that have been too often
urged to discourage missionary effort availed nothing against the
spiritual enthusiasm of the early disciples. d
4-12
On missionary work in the first century. The Acts records
mainly the labours of St. Paul, but other missionaries must have
been working in every direction. Paul himself alludes (1 Cor. ix. 5)
to Peter and the other Apostles receiving maintenance as evangelists;
the narrative of the Acts in several places implies their absence from
Jerusalem ; and though we have no certain data connecting any
one of the Twelve with the foundation of particular Churches, tradi-
a Eadie, p. 52 ; Stanley, p. 50. b Ramsay, Paul, p. 67.
" Briggs, p. 109. d Taylor, Paul, p. 8s ; Lyman Abbott, p. 43.

THE ACTS. XIII. 4-12 195
tion is uniform in so connecting almost all of them. Further, the
natural inference from the wide spread of Christianity in the second
century is that the foundations were laid in the first century by
a host of preachers unknown to us by name. The silence of the
Acts cannot be due to ignorance on Luke's part. But the expansion
under St. Paul, working in the chief cities of the Roman world,
interested him more than the spread of the Church to East and
South. In his estimation other workers sank into insignificance
in comparison with the great figure of the man whose friend and
fellow worker he himself had been. And he was right. Paul's
statesmanship in following the arteries of the Empire made his work
historically the most important. But we must not on that account
forget the existence of other agents in the spread of the Gospel.0-
4 So they, being sent forth by the Holy Spirit,
went down to Seleucia ; and sailed thence to Cyprus.
6 And when they arrived at Salamis they began to
proclaim the word of God in the synagogues of the
Jews: and they had also John as attendant. 6 And
when they had gone through the whole island to
Paphos, they found there a certain sorcerer, a false
prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-Jesus. 7 He was
with the proconsul, Sergius Paullus, a man of intelli
gence, who called for Barnabas and Saul, and sought
to hear the word of God. 8 But Elymas, or the sorcerer
(for such is the meaning of the name), withstood them,
seeking to turn aside the Proconsul from the faith.
9 But Saul (who is also called Paul) was filled with the
Holy Spirit, and fastening his eyes on him 10 said, O full
of all guile and all villainy, son of the devil, enemy of
all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to turn aside the
straight paths of the Lord ? n And now, behold, the
hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind,
not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there
a Hanson, p. 3 seq. ; Ramsay, Pauline Studies, p. 256 seq.; Purves, p. 177;
Weizsacker, ii. 8 ; Ropes, p. 207.
O 2

196 THE ACTS. XIII. 4-12
fell on him a mist and a darkness ; and he went about
seeking some to lead him by the hand. 12 Then the
Proconsul, when he saw what had befallen, believed,
being astonished at the teaching about the Lord.
4. So they. The usual expression, 'Paul's first missionary
journey,' is so far misleading that he had been for years engaged in
missionary work in Cilicia and Syria.a But now for the first time
the purpose of carrying the Gospel to the heathen was definitely
present to him.
Seleucia. The seaport of Antioch, fifteen miles distant, at the
mouth of the Orontes.
to Cyprus. They started in obedience to a Divine inspiration,
but the particular place to which they went was probably determined
by what we call ordinary human considerations.0 Not only was
Cyprus the birthplace of Barnabas, who would be familiar with the
people and naturally anxious for their evangelization — subsequently,
after his rupture with Paul, he again went thither with Mark (xv. 39) —
but the Church at Antioch owed its existence to Cypriotes among
others. 5. Salamis. It had been the capital of the island under the
Ptolemies, and was still, owing to its excellent harbour and com
mercial prosperity, the largest town, though the seat of government
had under the Romans been transferred to Paphos.
in the synagogues. Jews had long been settled at Salamis;
and their numbers greatly increased after Augustus leased the
Cyprian copper mines to Herod the Great.0 It is interesting to find
Paul at once beginning his constant policy of attacking the strong
holds of heathenism, the cities. The country follows the lead of
the towns ; and the battle, if it was to be won, had to be first fought
in them.d And in another way this plan of action was that to which
Paul adhered in all his after-work — to carry the Gospel to the Jew
first. Except on those occasions, which are noted, as at Lystra
(xiv. 15) and Athens (xvii. 22), he everywhere went first to the
synagogue, and only when the Jews rejected his message turned to
the Gentiles. Apart from his natural desire to address the first offer
of the Gospel to his countrymen, it was the common-sense proce
dure. As a Jewish Rabbi he would be accorded at first a ready
a Wrede, p. 43 ; McGiffert, p. 173. b Maurice, p. 191.
" Josephus, Antiq., xvi. iv. 5. d Ball, p. 40.

THE ACTS. XIII. 4-12 197
welcome in the synagogue ; whereas in the streets of a great city one
of a despised and unpopular race would have found it hard to win
a hearing.3- Moreover, the synagogue furnished a connecting link
for activity among the heathen. The coarse and incredible myths of
polytheism had lost their hold on the nobler spirits of the age ; and
such men, in their revolt from the crude idolatries and licentious
indulgences round them, turned, in their longing for some worthier
object of worship, to the purity and grandeur of the Jewish faith.
Hence the synagogue attracted numerous proselytes, and a preacher
of the Gospel found in it a bridge over which to pass to pagan
circles.0 they had also John as attendant. John was his Jewish
name, Mark the Roman name by which he was known among those
for whom the Acts was written (xii. 12, 25). The words are some
what strangely inserted. They may have been introduced by Luke
into his source, because the subsequent narrative (ver. 13) required
some previous mention of Mark's presence. Or, since we are not
told with what success they preached, the mention of Mark at this
point may imply that there were converts to be baptized. But it is
more probable that his duty was not to baptize, but to make arrange
ments for board, lodging, and travelling. Though Paul had later in
more distant places to work for his living, he is not likely to have set
out from such a Church as Antioch unprovided with money. And
the party, as we see from ver. 13, consisted of more than three.
Paul's companions are not always mentioned. The name of Titus,
for instance, nowhere occurs in the Acts.0
It has been suggested cl that the word translated ' attendant ' may
be, not a predicate, but an official title— ' John, the synagogue
minister.' The clause is in close connexion with the mention of
synagogues ; the omission of the article is common in the case of
official titles ; and, if it was a predicate, the natural order of the
Greek words would be different. If this view be correct, we have
a fact about Mark which reveals his close ties with Judaism.
6. through the whole island. There is no indication as to the
length of their stay in Cyprus ; but if they preached in all the towns
in which there was a synagogue, this work would occupy many
weeks. So far Barnabas, no doubt, took the leading part. As
" Maclaren, ii. 4; Baring Gould, p. 145; Johnston, p. 77.
b Wrede, p. 50 ; Eadie, p. 54.
c Olshausen, p. 514; Lewin, i. 127 ; Johnston, p. 75.
i Chase, Hastings' Did., art. Mark.

198 THE ACTS. XIII 4-12
a native of the island, he may have had acquaintances among the
Jews. Whereas he returned thither after his separation from Paul
(xv. 39), the latter does not appear to have regarded it as a Church
of his foundation and never revisited it.a
to Paphos. On the west of the island, four hundred miles from
Salamis. They were here attacking vice in its very citadel. Paphos
was the centre of the worship of Aphrodite, and was notorious, even
in that profligate age, for its licentiousness.
a certain sorcerer. Luke's accuracy is incidentally confirmed
by Pliny, who says b that there were in Cyprus two schools of sooth
sayers, one of which was Jewish ; and in connexion with this state
ment he mentions a Sergius Paullus, who may have been this very
Proconsul.0 In those days, when faith in idolatry was shaken, the
Romans, feeling their own weakness and the need of Divine
guidance, turned to men who professed to possess supernatural
powers. This man was probably a Babylonian Jew, skilled in
chemistry and astrology, and beyond his age in his knowledge of
the powers of nature. He was what we should call a man of
science rather than a sorcerer, though there was at this time no real
distinction between science and magic.d
a false prophet. He had probably taught much that was true
about the one God, but had falsely pretended to be in intimate
communion with Him, and had supported his pretensions by the
arts of magic.6
a Jew. The sight of a countryman of his own, one of the chosen
race, exercising a pernicious influence over heathens, prostituting
his knowledge of the sacred books to strengthen what was debasing
in superstition, would stir Paul deeply. He would be familiar with
such pretenders, being a contemporary of the celebrated thaumatur-
gist, Apollonius of Tyana, who had studied at Tarsus ; and he would
feel that in the persons of himself and'Elymas Christianity was
confronted by a system rather than by an individual.
7. the proconsul. A mark of accuracy. In b. c. 30 Cyprus had
been made an Imperial province under a Propraetor. But five years
later Augustus changed it to a Senatorial province under a Pro
consul. Two inscriptions have been found giving the names of
Proconsuls of Cyprus in a. d. 51 and 52, and a third ends with the
a Fouard, Paul, p. 8. b N. II. xxx. ii. 6. ° Maurice, p. 193.
a Vaughan, ii. 144 ; J. Massie, Hastings' Did., art. Bar- Jesus ; Buss, p. 255.
" Briggs, p. 120.

THE ACTS. XIII. 4-12 199
words ' in the proconsulship of Paullus ', but without any clue to the
date.a a man of intelligence. He had seen the absurdity of idolatry
and felt the insufficiency of scepticism ; and he was anxiously in
search of truth, and ready to welcome it from whatever source it
might come. And the theology of this Jewish magician taught at
least the great truths of the unity and the spirituality of the Divine
Being. But he was not satisfied ; and the same craving that brought
him under the influence of Elymas led him to send for these new
teachers who spoke of a Divine word of God which taught and
enlightened man.0
8. Elymas. The abruptness with which the Arabic name is
introduced looks as though Luke has amalgamated two accounts, in
one of which the man was called ' Bar-jesus, a false prophet ', in the
other ' Elymas, a sorcerer '.°
withstood them. Apparently a public discussion was arranged.
The situation recalls the scene in the Old Testament, where Jannes
and Jambres ' withstood ' Moses (2 Tim. iii. 8).d Evidently the
words of the Evangelists produced a deep impression on the Pro
consul, and Elymas, feeling that his position and influence were
being endangered, put forth all his efforts to counteract them.
9. who is also called Paul. It is impossible to suppose, with
Jerome, that Saul adopted the name of his first Gentile convert,
though the coincidence of the names may have struck Luke and
led him to introduce his Roman name at this particular point.
As the son of a Roman citizen, Saul must always have had a Roman
name ; and since it was a common practice with Jews to adopt for
use among Gentiles a name which resembled in sound their Hebrew
name, Paul would be a likely name for Saul to choose. Luke, by
a true instinct, realizes that this occasion, when Saul stood for the
first time in the presence of a representative of the Roman govern
ment, marked an epoch. It was the real beginning of the work
which was ever after associated with his Roman name ; and his
Hebrew name is henceforth dropped, except when the narrative
deals with episodes in his earlier life.
filled with the Holy Spirit. Such a case had not occurred
before. Cornelius had been a devout worshipper of the true God :
Paullus was a typical specimen of the cultured heathen of the day.0
a Stokes, ii. 205. b Binney, p. 144; Eadie, p. 57.
0 P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. Bibl., p. 478.
d Baumgarten, i. 370 ; Fouard, Paul, p. 14. e Shirley, p. 46.

200 THE ACTS. XIII. 4-12
The critical moment called forth all Paul's powers. Perhaps he
became for the first time fully conscious of what his mission to the
Gentiles meant : perhaps he now first conceived the dream of win
ning the Roman Empire to the Gospel. But what Luke is careful
to emphasize is that he did not speak under the influence of human
passion. 10. full of all guile. Evidently Elymas had not employed the
legitimate weapons of controversy, but had resorted to evasion and
distorted his opponents' statements.11
turn aside. A plain reference to Isaiah xl. 4, where the prepara
tion for the way of the Lord is described as ' making the crooked
straight '."
11. the hand of the Lord. The story of Elymas' blindness
must have at least an historical basis. If, says Harnack,0 Luke had
wished to invent miracles, he would have consigned Simon Magus,
who is painted in darker colours, to some similar fate.
shalt be blind. It was a judicial infliction ; blindness for blind
ness, darkness without for wilful darkness within ; he who had misled
others seeking for a hand to lead him.d It may well have been that
Paul remembered how God had dealt with himself on the road to
Damascus, when he was opposing the truth and fighting against
light. Then the visual power which he had misused had been
temporarily suspended, or rather turned inward. The very language
suggests the comparison. Cf. 'seeking some to lead him by the
hand ' with ' they led him by the hand ' (ix. 8).e
for a season. The infliction was not simply retributive, but
remedial. Paul remembers the mercy shown to himself as well as
the judgment. He had been but ' three days without sight '.
a mist. Luke here uses a medical term, found in Galen to denote
the opacity of the eye caused by a wound.'
12. believed. The natural inference from the language is that
he accepted Christianity. But it is scarcely conceivable that Luke
can have meant this. He generally records critical facts, and here he
does not even say that Paullus was baptized. Yet the conversion of
a Proconsul would have been an event of the first importance, such
as we should expect to find recorded even by secular historians, since
it would almost certainly have necessitated the resignation of his
" Briggs, p. 130. b Plumptre, Acts.
° A[ts, P- 153- d Briggs, p. 132.
e Page, Acts. '.Plumptre, Acts; Baumgarten, i. 379.
Humphrey, Acts.

THE ACTS. XIII. 4-12 201
office which involved official patronage of idolatrous worship. Even
Christian legend is silent about him. Probably he merely acquiesced
courteously in what Paul said, which agreed with his own views.
Paul himself did not, it is clear, regard his work in Cyprus as of
great importance. He nowhere mentions the island in his letters,
nor did he ever revisit it.11 It may, however, be noted that the
name of a Sergia Paullina has been found in a Christian cemetery
at Rome, and this looks as if some of his family became Christians.1*
13-15
On the Churches of Galatia. The Gallic settlement in
' Galatia ', in an ethnological sense, has always been well known ; but
the limits of the Roman province of Galatia, in a political sense, were
till recently little understood. It was therefore supposed by Bishop
Lightfoot and others that the Galatian Church was founded by
St. Paul in his second missionary journey (xvi. 6) ; and that Luke,
knowing no details, passed over its foundation, and carried the
narrative rapidly forward to Troas, where he himself met Paul. This
is known as ' the North Galatian theory ' Renan and other recent
commentators hold, on the contrary, that the Churches founded on
the first missionary journey in Phrygia — Pisidia, Antioch, Iconium,
Lystra, Derbe — are the Churches to which the Epistle was written.
This is known as ' the South Galatian theory '. It was, however, little
more than a happy guess till Professor Ramsay placed it on a solid
basis of historical and archaeological research. Its correctness is
now almost beyond question. There is no record of any visit of
Paul to Northern Galatia, and the course of the narrative in ch. xvi
renders such a visit improbable. The existence of the Epistle to
the Galatians is the sole reason for postulating it ; and South Galatia
satisfied all the requirements in regard to the Epistle.0
The following considerations seem to be almost conclusive in
favour of the South Galatian theory : —
(i) The well-known Churches of South Galatia disappear entirely
from the New Testament when we pass from the Acts, and the
Churches of North Galatia, of whose foundation we are told nothing,
come into prominence, if we refer to the latter St. Paul's letter to
' the Galatians '.d
a Rackham, Acts; Baring Gould, p. 152 ; Renan, Paul, p. 56.
b Simcox, p. 69. c Johnston, p. 102 seq.
11 Gilbert, p. 262.

202 THE ACTS. XIII. 13-15
(ii) It is inexplicable that the Judaizers should have passed by
the Churches of South Galatia and penetrated to the distant North
Galatia. (iii) The converts to whom the Epistle is addressed had evidently
received the faith before the Conference at Jerusalem, but St. Paul
did not visit North Galatia (if at all) till after the Conference.8-
(iv) Barnabas is alluded to (Gal. ii. i, 9, 13) in a way which implies
that he was personally known to the Galatians ; but he was Paul's
companion on his first journey only.
(v) The Epistle implies intimate ties with the Galatians, and there
fore a long stay among them. Paul did stay long in South Galatia,
but cannot have stayed long (if at all) in North Galatia.
(vi) Galatia took part in the collection for the brethren at Jeru
salem (1 Cor. xvi. 1). Is it likely that Paul would have gathered
no contribution from the Churches of South Galatia, which he had
founded earliest and had later revisited ? And how comes Luke to
give (xx. 4) two names of South Galatians among the delegates who
bore the contributions, but no names of North Galatians ? ^
(vii) It is difficult to see why St. Paul should have turned aside to
a district relatively so unimportant as North Galatia, where Jews
were few and where the Greek language was less commonly used.0
(viii) Early Church history supplies no trace of Churches in
North Galatia.d
(ix) In his letters St. Paul consistently uses provincial, not local,
names. If ' Syria', ' Asia ', ' Macedonia ', and ' Achaia ', mean with
him always the Roman province, then ' Galatia ' will mean the same
— the province, that is, formed under Augustus by the union of
Lycaonia, Pisidia, Phrygia, and Paphlagonia with the ethnological
Galatia.6 Through the chief cities of South Galatia, connected with one
another by good military roads, passed a constant stream of inter
course between Rome and the East. Thus they formed a fine
strategic position for Paul's campaign. But the same advantage of
position which attracted him facilitated the organized subversion of
his converts by the Judaizers.f
13 Now Paul and his company put to sea from Paphos
and came to Perga in Pamphylia; but John departed
* Fouard, Paul, p. 44. b McGiffert, p. 180; Gilbert, p. 263.
c Church Review, July, 1893. d Lock, p. 15 seq.
6 Weizsacker, i. 231. ' Ragg, p. 132.

THE ACTS. XIII. 13-15 203
from them and returned to Jerusalem. u But they
themselves, passing through from Perga, came to
Pisidian Antioch. And they went into the synagogue
on the sabbath day and sat down. ls And after the
reading of the law and the prophets the rulers of the
synagogue sent to them, saying, Brethren, if ye have
any word of exhortation for the people, speak it.
13. Paul and his company. Paul had already taken the lead
in the interview with the Proconsul, and henceforth he retains it.
In nothing is the greatness of Barnabas more manifest than in his
recognition of the superiority of Paul and acceptance of a secondary
position for himself.
came to Perga. It has been suggested*1 that the pointed repe
tition of the expression ' the work ' at the beginning (ver. 2) and at
the end (xiv. 26) of the account of this mission, and again (xv. 38)
in Paul's reference to Mark's departure, indicates that the general
outline had been planned before leaving Antioch. But it is more
likely that there was a change of plan, since John had been willing
to go with them to Perga, but then refused to go north. If so, the
new move was the choice of the new leader, just as the choice of
Cyprus had been due to Barnabas ; and it came as a surprise to his
companions.13 John departed. What was the reason ? Many explanations are
possible. He was a young man, and had perhaps entered on the
work without counting the cost. In Cyprus he may have been
among relations and friends ; he had, at least, found himself in the
familiar Ghetto at every halting-place. But now, when he got to
Asia, and heard of swollen rivers and bands of robbers, his heart
failed him. Perhaps, too, he was feeling homesick (he did not return
to Antioch but to Jerusalem), and finding a ship sailing for Caesarea
could not resist the temptation to embark.0
Or he may have been offended at the change which had been
silently effected in the leadership. When they left Antioch, Barna
bas was first and Paul second. The party had now become ' Paul
and his company'; and the young cousin felt a jealousy to which
the generous Barnabas was himself superior.3
a G. G. Findlay, Hastings' Did., art. Paul.
b McGiffert, p. 176; Stalker, p. no.
c J. Robertson, p. 112 ; Fouard, Paul, p. 23 ; Binney, p. 147.
d Arnot, p. 303.

204 THE ACTS. XIII. 13-15
Or it may have been genuine alarm on the part of a disciple of
the Church at Jerusalem, brought up in the atmosphere of Judaism,
at finding himself associated with one who, as he only now realized,
was preparing to preach directly to Gentiles. a As an Israelite he
could not accept this, much less take an active share in it. And it
is significant that after the Conference at Jerusalem, when the
Church had given its sanction to Paul's policy, Mark was once more
anxious to join him.
But whatever his reasons were — and there may have been a
mixture of all the above motives — Paul, it is clear, thought him
blameworthy. We read later (xv. 38) that he ' thought not good to
take with them him who deserted them in Pamphylia and went not
with them to the work '.
14. passing through. Since they preached in Perga on their
return journey (xiv. 25), there must have been some reason why
they now left the place at once. It is not likely that they had
sailed from Seleucia (ver. 4) before the opening of navigation in
March; and as they must have spent some months in Cyprus, it
would now be late summer or early autumn, a season at which the
coast of Pamphylia was specially unhealthy.0 Farrar thinks ° that
they found the place deserted, the whole population having migrated
in the hot weather to the hills. But this cannot be the explanation,
since the custom of so migrating was first introduced by the Turks
after the twelfth century/1 Since St. Paul says (Gal. iv. 13) that it
was on account of illness that he preached to the Galatians, Ramsay
suggests that the journey north to the hill country may have been
undertaken because Paul was prostrated by an attack of malaria.
But in such a condition he could scarcely have ventured on the long
and dangerous journey from Perga to Pisidian Antioch — 'perils of
rivers and perils of robbers' (2 Cor. xi. 26) suits this journey better
than any other of Paul's of which we know— and he implies that his
preaching in Galatia was due to his being detained there by illness
rather than to his having gone thither on that account. Nor would
malaria excite the feeling of repulsion implied in Gal. iv. 14. There
was nothing in it to be a ' temptation ' to the Galatians, or to call
forth contempt and loathing. Ophthalmia would better answer to
the conditions, and Paul may have suffered from snowblindness in
crossing the Taurus range.e
a Fouard, Paul, p. 74. b Fouard, Paul, p. 22.
c Vol. i, p. 359. a Ramsay, Churches, p. 17.
0 F. Ii. Chase, Expositor, IV. viii. 401 ; G. G. Findlay, Hastings' Diet., art. Paul.

THE ACTS. XIII. 13-15

205

A more likely explanation is n that Paul's aim was Ephesus, which
was his object in his second missionary journey, when he was turned
aside by Divine intervention (xvi. 6), and was the place at which he
opened the campaign in his third journey (xix. r). If it was autumn
when he reached Perga, the sea route to Ephesus would be closed,
and his natural way would be by the Roman road through Galatia.
His purpose was to pass through, but being detained by illness he
preached in Galatia on his recovery.
Pisidian Antioch. Popularly so called, to distinguish it from
' Syrian Antioch ', though it was not actually in Pisidia, but was
a Phrygian town on its borders. It had been made a Roman colony
in 8 b. c, and was at this time the chief centre of military and civil
administration in the south-western portion of the vast province of
Galatia.b the synagogue. There was but one. The town was more
Roman than Greek; and the Jews, though evidently influential
(ver. 50), were not numerous.0
on the sabbath day. It is not said that this was on the first
Sabbath after their arrival, and the effect described later (ver. 44)
would scarcely have been produced in a few days.d
15. after the reading. The reading consisted of two lessons
from the law and from the prophets, and was in Hebrew. But since
the knowledge of that language was confined to the learned, it was
interpreted, verse by verse in the case of the law, and three verses
at a time in the case of the prophets. It was followed by the
sermon, which usually took the shape of an exposition of the
Scriptures which had just been read (Luke iv. 17 seq.). It would
appear that on the present occasion Paul, with the same readiness
with which he took the inscription on an altar as the text of his
address at Athens, began with a reference to the lessons of the
day. The words translated 'sustained' (ver. 18) and 'lifted up'
(ver. 17) occur respectively in the LXX version of Deut. i. 31 and
Isaiah i. 2, which two chapters are read on the same Sabbath accord
ing to the present Jewish lectionary, which is of unknown antiquity.
Both these words are rare in the Old Testament, and Paul uses
them in the same sense which they bear in these chapters. Thus
we have an incidental proof that he spoke in Greek.6
" F. Rendall, Expositor, VI. iii. 241.
b Ramsay, Expositor; IV. v. 32; vi. 167.
c J. Robertson, p. 131. d Ramsay, Paid, p. 99.
p Farrar, i. 366 ; Taylor, Paul, p. in ; Fouard, Paul, p. 28.

206 THE ACTS. XIII. 13-15
sent to them. Two chance strangers would scarcely have been
thus singled out. It must have become known in the Jewish quarter
that the newcomers were Rabbis with a message which they desired
to communicate. None the less, the invitation is an interesting
illustration of the national and religious unity which bound the
Jewish people together throughout the world."-
word of exhortation. Probably a technical phrase used in the
synagogue (cf. Heb. xiii. 22 ; r Tim. iv. 13)-^
16-41
Three missionary speeches by St. Paul are recorded in the Acts,
and they are clearly given as examples of his method of preaching
to different audiences — at Pisidian Antioch to Jews, at Athens to
Gentiles, at Miletus to Christians.0
How far is this speech historical ? There is no doubt that the
style is Luke's, and there is equally no doubt as to the resemblance
to Stephen's speech and to speeches by Peter.d As to the style,
Luke is not likely to have had access to more than brief notes pre
served by some Christian at Antioch; and he would have himself
to flesh out the skeleton. In doing this he would be helped by the
fact that he must have listened to scores of addresses to Jews by
St. Paul, who could scarcely fail gradually to stereotype his material.3
As to resemblances to speeches by Peter, the early preachers of Chris
tianity would be likely to follow similar lines of argument. But as
regards Stephen's speech the differences are as marked as the resem
blances. Both Stephen and Paul give, it is true, a review of the
national history ; but that is a common feature in Jewish oratory
(cf. 1 Sam. xii), and the motive is wholly different. Stephen was
mainly concerned with showing that the Divine revelations had had
no necessary connexion with the Holy Land, and that the rejection
of Jesus had been foreshadowed in the rejection of Moses. Paul's
aim was to show that in earlier deliverances, as in the redemption
by Jesus, all was the outcome of the Divine working.?
On the other hand, it is possible to trace in this speech the germ
of several of the characteristic thoughts of St. Paul's Epistles —
justification by faith, the powerlessness of the Mosaic Law to save,
and the connexion of Christ's Resurrection with man's justification.
And the unmistakable references to the lessons just read in the
"¦ Rackham, Acts; Johnston, p. 81 ; Binney, p. 149. b Chase, p. 179.
0 Pfleiderer, Paulinism, ii. 246. d McGiffert, p. 186.
15 Hausrath, iii, 138. ' Chase, p. 182.

THE ACTS. XIII. 16-41 207
synagogue prove the speech to have its source in actual circumstances,
and not in any imaginary situation."- And if Luke has given the
spirit rather than the exact form, we may be gainers rather than
losers. A good painting may tell more of the man portrayed than
a photograph can do.b
16 And Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand
said : — Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, hearken ;
17 The God of this people Israel chose our fathers, and
lifted up the people when they sojourned in the land of
Egypt, and with a high arm led them out of it. 18 And
for about forty years he sustained them in the wilder
ness. 19 And when he had destroyed seven nations in
the land of Canaan, he gave their land for an inheritance
within about four hundred and fifty years. 20 And, after
that, he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet.
21 And afterward they asked for a king ; and God gave
them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of
Benjamin, for the space of forty years. 22 And when
he had removed him, he raised up David to be their
king ; to whom also he bare witness, saying, I have
found David the son of Jesse, a man after my heart,
who shall do all my will. 23 Of this man's seed hath
God according to promise brought to Israel a Saviour,
Jesus; 24John having first proclaimed in preparation
for his coming a baptism of repentance to all the people
of Israel. 25 And as John was finishing his course, he
said, What suppose ye that I am ? I am not he. But
behold, there cometh one after me, the shoes of whose
feet I am not worthy to loose. 26 Brethren, sons of the
race of Abraham, and those among you that fear God,
to us was the word of this salvation sent forth. 27 For
they that dwell at Jerusalem and their rulers, because
they knew him not, even fulfilled the voices of the
prophets which are read every sabbath by giving
a Baumgarten, i. 44. b Gardner, p. 396,

208 THE ACTS. XIII. 16-41
sentence ; 28 and though they found no cause for death
asked of Pilate that he should be slain. 20 And when
they had fulfilled all things that had been written of
him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in
a tomb. 30 But God raised him from the dead : 31and
he was seen for some days longer by them that came
up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now
witnesses of him to the people. 32 And we bring you
good tidings of the promise made unto the fathers,
33 how that God hath fulfilled the same to our children
to the utmost, in that he raised up Jesus : as also it is
written in the Second Psalm,
Thou art my Son, I have this day begotten thee.
34 And in token that he raised him from the dead, no
more to return to destruction, he thus hath spoken : —
I will give you the holy promises covenanted to
David.
35 Because he saith also in another Psalm,
Thou wilt not give thy Holy One to see
destruction.
36 For David, after he had ministered to his own
generation by the counsel of God, fell asleep and was
laid with his fathers, and saw destruction : 37 but he,
whom God raised up, saw no destruction. 38 Be it
therefore known to you, brethren, that through this
man is being proclaimed to you remission of sins ;
39 and in him every one that believe th is acquitted from
all things, from which ye could not be acquitted by the
law of Moses. 40 Beware therefore lest that come upon
you which is spoken in the prophets,
41 Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish ;
For I work a work in your clays,
A work which ye shall in no wise believe, if a
man declare it to you.

THE ACTS. XIII. 16-41 209
16. stood up. The usual Jewish practice was for the speaker to
sit (Luke iv. 20), but the Greek and Roman custom was to stand,
and here the population was largely Roman. a
ye that fear God. The devout Gentiles furnished the most
receptive soil for the Gospel, since they had been attracted by
Judaism, not as a ceremonial system, but as a lofty conception of
God and life. How wide a gap separated them from the mass of
the heathen is shown by the way in which Paul here, as in his
Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans, is able to assume their
intimate acquaintance with the Jewish scriptures.0
hearken. That to which they were to hearken was the history
of their calling. The Jews were not likely to forget that they were
not as other nations, but they were in grave danger of forgetting
the purpose for which God had chosen them out from the nations.
The fact that the race was appointed to do a great work might be
written large in their scriptures and yet not be written in their
hearts.0 1 7. God . . . chose. At the outset he strikes the key-note, the sove
reign agency of God. The Israelites did not choose God, but God
chose them. God brought them out of Egypt, God led them in the
wilderness, God destroyed the nations before them, God gave them
Saul, God gave them David, God raised up a Saviour for them,
God raised Him from the dead. All through history Paul saw a
Figure in the likeness of God.d
this people. Some commentators e refer the word ' this ' to the
address of the previous verse, as though Paul called the attention of
the proselytes to the Jewish portion of the congregation. By thus
marshalling the glories of their past before the Gentiles, he would
enlist the sympathy of the synagogue. But it is better f to refer the
word to some mention of Israel in the passage of Scripture just
read. It thus furnishes a fresh indication that Luke had a back
ground of facts for his report of this speech.
18. sustained. The MSS. are divided between two words,
differing in a single letter, meaning respectively ' sustained them '
and ' bore with their humours '. The word occurs, with the same
variation of reading, in the LXX of Deut. i. 31, which is obviously
referred to. The former meaning is preferable, since Paul's point
here is not the wilful and refractory temper of the people, but the
"¦ Lewin, i. 141. b Gilbert, p. 80; Rendall, Acts. c Maurice, p. 198.
A Parker, ii. 17; Taylor, Paul, p. 112; Maurice, p. 201.
* e.g. Fouard, Paul, p. 29. ' Chase, p, 179.
152U P

210 THE ACTS. XIII. 16-41
care of God for them, when they were helpless and unable to support
themselves. a
21. of the tribe of Benjamin. The mention of Saul's tribe
and the reticence as to his sin may be due to Paul's innocent pride
in the glory of his own ancestry,0 and so be another indication of
the authenticity of the speech.
22. I have found. The quotation is interesting for two
reasons : — ¦
(i) It is not a formal quotation, but the spirit of two passages —
' I have found David my servant ' (Ps. lxxxix. 20) and ' the Lord
hath sought him a man after his own heart' (1 Sam. xiii. 14). But
since this application of the Old Testament with the facility of a
master hand and the method of half- quotation are characteristic of
Paul's Epistles, we get another reason for believing in the authenticity
of this speech. °
(ii) This union of the same two quotations, with the addition of
the words ' to whom he bare witness ' and ' the son of Jesse ', which
are not found in them, occurs in Clem. Cor. xviii. 1 — ' What shall
we say of David, to whom witness is borne, unto whom God said,
I have found a man after my heart, David, the son of Jesse.' This
furnishes a strong presumption that the Acts was known at Rome
before the end of the first century.d
23. Of this man's seed. The historical review stops with David,
not because later instances of the Divine intervention could not be
cited, but because the mention of David opened the way to introduce
the story of Jesus.6
25. What suppose ye? It is interesting to note Paul's famil
iarity with the teaching of the Baptist, though he does not give the
Baptist's words identically with any of the Gospel records (Matt. iii.
11 ; Mark i. 7; Luke iii. 16; John i. 21, 26)/
27. they that dwell. Lest they should suspect his message on
the ground that the central authorities of their nation had rejected
it, he shows how that very rejection of Jesus was the fulfilment of
prophecies concerning the Messiah.
28. found no cause. As a matter of fact, the Sanhedrin had
pronounced Him guilty of blasphemy and deserving of death (Matt.
xxvi. 65). But none of the Gospels were yet in existence, and it is not
strange if Paul, who had not been in Jerusalem at the time of the
"¦ Page, Acts. b Howson, Scenes, p. 26. c Howson, Scenes, p. 29.
d Knowling, Sermons on Critical Questions, p. 68.
e Fraser, p. 119. f Puives, p. 115 ; Lewin, i. 142.

THE ACTS. XIII. 16-41 211
Crucifixion, should have been, though familiar with the main out
lines, ignorant of unessential details.
29. they took him down. This statement also is at variance
with the account in the Gospels. It was not the enemies of the
Lord who took His body from the Cross and laid it in the tomb.
St. Luke himself tells us (xxiii. 53) that this was done by Joseph of
Arimathea, and in recording here an account inconsistent with his
own Gospel, he shows that he is following some report of Paul's
words."- 31. by them that came up. Another evidence of the genuine
ness of the speech. Paul allows to the Twelve an office which he
could not share. He rests the proof of the Resurrection upon their
witness of the Risen Lord amid the scenes of earth. His own sight
of the Risen Saviour was different.1'
33. raised up. Two ' raisings ' are spoken of — the raising from
the dead (ver. 30), and the raising to His throne (ver. 33). °
begotten thee. That is, acknowledged Thy Sonship by exalting
Thee to the Kingdom.
34. no more to return. He did not rise, like Lazarus, to die
and be again buried. ' Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no
more' (Rom. vi. 9).
the holy promises. The promise to David was that he should
have an heir to sit on his throne for ever. To realize such a pro
mise it was necessary that David's heir should be One not liable to
death and destruction.11
39. every one that believeth. We have here the germ of all
that is most characteristic in Paul's later teaching. It is the argu
ment of the Epistle to Galatians and Romans in a sentence.6
40. Beware. The change of tone is evident. The assertion,
and that in the hearing of Gentiles, of the insufficiency of the Law
to justify grated on some of his hearers, and anger and unbelief
were plainly written on their faces. Paul marked their rising
passion, and brought his speech to a close with warning words from
prophecy. The Jews of Habakkuk's day had refused to believe
in the impending invasion by the Chaldaeans, and yet it had

come.

a Chase, p. 184. b Chase, p. 185.
c Chase, p. 188. d Stifler, p. 120.
'' Plumptre, Acts ; Stifler, p. 1 20.
f Eadie, p. 104; Fraser, p. 127; Binney, p. 150.
P 2

212 THE ACTS. XIII. 42-49
42-49
42 Now as they were going out, the congregation
besought them that these words might be spoken to
them the next Sabbath. 43 And after the synagogue had
broken up, many of the Jews and of the devout proselytes
followed Paul and Barnabas ; who speaking to them
urged them to continue in the grace of God. u And
the next Sabbath almost the whole city was gathered
together to hear the word of God. 45 But when the
Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy, and
kept contradicting the things which were spoken by
Paul, reviling him. 46 And Paul and Barnabas spake
out boldly and said, It was necessary that the word of
God should first be spoken to you. Seeing that ye
thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of
eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. 47 For so hath
the Lord commanded us, saying,
I have set thee for a light to the Gentiles,
That thou shouldst be for salvation to the utter
most part of the earth.
48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and
glorified the word of God ; and as many as had ranged
themselves on the side of eternal life believed. "9 And
the word of the Lord was spread abroad throughout all
the region.
42. besought them. Others, however, both Jews and Gentiles,
were not offended, but were eager to hear him.
43. to continue. They were beginning to understand for the
first time the true meaning of their national history; and Paul
urged them to retain the impression already made— to see what
their calling involved — that it meant that the grace shown to their
fathers was with them too.
44. almost the whole city. The missionaries must have

THE ACTS. XIII. 42-49 213
laboured during the week among the Gentiles, and these on the
next Sabbath not only thronged the synagogue, but apparently
gathered in a vast crowd outside.
45. with jealousy. The preaching of their own Rabbis had
attracted no such notice. And their national pride was also
wounded. They might bear to hear of their Law being superseded,
but not of being superseded themselves. They were willing to be
told that the Messiah was to be ' the glory of His people Israel ',
but not that He was to be 'a light to lighten the Gentiles '.a
46. It was necessary. The Jews were to have the first offer.
' Beginning at Jerusalem ' had been Christ's direction.
judge yourselves. By their action they had pronounced verdict
on themselves ; by refusing to accept salvation, had declared them
selves unworthy of it.
we turn to the Gentiles. The meaning is not that Paul now for
the first time preached to Gentiles, or that he determined henceforth
to preach no more to Jews (the facts negative such an interpretation),
but that there, in Antioch, he meant to offer the Gospel without
respect of race. Nevertheless, it was a decisive moment. His
experience at Antioch forced him to put into words the law of his
future action. A conviction in the mind is one thing; the same
conviction brought home by facts is another.0
48. were glad. Gal. iv. 13 seq. shows how warmly they welcomed
Paul and with what affection they repaid him. Their joy was not
at the offer of Christianity as distinct from Judaism, but at the free
offer of the Jew's religion without conditions that were almost im
possible of acceptance. For while Judaism met the higher instincts
of the heathen, it had its repellent side. It entailed burdens and
obligations from which they shrank. It was purely national, holding
out its hopes only to the seed of Abraham. Even circumcision,
from which they specially revolted, gave only partial admission.0
ranged themselves. A designed contrast to ver. 46, 'Judge
yourselves unworthy of eternal life.' They fell in with the Divine
order which the Jews rejected.
49. throughout all the region. This implies a stay of some
months at least, as does also the fact that they left a vigorous
Church there.d
» Johnston, p. 83 ; Simcox, p. 71 ; Mackenzie, p. 72.
b McGiffert, p. 185 ; Maclaren, ii. 46.
0 Johnston, p. 84 ; Baring-Gould, p. 163. d Gilbert, p. 81.

214 THE ACTS. XIII. 50-52
50-52
50 But the Jews urged on the female proselytes of
rank and the chief men of the city, and stirred up
a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and cast
them out from their borders. 51 But they shook off the
dust of their feet against them, and went to Iconium.
52 And the disciples were filled with joy and with the
Holy Spirit.
50. the Jews. They were not numerous — they had but one
synagogue — and it is interesting to see what considerable influence
could be exercised by even a few resident Jews upon a heathen
community. An inscription, probably of the first century, discovered
in Apollonia, shows that Jews of one family had long been citizens
of Antioch and held important positions there. a
female proselytes. The influence of women is a marked feature
in the history of the cities of Asia.0 The dislike to circumcision led
to conversions to Judaism being much less numerous among men
than among women.0 Josephus says a that ' almost all ' the women
in Damascus were proselytes.
the chief men. Probably unofficial Romans are meant, though
the Greek word may denote Praetors. The Roman authorities were
always ready to deal promptly with any who disturbed the public
peace. Thus ' perils from their own countrymen and perils from the
Gentiles' (2 Cor. xi. 26) followed 'perils of rivers and perils of rob
bers '. There can be little doubt that they were scourged by the
lictors before being expelled. The three floggings with rods alluded
to in 2 Cor. xi. 25 can only have been inflicted in Roman colonies.6
Luke's account of what happened at Antioch is typical of his
method. His aim was not to give the history either of individuals
or of Churches. In the case of each city he asks only, What recep
tion did the missionaries meet with among the Jews ? What among
the Gentiles ? What from the Roman authorities ? How long did
they stay ? What was the manner of their departure ? *'
51. shook off. As a protest against the injustice which cast
a Lewin, i. p. xxviii ; Ramsay, Cities, p. 256.
'' Ramsay, Churches, p. 67. ° Renan, Paul, p. 77.
a Bell. Jud. n. xx. 2. e Ramsay, Expositor, Nov. 1907.
' Harnack, Acts, Introd. p. xxx.

THE ACTS. XIII. 50-52 215
them out. The sandal was taken off and the dust shaken out as
a symbolic token that the very soil of the country was defiling.
Iconium. Sixty miles distant to the east along the Roman
military road.
52. And. We should have expected ' But '. It looks as though
verses 50 and 51 were inserted by Luke from a different source.
Verse 52 follows naturally on verse 49. a
filled with joy. The same note is struck as at viii. 8. The Acts
throbs with wonder at the new gift which Pentecost brought. The
Jews might be ' filled with jealousy ' (ver. 46) ; the disciples were
' filled with joy '. Though they were but just won from heathenism,
raw, ignorant, unfit to stand alone ; though those who had brought
them the glad tidings were being violently expelled ; the disciples
were filled with joy.b
CHAPTER XIV
i-7
1 And it came to pass in Iconium that they entered
in like manner into the synagogue of the Jews, and
so spake that a great multitude both of Jews and of
Greeks believed. 2 But the Jews that were disbelieving
stirred up the minds of the Gentiles and made them
hostile to the brethren. 3 Long time therefore they
tarried, speaking boldly in reliance on the Lord, who
bare witness to the word of his grace by granting signs
and wonders to be done by their hands. 4 But the
multitude of the city was divided, and part held with
the Jews and part with the Apostles. 5 And when
there was a movement made both by the Gentiles and
by the Jews with their rulers to treat them evilly and
to stone them, 6 they became aware of it, and fled to the
cities of Lycaonia, Lystra and Derbe, and the region
round about. 7And there they preached the glad
tidings.
a P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. BUI. p. 45. b Maclaren, ii. 56.

216 THE ACTS. XIV. 1-7
1. Iconium. Famous, under its later name of Konieh, in the
time of the Crusades. It was a Greek city ; not, like Pisidian
Antioch, a Roman colony. At the death of Augustas in b.c 36 it
had been incorporated in the Roman province of Galatia, but was
not made a colony till the reign of Hadrian. Situated in a fertile
district, and on the Roman road from Cilicia to the west, it was an
important place from both a commercial and a military point of
view.8 It was here that Paul converted Thekla. Her 'Acts', as it has
come down to us, belongs to the latter part of the second century,
and is not in its original form ; but its nucleus is a very early docu
ment, probably of much the same date as Luke's Acts : and it is
generally accepted as giving a substantially true narrative of an
incident of Paul's ministry at Iconium. Although it is marked by
some of the characteristics of the Apocryphal literature, many of the
details have historical probability, especially as the doctrinal motive
is in the background.0 One detail of great interest is the description
of Paul's personal appearance, which may well rest on a true
tradition — ' bald, bow-legged, strongly built, small in stature ; with
large eyes and meeting eyebrows and longish nose ; full of grace ;
sometimes looking like a man, sometimes having the face of an
angel '. This description is more or less confirmed by the figure of
Paul in a fourth-century ivory diptych.0
the synagogue. Apparently one synagogue sufficed for the
Jewish population. The Apostles, though they had broken with
the Jews at Antioch, did not depart from their practice of preaching
first to them.
so spake. Nor did they modify their preaching so as to mitigate
opposition. Since many Jews believed, they may have preached the
Gospel as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy ; since many
Gentiles also believed, they must have taught that the Gospel was
for all nations.d
2. stirred up. As Iconium was a self-governing Greek city, the
Jewish appeal was to the mass of the people. On this occasion
they harassed, not the preachers, but their converts— made 'the
brethren ' bear the brunt of the attack. The feeling of caste prejudice
in the Jew and the Gentile respectively, though it might keep them
a Ramsay, Churches, p. 45 ; Hastings' Did., art. Iconium.
b Baring-Gould, p. 170; Church Review, July, 1893.
0 Depicted in Lewin, ii. 211. d Watson, p. 90; Eadie, p. 115.

THE ACTS. XIV. 1-7 217
apart from one another, would unite them against those who
preached a religion which levelled all distinctions.0-
3. Long time. These words imply that they stayed at Iconium
longer than at Antioch ; probably for at least six months.1'
therefore. The connexion is obscure, and verse 3 may be an
early insertion, since verse 4 follows naturally on verse 2.° If it is
genuine, the meaning will be that this unprincipled opposition
determined them to stay and confront it. They knew when to
retreat, and when to stand their ground. Now, when the attack
was on their friends, they would not leave in the lurch those whom
acceptance of their message had brought into straits.d
the word of his grace. They spoke of Jesus as the source of
grace to men. And He showed that He was what they declared
Him to be, by enabling them to do acts of grace to men, to make
them feel that an invisible Helper, the enemy of disease and death,
was near.6
4. the Apostles. The title is used not only in the special sense
of the Twelve, but in a wider sense (John xiii. 16, 2 Cor. viii. 23) of
men ' sent forth ' by the Church and the Holy Spirit, as Barnabas
and Saul had been sent. So St. Paul applies it to James the Lord's
brother (Gal. i. 19), to Epaphroditus (Phil. ii. 25), to Silvanus (1 Thess.
ii. 6), to Andronicus and Junias (Rom. xvi. 67), and speaks of ' false
Apostles ' (2 Cor. xi. 13). But since the title is in the Acts restricted
to the Twelve, except here and in verse 14, it looks as though Luke
were using here some written account of this tour.
5. a movement. No assault was actually made, but a plan of
action was formed, in which the Jews were the leaders, as is shown
by stoning being part of the plot. The words ' treat them evilly ' in
all probability implies a scourging in the synagogue.
6. cities of Lycaonia. Ramsay has conclusively disproved the
assertion of Farrar that by going to Lycaonia they were exchanging
one jurisdiction for another. Lystra and Derbe were in that part
of Lycaonia which was incorporated in the province of Galatia, just
as Iconium was in that part of Phrygia which was similarly incorpo
rated. Thus Paul followed his usual plan of confining his preaching to
the centres of Roman life and influence. Lystra was at this time no
longer a rude village, but an important garrison town, having been
made a Roman colony in b. c. 6, as is known from an inscription
a Ramsay, Expositor, Nov. 1907; Maclaren, ii. 50; Maurice, p. 215.
" Ramsay, Churches, p. 67. c Ramsay, Paul, p. 108.
d Maclaren, ii. 51. e Maurice, p. 217.

218 THE ACTS. XIV. 1-7
discovered in 1885. And Derbe was the frontier city on the south
east, and so of military importance, but less is known of it than of
any of the cities visited by St. Paul. Since there is no mention of
a synagogue at either place, the Jews cannot have been numerous.11
7. there they preached. In these words much history is nar
rated with epigrammatic brevity. Now for the first time the Gospel
came into direct contact with heathenism, without the preparation of
Jewish proselytism. But though there was no synagogue through
which they could introduce their message, there was at least one
Jewish family — that of Eunice, with her mother Lois and her son
Timothy — with whom Paul may have lodged (xvi. i).b
8-18
8 And at Lystra a certain man was sitting, impotent
in his feet, who had been a cripple from his mother's
womb and had never walked. ° He was listening to
Paul speaking ; who, fastening his eyes upon him, and
seeing that he had faith to be made whole, 10 said with
a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped
up and began to walk. u And when the multitude saw
what Paul had done, they lifted up their voice, saying
in Lycaonian, The gods are come down to us in the
likeness of men. 12And they called Barnabas Zeus;
and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.
13 And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was before the
city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, and would
have offered sacrifice with the multitude. 14 But when
the Apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of it, they
rent their garments and sprang forth into the crowd,
crying out, 16 and saying, Sirs, why do ye these things ?
We also are men of like nature with you, and bring you
good tidings that ye should turn from these vanities to
the living God, who made the heaven and the earth
and the sea and all that is in them : 10 who in the
"¦ Ramsay, Churches, pp. 44, 57, and Hastings' Did., art. Lystra.
b Merivale, p. 158; Norris, p. 66.

THE ACTS. XIV. 8-18

19

generations past suffered all the nations to walk in
their own ways. " Nevertheless he left not himself
without witness, working good and giving you rain
from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts
with food and gladness. 18 And speaking thus they with
difficulty restrained the crowd from offering sacrifice
to them.
8. Lystra. Eighteen miles from Iconium. Its site, which was
uncertain, has recently been clearly identified.
was sitting. Apparently (ver. 13) outside the gate of the city.a
The vivid account which follows may be due to Timothy, who was
probably an eyewitness (see on xvi. i),b but the wording must be
Luke's, since the parallel with the narrative of the cure of the cripple
by Peter (iii. 1-10) cannot be denied and is too close to be un
designed. Not only is the main result the same, but the adjuncts
and even the expressions are almost identical.0 Thus : —

iii. 2. A certain man was being
carried, that was lame
from his mother's womb.
iii. 4. Peter, fastening his eyes
upon him.
iii. 8. leaping up, he stood and
began to walk.

xiv. 8. A certain man was sitting,
impotent in his feet, who
had been a cripple from
his mother's womb.
xiv. 9. who, fastening his eyes
upon him.
xiv. 10. he leaped up and began
to walk.

9. was listening. He may have heard rumours of the signs and
wonders wrought at Iconium (ver. 3). And doubtless Paul had been
telling of Jesus and His deeds of mercy and healing — how He had
made the deaf to "hear and the dumb to speak and the lame to
walk — and of His willingness to bless those who had faith. And it
all came home to the poor cripple, as he lay there listening in deep
consciousness of his one great need, and his eyes were lit with
a new-born hope.
11. in Lycaonian. Paul must have preached in Greek, and
they would understand that language ; but ordinarily they would use
their native tongue, and they naturally employed it now in their

a Harnack, Acts, p. 223.

Rendall, Acts.

Zeller, ii. 6.

220 THE ACTS. XIV. 8-18
excitement. The Apostles appear to have retired (ver. 14) after the
cure. It was not ignorance of the dialect which prevented them
from knowing what was happening."
The gods are come down. Among this rude people the
ancient faith remained unweakened, and the legends, which had
become dim to the sceptics of Greece and Rome, still found credence.
And, indeed, the story shows how deep lies the longing for the
manifestation of Divinity in the form of humanity; how old and
instinctive is the belief that to cure human misery is a Godlike work ;
that, if there is a God, He is sure to draw near to men in their own
likeness. Thus the legends of paganism are unconscious prophecies —
witnesses of the deep, unsatisfied longing to which the Incarnation of
Christ is the answer.0
12. they called. The scene of the old legend, according to
which Zeus and Hermes came to earth and were entertained by
Baucis and Philemon (Ovid, Met. viii. 611 seq.), was laid in this
neighbourhood. An inscription of the first century found at Baluklaou,
a short distance south of Lystra, records the dedication of a statue
of Hermes to Zeus by men with Lycaonian names. As there was
a temple of Zeus at the gate of Lystra (ver. 1 3), he was their tutelary
god ; and when they saw the miracle, they supposed that he was
once more paying them a visit.0
because he was the chief speaker. The words are probably
an early gloss. It is more likely that, while the part of Zeus was
assigned to Barnabas, as the more dignified personality (Paul implies
in 2 Cor. x. 10 that his own appearance was not striking), Paul was
identified with Hermes, not because he was the chief speaker and
Hermes was the god of eloquence, but because Hermes was the
companion of Zeus in the legend.
13. before the city. At Claudiopolis in Isauria, south-east from
Lystra, an inscription has been found recording a dedication to
' Zeus before the city 'A
oxen. The animals usually sacrificed to Zeus. The garlands
were for wreathing the horns of the victims.6
the gates. That is, the city gates. The plural would not be
used of the gate to a house, nor would the narrow streets of an
Oriental town lend themselves to a sacrifice. Probably the lame
a Rendall, Acts. " Maurice, p. 218; Maclaren, ii. 65, 75.
c Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 280; Buss, p. 260.
d Ramsay, Expositor, iv. vi. 293. e Benson, p. 327.

THE ACTS. XIV. 8-18 221
man had been laid at the city gate and a crowd was already assem
bled before the temple for a religious festival (see on ver. 17), so
that the priest, the oxen, and the garlands would all be ready .a
14. Barnabas and Paul. It is a touch of accuracy that the old
order of the names is suddenly reverted to (see on xv. 12). Barna
bas, being taken for Zeus, their tutelary god, naturally received the
precedence in the eyes of the Lystraeans.
heard. They had gone to their lodging after healing the lame
man, and hurried forth on learning what was going on. The
scene that follows has been depicted by Raphael in a famous
cartoon. lj
rent their garments. Some men, holding that the end justifies
the means, might have winked at this mistake, in order to win
a hearing for their message. What (they might say) does it matter if
we are called Zeus and Hermes, since these are but empty names ?
Is it not true that God has come down in the likeness of man ? And
may we not lead these ignorant heathen by degrees from ourselves
to Him ? But the horror of idolatry, their inheritance from a hundred
generations, flamed up at the bare thought of being themselves made
objects of worship. So far from being there to receive Divine
honours, they were come for the expressly opposite purpose of
turning men from such ' vanities '.°
15. and saying. Luke may have received an account of this
speech from Paul himself, on whose memory this perilous episode
in his missionary life would be stamped with special clearness. It
is full of coincidences, both in argument and in expression, with
passages in his epistles (compare ver. 15 with 1 Thess. i. 9 ; ver. 16
with Rom. iii. 25 : ver. 17 with Rom. i. 19, 20). And the fact that
it contains nothing that is distinctively Christian is evidence of its
essential genuineness, since no forger would have invented a Pauline
speech destitute of all reference to Christ. But just as Paul had
preached Christianity to the Jews as the completion of Judaism,
appealing to their scriptures, so he preached it to the heathen as the
completion of natural religion, appealing to those intuitions which
form God's earliest revelation to the human mind.d
these vanities. He points to the heathen temple with its statue.
The Greek word is commonly employed in the LXX to denote ' false
gods '.
a Rackham, Ads. b Blass, Acts; Ball, p. 45.
c Binney, p. 162 ; Parker, ii. 53; Maurice, p. 219; Maclaren, ii. 68.
d Chase, pp. 195, 203; Ramsay, Paul, p. 150; Taylor, Paul, p. 138.

222 THE ACTS. XIV. 8-18
1 7. giving you rain. Paul does not speak about 'laws of nature ',
as though they administered themselves. He sees a ' living God '
behind the drama of the physical world.
These words sound like a fragment of dithyrambic verse. If (see
on ver. 13) a religious festival was being celebrated, it would be
characteristic of Paul, with his happy knack of utilizing the circum
stances of the moment, to quote the words from a lyric hymn which
had just been sung as the procession moved to the temple. a
19-23
19 But there came after them Jews from Antioch and
Iconium ; who having won over the multitude stoned
Paul, and dragged him out of the city, supposing him
to be dead. -u But when the disciples had gathered
round him, he rose up and went into the city : and on
the morrow he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.
21 And when they had preached the glad tidings to that
city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra
and Iconium and Antioch, 22 confirming the souls of the
disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and
warning them that we must through many tribulations
enter into the kingdom of God. 23 And when they had
appointed them elders in every Church, they prayed
with fasting, and commended them to the Lord on
whom they had believed.
19. there came after them. The narrative seems to imply
that these Jews came in consequence of the news of the miraculous
cure of the cripple having reached Iconium and Antioch, distant
respectively about twenty and eighty miles. If so, some interval
must have elapsed before their arrival, and this would explain the
mention of 'disciples' (ver. 20). And it would furnish a signal
illustration of the bitterness and tenacity of Jewish hatred which
could supply the motive for so long and arduous a journey.
But it is more likely that the revulsion of feeling among the
Lystraeans followed closely upon the discovery of their mistake, and
a Plumptre, Paul, p. 14S ; Farrar, ii. 384.

THE ACTS. XIV. 19-23 223
that these Jews came upon the scene by an opportune accident.
It has been suggested a that they may have been corn merchants,
travelling after the harvest.
having won over. It was with the servant as with the Master—
'Hosanna' one day, 'Crucify him' the next. Such revulsions of
feeling are common with ignorant and impulsive people. The
natives of Melita took Paul first for a murderer and then for a god
(xxviii. 4 seq.). And these people were notoriously fickle. Aristotle
speaks b of ' Lycaonian treachery ' as proverbial. The Jews no
doubt ascribed the miracle, as they had done those of Jesus, to the
powers of darkness ; and the annoyance of the people, and especially
of the priest of Zeus, was naturally great. They did not relish being
told that their supposed gods were a pair of vagrant Jews, and turned
vindictively on the men whom they regarded as the cause that they
had stultified themselves.0
stoned Paul. As the chief speaker, he bore the brunt of their
anger. Barnabas, being less prominent, escaped, as Silas did later
on at Beroea (xvii. 14). Thus the Jews accomplished at Lystra what
they had meditated at Iconium (ver. 5). It was an experience which
Paul never forgot. He may have owed to it some of those scars to
which he alludes (Gal. vi. 17) as proof that he was Christ's branded
slave. Years after, ' once was I stoned ' stands out in solitary pre-emin
ence in the catalogue of his sufferings (2 Cor. xi. 25). We can
scarcely doubt that, as the stones rained on him, his thoughts
travelled back to the day when the stoners of Stephen had 'laid
down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul'
(vii. 58) A
dragged him out of the city. A touch of truth. Stephen had
been hurried out of the city before he was put to death (vii. 58).
But the Jews would hold that a Gentile city could not be polluted by
such a murder, as the holy Jerusalem would have been. Since, how
ever, the riotous proceeding might involve them in difficulties with
the authorities, they dragged what they thought was the dead body
without the walls. e
supposing him to be dead. The cautious statement stands in
contrast to the emphasis laid on the miracle in ver. 8. Luke does
not say that Paul was dead, or that anything miraculous happened,
a Ramsay, Churches, p. 69. b Schol. on Horn. //. iv. SS.
0 Vaughan, ii. 194 ; Eadie, p. 137 ; Norris, 67 ; Haweis, p. 78 ; Kitto, p. 290.
A Conybeare and Howson, i. 185 ; Plumptre, Paul, p. 150 ; Benson, p. 330.
c' Eadie, p. 136; Rackham, Acts.

224 THE ACTS. XIV. 19-23
though he undoubtedly gives the impression of an extraordinary
recovery.51 Paul's allusion to this stoning in 2 Cor. xi. 25, by confirming part
of this account, affords evidence of the truth of the incidents which
led to it. And Luke's narrative explains what would otherwise be inex
plicable — how a man could live to say ' once was I stoned ' ; for stoning
was a form of capital punishment from which people did not escape
with their lives. But this stoning was not a judicial proceeding. The
Roman magistrates would not have allowed any but themselves to
inflict death. It was the act of a tumultuous gathering; and the
actors would not care to linger on the spot till the authorities
appeared.0 20. While his would-be murderers fled, some of his converts had
the courage to remain, meaning doubtless to give what they thought
was his dead body burial, as devout Jews had in similar circumstances
buried Stephen (viii. 2). As no disciples have previously been
mentioned, we have a warning against trusting to the ' argument from
silence '.c Among them may have been Timothy, who would be at
this time a boy of about fifteen, and was not likely soon to forget
the scene (cf. 2 Tim. iii. 11).
on the morrow. A splendid illustration of Paul's fortitude.
Roused from apparent death, he struggled back to the city, bruised
and shaken ; and next morning started on a forty miles' journey to
face fresh scenes of toil and danger.*1
21. made many disciples. It looks as though they stayed some
months at Derbe. No opposition is mentioned as occurring there.
Paley points 6 to the omission of Derbe in the list of places (2 Tim.
iii. 11) associated in Paul's mind with persecution. They had
apparently got beyond the region where Jewish influence was formid
able. Even at Lystra Jews must have been few and lax, if a devout
Jewess could marry a Greek and allow her son to be uncircumcised.*
they returned. Derbe was the frontier city of the province, and
they probably did not wish to go beyond Roman territory.s The
most direct route to Syrian Antioch involved crossing the Taurus
range — a difficult task in winter — and passing out of Roman territory
into the kingdom of Antiochus. These reasons alone might lead
them to retrace their steps. But no doubt they also felt that much
was needed to render their past work effective. They had been
a Ramsay, Paul, p. 120 ; Rackham, Ads. '' Johnston, p. 88.
0 Maclaren, ii. 72. d F. B. Meyer, p. 89. ° Horae Paulinae.
1 Simcox, p. 72. »' Ramsay, Hastings' Did., art. Derbe.

THE ACTS. XIV. 19-23 225
driven by persecution from each city, and had had no opportunity
of confirming their converts in the faith. A passing proclamation of
the Gospel was not enough for Paul. He aimed at founding organ
ized communities. So they went back to Lystra, where Paul had
been stoned ; to Iconium, where their lives had been threatened ;
to Antioch, whence they had been expelled. Truly they ' counted
not their lives dear unto them '. But their danger would be lessened
by the fact that new magistrates would have come into office in all
the three towns since their previous visit ; and it is probable that
they did not again preach in the synagogues, but avoided publicity,
devoting themselves entirely to the converts already made.8-
22. confirming the souls. Their task was now not to convert,
but to confirm ; the seed sown must be watered. These disciples
had just come out of heathenism ; had as yet only a slight hold on
the truths of the Gospel ; were surrounded by those who would both
sneer at, and argue against, their belief.0 Probably they were already
suffering for their faith. And harder to bear than persecution from
Jew or heathen must have been the rupture of family ties and old
friendships which almost inevitably followed conversion.
we must. The pronoun is not personal, but general. It means
' we Christians '. It does not therefore here imply Luke's presence.
But it shows that he associated himself with the principle, as one
who realized its truth from experience.0
through many tribulations. Paul did not, as he told the
elders at Miletus (xx. 20), keep back the truth from his converts.
He frankly prepared them for the ordeal before them — did not
display the Eshcol clusters of the promised land without telling them
of the Anakim, who had to be met and overcome before the inheri
tance could be theirs. Similarly, Jesus had plainly told His disciples
what to expect : — ' In the world ye shall have tribulation ' (John
xvi. 33).11
23. appointed. The Greek word is often used generally of any
kind of appointment. For instance, in x. 41, where it is a case of
Divine choice, there can be no idea of popular election. But
strictly the word implies election by vote, and it probably means this
here, as it certainly does in 2 Cor. viii. 19. Thus the Apostles, as
men of sense, allowed the disciples, who would know the fittest men,
to nominate the elders, and then confirmed their choice.
a Church Review, July, 1893; Lewin, i. 153; Wrede, p. 56; Iverach, p. 57;
McGiffert, p. 191. b Taylor, Paul, p. 151.
" Ramsay, Paul, p. 123. d Taylor, Paul, p. 153.
1328 Q

226 THE ACTS. XIV. 19-23
elders. This is the first mention of the formal appointment of
these officers, though their existence in the Church at Jerusalem has
been incidentally mentioned (xi. 30). There can be little doubt that
the synagogue formed the model for the organization of the Christian
Church. It was an institution which had arisen under the Dispersion,
and was entirely distinct from the Temple, having no altar or sacrifices
or priests, but a ministry not Levitical under the control of elders.a
The significance of the appointment of Christian elders lies in
the proof which it furnishes that the Christian communities were
independent of the synagogue. It is not easy to say what was the
relation of Jewish converts to the synagogue. Probably their desire
to avoid a complete severance of old social ties had much to do with
the later difficulties which arose in the Galatian Churches.0
24-28
24 And they passed through Pisidia and came to
Pamphylia. 26 And when they had spoken the word in
Perga, they went down to Attaleia ; 26 and thence
sailed away to Antioch, whence they had been com
mitted to the grace of God for the work which they
had fulfilled. 27 And when they were come and had
gathered the Church together, they reported all that
God had done working with them, and that he had
opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. 28 And they
remained no little time with the disciples.
25. in Perga. So far their work on the return journey had been
to confirm their previous converts. But at Perga, which they had
merely passed through on their previous visit (xiii. 14), they preached.
Apparently there were no important results, since we never hear of
Paul revisiting the city.
to Attaleia. Perga was some miles up the Cestus. Finding no
ship sailing to Antioch, they crossed the plain to Attaleia, the chief
city of Pamphylia, sixteen miles distant. That they did not revisit
Cyprus looks as though they had founded no churches there.
Probably their converts had been only Jews and proselytes.
27. gathered the Church together. This was the first 'mis-
a Norris, p. 141, b Johnston, p. 90.

THE ACTS. XIV. 24-28 227
sionary meeting' in history. Doubtless there was great eagerness to
hear their report. Their mission had been, in a sense, an experiment.
The suitability of the Gospel to become the religion of the world had
not before been put to the test."- A-3>, lj-7
a door. The metaphor occurs three times in Paul's Epistles
(1 Cor. xvi. 9 ; 2 Cor. ii. 12 ; Col. iv. 3), and nowhere else in the
New Testament. It looks as if we had here a reminiscence of the
actual expression used by him in his narrative of his mission.
28. no little time. Ramsay places at this point the visit of Peter
to Antioch and his rebuke by Paul (Gal. ii. 12). But see note on
xv- 35-
CHAPTER XV
The Judaizers. To the Church at Antioch the success of the
mission was matter of unmixed rejoicing. But there were others
who did not regard- it in the same light. One member of the
expedition, John Mark, had, some time before, taken to Jerusalem
a report of Paul's proceedings, doubtless not uncoloured by the
scruples which had led him to leave the party.0 There had been
from the first many in the Church at Jerusalem who, though they
accepted Jesus as the Messiah, still insisted on the permanent obliga
tion of the ceremonial law. The jealousy of the unbelieving Jews in
foreign cities, excited by Paul's preaching to Gentiles, was only the
more unrestrained expression of the feelings of these Christian Jews.
That this controversy broke out now shows that his action in the
matter of circumcision had changed during his work in Galatia. He
can scarcely have adopted the same attitude during the years of his
preaching in Cilicia, when, as he tells us (Gal. i. 24), the brethren in
Judaea, hearing of his work, ' praised God ' for him. And the dis
covery that the Christian Church, instead of being, as heretofore,
a society of Jews with a sprinkling of Gentiles, was to be henceforth
a vast society of Gentiles with here and there a sprinkling of Jews,
kindled their suspicions into open hostility. Christianity, in place of
being the purest form of Judaism, was becoming a universal religion
in which the Jewish element would be absorbed and lost.0
Emissaries from this party consequently now appeared at Antioch ;
and from the circumstance that the Church at Jerusalem addressed
a Briggs, p. 290. b Bacon, p. 105.
c Simcox, p. 73; Watson, p. 98; L. Merivale, p. 164; Hausrath, iii, 164;
Stanley, p. 194 ; Conybeare and Howson, i. 198.
Q 2

228 THE ACTS. XV
their letter to the brethren in Syria and Cilicia (ver. 23) we may infer
that these Judaizers did not confine their attentions to Antioch.
Paul's strong language about them — ' false brethren, secretly intro
duced, who sneaked in to spy out our liberty ' (Gal. ii. 4) — is probably
coloured by resentment. He regarded them as in no true sense
Christians, but Jews pretending belief in Jesus. But Luke says
merely that ' certain men from Judaea ' came and insisted on Gentile
circumcision, though he implies (ver. 24) that they claimed a delega
tion from the Church at Jerusalem which had never really been
granted them.a
We may blame their narrowness, but we must try to understand
their feeling. It was to them not a matter only of national pride, but
of conscience. They honestly believed that God required Christians
to be circumcised. And there were facts which seemed to support
their contention. They had their texts to appeal to. The Jews had
been separated by God's will from other nations in order that they
might keep a heritage of truth for the benefit of all the world ; that
in Abraham's seed all the families of the earth might be blessed. If
all nations were to be blessed in Jesus, yet the word was to go forth
from Sion. If the light was to lighten the Gentiles, yet the Old Testa
ment always assigned them an inferior place in the Kingdom. Did
not Isaiah predict (lxi. 5) that the sons of the alien should be plough
men and vine-dressers to the Jew ? The Law had been given by
God, and nothing had been said of its transitory character. Jesus
had not formally abrogated it for His disciples. On the contrary,
He said that He came, not to destroy, but to fulfil it, and that not
one jot or tittle of it should pass away (Matt. v. 17 seq.). He had
Himself observed it, had kept the Passover, had paid the Temple-tax,
had told the healed leper to offer the prescribed gifts, had said that
He was not sent ' save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ', and
that it was ' not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to
dogs' (Matt. xv. 24, 26).0
And if it was not strange that the Judaizers failed to see that the
profound spirituality of Jesus itself involved in course of time the
supersession of the unspiritual ceremonial law, their mistake with
regard to circumcision was yet more excusable. For a still stronger
case could be made out for its necessity than for the observance of
the Mosaic Law. It had been instituted by God Himself. It was
a Lange, Ads ; Hausrath, iii. 169 ; Plumptre, Paul, p. 66.
b Wrede, p. 63; Fraser, p. 199; Huntington, p. 39; Gilbert, p. 94; Stifler,
p. 131.

THE ACTS. XV 229
before the Law. It dated from Abraham. It was the necessary sign
of belonging to the covenant. ' This is my covenant which ye shall
keep between me and you and thy seed after thee — every man-child
shall be circumcised' (Gen. xvii. 10). No words could be plainer.
When had the requirement been abrogated ? Did Christ repeal it ?
On the contrary, He submitted to the rite. His Apostles had all
been circumcised ; so had St. Paul himself been. True, there was
the case of Cornelius, whose admission as an uncircumcised conveit
the Church at Jerusalem had recognized. But that was an exception
which proved the rule. A similar concession ought only to be granted
when there was a similar Divine revelation and a similar extraordinary
bestowal of the Holy Spirit. Nor was the present issue the same.
What had then been accepted was that God had granted life to the
Gentiles. Now the question was the condition of their admission.
A distinction must be drawn between the conversion of the uncircum
cised and the toleration of uncircumcision in converts.^
We know from Paul's Epistles the kind of answer which he gave.
Circumcision, like every typical rite, had a spiritual significance.
When the spiritual purpose is realized, the symbol is done away —
not violently ended, but abolished, as manhood abolishes infancy.
With circumcision of the heart, circumcision of the flesh vanishes.
The Christian has entered into the consecration which it implied :
he does not cut the flesh, but gives the life.0
Two thoughts are suggested by this controversy : — •
(i) People often talk vaguely of the harmony which prevailed in
the early Church, as though the days of primitive Christianity were
days of peace and unity, and it was only in these latter days that
the Church of Christ has been divided. But we misread the history
of the Acts and of the Epistles, if we fail to see that the wonderful
expansion of the new faith did not come without a severe struggle
within the Church itself, a struggle often bitter.0
(ii) To us it seems pitiful that a fleshly rite such as circumcision
should have been gravely regarded as essential to salvation. But the
errors of the Judaizers are the errors of human nature. Christianity
has never been without men who taught conditions of salvation quite
as irrational. The terms vary, but the dispute is the same. The
controversy at Antioch was a conflict between the ritualistic and the
spiritual, the traditional and the progressive, the fettering and the free.
J Prleiderer, HUbert, p. 25 ; Maurice, p. 232 ; Iverach, p. 59 ; Plumptre, Paul,
p. 65 ; Simcox, p. 78.
b Parker, ii. 108 seq. c Norris, p. 70 ; J. Robertson, p. 99.

230 THE ACTS. XV
And it was only the first of a long series of controversies between the
type of Christianity which relies on external observances and that
which holds the sole condition of salvation to be faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ."- That Judaism, which was the cradle of Christianity,
did not become its grave is due, under God, to Paul. If the condi
tions of salvation are now clearly defined as repentance towards God
and faith in Christ, we owe it to the courage and clear grasp of
principles with which he contended for the truth.1'
Is this visit to Jerusalem the same as that recorded in Galatians ii ?
The first three visits mentioned in the Acts are : —
A. After the flight from Damascus, ix. 26.
B. Carrying relief from Antioch, xi. 30.
C. For the Conference, xv. 2.
Two visits are mentioned in Galatians : —
{a) 'After three years' from his conversion, i. 18.
(b) ' Fourteen years after,' ii. 1.
It is agreed that {a) and A are identical. But is (/') to be identified
with B or with C ?
Many in recent times ° have sought to identify it with B. The most
important arguments in favour of this course are the following : —
(1) Paul says that the visit of Gal. ii was the second ; and he could
not have omitted all reference to the visit of Acts xi without exposing
himself to a charge of falsehood.
(2) Paul says (Gal. ii. 3) that he was accompanied by Titus. But,
while he might have taken the uncircumcised Titus as an assistant
in the work of administering the relief, to have taken him to the
Conference would have been a blunder impossible in a man
so tactful, so ready to consider prejudices and to avoid causing
unnecessary irritation.01
(3) There are serious discrepancies between Gal. ii and Acts xv,
if both are accounts of the same visit. For instance, the conferences
are in Galatians private ones between Paul and a few of the leaders ;
those in the Acts are public gatherings of the Church.
In answer it may be said : —
(1) Apart from the fact that Paul does not say ' I went up for the
second time', but 'I went up again', this argument rests on the
assumption that Gal. ii continues the reasoning of Gal. i. But it is
a Fraser, p. 135; Ropes, p. 91. b F. I!. Meyer, p. 103.
c c. g. Ramsay, Paul, p. 48 seq. ; Expositor, > . iii.
d Baring-Gould, p. 196.

THE ACTS. XV 231
not so. Paul is proving in ch. i that he was independent of the
Apostles ; he had been preaching for two years before he met any
one of the Twelve. In ch. ii he is meeting a charge that he was
not an Apostle, and that he preached a Gospel which the Apostles
disapproved : and he shows that at a later visit they recognized his
Apostleship and sanctioned his Gospel. a
(2) Though Paul was unquestionably tactful, he was not a man to
do things by halves. Feeling that a convert was the best argument,
he took Titus to the Conference as a living witness that uncircumcised
Gentiles could be equally partakers of the Divine Spirit. It was
a definite challenge that the question whether an uncircumcised
Christian was to be received as a brother should be answered. And
the challenge was taken up. The Judaizers demanded that Titus
should be circumcised ; and Paul withstood the demand successfully
(Gal. iii. 3).
(3) The discrepancies admit of explanation. Luke's information
about the Conference, came from without— from some one who had
been present at the public meetings. Paul wrote from within of
things known only to a few. Luke may not even have heard of the
private interviews. In complicated and difficult negotiations two
very different representations may both be true.0 Further, Luke and
Paul were concerned with different questions. Luke was thinking of
the rights of the Gentiles, which was the subject before the public
Conference. Paul was writing about his Apostleship, and the under
standing to which he alludes was reached in private.0 And while
both accounts may accurately record the facts, both may require
allowance to be made for some heightening of the colour. Luke
was anxious to minimize any differences between the Apostles and
Paul. Paul was writing to the Galatians in a moment of passionate
feeling, with the definite aim of establishing his independence of the
Twelve.-* But there are further reasons for declining to identify {b) with B.
(4) Paul, who in Gal. ii goes to Jerusalem as a leader to confer
with the Apostles, is in Acts xi subordinate to Barnabas ; and
Barnabas, who in the Acts is in the first place, is in Galatians in the
background. (5) Paul in Galatians is, as Apostle to the Gentiles, on a level
a Godet, p. 98.
b Sanday, Expositor, v. iii. 90; Lechler, i. 198 ; Findlay, Hastings' Did., art.
Paul. c Thiersch, p. 122 ; Godet, p. 104. " Wrede, p. 67.

232 THE ACTS. XV
with Peter, the Apostle to the Circumcision. But at the time of
Acts xi. 30 his first missionary journey had not been undertaken.
(6) If the concordat of Gal. ii had been reached in a.d. 44, the
Apostles had already conceded the liberty which Paul sought at the
Conference ; and it is not likely that the question would have been
re-opened, or that, if it were re-opened, no reference should have
been made at the Conference to the previous agreement.8
(7) Finally, the chronology is decisive. The position which the
account of Herod's death occupies between Acts xi. 30 and xii. 25
makes it clear that Luke at any rate thought that the visit of xi. 30
took place in a. d. 43 or 44 ; that is, much less than ' fourteen years '
after Saul's conversion (Gal. ii. 1), which cannot possibly be thrown
back to a.d. 30. b
On the other hand, the reasons for identifying {b) with C appear
to be overwhelming. There is a wonderful correspondence in all
important points between Gal. ii and Acts xv. The controversy is
the same ; the immediate occasion (the efforts of the Judaizers) is
the same ; the chief actors (Paul and Barnabas, Peter and James)
are the same ; there is the same appeal by Paul to his success among
the Gentiles ; the same loyal recognition of his work ; and the same
decision in favour of liberty. No minor discrepancies can outweigh
this substantial coincidence.0
In one way only can the visit of Gal. ii be identified with that of
Acts xi, and that is by identifying both with the visit to the Conference
in Acts xv. It is conceivable that Luke had before him two accounts
of the Conference visit ; one from a Judaic source, speaking of
' Barnabas and Saul ' (xi. 30), and another from an Antiochean
source, speaking of ' Paul and Barnabas ' (xv. 2) ; and that he
wrongly supposed them to relate to different occasions. Certainly,
the similarities are remarkable. Both visits are made by Paul {a) in
consequence of the arrival of men from Jerusalem ; {b) in company
with Barnabas ; {c) from Antioch ; (d) under commission from the
Church ; and (e) both are followed by the appearance of Mark at
Antioch (xii. 25, xv. 37). Such a hypothesis, however, though tenable,
is unnecessary.d 1-2
1 And certain men came down from Judaea and taught
the brethren, Except ye be circumcised after the custom
a McGiffert, p. 208. b Zeller, ii. 9.
c Thiersch, p. 122 ; Zeller, ii. 13. A J. Thomas, p. 89 ; McGiffert, p. 170,

THE ACTS. XV. 1-2 233
of Moses, ye cannot be saved. 2 And when there arose
a dissension and no small debate on the part of Paul
and Barnabas with them, they arranged that Paul and
Barnabas and certain others of their number should go
up to the Apostles and elders at Jerusalem about this
question. 2. a dissension. The teaching of the Judaizers naturally made
no little stir in a Church in which a considerable proportion, if not
a majority, of the members were uncircumcised Gentiles.a
no small debate. Paul, fresh from his work among Gentiles,
knew, as the Judaizers with their provincial horizon could not know,
how fatal such a condition as they sought to impose would be to
the spread of Christianity. But their contention may really have
strengthened his work by forcing him to think out his principles. If
obedience to the Law could not be an essential of Christianity for
the Gentile, it could not be an essential even for the Jew. Thus he
was driven to define the true condition for admission to the Church,
and that was simply faith in Christ.b The question, therefore, did
not concern the Gentiles only ; it was vital to him, a Jew. If their
doctrine were sound, he must himself claim to be better than Gentiles
in virtue of his circumcision. But all such ground of confidence had
been cut from under his feet. He had been shown that he, a Pharisee
of Pharisees, was a sinner as truly as any Gentile — that in Christ
alone he had any life. And if that was true for him, it was true for
all men.0
they arranged. It is clear that the whole Church at Antioch
was with Paul. We read of no dissenting voice. They chose as
their representatives the very men who were most deeply committed
to the cause of Gentile freedom, and escorted them on their way
(ver. 3)/1
How deeply Paul felt the gravity of the occasion is shown by the
fact that he had one of those visions which with him so often marked
the travail of great decisions (xvi. 9; xviii. 9; xxii. 18; xxxiii. 11 ;
xxvii. 23).° He tells us (Gal. ii. 2) that he went up to Jerusalem
' by revelation '. The statement does not exclude a commission
a Row, p. 145. b Stalker, p. 193; Wrede, p. T2tf.
c Maurice, p. 229.
d Bungener, p. 81 ; F. Rendall, Expositor, V. vii. 22S.
' Hausrath, iii. 169.

234 THE ACTS. XV. 1-2
from the Church at Antioch, as narrated by Luke ; but it shows that
it was not their appointment, but his own conviction of the Divine
will, which led him to undertake the journey. And going because
God had said to him ' Go ', he went in the Divine strength, and the
greatest men in the Church at Jerusalem only ' seemed to be pillars '
(Gal. ii. 9).°-
He knew that, if the legalists succeeded and circumcision was
to be imposed on Gentile Christians, his whole life-work was over
thrown (Gal. ii. 2). Whatever his motive in going to the Conference,
it certainly was not to make the justification of his work dependent
on the judgment of the Twelve. If they had refused to countenance
his Gospel, we cannot suppose that he would either have given up
preaching or have preached circumcision. But though he did not
go to submit the decision to any human tribunal, he felt the grave
danger that the unity of the Church might be broken and his work
be shipwrecked. So he was anxious to come to an understanding
with the Jewish Christians as to what would satisfy them, and how
far the Gentiles could go to meet them. It was the policy, not the
doctrine, that he went to settle. Nor, probably, had he any serious
misgiving as to the view which would be taken by the leaders of the
Church at Jerusalem. The Judaizers had not been sent by them
(ver. 24). The only man who had been sent by them to Antioch
was Barnabas, his own friend and fellow-labourer (xi. 22). And
while the result proved that he was not mistaken as to the Apostles,
the opposition of the rank and file shows how grave a peril would
have arisen if he had not taken this step.0
and certain others. Titus was one of them (Gal. ii. 3). It is
a significant fact that one of the most prominent and trusted of Paul's
Gentile helpers, Titus, should never be mentioned by name in the
Acts. It is probably due to the same motive which led to the
omission of all mention of the rupture between Paul and Peter at
Antioch, and to the explanation of Paul's severance from Barnabas
by the trivial dispute about Mark. Luke's reticence is no argument
against his veracity ; but it shows that he wrote, as he had a perfect
right to do, with a definite aim in view. He not only does not record
many things, but he purposely avoids recording them.0 Thus, while
the Epistles to the Thessalonians show that the Church there
a McGiffert, p. 194; Parker, ii. 90.
b Pfleiderer, Prim. Christianity, p. 115 ; Ropes, p. S8 ; Reuss, i. 266 ; Taylor,
Paul, p. 168 ; Bungener, p. 82 ; P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. Bibl. p. 919.
0 Bacon, p. 119 seq.

THE ACTS. XV. 1-2 235
consisted mainly of converts from heathenism, the Acts (xvii. i seq.)
speaks of little but Paul's preaching in the synagogue and of the
hostility of the Jews. Of the fruitful eighteen months at Corinth
little is told beyond the attempt of the Jews to involve Paul with the
Roman authority. Little reference is made to the attacks of the
Judaizers upon his work after the Conference, though they fill a large
space in Paul's letters. And Luke says practically nothing of the
Gentile gift to the Church at Jerusalem, or of the way in which it
was received. Clearly he was anxious not to dwell upon any marks
of internal discord in the Church.
the Apostles and elders. On the previous occasion, when
Peter's action at Caesarea had been called in question at Jerusalem,
we hear of 'the Apostles and brethren' (xi. i). But there appears
to be insufficient ground for assuming a that elders had been appointed
in the interval. 3-5
3 They therefore, being brought on their way by the
Church, passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria,
declaring the conversion of the Gentiles ; and they
caused great joy to all the brethren. 4 And when they
were come to Jerusalem, they were received by the
Church and the Apostles and the elders ; and they
reported all things that God had done working with
them. 5 But there rose up certain believers, who were
of the sect of the Pharisees, saying, It is necessary to
circumcise them and to charge them to keep the law of
Moses. 3. great joy. It is evident that the unfavourable view of Paul's
teaching was mainly confined to Judaea. Communities less bound
by traditions of the Law welcomed the news of his success among
the Gentiles.b The cities that had felt 'much joy' (viii. 8) at their
own conversion now rejoiced over the conversion of others.
4. received. The public conference (ver. 6) was preceded by
a general meeting at which the delegates were welcomed. It was
also, as we learn from Galatians (ii. 2), preceded by private interviews,
a Fraser, p. 132. b L. Merivale, p. 166; Johnston, p. 94.

236 THE ACTS. XV. 3-5
in which the leading Apostles pledged themselves to a friendly
partition of labour. a
the Apostles. This was, so far as we know, the only occasion on
which St. Paul met St. John (Gal. ii. 9).
reported. Luke's silence is significant. The joy of the brethren
in Phoenicia and Samaria found no echo in Jerusalem.
5. of the sect of the Pharisees. In many respects Christianity
still appeared to be a spiritual revival of Judaism rather than a new
faith ; and as such it appealed to the more earnest Jews. But the
attachment to forms, which had made them Pharisees before con
version, made them legalists after. Some men of this type at once
raised the question which had been agitated at Antioch ; but here,
on their own ground at Jerusalem, they enlarged their demands.
There must be not only circumcision, but complete conformity to
the Mosaic Law. And the controversy assumed a personal form, in
consequence of the presence of the young Gentile convert, Titus.
They demanded that he should be circumcised (Gal. ii. 5). But, in
the providence of God, 'a Pharisee of Pharisees ' was there to answer
them. In Paul, ' of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised the eighth
day,' they met their match. To him Titus was the representative of
all Gentile converts, and he refused absolutely15.
6-1 1
0 And the Apostles and the elders assembled together
to consider this matter. 7 And when there had been
much debate, Peter rose and said to them, Brethren,
ye know how in early days among you God made
choice that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the
word of the Gospel and believe. s And God, who
knoweth the heart, bare them witness, giving them the
Holy Spirit, even as he did to us, 9and made no
distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts
by their faith. 10 Now therefore why make ye trial of
God, that ye put upon the neck of the disciples a yoke
which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear ?
11 But it is through the grace of the Lord Jesus that we
trust to be saved, in like manner as they.
a Norris, p. 73. '' Purves, p. 99 ; Maclaren, ii. 83 ; Parker, ii. 7S.

THE. ACTS. XV. 6-u 237
6. assembled together. The word ' Council ' is best avoided
in reference to this assembly at Jerusalem, since it connotes a wholly
different order of ideas. The gathering was not an ecclesiastical
council with power to legislate, but a friendly conference between
a younger and an older Church. The former asked for counsel on
a practical question, without conceding to the latter any authority
beyond such as belonged to the wisdom and experience of its
individual members."-
Paul tells us (Gal. ii. 9) that James and Peter and John privately
recognized his Divine mission to the Gentiles and entered into
a covenant of fellowship with him. The one condition which they
laid upon him neither hindered his work nor touched his principles. ,J
That there had been a preliminary interview is borne out by the
evidence in Luke's narrative of previous arrangement. Peter speaks
first ; the missionaries tell their story ; James sums up. At the same
time, Luke's account appears to be compiled from various sources
and is not quite consistent. We are told (ver. 6) that the gathering
was of ' the Apostles and the Elders '. Yet ' all the multitude ' (ver.
12) were present, and were responsible for the decision (ver. 22),
though immediately after (ver. 23) it is attributed to the Apostles and
Elders.0 7. much debate. The leaders had already come to an agree
ment as to the course which they intended to recommend, but they
wisely allowed free discussion.
Peter rose and said. He claims no precedence, makes no
assumption of superiority ; just as at a later time (1 Pet. i. 1 ; v. 1)
he describes himself as ' an Apostle of Christ ', ' who am also an
Elder.' d
God made choice. God made choice, God bare them witness,
God gave them the Holy Spirit, God made no distinction. His argu
ment is that anything said in God's word must be interpreted in the
light of God's acts. The matter at issue had been settled by God
Himself.e 9. made no distinction. How then could they dare to make it
for Him ? f
1 o. make trial of God. That is, by distrusting His clear guidance.
a yoke. We can scarcely doubt that we have here an echo of the
previous interview with Paul. Peter has caught the spirit of him who
a Farrar, i. 431 ; Gilbert, p. 96. b YVeizsacker, i. 180.
c P. W. Sehmiedel, Encycl. BUI. p. 920. A Fraser, p. 136.
0 Stifler, p. 136. f Renan, Paul, p. 84.

238 THE ACTS. XV. 6-n
calls the ceremonial law 'a yoke of slavery' (Gal. v. i). He may
also have remembered how Jesus had spoken of the precepts of the
Law as ' burdens grievous to be borne ' (Matt, xxiii. 4), and of the
' easy yoke and light burden ' of Christianity (Matt. xi. 30).
With this speech Peter disappears from the Acts. We hear of him
later as being rebuked by Paul at Antioch (Gal. ii. 10) ; we learn from
an incidental remark by Paul (1 Cor. ix. 5) that he made missionary
journeys, taking his wife with him ; and we have at least one letter
by him. Otherwise we know only that he went one day to Rome,
and there shared with Paul a martyr's death. a
12-21
11 And all the multitude kept silence and listened to
Barnabas and Paul recounting how great signs and
wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles through
them. 13 And when they had finished speaking, James
answered, saying, Brethren, hearken to me. u Symeon
hath recounted how in the first instance God did look
graciously upon the Gentiles to take out of them a people
to be called by his name. 15 And with him agree the
words of the prophets, as it is written : —
10 After these things I will once more build again
the tent of David which is fallen ;
yea, the ruins thereof I will build again, and will
set it up ;
17 That the residue of men may seek after the Lord,
And all the Gentiles who are called by my name,
saith the Lord who doeth these things,
18 known unto him from the beginning of the world.
"Wherefore my judgment is that we do not further
trouble them which from among the Gentiles are turn
ing to God ; 20 but that we write to them that they
abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication,
[and from what is strangled,] and from blood. 21 For
a Schaff, ii. 10 ; Parker, ii. 2S4.

THE ACTS. XV. 12-21

239

Moses from generations of old hath in every city them
that preach him, being read in the synagogues every
Sabbath.
12. kept silence. The words imply previous noise and interrup
tion. It must be remembered that the question was one which
excited intense feeling. a
Barnabas and Paul. This reversion to the old order of the
names is a proof of the genuineness of the narrative. No forger
would have thought of such a subtlety. In Jerusalem Barnabas was
well known and highly honoured ; whereas Paul would be remembered
as once a persecutor of the Church. And since a simple narrative of
facts was all that was necessary, Paul no doubt allowed Barnabas to
take the more prominent part.0
recounting. They followed on the lines already adopted by Peter
— that facts were stronger than theories. They did not argue, but
simply narrated what God had wrought among the Gentiles under
their ministry.0 And this is borne out by Gal. ii. 7-9, where Paul
is said to have defended his cause by an appeal to the actual success
of his work.
signs and wonders. They appeal, not so much to the fact
that Gentiles had become Christians without having first become
Jews — that argument might have been met by the retort, ' But they
are not true Christians ' — as to the miracles which were God's seal
upon their work.d No arguments could have brought home so
forcibly to the Church at Jerusalem the responsibility of reversing
this work as the proof that it manifestly had the Divine approval.
So years before, Peter had asked in the case of Cornelius, ' Who was
I that I could withstand God ? ' (xi. 17).°
13. James. He may have been elected to the Apostleship as
Matthias had been. The latter's appointment shows the belief that
the number should be kept at twelve ; and James may have taken
the place of his martyred namesake, the son of Zebedee. Paul classes
him with the Twelve (Gal. i. 19). But his relationship to Jesus may
have been the cause of the position assigned to him, though it would
be a wholly inadequate cause and contrary to the tenour of what
Jesus said (Matt. xii. 50) as to who were His brothers. Or his
authoritative position may have been due to his character as a strict
a Fraser, p. 134. b Binney, p. 1S5 ; Stifler, p. 136 ; Baumgarten, ii. 39.
c Fraser, p. 139; Maclaren, ii. 82 ; Pfleiderer, Paulinism, ii. 240.
a Bunell, p. 209. ° Iverach, p. 64.

240 THE ACTS. XV. 12-21
Jew and to his reputation for excessive reverence for the Law, which
in the Church at Jerusalem would greatly increase his influence.*
His speech bears some marks of authenticity. An interesting
indication is the use of the strictly Jewish name, Symeon — the old
name by which James had known him in youth — though now all men
probably called him Peter." At the same time, since the discussion
must almost certainly have been conducted in Aramaic, Luke would
have to put the record into its Greek dress. And if James quoted
Amos, it would probably be from the Hebrew text ; and this says
only that Israel should again have dominion over Edom and over
the other nations which had once been under their rule ; and so
would have no real relevance to the question at issue. Luke, on the
other hand, giving the quotation from the LXX version, freely alters
both the words and the application. Even so, the relevance is not
clear, unless we press the argumentum ab silentio ; that is, that the
prophet, in declaring that the Gentiles may become God's people,
says nothing about ritual conditions.0
17. of men. Our Hebrew text has Edom. The LXX translators
evidently had before them a text which read Adam (' man ').
who are called by my name. The same phrase is found in
James ii. 7.
18. known unto him. These words are not in Amos, but are
an addition by James. In calling the Gentiles, God was carrying
out what had been His purpose from the beginning.
19. my judgment. This was not so liberal as that of Peter, who
had urged no restrictions ; but it was more likely, while it conceded
the main issue, to be accepted by the Conference.
20. we write to them. The word appears to be carefully
chosen. It may mean either ' write to ' or ' enjoin upon ', and the
ambiguity is probably studied. It was necessary to avoid the appear
ance of dictation — to use no language which might seem to affront
the spiritual freedom of the Christians of Antioch.d
that they abstain. Commentators have raised many difficulties
with regard to these prohibitions. They regard them as (i) ceremonial
— forbidding certain kinds of food ; (ii) moral — forbidding fornica
tion. Harnack has, however, shown conclusively e that three things
are forbidden, all of them moral — idolatry, fornication, and murder.
(i) 'pollutions of idols' (ver. 20) and 'things sacrificed to idols'
(ver. 29) refer, not to sacrificial meat sold in the market, but to idola-
a McGiffert, pp. 198, 551 ; Adeney, p. 256. b Maclaren, ii. 85.
0 P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. Bib.', p. 921 ; Maclaren, ii. 86.
a A. F. W. Blunt, p. 27. " Acts, p. 250 seq.

THE ACTS. XV. 12-21 241
trous practices. Hence we see why Paul did not, in answering the
question of the Corinthian Church (i Cor. x. 27 seq.), refer to the
decision of this Conference.
(ii) 'fornication.' The supposed combination of the prohibition
of this grave moral offence with the purely ceremonial prohibition of
certain kinds of food has puzzled commentators, but the combination
of three moral offences — idolatry, fornication, and murder — presents
no difficulty. Cf. Rev. xxii. 1 5, ' Without are . . . the fornicators and
the murderers and the idolaters.' It must be remembered that
fornication was scarcely regarded as wrong by the Gentile world.
Even Socrates speaks of it without censure."- Among the heathen
the practice of immorality was an essential part of the worship of
many of their deities. And just as the Jew took into his Christianity
some of his old habits and prejudices, so the Gentile was in danger
of carrying into his some of the vices of heathenism. Of this we
have proof in more than one of Paul's letters (e. g. Gal. v. 16 seq.).1'
(iii) ' blood ' means bloodshed, or murder. The words ' and from
what is strangled ' are an early gloss written in the margin by some
one who misunderstood the ' blood ' and thought that certain kinds
of food were forbidden. The proof of this is that many of the Fathers
not only quote the verse without them, but interpolate the words,
'not to do to others what thou wouldst not wish done to thyself,
showing that they regarded the prohibition as relating to moral, and
not ceremonial, matters. This is also borne out by the fact that
the Greek word rendered 'keep themselves from', in xxi. 25, where
these prohibitions are referred to, is never used in the New Testament
of abstinence from meats, but is used (Luke xii. 15) of abstinence
from a moral offence. Further, the prohibition of certain kinds of
food would be inconsistent with ver. 19, for it would certainly ' trouble
them which from among the Gentiles are turning to God '. If the
necessity of forbidding murder seems strange, it must be remembered
that at a time when exposure of infants and murder of slaves were
common, converts needed to be taught elementary morality. So
St. Peter exhorts (1 Pet. iv. 15), ' Let none of you suffer as a murderer.'
21. For Moses. The argument is that there was no fear of the
Law falling into disuse because Gentile Christians were exempted
from its observance. The maintenance of the Law did not depend
on what Gentiles did or left undone, but on the universal diffusion
of Jews in all the cities.0
a Xen. Mem. iii. 13. b Binney, p. 198.
0 Baumgarten, ii. 55.
1329 R

242 THE ACTS. XV. 22-29
22-29
22 Then the Apostles and the Elders with the whole
Church resolved to choose out men of their company
and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas ;
namely, Judas called Barsabbas and Silas, leading men
among the brethren. 23 And they wrote by them, The
Apostles and Elders, brethren to their brethren which
are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia,
greeting. 24 Inasmuch as we have heard that certain
which went out from us have troubled you, unsettling
your souls with words which we did not enjoin, 25we
have resolved, having come to one accord, to choose
out men and send them to you with our beloved
Barnabas and Paul, 26 who have devoted their lives for
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2'We have sent
therefore Judas and Silas, who themselves also shall
report to you the same things by word of mouth. 28 For
it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon
you no greater burden than these necessary things ; —
29 that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from
blood [and from things strangled] and from fornication :
from which if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with
you. Fare ye well.
22. resolved. If all did not approve, at least no objection was
raised. But after-events show that the Judaizers were silenced rather
than convinced. a
to choose out men. Wisdom was shown in the choice of dele
gates. One, Judas, was a Hebrew, perhaps a brother of the Joseph
Barsabbas of i. 23 ; the other, Silas, apparently a Roman citizen
(xvi. 37) and so almost certainly a Hellenist ; and both prophets (ver.
32) ; men, that is, with special gifts of teaching and exhortation.0
23. they wrote. This letter, if genuine, is the earliest Christian
document known to us.0 And since numerous copies were made
a Binney, p. 1S6; Fraser, p. 144. b Rackham, Ads; Bungener, p. 95.
0 Harnack, Acts, p. 219.

THE ACTS. XV. 22-29 243
(xvi. 4), Luke may easily have come into possession of one. Har
nack decides a against its genuineness on the ground that it is Lukan
in both style and vocabulary. But Chase gives ° strong reasons for
the opposite view. It is a commendatory letter, such as were con
stantly sent by the Sanhedrin (e. g. ix. 2) to the synagogues of the
Dispersion, commending Judas and Silas. It will be observed that
no mention is made of the matter in dispute (the latter part of
ver. 24 in the Authorized Version is not genuine), and the word
' circumcision ' does not occur. All details are left to be given orally
by the delegates. This would be inconceivable in a fictitious letter
composed later. Nor would a Pauline forger have placed Paul's
name second to that of Barnabas.
The Apostles and Elders. There are two readings in the MSS. :
(i) ' The Apostles and Elders and brethren ' (Authorized Version) ;
(ii) ' The Apostles and the elder brethren ' (Revised Version). The
latter has the better authority, but is not necessarily right on that
account, since the second ' and ' may have been omitted for hier
archical reasons. The reading would very early be of importance as
bearing on the question of the admissibility of laymen to ecclesias
tical councils ; those who upheld their claim quoting this passage with,
and those who opposed it without, the conjunction.0 But if the
second reading be adopted, it should be translated, not as in R. V.,
' the elder brethren ', which is an expression nowhere else found, but
' brethren to their brethren ' — a formula found in the commendatory
letter in 2 Mace. i. i.cl Thus the passage implies the absence at this
time of any distinction in kind between elders and the rest of the
brethren. 25. our beloved. The word is confirmed by Paul's statement
(Gal. ii. 9) that the Apostles ' gave the right hand of fellowship ' to
himself and Barnabas.
28. to the Holy Spirit. Even in this book of the Gospel of the
Holy Spirit these words are startling. No such language occurs else
where in the New Testament. Hence their primary reference is
probably to the witness of the Spirit (ver. 8) to the right of the Gentiles
to be admitted to the Church. The action of the Spirit had already
furnished ground for a judgment. But we need not therefore ex
clude the other interpretation of the words, which would regard them
as a simple expression of trust in the Lord's promise that His Spirit
a Ads, p. 223. b Credibility of the Acts, p. 94 seq.
c Conybeare and Howson, i. 210 ; Farrar, i. 249 ; Stokes, ii. 236.
H Page, Acts ; Chase, p. 94 seq.
R 2

244 THE ACTS. XV. 22-29
would guide His followers into truth (John xvi. 13). The calm and
brotherly manner in which they had been able to conduct their
deliberations testified to His presences
and to us. The addition of these words shows that the Spirit
did not force Himself upon the Church by an irresistible revelation.
The faithful deliberated, and listened to clashing opinions. If the
controversy had been settled by direct revelation, the precedent
would not have helped the Church in after-days, when Apostles and
miraculous gifts had passed away. But if the decision was reached
by Christian men in the exercise of their natural powers, and in
prayerful reliance on the Divine guidance, we have a helpful example
to follow in all times of controversy.0
necessary. Not in the sense of essential to salvation, but necessary
if there was to be fellowship between Gentile and Jewish Christians.
As has been said above, this is not the ' decree ', but a ' commenda
tory letter '. But we can gather plainly what the decision was. Liberty
was to be conceded to all purely Gentile churches, while the Law was
to be observed in all Jewish churches. This, however, could not be
any real or lasting solution of the problem. It was neither logical nor
practical : not logical, for if a Gentile Christian need not observe the
Law, observance of the Law was not essential to Christianity and
could not be necessary for a Jewish Christian : not practical, for a Jew
who observed the Law could not eat with a Gentile, and the greatest
act of Christian worship was a common meal. So long as the Gentile
and the Jewish mission-fields could be kept apart, the compromise
might work ; but wherever they overlapped — that is, in all mixed
congregations — it was bound to break down.0
How far it was from being a real solution was quickly shown by
the dispute between Peter and Paul at Antioch (Gal. ii. n seq.),
which undid whatever this conference had achieved. That dispute had
its origin in the arrival of fresh Judaizers at Antioch. The Pharisaic
party had been defeated at Jerusalem, but the cause was to them too
sacred to be abandoned without a further struggle. From this time
forward we can trace their efforts in almost every place where Paul
worked. Not content with insisting on circumcision, they denied
his Apostleship, traduced his character, misrepresented his refusal to
accept maintenance, dwelt with cruel malice on his personal defects,
a Page, Acts; Maclaren, ii. 90; Pressense, p. 108.
h Bungener, p. 96 ; Taylor, Paul, p. 1 74.
0 Pfleiderer, Paulinistn, ii. 10; Weizsacke.r, i. 187; Wernle, i. 155; Weinel,
p. 226.

THE ACTS. XV. 22-29 245.
and in some cases succeeded in alienating the love and loyalty of his
converts.* 30-35
30 So they, being dismissed, went down to Antioch ;
and, having gathered the multitude together, they
delivered the letter. 31 And they, when they had read
it, rejoiced for the consolation. 32 And Judas and Silas,
being themselves also prophets, exhorted the brethren
with many words and strengthened them. 33 And after
they had spent some time there, they were dismissed in
peace from the brethren to those that had sent them.
36 But Paul and Barnabas tarried in Antioch, teaching
and preaching the glad tidings of the word of the Lord,
with many others also.
[34. ' Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still ' (Author
ized Version). This verse, which is wanting in the best MSS., is
a later insertion to account for the presence of Silas at Antioch in
ver. 40. And it suggests a wrong view. He may have arranged at
Antioch to join Paul, but he would naturally return first to Jerusalem
to report on the discharge of his mission. ,J The ' after some days '
of ver. 36 allows for a sufficient interval in which be may have
returned to Antioch.]
35. tarried in Antioch. McGiffert holds ° that Paul wrote his
Epistle to the Galatians at this time, (i) In Gal. iv. 3 he refers
to two visits. If the South Galatian theory is correct, the second
visit had been already paid (xiv. 21), and the letter must have been
written before the visit of xvi. 1, which is the third, (ii) The words
' so quickly ' (Gal. i. 16) imply that little time had intervened between
their conversion and the relapse which occasioned the writing of the
letter, (iii) If he had visited them between the conference and the
writing of the letter, it is hard to see why he should have written so
full an account of that conference, about which he must have told
them by word of mouth, (iv) The letter contains no personal
greeting from companions ; whereas later on Timothy, a Galatian, was
with him. "¦ Wrede, p. 69; Stanley, p. 197; F. B. Meyer, p. 102.
b Kendall, Acts. ° p. 226 seq.

246 THE ACTS. XV. 30-35
If this reasoning is sound, ' Galatians ' will be the earliest extant
letter of Paul's — two years earlier than those to the Thessalonians.
with many others. Among the number may possibly have
been the martyr-bishop Ignatius, who was at this time a young man.a
Paul's rebuke of Peter at Antioch. There are three points
in Luke's history at which the episode narrated in Gal. ii. n may be
inserted : —
(i) Ramsay0 would insert it at xiv. 28, and he is able to urge
plausible arguments in favour of so doing ; e. g. that the same difficulty
was not likely to arise twice (before, and after, the conference), and
under similar circumstances (' men came down from Judaea ', xv. i ;
and 'certain came from James', Gal. ii. 12) — that Barnabas might
be ' carried away ' by the Judaizers before the conference, and being
convinced by Paul of his error consent to go as one of the delegates
to the conference ; but could scarcely have been ' carried away ' after
it — that Peter could scarcely have 'drawn back' (Gal. ii. 12) after
his uncompromising speech at the conference — and that Paul, if his
rebuke were subsequent to the conference, could scarcely have
failed to appeal to the recent decree.
(ii) Others would insert it at xviii. 23. They argue that the re
newed activity of the Judaizers would be explained by the large
accession of Gentile converts as the result of Paul's second mis
sionary journey ; and that Peter's tergiversation is less startling when
some time had elapsed since the conference.
(iii) But these considerations cannot outweigh the reasons for
inserting it at xv. 35. Since Paul himself in Gal. ii n plainly places
the rebuke after the visit to Jerusalem narrated in the preceding
cases, those who identify that visit with the visit to the conference
are precluded from accepting Ramsay's conclusion. And since
Paul mentions the presence of Barnabas, who left Antioch before
his second journey, the episode of the rebuke cannot be postponed
till xviii. 23. °
What happened appears to be as follows. Soon after the conference
Peter visited Antioch, and found all the members of the Church
living in full freedom and joining without scruple in the Lord's
Supper. And he did as the others. The obligations of the Law
would sit more lightly upon the Galilean fisherman than upon a Jew
of Jerusalem, even if Peter had not often in the company of Jesus
eaten with unwashed hands in the houses of publicans and sinners.d
a Plumptre, Acts. '' Paul the Traveller, p. 159 seq.
c Purves, p. 154. cl Bacon, p. 129.

THE ACTS. XV. 30-35 247
And he may have felt a generous wish to show the Apostle to the
Gentiles in what complete accord with him he,' the Apostle to the
Circumcision, was as regarded the principle involved in the recent
controversy. But presently messengers came from Jerusalem to
check this disregard of the Law. James' action in dispatching them
implied no repudiation of the compact which he had himself proposed
at the conference. Rigid Jew that he was, he had never contem
plated Jew and Gentile associating on an equality and eating together.
The question before the conference had been the standing of Gentile
Christians — whether or not they were to be subject to the Law. The
question which was now at issue was the conduct of Jewish Christ
ians — whether they were, in their intercourse with their Gentile
brethren, to be free from its obligation— and this had not been before
the conference at all. And the Judaizers were quick to seize their
opportunity. Abandoning their former contention that circumcision
was necessary to salvation, they now opposed the union of Jew and
Gentile in the mixed congregation at Antioch ; and by asserting the
higher status of the circumcised placed a moral pressure on the
uncircumcised to surrender their freedom. a
Under these circumstances Peter's courage was not equal to his
generosity, and he withdrew from social intercourse with the Gentile
Christians. It was the old Peter, with the impulsive readiness to
promise more than he could perform. Yet his conduct need not have
been due, as Paul says (Gal. ii. 1 2 ), to ' fear ' of the Judaizers. He was
the Apostle to the Circumcision ; and the messengers from James
may have convinced him that his influence with his own countrymen
would be impaired and his authority weakened, if he showed himself
careless about the observance of the Law. Nor does Paul's use of
the word 'dissimulation' (Gal. ii. 13) imply conscious disloyalty to
conviction on Peter's part, but rather intellectual inability to see
that by his action in withdrawing from intercourse with Gentiles he
was false to his own principles — was by his conduct obscuring the
true Gospel, which he believed as fully as Paul, that man was saved
by faith in Christ alone. He had no clear vision of a guiding
principle ; and uncertainty in thinking led to uncertainty in conduct."
None the less he should have seen that the obvious inference would
be drawn from his action, that he regarded the Gentile Christians as
an inferior caste in the Church ; and that no less a question was at
a Weinel, p. 227; Taylor, Paul, p. 187; Cone, p. 85; Lechler, i. 177, 234;
Iverach, p. 68 ; G. G. Findlay, Hastings' Did., art. Paul.
h McGiffert, p. 206 ; Pfleiderer, Paulinism, ii. 14.

248 THE ACTS. XV. 30-35
stake than that of liberty or bondage for the Christian Church in all
future ages. Happily a greater man than Peter was at Antioch — one
capable of seeing great principles through the haze of temporary
and local circumstances. And Paul did not hesitate, though he was
placed in a peculiarly trying position. For one who had been
a persecutor of the Church to rebuke one of the Twelve who had
lived in daily intercourse with Jesus was a hard task. But his moral
courage stood the test. He would neither sanction by his silence
what he felt to be wrong, nor be satisfied with a private remonstrance.
The error had been publicly committed, and the rebuke must be as
public. 'I said unto Peter before them all ' (Gal. ii. 14)."-
Nor did Peter's defection stand alone. It was bad enough that he
should draw back ; it was yet worse that he carried with him many of
Paul's Jewish converts and ' even Barnabas ' (Gal. ii. 13). There is
a world of pathos in that ' even ' ! The man who had first sanctioned
the admission of Gentiles to the Church at Antioch, who had been his
fellow-worker among Gentiles, in Galatia, who had championed the
cause of the Gentiles at the conference— that he should be caught in
the current of reaction, this was disastrous ; the results of years of
arduous work were being imperilled by this narrow Judaism.0 And,
indeed, Barnabas' weakness is surprising. His former close relations
with Peter — they had probably shared the same house at Jerusalem
(see on ix. 27) — may have made it specially difficult for him to
dissociate himself publicly from his action. But, all the same, his
conduct is only explicable on the supposition that in his previous
work among the Gentiles he had never really thought out the
principles involved, so as to be able to vindicate his action when
challenged. He was a good, but not a great, man ; self-denying and
lovable, but not of the stern stuff needed in a crisis.0
And Mark, who was devotedly attached to Peter, and appears
to have been now at Antioch (ver. 37), may not only have been
among 'the other Jews' (Gal. ii. 13) who followed Peter's example,
but may have influenced his kinsman Barnabas. This would explain
Paul's strong objection to take him with them (ver. 38). His loyalty
to the Gospel, as Paul understood it, was doubtful, and his influence
with Barnabas was harmful.01
It is clear that Peter did not admit his error, and again associate
* Row, p. 144; Farrar, i. 442 ; Spence, p. 237.
l' Adeney, p. 320; Balmforth, p. 140.
c P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. Bibl., p. 485 ; Iverach, p. 41.
'' F. H. Chase, Hastings' Did., art. Mark.

THE ACTS. XV. 30-35 249
with the Gentiles, since Paul could not have failed to mention such
a fact in his letter to the Galatians. One result of the rupture was that
the Judaizers were more exasperated than ever. Before, they had
attacked Paul's principles : henceforth they attacked his person and
his work, organizing a counter-mission in his own communities.
Another result probably was that Paul, realizing that the time was
not yet ripe for obliterating the boundary between Jew and Gentile,
resolved to carry on his labours in more distant parts, where he
would be comparatively free from Judaizing opposition.11
36-41
36 And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, Let
us go again and visit the brethren in every city wherein
we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they
fare. 37 And Barnabas wished to take with them John
also, who was called Mark. 38 But Paul thought not
good to take with them him who deserted them in
Pamphylia and went not with them to the work. 30 And
there ensued a sharp contention, so that they parted
asunder one from the other ; and Barnabas took Mark
with him and sailed away to Cyprus ; 40 but Paul chose
Silas and went forth, being commended by the brethren
to the grace of the Lord. 41 And he went through
Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches.
36. Let us go. No sooner was all smooth in the Church at
Antioch than Paul was bitten with the old missionary hunger. There
is, however, no evidence that he thought at first of new fields of
labour. It was the longing to see his old converts which was drawing
him. But where he proposed God disposed, and larger designs
opened up before him as he went forward.0
Throughout his letters can be traced his sense of the precariousness
of the Christian life of new converts. He has scarcely left a place
before his anxiety to hear tidings of the stability of his disciples
becomes almost unbearable. He tells the Thessalonians that he
a McGiffert, p. 20S; P. W. Schmiedel, Einycl. Bibl., p. 91S; Weizsacker, i.
197, 227; Lechler, i. 179; Wrede, p. 69.
b Parker, ii. 117; Gilbert, p. 107; Stalker, p. 119.

250 THE ACTS. XV. 36-41
cherished them ' even as a nurse cherisheth her children ' (1 Thess.
ii. 7). It is one of the fine features of his character. The zeal
which bore him over sea and land to win converts is less rare than
the loving anxiety with which he carried them, when won, in his
thoughts and prayers. a
37. to take with them John. Mark may either have accom
panied his cousin Barnabas from Jerusalem after the conference, or
have come subsequently to Antioch with Peter. His prejudice
against work among Gentiles may have been removed by the decision
of the conference, or the remonstrance of Barnabas may have
brought him to a sense of his previous misconduct. At any rate,
since he himself now wished to rejoin them, it is clear that he was
prepared to promise greater perseverance.
38. Paul thought not good. Probably the proposal took him
by surprise. If, as is likely, Mark had originally been taken as their
assistant on the recommendation of Barnabas, that fact might make
Paul resent the suggestion of Barnabas to take him again.
deserted. The Greek word is a strong one — ' apostatized from
the work.' Hippolytus calls Mark ' the man with the finger wanting ',
in allusion to the Roman custom of marking a deserter by cutting off
the little finger.1'
39. a sharp contention. It is the old story. The smaller rubs
of life often try the temper more than the greater things, and they
find us with our armour off. Who would have expected ' the son of
consolation' to be violent in a dispute? Who would have expected
Paul, the most generous of men, to forget his debt to the old friend
who had trusted him when others suspected (ix. 27), had gone to
Tarsus to fetch him to share his labours at Antioch (xi. 25) ; and had
later loyally accepted his leadership (xiii. 13) ? But the real difference
probably lay deeper than the disagreement about Mark's fitness or
unfitness for the work. If, as is almost certain, he had followed
Barnabas in being carried away by Peter's example, this would be
a fresh ground for distrust in Paul's eyes. And when Barnabas
insisted on taking him, Paul would remember that Barnabas
himself had recently shown that they were not in principle agreed
about the relation between Jewish and Gentile Christians ; and he
may have felt that their future association in missionary work among
the heathen was undesirable. And it may even be ° that Barnabas,
after finding himself once more in the old place of high consideration
11 Benson, p. 361 ; Vaughan, ii. p. 247.
b Benson, p. 362. Binney, p. 192.

THE ACTS. XV. 36-41 251
at Jerusalem was beginning to feel his secondary position at Antioch,
and resented Paul's determination to have his own way.
they parted. So God overruled the issue. The water of life flowed
in a double, instead of a single, channel ; and Paul could say even of
this miserable business, ' The things which happened unto me have
fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel' (Phil. i. 12).
to Cyprus. This is the last mention of Barnabas in the Acts.
That his teaching was successful is shown by the fact that an
Alexandrian Jew about the end of the first century, when publishing
a commentary on texts of Scripture, attributed it, in order to lend
authority to his work, to Barnabas. a
40. chose Silas. Harnack thinks b that Silas was Luke's author
ity for the records concerning Jerusalem and Antioch. From the
fact that he was one of the delegates to carry the letter we may infer
that he had shown a liberal spirit in the deliberations at the con
ference ; and he had probably sided with Paul in the dispute with
Peter. Thus his conduct would contrast with that of Barnabas.
His Roman citizenship shows a connexion with the Gentile world,
to which he would therefore be an acceptable evangelist. As he is
not mentioned in the Acts after Paul's first visit to Corinth, nor in
any of the salutations in Paul's letters written after that visit, he
probably died at that time. He may, however, be the same as the
Silvanus who was the bearer of Peter's first Epistle (ver. 12), in
which case he may have left Paul at Corinth and joined Peter.
being commended. The statement does not necessarily imply
that Barnabas had not also the sanction of the Church, since Luke's
narrative is concerned with Paul and not with Barnabas. But the
natural inference is that the Church at Antioch agreed with Paul.0
41. Syria and Cilicia. These Churches had probably been
founded by Paul during his stay at Tarsus (ix. 30).
The quarrel between Paul and Barnabas. The question has
been asked, Which of the two was in the right ? And the answer is
that both acted from good motives. Barnabas felt that it was hard
that one still young should be debarred from useful work, which he
earnestly desired to share, on account of a past fault which he now
heartily repented. Himself a man of kindly, generous disposition,
ready to see the good in men and to trust where others doubted, he
could not bear to think of the effect which a rebuff might have on
a beginner. But this very ' goodness ' was liable to degenerate into
a Fouard, Paul, p. S3. b Acts, p. 201. c Lewin, i. 165.

252 THE ACTS. XV. 36-41
its weak counterfeit, ' good nature ' — the temper which leads men to
tolerate indifferent instruments, and to show partiality to relatives
where posts of responsibility are concerned.8-
Paul, on the other hand, putting the interests of the work, not of
the person, in the first place, felt that he could not trust a staff which
had once broken in his hand. Nor did he care to risk having his
own liberal views thwarted by a timorous companion, still under the
bondage of Jewish prejudices. But he, like Barnabas, had perhaps
the defects of his good qualities. His own ardent zeal may have
made him too little tolerant of faintheartedness in others.0
If we are not called to decide who was right, who wrong, we may
at least be sure that both felt sadly the truth of what they had told the
Lystraeans, ' We are men of like nature with you ' (xiv. 15). And it is
well for us to have the encouragement of knowing that these men, good
and great though they were, were not perfect, were no more perfect
than the Peter who denied his Lord, or the John who wished to call
down fire on the Samaritans. There is only one infallible Person in
the Church, and He is its Lord. Paul could ask, ' Who is Paul ? '
and answer, ' A minister, a servant, a slave of Christ.' Jesus only
could look up and ask, ' Which of you convinceth me of sin ? ' °
Both, at all events, suffered. They had probably known one
another in boyhood as fellow-students at Tarsus. Certainly they had
worked together for years ; had faced together dangers by sea and
land, together proclaimed Christ in strange cities, together fought the
battle for the freedom of the Gospel. And now they were parting in
anger— Paul from the man to whom he owed more than to any other
human being ; Barnabas from the greatest spirit of the age.d Whether
they ever met again we do not know ; but some years later Paul
alludes to Barnabas (1 Cor. ix. 6) in a way which shows that no feeling
of estrangement remained ; and the description of Mark as ' kinsman
of Barnabas' (Col. iv. 10) reads like a fond recollection of old times.
And the fact that Mark, who now went with Barnabas, later rejoined
Paul is evidence that Barnabas had cherished no grudge. Whether
he was still living or not, it is likely that Mark in so doing was obeying
his expressed wish.9 And it is pleasant to know that the ' deserter
from Pamphylia ' lived to hear the sentence on himself revoked by
him who had pronounced it (Col. iv. 10, 11 ; Philemon 24).
a Johnston, p. 99; Kitto, p. 319; Stalker, p. 119; Maurice, p. 247 ; Howson,
Companions, p. 23. b Parker, ii. 117 ; Pressens<5, p. 113; L. Merivale, p. 174.
0 Macduff, Paul, p. 157 ; Parker, ii. 119.
'' Stalker, p. 120; Farrar, i. 451 ; Iverach, p. 70. » Kitto, p. 321.

THE ACTS. XVI. 1-5 253
CHAPTER XVI
1 And he game also to Derbe and to Lystra: and
behold, a certain disciple was there named Timothy,
the son of a Jewess who was a believer, but his father
was a Greek. 2 The same was well reported of by the
brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium. 3 Him
would Paul have to go forth with him ; and he took
and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in
those parts, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
4 And as they went through the cities, they delivered to
them for their observance the ordinances that had been
determined by the Apostles and elders which were at
Jerusalem. 6 So the churches continued to grow strong
in the faith and to increase in numbers daily.
r. to Derbe. Instead of travelling northward from Attaleia to
Pisidian Antioch and then eastward, as in his previous tour, Paul made
his way from Cilicia to Lycaonia from the west, and revisited the cities
in reverse order. The reason may possibly have been the hope of
finding in Timothy one fitted to take the place which Mark had been
deemed unworthy to fill.a
The first question to meet him in each city would be, ' But where
is Barnabas ? ' — one of those questions which open heart-wounds ; and
Paul was too true a man to put off questioners with an equivocating
answer. Happily he could say, 'Though we have agreed to go
different ways, we are still engaged in the same work.' °
and behold. The language marks a happy episode in the tour.
It seemed providential that, as Silas had joined Paul after the de
fection of Barnabas, so another should be found to take the place of
Mark. It is characteristic of Luke that he usually records no details
of second visits ; and the motive of the present exception is the
importance of the circumcision, of Timothy and his enrolment as
a member of the missionary party.0
a Taylor, Paul, p. 205 ; Plumptre, Paul, p. 151.
b Farrar, i. 457 ; Parker, ii. 125.
c J. Moffatt, Encycl. BUI, p.. 5075; Johnston, p. 100.

254 THE ACTS. XVI. 1-5
Timothy. He would be at this time about eighteen years of age.
Some twelve years later Paul wrote to him, ' Let no man despise thy
youth ' (1 Tim. iv. 12). Hence he would have been only twelve at the
time of Paul's previous visit. Paul calls him his ' true child in faith '
(1 Tim. i. 2) and his 'beloved child' (2 Tim. i. 2);a and evidently
regarded him with love and confidence beyond any of his companions
(cf. 1 Tim. i. 3 ; v. 23 ; 2 Tim. iii. 15 ; Phil. ii. 19 seq.).
a Jewess. Eunice (2 Tim. i. 5). Her Greek name points to
some previous connexion with Gentiles ; and, had there not been
such, she would scarcely have contracted one of those mixed marriages
which were forbidden to Jews, or allowed her son to be uncircum
cised. Thus she must have been a liberal-minded woman, looking
beyond the letter and ceremonial of the Law to the deeper truths of
revelation, and would have brought up her son in a way with which
Paul would sympathize. With her lived her mother, Lois (2 Tim.
i. 5), and they had trained the child carefully. He had 'from a babe
known the sacred writings ' (2 Tim. iii. 15). The Greek father was
undoubtedly a proselyte, for the daughter of the devout Lois would
not have married a heathen ; and though he had objected to his
son's circumcision, he had given him a name which, while fairly
common among Greeks, would by its religious significance be
acceptable to his wife.
3. Him would Paul have. Timothy seems to have been ' the
only son of his mother, and she was a widow'. But like Hannah
(1 Sam. i. 28) she recognized the call to give him to the Lord. In
the first instance he was probably taken as an assistant rather than
as a preacher. It is clear that he stood on a lower footing than
Silas (verse 19; xvii. 4, 10). But after Silas' departure or death,
Timothy may have taken his place.0 With the blood of both Jews
and Greeks in his veins, he was specially fitted to work among both
peoples. If the Cross was ' unto Jews a stumbling-block and unto
Gentiles foolishness ', to the Christian Timothy it was ' the power of
God and the wisdom of God ' (1 Cor. i. 23, 24). °
and circumcised him. In this case Paul took a step which he
had strenuously resisted in the case of Titus (Gal. ii. 5). Titus was
a pure Gentile, who had become a Christian on the basis of salvation
through faith in Christ. To have circumcised him at the demand of
the Judaizers would have been a concession of principle. But
Timothy was, according to Jewish reckoning, a Jew by birth ; and
a Benson, p. 362. " Harnack, Ads, p. 124. ° Parker, ii. 126.

THE ACTS. XVI. 1-5 255
the fact that his father was a Greek was too generally known not to
provoke inquiry as to whether he was circumcised or not. No
principle was here at stake, but his circumcision was essential to his
efficiency. For Paul to take an uncircumcised Jew as assistant in his
missionary labours would have been to raise a storm in every
synagogue that he entered. What was not necessary on the ground
of salvation was indispensable as a qualification for service.'1
The circumcision was followed by solemn imposition of hands
(1 Tim. iv. 14 ; 2 Tim. i. 6).
4. the ordinances. It was a happy thing that Silas, the author
ized exponent of the decision reached at the conference, was in Paul's
company. Otherwise the absence of Barnabas might have roused
suspicion.0 5. So the Churches. One of those summarizing sentences with
which Luke marks the close of a chapter in his history (ii. 47 ; v. 42 ;
ix. 30).0
6-IO
6 And they went through the Phrygian and Galatian
district, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to
speak the word in Asia. 7 And when they came over
against Mysia, they were essaying to go into Bithynia ;
and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not ; 8 but passing
by Mysia they came down to Troas. 9And a vision
appeared to Paul in the night : a man of Macedonia
was standing, beseeching him and saying, Come over
into Macedonia and help us. 10 And when he had seen
the vision, immediately we sought to go forth into
Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to
preach the glad tidings to them.
6. the Phrygian and Galatian district. One district is meant,
not two. The country could be described either as Phrygia or Galatia,
according as the popular or the political usage was employed.11
At this point the advocates of the North Galatian theory place the
founding of the Churches of Galatia. But see note on xiii. 14.
a L. Merivale, p. 177 ; Stifler, p. 150.
b Conybeare and Howson, i. 233. " Rackham, Acts.
A Ramsay, Paul, pp. 199, 210 ; Church Review, July, 1893.

256 THE ACTS. XVI. 6-10
Luke clearly regards the revelations (ver. 6, 7, 9) as meant to show
that the plans with which Paul had started were divinely set aside
in favour of a mission to Europe. This consideration alone is con
clusive against intercalating here a mission to North Galatia.8-
in Asia. Whatever dreams Paul may have had of one day
preaching in Europe, it is clear that he had not meant to do so till
he had established Christianity in Asia. At Pisidian Antioch his
thoughts would naturally turn thither. Only two hundred miles to
the west was Ephesus, the chief city of the whole country. But he
was made to realize that another Mind than his own was planning
his course.0 How the prohibition was conveyed we are not told,
but Silas was a prophet (xv. 32), and the action of the Spirit is
elsewhere (xxi. 1 1) associated with prophecy. It is, however, more
helpful to see in such language no pretension to exceptional advan
tages. The mind of the Spirit was probably made known to Paul,
as it is to Christians in all time, through some person or some
circumstances ; and he, realizing that he was living in communion
with Him, acknowledged the Guide whom all men ought to acknow
ledge. The life which prays ' Lead, kindly light ' sees the guiding
star.0 7. Bithynia. They were no doubt attracted by its many flourish
ing cities, such as Nicea and Nicomedia. Pliny, who was Proconsul
in a.d. no, found numerous Christians there. The Churches in
Bithynia may have been founded later by Peter, whose first Epistle
is addressed in part to them.d
suffered them not. Again they encountered obstacles hemming
them in, on this side and on that, in unaccountable ways ; and again
Luke, in recording what another might call ' the accidents of travel ',
sees the guiding hand of a personal Lord.6
8. passing by. Not literally, for they would have to pass through
Mysia on their way to Troas ; but in the figurative sense of ' neglect
ing ', They did not preach there, since it was a part of the ' Asia '
in which they had been forbidden to ' speak the word '.f Paul, no
doubt, now thought that Troas was the field where he was being
called to labour. It was a busy city and, as the subsequent history
shows (xx. 7), offered a good opening for missionary work.
9. a vision. The revelation of the Divine purpose is no longer
a Rendall, Acts.
b McGiffert, p. 236; Gilbert, p. no; Purves, p. 180.
0 Rackham, Ads; Parker, ii. 132. d Stokes, ii. 266; Rackham, Acts.
* McGiffert, p. 236; Norris, p. 81. ' Ramsay, Paul, p. 796.

THE ACTS. XVI. 6-10 257
negative. Visions, with Paul, usually mark a crisis. He was about
to take a most important step — a step never dreamed of when he
started from Antioch. The form which the vision took tells what
thoughts had been uppermost in his mind since his arrival the day
before. He had been guided to the sea. Before his eyes were
the islands which bridged the way to Europe. Perhaps for the
first time the sense of his call to evangelize the Empire broke upon
his mind, and he understood the full meaning of ' far hence to the
Gentiles' (xxii. 21). Troas was the port from which travellers to
Rome sailed to Neapolis, in order to strike the Egnatian road at
Philippi. Was it not God's will that he should cross to that Europe,
the hills of which he saw for the first time behind the setting sun ?
It may well have been that such thoughts projected themselves into
the vision which he saw in his sleep. a
a man of Macedonia. That he recognized the man as a Mace
donian (who would have nothing in dress or language to distinguish
him from other Greeks) looks as if he had already met him.
Ramsay, following Renan, suggests that Luke was himself the ' man
of Macedonia '. If (but see on ver. 10) Luke was a native of
Philippi, he may have spoken to Paul of the field that was open for
the Gospel in Macedonia. This conjecture would explain the
appearance of the ' we ' at this point, and would suit the delicacy
of Luke's literary feeling. But it cannot be more than an attractive
conjecture.^ Come over. The man stood for more than his own nation. It
was the cry of the European world — the expression of the deep
unrest felt at this time by all hearts that had risen above coarse
pleasures and the fables of an immoral heathenism.0
10. we. This is the first of the 'we' sections. They are three
in number, all describing voyages, (i) xvi. 10-17 — Troas to Philippi.
(ii) xx. 6-xxi. 18 — Philippi to Jerusalem, (iii) xxvii. i-xxviii. 16
Caesarea to Rome.
That Luke was not of the party before they reached Troas is
certain. The pronoun ' we ' would of itself be tolerably conclusive,
but the change in the narrative is unmistakable. The minuteness of
detail in what follows is in marked contrast to what precedes, in
a Hausrath, iii. 203; W. J. Woodhouse, Encyc. BUI, p. 2887; Purves,
p. 185; Rackham, Acts; J. Robertson, p. 176; Stalker, p. 125.
b Gilbert, p. 113; Baring-Gould, p. 208; Harnack, Acts, p. 99.
c Baumgarten, ii. no; Iverach, p. 86; Bungener, p. 123.
1329 S

258 THE ACTS. XVI. 6-10
which the events of months of travel are compressed into a few
lines.a concluding. The guidance of the Spirit does not dispense with
the use of human reason and judgment. Paul evidently called in
his companions to consult with him and talk the matter over.0
Luke. He was a Gentile, not being ' of the circumcision '
(Col. iv. 11, 14). But few Gentiles became Christians unless they
had first been attracted by Judaism ; and his references to Jewish
feasts (e. g. xxvii. 9) suggest that he had before his conversion been
in touch with the Judaism of the Dispersion.0 It is probable that
he was, like most physicians at that time, a freedman. Freedmen
often bore contracted names, and Lucas is a contraction of Lucanus.d
The style of his Gospel and of the Acts shows that he had received
a liberal education.
He appears to have had some special connexion with Philippi.
The ' we ' begins when Paul was about to enter Macedonia, ceases
when he left Philippi, and is resumed when he returned thither. But
it is not likely that it was his birthplace. Eusebius e and the
' Argumentum Evangelii secundum Lucan ' (early third century)
agree in describing him as a native of Antioch. This tradition can
scarcely have its origin in any particular statement in the Acts, but
the book contains much which corroborates it by showing special
interest in, and special knowledge of, the community there. Thus,
while Luke does not give the birthplace even of Stephen, he records
that Nicolas was 'a proselyte of Antioch' (vi. 5); his statement that
the first preachers to Gentiles at Antioch were ' men of Cyprus and
Cyrene ' (xi. 20) implies local information ; he knows that the name
'Christian' first arose there (xi. 26); he enumerates with distinguish
ing additions the names of the ' prophets and teachers ' there (xiii. 1) ;
he records that the first missionaries were dispatched thence (xiii. 3) ;
and that the question about circumcision came to a crisis there
(xv. i).f
It is possible that he had been a fellow student of Paul at Tarsus,
which stood high in reputation as a medical school. In that case we
have an explanation of the absence of any record of their first
meeting. It is further possible that they had worked together at
Antioch ; or that Paul, when stricken down by illness in Galatia,
had sent for 'the beloved physician'. The 'us' of ver. 10 shows
a J. Robertson, p. 178. b Row, p. 166 ; Maclaren, ii. 198.
0 Harnack, Acts, p. 20. d L. Merivale, p. 189. e HE., iii. 4, 6.
' Harnack, Luke, pp. 4, 21 seq.; Plumptre, Acts, p. 461.

THE ACTS. XVI. 6-10

259

that he was not a new convert, and he joins (ver. 13) in the work of
evangelizing. His medical skill would be of use in gaining an
opening for preaching the Gospel, as modern missionaries often
find.a His history owes much to the fact that he joined Paul at the critical
moment when a special revelation led him to Europe. At the outset
he was placed in a position to gain a wide survey of the course of the
Gospel— such a survey as gives the tone to his history throughout.1'
II-15
11 Putting out therefore from Troas we made a straight
course to Samothrace, and the day following to Neapolis,
12 and thence to Philippi, a chief city of the border
country of Macedonia and a Roman colony : and we
were in this city abiding certain days. 13 And on the
sabbath we went forth without the gate by a river side,
where we supposed there was a place of prayer ; and we
sat down and spake to the women who came together.
14 And a certain woman, named Lydia, a seller of purple,
of the city of Thyatira, who worshipped God, was a
hearer ; whose heart the Lord opened, to give heed to
the things which were spoken by Paul. I5 And when
she had been baptized, and her household, she besought
us saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the
Lord, come into my house and abide there. And she
constrained us.
11. Putting out. There is a strange contrast between this
invasion of Europe by the Jew Paul and that of Asia, four centuries
before, by the Macedonian Alexander. If the great conqueror brought
the East under Greek civilization, the poor Jew founded a Christian
civilization in the West which ultimately absorbed the other.0
When these four men went down to the quay of Troas to look for
a vessel, how little the world thought, how little they themselves
knew, what history they were making ! Probably in Paul's mind the
a Plumptre, Ads, p. 408; Levvin, i. 197. b Baumgarten, ii. 113.
' Maurice, p. 253.
S 2

260 THE ACTS. XVI. 11-15
passage to Europe was but one of many journeys. Yet it was one of
the turning-points of history — the challenge of Christianity to Western
civilization to accept the rule of Christ. a
we made a straight course. It is as though Luke saw in the
favouring winds (Paul took five days for the return voyage, xx. 6)
a contrast to the previous checks. The vivid details mark the eye
witness. How different is the bald ' thence they sailed to Cyprus '
of xiii. 4.
Neapolis. The town was Thessalian and would be much like
Troas, with the usual busy crowd of traders who thronged the
Mediterranean ports. These were not the Macedonians to whom
the vision had summoned them to minister ; so they did not linger
there. 1 2. Philippi. The ancient Datum had been renamed after himself
by Philip of Macedon, the destroyer of Greek liberty. It was famous
as the scene of the great victory of the Triumvirs Antony and Octavian
over Brutus and Cassius, which decided the fate of the Empire.
But these associations had no interest for Luke. His history was
concerned with the greater battle now beginning between the new
faith and the old-world idolatries.0
a chief city. The fullness of the description looks as though
Luke's long residence there gave him a patriotic pride in it. Of the
five Roman colonies mentioned in the Acts — Pisidian Antioch,
Lystra, Troas, Philippi, and Corinth — it is the only one which he
so calls.0 colony. That is, a military settlement of veterans, who had
farms assigned them. Here, to a much greater extent than in the
Roman colonies of Asia, Paul found himself in the Romanized
world. Latin was the official language. The constitution was that
of Rome in miniature. In a sense, never before true, he had entered
on the conquest of the Empire in the name of Christ.d
abiding certain days. They found no crowd of Macedonians
eager to welcome them. But conscious of the Divine guidance they
could afford to wait.6
13. a river. The Gargites flows one mile west of the town.f
supposed. They knew the Jewish custom of having their place
of prayer near water for the sake of the ceremonial washings.
a Binney, p. 2 II; Thomas, Acts, p. 262 ; Burrell, p. 215.
'' Stokes, ii. 274; L. Merivale, p. 191 ; Maurice, p. 255.
c Ramsay, Paul, p. 206. A Norris, p. 82 ; Purves, p. 186 ; Stifler, p. 152.
' Burrell, p. 219; Binney, p. 213. ' Rackham, Acts.

THE ACTS. XVI. 11-15 261
a place of prayer. The Rabbinical rule was that ten men were
required to constitute a synagogue; so that there were probably
fewer here. The paucity of Jews is accounted for by the fact that
Philippi was a military, not a commercial, city. In his anxiety to
evangelize the first Macedonian town to which he came, Paul broke
through his usual practice of not stopping in places where there was
no synagogue (xvii. i).a
the women. They may have been, like Eunice, the Jewish
wives of Gentiles ; but it is more likely that they were, like Lydia,
proselytes, who wished to be faithful to their new religion even in
the absence of any settled provision for their instruction.0
' Where is the man of Macedonia ? ' the missionaries might well
have asked. But the fact that their first congregation at Philippi
consisted of women was typical of the prominent part which women
were destined to take in the Church founded there. And the men
of Macedonia could not be better 'helped' than by raising and
refining the women.0
14. Lydia. It was a common name (cf. Hor. Odes, i. 8. 1 ;
iii. 9. 7, &c.) ; and, since racial names were usually borne by slaves,
she may have been a freedwoman.'1 But perhaps the translation
should be ' The Lydian ' : that is, she was popularly known in
Philippi by the name of the country from which she came. Paul
does not mention ' Lydia ' in his letter. She may, of course, have
died before he wrote, but it is possible that she is there alluded to
under her own name, either Euodia or Syntyche (Phil. iv. 2).
a seller of purple. There was a large market for purple dye, as
this was the colour of the stripe on the official toga at Rome and in
Roman colonies. She may have been a widow carrying on her
husband's trade.
of Thyatira. The existence of a guild of dyers at Thyatira is
proved by inscriptions.6 The town was a Macedonian colony,f and
this may account for a trader of Thyatira being settled at Philippi.
to give heed. There was a Jewish settlement at Thyatira, and
Lydia had probably become a proselyte there. But the Gospel
which Paul preached rose in power above the Judaism to which she
had already conformed. We need not suppose that she was con
verted on the first sabbath : the narrative is evidently condensed.s
"¦ Iverach, p. SS ; Stokes, ii. 277; Conybeare and Howson, i. 270; Rackham,
Acts. b Taylor, Paul, p. 227; Plumptre, Acts.
c Gilbert, p. 115 ; J. C. Jones, p. 301. A Rackham, Acts.
" Ramsay, Hastings' Did., art. Thyatira. f Strabo, xiii. 4.
B Ramsay, Paul, p. 214; Eadie, p. 144.

262 THE ACTS. XVI. 11-15
How unlike invention is the story ! What an insignificant result
after the double prohibition in Asia, the vision of Troas, the long
voyage, the high expectation ! One solitary convert, a woman, and
she already a seeker after God, and a native of that very Asia where
they had been forbidden to preach ! a But that the first convert in
Europe should be a woman was a prophecy of the happy change in
the lot of women which Christianity was to effect. A new era had
dawned for that half of mankind which had been neglected and
oppressed through the ages. If man owes much to Christ, woman
owes in one sense even more. He delivered her from being man's
drudge or plaything, and raised her to be his friend and equal, to
enter the Kingdom by his side. And woman has acknowledged the
debt by sweetening homes and purifying social life.0
15. baptized. Probably not on the day of her conversion.
Paul evidently stayed for some time at Philippi ; and the words
' if ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord ' would most
naturally imply some period of probation. (But see on ver. 33.) °
and her household. This statement cannot be claimed as any
argument for infant baptism, since the Greek word may mean her
servants or her workpeople. But as regards the baptism of infants,
it must be remembered that at this time the status of the child was
not separated in thought from that of the parent. Nor can the
example of Jewish circumcision, to which baptism was early regarded
as the Christian counterpart, have been without its effect.d
if ye have. They had recognized her faith by admitting her to
baptism. If she was fit for that, surely she was fit to be their
hostess.6 come into my house. Purple was a costly dye, and she was
probably a rich woman.
she constrained us. It is clear that Paul demurred at first, and
his acceptance of her hospitality was, so far as we know, a unique act
on his part. He prized his independence too dearly to accept main
tenance from his converts. But he probably felt that invaluable
service might be rendered to the Gospel by these Macedonian
women, who occupied a position of respect and freedom unknown
in his experience of the women of Syria and Palestine.1'
The fact that he accepted hospitality at Philippi and was compelled
to work for his livelihood at Thessalonica (2 Thess. iii. 8) shows that
a Farrar, i. 487; Burrell, p. 222. b Stalker, p. 128; Noble, p. 63.
c Geikie, p. 385. A Ropes, p. 198.
' Plumptre, Acts. ' Fouard, Paul, p. 115.

THE ACTS. XVI. 11-15 263
he had crossed the sea from Troas without funds for a sojourn in
Europe. He had never contemplated such distant work when he
started from Antioch.a
us. This word shows that Luke was not a householder in
Philippi.0 16-34
10 And it came to pass that, as we were going to
the place of prayer, a certain maid having a spirit,
a Pythoness, met us, which brought her masters much
gain by soothsaying. 17The same, following Paul and
us, kept crying out, saying, These men are slaves of the
Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salva
tion. 18 And this she did many days. But Paul, being
sore vexed, turned and said to the spirit, I charge thee
in the name of Jesus Christ to depart from her. And
he departed that very hour. 19 But when her masters
saw that the hope of their gain had departed, they laid
hold on Paul and Silas and dragged them into the
market-place before the magistrates ; 20 and when they
had brought them to the Praetors, they said, These
men, being Jews, are causing great disturbance in our
city, 21 and proclaiming customs which it is not lawful
for us to receive or to observe, being Romans. 2- And
the multitude joined in the outcry against them ; and
the Praetors rent their garments off them and com
manded to scourge them. 23 And when they had laid
many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison,
charging the jailor to keep them safely: 24who, having
received such a charge, cast them into the inner prison,
and made their feet fast in the stocks. 25 But at mid
night Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns
to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
26 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that
" Johnston, p. 108. b Ramsay, Paul, p. 219.

264 THE ACTS. XVI. 16-34
the foundations of the prison-house were shaken ; and
immediately all the doors were opened and every one's
bonds were loosed. 27And the jailor, being roused out
of sleep and seeing the prison doors open, drew his
sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the
prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul cried with a loud
voice, saying, Do thyself no hurt ; for we are all here.
29 And he called for lights and sprang in and, trembling
for fear, fell down before Paul and Silas, 30 and brought
them out and said, O my lords, what must I do to be
saved? 31And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus
and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house. 32And
they spake the word of the Lord to him, with all that
were in his house. 33 And he took them the same hour
of the night and washed their stripes ; and was baptized,
he and all his, immediately. Si And he brought them
up into his house and set food before them, and rejoiced
greatly with all his house, having become a believer
in God.
16. it came to pass. Luke gives no clue to the length of their
stay ; but, as usual, he narrates the incident which led to their
departures a Pythoness. That is, having a spirit of divination from Pythian
Apollo, coupled with the power of ventriloquizing. Plutarch says
that a ventriloquist was called a Python.1' Since Luke speaks in his
Gospel of ' demoniacs ', his use of this word shows that he is here
employing the term used by the people of Philippi about the girl.
It was inevitable that he should adopt the ideas and use the current
phraseology of his time. In our day we do not look on such
a phenomenon as the union of two personalities, but as a divided
consciousness in one person.0
her masters. The gold-miners of the neighbourhood may have
consulted her where to dig. At any rate, she was from her reputa
tion as a fortune-teller so valuable a slave that it required the
formation of a ' divination company ' to purchase her. Luke has
"• Iverach, p. 89. b Def. Orac. 9.
c Plumptre, Ads ; Farrar, i. 491 ; Benson, p. 388.

THE ACTS. XVI. 16-34 265
already shown, in the case of Simon in Samaria and of Elymas in
Paphos, how highly in this age of general unbelief and superstition
diviners and soothsayers were honoured.'1
17. These men. As the demoniac of Galilee had hailed Jesus as
'Son of the Most High God' (Luke viii. 28), so this poor slave bore
testimony to the ' slaves of the Most High God '. Since she apparently
frequented the road to the place of prayer, she may have been con
nected with Jews and have imbibed vague notions of the expected
Messiah. And the preaching of Paul, the burden of which had
evidently been the ' way of salvation ', had powerfully wrought upon
her disordered mind.b
18. being sore vexed. It has been seen (see on xiv. 14) how
Paul resisted the temptation to accept and utilize the homage of the
Lystraeans. A yet subtler temptation was here. This slave girl's
testimony was an acknowledgment and proclamation of a real truth.
If she was possessed by a false spirit, so much the greater was the
triumph of the truth which compelled such testimony. She was
well known, and her utterances were regarded with reverence. Why
not avail himself of her wide influence to further his evangelistic
work? But, like his master (Luke viii. 29), Paul would receive no
aid from such a source. That would be to confound the distinction
between light and darkness, to confirm superstition, and to com
promise his message.0
he departed. She had declared that they, like herself, were
slaves of God, divinely inspired. So real was her belief in this fact
that, on hearing Paul's words, she lost faith in herself and in her
power of divination. d The deliverance of the slave girl is as typical
as the conversion of Lydia. The two most important social revolu
tions worked by Christianity have been the elevation of women and
the abolition of slavery.
19. when her masters. Luke characteristically enlarges his
narrative, because this was the first example of a persecution not
originated by Jews. Like the riot at Ephesus, it rose from threatened
loss of profits. The capital which the shareholders had invested in
the girl had suddenly been rendered unproductive ; and they thought
that if the superior influence of the strangers could be removed, she
might recover her powers.6
a Baring-Gould, p. 216; Vaughan, ii. 305; Maurice, p. 258.
b Taylor, Paul, p. 230 ; Eadie, p. 147 ; Lewin, i. 215.
c Maurice, p. 260; Purves, p. 1S6.
A C. H. Turner, Hastings' Did., art. Philippi ; Ramsay, Paul, p. 216.
L' Maurice, p. 262; Eadie, p. 14S ; Ramsay, Pictures, p. 182.

266 THE ACTS. XVI. 16-34
and dragged . . . magistrates. These words appear to be a
marginal gloss on the following clause. Luke is not likely to have,
so unnecessarily, used in successive lines both the Greek and the
Roman designation of the officials. a
20. the Praetors. Roman colonies were governed by 'Duumvirs',
but these usually assumed the courtesy title of ' Praetor '. As repre
senting consuls, they were attended by lictors bearing rods.
These men. To claim that their slave had been deprived by
exorcism of all commercial value would have been a plea which might
redound to the credit of the strangers. So they devised a charge
which would appeal at once to the popular dislike of Jews and to the
colonial pride of the citizens.0
being Jews. The Jews were everywhere unpopular owing to their
social exclusiveness and their success in trade. And to the Roman
governors they were obnoxious on account of their stubborn and
contumelious bearing. The recent decree of Claudius expelling them
from Rome (xviii. 2) for tumultuous conduct gave a special sting to
the present charge.
21. not lawful. Judaism was a 'lawful religion' in the Empire,
and Jews were free to live as Jews ; but to induce Roman citizens to
adopt Jewish customs was quite another thing.0 There was, however,
no truth in the charge, since the missionaries were not seeking to
make proselytes to Judaism.
22. commanded. The Praetors, seeing that the mere statement
of the charge was causing a ferment among the people, and regard
ing the accused as two vagabond and seditious Jews on whom they
could safely perpetrate any outrage, did not trouble to inquire into
the matter, but summarily ordered them to be scourged A
23. many stripes. A Roman scourging was a terrible ordeal,
and this was of exceptional severity. How deeply Paul, a Roman
citizen and gently nurtured, felt the indignity is shown by his state
ment to the Thessalonians that he had been ' shamefully treated at
Philippi ' (1 Thess. ii. 2).°
24. having received such a charge. It was a significant hint
to deal as harshly as he chose with his prisoners.1,
the inner prison. Probably a dark unventilated chamber further
in the rock, foul and loathsome with filth and vermin. We know
what the dungeons are like which may be seen in the ruins of feudal
a Ramsay, Paul, p. 217. b Fouard, Paul, p. 117 ; Purves, p. 1S6.
0 Rackham, Acts. A Fouard, Paul, p. 119.
0 Benson, p. 391. ' Macduff, Paul, p. 1S7.

THE ACTS. XVI. 16-34 267
castles. And we know what prisons were in Christian London before
the time of Howard. But, even so, we can scarcely realize the horrors
of ' the inner prison ' in a pagan provincial town of the first century.0-
made their feet fast. This refinement of cruelty reveals the
character of the man. The inner prison must have been safe enough.
But a Roman soldier was not likely to be a gentle person, and the
work of a provincial jailor would not be humanizing.
25. singing hymns. Truly, ' Stone walls do not a prison make.' b
Paul must have been tempted to think that the ' man of Macedonia '
was no heaven-sent vision, but had originated in his own disordered
imagination. He must have been saddened by the discovery that
the same hostility which the Jews had shown to the Gospel was being
shown by the Gentiles. He must have been smarting under a sense
of unjust treatment (ver. 37). He must have felt that there was every
prospect of further danger and ill-treatment before him. But as he
and Silas sat on the foul floor, their backs torn by the scourge, their
wrists galled by fetters, their feet fastened in the stocks so as to make
change of posture difficult and sleep impossible, these men did not
complain, did not merely pray — that would not be so wonderful —
but burst into songs of praise. No event in Paul's life reveals, as
does this midnight scene in the Philippian dungeon, what the grace
of God can enable His saints to be ! °
were listening. No wonder ! Such sounds had never been
heard before in a prison. But neither had any prison ever held such
prisoners.'1 26. a great earthquake. Luke had not been arrested, and so
cannot speak in the first person of what happened in the prison.6
But he evidently regarded the earthquake as an answer to their
prayers — as something which, if not in itself miraculous, was provi
dential in its opportuneness. A secret spring had been touched on
earth, and the effect was instantaneously felt in heaven.f
shaken. If the prison was excavated in the rock, it is intelligible
that a shock, which would have thrown down a building, might pro
duce the effects described. The doors were probably secured by bars
which slipped from their sockets, and the prisoners chained to staples
which fell out from the walls.s
a Taylor, Paul, p. 232 ; Farrar, i. 497. b Lovelace.
c Noble, p. 90; Baumgarten, ii. 126. d Iverach, p. 92.
" Ramsay, Paul, p. 219.
f Baumgarten, ii. 128 ; Gilbert, p. 117 ; Ramsden, ii. 26.
» Rackham, Acts; Ramsay, Paul, p. 221.

268 THE ACTS. XVI. 16-34
27. to kill himself. By Roman military law he was answerable
with his life for the custody of his prisoners (xii. 19). Suicide was
among the Romans at this time the popular means of escape from
trouble. At this very Philippi Brutus had 'fled, not with feet, but
with hands '.
28. Paul cried. As usual, he showed self-possession in danger
and unselfish thought for others.
29. fell down. Paul's words freed him from one fear, only to
rouse another. Who were these men ? He had no experience of
prisoners who requited his cruel treatment with concern for his wel
fare and sacrificed their chance of escape to save him from suicide.a
30. my lords. They have suddenly become persons to be treated
with respect and reverence. The earthquake might, he thought, be
the expression of some deity's anger at their harsh treatment.0
to be saved. Saved from what ? He may have heard of the
strange words of the divining girl about these men ' showing a way of
salvation '. But it is more likely that he vaguely sought deliverance
from the dangers, seen and unseen, which beset him.0
31. Believe. They answer him according to the deepest sense of
his words. If he meant temporal salvation, they will mean spiritual.
If he called them lords and appealed to them for safety, they will tell
him of the Lord who alone could save him.d
32. they spake. Paul must have begun to understand the mean
ing of his stripes. He allows no plea of weariness or suffering to
excuse him from seizing an opportunity of preaching the Gospel.
33. washed their stripes. Faith bears fruit in action. At once
he seeks to repair the past neglect and to atone for the brutality of
the stocks.6
was baptized. The same apparent prematureness strikes us as
in Philip's baptism of the eunuch (viii. 38). What could a man,
brutalized by his calling, learn of the Christian faith in a few short
hours ? The narrative expressly says that there was no delay — ' the
same hour of the night ' and ' immediately '. But the faith required
was not faith in a set of doctrines, but faith in a living Person ; and
baptism was regarded as matriculation, not graduation, in the school
of Christ/
34. food. They had probably been fasting for some twenty hours.
rejoiced. Luke notes, as usual, the joy of conversion.
a Maclaren, ii. 120; Row, p. 174. b Iverach, p. 93; Stokes, ii. 287.
0 Maurice, p. 264. a Maurice, p. 265. ° Arnot, p. 352.
f Goulburn, p. 352 ; Maurice, p. 265.

THE ACTS. XVI. 16-34 269
The three conversions at Philippi which Luke narrates— the Asiatic
Lydia, the Greek slave, the Roman soldier — illustrate the universality
of the Gospel.a
The Earthquake at Philippi. — It would not be honest to con
ceal the difficulty of reconciling the above narrative with Paul's own
words, written only a few months after the event, to the Thessa-
lonians (1 Thess. ii. 2), 'Having suffered before, and been shame
fully treated, as ye know, at Philippi, we waxed bold in our God to
speak unto you the Gospel of God in much conflict.' He says
nothing here of any miraculous deliverance at Philippi. He speaks
of his suffering and shameful treatment in that city, and glories in
the fact that, in spite of this heavy discouragement, he is still bold
to preach the Gospel to the Thessalonians. But he does not suggest
that his ' boldness in God ' was due to any direct interposition of
God on his behalf. Yet it is hard to believe that the Apostle, who
thankfully records every token of the Divine favour, would have told
of his harsh treatment and said nothing of his release by a miracle.0
Similarly, in his letter to the Philippians (i. 30) he speaks of their
' having the same conflict which ye saw in me ' ; but again without
any reference to this miraculous deliverance.
Nor is there any allusion in the subsequent narrative of the
Acts itself to the earthquake and its consequences. The natural
inference from ver. 35 would be that it was the realization of the
illegality and unbecoming haste of their action which led the Praetors
to release the prisoners on the following morning without further
examination of their case.0
If it be urged that the story must be historical because it occurs in
a part of the narrative in which Luke was himself an actor, it may be
pointed out that there is no trace of the ' we ' in the account of the
earthquake, the third person being resumed after ver. 17. Hence
Harnack may be right11 in regarding verses 24-34 as a later inter
polation. It will be noticed that verses 23 and 35 cohere well. It
is, however, better to suppose that Luke, writing many years after the
events which he is narrating, made use of a source containing legendary
accretions which had grown round the fact of the conversion of the
jailor by his prisoners. There is a significant resemblance between
the three narratives in the Acts of the release of Apostles from
imprisonment by miraculous intervention (v. 19 seq.; xii. 7 seq.;
a Iverach, p. 94. b J. Thomas, p. 98 ; Hausrath, iii. 207 seq.
c McGiffert, p. 242 ; Bacon, p. 160. '' Acts, pp. 206, 231.

270 THE ACTS. XVI. 16-34
xvi. 24 seq.). And as regards the particular form which the present
tradition assumed, a parallel may be found in St. Matthew's double
narrative (xxvii. 51 ; xxviii. 2) of an earthquake, which is not men
tioned by the other Synoptists ; and which Plummer thinks a that
the Evangelist, or his source, may have conjectured as a cause of the
extraordinary phenomena which he had to relate.
35-4°
35 But when it was day, the Praetors sent the lictors,
saying, Let those men go. 30And the jailor reported
the words to Paul, saying, The Praetors have sent to
let you go : now therefore depart, and go in peace. 37 But
Paul said to them, They beat us publicly uncondemned,
men that are Romans, and cast us into prison, and do
they now cast us out privily? No, indeed! Let them
come themselves and bring us out. 3S And the lictors
reported these things to the Praetors ; and they feared
when they heard that they were Romans : 39 and they
came and besought them ; and having brought them
out, they asked them to leave the city. 40 And they
departed from the prison, and entered into the house
of Lydia ; and when they had seen the brethren, they
encouraged them, and departed,
35. the Praetors sent. The earthquake (if the above narrative
be historical), which the Romans commonly regarded as a token of
the anger of the gods, may have roused their superstitious fears. But
it is more likely that they felt that their action had been hasty and
unjust. Roman magistrates were generally fair. Or Lydia, who
seems to have been a person of some importance, may have lodged
a remonstrance against their treatment of inoffensive strangers who
were her friends, and mentioned the fact that they were Roman
citizens.0 36. go in peace. It is clear that the jailor in his simplicity
carried the news with eager satisfaction.0
a St. Matthew, p. 415.
b Benson, p. 393; Ramsay, Paul, p. 223; Fouard, Paul, p. 121.
c Row, p. 175.

THE ACTS. XVI. 35-40 271
37. But Paul said. There is a meekness which is Christian;
but there is also a mistaken meekness, which, in failing to acknow
ledge the rights given by God, dishonours them. Paul did not think
that Christ's law bound a man to tolerate gross injustice. He might
personally forgive the wrong done to himself; but a public wrong had
been done to justice and to religion. For the sake of others these
provincial magistrates must be taught not to use mob law : and for
the sake of the Church at Philippi it was necessary to establish the
claim of the Gospel to the respect of the heathen. He and Silas
could not remain, but he intended to leave Luke behind ; and it might
save much trouble and suffering in the future, if it were openly declared
that their preaching was not immoral or revolutionary^
uncondemned. The Greek word can only mean this ; but since
a citizen could not lawfully be scourged even after condemnation, the
expression used by Paul was probably a Latin one meaning ' without
a hearing ' ; and Luke translated it (as again in xxii. 25) by an
inadequate Greek word.b «U i^co^-V lift
men that are Romans. The scourging of a citizen was forbid
den by the Valerian Law, b. c. 508, and the prohibition was re-enacted
by the Porcian Law, b. c. 300. That these Praetors did not, any more
than Claudius Lysias (xxii. 27), question Paul's statement is explained
by the fact that it was a capital offence to make a false claim to citizen
ship. But why, it may be asked, had not the missionaries declared
their citizenship before being scourged ? It is usually said that the
proceedings had been so tumultuous that their cry, ' we are Romans ',
was not heard. A more reasonable explanation would be that Silas
was not a citizen, and that Paul held his tongue because he would not
save himself and leave his companion to suffer. The plural need not,
in that case, be regarded as a mistake on Luke's part, since it would
be natural enough in Paul's mouth if the offence had been committed
against himself only. The difficulty, however, is not really met thus,
because this instance does not stand alone. Paul says (2 Cor. xi. 25)
that he thrice received a Roman scourging. Hence we can only con
clude that, though he availed himself of his privileges on one occasion
(xxii. 25), he must, on others, have for some reason deliberately chosen
to be silent about his citizenship (see on xxii. 25).
38. they feared. That a Roman citizen should have been scourged
in a Roman colony was an enormity which, if it became known, would
not only involve them in trouble at Rome, but be keenly resented
a Stifler, p. 161; Stokes, ii. 290; Barnes, p. 167 ; Farrar, i. 501 ; Birks, p. 217.
b Ramsay, Paul, p. 225.

272 THE ACTS. XVI. 35-40
by the colonists of Philippi, jealous as they were of their rights and
privileges as citizens."1
40. they departed. Paul left Luke and Timothy behind to
consolidate the work. Luke, for all that we know to the contrary,
remained till Paul's return some six years later ; Timothy rejoined
him at Beroea (see on xvii. 15). How long his own stay at Philippi
had lasted we cannot say ; but it must have been for several weeks at
least, since his preaching laid the foundation of a flourishing Church,
and he made friendships there which were among the truest of his
life. The field was in every way more hopeful than any in which he
had previously laboured. He had not, as in the past, to deal with
effeminate Syrians or fickle Galatians ; nor did he encounter here the
corruption which he afterwards found in the more polished Greek
society of the south. In the Macedonians still lingered something
of the grit and vigour and courage which four centuries before had
made them the conquerors of the world.0 Hence in his letter to the
Philippians, written some ten years later, he uses more endearing
terms than to any other Church. They are his ' dearly beloved and
longed for, his joy and crown' (iv. 1) : he has no syllable of rebuke
for them ; he can only ' thank his God upon all his remembrance of
them ' (i. 3). We only gauge the full significance of his acceptance
of pecuniary help from them — twice at Thessalonica (Phil. iv. 16), at
Corinth (2 Cor. xi. 9), and at Rome (Phil. iv. 16) — when we remember
that in so doing he departed from a custom which elsewhere was with
him a settled principle.0 Yet they were not, with the exception of
Lydia, wealthy; they gave out of their deep poverty (2 Cor. viii. 2).
The explanation may, in part at least, be found in the presence at
Philippi of the ' loved physician ', who so well knew his infirmities
and needs.
CHAPTER XVII
i-9
1 Now when they had journeyed through Amphipolis
and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was
a synagogue of the Jews. 2 And Paul, as his custom was,
went in to them and for three sabbath days reasoned
with them from the Scriptures, 3 expounding and proving
a Life, c. iii. b Kitto, p. 363 ; Row, p. 176.
e Stalker, p. 127; Hausrath, iii. 203 seq.
'' Taylor, Paul, p. 236; F. B. Meyer, p. 117; Weizsacker, i. 280.

THE ACTS. XVII. 1-9 273
that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, and to rise
again from the dead ; and that the Jesus, whom he was
proclaiming to them, was the Christ. i And some of
them were convinced and threw in their lot with Paul
and Silas ; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude,
and of the chief women not a few. 6 But the Jews,
being moved with jealousy, took to them certain ill-
conditioned fellows of the rabble, and gathering a crowd
filled the city with uproar ; and attacking the house of
Jason sought to bring them forth to the people. 6 And
when they found them not, they dragged Jason and
certain brethren before the burgomasters, crying, These
that have turned the world upside clown are come hither
also: 7whom Jason hath received; and these all act
contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is
another king, one Jesus. 8 And they troubled the multi
tude and the burgomasters, when they heard these
things. 9 And having taken security of Jason and the
rest, they let them go.
1 . through Amphipolis. They travelled along the Egnatian road
which ran from Byzantium to the Adriatic. Since no towns but
Amphipolis and Apollonia are mentioned, it has been supposed a
that Paul halted only there, doing the stages of thirty-three, thirty,
and thirty-seven miles on successive days, and this after his terrible
scourging. And the reason usually given why he did not stop at
these towns for missionary work is that they were without synagogues.
But the narrative is so condensed that such assumptions must be
received with caution. He may just as well have halted for a week
as for a day in each town. And as regards preaching there, no
inference can be safely drawn from Luke's silence. We should
never have known of the foundation of a permanent Church at
Beroea but for his accidental mention (xx. 4) of the name of a
Beroean among the delegates who accompanied Paul with contribu
tions for the poor of Jerusalem.0
Thessalonica. The ancient Therma had been thus re-named by
a Benson, p. 400. b Dobschiitz, p. 81.

274 THE ACTS. XVII. 1-9
Cassander after his wife, a sister of Alexander the Great. It was,
with the sole exception of Syrian Antioch, the most important town
in which Paul had yet preached. Along the Egnatian road merchants
and legionaries were continually passing. At the very centre of this
tide of travel, and boasting also the finest harbour on the coast, stood
Thessalonica. Owing to this ceaseless coming and going the Gospel
preached there was so quickly carried elsewhere that only a few months
after his departure Paul could write (1 Thess. i. 8), ' From you hath
sounded forth the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and
Achaia, but in every place your faith to Godward is gone forth.' a
2. as his custom was. Though he had been summoned to
Europe to help 'a man of Macedonia', he did not change his
practice of speaking first to his own countrymen.
three Sabbath days. The three Sabbaths must be understood
as the period of work in the Synagogue. His stay must have been
much longer. The words quoted above from 1 Thess. i. 8 imply an
extended sojourn; as does the statement to the Philippians (iv. 16),
' In Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity,' since
Philippi was more than a hundred miles distant. And in spite of
this aid, he had to 'work night and day' (i Thess. ii. 9) for his
support. Further, the Church seems to have consisted mainly of
Gentile converts (2 Thess. iii. 7, 8, and see on ver. 4), and to have
been formally organized (1 Thess. v. 12).0
Paul's refusal to accept maintenance from his converts at Thessa
lonica (' That we might not burden any of you ', 1 Thess. ii. 9) may
imply that his different action at Philippi had given rise to injurious
reports.0 As Thessalonica was noted for its textile productions, he
would have no difficulty in finding employment as a tent-maker/1
3. expounding. Paul gives a hint of the heated discussions
which took place, when he says (1 Thess. ii. 2) that he preached
'in much conflict'. The Cross was 'unto the Jews a stumbling-
block' (r Cor. i. 23). It was hard for those, who had fed their
imagination with the glowing pictures in the Old Testament of the
Messiah's Kingdom and ignored the lines of prophecy which spoke
of His suffering and humiliation, to re-read the Scriptures in a new
light.6 4. some of them. The contrast of these words with 'a great
multitude ', and the distinction made (ver. 1 1) between the Jews of
a Fouard, Paul, p. 126. b Ramsay, Paul, p. 22S ; Gilbert, p. 121.
0 Weizsacker, i. 288. a Fouard, Paul, p. 127 ; Baring-Gould, p. 221.
e Maclaren, ii. 133 ; Iverach, p. 101.

THE ACTS. XVII. 1-9 275
Thessalonica and those of Beroea, confirm the inference to be drawn
from the letters that the Church at Thessalonica was predominantly
Gentile. The disciples are said (1 Thess. i. 9) to have 'turned to
God from idols ' ; and the Jewish Scriptures are not referred to.
devout Greeks. The expression probably means here heathens
honestly in search of truth ; though it usually denotes Gentiles who
had embraced the worship of Jehovah as they had learnt it from the
synagogue." the chief women. In Macedonia women occupied a freer and
more influential position than in Greece proper.0
not a few. The statement must be received with caution, since
Luke was not present, and Paul himself implies (1 Thess. iv. n) that
his converts came mainly from the industrial classes, and speaks
(2 Cor. viii. 2) of the 'deep poverty' of the Macedonian Churches.0
5. moved with jealousy. The statement is confirmed by Paul's
words (1 Thess. ii. 16), 'Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that
they may be saved.' Here, as at Corinth, where the Jewish colony
was in constant communication by sea with Palestine, the opposition
of the Jews to Paul was specially active.
fellows of the rabble. The Greek word means 'market-loungers'.
The contempt for manual labour in slave communities led to the
existence of numerous worthless idlers ; and in a seaport there would
be the usual loafers about the wharves ready to be hired for any
work.'1 Jason. Evidently he was Paul's host, and may have been a dealer
in goat-hair stuffs ; perhaps a Gentile convert, since the name is that
of an ancient king of Thessaly. But it was also a favourite name for
Jews to assume, if their Hebrew name was Joshua.6 If he is the
same as the Jason of Romans xvi. 21, he was a Jew, for Paul there
calls him his ' kinsman '.
6. the burgomasters. The Greek word occurs nowhere else in
Greek literature, but is found in an inscription (now in the British
Museum) from an Arch at Thessalonica, erected in memory of the
victory of Philippi, and demolished in a.d. i867.f It is a striking
illustration of the accuracy of Luke, who, at a time when various
forms of government existed in the cities of the Empire, writes with
unfailing correctness of the ' Proconsul ' in Cyprus and in Achaia, the
' Praetors ' at Philippi, and the ' Primate ' in Melita.
a Davies, p. 114. b Ramsay, Paul, p. 227. c Hausrath, iii. 211.
a Farrar, i. 513; Binney, p. 222. ° Josephus, Antiq. xii. 5. 1.
f YV. J. Woodhouse, Encycl. BUI., p. S047.
T 2

276 THE ACTS. XVII. 1-9
the world. The Greek word denotes the Roman world. News
of the disturbances at Rome and the expulsion of the Jews by Claudius
may have just reached Thessalonica. Even so, the charge is a tribute
to the influence exercised by the missionaries. And it was true in
another sense than the accusers meant. Though it sounds like mere
frenzy as directed against two poor tent-makers, the instinct that
framed it was prophetic. Christianity is revolutionary. It revolu
tionizes individuals, and through them revolutionizes society.a
7. another king. Here were Jews disclaiming their nation's dearest
hope ; declaring, like the crowd before Pilate, that they had ' no king
but Caesar' (John xix. 15). We know from Paul's letters to the
Thessalonians that the Second Coming of Christ had been a leading
topic of his teaching. Perhaps the prevalence of vice in a great sea
port led him to lay stress on the impending Judgment; perhaps,
after his suffering experience at Philippi, his thoughts turned specially
to the approaching end of the trial -time of life and the coming glories
of the Redeemer's Kingdom. Anyhow, it was not unnatural that
those who were only half-informed should interpret his words literally.
Hence the charge would have a semblance of truth. Paul had
preached ' another king ', though not in any political or treasonable
sense.0 8. they troubled. In a ' free city ', like Thessalonica, there was
a dread of anything being done which could give the Romans a pretext
for taking away their cherished privileges.
9. taken security. If Jason undertook that Paul should leave
the town and not return, we have an explanation of his inability to
revisit the city when he greatly wished to do so (1 Thess. ii. 17, 18).0
let them go. The culprits were not before them ; and the only
charge which could be brought against Jason was that he had
harboured men who were teachers of sedition. Unlike the praetors
of Philippi, the burgomasters had no sympathy with the dregs of the
populace stirred up by Jews, and they were content with an assurance
that the causes of disturbance should leave the city.
Though Paul's work here was broken off by persecution, its success
was marked. The Thessalonians received his teaching as ' the word
of God ' (1 Thess. ii. 13) ; rejoiced in their afflictions (1 Thess. i. 6 ;
ii. 14); became an example to all believers in Macedonia and Achaia
(1 Thess. i. 7, 8). He speaks of them as his 'glory and joy ' (1 Thess.
a Johnston, p. 114; Maurice, p. 275; Maclaren, ii. 136.
b J. Robertson, p. 197; McGiffert, p. 24S ; L. Merivale, p. 204.
0 Johnston, p. 114.

THE ACTS. XVII. 1-9 277
ii. 20). There is abundant evidence in the letters that in leaving
them he left his heart behind him. Two of them, Aristarchus and
Secundus, accompanied him on his last visit to Jerusalem (xx. 4),
and the former went with him to Rome (xxvii. 2).a
IO-15
10 And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and
Silas by night to Beroea ; and their escort, having
reached the synagogue of the Jews, departed. n Now
these men were of nobler temper than those in Thessa
lonica, in that they received the word with all readiness
of mind, examining the Scriptures daily whether these
things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed ;
and of the Greek women of rank and of men not a few.
13 But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge
that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Beroea
also, they came, stirring up and troubling the multitudes
there likewise. u But the brethren then immediately
sent away Paul in the direction of the coast, while both
Silas and Timothy stayed behind there. 15 But they
that conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens ; and
taking an urgent message from him to Silas and Timothy
to join him with all speed they departed.
10. by night. This shows that Paul and Silas were in hiding
and in real danger. The moderation of the authorities would be an
ineffectual protection for poor Jews from the violence of a mob.
We learn from the letters (1 Thess. ii. 14, iii. 1-5 ; 2 Thess. i. 6) that
their departure was followed by a persecution of the Christians which
caused Paul the gravest anxiety during the next few months.1'
Probably he did not know, when he left, of the pledge that had
been exacted from Jason. He fully meant (1 Thess. ii. 17, 18) to
return soon.
their escort. Probably they were Gentile converts, who had not
been proselytes and therefore were not at home in the synagogue.
the synagogue. Considering the treatment which Paul had
1 Gilbert, p. 122. b Johnston, p. 114 ; Farrar, i. 515 ; Rackham, Acts.

278 THE ACTS. XVII. 10-15
recently received at Thessalonica from the Jews and the Gentiles
respectively, it might have been expected that he would preach at
once to the latter. But such was his love to his countrymen that no
persecution on their part could shake it.a
11. received the word. In this remote town the Jews welcomed
visitors of their own race, and gave an unprejudiced hearing to their
message.0 examining the Scriptures. Paul had based his message on the
Scriptures, but his interpretation of them was new to the Beroeans,
and they set themselves to examine its grounds.0 Nowhere else did
he encounter Jews so candid and reasonable.
12. Many believed. And the others did not persecute him.'1
therefore. Luke has a grand confidence in the result of such
methods. r3- when the Jews. The Jews who lived out of Palestine,
being chiefly engaged in commercial pursuits, were in constant inter
course, and the news would soon be carried to Thessalonica.6 The
unsleeping hatred, which thus pursued Paul like a sleuthhound,
recalls their similar action at Lystra (xiv. 19). Probably this is
what he was referring to when he wrote (1 Thess. ii. 18) that 'Satan
hindered ' him from returning to the converts over whom he yearned,
feeling that he had left them to bear the brunt of the hatred which
his teaching had provoked. When the Jews from Thessalonica
followed him to Beroea and hounded him thence, he abandoned the
hope of returning for the present.1'
troubling. The word suggests that the same accusation was
brought against him as at Thessalonica, and he was compelled by
much the same process to leave Beroea.s The length of his stay is
quite uncertain, but it must have been some months. In his anxiety
to re-visit Thessalonica, only fifty miles distant, he lingered in the
neighbourhood as long as possible. Though the Beroean Church is
not mentioned in the Epistles, the appearance of a Beroean (xx. 4)
among the delegates who carried to Jerusalem the great collection
for the poor proves that lasting results were effected.11
14. immediately. It is likely that Paul's health had not recovered
from the shock of his terrible experience at Philippi and the more
recent danger at Thessalonica ; and the disciples dared not expose
a Lewin, i. 236. b Ramsay, Pictures, p. 191. c Iverach, p. 105.
(1 Gilbert, p. 123. e Row, p. 179. ' J. Robertson, p. 220.
B Iverach, p. 106; Ramsay, Paul, p. 232.
11 Conybeare and Howson, i. 314 ; Weizsacker, i. 279.

THE ACTS. XVII. 10-15 279
him to a fresh attack. It is clear from his letters that he did not
regard his work in Macedonia as completed, but meant to return.
If he had been deliberately starting for prolonged work in Achaia,
he would have waited in the neighbourhood for his companions to
join him. But the Jews were on his track and his life was in danger ;
and he quitted Macedonia hurriedly.*
in the direction of the coast. It is generally held that he was
conducted to Dium, sixteen miles away on the coast, to take the first
boat that offered, without any fixed plan of going to Athens. And,
it is true, the absence of any mention of places between Beroea and
Athens is in favour of their having gone by sea. But otherwise the
language implies that they started in the direction of the coast, in
order to throw pursuers off the scent ; and then went to Athens by
land. His escort would not have sailed with him, unless he was too
ill to look after himself; and his action at Athens seems to negative
such a supposition.0
Silas and Timothy. They had not been left behind, as Luke
had apparently been left at Philippi, to consolidate the work, since
Paul immediately sent for them ; but they remained to screen his
flight. It is evidence of his dominating personality that it was his
blood that was wanted. The others were of small account.0 Until
the return of the escort they would not know where they were to
rejoin him.
15. an urgent message. So far as we know, Paul was, for the
first time since he began his missionary travels, absolutely without
a companion. The word ' urgent ' and the following words ' with all
speed ' show how keenly he felt his loneliness.
There is some uncertainty as to the movements of Silas and
Timothy at this time. Luke, being at Philippi, probably did not
know accurately what took place. The inference from xviii. 5 is
that he thought that Paul left Athens before their arrival, and that
they only rejoined him at Corinth. But Paul implies in his letters
(r Thess. iii. 1, 6) that they did, in fact, rejoin him at Athens, and
were thence despatched by him, Timothy to Thessalonica, and Silas
to Philippi. The latter brought a contribution from the Philippians
(2 Cor. xi. 9 ; Phil. iv. 15), and, having been joined by Timothy from
Thessalonica, went on with him to Corinth. The two accounts are
not absolutely contradictory, since Luke does not expressly exclude
a Johnston, p. 115. " Rendall, Expositor, iii. 8, 120.
0 Johnston, p. 115.

280 THE ACTS. XVII. 10-15
their arrival at Athens ; but he could scarcely have written as he did
if he had known of it.a
The natural inference from the fact that Timothy, and not the
more experienced Silas, was sent to Thessalonica is that he had not
been with Paul and Silas there, but had stayed with Luke at Philippi
and only rejoined them at Beroea. Hence he could be sent to
Thessalonica, since the security given by Jason related to Paul and
Silas only. The way in which Paul describes him (i Thess. iii. 2),
as ' our brother and God's minister in the Gospel of Christ ', looks as
though he was introducing one whom they had not seen.1'
The Macedonian mission was Paul's most fruitful work up to this
time. Though Luke mentions only three cities — Philippi, Thessa
lonica, Beroea — it is clear from the letters (1 Thess. i. 7 seq.) that
Christianity was very shortly widespread ; and there can be little
doubt that Paul did other work which Luke's sources did not record.
He tells the Romans (xv. 1 9) that he had preached as far as Illyricum ;
and it is not easy to say when, if not now, he could have done so.
When he later passed through Macedonia on his way to Corinth (xx. 1),
he was in too great anxiety about the state of the Corinthian Church
to have undertaken an extended missionary tour there ; and we know
of no other time before the date of his letter to the Romans when
he could have gone thither.0 16-21
16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his
spirit was provoked within him as he beheld the city
filled with idols. "He reasoned therefore in the syna
gogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and daily
in the market-place with those that fell in with him.
18 But certain also of the Epicurean and Stoic philoso
phers encountered him. And some said, What might
this charlatan say ? Others, He seemeth to be a setter
forth of strange divinities ; because he preached Jesus
and the Resurrection. 19 And they took hold of him
and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, May we
know what this new teaching of thine is ? 20 For thou
a Johnston, p. 116; McGiffert, p. 257. b Binney, p. 230.
" McGiffert, p. 254.

THE ACTS. XVII. 16-21 281
bringest certain strange things to our ears : we would
know, therefore, what these things mean. (21 Now all
the Athenians and the foreigners residing there had
leisure for nothing else but either to tell or to hear the
last new thing.)
1 6. waited for them. He had gone to Athens as a retreat only, with
no intention of working there. So far as he had any plans for Achaia,
his mind was probably already fixed on Corinth as a more important
centre. Another man would have welcomed a quiet breathing-space
in which to recover from the strain of his recent experiences. But
Paul was not a good ' waiter ', nor was Athens a place in which he
could be idle. The idolatry of the city provoked in him a paroxysm
of zeal. He did not reason that he was one of an unpopular race,
alone in a strange land ; nor was he deterred by the memory of the
perils from which he had so lately escaped. None of these thoughts
crossed his mind. He saw souls perishing, and he could not hold
his peace. Single-handed and alone he threw himself into the arena
to do battle for God and truth. a
Athens. Captured by Sulla in 86 b. c, Athens was politically
now of little consequence, but was still of importance as the University
of Rome.
filled with idols. The description is no figure of speech. For
though Paul, misled by his Jewish prejudices, may have, as Renan
suggests, wrongly taken all the statues which he saw for ' objects of
worship ' (ver. 23), yet Pausanias says that there were more statues
in Athens than in all the rest of Greece put together. According to
Pliny, it contained in the time of Nero more than three thousand.
Petronius says that it was easier to meet a god there than a man.
Paul had seen many Pagan cities, but never before had he seen the
Second Commandment so aggressively violated ; so much art and
wealth lavished on idolatry ; the highest culture so strangely allied
with superstition.
It must be remembered that nothing in his mental history had
prepared him to feel as we feel in the presence of the monuments of
Athens. A ' Hebrew of Hebrews ', he was indifferent to the history
of heathen peoples. To him Athens was not the city with the glorious
past, but only the embodiment of that idolatry which Christianity
a Parker, ii. 192 ; Arnot, p. 375 ; J. C. Ryle, Oxford and Cambridge Journa.,
1S80; W. Alexander, p. 12.

282 THE ACTS. XVII. 16-21
came to destroy. As his Master, when the disciples called His
attention to the grandeur of the Temple, thought only of the people
and the coming desolation, so any admiration which Paul might have
felt was swallowed up in pity and sorrow that men of high intelligence
and culture should be morally so ignorant and fallen.0
17. therefore. His object was not, as in other cities, to offer the
Gospel first to his own countrymen and to the proselytes gathered
round them ; he went to the synagogue to enlist their sympathy
against the surrounding idolatry. But the Jewish colony was not
large, since the commercial Corinth offered more attractions than
Athens ; and the Athenian Jews appear to have been themselves
tainted with the prevailing superstition and frivolity of the city.
Custom had deadened their sense of the heinousness of idolatry.
So Paul, failing to stir them to the level of his own feeling, carried
his activities elsewhere.0
in the market-place. This was the centre of public life at
Athens. Paul, with the amazing versatility which enabled him to
become all things to all men, adapted himself to the conditions.
No ordinary Jew could have entered into the spirit of the place as
he did, and have excited sufficient interest among its philosophers to
make them ask for a statement of his teaching. Centuries before,
Socrates had stood there, disputing ' with those that fell in with him ',
trying to make them think seriously of truth and righteousness. Now
a Christian Socrates was striving with like earnestness to lead the
people to higher things. And Paul was fitted, both by training and
by natural gifts, for the task. In his native Tarsus he must have
come into contact with inquirers similar to those whom he now
encountered ; and the ready answers to objectors, the rapid transi
tions, the quick turns of thought, in which his letters abound, show
how well equipped he was for the Socratic form of discussion.0
18. But certain. There is a curious parallel in the life of
Apollonius of Tyana.cl On his way from Piraeus to the city he met
many philosophers, reading or arguing, all of whom greeted him.6
Epicurean and Stoic. These were the only philosophies which
at this time possessed any vitality.1 Both were fundamentally antago
nistic to the Gospel. In Epicureanism man's sensual nature, in

" Shakspeare, p. 31; Mackenzie, p. 151.
b Shakspeare, p. 47; Haweis, p. 113; Iverach, p. 107.
' Stalker, p. 132 ; F. B. Meyer, p. 121 ; Iverach, p. 108 ; Taylor, Paul, p. 264.
d Philos. Vita, iv. 17. " W. J. Woodhouse, Encycl. BUI., p. 382.
1 Rackham, Acts.

THE ACTS. XVII. 16-21 283
Stoicism his intellectual pride, were arrayed against Christianity.
What could be more opposed to the doctrine of self-sacrifice and the
belief in a personal God, with whom man could hold communion,
than the self-indulgence of Epicureanism and its theory of gods who
dwelt apart, serenely indifferent to men? What could be more
opposed to the doctrine of the Cross, in which the axe was laid at
the root of self-confidence and trust in human merit, than the system
of Stoicism, which was based on pride in self, on the power of man
to work out his own release, and substituted for the Holy Spirit the
resistance of a stubborn human will ? a
charlatan, or 'quack'. The Greek word, meaning literally 'a seed-
pecker ', was used as a name for a rook ; and so came to be used for
a noisy, empty babbler. The use of this Athenian slang-word shows
that Luke derived his information from a good source, probably Paul
himself. It would have seemed a triumph for the Gospel, if it could have
won converts from the ranks of scholars in the centre of Greek refine
ment. But Luke is honest, and records no such triumph. Paul is
ridiculed, and his message treated with contempt. But what a lesson
to learned men not to scoff at what seems to them absurd ! b Paul
was the real master of all these philosophers, and they the ' quack-
teachers '.
a setter forth of strange divinities. The identical charge
which had been brought against Socrates,0 and which had led to the
Athenians decreeing the hemlock for their noblest citizen. But this
Athens was not the Athens of Socrates. Then there was still some
belief in the gods. Now the age was more tolerant, because more
sceptical.11 Jesus and the Resurrection. It is thought by some that they
took the Resurrection (Anastasis) to be the name of a goddess. But
Paul is not likely, in speaking of the Resurrection, to have expressed
himself so strangely as to lead them to think that he was speaking of
a person. What he had doubtless done was to set forth the claim of
Jesus to be the Son of God, and His Resurrection as the attestation
of that claim.6
The words are interesting on two grounds. They show, first, what
was the main subject of Paul's preaching — not abstract doctrines, but
a Macduff, Paul in Athens, p. 40 ; Benson, p. 41 S ; Huntington, p. 48.
b Hackett, Acts; Renan, Paul, p. 134. c Xenophon, Mem. i. r.
11 Maurice, p. 284. c W. Alexander, p. 19.

284 THE ACTS. XVII. 16-21
the personal history of One who was Divine a ; secondly, that, though
his spirit had been provoked by the sight of a city filled with idols,
he had not inveighed against idolatry, but had set forth the positive
truth of the Gospel.0
19. took hold of him. The common view is probably mistaken
in two respects. First, there was no arrest or formal trial. The
time had passed when a setter forth of strange gods was in any
danger at Athens. Curiosity was (verse 21) the motive of the whole
proceeding. A fancy seized them to call this Jewish stranger to
a sort of mock trial for his new doctrine.0 His speech is not of the
nature of a defence and is followed by no verdict. His hearers, when
they had heard enough, simply walked away.
Secondly, he was not taken to the Hill of Areopagus. The picture
of Paul upon the hill, familiar to all from Raphael's cartoon, speaking
in view of the glorious Acropolis, is so striking that it can be aban
doned only with extreme regret. But it is without foundation. The
connexion of the Council of Areopagus with the Hill was traditionary,
or, at most, ceremonial. Its usual meeting-place was in the Stoa
Basilica, opening on the Agora, and close to the scene where the
discussion had arisen. The Hill would be inadequate in size and
otherwise unsuitable ; and the idea that Paul was taken thither is
mainly due to the translation 'Mars Hill 'in the Authorized Version
of verse 22. But ' the Areopagus ' was popularly used as a shortened
form of ' the Council of Areopagus V1
21. Now all the Athenians. This verse almost reproduces
words of Demosthenes.6 The frivolous character of the Athenians
could scarcely have been summed up better. It looks as though
Luke felt the dramatic contrast between the eager, burning Apostle
and these idle triflers.f 22-31
~ And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and
said, Men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are
specially Godfearing folk. 23 For as I went about and
observed the objects of your worship, I found also an
altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. What,
a Row, p. 1 82. b Iverach, p. no. ° Fraser, p. 151.
a Johnston, p. 118 ; E. Curtius, Expositor, Nov. 1907. e Philipp. i. 43.
' Davies, p. 133 ; Iverach, p. 108.

THE ACTS. XVII. 22-31 285
therefore, ye unknowingly worship, that set I forth to
you. 24 The God who made the world and all things
therein — he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth
not in temples made by hands ; 25 neither is served by
human hands as needing anything further, seeing he
himself giveth to all life and breath and all things:
26 and he made from one source every race of men to
dwell on all the face of the earth, determining their
appointed times and the boundaries of their homes ;
27 that they should seek God, if haply they might grope
after him and find him, though he is not far from each
one of us : 28 for in him we live and feel and are : as also
certain of your poets have said, For we are even his
offspring. 29 Being then the offspring of God, we ought
not to think that the Godhead is like to gold and silver
or stone, graven by art and device of man. 30 Having
therefore overlooked the times of ignorance, God now
commandeth men that they should all everywhere
repent ; 31 inasmuch as he hath appointed a day on
which he will judge the world in righteousness by
a man whom he hath ordained ; whom he hath accredited
unto all by raising him from the dead.
No record of this speech is likely to have been preserved by any
of those who heard it. But the lines of the address were probably the
result of long thought ; and so Paul would be able to give Luke later
an accurate summary of what he had said. When we mark the
difference between this speech and those addressed to Jewish
synagogues, we understand the providential ordering by which the
Apostle to the Gentiles had received a Gentile, as well as a Jewish,
training. Speaking to heathens he bases nothing on Jewish history,
makes no reference to Jewish Scriptures, but appeals to the moral
and religious consciousness of humanity. He tries to comprehend
paganism and its history from the standpoint of the new revelation.
And his conception of paganism is as original as it is profound.
' What ye unknowingly worship ' — in polytheism thus understood he

286 THE ACTS. XVII. 22-31
finds a point of attachment for the worship of the true God. Instead
of denouncing idolatry, he penetrates to the feeling which underlies
it and to the necessity under which man must worship/"1
Yet never did speaker labour under greater disadvantages. Paul
was a foreigner, and the Athenians despised all foreigners as ' bar
barians '. His ignorance of the laws of Greek rhetoric was against
him : his speech, by his own confession (2 Cor. x. 10) rendered him
contemptible in the eyes of the less fastidious Corinthians. His
general appearance was against him ; his ' bodily presence was weak ',
and his hearers belonged to the most perfectly developed race that
the world has seen. His subject was against him ; he stood there
to denounce the religious usages of the Greeks in the very centre of
Greek worship.1'
22. Men of Athens. The words were those with which the great
Demosthenes always began his speeches, and they would send
a thrill through the hearts of his hearers, carrying them back in
thought to the days of Athenian freedom and greatness.0 But they
meant more than this to Paul — ' men ' — they were men with immortal
souls, capable of salvation. How should he deal with them ? Was
there one idea in common between himself and them which could
serve as a link? Yes; he begins with that graceful tribute which
our Authorized and Revised Versions agree to mar. His own eyes
confirmed what so many travellers had said of them — that they were
a Godfearing people. Here was a bond of common feeling ; a slender
bond, for their religion was to him the saddest feature of their life ;
yet even from their idolatrous altars he would get a text, if so he
might win them for his Master.d
Godfearing. The translation ' superstitious ' alters the keynote of
the speech, which is wholly conciliatory. The Greek word involved,
no doubt, the idea of fear — of that apprehensive presentiment of evil
in connexion with religion which threw a dark shadow over the
heathen mind. But Paul was not the man to begin by tilting at
errors, and offending his audience in his first sentence. He meant
by this word to commend their zeal in religion as zeal in a good
cause. He was glad to find a whole city evincing interest in that
subject which to himself was of paramount importance.6

"¦ F. B. Meyer, p. 122 ; J. Robertson, p. 213; Sabatier, p. 104 ; Eadie, p. 190.
b W. Alexander, p. 39. c Shakspeare, p. 17 ; W. Alexander, p. 45.
d Huntington, p. 51.
0 Farrar, i. 542 ; Huntington, p. 45 ; Barnes, Paul, p. 187.

THE ACTS. XVII. 22-31 287
23. the Unknown God. Pausanias mentions a the existence of
altars at Athens to unknown gods. This one had probably been
erected at a time of pestilence, or some other visitation, the source
of which could not be identified. The inscription in no way proves
that they had any conception of an unknown god exalted above
other gods, but meant only that they feared that they had unwittingly
offended some god and wished to propitiate him. To read into it
the aspiration of a purer piety, casting into the void that homage
which it could no longer pay to the gross divinities of paganism, is
to be guilty of an anachronism. But Paul seized upon it as a text.
If they meant only that, he would make it mean something more —
an avowal of the inadequacy of paganism ; a confession that their
catalogue of gods did not include all the powers of the universe.
There was a God not found in their list ; unknown, as they admitted,
to them. He could tell them about this unknown God, whonr they
virtually acknowledged ; for the God to them unknown was to him
the only real God.b
24. who made the world. God, so far from being really un
known, has revealed Himself in creation. And being the Maker of
the universe, He cannot be limited to one spot in it. Temples are
holy, not because God dwells in them, but because men set them
apart for worship.0
25. as needing anything. From the false theory of temples he
passes to the false theory of worship. God is not Receiver but Giver.
26. from one source. No Greek held this view. To him all
other races were ' barbarians '. And the Jew was equally exclusive.
He claimed to belong to a people marked off from all other nations.
It shows the greatness of Paul that he, ' a Hebrew of Hebrews,' could
see the providence of God shaping the destiny of the Gentiles as
well as of Israel.
determining their appointed times. From creation he passes
to providence. There, too, the Unknown has revealed Himself.
God is in history. The separation of men into nations, each with
its assigned territory and destiny, is not the outcome of chance or of
blind fate.
27. that they should. In all the tangled web of history the
Divine purpose is to lead men to seek God. He is drawing them
to Himself through the whole course of human affairs/1
a Description of Greece, i. i, 4.
b Neander, p. 190; Bungener, p. 160; Fraser, p. 154; Eadie, p. 192.
0 Plumptre, Acts. d Maclaren, ii. 142.

288 THE ACTS. XVII. 22-31
28. certain of your poets. In two other places Paul quotes
from classical authors — from Menander (i Cor. xv. 32) and from
Epimenides (Titus i. 12). But both these quotations may well have
been current as proverbs, and are no proof of acquaintance with
classical literature. This, however, is not true of the present quota
tion. The words are found in both Aratus and Clean thes. The
former was a Cilician, and therefore his poem, which was widely
known, may have been familiar to Paul. But the plural looks as
though he were aware that the words occurred in Cleanthes also ; and
his retention of the particle ' for ', which belongs to the text of both
Aratus and Cleanthes, shows that he is quoting, not a proverbial
utterance, but a passage from their works. None the less this
solitary instance must not be unduly pressed. A man may easily
quote an isolated verse from a poet without having read his poems.
And the scarcity of quotations from classical authors on the part of
a man who could scarcely write a sentence without quoting from the
Hebrew Scriptures is proof that Paul had not had a Greek education.
Further, his Greek style shows no trace of classical influence ; and
his method of reasoning is that of a Jew by training as well as by
birth. a
29. the Godhead. That we are the offspring of God ought to
teach us that the Divine Essence cannot be imaged in stone or
metal, since we cannot image ourselves in our essential nature. We
can only produce an effigy of our external appearance : our living
selves, our reason, our soul, defy material representation.0
30. overlooked. The parallel with Wisdom xi. 23 — 'Thou over-
lookest the sins of men to the end they may repent ' — is too close to
be accidental. The resemblance of phraseology between the first
chapter of ' Romans ' and Wisdom clearly shows that Paul knew the
latter book well. The parallel here is evidence that this speech and
the Epistle to the Romans are productions of the same mind.0
31. will judge. Paul had just come from Thessalonica ; and his
letters to that Church written from Corinth show that his mind was
at this time full of the expectation of the Return of Christ as Judge.d
a man. This avoidance of more distinctively Christian language
is evidence of the authenticity of the speech. It was no time to
unfold the mystery of Jesus' Divine nature.6
whom. 'Whereof (A. V. and R.V.) is a wrong rendering.
a Godet, p. 71 ; Wrede, p. 3; Hausrath, iii. 10 ; Dewes, p. 1 seq.
b Eadie, p. 218. c Chase, p. 221.
d Chase, p. 230. " Chase, p. 232.

THE ACTS. XVII. 22-31 289
There is no connexion between the fact of Judgment by Christ and
the fact of His Resurrection. What Paul says is that God, by
raising Jesus from the dead, accredited Him as being all that He
claimed to be.a

32-34
32 Now when they heard of a resurrection of dead
men, some mocked ; but others said, We will hear thee
yet again on this matter. 33 Thus Paul departed from
among them. 3* But certain men clave to him and
believed ; among whom was also Dionysius the Areopa-
gite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with
them. 32. when they heard. The assertion of the existence of one
sole Creator was not an unheard-of thing to them : it was found in
the speculations of their own philosophers. Nor were His spiritual
nature and His paternal relation to His creatures truths of which
faint visions had not been seen from time to time. Even to Paul's
statement of a future Judgment they listened, though perhaps with
amused toleration. But when he approached the distinctive doctrine
of the Gospel — that this Judge would be a man whom God had
recently raised from the dead — they did not care to hear more.0
And, indeed, the unsupported assertion that a certain man had been
raised from the dead was not likely to obtain credence from such an
audience. There had not been sufficient contact with Judaism to
touch the Greek belief that there was ' no resurrection for the man
once dead '.° That the soul might live apart from the body their
best men hoped and argued ; but matter they regarded as essentially-
impure. The body was a clog upon the nobler part of man. The
idea of a risen body, a glorified body, no longer an encumbering
weight but a worthy handmaid of the soul — this was altogether
beyond their speculations. ' O grave, where is thy victory ? ' was
a strain never dreamt of in their philosophy. ' A resurrection of dead
men ! ' — so they contemptuously generalized from Paul's assertion of
the resurrection of one man — Why should they listen further?11
a W. Alexander, p. 269. b Davies, p. 147 ; Norris, p. 88.
0 TEschylus, Eum. 647 ; J. Thomas, p. 101 ; W. J. Woodhouse, Encycl. Bib!.,
p. 383. d Gurney, p. 265,
1329 U

29o THE ACTS. XVII. 32-34
some mocked. These philosophers were gentlemen : not like
the rough Praetors of Philippi or the mob of Thessalonica. Their
weapon was not force, but ridicule. And Paul found ridicule harder
to bear than violence. Their cold disdain cut him more deeply than
the stones of the mob or the lictors' rods. If they had beaten him,
he would have been there on the morrow. He returned to cities
where he had been persecuted. But to Athens, where he had been
met with scorn or indifference, he never returned. It is a sad
story — the noblest of ancient cities and the noblest man of history —
and he never cared to look on it again ; never speaks of his work
there, or mentions his converts ; never even alludes to the place,
except in the incidental remark (i Thess. iii. i), 'I thought it good
to be left at Athens alone.' a
33. Thus Paul departed. Luke makes no attempt to disguise
the situation. It is clear that Paul felt that his speech had been
a failure. Never had he tried more earnestly to adapt his teaching
to his audience, and never had he been so unsuccessful. He had
not even succeeded in stirring opposition or stimulating inquiry —
they simply did not care what 'this charlatan' said. The Greeks
' sought after wisdom ', and he had tried to impart wisdom, only to
realize that ' the world by wisdom knew not God '. He set out for
Corinth, determined, as he himself tells us, ' not to know anything
there save Jesus Christ and him crucified '.b
Yet the failure may have been to the outward eye only. We need
not accept as justified the reproach which in his soreness he cast
upon himself. But the fact that he did believe that he had erred at
Athens in trying to meet philosophy with philosophy is a strong
confirmation of the truthfulness of Luke's account of his speech.0
34. certain men. A marked contrast to the ' great multitude '
at Thessalonica (ver. 4) and the ' many ' at Beroea (verse i2)A
Dionysius. Luke probably inserted these names on the basis of
tradition. Paul himself (i Cor. xvi. 15) calls the household of
Stephanas ' the firstfruits of Achaia ' — not, that is, of Corinth, but of
the province which included Athens.6
a woman. Luke's interest in women, which is so marked in his
Gospel, is seen also in the Acts. He specially notes the female
converts made on this tour — Lydia at Philippi, ' the chief women ' at
¦' Benson, p. 429; Stalker, p. 133; Parker, ii. 221.
b Maclaren, ii. 145 ; Johnston, p. 119.
c Bungener, p. 173; Chase, p. 234. a Plumptre, Acts.
r McGiffert, pp. 259, 273 ; W. J. Woodhouse, Encycl. BUI., p. 33.

THE ACTS. XVII. 32-34 291
Thessalonica, ' Greek women of rank ' at Beroea, and now, at Athens,
Damaris.3- Damaris. She was probably the fruit of his more general work in
the city. She may have been a Jewess, Tamar, whose name was thus
Grecized. In Athenian society no woman of respectable position
would have been present at this speech. If she was present, she must
have belonged to the class of educated courtezans — another Magda
lene, who cast herself in penitence at the foot of the Cross.1'
CHAPTER XVIII
1-4
1 After these things he departed from Athens and
came to Corinth. 2 And he found a certain jew named
Aquila, a man of Pontus by birth, lately come from Italy
with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded
all the Jews to depart from Rome ; and he went to them.
3 And because he was of the same craft he abode with
them, and they wrought ; for by their craft they were
tentmakers. i And he discoursed in the synagogue
every Sabbath, seeking to win over Jews and Greeks.
1. Corinth. The ancient city, which had played a part second
only to Athens and Sparta in the history of the Greeks, had been
taken and totally destroyed by Mummius two hundred years
before this date. A century later it had been rebuilt by Julius
Caesar and made a Roman colony. Considering its unrivalled
situation, with a harbour on both east and west, it is not strange that
it rapidly became again a great city. Still, it was not the old Corinth,
but a European commercial town, with a populous Jewish settlement ;
and, as the seat of the Roman Proconsul, it was almost as much
Latin as Greek.
These considerations must have given Corinth unusual importance
in the eyes of Paul. To establish a strong Church there would be
to cast seeds upon waters that would bear them to all parts of the
civilized world. Yet he tells us (i Cor. ii. 3) that he arrived there
a Fraser, p. 163.
b Baring-Gould, p. 238; F. B. Meyer, p. 123; Ramsay, Paul, p. 252;
Macduff, Paul in Athens, p. 203. U 2

292 THE ACTS. XVIII. 1-4
' in weakness and in fear and in much trembling '. His dejection
may have been due in part to illness : in part it was certainly due
to anxiety about his Thessalonian converts ; but the main cause was
his ill success at Athens. Everywhere else the susceptibility of the
Gentiles to his message had been his consolation under the sadness
caused by the hardheartedness of his own countrymen. Was his
failure at Athens about to be repeated at Corinth? This was
the dread which haunted him. True, Corinth was very different
from Athens, but the difference was itself an additional reason for
discouragement. The most conspicuous object was not the Parthenon,
dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, but the temple of Aphrodite,
the centre of a worship which made a religion of impurity. To ' play
the Corinthian ' was a proverbial expression for a life of debauchery.
Paul was there confronted not merely by polytheism, but by a de
graded moral sense.
Yet strangely enough he found there what he had sought in vain
among the philosophers of Athens, responsiveness to the truth. On
intellectual Athens he had made no impression. In licentious Corinth
he planted one of his most vigorous Churches.
2. a certain Jew. If he was already a Christian, he may have
been converted at Pentecost where ' Jews from Pontus ' were present
(ii. 9). But since Luke calls him simply ' a Jew ', without adding
that he was 'a disciple' or 'a believer', and assigns (ver. 3) a
common trade, and not a common faith, as Paul's reason for joining
him, he was probably not yet converted. He was, it is implied,
a Jew by religion and a Pontian by birth ; and the double bond of
nationality and common occupation drew them together, both
strangers in a great city. His subsequent conversion from daily
contact with Paul in the workshop might easily pass unrecorded by
Luke.a of Pontus. Pontius Aquila is a name found more than once in
the Pontian family,0 so that the ' of Pontus ' might be thought to be
a mistaken inference on Luke's part from his name. But this man
was ' a Jew ' ; and the fact that the Aquila who in the second century
translated the Old Testament into Greek was a native of Pontus
confirms Luke's statement. Moreover, Pontus was, like Cilicia,
a district with abundant pasturage for goats and numbered tentmaking
among its industries.0
Priscilla. One of the oldest Roman catacombs is the Caemeterium
a Lange, Acts ; Iverach, p. 116. b Cic. ad Fam. x. 33 ; Suet. Caes. 78..
0 G. Milligan, Hastings' Diet., art. Aquila ; Benson, p. 436.

THE ACTS. XVIII. 1-4 293
Priscillae. The name Prisca has some connexion with the Acilian
family, members of which are buried there. She may have belonged
to that family, or to that of the Prisci, another noble clan ; while her
husband was probably, like many of the Jews at Rome, a freedman.
This would account for the prominence given to her, and would
explain why her name is elsewhere placed before his (ver. 18, 26 ;
Rom. xvi. 3 ; 2 Tim. iv. 9)." Harnack suggests that they may be
the writers of ' Hebrews ', and that the anonymity is due to the fact
that a woman was joint author.
Paul in his letters employs the more courteous and correct form
of her name, Prisca (Rom. xvi. 3 : 1 Cor. xvi. 19), just as he calls
Silas Silvanus (2 Cor. i. 19 ; 1 Thess. i. 1), while Luke uses the
familiar form of everyday life.0
Claudius had commanded. Suetonius says ° that ' the Jews
were expelled by Claudius for incessant riots under a ringleader,
Chrestus '. There may, of course, have been at Rome a Jew named
Chrestus, but it is more likely that the disturbances arose among
the Jews ' about Christ '. The mistake would be explained by the
common tendency to give a familiar form to foreign names. Thus
Tertullian says that the Greeks and Romans .both called Christ
Chrestos ('the good man'). On the other hand, it should be said
that Suetonius elsewhere d mentions the sect of 'the Christians'.
Josephus, however, makes no mention of the decree ; and Dio
Cassius expressly says e that Claudius did not banish the Jews, since
they were too numerous (they numbered over 20,000), but merely
' forbade them to hold the meetings enjoined by their laws '. Probably
only a few who were implicated in the disturbances were expelled ;
and Luke himself states that some few years later Paul found Jews
in Rome (xxviii. i7).f
Aquila and Priscilla would seem to have had their home at Ephesus,
whither they went from Corinth (ver. 18), and where they were living
some eight years later (2 Tim. iv. 19). Romans xvi (ver. 3) cannot
be used to prove their return to Rome, since that chapter may be no
part of the Epistle to the Romans (see on xx. 1). They furnish s
a beautiful example in the Apostolic age of the power for good which
may be exercised by a Christian husband and wife (ver. 26). They

a Plumptre, Acts ; A. C. Headlam, Hastings' Did., art. Prisca.
b Ramsay, Pictures, p. 186. c Claud. 25. d Nero, 16.
° lx. 6. ' Renan, Paul, p. 92 ; Benson, p. 436; Hausrath, ii. 214.
k McGiffert, p. 428.

294 THE ACTS. XVIII. 1-4
appear to have allowed their house to be used as a meeting-place for
the Christians (i Cor. xvi. 19 ; Rom. xvi. 5).
3. he abode with them. The domestic life and the society of
a woman, apparently of refinement and strong character, must have
been a great comfort and cheer to the homeless Apostle at this time
of special depression. It is possible that the talks which he had with
her and her husband about Rome may have suggested to him the great
opening for missionary work in the capital and kindled his desire to
visit it (xix. 21).
tentmakers. It is not likely that in other cities Paul worked
among the slaves of a heathen employer. He would naturally prefer
to rent a small workshop. And at Corinth he probably worked with
Aquila, not as a labourer, but as a partner, as he appears to have
worked with Philemon ; cf. ' If thou countest me as a partner, receive
him as myself. But if he have wronged thee at all or oweth thee
aught, put that to my account' (Philem. 17). Aquila must have been
a man of means, since his house at Ephesus was large enough for
meetings (1 Cor. xvi. i9).a
It is thought by some that Paul's trade was that of a weaver of the
goat's-hair cloth, working for a master who supplied the loom. But
the word ' tentmaker ' suggests rather one who made up the material,
cutting out and stitching the tents. Tents were in constant demand
in days when few, especially in the East, travelled without them.1'
Paul had already worked for his support at Thessalonica (1 Thess.
ii. 9 ; 2 Thess. iii. 8), and Luke only mentions the fact here because
it led to his acquaintance with Aquila and Priscilla. His craft was
strangely suited to his circumstances, since it required few tools, was
capable of being followed anywhere, and left mind and tongue free.
But it was, as a consequence, poorly paid, and he had to ' labour
night and day' (1 Thess. ii. 9) in order not to burden his converts.0
Probably most of his evangelistic work was done, not by public
preaching, but by personal contact, forming acquaintances as oppor
tunity offered, labouring among those of his own trade, gradually
gathering about himself a little circle which became the nucleus of
a Church. ' Is not this the Carpenter ? ' men had asked of the world's
Saviour : and of the world's greatest missionary they might have asked
similarly, ' Is not this the tentmaker ? ' The fact that Luke almost
a E. H. Plumptre, Expositor, I. i. 259 ; Conybeare and Howson, i. 359.
b Godet, p. 69 ; Eadie, p. 245.
' Baumgarten, ii. 209 ; F. B. Meyer, p. 23 ; Hausrath, iii. 44.

THE ACTS. XVIII. 1-4 295
necessarily lays the chief stress on his public activity must not blind
us to the quiet methods by which the Gospel was ordinarily spread.a
But Paul's reason for thus labouring was not primarily evangelistic
work, but the desire to give no handle to those who thronged the
city, bent on purposes of trade, to allege that he was actuated by
mercenary motives. No man should be able to say that he cared
more for the fleece than for the flock. And his instinct was right ;
how right, we see when we note that he was accused later on of
raising money out of the Corinthians for his own purposes, because
he was so eager about the collection for the poor at Jerusalem (2 Cor.
xiii. 16). Then he was able to remind them that, though the labourer
was worthy of his hire, he had taken no hire from them.15
The fact that he alludes so often to having earned his living by
working with his own hands is significant. To the ordinary artisan it
would have been a matter of course. It is the man of culture who
emphasizes it.
4. he discoursed. The next verse implies that, until the arrival
of his companions, he confined his evangelistic work to speaking in
the synagogue on the Sabbath. But he appears to have made some
converts whom, in the absence of Timothy, he himself baptized
(r Cor. i. 14-16).
in the synagogue. An inscription for a door — ' Synagogue of
the Hebrews ' — found at Corinth probably belongs to about the time
of Paul's visit. The interest lies in the rude and uncouth lettering,
which points to the low social position of those who worshipped there,
many of whom would be among his converts.0
5 But when Silas and Timothy arrived from Mace
donia, Paul began to be constrained by the word,
testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. 6 But
when they ranged themselves in opposition and reviled
him, he shook out his raiment and said to them, Your
blood be upon your own heads : I am clean : henceforth
I will go to the Gentiles. T And he removed thence,
and went into the house of a certain man named Titus
a McGiffert, p. 255; Eadie, p. 247. b Haweis, p. 125.
0 Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 13.

296 THE ACTS. XVIII. 5-1 1
Justus, one that worshipped God, whose house was
hard by the synagogue. 8 But Crispus, the ruler of the
synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his house ;
and many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were
baptized. 9 And the Lord said to Paul at night by
a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy
peace ; 10 for I am with thee, and no man shall lay hand
on thee to hurt thee ; for I have many people in this
city. u And he settled there for a year and six months,
teaching the word of God among them.
5. Silas and Timothy. For their movements, see on xvii. 15.
constrained. The Greek word is the same as is used by our Lord
(Luke xii. 50), ' I have a baptism to be baptized with : and how am
I straitened till it be accomplished !' and by St. Paul (2 Cor. v. 14),
' The love of Christ constraineth us '. It brings out strikingly the
Christian impulse which makes missionary work a necessity — the
feeling that 'woe is unto me, if I preach not the Gospel!' (1 Cor.
ix. 16). It was with Paul as with Jeremiah of old, ' I am in derision
daily : every one mocketh me. Then I said, I will not make mention
of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in my
heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with
forbearing, and I could not stay ' (Jer. xx. 9). So it was with Paul.
The fire was kindled, and the tongue must speak. a
The text evidently brings into relation, as cause and effect, the
coming of his friends and the change in Paul. We learn from his
letters (Phil. iv. 15 ; 2 Cor. xi. 9) that they brought a gift from the
Church at Philippi ; and this set him temporarily free from the neces
sity of working for his support. But they brought him something else
(1 Thess. iii. 6) which was yet more gladdening — a good account of
the steadfastness of his Thessalonian converts. He had been miser
ably anxious about them, and could not give his whole mind to the
Corinthian work. Now a load was lifted from his heart, and at once
the old impulse gripped him again.0
6. shook out his raiment. A significant gesture of rejection
(Neh. v. 13).
Your blood. So he tells the Elders of Ephesus (xx. 26) that he
1 Ramsden, ii. 76. b Maclaren, ii. 150, 156 ; Gilbert, p. 131.

THE ACTS. XVIII. 5-11 297
was ' pure from the blood of all men '. The words are a plain
reference to Ezek. iii. 18, 19.
henceforth. While, that is, he was at Corinth (cf. xiii. 46).
A stormy period, lasting some time, seems to be compressed by
Luke into one dramatic moment/1 The expressions-about the Jews
in 1 Thess. (ii. 14-16) imply that Paul was suffering at their hands
when he wrote the letter ; and they show how deeply he felt their
opposition and unrelenting persecution.
7. went into the house. Not as a lodging — he remained with
Aquila and Priscilla — but as a meeting-place. For the first time,
apparently, he established a place for separate Christian worship, as
he did later at Ephesus (xix. 9).
Titus Justus. He was a proselyte — ' one that worshipped God '
— and so would be in a position to receive Jews and Gentiles indis
criminately under his roof.0 Some MSS. have ' Titius ', which may
be right, since the less common name would easily be altered to the
more familiar. In that case, he may have been one of the Titii,
a famous family of potters at Corinth.0
hard by. This was not a conciliatory step, but the words and the
actions of the last verse show that Paul was indignant with the Jews.'1
8. Crispus. Paul himself baptized him (1 Cor. i. 14). This
might imply that his conversion preceded the arrival of Timothy.
But the order of the narrative does not favour this conclusion. He
was a leading man among the Jews, and it is more likely that Paul
desired to mark the conversion as one of exceptional importance.6
many of the Corinthians. The letters to Corinth imply a
numerous company of believers. Paul speaks of four different
factions (i Cor. i. 12), and of several delegates (1 Cor. xvi. 3) to
carry the contribution to Jerusalem. f
9. And the Lord said. This verse and the next, like the pre
cisely similar passage in xxiii. ii, break into the context both in
thought and form, and seem to have been inserted by Luke into the
account which he had before him.s
a vision. These visions, which occur at other critical moments
of his history (xxii. 18 ; xxiii. 11; xxvii. 23), seem to mark the
reaction of Paul's indomitable faith in his periods of profoundest
dejection.11 It is clear that he was fearful and depressed, like other
11 Hausrath, iii. 243. b Conybeare and Howson, i. 373.
•> Strabo, viii. 8 ; Hausrath, iii. 235. d Ramsay, Paul, p. 256.
* Baumgarten, ii. 214. f Gilbert, p. 132.
* Harnack, Acts, pp. 142, 207. h Bacon, p. 171.

298 THE ACTS. XVIII. 5-11
great souls in hours of reaction from strain ; like Elijah ( i Kings
xix. 4), or Jeremiah (Jer. xv. 15 seq.). It was very natural. From
the hour of his landing in Europe he had encountered little but
danger and disappointment. Scourged and imprisoned at Philippi ;
hounded by a mob out of Thessalonica ; forced to make a hasty
escape from Beroea ; met with indifference or contempt at Athens ;
he had entered a few weeks before on a new field. The opposition
of the Jews made him apprehend a similar termination to his work
at Corinth. If the second letter to the Thessalonians was written at
this time, it shows the dangers that beset him. He asks (iii. 2) for
their prayers that he may be ' delivered from unreasonable and evil
men '.a Recalling his want of success at Athens, he had determined
to have done with the arts of rhetoric and philosophy. No more
would he use 'enticing words of man's wisdom' (1 Cor. ii. 4). He
would know nothing now but ' Jesus Christ and him crucified '. But
would the new method be more successful ? What was there in his
message which could interest this gay and profligate people ? Fearful
and despondent, he had, it would seem, been pondering whether he
ought not to leave Corinth.
But this vision changed everything. At Athens, and up to this
time at Corinth, he had been hoping to return to Macedonia — to the
' man of Macedon ', to whom he had been specially called. Now he
had received an equally definite call to remain where he was, and
the assurance of the Divine assistance in a work which, because it
was not his, but God's, could not fail.
10. I am with thee. The general promise to the Church (Matt.
xxviii. 20) receives a personal application.0
no man shall. The promise was fulfilled. In no other Church,
except Syrian Antioch, did the Christians meet with so little perse
cution.0 many people. It is the same Divine optimism which had seen
in unpromising Samaria fields 'white already unto harvest' (John
iv. 35). The Greek word for 'people' is that used to designate the
chosen nation. ' The people ' is no longer Abraham's seed accord
ing to the flesh, but a new Israel gathered from all kindreds and
tongues.d 11. he settled there. We gather from the regulations laid down
in his letter (1 Cor. vi and xi) that an unusual number of women
R Plumptre, Ads; Maclaren, ii. 158 ; Pask, p. 241. b Plumptre, Acts.
c G. G. Findlay, Hastings' Did. , art. Paul the Apostle.
d Arnot, p. 404.

THE ACTS. XVIII. 5-11 299
were converted. Of the men some were of good social position,
such as Erastus, the Treasurer of the city (Rom. xvi. 23) ; but the
numerous slave-names (Tertius, Quartus, Fortunatus, Achaicus) show
that the majority of his converts were from the industrial class.
' Wast thou called being a slave? ' he asks (1 Cor. vii. 21). And he
describes them (1 Cor. vi. 9-1 1) in a way which shows that he had
gone to the lowest dens of iniquity in this city of slaves and sailors.3-
teaching the word. That his teaching was not confined to the
city is implied by his reference (2 Cor. xi. 10) to 'the regions of
Achaia '. We hear also (Rom. xvi. 1) of a church at Cenchreae.
12-17
12 But when Gallio was Proconsul of Achaia, the Jews
with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him
before the judgment seat, "saying, This man seeketh
to persuade men to worship God contrary to the law.
14 And when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio
said to the Jews, If it were a matter of civil wrong or
criminal action, O ye Jews, it were reasonable that I
should bear with you. 15 But if there be questions
about words and names and your own law, ye will look
to it yourselves : judge of these matters I am not
minded to be. 16 And he drave them from the judg
ment seat. 17 And they all laid hold on Sosthenes, the
ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judg
ment seat. And Gallio cared for none of these things.
12. Luke passes rapidly over the eighteen months, but relates an
incident which shows the success of Paul's work. Elsewhere the
Jews had stirred up the people against him. Here his influence was
too strong to allow them to venture on this course, and they see what
they can do through the Roman Governor.1*
Gallio. His name has, owing to a misunderstanding of ver. 17,
become a synonym for a cynical indifferentist. But the witness of
secular history is wholly favourable to him, as a Roman noble of
high character, wide culture, and singularly lovable disposition.0 His
a Hausrath, iii. 244. b Baumgarten, ii. 216.
c Johnston, p. 123.

300 THE ACTS. XVIII. 12-17
brother Seneca wrote of him,a ' No other man is so dear to any single
individual as Gallio is to all the world.'
Proconsul. Another proof of Luke's accuracy (see on xviii. 6).
In b.c 23 Achaia was made a Senatorial province under a Proconsul :
in a.d. 15, owing to its financial embarrassment, it was changed by
Tiberius to an Imperial province under a Procurator : in a.d. 44 it
was restored by Claudius to the Senate. Thus at this time (arc.
a.d. 52) it is correctly described as being under a Proconsul.0 In
direct evidence of the fact of Gallio's Proconsulship is furnished by
Seneca's statement that he ' caught a fever in Achaia '.°
brought him before the judgment seat. Gallio's character
for gentleness had doubtless gone before him to his province, and he
was presumed to be weak and compliant.4 At any rate, the Jews
hoped something from the inexperience of a new Governor, who
might also wish to do a popular act at the outset of his administra
tion (cf. xxv. 2).
13. contrary to the law. Their argument was that, whereas
Judaism was recognized as 'a lawful religion', Paul's religion was not
Judaism. He, a Jew, was a disturber of the peaceful worship allowed
by the Roman Government to the Jews.e
14. when Paul. They had reckoned without their host. Gallio
refused to listen further to either party. The question they raised
was beyond his province. As a secular magistrate, he would have
nothing to do with it.f
If it were a matter. The contempt of the Roman for the Jew
breathes in every word.s Men earn their title to immortality in
various ways. Little did Gallio dream that he would live in history
by reason of this one judicial sentence.
15. names, Whether, for instance, Jesus was to be called Christ
or not.h
your own law. They had pretended (ver. 13) to be vindicating
Roman law, but Gallio sees through the pretence. He was there
to administer Roman law, and these Jews were for their own ends
trying to obtain from him a decision on a dispute which lay outside
his cognizance. He would not allow a religious question to be a
subject of indictment in a civil court. He rightly understood the
a Quaesl. Nat. iv. Praef. 11. b W. J. Woodhouse, Encycl. BUI., p. 33.
0 Ramsay, Paul, p. 258. d Buss, p. 287.
" Johnston, p. 123; Davies, p. 172. f Binney, p. 277.
- Farrar, i. 569. h Plumptre, Acts.

THE ACTS. XVIII. 12-17 301
true functions of the civil magistrate; drew a clear distinction be
tween opinion and conduct ; and exempted the former from his
jurisdiction.81 16. drave them. He ordered the lictors to clear the court. With
their usual obstinacy, the Jews, who had not anticipated this summary
dismissal of the case, remained before the tribunal, urging their
complaint afresh.0
17. they all. When the Jews were forcibly ejected, the Greek
mob, never friendly to them, was delighted to intervene.0
Sosthenes. He had doubtless been the spokesman of the Jews.
If he succeeded Crispus (ver. 8) as ruler of the synagogue, his zeal
may have been stimulated by the defection of his predecessor. If,
as is more than likely, he is the Sosthenes coupled with Paul in
the salutation of the First Epistle to Corinth (i. i), he later became
a convert and accompanied Paul in his work ; and so two men, who
had both been persecutors of the Church in times and places far
apart, laboured together to build up that which they had sought to
destroy.*1 cared for none of these things. These words have been the
text of many sermons, and the expression ' Gallio-like ' used to denote
the religious indifferentist. But they refer not to religious indiffer
ence on Gallio's part, but to his action as a Roman judge on a par
ticular occasion. The mobbing of a foolish fanatic was a matter for
the local police and not for the Proconsul of Achaia. What if a Jew
got a beating ? No doubt he richly deserved it. So long as there
was no public disturbance, it would do these Jews no harm to get
a caution not to take up the time of a busy official with their trumpery
questions.6 Two results probably followed from this episode, (i) It strength
ened Paul's position by assuring to him the protection of the law.
The remainder of his residence in Corinth appears to have been
safe from molestation. f (ii) It may have directed Paul's attention
to the protection which the Roman Government might give him
against the Jews, and have influenced him later in appealing to the
Emperor.s a Plumptre, Acts; Maclaren, ii. 165. b Binney, p. 278.
0 Hausrath, iii. 247.
d Farrar, i. 570; Thomas, Acts, p. 312 ; Kitto, p. 388.
' Eadie, p. 268; Johnston, p. 124; F. B. Meyer, p. 127.
f Davies, p. 173. e Ramsay, Hastings' Diet,, art. Corinth.

302 THE ACTS. XVIII. 18-23
18-23
18 And Paul, having tarried yet many days, took his
leave of the brethren and sailed away for Syria, and
with him Priscilla and Aquila ; having polled his head
in Cenchreae, for he had a vow. 19 And they came to
Ephesus ; and them he left there ; but he himself
entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.
20 But when they asked him to abide longer time, he
consented not ; 21 but, bidding them farewell, and saying,
I will return again to you, if God will, he put to sea
from Ephesus. 22 And having landed at Caesarea
and gone up and saluted the Church, he went down to
Antioch. 23 And after he had spent a certain time there,
he departed, and went through the Galatian country
and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the disciples.
1 8. took his leave. Corinth was the first city on this tour where
persecution had failed against him. So he stayed a long time and
only left when he felt that his work there was for the time completed.
The net result of the tour was the firm establishment of the Gospel in
the two important provinces of Macedonia and Achaia.
having polled. The word may grammatically refer to Aquila, but
since both the other participles in the verse refer to Paul, it is practi
cally certain that this one also does. Luke would scarcely have
thought it necessary to record that Aquila had taken a vow, but
may have had reasons for recording that Paul did. The vow was not
that of the Nazirite, since the cutting of the hair marked the termina
tion, not the commencement, of the vow, and there is no proof, in
spite of assertions to the contrary, that the Nazirite vow could be
terminated elsewhere than at Jerusalem. The incident is obscure,
but the fact that no explanation is given suggests that Luke con
sidered that it was explained by the context. Hence the vow was
probably connected with Paul's safe embarkation at Cenchreae. The
interest of the matter lies in the proof which it furnishes that he did
not in his own personal conduct depart from Jewish habits so widely
as is sometimes represented.0-
a Lange, Ads; Bungener, p. 193; Ramsay, Paul, p. 263; Johnston, p. 125.

THE ACTS. XVIII. 18-23 303
20. they asked him to abide longer. Such a request did not
often come to him from Jews ; but in this busy centre of commerce
they were accustomed to encounter every variety of opinion.
he consented not. Ephesus had, no doubt, been his objective
at the beginning of this tour, but he had then been forbidden to
preach in Asia (xvi. 6). Yet now he would not stay, though pressed
to do so. It looks as if he was anxious, before entering on a fresh
campaign, to revisit Antioch and give a report of his work, as he had
done (xiv. 27) at the end of his first tour.
21. and saying. The A. V. has a later insertion, ' I must by all
means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem ' — words suggested
by xx. 16, and interpolated to account for the visit mentioned in the
next verse.
22. and gone up. Serious difficulties are raised by this state
ment. Some have tried to get rid of them by understanding ' gone
up ' to mean ' from the shore to the town of Caesarea '. But even if
this were possible, ' went down ' could not possibly be said of a journey
from a seaport to an inland town like Antioch. There can be no
question but that Luke meant a visit to Jerusalem, though he evi
dently knew no details about it.a The improbability of such a visit
is, however, very great. When Paul did go to Jerusalem three or
four years later, he went in fear of the Jews, who were equally hostile
now. Nor would he be likely to go there empty-handed, after his
understanding with the Apostles (Gal. ii. 10). His own letters nega
tive the idea. His last journey with the collection loses its historical
significance, if he had been in Jerusalem at a comparatively recent
date ; whereas we see from Rom. xv. 26 that he regarded that visit
as a momentous and decisive action. Indeed, the Acts itself nega
tives the idea by its subsequent statements. It implies (xxi. 25) that
Paul had not been in Jerusalem since the Conference ; and represents
himself as saying (xxiv. 17) that it was 'many years' since he had
been there.0 Hence it would seem that the statement is due to an
assumption on Luke's part that Paul would not have gone to Syria
without saluting the Apostles.
23. he departed. This marks the beginning of the third mis
sionary tour. In order to avoid repetition, and not to weaken the
impression of continuous progress, Luke scarcely notices Paul's
second visits to places. True to his plan of dwelling at length only
a P. W. Schmiedel, Encycl. BUI., p. 917; Cone, p. 153.
" Gilbert, p. 144; Weizsiicker, i. 249 ; ii. 11 ; McGiffert, p. 274.

3o4 THE ACTS. XVIII. 18-23
on what was new, he supplies details relating to Ephesus alone.a
Indeed, the complete absence of detail about Paul's movements
between his departure from and his return to Ephesus suggests that
Luke's authority for the events of this time was some one who had
remained at Ephesus during Paul's absence, perhaps Aristarchus
(xix. 29), who was afterwards Luke's fellow-traveller to Rome (xxvii. 2).
the Galatian country and Phrygia. The words are to be
interpreted in the light of xvi. 6. Two districts are meant, both in the
province of Galatia — Lycaonia (Derbe and Lystra) and Phrygia
(Iconium and Pisidian Antioch).0
What period is covered by this verse it is impossible to say, but the
work described would occupy a considerable time.
24-28
24 Now a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian
by birth, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus ; and he
was mighty in the Scriptures, 25 This man had been
instructed in the way of the Lord ; and being fervent
in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the
things concerning Jesus [knowing only the baptism of
John], 26 and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue.
But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him
to them, and expounded to him the way of God more
accurately. 27 And when he was minded to cross to
Achaia, the brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the
disciples to receive him : and when he was come, he
through the grace given to him helped them much
who had believed : 28 for he powerfully confuted the
Jews, publicly proving by the Scriptures that Jesus
was the Christ.
24. Apollos. This is the only instance in the latter half of the
Book where the narrative parts company with Paul. Many have
followed Luther in regarding Apollos as the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews. The insertion of this episode shows that Luke was
specially interested in him. Though his main subject was the
a Harnack, Acts, p. xxxiii ; Stalker, p. 1 36.
b Ramsay, Hastings' Diet., art. Galatia.

THE ACTS. XVIII. 24-28 305
passage of the Gospel from the Jews to the Gentiles, the conquest
of the Jews by this gifted man was in his eyes so important that
he gives him a prominence which he nowhere assigns to Silas or
Timothy, though he knew them personally ; and this is in harmony
with what we learn about Apollos from St. Paul's first letter to Corinth
(i. 12 ; iii. 5; iv. 6).a
25. instructed in the way of the Lord. It is not easy to say
precisely what his religious knowledge was. These words, interpreted
in the light of the clause ' knowing only the baptism of John ', would
mean that he knew of the prophecies about the Messiah and of the
Baptist's call to repentance as a preparation for His coming (Isaiah
xl. 3 ; Luke iii. 4) ; and ' teaching accurately the things concerning
Jesus ' would imply knowledge of John's declaration that Jesus was
' the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world ' (John i.
29); in other words, he accepted Jesus as the Messiah, and was
acquainted with the main facts of His life ; but had little, or no, know
ledge of His death and Resurrection and Ascension, or of the wonders
of the Day of Pentecost and of the growth of the Christian Society.
We seem, then, to have a combination of incompatible features. It is
impossible not to wonder how, so many years after the Resurrection,
one like Apollos, spiritually earnest and intellectually able, who
believed that Jesus was the Messiah, could have been satisfied
without further inquiry. The suggestion ° that Apollos, like many
Alexandrian Jews, may have lived in almost entire seclusion in some
ascetic community would only partially remove the difficulty. That
difficulty is entirely caused by the words ' knowing only the baptism
of John ', and they look very like an interpolation from the succeeding
episode (xx. 1-7). For we are not told that Apollos was baptized
afresh, as those disciples of John were ; and they are introduced
without any mention, apart from these words, of a disciple of John.
If these words be omitted, all is clear. What was it that Apollos,
who had been already ' instructed in the way of the Lord ', and
who ' taught accurately the things concerning Jesus ', lacked ? The
incident in the next chapter seems to have been inserted with the
express object of showing what was deficient in him. He knew
nothing of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church.
speaking and teaching. That is, privately. It was not till he
began to speak in the synagogue that Priscilla and Aquila came to
know about him.
a Harnack, Acts, p. 120. b Plumptre, Paul, p. 10S.
1320 X

306 THE ACTS. XVIII. 24-28
26. they took him. His case was probably only one of many in
which they prepared the way for Paul's work on his return ; but Luke
singles it out on account of Apollos' subsequent prominence.a
27. the brethren. The expression, which could scarcely be used
of Priscilla and Aquila alone, implies that there was already the
nucleus of a Church at Ephesus. But this is not the inference which
would naturally be drawn from Luke's narrative ; and according to
the Western text Apollos received an invitation to visit Corinth from
some Corinthian disciples who happened to be at Ephesus.
helped them much who had believed. By confuting the Jews
who had rejected Paul's teaching, he was of great assistance to the
Christians in the controversies which were rife between them.0
28. confuted the Jews. Luke implies that Apollos laboured
chiefly, if not solely, among the Jews. But the natural inference
from 1 Cor. iii. 5 seq. is that he followed in Paul's steps and did not
alter the predominantly Gentile character of the Corinthian Church.
And this is inherently likely. Alexandria produced a school of
thought in which the principles of Greek philosophy were applied to
the Jewish Scriptures, and Apollos would be specially equipped for
introducing the truths of the Gospel to the Greek mind. We know
(1 Cor. i. 12) that the influence of his ability and eloquence was so
great that a party among the Christians called themselves by his
name, putting him, if not in opposition to Paul, at least on an
equality with him.0

CHAPTER XIX
i-7
1 And it came to pass, while Apollos was at Corinth,
that Paul, after passing through the inland country,
came to Ephesus, and found certain disciples : 2 and he
said to them, Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye
became believers ? And they said to him, Nay, we
did not so much as hear that there is the Holy Spirit.
3 And he said, Into what, then, were ye baptized ? And
they said, Into John's baptism. 4 And Paul said, John
a Howson, Companions, p, 255. b Conybeare and Howson, ii. 9.
c McGiffeit, p. 292; Cotterill, p. 390; Binney, p. 296.

THE ACTS. XIX. 1-7 307
baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the
people that they should believe on him who was coming
after him, that is, on Jesus. 5 And when they heard,
they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.
0 And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the
Holy Spirit came on them, and they began to speak
with tongues and prophesy. 7 And the men were in all
about twelve.
r. passing through. The Greek word always in the Acts implies
missionary work (cf. especially xx. 25).°- Hence it looks as though
Paul were evangelizing as he travelled. That, however, can scarcely
have been his reason for choosing this route in preference to the
usual trade route through Colosse and Laodicea— cities which, he
tells us (Col. ii. 1 ), he never visited. His motive for adopting the more
direct, but less frequented, road through the Cayster valley must
have been his anxiety to reach the great central city of Ephesus as
quickly as possible.0
Ephesus. The capital of the Roman province of Asia and the
residence of the Proconsul. Originally a Greek colony, it had
become orientalized ; and, though more Greek than Antioch, it was
essentially an Eastern city. It was dominated by the worship of
Artemis, and was the head-quarters of magical art.0
certain disciples. This is a puzzling incident ; and, in the
scantiness of the record, it is idle to discuss just what they did, or
did not, know. If the words in xviii. 25 — ' knowing only the baptism
of John ' — are genuine, it is natural to connect this incident with the
foregoing narrative of Apollos, since much the same stage of develop
ment is presented. But if they were his disciples, how was it that
they remained uninfluenced by the instruction which he received
from Priscilla and Aquila? If those words are not genuine, the
narrative presents less difficulty. Ephesus, like other cities which
Paul visited, had received a special kind of preparation for the
Gospel. Some account of the Baptist's preaching, with his announce
ment of the Messiah's coming, had been brought to the Ghetto, and
a small band of penitents gathered together to help on the Advent
a Ramsay, Expositor, v. i. 385.
b McGiffert, p. .275; Ramsay, Churches, p. 93.
0 Farrar, ii. 10 ; Vaughan, iii. 83.
X 2

308 THE ACTS. XIX. 1-7
of the Day by prayer and fasting.3 The ministry of John was so
overshadowed by that of Jesus that its influence is easily under
estimated. He stirred the Jewish nation to its depths. When Jesus
began His ministry, John still continued his work (John iii. 22, 23);
the disciples of each followed their own leader (John iii. 25 ; iv. 1);
and those of John clung to him till his death (Luke vii. 19; Matt.
xiv. 12). Many Jews from foreign countries must have received
from him a knowledge of the Messiah and carried the knowledge to
their homes. Their connexion with Judaea had ceased before the
Day of Pentecost, and so they knew nothing of the mission of the
Comforter : but the fact gives us a glimpse of the small publicity
attained by the story of Jesus outside Palestine.11
One difficulty, however, still remains. It is not only strange that
they should have been associating with the Christians and been
accepted as ' disciples ' with such imperfect knowledge, but that,
being thus associated, their knowledge should have remained so
defective. 2. and he said. The previous conversation is not recorded :
only the result is given.
Did ye receive. Obviously he missed the marks of the Spirit
in them. Spmething wanting in them suggested the question. The
gospel of repentance did not give the joy which Paul's gospel brought.
They were devout, rigorous, austere ; but had not the radiant gladness
which was so conspicuous a feature of the early Christians. ' The
fruit of the Spirit is joy ' (Gal. v. 23).°
3. John's baptism. This was a baptism to repentance and to
belief in a Messiah who was immediately to appear. Paul showed
them (ver. 4) that, if they were true disciples of the Baptist, they
should accept the Gospel of Jesus, since He was the Messiah whose
coming John had foretold.
7. about twelve. It is a strange episode. The men disappear
from the history as suddenly as they enter it. It is clear d that they
were not individual cases, but an ascetic community living together.
8-IO
8 And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly
for the space of three months, discoursing and seeking
a Maclaren, ii. 170; Stifler, p. 185; Barnes, p. 234; Hausrath, ii. 213.
b Stifler, p. 178; Conybeare and Howson, ii. 6; Maclaren, ii. 171.
0 Parker, ii. 263 ; Plumptre, Paul, p. 109. A Plumptre, Acts.

THE ACTS. XIX. 8-10

309

to persuade concerning the kingdom of God. 9 But
when some were growing hardened in unbelief, speaking
evil of the Way before the multitude, he broke off from
them and separated the disciples, discoursing daily in
the lecture-hall of Tyrannus. 10 And this continued for
the space of two years, so that all they who dwelt
in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and
Greeks. 8. three months. Nowhere else did he preach for so long
a time in the synagogue. On his former hurried visit he had
awakened the interest of the Jews (xviii. 20), and they were probably
eager at first to hear him. And it was only ' some ' who opposed
him." 9. separated the disciples. He followed the course which he
had adopted at Corinth (xviii. 7), and formed the disciples into a dis
tinct body by themselves. The meetings for worship would naturally
be in the house of some member of the community, and that of
Aquila was one of those so used (1 Cor. xvi. 19). But it was further
necessary to have some fixed place for those who were yet inquirers
only, and this was found in the lecture-room of Tyrannus.0
Tyrannus. The name is found in inscriptions in the Colum
barium of the Empress Livia as that of a physician attached to the
Imperial court. If this man was his son (and identity of name,
where the name is uncommon, points to the possibility of relation
ship), he may, since the calling was often hereditary, have been also
a physician and have lectured at Ephesus on medicine. If, further,
he was a friend of Luke, who would naturally be acquainted with
leading members of his own profession, we can understand his
willingness to oblige Luke's friend, Paul.0
The Bezan text adds the words ' from the fifth hour to the tenth '
The words may be genuine, since it is difficult to see why they
should have been inserted. The fifth hour was the usual time for
stopping business for the midday meal,01 and Tyrannus would then
vacate the hall, which would be at Paul's disposal till two hours
before sunset.8
a Rackham, Acts; Taylor, Paul, p. 306. D Plumptre, Paul, p. nr.
" Plumptre, Expositor, 1. iv. 144. d Martial, iv. 8. 3.
0 Ramsay, Hastings' Diet., art. Tyrannus.

310 THE ACTS. XIX. 8-10
10. two years. Paul says ' three years ' (xx. 31). To the ' two
years ' must be added the ' three months ' (ver. 8) and the ' for
a while' (ver. 22).a At some point during his stay at Ephesus he
appears to have paid a flying visit to Corinth (2 Cor. xii. 20, 21;
xiii. 1). Communication between two such commercial cities was
easy and constant. We know (1 Cor. xvi. 12) that Apollos had
returned to Ephesus before Paul left it, and his report may have led
Paul to revisit his converts. Soon after his return he learnt that his
forbearance had been misunderstood, and he wrote a letter which
has not been preserved (1 Cor. v. 9), unless 2 Cor. vi. 14- vii. 1 is
a page from it which became attached to our second Epistle.0
all they who dwelt in Asia. Demetrius confirms this state
ment (ver. 26). The Seven Churches of ' Revelation ' were all
within easy reach of Ephesus, and may have been founded during
this period by Paul's fellow-workers. It is implied in Col. iv. 13
that Epaphras founded communities which he placed under Paul's
authority in Colosse, Laodicea, and Hierapolis. In 1 Cor. xvi. 19
Paul sends salutations from ' the Churches of Asia '. Further, his
words to Titus (i. 5), 'For this cause left I thee in Crete,' most
naturally suggest that he had been there; and if so, it was probably
in the course of his stay at Ephesus.0
1 1-20
11 And God wrought no common works of power by
the hands of Paul : 12 so that there were even carried to
the sick handkerchiefs or aprons from his body, and the
diseases departed from them and the evil spirits went
out. ls But certain also of the itinerant Jewish exorcists
tried the plan of naming over them who had the evil
spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, I adjure
you by the Jesus whom Paul preacheth. u And there
were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who
were doing this. 16 And the evil spirit answered and
said to them, Your Jesus I know and your Paul I under
stand ; but who are ye ? 16 And the man in whom the
evil spirit was leaped on them and mastered both of
a Page, Acts. >' L. Merivale, p. 258 ; Baiing-Gould, p. 310.
0 Gilbert, p. 147 ; Wrede, p. 62 ; C. Ii. Prichard, Hastings' Diet., art. Crete.

THE ACTS. XIX. 11-20 311
them and prevailed against them, so that they fled out
of that house stripped and wounded. " And this became
known to all, both Jews and Greeks, who dwelt at
Ephesus ; and fear fell on them all, and the name of
the Lord Jesus began to be held in honour. 18Many
also of them that had believed came, confessing and
declaring their dealings. 19 And a number of them that
practised curious arts brought their books together, and
burned them in the sight of all ; and they reckoned up
their value and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.
20 Thus by might of the Lord the word grew and
prevailed. 11. no common works. Luke is careful to call attention to
the unusual character of these miracles. Tyrannus may, if he was
a physician, have been his informant. The phenomena described
are just such as one physician would be likely to record, in writing
to another.8-
12. handkerchiefs or aprons. Our first impulse is to ask,
How could God have worked in this materialistic way ? Would it
not give encouragement to superstition ? But such questions ignore
the place which in those days magic held in men's thoughts, espe
cially in Ephesus. There, ' Ephesian letters ' — pieces of parchment
inscribed with the letters on the brow, girdle, and feet of the statue
of Artemis — were worn as amulets against disease and danger. But
the power of healing is a sacred power, which the impostor may
claim, but which does not belong to him : and the Gospel confronted
him at Ephesus with the true power, of which his was the counterfeit.0
God teaches men by the means which will come home to them.
Our Lord appealed to Galilean fishermen by miraculous draughts of
fishes, by storms calmed at a word, by water turned to a crystal
pavement beneath His feet. Though He sometimes healed without
material vehicle, at other times He chose to anoint blind eyes with
clay. He did not reject sense-bound faith, but helped it to become
stronger and purer. The phenomena here described find parallels
in the Gospel story. When the sick were healed by touching the
hem of His garment (Matt. ix. 20, 21 ; xiv. 36), the same method of
1 Plumptre, Paul, p. 116. ll Maurice, p. 309.

312 THE ACTS. XIX. 11-20
working was involved. It was not every one who had the faith
which enabled the centurion of Capernaum (Luke vii. 7) or the
woman of Tyre (Matt. xv. 28) to believe in the Lord's healing
power without contact or material instrumentality. Among these
Ephesians much superstition was doubtless mixed with the faith of
those who received the handkerchiefs : but it was not to the super
stition, but to the faith, that the reward of healing was given. It
should, however, be noted that it is not said that Paul sanctioned
such proceedings ; and neither in his address to the elders (xx. 18 seq.)
nor in his letter to the Ephesians does he allude to these miracles."
The idea that a man's character and clothing are in some
mysterious way identified, so that his garments can convey some
efficacy, is widely found. It explains Elisha's action in taking up
'the mantle of Elijah that fell from him' (2 Kings ii. T3). Similarly
Mohammed was besought to give his shirt to serve as a shroud for
a dead man.0
13. Jewish exorcists. Luke in his Gospel (xi. 19) mentions
such. The stern denunciations of sorcery in the Old Testament
show the tendency of the Jews to such practices.0 Instances are
found in Tobit viii. 1-3, and Josephus, Antiq. vm. ii. 5.
tried the plan. Evidently they had seen miracles wrought by
Paul in Jesus' name.d
the Jesus whom Paul preacheth. Success was thought to
depend on the correct use of the prescribed formula. So, since
Jesus was a common name, they, to avoid mistake, added the words
' whom Paul preacheth '. Christianity was, they thought, only a new
form of magic : it seemed to work well in Paul's hands, and it might
be worth while to incorporate it with other Ephesian mysteries.
They failed, because they knew nothing of the Name which they
invoked. To them it was a charm only — 'Jesus, whom Paul
preacheth ', not ' Jesus in whom we believe ' — and the Divine energy
could not pass through such a non-conducting medium.6
14. seven. They may have pretended that there was a virtue in
this mystical number. It shows the corrupt state among the Jews of
Ephesus that these exorcists should be the sons of the leading priest. f
a Ramsden, ii. 110; Maclaren, ii. 175; Plumptre, Paul, p. 116; Iverach,
p. 132 ; Farrar, ii. 23.
b O. C. Whitehouse, Hastings' Did., art. Sorcery.
c Conybeare and Howson, ii. 15. <J Baumgarten, ii. 290.
e Morrison, p. 98 ; Parker, ii. 270 seq. ; Ramsden, ii. 114.
1 Ramsden, ii. 113.

THE ACTS. XIX. n-20

3i;

a Jewish chief priest. Probably the chief Rabbi of the
Ephesian synagogue.
15. the evil spirit answered. Speaking by the mouth of the
possessed man.
16. both. The narrative is evidently abbreviated by Luke from
a fuller account. The house is alluded to as though it had been
mentioned before ; and the fact that two only of the seven men were
concerned in this attempt comes out incidentally in this word.a It
should, however, be said that Moulton has found b examples in the
papyri of the Greek word here used meaning, not ' both ', but ' all '.
1 7. this became known. The sons of the leading priest would
be well-known men in Ephesus. Both Jews and Greeks felt them
selves in the presence of a power which they could not measure.0
held in honour. The city was convinced that the name of
Jesus was not one to be lightly used or trifled with.d
18. Many also. This feeling was not confined to unbelievers.
Many who had accepted the new faith had not before realized that
it was incompatible with the practice of magic. It is hard for us
to understand the extent to which such dealings entered into the
affairs of daily life. Days for marriages or for journeys, engagements
and business transactions, were often fixed only after an appeal to
the soothsayer. It is not strange that converts to Christianity found
it difficult to break from their old association with these practices.
It was only by a severe struggle that the Gentile Christians con
verted from heathenism freed themselves from their corrupt ante
cedents. The stern and repeated warnings in Paul's letters show
with what extreme forbearance the early converts had to be
treated.6 19. a number. It is generally thought that these magicians
also were believers, who, as soon as they realized that their trade
was sinful, burnt their books, thereby not only putting themselves
out of the way of temptation, but securing also that others should not
in future be corrupted by them. It was probably this interpretation
which led to the similar holocaust by the populace of Florence at
the bidding of Savonarola.f But few of Paul's converts could have
owned books of value. The more natural meaning of Luke's words
is that these magicians were not Christians. In the fear that
11 Harnack, Ads, p. 207; A. C. Headlam, Hastings' Did., art. Sceva.
b Prolegomena, p. 80. c Iverach, p. 133. d Stifler, p. 192.
" F. B. Meyer, p. 136; Farrar, ii. 25.
1 Barnes, p. 244; Plumptre, Paul, p. 119.

3H THE ACTS. XIX. 11-20
prevailed, they had not the courage to pursue their art longer. It
might befall them as it had befallen the exorcists. And Luke
records their action as a notable proof of 'the growth of the
word.' a
fifty thousand pieces of silver. Ephesus was so largely
Greek that it is practically certain that these coins were Attic
drachmas of about the value of a French franc. Thus the amount
would be about £2,000; but the purchasing power of this sum
would be, of course, far greater than its nominal equivalent in
English currency.0 21-22
21 Now after these events Paul purposed in the spirit,
when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to
go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must
also see Rome. 2Z And sending into Macedonia two of
them that ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus, he
himself stayed for a while in Asia.
21. Paul purposed. This had not been his original plan. He
had intended (2 Cor. i. 16-23) L° g° by sea to Corinth; thence
by land to the Churches of Macedonia, which he had not seen
for five years ; thence by sea back to Corinth ; thence by sea to
Jerusalem. But the anxious reports of the state of the Corinthian
Church led him to change his plans. He sent Titus to Corinth to
regulate the disorders, and deferred his own visit.0
to go to Jerusalem. Carrying the contributions from the
Gentile Churches (1 Cor. xvi. 1-3).
I must also see Rome. The Greek words form the latter
part of an iambic verse. It may have been a proverbial utterance,
expressing the magnetic attraction of the great centre of the civilized
world, which was often on Paul's lips. It was ' must ' also in the
purpose of Providence, but he little knew yet in what capacity he
was to travel to Rome. The mere formulation of such plans shows
how far he had enlarged his view since he wrote to the Thessalonians
of the Second Advent as a near event.d
Luke's statement that Paul's plan of visiting Rome was formed
a Hausrath, iii. 262 ; Stifler, p. 192.
11 Buss, p. 260; Plumptre, Paul, p„i2o. ° Farrar, ii. 32.
" Arnot, p. 430 ; Shirley, p. 75.

THE ACTS. XIX. 21-22 315
before he left Ephesus is confirmed by the letter to the Romans,
where he speaks (i. 13; xv. 22, 23) of the design as having been
in his mind ' for many years '."¦
22. sending into Macedonia. The object was to secure that
the contributions of the Churches should be in readiness.
he himself stayed. The reason is given in 1 Cor. xvi. 8, 9,
' I will tarry at Ephesus till Pentecost ; for a great door and effectual
is opened unto me.' Pentecost fell about the end of May, and
that was the month of the annual Festival of Artemis, when business,
worship, and pleasure combined to bring vast multitudes to Ephesus;
and Paul felt that it would be a seed-time for the dissemination of
the Gospel.0 2 3-41
23 And at that time there arose no small commotion
about the Way. 2i For a certain man, named Demetrius,
a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, pro
vided no little employment for the craftsmen : 26 whom
he gathered together, with the workmen of like occupa
tion, and said, Sirs, ye know that out of this employ
ment cometh our wealth : 2C and ye see and hear that
not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout Asia, this
Paul hath by his persuasion turned away much people,
saying that they be no gods which are made by hands.
27 And not only is there danger that this our trade come
into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great
goddess Artemis be made of no account, and she should
even be deposed from her magnificence, whom all Asia
and the world worshippeth. 28 And when they heard
this, they were filled with wrath, and cried out, saying,
Great Artemis of the Ephesians ! 29 And the city was
filled with the confusion ; and they rushed with one
accord into the theatre, haling with them Gaius and
Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions in
travel. 3n And when Paul was minded to enter in to the
a Gilbert, p. 157. b L. Merivale, p. 270; Taylor, Paul, p. 321.

316 THE ACTS. XIX. 23-41
people, the disciples suffered him not : 31 and certain
also of the Asiarchs, being his friends, sent to him and
besought him not to adventure himself into the theatre.
32 So some kept crying one thing and some another ;
for the assembly was in confusion, and most of them
knew not wherefore they were come together. 33 And
they brought Alexander out of the crowd, the Jews
putting him forward. And Alexander motioned with
his hand and would have made defence to the people :
34 but when they recognized that he was a Jew, all with
one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great
Artemis of the Ephesians ! 35 Howbeit the Recorder
quieted the multitude, and said, Men of Ephesus, why,
what man is there who knoweth not that the city of the
Ephesians is temple-warden of the great Artemis and
of the image which fell from the sky ? 3e Seeing then
that these things cannot be gainsaid, ye ought to be
quiet, and to do nothing rash. 37 For ye have brought
hither these men, who are neither guilty of sacrilege nor
blasphemers of our goddess. 38 If therefore Demetrius
and the craftsmen which are with him have a grievance
against any man, there are appointed court days and
there are proconsuls : let them join issue there. 39 But
if ye seek anything further, it shall be settled in the
regular assembly. 40 For indeed we are in danger of
being accused of riot in connexion with this day's
gathering, there being no man whose proved guilt shall
furnish us with an excuse for this concourse. 41 And
when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.
23. at that time. The new teaching had, before this outbreak,
roused fierce opposition. The words of i Cor. xv. 32, ' If after
the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus,' were written
before the riot and therefore cannot refer to it. They are not to be
taken literally — the qualifying 'after the manner of men' means

THE ACTS. XIX. 23-41 317
'so to speak', and no Roman citizen could be thrown to beasts
in the arena— but they show the dangerous temper of the populace,
which Paul compares, according to a common Greek idea,a to a
wild beast.0 Demetrius now saw his opportunity in the presence
of thousands of fanatical worshippers who thronged the city for
the Festival.
24. Demetrius. It has been suggested by the Bishop of Lincoln0
that this man may be the Demetrius whose name is found in an
inscription (probably of about this date) as Head of the Neopoioi,
or temple-wardens of Artemis : and that, if the source of this
narrative described him as ' a silversmith and neopoios of Artemis ',
Luke may have mistaken the title of office for a further description
of his trade, and understood ' neopoios ' to mean ' maker of shrines '.
And he points to the fact that no specimens of such silver shrines
have been found. But it would follow from this theory that the
riot was organized by the priests; whereas there is no evidence d
that the priests were hostile to Paul (cf. ver. 37, ' nor blasphemers
of our goddess ') ; and the theory therefore involves the assumption
that Luke not only mistook the meaning of ' neopoios ' but also
misunderstood the whole situation, since he represents trade interests
to have been affected. And to the argument that no silver shrines
have been found, Professor Ramsay replies6 that they would be
melted down and so disappear.
silver shrines. Models for votaries to dedicate in the temple.
The rich bought silver ones, the poor terra-cotta S They were on sale
throughout the year, but a special harvest would be reaped in May.
Artemis. The translation ' Diana ' is most misleading, since
she is not to be identified with the Greek Artemis, of which Diana
was the Roman counterpart. She was an Oriental deity, a primitive
personification of the powers of nature ; a figure with many breasts,
tapering downward to a point. The mystery of nature's fertility
was a source of wonder to all early peoples, and corresponding
forms of worship have been found almost everywhere.
25. the workmen of like occupation. That is, the makers
of terra-cotta shrines. Demetrius summoned a meeting of the
associated trades.8
a Plato, Repub. 493.
b Gilbert, p. 152 ; W. J. Woodhouse, Encycl. BUI., p. 1304.
0 E. L. Hicks, Expositor, iv. i. 401.
d W. J. Woodhouse, Encycl. BUI., p. 1305. e Expositor, iv. ii. 16.
f Ramsay, Paul, p. 27S. s Ramsay, Churches, p. 128.

318 THE ACTS. XIX. 23-41
26. throughout Asia. It is difficult to believe that converts
lo Christianity were so numerous as seriously to affect the sale of
shrines. In comparison with the bulk of the population, the
Christians must have been a small body. But since the majority
of converts almost certainly came from the poorer classes, the trade
may have been affected by the master-craftsmen losing some of
their best workmen. And though there was doubtless exaggeration,
the meeting would not have been called unless Paul's teaching had
produced a perceptible effect; and men are quick to take alarm
when their pockets are threatened. The speech is a good illustra
tion of the way in which self-interest may masquerade as concern
for lofty objects and yet betray itself. a
this Paul. A Jewish colony had long been in Ephesus, but
its lifeless protest against idolatry had been harmless as compared
with Paul's earnestness.
27. the temple. Its size and magnificence made it one of the
wonders of the ancient world. And against the worship embodied
in this glorious building one man, and he a poor tentmaker, was
contending !
even be deposed. Self-interest tends to pervert the judgment.
Yet it was a sound instinct which led Demetrius to see that Artemis
was confronted by a Power before which she was doomed to fall.
and the world. This was scarcely an exaggeration. The cult
of Artemis was carried far by Asiatic sailors and merchants, and her
temples have been found in Spain and Gaul.b
28. Great Artemis of the Ephesians! This is the reading
of the Bezan text, and inscriptions show that it was the formula
of invocation, the usual cry of the votaries of the goddess at
festivals. Professor Ramsay has pointed out0 that the cry of the
mob was not likely to be a controversial assertion ; some familiar
formula was sure to rise to their lips. And though he inclined
later to retract his opinion d on the ground that the formula ' Great
is Apollo ! ' has been found in an inscription at Dionysopolis, his
earlier view is probably correct.
29. the theatre. The existing ruins show its enormous size,
capable of holding some forty thousand persons. Though con
structed for gladiatorial shows and dramatic performances, it was
also the place for all large public gatherings.
a Johnston, p. 131 ; J. Robertson, p. 253 ; Maclaren, ii. 182.
b Stokes, ii. 374. c Churches, p. 135 seq. d Expositor, iv. ii. 17.

THE ACTS. XIX. 23-41 3i9
Gaius and Aristarchus. If Rom. xvi. 4— 'who for my life
laid down their own necks' — refers to this occasion, the mob
appears to have gone in search of St. Paul to the house of Priscilla
and Aquila, who endangered their own lives by some resistance.
Foiled of their aim, the crowd seized two of Paul's companions,
just as the mob had done at Thessalonica (xvi. 6) ; but, as they were
not Jews, no further outrage was offered them.a
The abrupt mention of their names is explained, if they were
Luke's authority for this chapter. Both were with him a few
months later (xx. 4), and Aristarchus voyaged with him from
Caesarea (xxvii. 2).0
companions in travel. Unless this description is an anticipa
tion of xx. 4, it implies missionary activity on Paul's part beyond
the walls of Ephesus.0
30. This verse and the next interrupt the context, and appear to
be an interpolation by Luke into his source.
when Paul. His distress, when he thought that his friends
might be murdered while he escaped, may be imagined. None
the less he showed splendid courage in wishing to face the mob,
knowing that he himself was the real object of their fanatic rage.
2 Cor. i. 8 may refer to this occasion.
31. Asiarchs. These were not, as was formerly thought, spe
cially associated with the worship of Artemis. They were, as is
now known from inscriptions, connected with the recently intro
duced worship of the Emperor. In neighbouring provinces they
were similarly called Bithyniarchs, Lyciarchs, &c. Originally there
was but one Asiarch at a time for the province of Asia ; but, as
temples dedicated to the Caesar multiplied, their number was
increased to ten. Their duties were to administer the funds for
the ceremonial in the various towns, and to preside at festivals and
games, even when the celebrations were connected with the worship
of other deities, such as Artemis. Their expenses were consider
able, so that only rich men could accept the office ; but as it was
a post of much dignity, it was eagerly sought.'1
being his friends. This may be a gloss by Luke, since the
Asiarchs probably did no more than order him not to leave the
house, as they feared a riot. At the same time they were not likely
to have much belief in the ceremonies, which they regarded1 as
a Binney, p. 309 ; Kitto, p. 406. b Harnack, Acts, p. 149.
c Plumptre, Acts ; Ramsay, Paid, p. 280.
A Buss, p. 304; W. J. Woodhouse, Encycl. BUI., p. 341.

320 THE ACTS. XIX. 23-41
matters of state rather than of religion ; and their sympathies were
likely to be with an educated man like Paul, in danger from a mob
of ignorant fanatics. It was an Asiarch who at Smyrna a resisted
the cry of the populace to throw Polycarp to the lions.0
32. kept crying. Luke's description shows a characteristically
Greek contempt for ' the mob ', which shouts because others shout,
and shouts what they shout without understanding it.
33. Alexander. It looks as if he had been previously men
tioned in the source from which Luke drew. Probably he was the
coppersmith' (2 Tim. iv. 14) who did Paul 'much evil'. The
Jews were likely to deal in the copper and silver required for the
shrines, so he may have had some trade connexion with the crafts
men which would give him influence.0
the Jews. Alexander was put forward to disclaim on behalf of
the Jews, who were notorious for their hatred of idolatry, any con.
nexion with the obnoxious Paul. The cry of ' Great Artemis ' had
roused the fanaticism of the mob ; the demonstration was becoming
anti-Jewish rather than anti-Christian, and they were afraid that
their shops might be sacked or themselves murdered, as had
happened not long before at Alexandria. So Alexander was put
forward to divert the anger of the populace once more upon the
Christians. 34. but when they recognized. The policy failed signally.
The rioters recognized his Jewish features, and were in no mood
to listen to fine distinctions between members of so hated a race.d
35. the Recorder. His office was one of far greater importance
than is suggested by the 'Town clerk' of the A. V. and R. V.
Ephesus was a ' free city ', under its own laws : and though the Pro
consul resided there, the Recorder was the chief magistrate, and
his name appeared on the coins issued in his year of office.
temple-warden. Though the temple was at Ephesus, it was
the common property of the towns of Asia, and its guardianship was
the privilege of the Ephesians. The title is first found on Ephesian
coins of Nero's reign.
37. these men. viz. Gaius and Aristarchus.
guilty of sacrilege. The Greek word occurs in Rom. ii 22,
and is found in inscriptions discovered at Ephesus. According to
the latter, the crime entailed severe penalties. Since heathen
" Eusebius, H.E. iv. 15. 27. b Hausrath, iii. 263; Buss, p. 306.
c Hausrath, iii. 264; Plumptre, Paul, p. 105. A Maclaren, ii. 1S6.

THE ACTS. XIX. 23-41 321
temples discharged some of the functions of a bank, vast treasures
were often deposited in them.
nor blasphemers. Clearly Paul had with his usual tact been
careful not to trample on the prejudices of the heathen, or insult
what they held sacred, but had sought to undermine idolatry by
preaching Christ. Perhaps, as at Athens, he had taken their reverence
for Artemis as a finger-post pointing to something higher and purer
than itself. a
38. there are proconsuls. A generalizing plural. It has been
suggested0 that since Junius Silanus, Proconsul of Asia, had in
a.d. 54 been poisoned, at the instigation of Agrippina, mother
of Nero, by the two Procurators, Celer and Helius, they may have
been rewarded for their crime by being allowed to act as joint
Proconsuls. But the conjecture is an impossible one.0 No prece
dent can be found for so unusual a method of filling a vacancy
caused by death ; and neither Celer nor Helius were of rank to
serve as Proconsuls.
40. we are in danger. Rome granted to the ' free cities ' con
siderable liberty, but she was very jealous of any turbulent proceed
ings ; and this disturbance might cost Ephesus a curtailment of her
privileges.'1 St. Paul at Ephesus. We have no letters of Paul to supple
ment our knowledge of his work at Ephesus ; and the vividness
with which the Epistles to the Thessalonians and to the Corinthians
depict those Churches makes the meagreness of our information
about Ephesus more felt. The so-called 'Epistle to the Ephesians'
has the vagueness and absence of personal details which we associate
with a circular letter. It can scarcely have been written to a Church
in which he had laboured for nearly three years ; and there is little
doubt that it was addressed to Laodicea and the Churches of Asia
generally. On the other hand there are grounds for thinking that the
sixteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans has been wrongly
attached to that letter, and is really a 'letter of commendation',
complete in itself, introducing Phoebe to the Church at Ephesus.
For (i) it would be strange if greetings to more than twenty-five
personal friends — a larger number than are mentioned in all Paul's
other letters combined — were sent to a Church which he had never
visited, (ii) Among those to whom he sends greeting are Epaenetus,
a Arnot, p. 434; Taylor, Paul, p. 325. b Farrar, ii. 41.
" Ramsay, Expositor, vi. ii. 335. d Stifler, p. 197.
1329 Y

322 THE ACTS. XIX. 23-41
' the firstrfruits of Asia ', and ' my fellow workers ' Prisca and Aquila,
who had worked with him at Ephesus. (iii) Those who join him
in sending greetings are Timothy and Erastus, who had both been
with him at Ephesus. (iv) A comparison of i Cor. xvi. 19 ('Aquila
and Prisca salute you much in the Lord, with the Church that is
in their house ') with Rom. xvi. 3, 4 (' Salute Prisca and Aquila . . .
and the Church that is in their house') implies Ephesus as the
continued residence of Prisca and Aquila. Otherwise we have to
suppose not only that they had suddenly changed their home from
Ephesus to Rome, but that they had again made their house a
meeting-place for the Christians. And since in 2 Tim. iv. 19 (which
letter, if genuine, was written by Paul to Ephesus during his im
prisonment at Rome) he writes ' Salute Prisca and Aquila ', we have
to suppose that they had again returned from Rome to Ephesus.
(v) Rom. xvi. 17-20 implies a pastoral solicitude and authority
which are natural enough if addressed to Ephesus where he had
worked so long, but are strange if addressed to a Church which was
not his own and which he had never visited, (vi) There are
numerous salutations to slaves in Rom. xvi. It is not easy to
understand how Paul could have friends among whole households
of slaves at Rome, where he had never been, (vii) The Epistle to the
Romans ends very naturally with the fifteenth chapter and the word
' Amen '. (viii) This letter of commendation might easily have
become attached to the letter to Rome, since both were written
from Corinth and may have been copied by the same amanuensis. a
But if Rom. xvi was addressed to Ephesus, we get an interesting
light thrown upon Paul's work there. The salutations to slaves —
' the household of Narcissus ' and ' the household of Aristobulus ' —
and the numerous slave names, show that his converts were largely
from the lowest social strata. The same fact is implied in Acts
xix. 12. We are carried to the work-rooms of slaves by the story
of the aprons taken to be laid on the sick and afflicted.13
It is sad to note the indications that the Church at Ephesus,
where Paul laboured for a longer period than anywhere else, soon
passed under other influences and away from him. In his address
to the Elders he betrays (xx. 29, 30) his foreboding of a great
defection. In Rom. xvi. 17 seq. (if it be addressed to Ephesus) he
warns them against those who were causing divisions. In 2 Tim.
a Cone, p. 128 ; McGiffert, p. 275 seq. ; Weizsacker, i. 382 ; J. Thomas, p. 251.
b Hausrath, iii. 261.

THE ACTS. XIX. 23-41 323
i. 1 5 we find, ' This thou knowest, that all that are in Asia turned
away from me.' And the Apocalypse claims the allegiance of the
Ephesian Church for John, without any reference to its past under
Paul.a

CHAPTER XX
i-5
1 And after the uproar had ceased, Paul, having sent
for the disciples and encouraged them, took leave of
them and departed for Macedonia. 2 And when he had
gone through those parts and had given them much
exhortation, he went into Greece. 3 And when after
a stay of three months a plot was laid against him by
the Jews, as he was about to put to sea for Syria, he
determined to return through Macedonia. 4 And there
accompanied him to Asia Sopater, the son of Pyrrhus,
of Beroea ; and of the Thessalonians Aristarchus and
Secundus ; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy ; and of
Asia Tychicus and Trophimus : 5 but these had gone
before and were waiting for us at Troas.
1. departed for Macedonia. The history of several eventful
months is here condensed into two verses. Happily the second
letter to the Corinthians supplies many details. We learn from it
(i. 5 seq.) that Paul left Ephesus in deep dejection. For the first time,
so far as we know, he found his burden too heavy and confessed that
his strength was gone.0 He had himself narrowly escaped death ;
serious dangers still threatened him ; but worse than any peril was
the sickening anxiety to learn how the Corinthians had taken his
stern words of reproof. He was haunted by the fear that he might
have imperilled all his influence with his converts and driven them
into defiance. Titus was to have met him at Troas with tidings of
them ; and his failure to arrive confirmed Paul's worst apprehensions.
He had gone to Troas 'for the gospel of Christ' (2 Cor. ii. 12) —
intending, that is, to do evangelizing work in that important city,
a McGiffert, p. 289 ; Weizsacker, i. 378. b Renan, Paul, p. 254.
Y 2

324 THE ACTS. XX. 1-5
from which he had, on his previous visit, been called away by the
summons to Macedonia (xvi. 10). But though he seems to have
done some preaching there, since he found an eager congregation
awaiting him on his return a few months later (see, however, on
ver. 7), he could not wait long in his impatience for news, but
pressed on to Macedonia, doubtless to Philippi. There at last
Titus met him with a report which greatly relieved him, and was
again dispatched to Corinth with a letter (our 2 Corinthians). a
2. gone through those parts. It is impossible to say how long
this journey lasted. It has been inferred from Rom. xv. 19 that
Paul at this time preached as far as Illyricum ; but that is a mistake
(see on xvii. 15). His present object was not fresh mission work,
but the confirmation of the Macedonian Churches and the collection
of the contributions for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. And
Luke, by mentioning that he stayed three months in Greece, implies
that his time was spent chiefly there.
3. a stay of three months. They were undoubtedly passed in
Corinth. No incidents were apparently known to Luke, but Paul
wrote the Epistle to the Romans in the course of it, and the plot of
the Jews shows that his influence was widely felt.
a plot. His inveterate enemies had not forgotten or forgiven
their defeat in the court of Gallio. This time they meant to trust to
themselves. They learnt his intention of sailing in a ship carrying
pilgrims to Jerusalem for the Passover ; and with such fanatics on
board it would be easy to find an opportunity of murdering him.
No doubt they also knew the object of his journey, and their hatred
was yet further inflamed by the thought of the Christians at Jeru
salem receiving so splendid a testimony of the gratitude of the
Gentile Churches.0
And Paul must have been painfully conscious of the perils which
beset him. If the enmity of the Jews so far from Jerusalem was
thus unrelenting, what might he not have to encounter there !
In the letter just written to the Romans he beseeches them (xv. 30)
to remember him before God that he might ' be delivered from them
that do not believe in Judaea '. And he felt also the danger that
a gift from him might not be welcomed even by the Church at
Jerusalem. In the following verse he asks for their prayers that
his ' ministration at Jerusalem may prove acceptable to the saints '.°
" F. B. Meyer, p. 141 ; Purves, p. 225.
b Baring-Gould, p. 367 ; J. Robertson, p. 266.
c Macduff, Paul, p. 287 ; Simcox, p. 102.

THE ACTS. XX. 1-5 325
4. there accompanied him. In his previous journeys Paul's
companions have been mentioned, but never before in such numbers.
This unusual enumeration and the mention of the Churches to
which they belonged — with the exception of the well-known Timothy,
who perhaps was not a delegate (see on ver. 38) — show that they
were travelling in some official capacity. Together they represent
the larger part of Paul's missionary field. The explanation is found
in xxiv. 17, 'I came to bring alms to my nation,' and also in
Rom. xv. 25, written from Corinth. Paul had not forgotten the
compact made at the time of the conference, that he would
' remember the poor ' (Gal. ii. 10). It is a proof of his greatness that,
after having been for years harassed and crippled in his work by
Jewish Christians sent from Jerusalem, he never abandoned his
purpose of a collection, but carried it out, not as a contract, but
as a privilege." This is the more striking, because he keenly felt his
liability to be misrepresented when he asked his poor converts for
contributions. It was not enough that he should not be accused
of using the fund for his own maintenance : it was indispensable that
he should not even be suspected ; and so he never himself touched
the money that was collected. Indeed, when he wrote his first letter
to the Corinthians, he was doubtful (xvi. 4) whether he would himself
go with it to Jerusalem. But when he wrote to the Romans (xv. 25)
he had made up his mind to go. His conception of the purpose
which the collection might serve had enlarged. It might be made
something more than an expression of Christian charity, more than
a proof of his own loyalty to his promise, more even than a recogni
tion on the part of the Gentile Christians of their obligation to the
Jews, 'whose debtors they were' (Rom. xv. 27). It was an evidence
to the Jewish Church of the reality of Gentile Christianity.15 How
could he prove that reality better than by bringing before them
living representatives of what the Divine grace had accomplished ? —
men from among the Gentiles in each of the four provinces in which
he had preached the Gospel, all showing the power of the new life ?
His recently written letter to the Romans shows (x. 19 ; xi. 14, 25, 26)
that he believed that a universal conversion of his own nation would
take place as soon as ' the fulness of the Gentiles ' should be accom
plished ; and he wished to represent to Israel in the most vivid
manner possible the great fact of the turning of the heathen to God.0
a Rendall, Expositor, VI. viii. 204; Ramsay, Paid, p. 287; Cone, p. 134.
b Taylor, Paul, p. 345 ; McGiffert, p. 338 ; Lock, p. 51.
" Baumgarten, ii. 315 seq.

326 THE ACTS. XX. 1-5
There are several indications that the collection was a large one.
It came from all the Gentile Churches; it had been gathered
through two years (2 Cor. viii. 10); the Churches of Macedonia had
given 'beyond their power' (2 Cor. viii. 3).a
It is strange that, while representatives of the Churches of Mace
donia, Galatia, and Asia are mentioned, no deputy from Achaia is
named, though Paul's letters show that the Church of Corinth was
a contributor. Possibly Luke was their delegate, he being 'the
brother whose praise is in the Gospel' (2 Cor. viii. 18). Though we
know of no connexion between him and the Corinthian Church, the
' us ' of ver. 5 may imply that he rejoined Paul there and not at
Philippi ; and the suppression of his own name and the indication
of his presence only by the pronoun would suit his characteristic
modesty.0 Sopater. As his name stands first, though Beroea was not
among the more important Churches, he was probably head of the
deputation ; and he, not Luke, may be ' the brother, whose praise is
in the Gospel throughout all the Churches '.° The unusual addition
of his father's name may be only to distinguish him from the Sosipater
of Rom. xvi. 21, but it may show that he was a man of social
position. of Derbe. The mention of a delegate from Derbe is interesting.
The later history of the struggle with the Judaizers in Galatia is
unknown, but the fact that the province contributed to the collection
shows that the victory lay with Paul.d
5. these had gone before. When the plot of the Jews obliged
Paul to change his plans at the last moment and go by land, the
rest of the party had gone, as originally arranged, by sea to Troas.
6-12
6 And we sailed away from Philippi after the days of
unleavened bread, and within five days came to them
at Troas, where we stayed seven days. 7 And upon the
first day of the week, when we were gathered together
to break bread, Paul was discoursing with them, being
about to depart on the morrow ; and he prolonged his
speech till midnight. 8 And there were many lamps in
" Gilbert, p. 159. i) Ramsay, Paul, p. 289.
0 Rendall, Expositor, in. viii. 204. A Weizsacker, i. 266.

THE ACTS. XX. 6-12 327
the upper chamber where we were gathered together.
0 And there sat in the window a certain young man
named Eutychus, who was gradually overcome by heavy
drowsiness ; and as Paul discoursed yet longer, he was
borne down by his sleep, and falling from the third story
was taken up dead. 10 But Paul went down and fell on
him, and embracing him said, Make ye no ado, for his
life is in him. n And when he had gone up, and had
broken the bread and eaten, and had talked with them
a long while, even till break of day, he departed. ,2 And
they brought back the lad alive, and were not a little
comforted.
6. we. With the presence of Luke the narrative at once becomes
more detailed, in strong contrast to the meagre summary of pre
ceding occurrences. The second letter to the Corinthians shows
that Paul had been for some time suffering from bodily infirmities.
This may have led Luke to join him there, and determined him to
accompany him in all his future travels.3-
after the days of unleavened bread. This reckoning by the
Jewish calendar marks Luke as having been a proselyte. (Cf.
xxvii. 9.)
five days. Either there was a calm or a contrary wind, since with
a favouring wind Paul had performed the reverse voyage in two days
(xvi. n, 12). A -TV i"£°>- l'~
stayed seven days. His first visit had been cut short by the
call to Macedonia. At his second he was too depressed by the
delay in meeting Titus to avail himself to any extent of the open
door which he found there. Now, having a few days to spare, he
gladly made use of them.0
7. upon the first day of the week. The substitution of the
first day for the seventh naturally began in Gentile Churches, which
had never been bound to the observance of the Sabbath. But
though it is a probable inference from this passage that the first day
had already been set apart for public worship, the proof is not
decisive, since the gathering may have taken place on that day solely
because it was the eve of Paul's departure. Nor are Paul's words in
a Plumptie, Expositor, I. iv. 144. b J. Robertson, p. 267.

328 THE ACTS. XX. 6-12
1 Cor. xvi. 2 — ' Upon the first day of the week let each one of you lay
by him in store,' — conclusive of the observance of Sunday, since
' by him ' means in the Greek ' in his own house ', and does not
suggest a gathering for public worship ; and as the converts were
mostly poor people and slaves, it may mean that the first day was
pay day, and so the day on which they could most easily lay by
something. None the less there would seem to be no reason for
mentioning here the day of the week, unless it had some special
significance.0 we. This, and not ' the disciples ' (A. V.), is the right reading.
Hence it is not certain that there was a definite Church already in
existence at Troas. The gathering may have consisted of Paul's
company with a few other believers. There is no mention of any
leave-taking in ver. n, such as is recorded in ver. 26 and xxi. 6.b
on the morrow. If the first day was being observed, it would
probably be reckoned, on the analogy of the Jewish Sabbath, as
beginning at sunset on the Saturday; and Paul started on his
twenty-mile walk on the Sunday morning. Thus he did not
transfer to the new Lord's Day the restrictions of the Sabbath on
travel.0 till midnight. A detail which betokens the eyewitness, as does
the ' till break of day ' of ver. 1 1 .
8. many lamps. Three weeks had elapsed since the Paschal
full moon, and the night would be dark.*
9. sat in the window. The ' many lamps ' made it necessary
to open the lattice shutter for ventilation, and Eutychus, who was
sitting on the sill, fell, like Ahaziah (2 Kings i. 2), out into the
courtyard. Eutychus. A common slave name. He was perhaps an un
educated lad, little able to follow the discourse.
was taken up dead. This appears to be a plain statement that
the lad was dead, and Luke was a physician. If he had meant
' taken up for dead ', that could easily be expressed in Greek. And
the embracing the body is not the act of a person investigating
a case of apparent death, but is evidently intended to recall the
miracles of Elijah (1 Kings xvii. 21) and Elisha (2 Kings iv. 34).°
But Paul did not pray, as Peter did in the case of Dorcas (ix. 40) ;
his words, ' his life is in him,' imply a swoon rather than death ; the
a G. A. Deissmann, Encycl. BUI., p. 2S13; Lechler, i. 137.
" Harnack, Acts, p. 29. « Hackelt, Ads; Plumptre, Ads.
A Conybeare and Howson, ii. 227. e Zeller, ii. 62.

THE ACTS. XX. 6-12 329
lad did not arise at once, as might have been expected in the case of
a miracle — it was not till the morning that his friends brought him
back alive ; and the language of ver. 1 2 does not indicate the great
sensation which would have been caused by a resurrection from death.
It is possible that Luke had already started with the others (ver. 13),
when the accident happened, and was not himself an eye-witness.11
n. till break of day. An interesting illustration of Paul's
energy and zeal. He discoursed throughout the night, though he
had a twenty-mile walk before him.b
he departed. Leaving behind with Carpus (2 Tim. iv. 13)
the warm cloak which he later missed in the chill of a Roman
dungeon.0 13-16
13 But we, going before to the ship, put to sea for
Assos, there intending to take in Paul ; for so had he
appointed, intending himself to go by land. u And
when he met us at Assos, we took him on board, and
came to Mitylene. 15 And sailing away thence we came
the following day over against Chios ; and the next
day we touched at Samos ; and the day after we came
to Miletus. 16 For Paul had determined to sail past
Ephesus, that he might not have to spend time in Asia ;
for he was hastening, if it were possible, to be at
Jerusalem the day of Pentecost.
13. the ship. The party had apparently chartered a coasting
vessel from Troas to Patara ; and this explains Paul's ability to decide
(ver. 16) where they should, or should not, touch. He may still
have been afraid of plots on the part of the Jews, and therefore
avoided vessels which sailed direct, taking pilgrims to Jerusalem for
Pentecost.d intending himself to go by land. He may have wished that
the disciples should have a few more hours of his instruction by
accompanying him.6 But it is more likely that he wanted to be
alone for a while. We generally have him brought before us amid
«¦ J. Robertson, p. 268; Gilbert, p. 170; Bungener, p. 291; Ramsay, Paul,
p. 291. b Johnston, p. 139. ° Macduff, Paul, p. 299.
A Rackham, Ads; Pask, p. 292; Hausrath, iv. 107. u Olshatisen, p. 591.

330 THE ACTS. XX. 13-16
the bustle of cities or disputes in the synagogues. And in so busy
a life his spirit must often have longed for solitude. As Jesus
sought His Father on the hill-top in the silent watches of the night
(Matt. xiv. 23), Paul may have welcomed this opportunity of quiet
communion with the God of nature. a
16. had determined to sail past Ephesus. Not because he
did not love Ephesus, but because he loved it too dearly to go there
for so brief a stay as alone was now possible.0
the day of Pentecost. He says (xxiv. 11) that he went to
Jerusalem ' to worship '. His object was to cement union between
the Gentile and the Jewish branches of the Church ; and it was
important to show his respect for one of the great feasts. He may
also have felt that, since the festival would bring a large number of
foreign Jews to Jerusalem, the presentation of his collection at such
a time would publish the happy relations between the Gentile
Christians and their brethren.0 17-35
17 But from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called to
him the Elders of the Church. 1S And when they were
come to him, he said to them, Ye need not to be told
what manner of life I led with you all the time from the
first day that I set foot in Asia, 10 serving as the Lord's
bondman with all lowliness of mind, and with tears, and
with trials which befell me by the plots of the Jews : —
20 that I kept back nothing that was profitable, but
declared it to you, and taught you publicly and from
house to house, 21 testifying to both Jews and Greeks
repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord
Jesus Christ. 22 And now, behold, I go bound in the
spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall
befall me there ; 2:5 save that the Holy Spirit testifieth
to me in city after city, saying that bonds and afflictions
await me. 2i But I hold not my life of any account as
precious to myself, if only I may accomplish my race
a J. Robertson, p. 269; Macduff, Paul, p. 290. b Arnot, p. 441.
0 Ramsay, Paul, p. 296; McGiffert, p. 339.

THE ACTS. XX. 17-35 33>
and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus,
to testify the glad tidings of the grace of God. 25 And now,
behold, I know that ye all, among whom I went about
preaching the kingdom, shall see my face no longer.
26 Wherefore I protest to you this day that I am pure
from the blood of all men. 27 For I shrank not from
declaring to you the whole counsel of God. 28 Take
heed to yourselves, and to all the flock in which the
Holy Spirit hath set you as overseers to shepherd the
Church of God, which he purchased for himself through
his own blood. 29 1 know that after my departing
grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing
the flock : 30 and from among your own selves shall
men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the
disciples after them. 31 Wherefore watch, remembering
that by the space of three years I ceased not to admonish
every one night and day with tears. 32 And now I
commend you to God, and to the word of his grace,
which is able to build you up and to give you your
inheritance among all them that have been sanctified.
33 1 coveted no man's silver or gold or apparel. 34 Ye
yourselves know that these hands ministered to my
necessities and to them that were with me. 33 In all
things I gave you an example, that so labouring ye ought
to help the weak, and to remember the words of the
Lord Jesus, how he himself said, It is more blessed
to give than to receive.
18. he said to them. This speech is the only one in the Acts
which it is practically certain that Luke himself heard ; and it arrests
attention by many marks of individuality. a It is even possible that
he may have taken it down in a sort of shorthand, since Galen
mentions that his lectures were taken down by his medical
students ; and Luke, as a physician, may have acquired the art.0
At any rate, of all the speeches in the Acts this contains most
a Ropes, p. 76. b Chase, p. 112.

332 THE ACTS. XX. 17-35
of Paul and least of Luke.a It contains not only many peculiar
Pauline words and phrases, but much Pauline mannerism. The-
same interruption to the flow of thought caused by strong under
currents, the dismissal of topics that presently force their way in
again, which are seen in his letters are seen here.0 Moreover,
the references to experiences at Ephesus which are not recorded
in ch. xix but are alluded to in Paul's letters (i Cor. iv. 12;
2 Cor. i. 8) show the trustworthiness of the report.0 Hence Ewald
is justified in saying that ' to doubt the genuineness of this speech
is folly itself '. And herein lies its value for us. It reveals Paul as
nothing else does. The man who spoke it is no longer a man of
eighteen centuries ago ; he is of yesterday ; of to-day. He speaks as
we speak and feels as we feel ; or rather as we fain would speak
and feel. d
what manner of life I led. The personal references, which are
a marked feature of the speech, are characteristic of Paul even in his
letters, and are therefore naturally found in such an outpouring of
his heart as this. Like Samuel (1 Sam. xii. 3), he appeals to the
knowledge and recollection of his hearers ; as he does in 1 Thess.
ii. 1, 5, 11, and in many other passages in his epistles.9.
19. serving. The Greek word is used by Paul no less than six
times in his letters. He loves to call himself ' the slave of the
Lord '.
plots. These are not recorded in ch. xix, but may be referred to
in 1 Cor. iv. 10 seq. ; xv. 30, 31 ; 2 Cor. i. 4 seq. ; vii. 5 ; xi. 23 seq.
20. I kept back nothing. This is in thorough harmony with
utterances in his letters. 'Not handling the word of God deceitfully'
(2 Cor. iv. 2). ' Am I seeking to please men ? If I were still pleas
ing men, I should not be the bond-slave of Christ' (Gal. i. 10). 'So
we speak, not as pleasing men, but God which proveth our hearts '
(1 Thess. ii. 4, and cf. ver. 11).
21. repentance . . . and faith. This summary is precisely what
he had recently set forth at length in his letter to the Romans/
22. I go bound in the spirit. He knew that his Lord had set
him a task, and ' necessity was laid upon him ' till it was accomplished.
It is only by realizing that Paul regarded this journey as one of
unavoidable duty that we can understand his determination to
a Gardner, p. 404. b Chase, p. 235.
0 McGiffert, p. 339. A Bungener, p. 115.
L Maclaren, ii. 188; Chase, p. 236. ' Stokes, ii. 410.

THE ACTS. XX. 17-35 333
persist at all hazards. On other occasions he did not expose himself
needlessly to danger (xix. 30 ; xx. 3). But now he was engaged in
a work which he regarded as the consummation of his previous
labours. He was going with a band of representative Gentile
converts, bearing to Israel offerings of love. Once he had not meant
to go himself (see on ver. 4) ; the resolution of going had been
gradually formed : he had come to feel that his work among the
heathen had reached a certain degree of completeness. But he went
with grave misgivings. Everywhere he had encountered . hatred and
persecution from the Jews. His danger at Corinth (ver. 3) was fresh
in his memory. And what chiefly caused their hatred was the
success of his preaching to the Gentiles. Why should it be other
wise at Jerusalem ? a
24. accomplish my race. This vigorous figure is a favourite
with Paul. It was as a race that life presented itself to him — an
appointed field for continuous effort, all directed to one goal. And
what was now aspiration became calm retrospect later, and he could
write, 'I have accomplished my race' (2 Tim. iv. 7).b
The A. V. adds ' with joy ' — the insertion of some copyist, who
took the words from Phil. i. 4 or Col. i. 1 r. They lower the whole
idea ; for Paul was thinking solely of his work, and of himself not
at all.0
25. see my face no longer. His work in the future was to be
in the West and not among them. The 'no more' of the A. V. is
a wrong translation of the Greek word, though his mind was no
doubt, from his consciousness of the danger of his present mission,
impressed with the idea that he would never re-visit Ephesus.d If
the Pastoral Epistles are genuine, this presentiment was falsified
(1 Tim. i. 3; iii. 4; iv. 13); if they are not, they show that there
was an early tradition that he was released from his imprisonment.
In either case they are evidence that this speech is not a fictitious
composition, since no romancer would have put into Paul's mouth
a quasi-prediction which was not fulfilled.6
28. Take heed to yourselves. Cf. the closely parallel passage
in 1 Tim. iv. 16.
overseers. ' Bishops ' (R. V.) is a very unfortunate translation,
since it conveys an idea wholly foreign to the atmosphere of Ephesus
in the middle of the first century. That the Greek word has here
a Baumgarten, ii. 321, 363 seq. b Maclaren, ii. 194.
c Maclaren, ii. 200. a Rendall, Acts; J. Robertson, p. 270.
e Chase, p. 262.

334 THE ACTS. XX. 17-35
no such official sense is shown by the absence of any reference to
bishops in Eph. iv. ir. Paul is addressing 'elders' (ver. 17), who
were not independent heads of separate societies ; and this word is
not a title at all, but merely denotes their work — the oversight of the
flock (cf. 1 Pet. v. 2, where the corresponding participle is used).
29. after my departing. That is, after my death. The Greek
word means ' arrival ' — arrival at home ; cf. Phil. i. 23, ' to depart and
to be with Christ' a
wolves. That is, enemies from without the fold. He doubtless
felt that the Judaizers, who had corrupted his teaching in Galatia,
were sure to appear in Asia.
30. from among your own selves. How sadly this anticipa
tion was realized may be seen from the warnings in the Pastoral
Epistles (1 Tim. i. 10; 2 Tim. i. 15 ; ii. 17, 18) against Phygelus and
Hermogenes, who had turned away all Asia from Paul ; and against
Hymenaeus and Philetus and Alexander, who were infected with the
errors of the Gnostics.0 His long residence in Ephesus may well
have enabled Paul to detect the germs of these evils. Thirty years
later, John, writing from Ephesus, speaks (r John ii. 19) of 'many
anti-Christs ' who ' went out from us, but were not of us '.
31. with tears. Once more, it is the same Paul whom we know
from his letters (2 Cor. ii. 4 ; Phil. iii. 18).
32. to build you up. Another favourite figure with Paul. How
these Elders would recall this language about ' building ' and ' inheri
tance', when they received the letter in which (Eph. ii. 20-22) he
dwelt on the building of Christians into a holy temple and on the
inheritance of the saints ! °
33. I coveted no man's silver or gold. He had but too good
reason for this disclaimer. One of the slanders which his enemies
industriously propagated was that his collection for the poor of
Jerusalem was really for himself. In commercial Ephesus many
probably were ready to attribute their own mercenary motives to
others. Paul's letters show his keen sensitiveness to such imputa
tions of self-seeking.
or apparel. The wealth of Orientals consisted largely of clothing.
Compare Naaman's 'changes of raiment' (2 Kings v. 5), and our
Lord's allusion (Matt, vi, 19) to the 'moth'; and to the 'rust' (or
'blight') which attacked grain, the other chief form of wealth in
the east. a Chase, p. 263. b Stokes, ii. 420. ° Fraser, p. 183.

THE ACTS. XX. 17-35 335
34. these hands. As he held them up, they saw a tongue of
truth in every seam that marked them. Luke has made no mention
in ch. xix of Paul's manual labour at Ephesus, but these words are
confirmed by i Cor. iv. 12, written from Ephesus — 'We toil, working
with our own hands.'
and to them that were with me. Timothy's ' often infirmities '
(1 Tim. v. 23) may have incapacitated him at times from working.
35. I gave you an example. So he says (1 Cor. xi. 1), 'Be ye
imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ ' (cf. also Phil. iii. 17).
so labouring. That is, as I did, and with the like motive.
Hence ' the weak ' will not mean ' the poor ', but the weak morally —
imperfect disciples, who might be caused to stumble if large demands
for maintenance were made by the Elders. At Ephesus, where
pseudo-spiritual arts had been so commonly practised for lucre, it
was specially desirable that the leaders of the Church should be
above suspicion of interested motives."
the words of the Lord Jesus. This ' Beatitude ' is recorded
here only. We do not know on what particular occasion the words
were spoken by the Lord, but we cannot read the Gospels and find
a day on which He was not saying them in His life. It was the one
thing which He, who ' came not to be ministered unto, but to minister ',
was ever saying, and which Calvary finally illustrated.0
36-38
30 And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down
and prayed with them all. 37 And they all wept sore,
and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, 38 sorrowing
most of all for the word which he had spoken, that they
should behold his face no longer. And they brought
him on his way to the ship.
36. he kneeled down. It is interesting to note the attitude
assumed in prayer. The usual posture of the Jew was standing
(Matt. vi. 5), but our Lord knelt at Gethsemane (Luke xxii. 41).
37. they all wept sore. If Paul were more hated than most
men, he had greater need of love than most, and he received it richly
from his disciples.0
a Maclaten, ii. 193; Fraser, p. 181. b Parker, iii. 6, 56; Maurice, p. 321.
c Gilbert, p. 172; F. B. Meyer, p. 145.

336 THE ACTS. XX. 36-38
Since Timothy is not mentioned as being present at Jerusalem, he
may have returned with the Elders to Ephesus, which seems to have
been specially entrusted to his care. Gaius would represent the
Churches of Galatia at Jerusalem.3-

CHAPTER XXI
1-6
1 And when we had torn ourselves away from them,
and had put to sea, we ran with a straight course to Cos,
and the next day to Rhodes, and thence to Patara.
2 And finding a ship crossing to Phoenicia, we went
aboard and put to sea. 3And when we had sighted
Cyprus, we left it on the left hand and sailed to Syria
and landed at Tyre ; for there the ship was to unlade
her cargo. 4 And having sought out the disciples we
stayed there seven days. And they said to Paul through
the Spirit that he should not set foot in Jerusalem.
5 But when we had completed our time, we departed
and went on our journey : and they all with wives and
children brought us on our way till we were out of the
city : and kneeling down on the beach we prayed : 6 and
after bidding each other farewell, we went on board the
ship, and they returned home.
2. finding a ship. The small coaster had anchored each night;
at Cos, Rhodes, and Patara successively. At the last place Paul was
fortunate in finding a larger vessel which could venture to sail across
the open sea to Tyre. This not only ensured his arrival at Jerusalem
in time for the Feast, but left several days at his disposal.11
3. Cyprus. The sight of the island must have carried Paul's
thoughts back to the day, some ten years before, when he had
landed there with Barnabas to begin his missionary travels.0
her cargo. Doubtless corn, since Tyre, having but little territory,
was dependent on a foreign food-supply. It must have been a large
a Lewin, ii. 96. b Johnston, p. 141 ; Lewin, ii. 101. ° Maclaren, ii. 216.

THE ACTS. XXI. 1-6 337
ship, since she required seven days to unload and take on board
a fresh freight.a
4. sought out. The word implies that the disciples were few in
number. When the Church at Jerusalem was scattered after the
death of Stephen, some (xi. 19) travelled as far as Phoenicia, and may
have preached at Tyre. And Paul had himself passed through the
country on his way from Antioch to the Conference (xv. 3), and may
have had friends there.
His unflagging zeal in improving every opportunity is as astonishing
as it is characteristic. After the exhausting work of many years, he
might well have excused himself if he had spent the intervals of
travel in taking rest, especially in view of the anxious days before
him at Jerusalem. Yet at Troas he finished a week of evangelistic
work by conversing with the disciples throughout the night. At
Miletus he sent for the Elders of Ephesus and addressed them.
At Tyre he ' sought out ' the disciples, and laboured for seven days
among them.1'
through the Spirit. From the Spirit came the prediction of
danger ; the prohibition was the voice of human affection. The
danger Paul himself already knew through the Spirit (xx. 13), but he
had made up his mind that he ought to face it (xx. 22). God's calls
do not supersede the duty of personal judgment. If one voice of
God seems to say ' Stay ', another voice of God may say ' Go '. Both
courses may be right, but one may be nobler than the other.0
5. they all. The word suggests that they were a small community
(see on ver. 4). The similarity and the difference between this leave-
taking and that at Miletus show the eyewitness. In both we see an
affectionate farewell ; but here there were no bonds of long comrade
ship, none of the clinging love.cl
with wives and children. The statement is interesting as
showing the place held by the family in the Christian society.9
7-14
7 And when we had landed at Ptolemais from Tyre,
so completing our voyage, we saluted the brethren and
remained with them one day. 8 And on the morrow we
a Stokes, ii. 425 ; Ramsay, Paul, 300. b Taylor, Paul, p. 386.
c Maclaren, ii. 218; Vaughan, iii. 174. d Maclaren, ii. 218.
0 Iverach, p. 149.
1320 Z

338 THE ACTS. XXI. 7-14
departed and came to Caesarea ; and going to the house
of Philip the Evangelist, who was one of the Seven, we
stayed with him. 9 Now this man had four daughters,
virgins, who prophesied. 10 And as we stayed some
days, there came down from Judaea a certain prophet,
Agabus by name. n And coming to us, and taking up
Paul's girdle, he bound his own hands and feet, and said,
Thus saith the Holy Spirit, so will the Jews bind at
Jerusalem the man whose girdle this is, and will deliver
him into the hands of the Gentiles. 13 And when we
heard these things, both we and they of that place
besought him not to go up to Jerusalem. "Then
answered Paul, What mean ye, weeping and breaking
down my resolution ? For I am ready not to be bound
only but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the
Lord Jesus. ll And when he would not be persuaded,
we desisted, saying, The will of the Lord be done.
8. the Evangelist. The word denotes (Eph. iv. n) a definite
calling, much like that of our ' missionary '.
These were Paul's last days of freedom, and he could not have
spent them in more congenial society. Philip was, like himself,
a Hellenist ; he had early displayed, in his preaching to the Samari
tans and in his baptism of the Ethiopian, the large sympathy and
clear vision which marked the Apostle to the Gentiles ; and he still
showed the same breadth of view in his preference of half-heathen
Caesarea to orthodox Jerusalem for a residence.8- Yet there can
have been few stranger meetings in history. Philip had been the
colleague of Stephen, and Paul had been the young man at whose
feet the stoners of Stephen laid their garments. Philip had been
driven from Jerusalem by the persecution which Saul directed ; and,
as the result, had anticipated Paul as a preacher to the Gentiles.
And now the dreaded persecutor was the honoured guest of the
persecuted ; and he who laid the foundation the host of him who
raised the superstructure.1'
a Farrar, ii. 28S ; Ilaweis, p. 167.
b Thomas, Ads, p. 374 ; Johnston, p, 141 ; Row, p. 83.

THE ACTS. XXI. 7-14 339
And another guest was present who adds to the interest of the
meeting. Did Philip, we wonder, realize that the physician, who
listened so eagerly to all that he could tell him about the early days
of the Church, was going to perpetuate the record for all time ? a
9. four daughters, virgins. That is, they were not merely
unmarried, but devoted to a celibate life such as Paul commends
in 1 Cor. (vii. 8, 26, 34).b
This verse has no bearing on the events, and the daughters are
not said to have made any prediction about Paul's fate. Harnack
thinks0 that they were the source of much of Luke's information
(he may have met them again on his departure from Caesarea
(xxvii. 1)); and, if so, the fact would explain his mention of them
(see on xix. 29).
Eusebius, however, saysd that Philip 'the Apostle' had four
daughters who prophesied. It is, of course, possible that he con
fused the two Philips. But he may be right ; and in that case this
verse must be a later insertion by some copyist who confused them.0
10. Agabus. Luke appears, from the way in which Agabus is
introduced, to have forgotten that he had previously mentioned him
(xi. 38 — but see note there). Coming from Judaea, Agabus would
have sufficient knowledge of the state of feeling in Jerusalem to
assure him of dangerous consequences if Paul ventured thither, as
the acknowledged leader of Gentile Christianity, at the time of a great
festival, when fanatic Jews from all parts would be present.1'
ir. he bound his own hands. The Old Testament prophets
were fond of such figurative actions (Jer. xiii. 4 ; xxvii. 2 ; Isa. xx. 3) ;
but ' Thus saith the Holy Spirit ' is a significant change from the Old
Testament formula, ' Thus saith the Lord.' s
will deliver him. Jews would deliver him to Gentiles, as they
had his Master. But there the curtain fell. Would his Master's fate
be his? The half-disclosure was more trying to the courage than
full details would have been.h
12. besought him. This fresh prediction intensified the im
pression made on the minds of Paul's own company by the prophets
at Tyre. Even his chosen friends, who knew all that he hoped to
effect by this journey, joined in trying to dissuade him from going
further. All the greater must be our admiration for the man who
a Maclaren, ii. 230. b Plumptre, Acts. c Ads, p. 192.
d //. E. iii. 39. ° Langc, Acts.
' Lange, Ads; Barnes, p. 272 ; Rendall, Expositor, iv. viii. 321.
* Rackham, Acts. h Maclaren, ii. 220.
Z 2

340 THE ACTS. XXI. 7-14
would not be driven from his purpose even by this storm of love ;
who, while tremblingly responsive to every thrill of human affection,
was set firm as a rock for duty.a
13. I am ready. Centuries after, a man who in many ways closely
resembled Paul showed the same courage. Luther, when the beloved
Spalatin besought him not to venture to Worms, replied, ' Though
devils be as many in Worms as tiles upon the roofs, yet thither will
Igo.'b It is clear that to Luke this last journey of Paul to Jerusalem
recalled another journey, when One greater than Paul steadfastly set
His face to go, also for the last time, to the Holy City. He too had
known His danger, and He too had to resist the remonstrance of His
friends. ' Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone thee ; and
goest thou thither again ? ' (John xi. 8). The servant was following
in the Master's steps, and was filled with his Master's spirit (see on
xxiii. 35).0
also to die. Paul was not to die at Jerusalem. To him, as to
us, the future was left in obscurity. The one thing clearly revealed
to him was his duty. 15-25
15 And after these days we packed our baggage and
went on our way up to Jerusalem. 16 And there went
with us also certain of the disciples from Caesarea,
conducting us to one Mnason of Cyprus, an early dis
ciple, with whom we were to lodge. 17 And when we
were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.
18 And the day following Paul went in with us to James;
and all the elders were present. 19 And when he had
saluted them, he narrated in detail the things which God
had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry. 2U And
they when they heard glorified God : and they said to
him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands there
are among the Jews which have accepted the faith ; and
they are all zealots for the Law : 21 and they have been
a Iverach, p. 151 ; Baumgarten, ii. 399; Haweis, p. 169.
b Thomas, Ads, p. 376. c Iverach, p. 152 ; J. Robertson, p. 277.

THE ACTS. XXI. 15-25 341
sedulously instructed respecting thee that thou teachest
all the Jews which are among the Gentiles apostasy
from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children
or to walk after the customs. 22 What is it then ? They
will certainly hear that thou art come. 23 Do therefore
this that we say to thee. We have four men who are
under a vow ; 2i these take, and purify thyself with them,
and bear their charges, that they may shave their heads :
and all shall know that there is no truth in the things
that they have been instructed respecting thee ; but
that thou thyself also walkest in observance of the Law.
[25 But, as touching the Gentiles which have accepted
the faith, we wrote giving judgment that they should
keep themselves from food offered to idols, and from
blood, and from what is strangled, and from fornication.J
15. packed our baggage. It is possible that the ' contribution '
consisted in part of clothing and provisions. But Professor Ramsay
may be right a in understanding the Greek word to mean ' having
saddled horses ' ; that is, they spared themselves the fatigue of two
long stages on foot by riding the first day as far as Mnason's house.
16. Mnason. According to the Bezan text his house was not at
Jerusalem, but in some village on the way thither (see on ix. 32).
And this is probably correct. There would be no need to make
provision for Paul's lodgement at Jerusalem, where he would easily
obtain hospitality ; but it would be a great convenience to break the
long sixty-four miles' journey at a friend's house.0
of Cyprus. He may have been a friend of Barnabas and so
specially interested in Paul. If he was one of the Cypriotes who
first preached to Greeks at Antioch (xi. 19), he would know both
Barnabas and Paul. Luke may have stayed with him at other times
and have gleaned information from him. If so, the fact would
account for the full mention of his name (see on ver. 9 and xix. 29).
an early disciple. This mention of the early date of his con
version may imply that, as the number of the first disciples lessened,
the next generation accorded a sort of honour to the survivors.0
a Paul, p. 302. b Ramsay, Expositor, v. i. 213 seq.
0 Maclaren, ii. 232.

342 THE ACTS. XXI. 15-25
17. to Jerusalem. Henceforward the narrative becomes much
fuller, and it is clear that Luke must have had a definite purpose
in devoting so disproportionate a space in his work to the arrest and
imprisonment of Paul. Throughout the book, whenever Christianity
comes into contact with the Roman authorities, its harmless character
is vindicated. He now shows that, in the person of its chief missionary,
it was after the fullest investigation acquitted. a
the brethren. These were Paul's personal friends, who welcomed
him on his arrival. The formal meeting with the Elders is related in
the following verses.
18. with us. The 'we' breaks off at this verse, and does not
reappear till the departure from Caesarea (xxvii. r). Whether Luke
was with Paul between these points is doubtful.0 If he had been
with him during the two years of his imprisonment, it is difficult to
see how he could have failed to learn matters of which his history
betrays ignorance. On the other hand, there are scattered about
these chapters detailed statements which point to the eyewitness ;
such as the shutting of the Temple doors (ver. 30), the carrying of
the Apostle by the soldiers up the stairs (ver. 35), the motioning with
the hand (ver. 40), the silence which fell on the crowd when they
heard the words of Aramaic (xxii. 2), the tossing of garments and
throwing of dust (xxii. 23), the minute description of the plot
(xxiii. 12 seq.), &c.°
to James. The silence about the Twelve suggests that none of
them were now at Jerusalem.
all the elders. Owing to the known prejudice of the Christian
Jews against Paul, James had not called together the whole Church,
but only the officials/1
The whole tone of the narrative implies that Paul was coldly
received. We are not told of any expression of gratitude for the
splendid offering from the Gentile brethren. It looks as though his
misgiving as to its reception (Rom. xv. 31) was confirmed. Nor do
we hear that the Christians of Jerusalem later put in so much as
a word on his behalf with either the Jewish or the Roman authorities,
or expressed any sympathy with him during his long imprisonment at
Caesarea. And this conclusion is borne out by the Epistles, which
say so much of the collecting of the contribution, but are silent about
the reception with which it met.6
a McGiffert, p. 346. b Harnack, Acts, p. 72.
c M. Jones, p. 165. A Rackham, Acts.
e Farrar, ii. 293 ; Schaff, i. 357; Gilbert, p. 175.

THE ACTS. XXI. 15-25 343
19. he narrated. Ending, no doubt, by pointing to his com
panions, the living attestation of the wonderful work of God among
the Gentiles. a
20. glorified God. But abstained, apparently, from any acknow
ledgment of Paul's great work.
how many thousands. The number is surprising, even if it is
a natural hyperbole to denote an indefinite multitude. But it may
include the Christians in the towns of Judaea as well as those in Jeru
salem ; and at Pentecost many Christian Jews from other countries
might be present.0 And secular writers to some extent confirm the
statement. Tacitus says that under Nero ' a vast multitude of Chris
tians ' were punished. And Pliny, writing half a century later,0 bears
witness to the wide spread of Christianity, not only in the towns, but
in the villages. The temples, he says, were deserted and industries
affected by the paucity of those who purchased animals for sacrifice.'1
they are all zealots. This zeal for the law no doubt won tolera
tion for the Christians at Jerusalem. And it would be intensified by
the crisis through which the nation was passing, the time being one
of acute political excitement in Judaea. But it was a serious obstacle
to Christianity to have its centre in such a hot-bed of fanaticism ; and
we can see that the destruction of Jerusalem rendered it a signal
service by helping it to disengage itself from Judaism.6
21. sedulously instructed. The Judaizers had been studiously
spreading reports that Paul was teaching Jews to abandon the Law.
In the eyes of the Church at Jerusalem this was a far more serious
matter than the previous question at the Conference about the
status of Gentile converts. If it were true, his action would be
as abhorrent to the Judaizing Christians as to the Jewish zealots.
And though it was untrue, there would be no difficulty in adducing
plausible grounds for the assertion. We know from Paul's letters
that he taught plainly that, in the matter of a sinner's acceptance
with God, Jew and Gentile were on the same level (Rom. ii and iii).
He spoke as strongly as possible against the Law as a means of
salvation. He taught that Gentiles might become Christians without
first becoming Jews. But he had never taught the Jew to throw
aside the Law. ' Was any man called being circumcised,' he wrote,
'let him not become uncircumcised' (i Cor. vii. 18). He himself
must have kept up his Jewish habits or he would not have been
a Baumgarten, ii. 422. b M. Jones, p. 178 ; Schaff, i. 357.
0 Ep. ad Trap. xcvi. a Ropes, p. 61.
p Purves, p. 160; Renan, Paul, p. 291.

344 THE ACTS. XXI. 15-25
tolerated at all among the Jews. His intercourse with them during
such periods as his first three months at Ephesus would have been
impossible, if he had not been living in general compliance with the
ceremonial law. But these things were to him external matters, in
no way essential to the religious life. And his removal of them from
the class of things necessary to the class of things optional was
undoubtedly a first step to their abolition. And the Judaizers, seeing
this, charged him with actually teaching that which was certainly
the logical outcome of his teaching.3
23. this that we say. The brethren at Jerusalem had evidently
determined on this policy before Paul's arrival.0
24. purify thyself with them. The whole process is wrapt
in obscurity, but apparently the person who paid the expenses of
a poor Nazirite (which was a fairly common act of charity at Jerusa
lem) so far shared the vow as to stay with the Nazirite in the Temple
during the entire period of seclusion, in order to avoid the danger of
ceremonial pollution.0
What the Elders recommended was a practical refutation of the
dangerous charge. It would, they thought, dissipate all suspicion, if
Paul were himself publicly to conform to one of those ' customs '
which he was accused of subverting. And the plan would have the
further advantage of keeping him within the precincts of the Temple,
secure, as they hoped, from danger for seven days, by the end of which
time many of the fanatical pilgrims would have left Jerusalem.11
bear their charges. The Nazirite vow was a costly one, and the
victims required for four men would entail a considerable expendi
ture. Professor Ramsay calls attention e to the indications that at
this time Paul had command of large sums. A poor man would not
have been treated with the respect paid to him at Caesarea, on the
voyage, and at Rome. Felix did not look for a small bribe from him.
An appeal to the Emperor was a costly matter. He took his com
panions with him on the voyage. He was able to hire a lodging at
Rome. It may be that on his missionary journeys he had deliberately
chosen to follow Jesus' command to His Apostles (Luke ix. 3), and
exemplify the dignity of labour by accepting no maintenance from his
converts. But it is possible that property had recently come to him
(see further on xxii. 28).
a Johnston, p. 143; Morrison, p. 114; J. Robertson, p. 282; Iverach, p. 155;
Burrell, p. 267 ; Taylor, Paul, p. 380. b A. T. Robertson, p. 223.
c Farrar, ii. 296. d Bungener, p. 304 ; Baring-Gould, p. 390.
e Paul, p. 310 seq. ; Pictures, p. 295.

THE ACTS. XXI. 15-25 345
25. But, as touching. This verse is almost certainly a gloss. If
it is genuine, it is an explanation, to prevent any misunderstanding,
that their view of the relation of Gentile Christians to the Law had
undergone no change since the decision at the Conference.3-
26-36
20 Then Paul took the men, and the next day purify
ing himself with them went into the temple (notifying
the clay on which the purification would be ended),
until the offering should have been offered for every
one of them. 27 And when the seven days were on the
point of being completed, the Jews from Asia saw him
in the temple, and began to stir up all the multitude ;
and laid hands on him, 28 crying out, Men of Israel, help !
This is the man that teacheth all men everywhere
against the people and the Law and this place; and
further brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath
defiled this holy place. (29 For they had previously
seen with him in the city Trophimus the Ephesian,
whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the
temple). 30 And all the city was moved, and the people
ran together ; and they laid hold on Paul and dragged
him out of the temple ; and straightway the doors were
shut. 31 And as they were seeking to kill him, tidings
went up to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem
was in a ferment. 32And forthwith he took soldiers
and centurions and ran down upon them ; and they,
when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, left off
beating Paul. 33 Then the tribune making his way to
him arrested him, and commanded that he should be
bound with two chains, and sought to learn who he was
and what he had done. ",4 And some shouted one thing
against him, some another, among the crowd ; and when
a Morrison, p. 115.

346 THE ACTS. XXI. 26-36
he could not know the certainty for the uproar, he
commanded that he should be taken into the barracks.
35 And when he came upon the stairs, he had to be
carried by the soldiers on account of the violence of
the crowd: for the multitude of the people followed
after, crying out, Away with him.
26. Then Paul. If he had refused, his refusal would have been
at once construed as proof of the charge against him.a Nor was there
any real inconsistency in his action. For it was not Jewish ceremonial
to which he objected, but the insistence on it as necessary. His epistles
show that he no longer attached importance to it, but they furnish no
evidence that he was personally lax with regard to it. Probably he
was ready at any time to perform ceremonial functions, not only with
a clear conscience, but, when Judaizing opposition to his Gentile
mission did not come into play, with gladness and reverence. He
was, and he remained, a Jew. Here in the venerable Mother Church it
was right to respect the national customs, and, if necessary, accom
modate himself to weaker brethren.15 Had he not avowed to the
Corinthians (i Cor. ix. 20) the principle of becoming as a Jew to
Jews ? And had he not yet more recently written to the Romans
(xiv. 13) that ceremonial observances should be complied with rather
than a stumbling-block be thrown in another's way ?
At the same time, it must be confessed that his action in consent
ing surprises us, especially as he was accompanied by delegates from
his Gentile Churches. He was not perfect, and he appears on this
occasion to have been unduly influenced by considerations of expedi
ency. He was not the scrupulous observer of the ceremonial law
which the Elders wished him to appear to be. We know that he
did not mean to imply by his action that such ceremonial observance
was in the least degree necessary to salvation. But what did he
intend by it? Clearly, to convey to the Christians at Jerusalem
something more than that he considered it a matter of indifference.
The object was to show that he was under no circumstances a
neglecter of the law, but as scrupulous a keeper of it as themselves.
' That all may know that there is no truth in the things that they have
been instructed respecting thee ' was the reason given (ver. 24).0
a A. T. Robertson, p. 224.
b Maclaren, ii. 240; Harnack, Acts, p. 236; Schaff, i. 361.
c Blunt, ii. 100 seq.

THE ACTS. XXI. 26-36 347
And the result is instructive. He had stooped to a compromise,
not from tenderness towards weak brethren, but in order to conciliate
opponents. And, like most compromises, it failed. It not only did
not produce the desired effect, but actually precipitated the crisis
which it was designed to avert.8-
27. the seven days. This is usually understood of the time
occupied by the offerings of the Nazirites ; but it is at least possible
that it refers to the Pentecostal week, for which Paul desired to be
present (xx. i6).°
from Asia. Probably from Ephesus, since they recognized Tro-
phimus the Ephesian.0 Few of the Jerusalem Jews would know
Paul by sight, but the Ephesian Jews would know him well. They
had plotted against him in vain in the province (xx. 19) ; now their
opportunity had come. If the cry was raised by Alexander the copper
smith it will explain the statement (2 Tim. iv. 14) that this man had
wrought Paul ' much evil '.
28. that teacheth all men. The three first charges were a deft
combination of truth and falsehood. Paul had not taught ' against
the people ', but he had said that being a Jew would not save a man.
He had not taught ' against the law ', but he had said that it was not
binding on Gentiles. He had not declaimed ' against this place ', but
he had taught that the Temple was not the only place for worshipping
God acceptably.01 As for the further accusation, it was wholly false.
He had not brought ' Greeks ' into the Temple — not even the one
Greek whom malice multiplied into many. To do so would have
exposed Trophimus as well as himself to death, since the Romans
had given e the Jews the right to inflict the death penalty on any
Gentile who trespassed beyond the court of the Gentiles.f
29. they supposed. Not content with a malicious generalization
from a single individual, they further assumed a supposition to be
a fact. 30. all the city was moved. The populace was more than
usually excitable at the time of the great feasts, when it was swelled
by fanatical pilgrims. It does not appear that the ' many thousands
of believing Jews ' (ver. 20) interfered to save the man who had come
with a gift of love to their poor. If they did not make common
cause with their unbelieving brethren, they kept in the background.8
out of the temple. These scrupulous Jews would not defile the
a Maurice, p. 327; J. Robertson, p. 284. u Schaff, i. 361.
c Gilbert, p. 179. d Burrell, p. 271. e Josephus, B.J. vi. 2, 4.
f Maclaren, ii. 242 ; Buss, p. 330. e Cone, p. 137 ; Baumgarten, ii. 449.

348 THE ACTS. XXI. 26-36
holy place with blood. But their punctiliousness saved Paul's life.
By the time that they had dragged him to the outer court the Roman
troops were on the spot.a
the doors. Separating the inner court from the court of the
Gentiles. 31. went up. The writer was obviously familiar with the topog
raphy. The Roman garrison was quartered in the tower of Antonia,
overlooking the Temple court, with which it was connected by a
flight of steps.
32. centurions. The plural shows that the force amounted to
several hundreds. The rapidity with which they appeared suggests
that they were prepared. We know from the Gospels (Matt. xxvi. 5)
how anxious the Jewish authorities were to avoid all cause of popular
excitement during the festivals ; and the Roman tribune would share
that anxiety.b
left off beating Paul. Many of those present would remember
how, some ten years before this date, when a riot broke out in the
Temple at the Passover, the Roman guard had marched down and in
the panic that ensued hundreds had been trampled to death.
33. arrested him. It has been suggested that, though Aristarchus
could not have been with Paul in the inner court, since he was not
a Jew, he may have tried to shield him and have been arrested with
him, since he sailed with him from Caesarea (xxvii. 2) and is said by
Paul to be his 'fellow prisoner' at Rome (Col. iv. 10). But, if
arrested at this time, he could scarcely have been included in Paul's
appeal to the Emperor ; and the inference from Col. iv. 10 is doubt
ful, since in writing to Philemon (ver. 24) Paul calls him his 'fellow
worker ' and speaks of Epaphras as his ' fellow prisoner '. Thus it
looks as though Aristarchus did not sail as a prisoner to Rome, but
that at Rome Paul's companions relieved one another in voluntarily
sharing his captivity.0 37-39
37 And as Paul was about to be led into the barracks,
he said to the tribune, Have I leave to say somewhat
to thee ? And he said, Dost thou know Greek ? 3S Thou
art not, then, the Egyptian who a short while ago stirred
a Taylor, Paul, p. 384. b Buss, p. 334 ; Iverach, p. 159.
0 Encycl. Bibl., p. 299.

THE ACTS. XXI. 37"39 349
up insurrection and led out into the wilderness the four
thousand of the Assassins ? 33 But Paul said, I am a Jew,
of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no undistinguished city;
and I beseech thee, give me leave to speak unto the
people. 37. Have I leave? Note the calm courtesy of his request. A
moment before he had been face to face with death in its most
unnerving form. Yet he is not only ready to seize the opportunity
of speaking a word for his Lord, but is so far master of himself as to
be able to use all his resources, and to marshal his facts in the way
most likely to propitiate his hostile audience.a
38. Thou art not, then. Evidently it was notorious that this
Egyptian could not speak Greek ; and the tribune, being addressed
in that language, discovered that he was mistaken in his conjecture
about Paul. Two months before this time, as we learn from Josephus,0
an Egyptian fanatic gathered a large force of Jews and led them to
the Mount of Olives to see the walls of Jerusalem fall before him.
They were there attacked and massacred by Felix, but the Egyptian
himself escaped ; and the Jews whom he had duped would be furious
with him. Thus Lysias' conjecture that his unpopular prisoner was
the Egyptian was natural enough ; but Paul must have smiled at the
irony by which he, who had been for twenty years preaching the
Gospel, was mistaken for the leader of ' the Assassins ' — the name
assumed by a band of cut-throats who appeared about this time.
39. of no undistinguished city. The words appear to be a
plain reference to a passage in Euripides.0 Harnack thinks cl that
Paul may have wished to prove to the tribune that he was no
Egyptian fanatic, but a man of Hellenic culture.
It is strange that he did not appeal to his Roman citizenship, which
would at once have impressed the tribune with his respectability.
Professor Ramsay observes6 that Paul's answer shows his patriotic
love for his native city— that ' Tarsian ' was the description of him
self which lay nearest to his heart. Thus the spirit of patriotism
finds its consecration here. Doubtless the frail figure lifted itself at
the words, as at the ' But I am free born ' of xxii. 28.
give me leave. There was something strangely masterful in such
a Fouard, Paul, 371 ; Maclaren, ii. 245- h Antiquities, xx. 8. 6.
c Ion 8. toriv yap oiiic a<n/^os 'EWtjvoiv nihis. d Ads, p. 6o.
c Expositor, April, 1906.

350 THE ACTS. XXI. 37~39
a request at such a moment, and clearly the tribune recognized that
he had no ordinary man before him. Indeed, few men just rescued
from a violent death at the hands of an infuriated mob would have
been thus self-possessed. Probably we are liable to be misled by his
own account of what his enemies said of him (2 Cor. x. 10) — that
' his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible '—
as though it were a true description. But this scene should undeceive
us. Set upon and beaten by a mob, with difficulty rescued by soldiers,
with clothing torn and dishevelled, he has only to raise his hand and
speak, and the angry crowd is hushed and listens. a
It is likely that Paul had been longing, ever since his arrival in
the city, for an opportunity of addressing the people. Now the
chance offered, and he eagerly seized it. Yet his bodily suffering
from violence must have been less than his suffering in mind. He
had come to Jerusalem as a messenger of peace, full of yearning love
for his nation, laden with liberal gifts for her poor ; and he had been
met with nothing but ingratitude and murderous malice. Yet his
words betray no bitterness. To win them for his Master — that is all
he thinks of. Truly he is the man who wrote (1 Cor. ix. 16), ' Woe
is unto me, if I preach not the Gospel ! '

CHAPTER XXII
xxi. 40 - xxii. 5
40 And when he had o-iven him leave, Paul standing-
on the stairs motioned with his hand to the people ; and
when a great silence ensued, he spake to them in the
Hebrew language, saying, xxii- 1 Brethren and fathers,
hear ye my defence which I now make to you. 2 And
when they heard him speaking to them in the Hebrew
language, they kept the more quiet ; and he said, 3 1
am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in
this city at the feet of Gamaliel, trained in strict observ
ance of the Law of our fathers, full from the first of zeal
for God, even as ye all are this day : 4 for I persecuted
this Way unto death, binding and delivering into prisons
" Lyman Abbott, p. 13.

THE ACTS. XXI. 40 -XXII. 5 351
both men and women ; s as indeed the high priest can
bear me witness and the whole body of the elders ; from
whom I received letters also to the brethren, and was
on my way to Damascus, to bring them also who had
fled thither bound unto Jerusalem, that they might be
punished. 40. when he had given him leave. The concession has been
thought improbable. But strong men recognize one another : the
brave Roman was struck by the courage of the request. Besides, it
was clear that his prisoner was no ordinary criminal — the courteous
speech showed so much ; and Lysias' curiosity was excited. !V
a great silence. The sight of the small, fragile man with mobile
features, calmly superior to insult and violence, standing on the stairs
with the legionaries round him and the crowd below him, and com
manding silence with upraised hand, overawed the mob, and the
clamour died away into a hush of expectancy.0
in the Hebrew language. Not because they would not have
understood Greek, but because by speaking as a Jew in the Pales
tinian Aramaic he enlisted their sympathy ; whereas the use of the
Greek language would have served to emphasize the charge that he
was unfaithful to the traditions of his own people.
The statement that Paul spoke in Aramaic looks like the personal
touch of one who was present.0 Luke may have been himself there,
but we cannot be sure that he understood that language, though he
would easily gather the purport of the speech from bystanders. In
any case the Greek dress is his ; and the objection to the authen
ticity of the speech founded on the absence of Pauline expressions (1
is met by the fact that, as we have it, it is Luke's translation of the
original. We have seen (note on xiii. 16) that Luke gives typical specimens
of Paul's addresses to different audiences, That he was not content
to give a single specimen of his speeches in his own defence suggests
that the three discourses in ch. xxii, xxiv, and xxvi rest upon a
historical foundation.6
1. my defence. It was no time for argument, except the argu
ment of facts ; and his defence is an appeal to facts — the story of his
a Maclaren, ii. 246; J. Robertson, p. 2S7. b Ilaweis, p. 1S0.
0 Gardner, p. 409. d Davidson, Introd. to N. T.\\. 121.
0 Harnack, Acts, p. 130.

352 THE ACTS. XXI. 40- XXII. 5
life, and particularly of his conversion. Nearly a quarter of a century
had passed since that vision on the road to Damascus — years crowded
with all the stirring adventures of a missionary's life ; yet the story is
just the same. Lapse of time has not blurred the memory of that
wonderful experience ; imagination has not amplified the details ;
the vision, seen through the vista of years, does not seem an unreal
dream ; it is as vivid as ever. Nor does Paul apologize for his story
as something which his hearers might deem incredible. Quietly and
soberly he speaks of facts — of what he had seen and heard. His
Lord had met him and spoken to him — that was the great fact of his
life and the unanswerable defence of his creed. His former zeal for
the Law was the measure of the strength of the conviction which had
changed his whole life.3-
2. kept the more quiet. We have here an interesting indica
tion of the wide use of Greek in Palestine. It is clear that while
they preferred to be addressed in Aramaic, they would have under
stood Paul if he had spoken in Greek.0
3. I am a Jew. He uses the same words as he had just
addressed to Lysias, but the emphasis is adroitly changed. Tarsus
is no longer in the foreground, but Jerusalem.0
brought up. The Greek word implies that he had been sent to
Jerusalem at quite an early age, and this is borne out by xxvi. 4,
' My manner of life from my youth,' &c. When he left the city we
cannot say, but he can scarcely have been in Palestine in the
Baptist's time. Such a spirit as his could not fail to have been
influenced by a movement which swept through the whole country.
Nor can he have seen Jesus during His life on earth. The man
who felt his persecution of the Church as a lifelong reproach never
accuses himself with reference to Jesus personally ; and he speaks
(2 Cor. v. 16) of those who had known Jesus in the flesh as boasting
a superiority over him.d
Gamaliel. The assertion that he had been a pupil of Gamaliel
has been questioned ; but his letters conclusively prove that he had
been trained in the Rabbinical schools. They also refer to the
same facts as are emphasized here — his Jewish birth, his Jewish
training, and his zeal for the law carried to the point of persecution
(cf. Phil. iii. 5, 6; Gal. i. 13, 14).0
even as ye all. So far from protesting against the fanaticism to
which he had so nearly fallen a victim, he implies, with his usual
a Parker, iii. 80 seq. b Row, p. 239. ° Howson, Character, p. 30.
11 Hausrath, iii. 32. ° Wrede, p. 4; M. Jones, p. 186.

THE ACTS. XXII. 6-11 353
tact, that he could easily understand their feeling and make allow
ance for it. For was not he too a Jew, and had not he too once
been as furious against Christianity as they were ? a
4. this Way. He avoids any irritating name for the Christian
body.0 5. the brethren. He tactfully adopts his hearers' point of view,
and calls the unconverted Jews of Damascus ' brethren ', and no
where in this speech applies that word to the Christians.0
6-1 1
6 And it came to pass that, as I was journeying and
drawing nigh to Damascus, about noon there suddenly
flashed from heaven a great light round about me.
7 And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to
me, Saoul, Saoul, why art thou persecuting me ? 8 And
I answered, Sir, who art thou ? And he said unto
me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou art persecuting.
9 And they that were with me beheld indeed the light,
but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.
10 And I said, What shall I do, Lord ? And the Lord
said to me, Rise, and go into Damascus, and there it
shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for
thee to do. n And when I could not see for the glory
of that light, being led by the hand of them that were
with me, I came into Damascus.
6. it came to pass. For the discrepancies in the three accounts
of the Conversion see on ix. 3. That Luke left them, when he
could easily have moulded them into conformity, is the best proof
that this speech is not a mere composition of his own, and that
his narrative is essentially truthful. It has been pointed out d that,
whereas Paul might well repeat the story of his Conversion, Luke,
who had already narrated it, would be unlikely to repeat it twice, if
he were merely composing speeches.
a Fraser, p. 190. b Rackham, Ails.
0 Howson, Character, p. 33. ,l Headlam, Hastings' Did., art. ' Acts, '.
i=:u A a

354 THE ACTS. XXII. 12-16
12-16
12 And one Ananias, a devout man according to the
Law and so reported of by all the Jews that dwelt
there, 13 came to me and, standing over me, said, Brother
Saoul, look up. And in that very hour I looked up on
him. 14And he said, The God of our fathers fore
ordained thee to know his will and to see the Righteous
One and to hear a voice from his mouth. 15 For thou
shalt be a witness for him to all men of what thou hast
seen and heard. 10 And now why delayest thou ? Rise,
and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on his
name.
12. a devout man. He tactfully avoids calling him a 'disciple',
as Luke calls him in his narrative (ix. 10).
13. came to me. He says nothing of the vision to Ananias,
and so avoids quoting expressions, such as 'thy saints ' (ix. 13) and
'the Lord Jesus' (ix. 17), which would have irritated his Jewish
audience.8 15. to all men. He is approaching the point of danger — the
commission to preach to the Gentiles — but he avoids the use of the
offensive word as long as possible. 17-21
17 And it came to pass, when I had returned to
Jerusalem, that, as I was praying in the temple, I fell
into a trance, 18 and saw him saying to me, Make haste
and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, seeing that they
will not receive thy witness concerning me. 19 And I
said, Lord, they themselves know that I imprisoned and
beat in synagogue after synagogue them that believe in
thee ; 20 and when the blood of thy witness Stephen was
shed, I was even myself standing by and approving,
and keeping the garments of them that slew him.
a Howson, Character, p. 37.

THE ACTS. XXII. 17-21 355
21 And he said to me, Go thy way ; for I will send thee
forth far hence to Gentiles.
17. when I had returned. He omits all mention of his preach
ing at Damascus, since he does not wish to recall the fact that he
had there been persecuted by the Jews.a
in the temple. So little had his conversion to Christianity
estranged him from the Temple that on his first return to Jerusalem
he went thither to pray ; and so little had it estranged him from
his own people that his first anxiety was to preach to them.0
18. saw him. Some0 assign this vision to the time of the visit
to Jerusalem recorded in xi. 30. But the context here appears to
be conclusive against them. As Paul went to Damascus (ver. 6),
Jesus appeared to him ; when he ' returned ' to Jerusalem, Jesus
appeared again to him. There cannot have been a return to
Jerusalem between two appearances thus narrated. Nor can Paul
have been told at the visit of xi. 30 that he was to be sent to the
Gentiles, among whom he had then been working for years, and
from whom at Antioch he had just come on a deputation.^
19. I said. His object in recording this visit is to show that
his heart was so set on preaching to his own countrymen that he
hesitated to obey the Divine command until it was repeated sharply
and decisively.
20. thy witness. Not 'martyr' (A. V.). The word must bear
the same meaning as it does in ver. 18.
21. to Gentiles. At last the word they hated could be no longer
kept back, and it fell like a spark into a magazine. There was an
instant explosion of fanatical rage. They did not believe that
Jesus was the Messiah, but it was not His name which roused their
fury. It was that a Jew, who claimed that the Messiah had come,
should assert that he was sent by Him to set up His Kingdom
among the Gentiles.9 22-29
22 And they gave him audience as far as this word,
and then lifted up their voice and said, Away with such
a fellow from the earth ; he ought not to have been
*" Howson, Character, p. 38. b Range, Acts.
- ° Thiersch, p. 119; Ramsay, Paul, p. 60. d Zeller, i. 202.
- Gilbert, p. 182. A a 2

356 THE ACTS. XXII. 22-29
allowed to live. 23And as they cried out and shook
their garments and cast dust into the air, 24 the tribune
commanded that he should be brought into the barracks,
and be examined by scourging, that he might know for
what cause they shouted thus against him. 25 But when
they stretched him forward with the thongs, Paul said
to the centurion which stood by, Does the law permit
you to scourge a man that is a Roman and uncon-
demned ? 26 And when the centurion heard it, he went
to the tribune and told him, saying, What art thou
about ? This man is a Roman. 2T And the tribune
came and said to him, Tell me, art thou a Roman ?
And he said, Yes. 28 And the tribune answered, With
a great sum obtained I this citizenship. And Paul
answered, But I am a citizen by birth. 29 Straightway
then they departed from him which were about to
examine him : and the tribune also was afraid, when he
knew that he was a Roman and that he had bound him.
23. cast dust. A token of detestation. So Shimei threw dust
at David (2 Sam. xvi. 13).
24. the tribune. He was more puzzled than ever. He would
probably be unable to follow the Aramaic speech, and may also
have been annoyed at the result of the indulgence which he had
granted. If no one can tell him what all this business means, he
will take summary measures to find out.
25. when they stretched him forward. The same difficulty
suggests itself as at xvi. 37. Why did not Paul proclaim his citizen
ship earlier ? Why wait till he had been bound ? The explanation
may be that hitherto he had deliberately abstained from cutting
himself off from his own people, whom he so passionately loved,
by claiming to be a Roman. Now, as he was being bound for the
scourging, the realization came to him that he had no longer
a place among his own nation. He had just delivered a speech
in which he had based his defence on his Jewish birth and training
and zeal, and it had been of no avail. His life would have been
sacrificed, if the Roman power had not stepped in and saved him.

THE ACTS. XXII. 22-29 357
Henceforth he must look to Rome for safety, and claim his Roman
privileges, if he was to have justice done to him. Thus the assertion
of his citizenship at this crisis marks a definite epoch in his career.
For the future he is Paul the Roman Christian, not Paul the Jew.a
Does the law. It was a capital offence to scourge a Roman
citizen (see on xvi. 37). The misstatement in Lysias' letter (xxiii.
26) is the measure of his alarm at having ordered such a procedure.0
uncondemned. See on xvi. 37. '-- -¦ T'-
27. art thou a Roman? The pronoun is emphatic in the
Greek. Lysias was more than ever perplexed by this intelligence.
28. With a great sum. From his name Lysias was probably
a Greek by birth. If he had been an Italian, he would have been
a citizen by the Julian Law of 90 b. c.°
by birth. Some ancestor must have won the citizenship as a
reward for distinguished service. The idea that Paul was descended
from a freedman is negatived by the various indications that his
family was of good social position. He was educated by the greatest
of the Rabbis ; he was at an early age entrusted by the Jewish
authorities with an important commission ; his nephew could gain
ready access to the Roman tribune ; he was treated as a person of
consequence by Felix, Festus, Agrippa, and Julius.d
29. had bound him. That is, for scourging. It refers to
ver. 25, not to xxi. 33. He was still chained to a soldier (ver. 30
and xxvi. 29) after his citizenship was known.

CHAPTER XXIII
xxii. 30- xxiii. 10.
30 And on the morrow, desiring to know for a surety
of what he was accused by the Jews, he loosed him,
and commanded the chief priests and all the Council
to assemble, and, bringing Paul down, set him among
them. xxni- *And Paul looking stedfastly on the Council
said, Brethren, I have lived in all good conscience
before God until this day. 2 And the high priest Ananias
a M. Jones, p. 190. b Benson, p. 553. c Buss, p. 336.
a Ramsay, Paul, p. 1 25.

358 THE ACTS. XXII. 30-XXIII. 10
commanded them that stood by him to smite him on
the mouth, 3 Then said Paul to him, God shall smite
thee, thou whitewashed wall : and sittest thou to judge
me according to the law, and commandest me to be
smitten contrary to the law ? * And they that stood by
said, Revilest thou God's high priest ? 6 And Paul said,
I wist not, brethren, that it was the high priest ; for it
is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of a ruler of thy
people. ° But when Paul perceived that the one part
were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out
in the Council, Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of
Pharisees : touching the hope of a resurrection of the
dead I am on my trial. 7 And when he had so said,
there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the
Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 For Sad
ducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel
nor spirit ; but Pharisees acknowledge both. 9 And
there arose a great clamour ; and some of the Scribes
of the Pharisees' part sprang to their feet and contended,
saying, We find no evil in this man ; but if a spirit spake
to him, or an angel — ! 10 And when the dissension
waxed violent, the tribune, fearing lest Paul should be
torn in pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go
down and take him by force from among them and
bring him into the barracks.
30. commanded the chief priests. The Procurator had power
to summon the Sanhedrin ; and in his absence the tribune repre
sented him in Jerusalem. a
set him among them. Lysias did not mean them to judge
the case of a Roman citizen ; but, being ignorant what Paul's
offence was, and seeing that it was apparently some infraction of
Jewish law, he wished them to investigate it in his presence.
1. looking stedfastly. The words may imply that he eagerly
scanned the faces before him, to see if any of his former associates
a Josephus, Anliq. xx. 9. 1 ; Buss, p. 367.

THE ACTS. XXII. 30-XXIII. 10 359
were there. Gamaliel was dead, but his two sons, Simon and
Jesus, must have been known to Paul.a
on the Council. The people had rejected the Gospel— what
will the Council do? That Council, which had passed sentence
on Jesus, and Peter, and Stephen, is to have one more, and last,
opportunity of accepting it.b
Brethren. He does not address them as Peter had done (iv. 8),
'Ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel', but speaks as an
equal to equals. The court was held, not to try a criminal, but to
investigate facts for the guidance of the tribune. Such was evidently
Paul's view of the situation.0
I have lived. The speech was probably on much the same
lines as that to the people on the preceding day. But whereas he
had then appealed to the outward facts which had determined his
action, he is now anxious to make clear his motives. He sums
it all up by saying that throughout he had followed his conscience.0"
He had been conscientious, when he persecuted the Church ; he
had thought, he says elsewhere (xxvi. 9), that he ' ought to do many
things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth '. He had been
conscientious, when he changed his whole life : ' I was not ', he says
(xxvi. 19), 'disobedient to the heavenly vision.'
This appeal to conscience is thoroughly Pauline. Cf. 2 Cor. i. 12,
' For our glorying is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in
holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the
grace of God, we behaved ourselves in the world.'
2. Ananias. A man of bad character and notoriously corrupt,
he had been deposed from his office by the Romans. That he was
now presiding may imply, either that he had been reinstated, or
that he had never ceased to be regarded by the Jews as high
priest. commanded. That the chief magistrate in presence of the
Council could be guilty of an act of such ruffianly rudeness is
a significant indication of the degradation of Jewish society at this
time." Josephus speaks f of the overbearing manners of the Jewish
ecclesiastics, and of the brutality of their retinues to those unable
to resist. 8
At the same time it must be admitted that Paul, in thus beginning
his speech with a protestation of his own rectitude, showed a lack
a Taylor, Paul, p. 396; Macduff, Paid, p. 308. b Stifler, p. 223.
° Eadie, p. 367 ; Arnot, p. 459. ' d Baumgarten, iii. 26.
0 Arnot, p. 460. ' Antiq. xx. 9. 2. B J. Thomas, p. 147.

360 THE ACTS. XXII. 30-XXIII. 10
of the tact, and desire to conciliate his audience, and power to
adapt himself to circumstances, which are such striking character
istics of all his other recorded utterances.8- It may well have been
the case that he was shaken and unnerved by the terrible experiences
of the preceding day.
to smite him on the mouth. A favourite form of argument
among the Jews (Luke vi. 29; John xviii. 22; 2 Cor. xi. 20).
Ananias perhaps wished to assert himself in the presence of the
Gentile soldier who had 'commanded' the Sanhedrin to meet;
perhaps he resented the claim to equality on Paul's part implied
in the word ' Brethren ' ; perhaps he regarded the assertion of
conscious rectitude as a side-blow at his own notoriously evil life.
Or it may be, as Professor Ramsay thinks, that the Greek word
translated 'lived' (ver. 1), which literally meant 'acted as a citizen',
and implied the free self-governing life of the Greek, seemed to
Ananias to be a provocative admission of the offence charged
against him, viz. that he sacrificed Jewish customs to Gentile
modes of life.0
3. God shall smite thee. The wanton outrage provoked an
outburst of anger on Paul's part. His conduct has been contrasted
with that of Jesus (John xviii. 22), who, ' when he suffered, threatened
not' (1 Pet. ii. 23). But when Jesus was smitten on the face, the
outrage was not so gross as now ; it was not by the express com
mand of His judge. And the reason which Paul gave for his anger
is not a personal one. He protested against an act of flagrant
injustice, not only in his own name, but in that of every man in all
time who is outrageously treated.0
thou whitewashed wall. In a court of justice he had out
raged the justice which he was there to administer. His white
robe, clothing a character that was not white, reminded Paul of the
outward cleanness and the inward corruption of a whitewashed
sepulchre. ^
5. I wist not. It is easy to imagine half a dozen reasons for
such want of recognition, but very difficult to find one for the
insertion of the incident without some historic justification.6 The
obvious explanation of the words is the best. Paul had heard the
order given, but did not know from whom it came. Finding that
" M. Jones, p. 198.
D Maurice, p. 330; Farrar, ii. 320; Ramsay, Pictures, p. 281.
0 Farrar, ii. 323; Bungener, p. 314; Parker, iii. 100.
A Taylor, Paul, p. 404. e Gardner, p. 390.

THE ACTS. XXII. 30- XXIII. 10 361
it had come from the high priest, he admits, not that the rebuke
was undeserved, but that it was unbecoming on account of the
respect due to the office.
6. when Paul perceived. The Pharisees and Sadducees
probably sat apart, and any one familiar with Jerusalem could tell
from dress and demeanour who were Pharisees and who Sadducees.
But these words may be Luke's own inference, and not derived from
Paul, just as ver. 8 is his own explanation. a
I am a Pharisee. The question has been raised0 whether
Paul was ingenuous in speaking thus. Certainly he was not any
longer a Pharisee in the sense in which his hearers would understand
the term. He had no sympathy with the Pharisees' respect for
tradition, their formalism, their ostentation, their self- righteousness,
their view that good works constituted the ground of hope towards
God. But we must remember that the name has become to us
a synonym for religious pride and hypocrisy owing to our Lord's
stern rebukes of the corruption of Pharisaism. The Pharisaic ideals
were in no way opposed to the Christian spirit. In its origin
Pharisaism was a revolt against the secularization of the national
life, and a recognition of the sacred mission of the Jewish race.
Amid the prevailing indifference the Pharisee stood for a strict
religious life as against the scepticism and worldliness of the Sad
ducee. And so far as these two parties were concerned, Paul was
wholly with the Pharisee and against the Sadducee.0
touching the hope of a resurrection. Here the same question
has been raised. Was Paul quite honest in making this statement ?
So far as there was a specific charge against him, was it not of
teaching against the Law, the Temple, and the people? (xxi. 28).
His belief in the doctrine of the resurrection would account only for
the hostility of the Sadducees, whereas the opposition to him came
more from the Pharisaic defenders of the Law. In regard to that
doctrine he was in the same case as the Christian Jews of Jerusalem,
who were not molested on that account. And his own words later
(xxiv. 21) may imply that he himself felt some misgiving about this
utterance.3 On the other hand, that he honestly felt that his belief
in the resurrection was part of the charge against him is shown by
his words before Agrippa (xxvi. 6-8). And Festus says (xxv. 19)
a Iverach, p. 166 ; Page, Acts. b e. g. by Gilbert, p. 187.
r Barnes, p. 299; Johnston, p. 13; F. B. Meyer, p. 19; Pfleiderer, Paulinism,
ii. 245.
d Gilbert, p. 188; Baumgarten, i. 206.

362 THE ACTS. XXII. 30-XXIII. 10
that the controversy was about ' one Jesus who was dead, whom Paul
affirmed to be alive '. If Paul felt that the root of the charge against
him was his Christianity, he might well say that his teaching of the
Resurrection of Christ was called in question. From the beginning
it was the great theme of Apostolic witness-bearing (ii. 24). And
Paul laid the same stress upon it (xiii. 30), even when addressing
Gentiles (xvii. 31). The foundation of his faith was the Resurrection
of Christ, through which a new principle of life was introduced into
humanity ; so that he could write to the Corinthians, ' If Christ be
not raised, your faith is vain' (i Cor. xv. 17)."-
But, in truth, these questions are irrelevant. They are based on the
assumption that Luke has recorded Paul's speech, whereas it is
obvious that he has given only the barest outline of it. It is clear
from ver. 9 that the Apostle had told once more the story of his
conversion, as he had told it on the preceding day to the people,
and as he subsequently told it to Agrippa. Luke narrates only two
sentences — one which led to the collision with Ananias, the other
which enlisted the support of the Pharisees. When the story of the
Risen Jesus provoked expressions of scepticism from the Sadducees
and counter-expressions of sympathy from the Pharisees, Paul
availed himself of the divisions between them. °
8. acknowledge both. That is, a resurrection and the existence
of angels. The Sadducees regarded the angels mentioned in the
Pentateuch, which they accepted, not as separate existences, but as
manifestations of the Deity.
9. or an angel — ! The rest of the sentence was drowned in the
uproar raised by the Sadducees. The words ' let us not fight against
God' (A. V.) have been introduced by a copyist from Gamaliel's
speech (v. 39).
10. to go down. Apparently Lysias with some soldiers was in
a gallery overlooking the court. I I
11 And the night following the Lord stood over him
and said, Be of good cheer ; for as thou hast testified
concerning me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear testi
mony also at Rome.
ir. the night following. This verse somewhat interrupts the
a Schaff, i. 365. b Rendall, Acts; Rackham, Acts.

THE ACTS. XXIII. n 363
context, and is perhaps interpolated by Luke into his source (see on
xviii. 9),a but need not be on that account less authentic.
On a similar occasion the entire Church of Jerusalem had watched
and prayed for Peter (xii. 5), but we hear of no such intercessions
now on behalf of Paul (see on xxi. i8).b
Visions such as this came to Paul at other crises of his career
(see on xviii. 9). Now, after two days of danger and excitement, the
reaction which comes even to the holiest had come to him, and God
seemed to have deserted His servant. The result of his two last
speeches had dispelled any lingering hope of winning his countrymen
for Christ. Alone, and without sympathy from those who should have
given it, he looked forward with dread to the uncertain future. Did
life or death lie before him ? More work for his Master, or silence
for ever in this world? The words of the Lord show what his
thoughts had been. To his cry of despondency came the answer,
' Be of good cheer ' ; to his misgivings as to his action before the
Council came the verdict of Divine approval, ' As thou hast testified
concerning me at Jerusalem ' : to his fear that his long-cherished
hope of seeing Rome (xix. 21 ; Rom. i. 13) must now be frustrated
came another ' must ' from the Divine lips, assuring him of its
fulfilment. Better this vision to such a man as Paul than even the
opening of the prison at Philippi by an earthquake. The Divine
voice not only approved the past, ' as thou hast testified,' and
lightened the present, ' Be of good cheer,' but pointed to a future,
' so must thou bear testimony.' ° He had the reward which he
valued most — faithful work acknowledged by the promise of more
work — and the assurance, not that his troubles should cease, but
that his witness-bearing should continue.
so must thou. When this announcement was made, he was
a prisoner in the hands of enemies, with no powerful friends to
champion him. But, while man proposes, God disposes. Enemies
and strangers concur to bring about the Divine purpose. Various
agencies are pressed into service. The implacable enmity of the
Jewish leaders, the impartial justice of Roman law, the plot of
assassins, the love of a nephew, the transference to Caesarea, the
avarice which led the corrupt Felix to leave him for two years in
bonds, the hesitation of Festus to act with justice, the consequent
necessity in self-defence of appeal to the Emperor— all these things
conspired to bring the great design to its consummation.3
a Harnack, Acts, p. 142. " Fouard, Paul, p. 376.
" Haweis, p. 196. d Arnot, p. 470; Gurney, p. 287.

364 THE ACTS. XXIII. 12-22
12-22
12 And when it was day, the Jews banded together
and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they
would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.
13 And they were more than forty who made this con
spiracy. 14 And they came to the chief priests and
elders and said, We have bound ourselves under
a solemn curse to taste nothing until we have killed
Paul. 15 Now therefore do ye with the Council signify
to the tribune that he bring him down to you, as though
ye would judge of his case more exactly : and we, before
he come near, are ready to slay him. 16 But Paul's
sister's son heard of their lying in wait, and presenting
himself at the barracks he went in and told Paul. 17 And
Paul called to him one of the centurions and said, Take
this young man to the tribune, for he hath something
to tell him. 18 So he took him and brought him to the
tribune and said, The prisoner Paul called me to him
and asked me to bring to thee this young man, who hath
something to say to thee. 19 And the tribune took
him by the arm, and going aside asked him privately,
What is that thou hast to tell me ? 20 And he said, The
Jews have agreed to ask thee to bring down Paul
to-morrow to the Council, in the hope of learning some
what more exactly concerning him. 21 Do not thou
therefore yield to them ; for there lie in wait for him
more than forty of them, who have bound themselves
under a curse neither to eat nor to drink till they have
slain him : and now are they ready, looking for the
promise from thee. 22 So the tribune let the young man
go, charging him, Tell no man that thou hast showed
these things to me.
1 2 . the Jews. They doubtless belonged to the sect of the Zealots,

THE ACTS. XXIII. 12-22 365
who held that to kill God's enemies was pleasing to God. But since
Luke calls them simply ' Jews ', and records no demur on the part
of the Jewish leaders to the murderous plan, it is clear that he wishes
to convey that the people and their rulers alike rejected the offer of
the Gospel. a
neither eat nor drink. Just such a reckless anathema as that
of Saul, which nearly led to the death of Jonathan (i Sam. xiv. 24).
We are not told what happened when their vow was not accomplished,
but the subtlety of the Jewish doctors would be equal to finding
a reason for declaring it void.0
14. the chief priests and elders. Their acquiescence throws
a lurid light upon the moral corruption of the time. These Zealots
were going to commit a horrible crime, but they claimed the sanction
of their religion, and obtained from their religious leaders, not only
this, but a promise of co-operation. So Christ had foretold (John
xvi. 2), 'Whoso killeth you will think that he doeth God service.'
The men who had not scrupled to accept the offer of Judas to betray
the Master felt no hesitation in accepting this proposal for the
murder of the servant.0
16. Paul's sister's son. We know no more of him than is here
told. He may have been sent, like his uncle, to Jerusalem to study
Under some distinguished Rabbi, and have heard of the plot from
a fellow-student. A secret known to so many, in a city where the
popular sentiment was strongly with them, might easily leak out.
Or possibly some one, to whom the plot was disclosed, either from
interest in Paul or from abhorrence of the crime, gave information to
Paul's relative. That his nephew sought to save his life is not
enough to prove that his sister was a Christian. The words (Phil.
iii. 8), ' For whom I suffered the loss of all things,' receive a natural
interpretation if Paul had been disowned by his family. At any
rate, the nephew had his uncle's courage, since he ran the risk of
death at the hands of the conspirators if it became known that he
had divulged their secret.d
he went in. The permission to see friends is said later (xxiv. 23)
to be an indulgence. Lysias may have granted the permission as
some atonement for having ' bound ' a Roman citizen.

a Maurice, p. 332 ; Baumgarten, iii. 47.
b Pressense, p. 369 ; Rackham, Acts.
c J. Robertson, p. 292 ; Benson, p. 567 ; Taylor, Paul, p. 401.
d Gilbert, p. 190 ; Kitto, p. 430 ; Weinel, p. 177 ; Ramsay, Paul, p. 3G ; F. B.
eyer, p. 150.

366 THE ACTS. XXIII. 12-22
17. Paul called. His trust in the Divine promise did not lead
him to intermit his own efforts to provide for his safety. He laid
his plans as skilfully and energetically as though all depended on
his own judgment and promptitude (see on xxvii. 24 and 33). It
is not faith, but presumption, which denies the need of the co
operation of the human agency, if the promises of God are to be
fulfilled.8- 22. Tell no man. There was no need to warn him of the risk
which he ran by playing the informer. But the tribune feared that
the Jews, if they learnt that their plot was known, would form some
other combination. Against this one he could now guard.
23-30
23 And he called to him two of the centurions and
said, Make ready two hundred soldiers to go as far as
Caesarea, with seventy h©r.seraen and two hundred
lancers, at the third hour of the night : 24 and he bade
them provide beasts that they might set Paul thereon
and bring him safe to Felix the governor. 23 And he
wrote a letter after this form : — 26 Claudius Lysias to
his Excellency Felix, greeting. 27 This man was seized
by the Jews and was about to be killed by them, when
I came upon them with the soldiery and rescued him,
having learned that he was a Roman. 28 And desiring to
know the cause wherefore they accused him, I brought
him down into their Council ; 29 and found him to be
accused about questions of their law, but to have nothing
laid to his charge deserving of death or imprisonment.
30 But when it was shown to me that there would be
a plot against the man, I sent him to thee forthwith,
charging his accusers also to speak against him before
thee. 23. And he called. The tribune was responsible not only for
the life of his prisoner but for good order in the city, and he de
termined to send Paul to the Procurator.
"¦ Arnot, p. 466 ; Taylor, Paul, p. 407.

THE ACTS. XXIII. 23-30 367
at the third hour. When it would be dark and the streets
deserted. a The accuracy of Luke's figures — nearly five hundred
men — has been questioned ; and they are certainly startling. But
the tribune had been unable to discover what Paul's offence was.
It evidently stirred the Jews to fury ; and the large number of the
conspirators made him fear the possibility of a popular rising.
24. provide beasts. The distance was seventy miles, so that
a change of horses was necessary.
Felix. A Greek slave, he had through the influence of his brother
Pallas, who was a favourite of the Emperor Claudius, been given the
Procuratorship of Judaea. He was one of the vilest men of this
dark age. Tacitus has summed up his character b in the bitter
epigram, ' A king in power, with the spirit of a slave.' In the hope
of winning the national support to his position in Judaea, he had
married a daughter of Herod Agrippa.0
25. a letter. The dexterous mixture of truth and falsehood
proves its genuineness.11 cCdgtw*'?
27. This man. The Greek word implies respect. It is clear
that Lysias, like others who came into contact with Paul, had been
impressed by his personality.
having learned. He states two facts which were true, but he
puts them into a combination which was false. He had rescued
Paul and he had learnt that he was a Roman ; but the former fact
preceded the latter and was not the consequence of it.6 And he
discreetly says nothing of the proposed scourging.
29. nothing laid to his charge. Much of the lenient treatment
with which Paul afterwards met may have been due to this favourable
report. f
31-35
31 So the soldiers, as it had been commanded them,
took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris.
:;2 But on the morrow they left the horsemen to go on
with him and returned to the barracks. 33 And they,
when they were come to Caesarea and had delivered
the letter to the governor, presented Paul also before
a Farrar, ii. 333. " Hist. v. 9.
L Thomas, Acts, p. 411 ; Bungener, p. 321. A Farrar, ii. 333.
e Howson, Scenes, p. 113. r Lewin, ii. 155.

368 THE ACTS. XXIII. 31-35
him. 34 And when he had read it and inquired of what
province he was and learnt that he was of Cilicia, 35 1
will hear thee fully, said he, when thine accusers also are
come. And he commanded him to be kept in Herod's
palace. 32. returned to the barracks. After Antipatris the road
emerged from the defiles on an open plain. Paul was now at a safe
distance from Jerusalem, and the rest of the journey would be by
daylight.5- 33. to Caesarea. Philip and the Christians there must have
been startled at this speedy fulfilment of Agabus' prediction. Less
than a fortnight had elapsed since it was uttered, and Paul was in
charge of Gentile soldiers.0
34. of what province. Felix had been told that he was
a Roman citizen, and naturally wished to learn more about him.
The inquiry was not made to ascertain whether he had jurisdiction :
the fact that Paul had been arrested in Jerusalem gave him that:
35. in Herod's palace. Used at this time as the official residence
of the Procurator.
The narrative of the week which followed Paul's arrest is fuller
than that of any like period in the New Testament, except the week
of the Lord's Passion. Luke, who wrote both narratives, seems to
have been conscious of a parallelism between them. Both Jesus
and Paul journey to Jerusalem for a Feast : both are aware that
a crisis is impending : both are greeted by the Jewish crowd with the
cry, ' Away with him ' : both are tried before the Council and struck
on the mouth : both are delivered up to the Gentiles : both are accused
before a Roman governor who wishes to save them : both stand
before a King Herod : both are pronounced to have done nothing
deserving of death but are not therefore released.0
CHAPTER XXIV
i-9
1 And after five days the high priest Ananias went
down with certain elders and a pleader, one Tertullus ;
a Rendall, Acts. b Farrar, ii. 335 ; J. Robertson, p. 295.
0 Rackham, Ads, p. 404.^.; Johnston, p. 151.

THE ACTS. XXIV 1-9 369
and informed the governor against Paul. 2 And
when he was called, Tertullus began to accuse him,
saying, That by thee, your Excellency, we enjoy much
peace, and that by thy foresight matters are ordered
rightly for this nation 3 everywhere and in every way,
we acknowledge with all thankfulness. 4 But, that
I may not be tedious to thee, I pray thee to hear us of
thy clemency a few words. 5 For we have found this
man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of insurrection
among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ring
leader of the sect of the Nazarenes ; 6 who even sought
to profane the temple ; on whom also we laid hold ;
8 from whom thou wilt be able, by examining him thy
self, to obtain certain knowledge of all these things
whereof we accuse him. 9 And the Jews also joined in
the charge, affirming that these things were so.
1. after five days. Since, that is, Paul had been despatched
from Jerusalem. He left on the ninth day after his arrival, and this
was the thirteenth (ver. n). We may imagine the calm contempt
with which Lysias told the Jews, when they came with their request
for a further hearing of the case, that Paul was at Caesarea and that
they must carry their accusation thither.8- In their angry disappoint
ment they must have started almost instantly.
Ananias. They left no stone unturned to gain their end. The
high-priest, with the ' whitewashed wall ' rankling in his memory,
went in person ; and they engaged a skilled advocate to state their
case. They had already experienced Paul's powers in debate.
Tertullus. His name is Roman, and he was evidently one of
those lawyers who practised in the provincial courts. The proceed
ings were probably conducted in Greek, but ignorance of the forms
of Roman law made professional assistance necessary.
informed the governor. They appear to have applied for an
audience immediately on their arrival.
2. we enjoy much peace. Clearly we have only a summary of
his speech. But Luke gives the tactful preface, in which Tertullus
selected the one point on which it was possible to commend the
* Symington, p. 227.
13!9 B b

J7

o

THE ACTS. XXIV. 1-9

infamous Felix, who had been sent to Judaea to suppress a serious
outbreak and had done it successfully. And the allusion was all
the more adroit, because Tertullus was about to charge Paul with
being a disturber of the peace.
The contrast between the fullness with which the opening words
of Tertullus are recorded and the brevity with which his subsequent
statement of the charges against Paul is given may point a to the
presence of Luke himself, who began by reproducing the exact words
of the speaker and then, as the case advanced, contented himself
with jotting down a brief summary of what he heard ; so that what
he gives here may be a transcript of actual notes taken at the time.
4. may not be tedious. The gross compliments culminate in
the suggestion that they must be distasteful to so modest a man.1'
5. we have found this man. The first charge was an offence
against Roman law. Paul was ' a mover of insurrection '. It would
not be difficult to find plausible evidence to support it. His appear
ance had been, Tertullus might urge, the signal for disturbance
wherever he went. Plotted against at Damascus, plotted against at
Jerusalem, expelled from Pisidian Antioch, stoned at Lystra, scourged
and imprisoned at Philippi, accused of treason at Thessalonica,
haled before the Proconsul at Corinth, cause of a serious riot at
Ephesus, and now finally of a riot at Jerusalem — was he not ' a mover
of insurrection ' ? But though put in the forefront as the charge
which would at once attract the attention of a Roman magistrate, it
was not the policy of the Jews to prove it by specific evidence. Their
design was to get the Procurator to remit the case back to the San
hedrin as one which properly belonged to its jurisdiction. Hence
Tertullus passed to two other charges with which a Roman court
had nothing to do — an accusation of heresy and of profanation of
the Temple.0
a pestilent fellow. It is instructive to see how the noblest man
then living, whose name is now revered throughout the world, could
be described by a contemporary as ' a pestilent fellow ', and the
great Apostle of Christianity as ' a ringleader of the sect of the
Nazarenes 'A
the Nazarenes. This name, derived from the common descrip
tion of our Lord as ' Jesus of Nazareth ', is still used of Christians by
Mohammedans. They would naturally have been called ' Galileans ',
a Chase, p. in. b A. Robertson, Hastings' Did., art. Tertullus.
c Buss, p. 381 ; J. Robertson, p. 299 ; Taylor, Paul, p. 412.
0 Stanley, p. 174.

THE ACTS. XXIV. 1-9 371
but that name was appropriated already to the followers of Judas
of Galilee.8-
6. we laid hold. The A.V. has an addition after these words,
' and would have judged according to our law. But the tribune
Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of
our hands, commanding his accusers to come unto thee.' The
words are probably genuine, and were omitted on account of their
discrepancy from the previous account (xxiii. 27). They are a gross
misrepresentation of the facts, the motive being to prejudice Felix
against Lysias, and destroy the value of any testimony which he
might give in favour of Paul. The Jews wished to persuade the
Procurator to remit Paul's case to the Sanhedrin. His offences, they
urged, were not such as Roman law took cognizance of. Let him
therefore be handed over to the Jewish tribunal which would already
have dealt with him, if Lysias had not violently removed him from
the Council when he was actually arraigned before it.0
9. affirming that these things were so. They called no
witnesses, since their object was not to have sentence passed by
Felix, but merely corroborated the speech of their counsel by strong
assertions. But the court was not the Sanhedrin, where assertions
might take the place of evidence. Felix saw that it would be
a mockery of justice to hand over the prisoner to a tribunal where
these angry fanatics would sit as judges. And the anxiety of Jews
to suppress insurrection against Rome was in itself suspicious. All
the same, he might have acceded to their demand, as a cheap
method of ingratiating himself, if Paul had not been a Roman citizen,
and if Lysias' despatch had not represented the matter in a very
different light.0 IO-2I
10 And Paul, when the governor had signed to him to
speak, answered, Forasmuch as I know that thou hast
been many years a judge to this nation, I do cheerfully
make my defence ; u seeing that thou canst ascertain
that it is not more than twelve days since I went up to
worship at Jerusalem. 12 And neither in the temple did
a Church Quarterly, cxx, July; Benson, p. 580.
b Morrison, p. 125; J. Robertson, p. 299; Fraser, p. 204.
c Fraser, p. 205 ; Maclaren, ii. 282 ; Bungener, p. 323 ; J. Robertson, p. 399.
B b 2

372 THE ACTS. XXIV. 10-21
they find me disputing with any man, nor stirring up
a crowd either in the synagogue or about the city;
13 nor can they prove to thee the things whereof they
now accuse me. 14 But this I confess to thee, that after
the way which they call a sect so serve I the God of our
fathers, believing all things which are according to the
Law and which are written in the prophets ; 15 having
hope toward God, which these men themselves also
look for, that there shall be a resurrection of both the
righteous and the unrighteous. 16 Meanwhile I for my
part train myself to have alway a conscience void of
offence toward God and men. " Now after an absence
of many years I came to bring alms to my nation and
offerings : 18 and while I was so busied they found me
purified in the temple, with no crowd nor yet with
tumult : but there were certain Jews from Asia — "who
ought to have been here before thee and to have made
accusation, if they had aught against me. 20 Or else let
these men themselves say what wrongdoing they found
when I stood before the Council, 21 except it be for this
one utterance which I made standing among them,
Touching the resurrection of the dead I am on my trial
before you this day.
10. Forasmuch as. Tertullus had begun with flattery; Paul
begins with respect. If the character of the judge was disreputable,
his office was honourable. And it was true that Felix had had so
long an experience of Palestine as to enable him to see through
Tertullus' rhetoric. Before his appointment as Procurator he had,
according to Tacitus,8- served as Prefect in Samaria under his prede
cessor, Cumanus ; and through the influence of his brother Pallas
his tenure of the Procuratorship had been extended beyond the usual
period. Consequently Paul could feel that he was addressing one
who was no novice in Jewish affairs, but possessed an unusual know
ledge of the men with whom he had to deal.
a Ann. xii. 54.

THE ACTS. XXIV. 10-21 373
His speech is singularly calm and dignified. He had just been
called ' a pestilent fellow ', but there is no resentment in his reply.
Nor does he say one word of the murderous assault upon him in the
Temple, or of the later plot to assassinate him. He does not even
urge the plea, which might have appealed to a Roman, that the
hostility of his countrymen was due to the fact that he did not share
their narrow exclusiveness.a He pleads as a Jew on Jewish grounds.
His defence may be summed up thus : — The charge of criminal
conduct is not true ; the other charges are true, but involve no
criminality. 15. these men. The Sadducee Ananias must have chafed at this
statement that all orthodox Israelites believed in a resurrection.0
of both the righteous and the unrighteous. Gardner thinks °
that these words must be due to Luke, since they give an incorrect
view of the Pauline doctrine of the resurrection. He holds that
1 Thess. iv and i Cor. xv show that to Paul the future life was
absolutely bound up with being ' in Christ '.
16. a conscience void of offence. The Greek word is Pauline,
being found in the New Testament only here and in i Cor. x. 32
and Phil. i. 10. Again, it must have been gall and wormwood to
Ananias to stand there and hear the very words repeated, for uttering
which a few days before he had commanded Paul to be smitten on
the mouth. d
17. alms. This is the one direct mention in the Acts of the
Collection which holds so prominent a place in Paul's letters. It is
a warning not to found arguments on Luke's silence.
offerings. The next verse shows that the offerings in connexion
with the Nazirites are meant. But since Paul had not come to
Jerusalem with the object of bearing their charges, it looks as though
he had had some vow of his own to fulfil.6 If so, this would make
the suggestion of the Elders (xxi. 24) more reasonable.1
19. who ought to have been here. This was alone enough to
make the condemnation of a Roman citizen in a Roman court
impossible. The accusers who were present had not witnessed the
alleged offence : those who could have given evidence at first-hand
were not presents
21. except. What a comment is this exception on his assertion
a Maurice, p. 333. " Fraser, p. 213.
0 p. 406. See also McGiffert, p. 351. a Fraser, p. 212.
e Hort, Judaistk Christianity, p. 109. f Rackham, Acts.
8 Fraser, p. 207.

374 THE ACTS. XXIV. 10-21
that he had trained himself to have ' a conscience void of offence ' !
To a less sensitive conscience his action before the Sanhedrin would
have seemed venial enough. a
22-23
22 But Felix, having more exact knowledge of the
Way, adjourned the hearing, saying, When the tribune
Lysias comes down, I will determine your matter. 23 And
he gave order to the centurion that he should be kept
in custody, but should have indulgence, and that none
of his own people should be hindered from ministering
to him.
22. having more exact knowledge. The statement has been
variously understood, but the most natural meaning is that, from his
long residence in Palestine and from his marriage with a Jewess,
Felix' knowledge was greater than that of an ordinary governor and
more than Tertullus credited him with possessing.
adjourned the hearing. It is usually said that, since the evidence
did not sustain the charge, Felix should have acquitted the prisoner ;
but that he yielded, like Pilate, to the temptation to avoid offending
influential Jews, and escaped from the dilemma by adjourning the
case on the ostensible ground of wishing to hear Lysias' account,
while he compromised with his conscience by relaxing the severity of
the imprisonment. And in favour of this view is the fact that Lysias
had already declared Paul to be innocent, and was not, so far as we
know, ever summoned to Caesarea; and also Luke's statement
(ver. 26) that Felix' greed was excited by Paul's mention of money.
On the other hand, it may well have been the case that Paul's
innocence was by no means so apparent to Felix as it is to us. He
had admittedly been the occasion of a disturbance such as the Roman
authorities particularly disliked ; and Lysias would be able to give
evidence about the facts of the tumult — the only point which seemed
to require investigation under Roman law. He may also have been
genuinely anxious to secure Paul's safety. He was a Roman citizen,
and the manifest hatred of the Jews made it clear that to release him
on the spot would be to endanger his life.
23. in custody. His captivity was not rigorous, but it was not
a Benson, p. 585.

THE ACTS. XXIV. 22-23 375
the merely nominal imprisonment known as ' free custody '. He was
chained to a soldier (ver. 27 ; xxvi. 29).
his own people. Philip and the other Christians at Caesarea
would not fail to visit him. Luke and Aristarchus were both with
him when two years later he sailed for Rome, and may have been
with him earlier. He is certain to have written letters to his Churches
during this long captivity, and Timothy or Titus would take them and
bring replies. 24-27
24 But after certain days Felix came with Drusilla,
his own wife, who was a Jewess, and sent for Paul, and
heard him concerning the faith in Christ Jesus. 25 And as
he discoursed of righteousness and temperance and the
judgment to come, Felix was terrified and answered,
Go thy way for the present, but when I get a convenient
opportunity I will call for thee. 26At the same time he
hoped that money would be given him by Paul ; where
fore also he sent for him the oftener and communed with
him. 27But when two years were expired, Felix was
succeeded by Porcius Festus, and desiring to ingratiate
himself with the Jews left Paul in prison.
24. Felix came. Apparently after some occasion of absence from
Caesarea. with Drusilla. Her family had been connected by daik incidents
with Christianity. She was daughter of the murderer of James, great-
niece of the murderer of the Baptist, great-granddaughter of the
murderer of the Innocents. She was wife of Azizus, king of Emesa,
but had been seduced by Felix.
his own wife. The ' own ' is inserted to show the unofficial
character of this interview.3-
a Jewess. The insertion of the word suggests that the interview
took place at her request. The clever Herodian family seem to have
felt a strange interest in Christianity. One Herod had listened gladly
to the Baptist (Mark vi. 20) ; another was eager to see Jesus (Luke
xxiii. 8).b And now Paul was not called upon to make any defence :
a Rendall, Expositor, III. viii. 211. b Stokes, ii. 447.

376 THE ACTS. XXIV. 24-27
he was to plead, not for himself, but for his Master— for ' the faith in
Christ Jesus '.
25. of righteousness. Apparently he said nothing of Christ.
Christianity is morality before it is theology. He took common
ground with his hearers, speaking of broad moral truths accepted by
Gentiles as well as by Jews. And doubtless, with his unfailing tact,
he dealt with them in the abstract. He was too courteous for
personalities. None the less, he showed his usual courage. He
knew that Felix held his life in his hand, and that the resentment of
Drusilla was more to be feared than that of the Procurator. It was
Herodias, not Herod, who had demanded the head of the Baptist.
Yet to the Roman libertine and to the profligate Jewess he calmly
discoursed on ' righteousness and temperance and the judgment to
come '-
was terrified. He had expected to gratify an idle curiosity : he
found himself in the presence of a man who, speaking without fear
or favour, roused his conscience.a
a convenient opportunity. It is often said that Felix never
found this convenient opportunity. It is more instructive to mark
that, on the contrary, he had many subsequent opportunities (ver. 26),
but a covetous motive vitiated them. That is the real lesson.0
26. he hoped that money. Under Roman law a magistrate
accepting a bribe was liable to punishment by exile and confisca
tion ; but at this corrupt period it was a common practice. Felix
had heard that Paul had brought alms to the poor and also paid the
charges of the four Nazirites. But, apart from this, neither he nor
Festus nor Agrippa treated Paul as an obscure Jew of no social
importance. The fact that on his missionary travels he was often
without funds need not imply that he was without resources at Tarsus
and Jerusalem. And no doubt he could easily have obtained money
from his friends, and by a bribe secured his liberty and new oppor
tunities of missionary work. But he would not do evil that good
might come.0 Josephus represents d Felix as greedy for money.
27. Festus. We know nothing of him apart from the Acts and
Josephus. He was evidently a far worthier and more honourable
man than Felix. His appointment was probably in a.d. 60, and so
we have here one of the few data for fixing the chronology of the
Acts. * Iverach, p. 174. b Fraser, p. 218.
0 Buss, p. 389 ; Johnston, p. 155 ; Howson, Scenes, p. 115,
d Antiq. xx. 8, 9; ix. 2.

THE ACTS. XXIV. 24-27 377
desiring to ingratiate himself. History supplies the explana
tion. During Paul's imprisonment an open fight broke out between
Jews and Gentiles in the market-place of Caesarea : Felix let loose
his soldiers on the mob, and they killed many. The result was the
impeachment of Felix by the Jews, and he was recalled to Rome to
answer the charge. Claudius was dead, Pallas had lost his position
of influence, and the Jews had a powerful friend at court in the
person of the Jewess Poppaea. Hence Felix was eager to conciliate
them. To leave Paul in prison might propitiate them, whereas to
release him was certain to exasperate them further. So he left him
bound, careless of the fact that by so doing he gave to his successor
the impression that Paul was a criminal. a
There is some ground for thinking that 2 Tim. iv. 9-2 2 may have
been written at this time from Caesarea, and have been later incorpo
rated with other fragments of Paul's letters. He there says that he
had recently come from Corinth by way of Troas, and he wishes to
have the cloak which he left with Carpus brought to him before
winter. Thus death was not immediately impending, as in the earlier
part of the letter (iv. 6). Moreover he had left Trophimus at Miletus.
Tychicus had been with him, but had been sent back to Ephesus.
All these features suit the journey from Corinth to Caesarea described
in the Acts. The only difficulty is the remark (xxi. 29) that the Jews
had seen Trophimus with Paul in Jerusalem, and that is a parenthetical
statement by Luke, who may have been mistaken in the name. Further,
the allusion to Alexander the coppersmith (2 Tim. iv. 14) who did
him 'much evil' will agree with the statement (xxi. 27) that 'the
Jews from Asia ' stirred up the multitude against him : and the words
'But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me' (2 Tim. iv. 17)
agree with xxiii. 11, 'The Lord stood by him and said, Be of good
cheer ' ; while ' At my first defence no one took my part, but all
forsook me ' harmonizes with the account in the Acts of his friendless-
ness among the Jews.1*
It is thought by some that Luke's Gospel may have been written
during these two years. The time was adequate for its composition ;
the 'eyewitnesses and ministers of the word' (Luke i. 2) could be
found nowhere so easily as in Palestine ; and Paul, who must often
have felt the inconvenience of having only oral accounts of the Lord's
life to give to his converts, might gladly have encouraged the idea.
But though Luke may have gathered materials for his Gospel in the
' Fouard, Paul, p. 388; Iverach, p. 175. b Bacon, p. 196 seq

378 THE ACTS. XXIV. 24-27
course of this visit to Palestine, the narrative here is apparently not
part of the ' we ' source. The author seems to know no details of
these two years, relating nothing except in connexion with Paul's trial. a
But in another way these two years were fruitful. No doubt Paul
felt the loss of time for active ministry and longed to re-visit his
Churches. It must have seemed a mysterious providence which
condemned him to such inactivity. Yet we can see a reason for it.
He had long been over-taxing his strength. After twenty years of
incessant missionary work he required leisure to garner the harvest
of experience. None can tell how much the world owes to the
enforced solitude of its great leaders. This was the Patmos of Paul's
busy life — a precious season for turning his eyes inward and fostering
the work of grace there. The result is seen when we compare the
letters written before and after — those, say, to the Thessalonians and
Corinthians with those to the Ephesians and Colossians. The spiritual
advance is easily discernible in the mellower tone and profounder
teaching. There is less polemic, and more of the Christian's vital
union with his Lord : less doctrinal discussion, and more absorption
in His Person.0
CHAPTER XXV
i-5
1 So Festus, having entered on the government of the
province, went up after three days from Caesarea to
Jerusalem. 2And the chief priests and the leading
men among the Jews informed him against Paul, and
besought him, 3 asking as a favour to Paul's prejudice
that he would send for him to Jerusalem, laying wait to
kill him on the way. 4 Festus, however, answered that
Paul was in custody at Caesarea ; but that he was him
self about to depart thither shortly. 6 Let them there
fore, said he, which are in authority among you go down
with me ; and, if there be anything amiss in the man,
let them accuse him.
a Morrison, p. 4; Baiing-Gould, p. 404; Weizsacker, ii. 119.
b Fraser, p. 216; Purves, p. 234; Macduff, Paul, p. 333; Stalker, p. 215;
F. B. Meyer, p. 151.

THE ACTS. XXV. 1-5 379
2. the chief priests. The high-priest was no longer Ananias,
but Ishmael, who had been recently appointed by Agrippa. This
renewal of the charge after two years, on the very first opportunity,
is a measure, not only of their unsleeping hatred, but of the importance
which they attached to Paul's influence.
3. laying wait to kill him. Two years before the Jewish
authorities had sanctioned the plot of certain zealots to assassinate
him. Now they adopt the plan themselves.
4. Festus, however, answered. Their plea had probably been
that it was easier for one man to be brought to Jerusalem than for
many to travel to Caesarea. But Festus suspected something from
their importunity (cf. ver. 24, ' all the multitude '), and his ' if (ver. 5)
implies some doubt in his mind whether there was any case against
Paul. At any rate, Caesarea was the seat of Roman government ;
the man was already there ; and, as he was himself shortly going
thither, he saw no reason for shifting the venue.
6-12
6 And after a stay among them of not more than eight
or ten days, he went down to Caesarea ; and on the
morrow seating himself on the judgment-seat he com
manded Paul to be brought in. 7And when he was
come, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem
stood round him, bringing against him many grave
charges which they could not prove : 8 while Paul said
in his defence, Neither against the law of the Jews nor
against the temple nor against Caesar have I committed
any offence whatever. 9 But Festus, willing to gain
favour with the Jews, answered Paul and said, Art thou
willing to go up to Jerusalem and there be judged of
these things before me ? 10 But Paul said, I am standing
at Caesar's judgment-seat, where I ought to be judged:
to Jews have I done no wrong, as thou too very well
seest. n If, then, I am a wrongdoer, and have committed
any offence deserving of death, I am ready to die : but
if none of these things be true, whereof these men accuse
me, no man can give me up to them as a favour. I

380 THE ACTS. XXV. 6-12
appeal to Caesar. 12 Then Festus, when he had conferred
with his assessors, answered, Thou hast appealed to
Caesar : to Caesar thou shalt go.
7. stood round him. This time the Jews conducted their own
case, apparently in an irregular manner, seeking to influence the
Procurator by their vehemence, and producing no more evidence
than on the previous occasion. a But Paul's defence shows that their
accusations were the same as had been urged by Tertullus ; and,
indeed, they were probably on the court record as the charges
against him.
8. Caesar. Since ' King ', as a title for the Emperor, established
itself in the East from the time of Domitian (a.d. 81-96), an inference
as to the early date of the Acts may be deduced from the fact that
it employs only ' Caesar ' and ' Augustus '.b
9. willing to gain favour. He naturally did not wish to begin
his term of office, as Felix had ended his, with a quarrel with the
leading Jews. They, seeing the failure of their case, seem to have
again urged that the venue should be changed to Jerusalem, and their
unanimity impressed him. As a new governor, without the long
experience of Felix, he was honestly perplexed. He was surprised
to find that the charges against Paul were not, as he had supposed
(ver. 18), against Roman law, but against Jewish law of which he
knew nothing. He therefore proposed, not that he himself should
try the case at Jerusalem — in that case he would not have asked the
prisoner's consent — but that the Sanhedrin should try it in his
presence. Probably he did not appreciate, as Paul did, the danger
of such a course.0
10. I am standing. The Procurator was Caesar's representative.
Paul was a prisoner of the Romans, not of the Jews. If Festus was
not prepared to find him guilty, he could not hand him over to an
inferior jurisdiction.01
n. no man can. The very form &f»the governor's question,
' Art thou willing,' implied that there was no legal power to remand
him, against his will, to Jerusalem.0
I appeal. Paul had waited two years for the decision of his case.
He had perhaps hoped much from the advent of a new governor.
Now he found that Festus, a just man, who admitted his innocence
a. Buss, p. 393. b Harnack, Acts, p. 36.
c Barnes, p. 356; Johnston, p. 157; W. O. Burrows, Hastings' Diet., art.
Appeal. J Bungener, p. 352. » Eadie, p. 407.

THE ACTS. XXV. 6-12 381
of any offence against Roman law, was proposing to hand the case
over to the Jews. Indignant at being again made a tool to serve the
policy of the Roman governors in their relations with the Jews, he
took a decisive step. Previous experience had taught him to expect
a favourable verdict from a Roman tribunal, where Jewish influence
had no power. And he felt all the more confidence in an Emperor
who had recently removed Felix for unjust conduct and replaced him
by an upright man.8
But that he made this appeal with reluctance is clear from his
words (xxviii. 19), 'I was constrained to appeal.' It was the complete
assertion of his Roman citizenship, and the final repudiation of the
Jewish authorities.b Perhaps, as he spoke the words, he saw for the
first time that they opened the door for his long-desired visit to Rome.
But it is absurd to think that the appeal was made to secure that
object. If he had been acquitted, he could have gone thither as a
free man ; and he certainly would not have incurred the expense and
delay and risks of an appeal, so long as he had a reasonable prospect
of acquittal.0 1 2. assessors. Leading provincials acted as assessors to the pro
vincial governors. Their short term of office left them little time to
gather experience, and local advisers were a necessity. The exercise
of a Roman citizen's right of appeal was subject to some discretion
on the part of the judge.
Thou hast appealed. The curtness of speech betrays the annoy
ance of Festus at this unexpected step on Paul's part. He had not
meant to be unjust ; and now, in the very first case after his entry on
office, his judgment was appealed against. And he was placed in
an awkward position. He had not acquitted a man whom he believed
to be innocent of any offence against Roman law, and yet had to
formulate charges against him which he did not understand/1
13-22
13 And after some days were passed, King Agrippa
and Bernice arrived at Caesarea and saluted Festus.
14 And as they were spending several days there, Festus
laid Paul's case before the king, saying, There is a
certain man left prisoner by Felix ; 15 about whom, when
a Ramsay, Paid, p. 312 ; Bungener, p. 353; Rackham, Acts; Pressense, p. 162.
b Rackham, Ads. e Taylor, Paul, p. 429; McGiffert, p. 354.
A Fraser, p.- 223; Buss, p. 394.

382 THE ACTS. XXV. 13-22
I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of
the Jews informed me, asking for sentence against him.
16 To whom I answered, that it is not the custom of
Romans to give up any man as a favour, before the
accused have the accusers face to face, and have oppor
tunity of defence concerning the charge against him.
17 When therefore they were come together here, I made
no delay, but on the next day sat on the judgment-seat
and commanded the man to be brought in. 18 Concern
ing whom, when the accusers stood up, they brought no
accusation of such evil deeds as I supposed ; 19 but had
certain questions against him of their own religion, and
of one Jesus, a dead man, whom Paul asserted to be
alive. 20 And I, being perplexed as to the inquiry about
such things, said that, if he would, he should go to
Jerusalem and there be judged of these matters. 21But
when Paul appealed to be kept for the decision of
Augustus, I commanded him to be kept till I might
send him to Caesar. 22 And Agrippa said to Festus, I
was wishing even of myself to hear the man. To-morrow,
said he, thou shalt hear him.
13. King Agrippa. Herod Agrippa II had lived all his youth in
Rome at the Court of Claudius, with whom he was a favourite. Being
only seventeen at his father's death, he was considered too young to
succeed him as king over so turbulent a people, and a Procurator was
sent to Judaea. But he was given the small kingdom of Chalcis, to
which five years later the tetrarchies held by Philip and Lysanias
(Luke iii. i) were added. As Judaea was still under a Procurator,
Luke rightly styles him ' king ', and not ' king of the Jews.' a He was
a clever, well-bred man, but worldly and dissolute. After the fall of
Jerusalem he lived at Rome and died there the last of his race.
Bernice. One of the vilest women known to history. A bare
recital of the facts of her life is more eloquent than any comment.
A noted beauty, like her sister Drusilla, she was married first to
Marcus, Alabarch of the Jews at Alexandria. At his death, when
a Eadie, p. 408,

THE ACTS. XXV. 13-22 383
she was still but twenty, she went to live with her brother Agrippa,
gossip said,a as his incestuous mistress. As a refuge from the scandal
so caused, she married Polemon, King of Cilicia, but soon deserted
him and returned to her brother. This was shortly before their visit
to Festus. She was afterwards mistress first of Vespasian, and then
of his son Titus. b
This was the profligate pair before whom the noblest of living men
was now to appear. It was necessary to describe them, if the dramatic
contrast between prisoner and judge was to be realized, and the full
significance of Paul's courtesy and earnestness grasped.0
16. not the custom of Romans. A touch of disdainful dignity.
Not the custom of Romans, however it may be with Jews.d The
allusion cannot be to the request of the Jews (ver. 3) that Paul
might be brought to Jerusalem, since he would then have had his
' accusers face to face ', but must be to some demand (cf. ver. 24)
that Festus should condemn him in his absence. When he refused
that, they made the request of ver. 3.e
19. their own religion. The translation 'superstition ' (A. V.)
is unfortunate. Festus would not have used so offensive a term to
the Jew Agrippa. At the same time, his expression ' their own
religion ' shows that Agrippa was accustomed to speak among Gentiles
of his religion in the tone of a man of the world.f
The absence of all reference to the other charge which Tertullus
had alleged — that Paul was ' a mover of insurrection ' — and which the
Romans would certainly not regard as trivial, implies that in Festus'
opinion Paul's defence had disposed of it satisfactorily.
of one Jesus. It is suggestive that Festus had got hold of the
central doctrine of Christianity. It proves that Luke has given a
greatly condensed narrative of Paul's speeches, s
20. being perplexed. This is not the reason assigned above
(ver. 9) for the proposal that Paul should go to Jerusalem ; but it
may have been one of the motives. Luke, however, is not likely to
have had any detailed report of a private conversation between Festus
and Agrippa.
22. I was wishing. Agrippa had doubtless heard much of Paul
from the Jews during the last two years, and his family always showed
a peculiar interest in Christianity (see on xxiv. 24).
thou shalt hear him. No obligation lay on Paul to fall in with
a Juvenal, vi. 156. b Buss, p. 262 seq. " Vaughan, iii. 28S.
A A. Robertson, Hastings' Did., art. Festus. e Hackett, Acts.
1 Plumptre, Acts; Farrar, ii. 352. g Taylor, Paul, p. 425.

384 THE ACTS. XXV. 13-22
this arrangement ; but Festus had found him to be a reasonable and
courteous man and assumed his consent.'1
23-27
23 So on the morrow, when Agrippa was come and
Bernice with great pomp, and had entered the judgment
hall, with the tribunes and principal men of the city, at
Festus' command Paul was brought in. 24And Festus
said, King Agrippa, and all who are here present with us,
ye see this man, about whom all the multitude of the Jews
made suit to me, both at Jerusalem and here, crying
that he ought not to live any longer. 25 But I found that
he had committed nothing deserving of death ; and as
he himself appealed to Augustus, I determined to send
him. 26 Of whom I have nothing definite to write to
my lord. Wherefore I have brought him before you,
and specially before thee, King Agrippa, that, after
examination had, I may have somewhat to write. 27For
it seemeth to me absurd, in sending a prisoner, not at
the same time to notify the charges against him.
23. on the morrow. This was not a new trial — Agrippa had no
jurisdiction, and Festus' jurisdiction had been ended by the appeal —
but was of the nature of an audience, at which the chief personages
of the city were invited to be present.
with great pomp. The description of the imposing entry, the
notice of Paul's gesture in stretching forth his manacled hand (ver.
29), and the standing up of the court (ver. 30) point to the eye
witness.0 The 'great pomp' was characteristic of the Herods, who
were all fond of display. It was in this very city that the doom had
fallen upon Agrippa's father amid a scene of pomp and magnificence
(xii. 21 seq.).
the tribunes. There were three legions quartered at Caesarea.0
25. I found. It does not seem to have occurred to Festus that
by this admission he was condemning himself for not having set his
prisoner free. His words may have been the first clear intimation
to Paul that the Procurator was convinced of his innocence.
* Buss< P- 4°r- b M. Jones, p. 239. « Benson, p. 599.

THE ACTS. XXV. 23-27 385
26. nothing definite. Festus had been able to discover no evi
dence of.any offence on the part of the prisoner against Roman law,
and his ignorance of Judaism made it difficult for him to formulate
the alleged offences against Jewish law.a
to my lord. A touch of accuracy. Augustus and Tiberius had
both refused to accept this title, but Caligula and his successors
permitted its use.0
Wherefore. With the scrupulous regard for legal forms which
characterized the Romans, Festus is careful to explain that this
was in no sense a fresh trial, but an examination held for his own
convenience. specially before thee. Agrippa was a Jew, with a wide
knowledge of Jewish customs, conversant with questions of Jewish
theology, and from his official position of Superintendent of the
Temple acquainted with Jewish ritual and ceremonial. Hence Festus
could scarcely have found any adviser more competent, by position
and knowledge, to extricate him from his dilemma.0
CHAPTER XXVI
1-23
1 Then Agrippa said to Paul, Thou art permitted to
speak for thyself. Then Paul stretched forth his hand
and made his defence : 2 1 think myself happy, king
Agrippa, that I am to make my defence before thee this
day touching all the things whereof I am accused by
Jews ; 3 seeing that thou art specially expert in all the
customs and questions among Jews : wherefore I beseech
thee to hear me patiently. i My manner of life, then,
from my youth, which was from the beginning among
mine own nation and at Jerusalem, know all Jews;
6 having knowledge of me from the first, if they be willing
to testify, that after the most rigid sect of our religion I
lived a Pharisee. 6 And now for the hope of the promise
which God made to our fathers I stand here to be
judged; 7to which promise our twelve tribes, worship-
a M. Jones, p. 225. b Buss, p. 402. ° M. Jones, p. 226.
1829 C C

386 THE ACTS. XXVI. 1-23
ping earnestly night and day, hope to attain. Touching
which hope I am accused by Jews, O king. 8 Why is it
judged incredible with you, if God doth raise the dead?
9 1 verily thought with myself that I ought to do many
things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
"Which, indeed, I did in Jerusalem; and I not only
shut up many of the saints in prison, having received
the authority from the chief priests, but when they were
put to death, I gave my vote against them. u And
punishing them many a time in all the synagogues I was
fain to compel them to blaspheme ; and being exceed
ingly mad against them, I was pursuing them even to
foreign cities. 12 While thus engaged, as I journeyed to
Damascus with authority and commission from the chief
priests, 13at midday, O king, I saw on the way a light
from heaven above the brightness of the sun, shining
round about me and them that journeyed with me.
14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard
a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, Saoul,
Saoul, why art thou persecuting me ? It is hard for thee
to kick against goads. 15 And I said, Sir, who art thou ?
And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou art persecu
ting. 16 But rise and stand upon thy feet ; for to this
end have I appeared to thee, to appoint thee a minister
and a witness both of these things in which thou hast
seen me and of those in which I will appear to thee ;
17 choosing thee out from the People and from the
Gentiles, to whom I send thee, 18 to open their eyes,
that thou mayest turn them from darkness to light and
from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive
remission of sins, and an inheritance among them that
have been sanctified by faith in me. 19 Wherefore, O
king Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly
vision; 20but first to them in Damascus and at Jerusalem

THE ACTS. XXVI. 1-23 387
and through all the country of Judaea and to the Gentiles
I announced that they should repent and turn to God,
doing works befitting their repentance. 21 For this cause
some Jews seized me in the temple and essayed to kill
me. 22 Having therefore obtained the help that cometh
from God I stand unto this day, testifying to both small
and great, saying nothing beyond what the prophets
and Moses did say should come to pass ; 23 that the
Christ was subject to suffering, and that he first by
a resurrection from the dead should proclaim light both
to the People and to the Gentiles.
1. Agrippa said. Festus appears to have accorded a courtesy
precedence to his guest.
stretched forth his hand. With the chain upon it (ver. 29)
which linked him to the soldier who guarded him.
made his defence. This is the fullest of all his speeches in his
own defence. But, in fact, he pleads rather for his Master than for
himself. Not one word does he speak of censure of the enemies
who had plotted his death, or of resentment for the two years of
imprisonment without any evidence of his guilt. This complete
absence of complaint or selfish anxiety, this consciousness simply
of the greatness of the opportunity of proclaiming the Gospel before
so distinguished an audience, give a singular dignity to this speech.*
The scene can scarcely fail to have recalled to him the prediction
(ix. 15) that he should bear the Lord's name 'before the Gentiles
and kings'. On this occasion he was speaking before a subject
king : the day was to come when the words would be fulfilled yet
more completely — when he would bear the Lord's name before the
Caesar himself.11
2. I think myself happy. With the same graceful courtesy
which he had shown before Felix he begins by acknowledging the
competence of his principal hearer.0
3. specially expert. This testimony is confirmed by Josephus,d
who consulted him with regard to his ' Jewish War '. Agrippa had
been given the custody of the sacred vestments, the superintendence
of the Temple and its treasury, and the appointment of the High
Priest.6 a Farrar, ii. 355; Gurney, p. 310; Fraser, p. 225. b M. Jones, p. 226.
8 Vaughan, iii. 284. A Antiq. XX. i. 3. e Gilbert, p. 199; Buss, p. 137.
C C 2

388 THE ACTS. XXVI. 1-23
8. with you (plural). He turns to his audience, apparently
noticing some movement of dissent. Most of those present were
Gentiles, to whom the idea of a resurrection was, as he had discovered
at Athens, an absurdity.a
10. the saints. So he calls the disciples before Agrippa, identi
fying himself with them. Before the people, who would have resented
the term, he had said ' men and women ' (xxii. 4), and identified him
self with the Jews, calling them ' brethren '.h
I gave my vote. This would naturally imply that Saul had been
a member of the Sanhedrin ; but it may mean no more than the
'approval ' of viii. i.
14. in the Hebrew language. In his former speech (xxii. 7),
which was spoken in Aramaic, there was no need to state this fact,
though the Hebrew form of the name, Saoul, is given.0
to kick against goads. This is a common proverb in both
Greek and Latin,'1 and Gardner thinks e that it may be an amplification
due to Luke. But, though it is not elsewhere found, it may well have
been a proverb in Aramaic also. As Jesus in the days of His flesh
was accustomed to ' open his mouth in parables ' (Matt. xiii. 35), so
now He clothed His thought in a graphic metaphor. The figure is
from an ox which, when pricked with the goad, kicks and so gets a
sharper stab. Paul records the words here, because they expressed
the idea which he was anxious throughout to suggest — that he took
the step which was so distasteful to the Jews under the constraint of
an irresistible power.f
17. choosing thee. Not 'delivering thee' (A. V. and R.V.).
He was a 'chosen vessel' (ix. 16).
to whom I send thee. Elsewhere (xxii. 21) Paul represents
this command as being given to him later. His early preaching,
both at Damascus and at Jerusalem, shows little trace of knowledge
of this mission ; he appears to have addressed himself to Jews only.
Probably he only gradually realized his special vocation, and after
wards unconsciously antedated it.s
18. from darkness to light. This conception of the world as
divided into two spheres of light and darkness, ruled respectively by

a Page, Acts; M. Jones, p. 232.
b Stifler, p. 252 ; Howson, Character, p. 46. c Baur, i. 64.
a jEschylus, Agam. 1624; Terence, Phorm. i. 2, 28. e p. 411.
' Stalker, p. 57; Page, Acts; Baur, i. 64.
B A. E. Garvie, Expositor, March, 1908, p. 205.

THE ACTS. XXVI. 1-23 389
God and Satan, is found repeatedly in Paul's Epistles. Cf. Eph. v. 8 ;
Col. i. 12, 13; 2 Cor. iv. 6 ; 1 Thess. v. 5-a
20. through all the country of Judaea. There is no record
elsewhere of this work. The Greek is unusual, and the passage may
be corrupt. If not, the words must be due to a mistake on Luke's
part. Paul cannot have preached in Judaea before the time men
tioned in Gal. i. 22. The few places through which he passed
between Caesarea and Jerusalem, or between Antioch and Jerusalem,
could scarcely be thus described ; but Luke may be assigning such
opportunities as those journeys afforded to an earlier period.0
22. the help that cometh from God. None of the plots of the
Jews against him had succeeded ; but in particular he ascribes his
escape in the Temple to a special interposition of Providence.
testifying. This and the following verse summarize his teaching
in its threefold aspect ; its witness-bearing — ' testifying ', its universal
destination — ' to both small and great ', its harmony with the earlier
revelation — ' saying nothing beyond ', &c. ; and in its threefold con
tents ; the story of a suffering Messiah, who rose from the dead, who
was the Light of the world.0
How far Luke is here giving Paul's words or his own it is not
possible to say. There is, at any rate, a strange correspondence d
between them and the concluding words of his Gospel (xxiv. 44 seq.),
' All things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of
Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning me . . . And he
said unto them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and
rise again from the dead ; and that repentance and remission of sins
should be preached in his name unto all the nations, beginning from
Jerusalem. Ye are witnesses of these things.'
24-29
24 And as he thus made his defence, Festus said with
a loud voice, Paul, thou art mad : thy many books are
making thee crazy. 25 But Paul said, I am not mad,
your Excellency ; but am uttering words of sober truth.
20 For the king knoweth of these things ; to whom also
I speak freely ; for I am persuaded that no detail of
these things is hidden from him ; for this hath not been
* M. Jones, p. 233. b Zeller, i. 301 ; Harnack, Acts, p. 75.
0 Maclaren, ii. 324. d Norris, p. 118.

390 THE ACTS. XXVI. 24-29
done in a corner. 27 King Agrippa, believest thou the
prophets ? I know that thou believest. 2S And Agrippa
said to Paul, With little labour thou wouldst fain per
suade me, to make me a Christian! 29 And Paul said,
I would to God that, whether with little or with much,
not only thou, but also all that hear me, might this day
become such as I am, saving these chains.
24. with a loud voice. This touch suggests that Luke was
present, or derived his account from one who was. The interruption
was rude, but the loud voice was not due to rudeness but to astonish
ment. A vision from heaven ! — that was startling enough : but a
resurrection from the dead ! — the man must be mad. Festus could
no more understand this than could the philosophers at Athens
(xvii. 32). And, indeed, from Festus' point of view Paul was mad.
Christianity is madness, if materialism be true and this world be all.
Why wander in sheep-skins and goat-skins, and be destitute, afflicted,
tormented (Heb. xi. 37), if there be no resurrection from the dead?
In a sceptical and materialistic age, when men lived for the pleasures
of the hour and had no thought of a God of judgment, one who
acted in opposition to all maxims of worldly prudence, and in his
zeal for souls scorned toil and suffering, might well seem to be
a madman. a
thy many books. Paul may have asked, as he did in his later
imprisonment (2 Tim. iv. 13) for ' books and parchments '.° But the
allusion may be only to his reference to the prophets as his authority
for such strange speculations.
25. I am not mad. The rude interruption of the judge does
not ruffle the exquisite courtesy of the prisoner. Yet it was no
cold, passionless man who made this brief, dignified reply, but one
whose soul contained hidden fires. Calmly he turns fron Festus,
who understood nothing, to Agrippa, who at least understood a
little.0 26. this hath not been done in a corner. The reference is not
to his own conversion, but to the Resurrection of Jesus. The king
could not deny that He had been crucified and was said by many to
have risen from the dead. So much was notorious.
a Johnston, p. 160; Parker, iii. 173 ; Eadie, p. 418.
'' Norris, p. 118. c Gurney, p. 310; Maclaren, ii. 325.

THE ACTS. XXVI. 24-29 391
27. believest thou the prophets ? He makes a personal appeal,
startling in its abruptness, and one that was awkward for Agrippa.
As a Jewish king, anxious to stand well with his own nation, he dared
not disown the prophets. But as a Roman nobleman, in the presence
of a Roman who had just expressed his scorn, he did not care to
acknowledge his belief in the superstition of the despised Jew. So
he adroitly parried the question with tact and good humour. a
28. With little labour. Sermons on the 'almost Christian' are
irrelevant, being based on a misunderstanding of the Greek. Agrippa's
answer is a bit of ironical pleasantry. Alluding evidently to Paul's
account of his own sudden conversion, he says, ' That is all very well
for a common Jew like you, but a king does not change his whole
course of life in a moment.' The irony is shown by the use of the
word ' Christian ', which was not at this time used by the brethren
themselves, but was a term of contempt used by outsiders (see on
xi. 26). It is, however, possible that Agrippa used the word
' Nazarene ', which was the name given to the Christians by the
Jews (xxiv. 3), and that Luke introduced the word ' Christian ' from
his own vocabulary.
29. And Paul said. This beautiful answer is Paul's last recorded
word in Judaea. He meets the sarcasm with deep earnestness ; ignores
the gibe in the word ' Christian ', substituting ' such as I am ' — ' like
me in my faith and joy and hope ' ; and, with perfect recollection of
the right thing to say, adds, as he lifts with a smile his manacled
hands, ' only not like me in this chain.'
3°-32
30 And the king rose up and the governor and Bernice
and they that sat with them ; 31 and when they had
withdrawn, they talked together, saying, This man doeth
nothing deserving of death or of imprisonment. 32 And
Agrippa said to Festus, This man might have been set
at liberty, if he had not appealed to Caesar.
31. nothing deserving of death. Luke evidently wishes to
show how from all quarters came the conviction of Paul's innocence.
The Jews 'find no evil in this man' (xxiii. 9); Lysias writes that
nothing was 'laid to his charge deserving of death or imprisonment' ;
Festus pronounces that he had 'committed nothing worthy of death '
a Johnston, p. 161.

392 THE ACTS. XXVI. 30-32
(xxv. 25) ; and now Agrippa declares that he ought to have been 'set
at liberty '.a Similarly Luke, alone of the Evangelists, records that
Pilate found no guilt in Jesus, and thrice desired to release Him
(Luke xxiii. 4, 16, 20, 22).
32. Agrippa said. The hearing did not furnish Festus with any
clear charge to send to Rome. But Agrippa was a favourite at the
Imperial Court, and his judgment would lead Festus to write
favourably. If Paul was acquitted by Nero, it was probably largely
in consequence of the official report now sent.

CHAPTER XXVII
1-6
1 And when it was determined that we should sail for
Italy, they delivered Paul and certain other prisoners
to a certain centurion named Julius, of the Augustan
cohort. 2 And embarking in a ship of Adramyttium,
which was about to sail to the places on the coast of
Asia, we put to sea, Aristarchus, a Macedonian, of
Thessalonica, being with us. 3 And the next day we
touched at Sidon ; and Julius treated Paul kindly and
gave him leave to go to his friends and avail himself of
their care. 4 And putting to sea thence, we sailed under
the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were contrary.
6 And when we had sailed across the sea off Cilicia and
Pamphylia, we came to Myra in Lycia. 6 And there the
centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy ;
and he put us thereon.
1. we. The greater detail which at once begins with the reappear
ance of this pronoun makes it improbable that Luke had been with
Paul during his imprisonment. Ramsay thinks ° that both he and
Aristarchus accompanied Paul as his slaves, and that this is the
explanation of his importance in the eyes of the centurion This
may be true of Aristarchus, but it is more likely that Luke obtained
a free passage as a physician, desiring to watch over Paul's health.
That the latter was an invalid is shown by the fact that, the very day
a Ramsden, ii. 2£0. b Paul, p. 316.

THE ACTS. XXVII. 1-6 393
after the voyage began, he was allowed to land at Sidon and have
the benefit of special care from his friends.11
The narrative of the voyage is valuable for two reasons, (i) It is
so plainly historical that it does much to confirm the historical
character of the whole book in which it finds a place. Thorough
investigation has served only to prove the accuracy of the nautical
details. Indeed, no other passage in literature teaches us so much
about the ships of the ancient world and the method of handling
them.0 (2) At first sight it seems strange that so disproportionate
a space should be given to the story of a storm and a shipwreck.
But we cease to wonder when we see how it shows the character of
Paul in a novel situation, displaying the even consistency of his
Christian life. The Apostle, whose spiritual preeminence is seen
elsewhere, appears here as the practical man, who by his experience,
self-possession, insight, and courage compels, as a prisoner, the
respect of those about him, and finally assumes the leadership.0
These facts, however, do not altogether explain why Luke described
with so much detail a particular voyage. It is clear that he felt that
with the departure from Caesarea a new era in the development of
Christianity began. Paul is setting sail to carry the Gospel to the
world's centre. At last all obstacles have been removed, all barriers
have fallen : Paul's face is turned to Rome/1
This was the fourth shipwreck in Paul's experience. More than
two years before this date he had written (2 Cor. xi. 25) that he had
' thrice suffered shipwreck '.
certain other prisoners. Probably they were not, like Paul,
appellants to the Emperor, but condemned malefactors, who were
being sent to Rome to amuse the populace by their death in the
arena.0 the Augustan cohort. Ramsay follows Mommsen in thinking
that this is a popular description of the corps of Imperial couriers,
called Peregrini (' foreigners ') from the fact that they were constantly
employed in the Provinces. They were also known as Frumentarii,
because they were members of the Imperial commissariat. Since
Julius assumed the chief authority (ver. 11) in the Alexandrian corn-
ship, he was almost certainly a Frumentarian.f
1 Fraser, p. 406; Buss, p. 406; Harnack, Luke, p. 148.
D Stanley, p. 11 ; Benson, p. 622 ; Howson, Character, p. 10.
" Howson, Scenes, p. 136; Weizsacker, ii. 127.
d Stifler, p. 259; Baumgarten, ii. 208, 218.
e Johnston, p. 163; Ramsay, Paid, p. 314. ' Buss, p. 345 ; Rendall, Acts.

394 THE ACTS. XXVII. 1-6
2. a ship of Adramyttium. This was evidently a small coasting
vessel, touching at various ports on its way to winter at Adramyttium,
near Troas. Julius either hoped to find, as happened, a larger ship
bound for Italy, or meant to cross from Troas to Philippi, take the
land route to Dyrrhachium, and thence go by sea to Brundusium.a
3. gave him leave. This kindly act, shown so early in the
voyage, must mean that Julius had made acquaintance with Paul
before starting. He may have been present at the hearing before
Agrippa. Paul would, of course, be accompanied by his military
guard. their care. The Greek word implies medical attention (Luke
x. 34, 35). b Paul was probably suffering from his long confinement.
5. Myra. There is no mention of Christians here, or at Lasea,
Melita, Syracuse, or Rhegium.0
6. a ship of Alexandria. A corn-ship (ver. 38), and therefore
with a dangerously shifting cargo. The size of these ships is shown
by the fact that not only could this one carry 276 persons (ver. 37),
but that, in the following spring, another corn-ship conveyed them,
or a portion of them, to Italy in addition to her own crew.cl
7-13
7 And when we had sailed slowly many days and were
come with difficulty over against Cnidus, the wind no
longer favouring us, we sailed under the lee of Crete
over against Salmone ; sand with difficulty coasting
along it we came to a certain place called Fair Havens,
nigh whereunto was the city of Lasea. ° And when
much time was spent, and sailing was now dangerous
because the Fast was now already past, Paul admo
nished them 10 and said to them, Sirs, I perceive that
further sailing will be with injury and much loss, not
only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.
11 But the centurion gave more heed to the sailingmaster
and the captain of the ship than to those things which
were spoken by Paul. 12 And because the haven was
not commodious to winter in, the more part advised to
a Farrar, ii. 364; Ramsay, Paul, p. 316. b Harnack, Luke, p. 181.
c Hainack, Luke, p. 31. A Smith, p. 70.

THE ACTS. XXVII. 7-13 395
put to sea thence, if by any means they could reach
Phoenix and winter there ; which is a haven of Crete,
looking south-west and north-west. 13And when a gentle
south wind sprang up, thinking that their purpose was
served, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete,
close in shore.
8. Fair Havens. It bears the same name still. A tongue of
land, stretching into the bay, divides it into a double harbour.
9. much time. They were three months at Melita, and probably
left that island in March, when navigation would begin again ; so
they must have waited here till late in the autumn.
the Fast. The Day of Atonement, Sept. 24, when navigation
usually ceased for the winter. Luke's use of the Jewish mode of
reckoning looks as though he had been a proselyte (see on xx. 6).
admonished them. His advice was not taken; but that a
prisoner should have tendered advice at all shows the position which
Paul's character and experience had already won for him in the ship's
community.8- 10. I perceive. This was not a prophecy. The man who had
'thrice suffered shipwreck' (2 Cor. xi. 25) spoke as an experienced
sailor. As a matter of fact, no lives were lost.
11. the centurion. The Alexandrian corn-ships were Govern
ment vessels, and the ' Frumentarian ' centurion ranked above the
captain. There was no separation at Rome between the military
and naval services.0
gave more heed. The captain had the best of reasons for
considering the safety of his ship, and the majority was on his side.
And though the event justified Paul's advice, a bay which was open
to nearly half the compass would not have been a good winter
harbour,0 and there was no town near.
12. if by any means. Evidently they were not very sanguine
of success. From Fair Havens to Cape Matala is five miles, and
thence to Phoenix thirty-four.
looking south-west and north-west. If, as is almost certain,
Lutro occupies the site of the ancient Phoenix, this description is
not accurate. It must, however, be remembered that Luke did not
see the harbour, but is describing it from hearsay.
a Stifler, p. 267. b Ramsay, Paul, p. 325.
c Howson, Companions, p. 1S1 ; Smith, p. 84.

396 THE ACTS. XXVII. 7-13
13. thinking that their purpose was served. They were
now so confident that they did not even take the precaution of
getting their longboat on board (ver. 16).

14-26
14 But not long after there beat down from it a tem
pestuous wind called Euraquilo ; 15 and when the ship
was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way
and let her drive. 16 And running under the lee of
a small island called Cauda, we were able with difficulty
to secure the boat ; 17and when they had hoisted it up,
they used braces, frapping the ship : and fearing lest
they should be driven on to the Syrtis, they lowered the
gear and so drove. 18 And as we laboured exceedingly
with the storm, the next day they began to throw the
freight overboard; 19 and the third day they cast out with
their own hands the furniture of the ship. 20And when
neither sun nor stars shone upon us for many days and
no small tempest lay on us, henceforth all hope that we
should be saved was being stripped from us. 21And
when they had been long without food, Paul stood forth
in the midst of them and said, Sirs, ye should have
hearkened to me and not put to sea from Crete, and so
have been spared this injury and loss. 22And now I
exhort you to be of good cheer : for there shall be no
loss of life among you, but only of the ship. 23 For there
stood by me this night an angel of the God whose I am,
whom also I serve, 24saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must
stand before Caesar ; and lo, God hath given thee all
them that sail with thee. 25 Wherefore, sirs, be of good
cheer ; for I believe God, that it shall be even so as it
hath been spoken to me. [26 Howbeit we must be cast
upon a certain island.]

THE ACTS. XXVII. 14-26 397
14. beat down from it. The Cretan mountains are over
7,000 feet in height.8-
Euraquilo. Luke probably heard the sailors describe the wind
by the local name. Levantine sailors still call this particular wind
' Gregalia ', which is the same word. (Cf. the corruption of ' Euripus '
into its modern form of ' Egripou '.) b
15. let her drive. The suddenness of the hurricane gave no
time to furl the great mainsail.0
16. with difficulty. The boat was doubtless waterlogged.
17. frapping. That is, passing cables round the hull to keep
the timbers from parting. It is evident that the ship had already
sprung a leak. The strain, instead of being distributed as in
a modern sailing ship, was concentrated by the single mast with its
huge sail upon a single point. The Greek word is nowhere else used
of undergirding a ship, though it is used of ships in another sense by
Polybius,d but it is the regular medical term for understrapping.
Similarly the Greek word translated ' braces ' was a current medical
term.6 the Syrtis. ' Quicksands ' (A.V.) is a mistranslation, because
a definite place on the north coast of Africa is referred to.
lowered the gear. That is, probably, the yardarm ; leaving only
enough sail to enable them to tack as near the wind as possible.
' Strake sail ' (A.V.) cannot be right, since such a course would
have deprived them of the only possible means of avoiding the
danger which they feared. f
18. throw the freight overboard. This is a doubtful rendering
of the Greek. The literal translation is ' proceeded to make an out
cast ', and what may be meant is a ' floating anchor ' — that is,
a huge bundle of everything that could be spared, fastened up in a
sail and thrown out with two cables attached. The effect would be
to retard the speed with which the ship drifted ; and, if thrown out
at one side, and not at the stern, to act as a rudder.s
19. they cast out. These successive attempts to lighten the
vessel show that she was leaking badly and was in imminent danger
of foundering.
21. without food. The Greek word is a medical term implying,
not fasting, but loss of appetite ; and the narrative suggests that it

a Ramsay, Paul, p. 327. b T. K. Cheyne, Encycl. Bibl., p. 1429.
c Ball, p. 68. d xxvii. 3. 3. e Hamack, Luke, p. 181.
' Smith, p. 106. « Benson, p. 626.

398 THE ACTS. XXVII. 14-26
was general, but not universal. Thus the cause was probably sea
sickness. Paul appears not to have suffered from it (verses 21
and 33), nor the sailors (verses 27 and 30) ; and they had flour and
were able to bake it (ver. 35). And the fact that all were able to
eat heartily when the gale had abated (ver. 38) implies that some had
previously been prostrated by sea-sickness rather than by starvation.8-
ye should have hearkened unto me. Not the ' I told you so '
of a small nature, but a reference to the wisdom of his former counsel
in order to induce acceptance of his present advice.0
23. there stood by me. We are shown the secret of his
courage and self-possession — faith and prayer. Like Peter before
his execution (xii. 6), he had calmly slept ; and to him, as to Peter,
an angel had ministered.0
24. God hath given thee. From the answer we gather what
the prayer had been — that he might be spared to preach Christ
in the capital and that the lives of all on board might be preserved.11
It is an encouraging proof that prayer is a real factor in determining
God's dealings with men. Paul, at any rate, so believed. Thus he
wrote to Philemon (ver. 22), 'Prepare me a lodging, for I trust that
through your prayers I shall be given to you.'
25. I believe God. But Paul did not sit down and wait for God
to bring about what He had ordained. From the hour that he
received this assurance he laboured to realize it. The Divine promise
of safety was to be fulfilled, not by fatalistic apathy, but by man's
co-operation. The same God who ordained the end ordained the
means. God's purpose and man's endeavour bear upon each other.
The Divine purpose gives energy to human effort, and human effort
is effectual through the Divine purpose.6
26. Howbeit. This verse is almost certainly an interpolation,
introduced by some copyist from the subsequent narrative. It is not
said to be part of the angel's message, and Paul was not likely to
have foreseen such an immaterial detail.
27-38
27 But when the fourteenth night was come, as we
were being driven over the sea of Adria, about mid-
a J. R. Madan, Journal of Theological Studies, Oct. 1904.
'' Maclaren, ii. 352. ° Howson, Scenes, p. 128 ; F. B. Meyer, p. 153.
'' Arnot, p. 514.
'¦ Stifler, p. 269 ; Plumptre, Acts; Blunt, ii. 220; Mackenzie, p. 284.

THE ACTS. XXVII. 27-38 399
night the sailors deemed that they were drawing nigh
to land ; 28 and they sounded and found twenty fathoms ;
and after a little space they sounded again and found
fifteen fathoms. 29And fearing lest we should be cast
ashore on rocky ground, they let go four anchors from
the stern and prayed for the dawn. 30 And as the
sailors were seeking to flee from the ship, and had
lowered the boat into the sea under colour as though
they would lay out anchors from the foreship, 31 Paul
said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these
abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. 32 Then the
soldiers cut away the ropes of the boat and let her fajl
off. 3:!And until the day was at point to break Paul
kept beseeching them all to take some food, saying,
The day ye are awaiting is the fourteenth that ye con
tinue fasting, having eaten nothing. ?A Wherefore I
beseech you to take some food ; for this is important
for your safety ; for there shall not a hair perish from
the head of any of you. "5 And when he had
said this, he took bread and gave thanks to God in
presence of them all ; and he brake it and began to eat.
30 Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took
food. 37 And we were in all in the ship two hundred
and threescore and sixteen souls. 3S And when they
had eaten enough, they set about lightening the ship by
throwing out the grain into the sea.
27. the sailors deemed. The wind was not off shore, so that
no land-scents could have reached them. They must have heard
the sound of breakers. A ship approaching St. Paul's Bay from the
east would have to pass close to the rocky point of Koura.0-
28. twenty fathoms. Modern charts show that after Koura
a ship passes over first twenty, and then fifteen fathoms.
29. four anchors. The number shows that the captain left
nothing to chance. They were forced to anchor, in order to have
* Smith, p. 117.

400 THE ACTS. XXVII. 27-38
daylight before venturing on the last resource of beaching the sinking
vessel. from the stern. There was a twofold reason for this unusual
course. If anchored by the bow, the ship might swing round upon
the rocks, the distance of which could not be seen in the darkness ;
and would also, when they wished to beach her, have had her stern
pointing towards the shore. a
prayed for the dawn. They feared that their anchors might
drag, not knowing — what modern investigation has revealed — that
they had been dropped into clay of extraordinary tenacity.b
30. as the sailors were seeking to flee. What a change
Christianity has wrought in the sailor ! These men, accustomed to the
sea, best able of all on board to take care of themselves in the event
of disaster, charged moreover with the care of the lives with them,
think only of themselves.0 At the same time it must be remembered
that the boat would not hold all the crew, so that only a selfish few
were guilty of this cowardly attempt at desertion.
had lowered the boat. Fearing that the anchors might drag,
or the cables part, or the ship founder before morning, and knowing
that the land was close, they thought it would be safer to try to gain
it in a small boat than in the ship.
from the foreship. Anchors from the bow would under the
circumstances obviously be useless ; and the centurion saw, when
Paul called his attention, that it was a pretext for deserting.11
31. Paul said. The sailors may have spoken unguardedly
before him, not suspecting that a landsman would understand their
real design.
Except these abide. If the sailors had left the ship, the soldiers
could not have executed the necessary measures for beaching her
safely.e 33. to take some food. It is an interesting illustration of
Paul's sanity that he did not excite minds, already strained, by any
spiritual demands, but begged them to eat a good breakfast if they
wished to be saved. Truly the man who had been ' caught up to
the third heaven ' (2 Cor. xii. 2) did not remain there ! f
fasting. The Greek word (see on ver. 21) does not necessarily
a Smith, p. 133 ; Conybeare and Howson, ii. 357.
b Farrar, ii. 378. ° Benson, p. 630 ; Burrell, p. 296.
4 Rendall, Acts. " Arnot, p. 519.
' Vaughan, iii. 350; Stifler, p. 269.

THE ACTS. XXVII. 27-38 401
imply entire abstinence from food ; and ' nothing ' is not to be taken
literally, but means ' no sufficient food '.a
35. gave thanks. This was a common custom and would not
surprise the heathen who witnessed it. And the ' breaking of bread '
was the usual act of the head of a Hebrew household. Though the
expression is often used to describe the Eucharist, it is also used
(Luke xxiv. 30) of an ordinary meal. Still, Luke probably means
to imply that what was to those present a common meal was to Paul
a Eucharist.0 36. Then were they all of good cheer. The courage and
example of Paul were contagious, and the sea-sickness was probably
over. There are several indications that the gale had abated — the
design of landing in the boat (ver. 30) ; the Greek word translated
' breeze ' (ver. 40), which would not be used of a high wind ; and the
heavy rain (xxviii. 2) which is not commonly found with a violent
gale.0 37. two hundred and threescore and sixteen souls. There
was probably at this juncture a muster of all on board, in order to
check their safety after landing. The number is startling, but we
know little about the size of ancient ships, and Josephus says cl that
the ship in which he was wrecked had six hundred on board.
38. lightening. The more they could reduce her draught, the
better their chance of getting the ship over the shallows to the shore.
39-44
39 And when it was day, they did not recognize the
land ; but they descried a certain bay with a beach,
upon which they planned, if it were possible, to run the
ship. *° And casting off the anchors they left them in
the sea, at the same time unlashing the paddle-rudders ;
and hoisting the foresail to the breeze they made for
the beach. 41 But lighting on a place where two seas
met, they ran the vessel aground ; and the foreship
struck and remained immovable, but the stern began
to break up under the shock. J2And the counsel of
* Plumptre, Acts ; Benson, p. 628.
" Bungener, p. 368 ; Hackett, Acts ; Benson, p. 628.
' J. K. Madan, Journal of Theological Studies, Oct. 1904. d Life, c. 3.
1320 D d

402 THE ACTS. XXVII. 39-44
the soldiers was to kill the prisoners, lest any of
them should swim out and escape. 4i But the centurion,
wishing to save Paul, stayed them from their desire,
and commanded that they who could swim should cast
themselves overboard and get first to land, 44 and the
rest, some on planks, and some on other things from
the ship. And so it came to pass that all escaped safe
to land.
39. did not recognize the land. The sailors probably knew little
of the island except the usual port of Valetta, from which the scene of
the shipwreck was some distance.8-
41. where two seas met. The island of Salmonetta forms
with the coast an apparent bay. The current flowing through the
narrow channel has raised a bank of tenacious clay.b
42. the counsel of the soldiers. Roman discipline was in
exorable. They could not save themselves by swimming without
unchaining the prisoners to whom they were linked and for whose
custody they were answerable with their lives. And probably they
did not know that the land was an island from which the prisoners
could not escape. It is also likely that all except Paul were criminals
under sentence of death.
43. stayed them. By taking this course Julius risked his own
life in the event of any prisoner escaping, since his order absolved
his men of their responsibility.
get first to land. In order to lend a helping hand to the others.
Josephus tells us in his Life (c. 3) that he was wrecked on his
voyage to Rome with some Jewish prisoners. He says that he was
twenty-six years old at the time, which would put the date three
years later than Paul's voyage. But his own narrative proves this to
be a mistake, since he says that the prisoners were sent by Felix,
the Procurator of Judaea. He calls them ' priests ', and says that
they were self-denying persons.0 The natural inference would be
that he was a passenger by this ship ; and his statement that they
numbered six hundred on board is not decisive to the contrary, since
he is not always accurate. It is true that he also says that, when the
vessel foundered, he was rescued by a ship of Cyrene, whereas Paul
a Smith, p. 143. I. Smith, p. 144.
c S. Sharpe, Journey and Epistles of the Apostle Paul, p. 58.

THE ACTS. XXVII. 39-44 403
was cast ashore at Malta,8- but the ' ship of Cyrene ' may be the
corn-ship which took Paul on to Italy in the spring, since the cult of
Castor and Pollux (xxviii. n) was common in, and round, Cyrene.

CHAPTER XXVIII
1-6
1 And when we were escaped, then we learnt that
the island was called Melita. 2 And the natives showed
us no common kindness ; for they kindled a fire and
received us all, because of the rain that was falling and
because of the cold. 3And when Paul had gathered a
bundle of brushwood and laid it on the fire, a viper
came out by reason of the heat and fastened on his
hand. 4 And when the foreign folk saw the beast hang
ing from his hand, they said one to another, No doubt
this man is a murderer, whom, though he escaped the
sea, Justice suffered not to live. 5But he shook off the
beast into the fire and took no harm. 6 Howbeit they
looked that he should swell, or fall down dead suddenly;
when, however, they had been looking a great while and
beheld nothing amiss happen to him, they changed
their minds and said that he was a god.
1. Melita. The modern Malta.
2. the natives. The translations ' barbarous people ' (A.V.) and
' barbarians ' (R V.) are both misleading. The Greek word means
only ' foreign folk ' — that is, non-Greek people — and is interesting as
plainly showing Luke's Greek origin.0 The Maltese were of Phoe
nician descent and are described by Diodorus Siculus0 as highly
civilized ; which is only what would be expected, since the island
was in constant communication with two seats of ancient civilization,
Carthage and Rome.d
3. when Paul had gathered. The man who had been fore-
a J. Thomas, p. 155. b Harnack, Luke, p. 13.
c v. 12. A Buss, p. 296.
D d 2

404 THE ACTS. XXVIII. 1-6
most during the trying experiences of the preceding fortnight is still
foremost when the danger is past ; has his wits about him, and at
once busies himself in work for the general good.
brushwood. Probably furze. But though there is now little
timber in Malta, which has long been thickly populated in proportion
to its size, there may have been forests at this period.
a viper. It has been objected that snakes are unknown in Malta.
But, apart from the fact that the increase of population and the
clearance of forests might easily lead to their disappearance in
a small island, the statement is inaccurate. According to Ramsay, a
a specimen has recently been found of the Coronella Austriaca,
a small constrictor, which clings and bites, but has no poison fangs,
and which resembles a viper in appearance.
fastened. It is not said in so many words that Paul was bitten,
but the whole narrative implies it, and the Greek word is a technical
medical term for poison taking effect.0
on his hand. Naturally after this work he was holding his
numbed wet hands to the fire for comfort.0
4. the beast. The Greek word, ' therion,' is the medical term
for a poisonous snake, the antidote made from its flesh being called
' theriake '.d
a murderer. Evidently he had been again chained to a soldier,
or had the manacles hanging from his wrist, so that they knew that
he was a prisoner ; and to have escaped death by drowning only to
die by the bite of a serpent was evidence of some great crime.
Justice suffered not to live. In their estimation he was already
a doomed man.
These people held the belief, which lies at the basis of all natural
religion, in the connexion between guilt and retribution. They
recognized the moral element in the government of the world. But
with this truth was mixed the erroneous idea that special calamity
indicates special criminality — that the men on whom walls of Siloam
fall are necessarily sinners. But the facts of life do not bear out such
an inference. The man whom the serpent bites may be a murderer,
but is more likely to be an innocent turf-cutter. There is such
a thing as retributive justice, but the time of retribution, whether for
good or evil, is not yet.e
1 Expositor, Feb. 1907, p. 122.
b Taylor, Paul, p. 466 ; Harnack, Luke, p. 177. c Stifler, p, 271.
A Harnack, Luke, p. 178.
• Taylor, Paul, p. 467.; F. W. Robertson, Sermons, i. 197 ; Vaughan, iii. 362.

THE ACTS. XXVIII. 1-6 405
6. swell, or fall down dead suddenly. The two possible
effects of snake-bite are described with medical accuracy ; and the
Greek words, rendered ' swell ', ' fall down ', and ' amiss ', are all
medical terms.8-

7-10
7 Now in those parts were lands belonging to the
Primate of the island, whose name was Poplius ; who
received us and for three days entertained us in kindly
fashion. 8And it chanced that the father of Poplius
lay sick of low fever and dysentery ; to whom Paul
entered in, and prayed, and laying his hands upon him
healed him. 9And when this was clone, the rest also in
the island who had infirmities came and received treat
ment ; 10whoalso distinguished us with many honours ;
and when we set sail, they put on board such things as
we needed.
7. Now in those parts. One incident of the three ' months'
stay in the island has been given — Paul's escape from danger. Now,
one other is given — his work in healing others.
the Primate. The title is evidently official, since his father was
living and would have been the chief man if the word was unofficial.
A Greek inscription, found at Citta Vecchia in the centre of the
island, confirms this, since it describes a man as 'Primate of the
Maltese '. As Melita was in the province of the Praetor of Sicily,
he probably governed by a delegate bearing this title.0
Poplius. Probably a Greek form of Popilius. The A.V. and
R.V. render ' Publius ', but the Primate would not be called by his
prenomen.0 entertained us. Not, probably, all the crew, but Julius and some
of his men, with a few others such as Paul and Luke. Their company
was doubtless welcome on the dull little island in the winter season.
The fact that Paul was included in the invitation is one more evidence
that he was treated as a prisoner of rank and distinction.
8. low fever and dysentery. Both Greek words are technical
terms found in Hippocrates.
" Harnack, Luke, p. 179. " Buss, p. 296. c Buss, p. 296.

406 THE ACTS. XXVIII. 7-10
healed him. Paul's power to heal by prayer and faith was
occasional, when circumstances and subjects were suitable. When
this cure was noised abroad, as would quickly happen owing to the
rank of the sufferer, invalids poured in and ' received treatment ' — ¦
that is, medical skill was employed to supplement the faith cure, and
the physician Luke became prominent, though with his usual modesty
he merely indicates the fact by the pronoun ' us ' (ver. 10). a
10. With many honours. A technical term, like our 'hono
rarium ', for the fee to a professional man.
such things as we needed. They had lost everything in the
shipwreck. No mention is made of evangelistic work in Melita. Very likely
Paul was ill from the reaction when the strain was over.11

II-15
11 And after three months we put to sea in a ship of
Alexandria, which had wintered in the island, whose
figurehead was The Twins. 12And touching at Syracuse
we stayed there three days. "And thence we beat up
to Rhegium ; and after one day a south wind sprang
up, and on the second day we came to Puteoli ; 14 where
we found brethren, and were invited to stay with them
seven days ; and so we came to Rome. 15 And mean
while the brethren, having heard of us, had come
thence to meet us as far as Appii Forum and Tres
Tabernae ; and when Paul saw them, he thanked God
and took courage.
11. three months. This period of leisure would have given
Luke abundant opportunity of learning from Paul the story of his
life,0 if he had at this time formed the design of writing the Acts.
That his history betrays ignorance of so many facts indicates that
the design was conceived later.
The Twins. Castor and Pollux were the tutelary deities of
sailors. 12. Syracuse. They must have had a favouring wind, or they
a Ramsay, Expositor, Dec. 1906; Harnack, Luke, p. 15.
b Maclaren, ii. 575. c Chase, p. 19.

THE ACTS. XXVIII. n-15 407
would scarcely have ventured to cross the open sea so early in the
year. Now the south wind failed them, and they had to wait three
days, and then had to tack in order to reach Rhegium, where they
once more waited till the wind was again favourable.8-
13. Puteoli. The regular port for the Alexandrian corn-ships. b
From this point they travelled the remaining 130 miles by land.
14. seven days. As everything must have been lost in the
shipwreck, the soldiers may have required some outfit before they
could enter Rome; or Julius may have sent to the Capital for
instructions and waited for an answer. Luke's statement that they
stayed because the brethren requested it can scarcely be accurate,
though it may have this foundation — that they wished Paul to stay
over a Sunday, as at Troas (xx. 6) and Tyre (xxi. 4), and Julius
prolonged the time as a favour to him.0
and so. The meaning is not clear. The words may imply that
Paul's wish to visit Rome was not fulfilled precisely as he had
hoped. d But they may mark the climax of the Book, to which the
long narrative of Paul's trial in its successive stages and the full
details of the voyage were meant to lead up.
we came to Rome. This is usually explained e as an awkward
anticipation of the narrative, since the next verse reverts to events
that occurred before their arrival at the Capital. But the word
' Rome ' in this verse denotes f the ' state ', the boundary of which
in Southern Latium they now crossed, while the entry to the city is
recorded in ver. 16.
15. having heard of us. The week's stay at Puteoli had
enabled the Christians at Rome to hear of Paul's arrival. Some
three years before they had received from him the greatest of his
letters, and had been expecting his coming.
The origin of the Church in Rome is wrapped in obscurity.
Probably it was formed gradually. The Christian faith had been
established in great provincial centres, such as Antioch, Ephesus,
Thessalonica, and Corinth ; and between these and Rome there was
constant intercourse. The very fact that Paul wrote a letter to
a Church of which he was not the founder implies (Rom. xv. 20)
that it did not owe its origin to any one of the Apostles.s
Appii Forum. Ninety miles from Puteoli and forty from Rome.
' Ramsay, Hastings' Diet., art. Rhegium. b Page, Acts.
c Johnston, p. 171. d W. M. Taylor, The Limitations of Life, p. 264.
' Page, Acts. ' Ramsay, Paul, p. 347- e M- J011es. P- 245-

408 THE ACTS. XXVIII. 11-15
It was a town with an evil reputation,8- haunted by thieves
and swindlers, who preyed on strangers making for the Capital.
Probably a crowd of idlers gathered to watch the arrival of the
party, and Paul must have felt acutely the humiliation of walking
through the streets chained to a soldier. This was not the arrival
at Rome to which he had for years been looking forward. It was
to have been the final fortress to be captured in his Master's name ;
he had told the Romans of his longing to ' impart some spiritual
gift' to them (Rom. i. n ; xv. 29); he had expressed the desire to
'have some fruit' there (Rom. i. 13), as in other parts of the Empire;
and now he was entering its borders, an old man, broken in health,
and a prisoner, uncertain as to the issue of his appeal. What
wonder if his heart sank within him ! b
Tres Tabernae. Thirty-three miles from Rome. Here he was
met by a second band of Christians, who had started later than the
others or had dropped behind on the way.
took courage. It has been already shown (see on xx. 1) that it
is not safe to conclude from Rom. xvi that Paul had many personal
friends at Rome. But this evidence of regard would be in one
sense all the more welcome from Christians who were strangers.
Never before had any Church, not of his own founding, given him
such a reception. And these brethren had taken a long journey,
doubtless at inconvenience and difficulty, to greet him. He had
been dreading his entry into Rome as a prisoner, doubtful if the
Christians would dare, even if they wished, to recognize him. And
when he found that, so far from being ashamed of his chain, they
were ready openly to avow their fellowship with him, a load was
lifted from his heart. 16-22
10 And when we entered Rome, Paul was suffered to
live by himself with the soldier who guarded him.
17 And after three days he called together first them
that were of the Jews ; and when they were assembled
he said to them, I, brethren, though I had done nothing
against the people or the customs of our fathers, was
delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the
Romans ; 18 who, when they had examined me, desired
» Horace, Sat. v. 3. b Macduff, Paul, p. 370; Stalker, p. 220.

THE ACTS. XXVIII. 16-22

409

to set me at liberty, because there was no cause of death
in me. 19 But when the Jews objected, I was compelled
to appeal to Caesar ; not that I had aught to accuse my
nation of. 20 For this cause therefore I invited you to
see and to speak with me ; for on account of the hope of
Israel I am bound with this chain. 21And they said to
him, We neither received letters from Judaea concern
ing thee, nor did any of the brethren come hither and
report or speak any evil of thee. 22 But we desire to
hear from thee what thou thinkest : for as concerning
this sect it is known to us that everywhere it is spoken
against. 16. when we entered Rome. Their road lay along the ' Sacred
Way', lined with monuments of the illustrious dead, by which
many a Roman general had passed, in his ' triumph ', to the Capitol.
Paul walked along it a prisoner in chains, yet a greater conqueror
than any before him.a
After these words the A. V. adds, ' the centurion delivered the
prisoners to the Captain of the Guard '. The words are wanting
in the best MSS., but they may preserve a true tradition. Ramsay
thinks b that ' the Captain of the Guard ' means the Captain of the
Frumentarians, to which corps Julius belonged. But Paul's words
to the Philippians (i. 13), 'My bonds became manifest in Christ
throughout the whole praetorian guard,' are in favour of under
standing the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard to be meant.
to live by himself. The favourable report given by Festus in
the official papers, backed by the testimony of Julius to Paul's high
character, doubtless procured him this indulgence. It is also clear
that Paul had ample funds. Not only is there no mention of his
working for his support at Rome — as a prisoner he would probably
be maintained by the State — but he was able to hire a lodging
commodious enough for a large gathering.0
with the soldier. There would be degrees of annoyance. Some
soldiers would be humane, others brutal ; but, at the best, it must
have been a grievous trial to a man of Paul's culture and refinement
1 Stalker, p. 221 ; Bungener, p. 373 ; Pressense, p. 164. b Paul, p. 348.
' Taylor, Paul, p. 485; Gilbert, p. 222.

410 THE ACTS. XXVIII. 16-22
to have, for two whole years, night and day, eating and sleeping,
talking or praying, a soldier chained to him. And the service was
so irksome to the soldier that, if he were a man of morose temper,
he could cause torture to his prisoner. How Paul felt the annoy
ance is shown by the fact that every one of the Epistles of the
Captivity contains an allusion to his ' chain '.a Yet, as he tells the
Philippians (i. 12), this 'fell out rather unto the furtherance of the
Gospel '. These men would hear his talks with his friends, would
listen while he dictated his letters, would witness the praying to
which he so frequently refers in those Epistles. Nor could Paul
sit for hours beside another man and not speak of the subject which
lay nearest to his heart. And he himself had the warrior spirit.
How the soldier at his side must have thrilled as he heard the
eloquent words dictated to the Ephesians (vi. 10 seq.), which de
scribed ' the whole armour of God ' ! And the frequent change
of guards would spread a knowledge of the Gospel through all
the Praetorians. It may even be that the number of Christians
in the Roman army, to which Tertullian refers a century later,
was largely due to the contact of these men with ' Paul the
prisoner'.1' 17. after three days. This was all the pause which he allowed
himself after his long and trying journey, and the three days must
have been occupied with finding and settling in his lodging.0
the Jews. That is, his countrymen who were not Christians.
He called them together, not for purposes of evangelizing, but to
forestall the false reports which were sure to come from Palestine
(ver. 20). He was, no doubt, at the same time anxious to remove
any prepossessions which might hinder the reception of his message.
That they came on the invitation of a prisoner proves that Paul was
well known to them by name.cl
was delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of
the Romans. This statement is not quite consistent with the
earlier narrative (xxi. 33 ; xxii. 24). But the discrepancy, which is
not material, is easily explained by the fact that Luke is giving the
barest summary of Paul's words.0 And Paul may have avoided,
with his usual tact, saying that he was delivered to the Romans by
the Jews.
19. was compelled to appeal. It was a principle with the Jews
"• Arnot, p. 534 ; Vaughan, iii. 364 ; Farrar, ii. 391.
b Stalker, p. 223 seq. ; Taylor, Paul, p. 490. c Maclaren, ii. 377.
A Gilbert, p. 218. * M. Jones, p. 253.

THE ACTS. XXVIII. 16-22 411
not to invoke Gentile authority against their own people. Similarly
Paul held (1 Cor. vi. 1) that Christians ought not to go to law before
heathen tribunals. Hence he was anxious that these Jews should
not think that in appealing he had any thought of bringing a charge
against his countrymen. His action had been defensive only."-
20. the hope. That is, of the Messiah. The chain upon his
wrist was the result of his attachment to that hope. He had but
taught that Christians were true Jews — that Christianity was not a
new thing, but Judaism perfected.
21. We neither received letters. They probably knew more
than they admitted, but news of his appeal could scarcely have
come before his arrival. They must have heard of his first trial at
Caesarea, since a number of Jews had come from that town to Rome
in connexion with the accusation against Felix.13
22. concerning this sect. The natural inference from their words
would be that there were very few Jewish Christians at Rome ; and no
doubt the Church there was mainly Gentile and the Jewish Christians
of a low social class. But they must have known more than their
language implies. Their relations with the Roman Government were
at this time critical, and the Edict of Claudius (xviii. 2) may have
made them cautious in discussing the new sect.0
it is spoken against. Paul might say that he was bound ' for
the hope of Israel ', but the general impression was that the Nazarenes
rejected the hope of Israel by turning away from Moses.d

23-28
23 And when they had appointed him a day, they
came to him at his lodging in larger numbers; to
whom he expounded matters, bearing witness to the
kingdom of God, and seeking to persuade them con
cerning Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from
the prophets, from morning till evening. 24 And some
listened to the things which were spoken, and some
were disbelieving. 25 And when they agreed not with
one another they departed, after that Paul had spoken
- Johnston, p. 68 ; Eadie, p. 44* ¦ " Joseph Anliq. xx. 8, 9.
• Purves, p. 238 ; Burrell, p. 306; Gilbert, p. 219. Fraser, p. 242.

412 THE ACTS. XXVIII. 23-28
a parting word, Well spake the Holy Spirit by Isaiah
the prophet to your fathers, 26 saying,
Go thou to this people, and say,
With your hearing ye will hear and will not
understand :
And with your eyes ye will behold and will not
see :
27 For the heart of this people is waxed gross,
And their ears are dull of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed ;
Lest at any time they should see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And should turn again,
And I should heal them.
28 Be it known therefore to you that this salvation of
God has been sent to the Gentiles : they will also hear.
23. in larger numbers. On this occasion Paul sought, not, as
before, to remove prejudices against himself, but to win a hearing
for the Gospel. Apparently the Jews were largely of a different class
from those of the previous gathering. There is no trace of the former
non-committal language, but, instead, the attitude which had con
fronted Paul in all the cities in which he had preached to Jews.8-
Luke gives the merest epitome of this address. It no doubt
followed the lines of the speech at Pisidian Antioch, which he had
already recorded as a type of Paul's presentation of Christianity to a
Jewish audience.0
25. your fathers. The change from the ' our fathers ' of ver. 17
is significant. Paul sees that his experience at other cities was to be
repeated at Rome, and he definitely separates himself from the Jewish
community.0 26. Go thou. >The result here was only what Paul had seen else
where — some believed, and some disbelieved. Why, then, did he
utter these words of judgment ? The answer is that, though Israel
had rejected the Gospel in every Roman province, the provinces
were not representative. But Rome was representative, and against
a Buss, p. 419. b M. Jones, p. 252. c M. Jones, p. 252.

THE ACTS. XXVIII. 23-28 413
the Jews of Rome he pronounces Isaiah's words (vi. 9) of Divine
judgment on the indolent or dishonest hearer, whose punishment is
judicial inability to hear aright. No passage of the Old Testament
is so often quoted in the New. Jesus quoted it when Galilee rejected
Him (Matt. xii. 14), and again, some months later, when Jerusalem
endorsed the rejection (John xii. 4o).a
28. they will also hear. The main theme of the Acts is the
expansion of the Gospel. But throughout we are shown the dark
side of the victorious progress in the hostility of the Jews. In
this Paul now recognizes the preordained judgment of God. The
rejection of Israel and the acceptance of the Gentiles is impressively
emphasized in this verse, which closes the first chapter of Christian
history.0 [Verse 29 (A.V.) — ' And when he had said these words, the Jews
departed, and had great reasoning among themselves '¦ — is wanting in
the best MSS.J
30-31
30 And he abode two whole years in his own hired
lodging, and received all that went to see him ;
31 preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching con
cerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all freedom and
without let.
30. two whole years. The statement implies a knowledge on
Luke's part that Paul's residence ceased at the end of that time,
either by death or release.
The long delay in the hearing of the appeal is strange. There is
no ground for throwing the blame on Nero, who with all his faults
was not neglectful of public business. But documents may have
been lost in the shipwreck ; the accusers may have been in no
hurry to expedite a case which they knew to be weak, and would
interpose every obstacle if they thought it was likely to be decided
against them. And Paul would have little power of accelerating
a decision in his favour.0
We know nothing of the events of these two years beyond what
may be gathered from the four Epistles of the Imprisonment— Philip-
" Stifler, p. 282 seq. ; Vaughan, iii. 366.
b Harnack, Acts, p. xxiii ; Pfleiderer, Paulimsm, 11. 35I.
" « Simcox, p. 114; C Merivale, p. 54-

414 THE ACTS. XXVIII. 30-31
pians, Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon. And they do not tell
us much more than the names of the companions who were with
Paul at one time or another — Tychicus, Timothy, Epaphroditus,
Onesimus, Luke, Aristarchus, Mark, Justus, Epaphras, and Demas.
But members of the Roman Church must have been constant
visitors. Those who had travelled so many miles to greet him on
his first arrival would not be likely to neglect him when he was settled
among them.8-
But though in these letters Paul does not tell us many facts, he has
done more for the world by them than he could have achieved by
many years of missionary activity. The greatest book of religious
genius outside the Bible was written by John Bunyan in a jail. A yet
greater treasure was given to the Church of Christ in the guise of
misfortune, when the arrest of Paul's bodily activity supplied him
with the leisure to write these four letters.0
31. without let. This was perhaps the only time in his ministry
of which this could be said. The Jews dared not agitate against him,
and the Romans did not care to interfere. It is a skilfully designed
conclusion. Luke's last word is to say something favourable to the
attitude of the Roman authorities to the Gospel.
Nothing so brings home to us the debt which we owe to Luke's
history as the thickness of the curtain which falls at the close of it.
We cannot even say for certain whether at the end of the two years
Paul was released or executed. His condemnation is certainly not
inherently improbable. No more serious charge in the eyes of the
Roman Government could be brought against any man than that he
was 'a mover of insurrection among all the Jews throughout the world '
(xxiv. 5) ; and though Festus is not likely to have recorded that
charge, Paul's enemies may have revived it, and they would have
had no difficulty in accumulating evidence of the fact that serious
disturbances had resulted from his presence in one city after another
(see on xxiv. 5). They might also be able ° to poison the Emperor's
mind by means of his mistress Poppaea, who was a Jewess by religion.
And it may plausibly be urged that, if he had been acquitted, it is
hard to see why Luke should not have recorded a fact which would
have been so grand a climax in the long series of instances which he
gives of favourable treatment accorded to Christianity by the Roman
authorities. d
On the other hand it may be urged that ver. 30 implies that after
" F. B. Meyer, p. 170. b Stalker, p. 228.
" Ragg, p. 201. cl McGiffert, p. 418 seq.

THE ACTS. XXVIII. 30-31 415
two years the situation there described ended. If it ended with Paul's
death, why was not his death recorded ? To imagine that Luke was
silent about the martyrdom of an Apostle lest he should efface the
impression of the friendliness of the Roman authorities, is absurd.11
The natural inference is that Paul was acquitted and left Rome ; and
this would become a practical certainty, if the Pastoral Epistles are
genuine. But, though they may well be based upon genuine letters
of Paul which have been enlarged by another hand, they are of
doubtful authenticity in their present shape. It may, however, be
pointed out that the argument which they supply in favour of a second
imprisonment does not altogether depend upon their authenticity,
since no early forger would have introduced details inconsistent with
what was believed in his time about Paul's life.0
Another question which has been mooted is whether the Acts was
meant by Luke to close his history. It has been thought by some
that, whether he completed the design or not, he purposed to write
a Trilogy. Too much stress must not be laid upon the fact that he
speaks (i. 1) of his ' first ', and not his ' former ', Book, as though he
contemplated a third volume.0 Professor Moulton has shown d that
the use of the Greek word for ' first ', where only two things are con
cerned, is common in the Hellenistic Greek (cf. Matt. xxi. 31). But
it has been pointed out that, just as he closed his Gospel with a brief
notice of the Ascension while he reserved the fuller account for his
second Book, so, in closing the Acts with a brief summary of Paul's
ministry in prison, he may have been reserving for a third volume,
which was either never written or has been lost, a fuller record of
that ministry and of the trial which ended it.e
. This supposition seems, however, to imply a mistaken view of
Luke's aim, which was not to write a biography of Paul, but a history
of the spread of the Gospel. So he leaves Paul, as before he left
Peter and Barnabas, the moment that their work ceased to be con
nected with the development of the Church as he was tracing it.
The cause was everything, the instrument nothing. He was not
concerned with individual workers, but with the grand fulfilment of
the Divine purpose. Rome, the proud capital of the world, has
heard about Christ. The Gospel has reached ' unto the uttermost
parts of the earth ' (see on i. 8).f
a Harnack, Acts, p. 39; Luke. p. 135- „ „ ,
" McGiffert, p. 404 ! Johnston, p. 185- ' R™**, *«*> P- »3-
a „ , „' ° Rendall, Ads, p. 14.
Prolegomena, p. 79-
1 Harnack, Acts, p. 39 i Stifler, p. 276; Burrell, p. 3".

LIST OF AUTHORS TO WHQ-
REFERENCE IS MADE
Abbott, Acts. — The Acts of the Apostles. By Lyman Abbott. (Barnes
& Co., 1876.)
Abbott, Paul. — The Life and Letters of Paul the Apostle. By Lyman
Abbott. (Clarke & Co., 1898.)
Adeney. — Men of the New Testament: St. Peter. By W. F. Adeney.
(James Robinson, 1905.)
Alexander, J. — The Acts of the Apostles. 2 vols. By J. A. Alexander.
(Nisbet & Co., 1884.)
Alexander, W.—St. Paul at Athens. By W. L. Alexander. (A. & C.
Black, 1865.)
Alford, Acts. — The Acts of the Apostles. By Henry Alford. (Rivington,
1874.)
Alford, Homilies. — Homilies on the Acts, ch. i-x. By Henry Alford.
(Rivington, 1858-.)
Arnot.— The Church in the House. By W. Arnot. (Nisbet & Co., 1873.)
Bacon. — The Story of St. Paul. By B.W.Bacon. (Hodder & Stoughton,
1905.)
Ball.— The Apostle of the Gentiles. By C. R. Ball. (S.P.C.K., 1885.)
Balmforth. — The New Testament in the Light of the Higher Criticism.
By R. Balmforth. (Swan Sonnenschein, 1905.)
Baring-Gould. — A Study of St. Paul. By S. Baring-Gould. (Isbister
& Co., 1897.)
Barnes, Acts. — The Acts of the Apostles. By A. Barnes. (Routledge
& Co., 1853.)
Barnes, Paul. — Scenes and Incidents in the Life of the Apostle Paul.
By A. Barnes. (Hamilton, Adams & Co., n. d.)
Baumgarten. — The Acts of the Apostles. 3 vols. By M. Baumgarten.
Translated by A. J. W. Morrison. (T. & T. Clark, 1854.)
Baur. — Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ. 2 vols. By F. C. Baur. Trans
lated by E. Zeller. (Williams & Norgate, 1876.)
Benson. — Addresses on the Acts. By E. W. Benson. (Macmillan, 1901.)
Binney.— St. Paul, his Life and Ministry. By T. Binney. (Nisbet & Co.,
1866.)
Bird. — Paul of Tarsus. By R. Bird. (Nelson & Sons, 1900.)
Birks. — Studies in the Life and Character of St. Peter. By H. A. Birks.
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1887.)
Biscoe.— The History of the Acts Confirmed from other Sources. By
R. Biscoe. (Oxford University Press, 1840.)
Blunt, A. F. W.— Studies in Apostolic Christianity. By A. F. W. Blunt.
(Dent & Co., 1909.)
Blunt, H., Paul.— Lectures on the History of St. Paul. 2 vols. By
H. Blunt. (Hatchard, 1841.)
Blunt, H., Peter.-— Lectures on the History of St. Peter. By H. Blunt.
(Hatchard, 1832.)
Briggs.— Missions, Apostolic and Modern. By F. W. Briggs. (Neil, n. d.)

LIST OF AUTHORS 417
UiZ£'?ifeC?™~Pentecost' and the Founding of the Church. By F. W.
Bnggs. (Mason, 1861.)
Bungener.-^. Paul. By F. Bungener. Translated from the French.
(Religious Tract Society, n. d.)
Burrell -The Early Church. By D.J. Burrell and J. D. Burrell. (American
T-. Jt Society, n. d.)
Buss.— R"man Law and History in the New Testament. By S Buss
(Ri- gton, 1 901.)
Cave.— Primitive Christianity. By W. Cave. (Vincent, 1840.)
Chase.— The Credibility of the Acts of the Apostles. By F. H. Chase.
(Macmillan, 1902.)
Cone.— Paul, the Man, the Missionary, and the Teacher. By O Cone
(A. & C. Black, 1898.)
Conybeare and Howson. — The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. 2 vols.
By W. J. Conybeare and J. S. Howson. (Longmans, 1863.)
Cook.— The Acts of the Apostles. By F. C. Cook. (Murray, 1880.)
Cotterill.— The Genesis of the Church. By H. Cotterill. (Blackwood,
1872.)
Cox.— The First Century of Christianity . By H. Cox. (Griffith, Farran,
& Co., 1892.)
Davies. — St. Paul in Greece. By G. S. Davies. (S.P.C.K. n.d.)
Denton. — The Acts of the Apostles. 2 vols. By W. Denton. (Bell
& Sons, 1876.)
Dewes.— Life and Letters of St. Paul. By A. Dewes. (Longmans, 1882.)
Dick. — Lectures on the Acts. By J. Dick. (Ogle, 1848.)
Dobschiitz. — Christian Life in the Primitive Church. By E. von Dob-
schiitz. Translated by G. Bremner. (Williams & Norgate, 1904.)
Dodd. — Life and Ministry of St. Peter. By P. S. Dodd. (Rivington,
1837.)
Du Veil. — A Commentary on the Acts. By C. M. Du Veil. (Hadden,
1851.)
Dykes. — From Jerusalem to Antioch. By J. O. Dykes. (Hodder &
Stoughton, 1874.)
Eadie.— Paul the Preacher. By J. Eadie. (Griffin & Co., 1859.)
Encycl. BUI.— Encyclopaedia Biblica. 4 vols. Edited by T. K. Cheyne
and J. S. Black. (A. & C. Black, 1899.)
Everitt. — St. Paul's Journey from Jerusalem to Rome. By H. Everitt.
(S.P.C.K., 1904.)
Exell.— The Acts: Biblical Illustrator. By J. S. Exell. (Nisbet & Co.,
n.d.)
Farrar.— The Life and Work of St. Paul. 2 vols. By F. W. Farrar.
(Cassell & Co., 1879.)
Farrar, Early Days. — The Early Days of Christianity. 2 vols. By
F. W. Farrar. (Cassell & Co., 1882.)
Fouard, Paul.— St. Paul and his Missions. By C. Fouard. Translated
by G. F. X. Griffith. (Longmans, 1894.)
Fouard, Peter.— St. Peter and the First Years of Christianity. By C.
Fouard. Translated by G. F. X. Griffith. (Longmans, 1903.)
Fraser.— The Speeches of the Holy Apostles. By D. Fraser. (Hodder
& Stoughton, 1884.) , „ _ _ _, „ ,
Gardner.— The Speeches of St. Paul in the Acts. By Percy Gardner.
Cambridge Biblical Essays. (Macmillan, I9°9-) .
Geikie.- The Apostles -their Lives and Letters. By C. Geikie. (Nisbet
GilbeA-The^Stldent's Life of St. Paul. By G. H. Gilbert. (Macmillan,
1899.)

418 LIST OF AUTHORS TO WHOM
Giles.— Apostolical Records. By J. A. Giles. (Reeves & Turner, 1886.)
Gloag.— The Acts of the Apostles. 2 vols. By P. J. Gloag. (T. & T.
Clark, 1870.)
Godet. — Introduction to the New Testament. By F. Godet. Translated
by W. Affleck. (T. & T. Clark, 1894.)
Goulburn. — The Acts of the Deacons. By E. M. Goulburn. (Rivington,
1866.)
Green. — The Apostle Peter. By S. G. Green. (Nelson & Sons, n.d.)
Gurney. — Sermons on the Acts. By J. H. Gurney. (Rivington, 1862.)
Hackett.— The Acts of the Apostles. By H. B. Hackett. (Hamilton,
Adams & Co., 1877.)
Hanson.— The Apostle Paul and the Preaching of Christianity. By
R. D. Hanson. (Williams & Norgate, 1875.)
Harnack, Acts. — The Acts of the Apostles. By A. Harnack. Translated
by J. R. Wilkinson. (Williams & Norgate, 1909.)
Harnack, Luke. — Luke the Physician. — By A. Harnack. Translated by
J. R. Wilkinson. (Williams & Norgate, 1907.)
Hastings. — A Dictionary of the Bible. 5 vols. Edited by J. Hastings.
(T. & T. Clark, 1903.)
Hausrath. — A History of New Testament Times. 4 vols. By A. Hausrath.
Translated by L. Huxley. (Williams & Norgate, 1895.)
Haweis. — The Picture of Paul. By H. R. Haweis. (Burnet & Co.,
1887.)
Howson, Character. — The Character of St. Paul. By J. S. Howson.
(Strahan & Co., 1873.)
Howson, Companions. — The Companions of St. Paul. By J. S. Howson.
(Strahan & Co., 1871.)
Howson, Peter. — Horae Petrinae. By J. S. Howson. (Religious Tract
Society, 1883.)
Howson, Scenes. — Scenes from the Life of St. Paul. By J. S. Howson.
(Religious Tract Society, n. d.)
Huntington. — The Fitness of Christianity to Man. By F. D. Huntington.
(T. Whittaker, 1878.)
Iverach.— St. Paul, His Life and Times. By J. Iverach. (Nisbet
& Co., n.d.)
Johnston. — St. Paul and His Mission to the Roman Empire. By C. N.
Johnston. (A. & C. Black, 1909.)
Jones, J. C. — Studies in the Acts of the Apostles. By J. C. Jones.
(Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1886.)
Jones, M.St. Paul the Orator. By M. Jones. (Hodder & Stoughton,
1910.)
Kennick.— Biblical Essays. By J. Kennick. (Longmans, 1864.)
Kitto.— Bible Illustrations : The Acts. By J. Kitto. (Oliphant & Co.,
1869.)
Knowling.— The Acts of the Apostles (Expositor's Greek Testament). By
R. J. Knowling. (Hodder & Stoughton, 1901.)
Lange.— The Acts of the Apostles. By G. V. Lechler and K. Geroth.
Translated by P. J. Gloag. (T. & T. Clark, 1864.)
Leathes. — The Witness of St. Paul to Christ. By S. Leathes. (Rivington,
1869.)
Lechler.— The Apostolic and Post- Apostolic Times. 2 vols. By G. V.
Lechler. Translated by A. J. K. Davidson. (T. & T. Clark, 1886.)
Lewin.— The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. 2 vols. By T. Lewin.
(George Bell, 1890.)
Lewis.— Petros. By Z. H. Lewis. (Lewis, n. d.)
Lock.— St. Paul the Master-Builder. By W. Lock. (Methuen, 1899.)

REFERENCE IS MADE 4.9
Lnct^S:^S7yf the A*ostles- 2 vois- B^ h- m- Luck-k
Lumby-7%* Acts 'of the Apostles. By J. R. Lumby. (Cambrid-.-
University Press, 1894.)
Lyttleton.— Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul.
By Lord George Lyttleton. (Religious Tract Society, n. d.)
Macduff, Athens.— St. Paul at Athens. By J. R. Macduff. (Nisbet & Co
1887.)
Macduff, Paul. — The Footsteps of St. Paul. By J. R. Macduff. (Nisbet
& Co., 1872.)
Macduff, Peter. — The Footsteps of St. Peter. By T. R. Macduff. (Nisbet
& Co., 1876.)
McGiffert. — A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age. By A. C.
McGiffert. (T. & T. Clark, 1897.)
Mackenzie. — Saul of Tarsus — His Life and its Lessons. By W. B.
Mackenzie. (Seeley & Co., 1864.)
Maclaren. — The Acts of the Apostles. 2 vols. By A. Maclaren. (Hodder
& Stoughton, 1907.)
Malleson. — The Acts and Epistles of St. Paul. By F. A. Malleson.
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1881.)
Maurice. — Sermons on the Acts. By F. D. Maurice. (Macmillan, 1894.)
Merivale, C.— St. Paul at Rome. By C. Merivale. (S.P.C.K., n. d.)
Merivale, L. — Christian Records. By L. A. Merivale. (Longmans, 1857.)
Meyer, F.B.— Paul, a Servant of Jesus Christ. By F.B.Meyer. (Morgan
& Scott, n. d.)
Meyer, H. — The Acts of the Apostles. 3 vols. By H. A. W. Meyer.
Translated by P. J. Gloag. (T. & T. Clark, 1887.)
Milligan.— The Resurrection of our Lord. By W. Milligan. (Macmillan,
1905.)
Morrison.— The Acts of the Apostles. By T. Morrison. (Oliphant
& Co., n.d.)
Neander. — The Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the
Apostles. 2 vols. By A. Neander. Translated by J. E. Ryland.
(Bell, 1876.)
Noble. — Typical New Testament Conversions. By F. A. Noble. (J. Robin
son, 1 901.)
Norris.— The A cts of the Apostles. By J. P. Norris. (Rivington, 1871.)
Olshausen. — The Acts of the Apostles. By H. Olshausen. Translated
by W. Lindsay. (T. & T. Clark, 1850.)
Overbeck. — Introduction to the Acts. By F. Overbeck. Translated by
J. Dare. (Williams & Norgate, 1876.)
Page— The Acts of the Apostles. By T. E. Page. (Macmillan, 1894.)
Parker.— Apostolic Life. 3 vols. By J. Parker. (R. Clarke, 1884.)
Pask.— The Apostle of the Gentiles. By B. P. Pask. (Sunday School
Union, 1877.)
Pfleiderer, Paul.— Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of
Christianity. By O. Pfleiderer. Translated by J. F. Smith. (Williams
& Norgate, 1885.)
Pfleiderer, Paulinism.—Paulinism. By O. Pfleiderer. Translated by
E. Peters. (Williams & Norgate, 1877O
Pfleiderer, Primitive.— Primitive Christianity. 2 vols. By O. Pfleiderer.
Translated by W. Montgomery. (Williams & Norgate, 1906.)
Pierson.— The Acts of the Holy Spirit. By A. T. Pierson. (Morgan
mummer°-Exegelical Commentary on St. Matthew's Gospel. By Alfred
Plummer. (Elliot Stock, 1909.)

420 LIST OF AUTHORS TO WHOM
Plumptre, Acts.— The Acts of the Apostles. By E. H. Plumptre. (Cassell
& Co., n. d.)
Plumptre, Paul.— St. Paul in Asia Minor. By E. H. Plumptre.
(S.P.C.K., n.d.)
Pressense\->i-77^ Early Years of Christianity. By E. de Pressense.
Translated by A. Harwood. (Hodder & Stoughton, 1869.)
Purves. — Christianity in the Apostolic Age. By G. T. Purves. (Smith,
Elder & Co., 1900.)
Rackham. — The Acts of the Apostles. By R. B. Rackham. (Methuen,
1901.)
Ragg. — The Church of the Apostles. By L. Ragg. (Rivington, 1909.)
Ramsay, Church. — The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170.
By W. M. Ramsay. (Hodder & Stoughton, 1904.)
Ramsay, Cities. — The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia. By W. M.
Ramsay. (Clarendon Press, 1897.)
Ramsay, Paul. — St. Paul, the Traveller and the Roman Citizen. By
W. M. Ramsay. (Hodder & Stoughton, 1897.)
Ramsay, Pauline. — Pauline and Other Studies. By W. M. Ramsay.
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1906.)
Ramsay, Pictures. — Pictures of the Apostolic Church. By W. M.
Ramsay. (Hodder & Stoughton, 1910.)
Ramsden. — Apostolic Times and their Lessons. 2 vols. By C. H.
Ramsden. (Hatchards, 1874.)
Rankin. — The First Saints. By J. Rankin. (Blackwood, 1893.)
Rawlinson. — St. Paul in Damascus and Asia Minor. By G. Rawlinson.
(S.P.C.K., n.d.)
Renan, Apostles. — The Apostles. By E. Renan. Translated from the
French. (Triibner & Co., 1869.)
Renan, Paul. — St. Paul. By E. Renan. Translated by J. Lockwood.
(Carleton, 1875.)
Rendall.— The Acts of the Apostles. By F. Rendall. (Macmillan, 1897.)
Reuss. — History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age. 2 vols.
By E. Reuss. Translated by A. Harwood. (Hodder & Stoughton,
1872.)
Robertson, A. T.- — Epochs in the Life of St. Paul. By A. T. Robertson.
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1909.)
Robertson, J. — Scenes from the Life of St. Paul. By J. Robertson.
(Whitfield, 1862.)
Ropes. — The Apostolic Age. By J. H. Ropes. (Hodder & Stoughton,
1906.)
Row. — Apostolical Christianity. By C. A. Row. (Church of England
Sunday School Institute, n. d.)
Sabatier.— The Apostle Paul. By A. Sabatier. Translated by A. M.
Hellier. (Hodder & Stoughton, 1896.)
Sadler.— The Acts of the Apostles. By M. F. Sadler. (George Bell
& Sons, 1887.)
Schaff.— History of the Apostolic Church. 2 vols. By P. Schaff. (T. & T.
Clark, 1854.)
Shakspeare.— St. Paul at Athens. By C. Shakspeare. (Kegan Paul,
1878.)
Shirley.— The Church in the Apostolic Age. By W. W. Shirley. (Clarendon
Press, 1874.)
Simcox. — The Beginnings of the Christian Church. By W. H. Simcox.
(Longmans, 1892.)
Slater.— The Faith and Life of the Early Church. By W. F. Slater.
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1892.)

REFERENCE IS MADE 421
SmhzL?'^/n the ?ays °f His Flesh- By D- Smith. (Hodder &
Stoughton, 1905.) v
Smith, ]-—The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. By J. Smith. (Long
mans, 1856.) v o
Spence.— Scenes from the Life of St. Peter. By J. Spence. (Religious
Tract Society, n. d.)
Stalker.— The Life of St. Paul. By J. Stalker. (T. & T. Clark, 1892.)
Stanley.— Sermons and Essays on the Apostolical Age. By A P Stanley
(Parker, 1847.)
Stier. — The Words of the Apostles. By R. Stier. Translated by G. H.
Venables. (T. & T. Clark, 1869.)
Stifler.— An Introduction to the Study oj the Acts. By J. M. Stifler.
(Passmore & Alabaster, 1894.)
Stokes.— The Acts of the Apostles. 2 vols. By G. T. Stokes. (Hodder
& Stoughton, 1891.)
Swete. — The Appearances of Our Lord after the Resurrection. By H. B.
Swete. (Macmillan, 1908.)
Swete, The Holy Spirit. — The Holy Spirit in the New Testament. By
H. B. Swete. (Macmillan, 1909.)
Taylor, Paul. — Paul the Missionary. By W. M. Taylor. (Sampson
Low, 1882.)
Taylor, Peter.— Peter the Apostle. By W. M. Taylor. (Burnet & Isbister,
1896.)
Thiersch. — A History of the Christian Church in the Apostolic Times.
By H. W. J. Thiersch. Translated by T. Carlyle. (Bosworth, 1883.)
Thomas, Acts. — The Acts of the Apostles. By D. Thomas. (Dickinson,
1889.)
Thomas, J. — The First Christian Generation. By J. Thomas. (Swan
Sonnenschein & Co., 1903.)
Vaughan. — The Church of the First Days. 3 vols. By C. J. Vaughan.
(Macmillan, 1864.)
Watson.— In the Apostolic Age. By R. A. Watson. (Kelly, 1894.)
Weinel.— St. Paul : The Man and his Work. ByH.Weinel. Translated
by G. A. Bienemann. (Williams & Norgate, 1906.)
Weizsacker. — The Apostolic Age. 2 vols. By C. von Weizsacker. Trans
lated by J. Millar. (Williams & Norgate, 1897.)
Wernle. — The Beginnings of Christianity. 2 vols. ByP.Wernle. Trans
lated by G. A. Bienemann. (Williams & Norgate, 1903.)
West.— Scenes from the Life of St. Peter. By D. West. (Heylin, 1854.)
Whyte.— The Apostle Paul. By A. Whyte. (Oliphant, 1903.)
Williams.— Studies in the Book of Acts. By J. Williams. (Nisbet & Co.,
1888.)
Wrtdt—Paul. By W. Wrede. Translated by E. Lummis. (Green,
1907.)
Zeller.— The Contents and Origin of the Acts of the Apostles. By E.
Zeller. Translated by J. Dare. (Williams & Norgate, 1875.)

INDEX

Acts of the Apostles, the ; date
and authorship, p. i seq.
sources, I.
title, 2.
qu. second of a trilogy? 415.
Agabus, 176, 339.
Alexander, 320, 347.
Ananias and Sapphira, 69.
Ananias, of Damascus, vision of,
130.
Ananias, the High Priest, 359, 369,
373-
Angels, appearances of, 8, 75, 114,
184, 186.
Annas, 59.
Antioch in Pisidia, 205.
Antioch in Syria, 171.
Apollos, 305, 306.
'Apostle,' 217.
Aquila, 292, 293.
Areopagus, the, 284.
Aretas, 138.
Artemis, 317.
Ascension, the, 4, 7, 12.
Asiarchs, the, 319.
Athens, 281.
St. Paul's failure at, 290.
Augustan cohort, 393.
Baptism, formula of, 40.
necessity of, 133, 165.
of converts, 117, 268.
of infants, 262.
Barnabas gives a farm, 68.
qu. an early friend of Saul? 141.
at Syrian Antioch, 172 seq.
quarrel with St. Paul, 251.

Bernice, 382.
Beroea, 278.
Breaking of Bread, 43, 401.
Brethren of the Lord, the, 14, 185,
239-
Caiaphas, 59.
Capital Punishment, powers of the
Sanhedrin with regard to, 78.
Captain of the Temple, 57.
Centurions of the N.T., 153.
' Christian,' 175.
' Church,' 71.
Claudius — edict expelling Jews,
293-
' Clean and unclean,' 158.
Collection for the poor saints, 325,
373-
Community of goods, 43 seq., 82,
177.
Conference at Jerusalem, the, 233,
237-
the Decree of, 240, 242.
Conscience, liberty of, 63, 76.
Corinth, 291.
the Church of, 299.
Cornelius, 152 seq.
Crispus, 297.
Cyprus, 196.
Damaris, 291.
Demetrius, 317.
Derbe, 217.
Drusilla, 375.
Elders, 177, 226.
Elymas, 198.

INDEX

423

Ephesus, 307.
the Church of, 321.
Epicureans, 282.
Eunice, 254.
Eutychus, 328.
Fasting, 193.
Felix, 367, 372, 374.
Festus, 376.
First day of the week, the, 327.
Forty Days, the, 3.
Galatia, the Churches of, 201.
Galatians, Epistle to the ; dis
crepancies with the Acts, 144,
230.
date of, 245.
Gallio, 299.
Gamaliel, 79.
Hellenists, 81, 84, 86.
Herod Agrippa I, 178.
Herod Agrippa II, 382.
Iconium, 216.
Italian cohort, 153.
James, St., the Apostle, 179.
the Lord's brother, 239.
Jason, 275.
John, St., 49, 1 10, 236.
Joppa, 156.
Josephus, 402.
Joy of the Early Christians, 107,
215.
Judaizers, the, 227, 343.
Judas, death of, 23.
Julius, 393, 402, 409.
Lot, use of the, 25.
Luke, St., 258.
a physician, 52.
accuracy of, 275, 300.
his interest in women, 290.
his Gospel, 377.

Lydia, 261.
Lystra, 217, 219.
Manaen, 192.
Mark, St, 146, 183, 189, 197, 203,
248, 250, 252.
Matthias, election of St., 19.
Miracles in the Acts, 46.
Missionary work in first century,
194.
Mnason, 147, 341.
' Nazarenes,' 370.
Paul, St., ' a young man,' 100.
his conversion as an evidence of
Christianity, 118.
nature of the appearance to him,
119, 188, 352.
the preparation for his conver
sion, 120.
'a chosen instrument,' 122.
discrepancies in the narratives of
his conversion, 126, 353.
retirement to Arabia, 134.
his Roman name, 199.
his Roman citizenship, 271, 356,
357-
his acquaintance with Greek
literature, 288, 349.
the tentmaker, 274, 294.
at Ephesus, 321.
rebukes St. Peter, 246.
quarrel with St. Barnabas, 251.
his missionary speeches, 206.
his visions, 257, 297, 355, 363,
398.
his vow at Corinth, 302.
his personal appearance, 216,
35°-
his command of money, 344.
his appeal to the Emperor, 381.
qu. acquittal by Nero ? 414.
Pentecost, day of, 30.
Perga, 204.

424

INDEX

Peter, St., election of St. Matthias,
1 8 seq.
his friendship with St. John, 49.
his knowledge of Greek, 17.
at the Conference, 237.
his later history, 238.
rebuked by St. Paul, 246.
Pharisees, the, 57, 236, 361.
Philip, St., the Evangelist, 106, 113,
338-
Philippi, 260.
the earthquake at, 269.
the Church of, 272.
Priscilla, 292.
' Prophet,' 176, 191.
Proselytes, 84, 153.
' Pythoness,' 264.
Risen Lord, appearances of the, 3,
163.
Romans, sixteenth chapter of the
Epistle to the, 321.
Sadducees, the, 57, 58, 75, 362.
Samaritans, the, 106.
' Seven,' the, 83.
Shipwreck, narrative of the, 393.
Silas, 251, 279.
Simon Magus, 108, 112.
Simony, in.
Sopater, 326.
Sosthenes, 301.

Speeches, authenticity of the, 5, 22,
34, 39, 54, 76, 78, 79, 9°, 168,
206, 240, 285, 331, 351, 362,
370, 389-
Stephen, St., 86.
speech of, 90, 97.
result of his death, 102.
Stoics, the, 282.
Stoning, origin of the punishment,
101.
Symeon Niger, 191.
Synagogue, the, 196.
Tanner, trade of the, 151.
Tertullus, 369.
Thekla, 216.
Theophilus, 2.
Thessalonica, 273.
Church of, 276.
Theudas, 79.
Timothy, 254, 279.
Titus, 234.
Titus Justus, 297.
Tongues, gift of, 26.
Tyrannus, 309.
Upper Chamber, the, 13.
' We '-sections, viii-ix, 257, 327,
342, 392-
Widows, 82, 150.
Women, position of, in early
Church, 14, 126, 169, 262.
Luke's interest in, 290.

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