3. The Diaspora Crowd’s Responses to Signs (2:5–13)

The scene with disciples speaking in “other” tongues by the Spirit’s inspiration opens directly into a mention of the crowds that recognized these tongues (2:5–13) and that the apostles evangelized through their common linguistic ground with them (2:41). It also offers a list of the linguistically diverse hearers’ locations (2:9–11).

Luke often uses the literary technique of a divided crowd (e.g., 17:18, 32), usually implying that one group is more receptive to the message than the other (17:32–34; 23:7–9). If Luke uses this technique the same way here as he often uses it, then the Diaspora Jews may be among Peter’s most receptive hearers in 2:37–41, just as Gentiles are in 13:48–50 (or probably Stoics in 17:32–34; Pharisees in 23:7–9). They may thus serve also as a bridge for audience identification.

Luke treats the crowds, from a literary standpoint, like a chorus in Greek plays: as Dunn notes, these crowds, like a chorus, have a representative function (for the nations, though they remain Jews). Perhaps like a chorus, a subgroup within the chorus provides some comic relief (2:13). The “crowds” appear frequently in Luke-Acts (πλῆθος, as here, more than twenty times; ὄχλος, as in 1:15, more than sixty times; see comment on ). In ancient aristocratic ideology, the “crowds” were untrustworthy; the masses were easily misled by demagogues, those who appeal to the ignorant masses rather than the wise elite. Trained philosophers often expressed the same sentiments concerning the philosophically uninformed masses. An urban elite might suspect that visitors to the festival would prove particularly susceptible to such deception; centuries earlier a Greek writer mocked urban demagogues who through flattery seduced country folk unaccustomed to their ways. In contrast to ancient aristocratic ideology, Luke’s crowds are often willing to learn (e.g., Luke 1:10; 3:10; 4:42; 5:1; Acts 8:6; 11:24, 26), a welcome contrast to the Jerusalem aristocrats (e.g., Acts 4:1–2), though sometimes easily stirred up (16:22; 17:8, 13).

Orators at festivals discussed how far people had traveled to attend a festival, “for what is much sought after has value” (Men. Rhet. 1.3, 366.9–10 [Russell and Wilson, 73]). They also might comment on the vast numbers who came (366.24), “as at the Hebrews’ festival in Palestine, where they gather in great numbers from many nations” (366.26–28 [Russell and Wilson, 73]). Luke is not offering an epideictic oration on the greatness of the Pentecost festival, but he uses the same sort of expected appreciation for the festival and its pilgrims’ interest to show the greatness of the event of the Spirit’s coming.

The Diaspora Jews in the crowd are astonished (Acts 2:7, 12), a familiar response in Luke-Acts to miracles (Luke 2:18, 33; 8:25; 9:43; 11:14; 24:12, 41; Acts 3:12; 7:31) and other divinely orchestrated phenomena (Luke 1:21, 63; 4:22; 20:26; Acts 4:13). Two terms for their reaction are used here: the term ἐξίστημι appears eleven times in Luke-Acts (about 65 percent of the NT uses); the term θαυμάζω appears in Luke-Acts eighteen times (about 42 percent of the NT uses). The reader can hardly miss the point, which reinforces the “confounding” or “confusion” of the audience in Acts 2:6. Such amazement constituted a normal response to God’s wonders. It does not always guarantee faith (cf. 13:41), but it is often its prelude. See fuller comment on Acts 3:12.

By asking what “this” (τοῦτο) phenomenon means, the crowds allude back to “this” (ταύτης) sound (2:6, referring to the disciples speaking in other languages in 2:4) and prepare for Peter’s explanation (2:16, τοῦτο): “this” sound of other languages fulfills Joel’s promise of Spirit-inspired speech in the eschatological time (Acts 2:17–18).

The crowds heard the disciples declaring God’s greatness (μεγαλεῖα, 2:11); Luke elsewhere uses a cognate of this term for an amazed crowd’s reaction to God’s greatness (Luke 9:43; cf. Acts 19:27), and another cognate for exalting God (Luke 1:46 [cf. Acts 19:17]; conjoined with tongues speaking in Acts 10:46). Praising God’s mighty deeds appears also in Ps 150:2 (though the LXX uses a different word), in a context that includes the “sound” (ἤχῳ) of the praise (150:3; cf. Acts 2:2) and praise from all with the “breath” of life (Ps 150:6; cf. Acts 2:2). In view of Acts 10:46 and (if we may admit it as evidence) the use of tongues for prayer and worship in Paul (1 Cor 14:14–17), it seems likely that the crowds heard the disciples worshiping God. Recipients of a benefactor’s favor were expected to honor the benefactor with public recognition, a common understanding in a milieu in which the emphasis on public praise for benefactors was more intelligible than it sometimes is for Western society. It is also relevant that “God’s mighty acts” are what Luke’s history is about; the Spirit-empowered disciples engage in precisely an activity most significant to Luke, who undoubtedly trusts the Spirit in an analogous manner for his own literary task.

Whether these crowds were visiting for the festival season (perhaps since Passover, but some perhaps new) or Diaspora Jews who had settled in Jerusalem makes a difference for how we understand following chapters. If they had settled in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem church had a sizable number of Hellenist converts (Acts 6:1) from the start. This would also mean that these Diaspora converts did not all immediately return to share their faith in the Diaspora (cf. 11:19).

The evidence is somewhat ambiguous but probably favors residents over visitors. Many scholars conclude that these Diaspora Jews had taken up permanent residence in Jerusalem, because of a term that normally suggests this in 2:5 (κατοικοῦντες). Luke does, indeed, usually employ the term in this manner. Peter addresses the crowd as Judean men and residents of Jerusalem (2:14), but since “residents” here presumably means what it meant in 2:5, it does not settle whether he addresses short- or long-term residents. The term appears twenty-one times in Luke-Acts, and in almost every case, it could mean a long-term resident, quite often for resident alien communities, though in many of these cases the long-term element may be incidental to the term’s meaning. Yet against reading the term as necessarily requiring long-term residents, Luke uses the same term for “residents” of Mesopotamia present for the festival in 2:9.

Archaeological evidence confirms that a large population of Diaspora immigrants settled in Jerusalem (see comment on Acts 6:1), though this information does not settle the case of the individuals mentioned here. In support of their being long-term residents, only the Romans are designated as “visiting” (2:10), though these could be set apart because of the narrative’s geographic goal (28:14–31). By contrast, some scholars argue that the Romans may be set apart not because of their geography but because of their citizenship, distinguishing them from provincials (a view that might require some adjustment to the various attempts to make sense of Luke’s geographic arrangement, below; he might count Rome as their “place” but does not seem to do so for the Roman citizen Paul, 21:39; 22:3). That Peter addresses Jerusalemites and Judeans (2:14; though “Israelites” in 2:22 may expand this address) and holds his audience partially culpable for Jesus’s crucifixion (2:23; cf. 3:17; in contrast to Diaspora Jews in the audience of 13:27–28) seems to militate against visitors being the primary audience.

Perhaps the ambiguity of the evidence (though generally favoring “residents,” especially on the basis of Luke’s normal usage) suggests that some Diaspora Jews present fell into either category, and Luke simply does not sacrifice the space to explain this detail; he could use either group to foreshadow the later Diaspora mission. Certainly, there must have been many visitors for the festival (see more extended comment on this point at Acts 2:1), and perhaps Luke would have included temporary residents who stayed for the seven weeks after Passover among his κατοικοῦντες.

Whether or not the Diaspora Jews whom Luke emphasizes here were visiting Jerusalem or had settled there, their sojourn in the Holy City would have signaled their piety (see comment on Acts 6:1), which Luke makes explicit (εὐλαβεῖς). In the NT corpus, only Luke uses the term εὐλαβής, and three of his four uses modify ἀνήρ or ἄνδρες (2:5; 8:2; 22:12; the exception uses ἄνθρωίος, for Simeon, Luke 2:25). Although he employs a term with a related semantic range for God-fearers (εὐσεβής, Acts 10:2, 7; cf. σέβομαι in 13:43, 50; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7), Luke never applies this particular term of piety to people here; here their Jewishness is explicit.

Their symbolic value for Luke’s narrative is clearer: as Diaspora Jews with linguistic and cultural contexts abroad, they prefigure the Gentile mission for which the Spirit is empowering the disciples (Acts 1:8; 2:39). Some national histories or foundation narratives report strife consequent on intermarriages or other ethnic mixing but also portray founders ready to welcome all foreigners. Luke, with his Diaspora and mostly Gentile audience, has even greater reason to portray the Jewish Jesus movement’s welcome to foreigners. (Some scholars compare the Diaspora Jews here with the “mixed multitude” of Exod 12:38, but aside from the ethnic difference, the Diaspora Jews here play a more unambiguously positive role in Luke’s narrative.)

Many readers today view the globalization of Christianity, the church’s global multiculturalism, or the Christian mission’s sensitivity to indigenous languages and cultures as a theological extension of Pentecost. It seems likely that Luke would have viewed such approaches, had he known of them, as a legitimate application of his perspective.

Although in most instances Acts appears to employ “all” with “nations” or “Gentiles” literally (Acts 10:35; 14:16; 15:17; 17:26; cf. Rom 1:5; 15:11; Gal 3:8), in Acts 2:5 “every nation” is presumably hyperbolic. Nevertheless, it may also be missiologically and eschatologically representative (Luke 24:47; Rom 16:26; Col 1:23). Thus the list in Acts 2:9–11 omits some obvious locations, such as Greece and Macedonia (though Jews lived there; cf. 17:1–5, 10–13, 17; 18:4–17). Ancient writers could employ such lists for rhetorical effect; thus, for example, Pseudo-Callisthenes provides a list of ten hostile nations arrayed against Alexander, plus “all the other great nations of the East.”

People naturally considered “Galilean” the antithesis of “cosmopolitan” (cf. Luke 22:59); this prejudice made these Galileans’ apparent universal linguistic proficiency appear all the more astonishing (Acts 2:8). Some Jewish texts also specify that Galileans failed to distinguish their gutturals properly.

The nations begin in the east; then the list mentions the Holy Land, then turns north, south, west (Rome), and (for the final two, which break the literary pattern as well) circles back to summarize some others. The fifteen nations apparently circle around Jerusalem; Luke moves counterclockwise in the first half of his list, then shifts. According to one more complex suggested pattern, we may count the third group, including Egypt and Libya as well as Rome, as west, with a return toward Judea by way of the sea (hence including Crete) and concluding with Arabia. The geography keeps circling back to Jerusalem, as the theological “center” of the earth (see comment on , proleptically fulfilled here). The nations to the north are in Asia Minor, and some appear in Paul’s ministry (though Luke skips Greece). Like 1 En. 26–36 (and presumably any derivative early Jewish sources), Luke may list nations in four groups starting in the east and moving counterclockwise. If Luke’s arrangement is not exact at all points, we should recall that he likely had no maps to consult (though some maps did exist; see introduction, , ).

Other texts use the four points of the compass to relate the Diaspora to Jerusalem (Isa 11:12; 43:5–6; 49:12; Zech 2:6). This arrangement could suggest a Judean source, but it could as easily suggest dependence on biblical geography that articulated a Judean perspective.

Lists of nations appear widely, although not all of them purport to be or represent universal geography. Just as biblical prophets uttered oracles against nations (e.g., Amos 1:3–2:6; Jer 46:1–51:64), so also did some postbiblical oracles; some of these included summaries of nations to be destroyed (e.g., 1QM II, 10–16; Sib. Or. 3.515–19). But universal lists are less frequent.

Dibelius thinks that the catalogue of nations, as well as the sermon, was likely composed by the author. Others consider it difficult for this view to explain why Luke lists precisely the nations he does and in this sequence, and thus suggest that Luke depends on a prior source. W. Knox suggests that Luke’s source contained twelve nations, one for each apostle; Luke then added Rome because of his focus, and either Luke or a “not very intelligent copyist” added Cretans and Arabians. Others also argue for an original list of twelve, which they identify with the twelve signs of the zodiac (a view no longer considered likely; see discussion below), arguing for a pre-Lukan list of twelve nations in Acts 2:9–11 (instead of the current fifteen).

Although Luke has arranged the first twelve differently from the few that follow, this might represent Luke’s choice of arrangement as easily as his redaction of a source. It was not uncommon to vary a structure at its end; cf. how Matt 5:11–12 departs from the structure of 5:3–10; or the sets of variations in 2 Cor 6:4–10; or the opposed paradigms of Ps 1:1–3 and 4–5, followed by the summary of 1:6. Metzger points to the catalogue’s “rhythm and structure, disclosed partly by the author’s use of connectives (καί and τε καί),” and observes that even the apparently dissonant “coda” at the end, “Cretans and Arabs,” “has many parallels in other examples of what can be called the catalogue-form.” Luke may have varied the structure in Acts 2:10–11 to draw attention to Rome (cf. 28:14–31) and proselytes (cf. 6:5; 13:43). If Luke deliberately marks off the first group of twelve, he may call attention to the multiplied ministry of the apostles the way he possibly did by mentioning the 120 in 1:15.

For a period of time many scholars believed that Luke’s list adapted an astrological list of nations under the twelve signs of the zodiac. The list compared with Luke’s list was from Paul of Alexandria, toward the end of the fourth century, but was based on earlier sources. (Critics condemned zodiacal geography as inaccurate, but Ptolemy made it difficult to falsify by claiming that groups were dispersed among various zodiacal regions.)

Before dismissing the zodiacal interpretation (although I will ultimately do so for other reasons), it is important to recognize that astrology was widely accepted in Greco-Roman antiquity. Many people in this era regarded astrology as a plausible science. Originating in the East, astrology spread in the Hellenistic era; it met some initial resistance in Rome, but it eventually became pervasive. Despite some intellectual detractors and political concerns, astrology was, by this period, widely known and used. People used it, for example, to predict the weather. On a cosmic level, however, it was bound up with the concept of fate. Because the place of the stars at one’s birth could determine one’s destiny, horoscopes became common, reflecting earlier Eastern usage. Astrology often overlapped with astronomical uses (such as navigation or attempted agricultural applications) and eventually appeared among academic disciplines.

A wide range of Jewish sources know and approve of astrology in some form. Astrology became widespread in Hellenistic Judaism; its discovery was sometimes attributed to Enoch. Josephus accepts the idea that astrology was effective for the emperor Tiberius (Ant. 18.216–17). Philo allowed that stars could predict the future, since God ordained them as signs (Creation 58–59). More ambiguously, he could allow celestial bodies as proximate causes (Creation 58, 113) but ultimately only under God’s sovereign will (Creation 46). They were not divine (Philo Spec. Laws 1.13), and although Philo links sacred objects with heavenly bodies (e.g., Heir 221), in some places he sounds opposed to astrology (Rewards 58). It was, for him, useful only as a form of meteorology, offering predictions for navigation and agriculture. Some other people apparently took astrology further, as a method of achieving power and gratification.

Palestinian Judaism also imbibed astrological influence. Astrological interest, including horoscopes, appears in the Qumran literature, and such interest grew in later sources; astrology was supposed to predict the future accurately. Some later rabbis seem to have used astrological information and also used imagery from the zodiac and seven planets. Some thought that astrology could often accurately predict the future, though it was inadequate and God shows himself truly in control. Sometimes pagan astrology even revealed Israel’s sufferings (Num. Rab. 20:7). But later rabbis generally agreed that astrology could not control Israel, which was under God’s dominion; God freed Abraham (and hence his descendants) from the power of fate and the stars. Both earlier and later sources often condemned using astrology; certainly, the form of astrology that worshiped stars was condemned.

The view that zodiacal geography ultimately stands behind Luke’s list is not meant to claim that Luke intended to evoke the zodiac (and certainly not astrological notions of fate or prediction) but that he or his source borrowed the list from one that depended on zodiacal regions of the cosmos to arrange the nations of humanity. Paul of Alexandria’s list and its alleged parallels (in different sequence) in Acts are as follows:

Sign

Zodiacal list of Paul of Alexandria

Acts 2:9–11

Ram (Aries)

Persia

Parthians, Medes, Elamites

Bull (Taurus)

Babylonia

Mesopotamia

Twins (Gemini)

Cappadocia

Crab (Cancer)

Armenia

Pontus (contiguous region in Acts 18:2; 1 Pet 1:1)

Lion (Leo)

Asia

Virgin (Virgo)

Hellas, Ionia

Scales (Libra)

Libya, Cyrene

Parts of Libya near Cyrene

Scorpion (Scorpio)

Italy

Romans

Archer (Sagittarius)

Cilicia, Crete

Cretans

Ibex (Capricorn)

Syria

Judea

Water carrier (Aquarius)

Egypt

Fish (Pisces)

Red Sea, India

Arabians

^*In this view, Luke avoids mentioning Greeks yet; Phrygia, however, is on the opposite side of Asia from Hellas.

Supporters of this view suggest that the divergences from Acts may stem from Luke’s use of a variant source or that he chose names most useful for his story line in Acts.

The evidence for this view, however, is questionable. Contrary to the suggestions of some, the phrase “under heaven” offers no support to the astrological interpretation; the idiom was frequent and unrelated to astrology, and its rare occurrences elsewhere in Luke and the NT corpus simply indicate the gospel’s universality (Acts 4:12; Col 1:23). Since a 1970 article by Bruce Metzger, few scholars have followed the astrological geography view. The parallels are not close enough (only five nations are the same in both lists); the parallels that are present also exist in other lists of nations not related to the zodiac. Luke’s and Paul of Alexandria’s lists may simply reflect more widespread usage. Barrett opines that the zodiacal view may now be safely dismissed as “impossible.”

The zodiacal lists simply resemble the more general form of lists of nations representing regions that together composed all nations. Romans, for example, often used such lists to celebrate the emperor’s reign or military prowess; some scholars have plausibly suggested that Acts 2:9–11 serves an analogous propagandistic function, but in this case to critique and offer an alternative to imperial ideology. Ad hoc lists could also include mention of the locations from which visitors to a widely attended festival came (Dio Chrys. Or. 9.5, with six locations named). Jewish people as well as Gentiles used such lists, developing their original model in Gen 10.

Barrett regards the closest parallels as “accounts of the distribution of Jews throughout the world” (not coincidentally, what Luke claims to be writing about here). These parallels do not depend on a common source but reflect a similar form; Luke may have used Diaspora Jewish lists as a model. By all ancient accounts, the Jewish people were widely dispersed. Luke here intends all the lands of the Diaspora.

Luke’s elaboration of regions here underlines a pervasive emphasis in his work. By enumerating the lands from which Diaspora Jews came, Luke prepares his audience for the dispersal of the word of God to those places. In so doing, he alludes to all humanity in a manner similar to the way he did in his Gospel. Immediately after Jesus received the Spirit (Luke 3:21–22), Luke listed generations back to Adam, the progenitor of humanity; here, after recounting the parallel gift of the Spirit in Acts, he lists the nations with the same universal allusion to all humanity.

Luke must have known broader frontiers of the world than he lists. The Roman world had trade ties with India and China in the east and Africa far to the south. Greek sages often commented on their counterparts in India, the famous gymnosophists. They also spoke regularly of Scythians in the far north(east); Rome controlled Gaul and fought with Germans, and Claudius had conquered Britannia. Luke omits distant Ethiopia, but clearly knows about it, correctly reproducing even the title of the queen as it appeared in Greco-Roman sources of his day (Acts 8:27). Why does Luke limit his geographic horizons here? One reason may be that he is citing the Jewish Diaspora, but then why not include Ethiopia, where the Jewish message had obviously reached (8:27)? A more complete reason may be that he draws on a list updating names from the table of the nations in Gen 10.

The first and best-known table of nations in the Bible, hence the prototype for most other Jewish lists and the most obvious single table of nations known to Luke’s ideal audience, was Gen 10. This list of nations is followed almost immediately by the tower of Babel narrative, in which God miraculously scatters the languages (Gen 11:7–9). In the context of Luke’s table of nations, God also scatters languages, but in this case for the opposite purpose, one framed by divinely sanctioned unity (Acts 1:14; 2:1, 46). Luke will not list all seventy nations from Gen 10; instead he provides samples, updating the names for his list. Updating the names of the nations was common even in paraphrases of Gen 10; some later Targumim thus include (by coincidence of selection, but probably also analogy of method) many names that Acts includes, such as Phrygia, Asia, Italy, the Cappadocians, the Medes, Arabians, as well as obvious choices such as Egypt and Libya. More significantly, Acts 2:9–11 shares about half the names found in Josephus’s updated table (Ant. 1.122–47).

Luke’s probable allusion to Gen 10 (whatever other samples he may have added) here underlines his very likely allusion to the tower of Babel in the context.

Many scholars understand Acts 2 as a reversal of the Babel story and believe that Luke patterned his narrative after it; some ancient commentators made the same connection. Such an approach would certainly fit Luke’s theme of mission transcending cultural and linguistic barriers. Others object that although the connection may be a legitimate theological inference to draw for Luke’s sources or others, the text gives no indication that Luke made the connection. Barrett regards the Babel narrative as more important background here than the alleged connection with “giving of Torah” at Sinai but thinks that Luke apparently “makes no attempt to call it to his readers’ mind.”

Does Luke in fact make “no attempt” to allude to Babel? Or does he make subtle allusions even in the narrative’s structure? If we surmise that the table of nations in Gen 10 informs Luke’s list of nations (as it did most Jewish lists of nations), an allusion to Babel in Gen 11:1–9 in the same context seems likely. This suggestion becomes more likely when we consider that Babel represents the only scattering of languages in the OT and hence the only potential background for Luke’s story shared by all his ideal audience. (Certainly, the Babel story, as part of the very popular book of Genesis, was widely told and retold and was reapplied for new settings. Even the very story of the scattered languages at Sinai, to which many scholars appeal, probably alludes to Babel—rabbinic haggadah tended to borrow other stories for Moses and the law—and even if it was widely known in the first century, it would not have been as widely known as the biblical story of Babel.)

When the author of the Qumran War Scroll refers to a “confusion of tongues” (1QM X, 14, בלת לשון), we know that he refers to Babel because this mention follows the creation of Adam and his seed and it parallels scattering. Luke’s use of a table of nations and his mention of scattered languages seem similarly transparent. Whatever the date of the triennial Jewish lectionary readings, at least some of them reflect earlier traditions, and so it would probably not be a coincidence if we concluded on other grounds, with some, that the cycle’s first year used Gen 11 as a reading for Pentecost. As a possible God-fearer or one in touch with early Jewish Christians who kept the Feast of Pentecost (cf. Acts 20:16), Luke may have been familiar with such a tradition or depended on a written or oral source that reflects such a tradition. Even if the lectionary connection is pure coincidence, however, the Babel allusion in this narrative is clear enough. At least some Jewish people could envision an eschatological reversal of Babel (cf. Test. Jud. 25:3).

Differences are clear, of course. God scattered nations at Babel for trying to deify themselves (Gen 11:4), paralleling Adam’s revolt and his expulsion from the garden (3:5, 22–23). By contrast, the disciples at Pentecost were waiting in obedience to a divine command (Acts 1:4–5); instead of trying to reach heaven, they were waiting for their Lord, who had ascended to heaven (1:9–11), to send them the Spirit. In Gen 11:7, God descended to confound the transgressors (the wording reflects their rebellion in 11:3–4), but at Pentecost God descends, in one sense, in a different way (Acts 2:33). In Genesis, God descended and scattered tongues to prevent unity; in Acts, the Spirit descends and scatters tongues to create multicultural unity (1:14; 2:1, 42, 44–46).

Luke employs the verb συνεχύθη for the crowd’s response in 2:6; although this is not Luke’s sole use of συγχέω (9:22; 19:32; 21:27, 31), it is likely an allusion to the Babel narrative, which employs the cognate noun σύγχυσις, “confusion,” as a Greek translation for “Babel” (Gen 11:9; the noun’s other three LXX uses all appear in 1 Samuel, two in the same passage). The verb appears some fifteen times in the LXX, but of these, the earliest uses and those clustered most closely together are Gen 11:7 and 9, referring to the confusion of languages; the same verb appears, referring to Babel, in Wis 10:5. Here it is the audience rather than the language that is confused, but in view of other allusions, this is likely an additional example (perhaps inverting the identity of those confused, to highlight reversal).

Jesus promised that the Spirit would enable the disciples to take the gospel to the nations (Acts 1:8), and throughout the book the Spirit continues to thrust the witnesses across previously foreboding cultural barriers (8:29; 10:19; 11:12). Although the mission is not completed in Acts 2 (or, for that matter, at the end of Acts 28), Luke provides, at Pentecost, a narrative foretaste of the Spirit’s equipping the church to reach all nations. Granted, at this stage in the narrative, Peter’s audience remains a Jewish one, but throughout Acts, Diaspora Jews become the link for God-fearers and eventually Gentiles; Paul himself regularly starts with synagogue communities (13:5, 14; 14:1; 16:13; 17:1, 10, 17; 18:4; 19:8; 28:17). Thus the Twelve begin to fulfill their commission to announce the gospel to every nation, “beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:27); as Jacques Dupont puts it, “The Church was born universal.” Scholars have long recognized the proleptic universalism here; see also comment on Acts 2:17, 39.

I noted earlier some likely Sinai allusions in the text of Acts (cf. 2:2–3; some others find the allusion in 2:33, 38) and that some also cite Jewish traditions linking the Pentecost festival with law-giving and with God’s voice being divided into seventy streams for all the nations. An allusion to these other Jewish traditions, which are of uncertain date, is less secure, but it is not impossible. At least as early as the second century, some Jewish teachers believed that God offered Torah to the other nations before offering it to Israel but that the other nations rejected it. If this tradition was widely known in Luke’s day, it is possible that his hearers would have found here a sort of universalistic reversal of Sinai, in which the message is now spread among the nations. It is not clear to what extent Gentile converts in Pauline churches would have been familiar with extrabiblical traditions (cf. 1 Tim 1:4; Titus 1:14), but at least the Jewish nucleus probably knew some (cf., e.g., 1 Cor 10:2–4; 2 Tim 3:8).

As noted above, Luke portrays the disciples as praising God in various languages, many of which are recognized by Jewish people and proselytes at the festival. Summarized below is some information on each of the groups Luke mentions, although his greater emphasis is on their cumulative import. Many local languages remained in use in this period, although we need not suppose that representatives of every locality listed here heard languages mutually exclusive of all other localities.

Many Jews had never returned to Palestine after the Babylonian exile. The names from Parthia through Mesopotamia (which Parthia controlled) recall not simply the farthest points east but the places of the longest exile. Given “the constant communication and travel between Jerusalem and the eastern diaspora,” the gospel surely reached Mesopotamia in Paul’s lifetime, though this is not Luke’s story to tell.

Parthia was on the overland silk route from China, and so many Parthian Jews took advantage of the connections with fellow Jews in the Roman Empire to work in the highly profitable silk trade. Indeed, “the earliest Christian apostles to Edessa and elsewhere in the Parthian empire were Jewish silk merchants.” Parthian Jews’ loyalty to a temple in the Roman Empire before 70 C.E. and Judeans’ ethnic ties with many Jews in Parthia adversely affected their treatment in both the Parthian and Roman empires.

The Parthians were among the most feared enemies of Rome. Though the river Euphrates appears throughout Roman literature as the general boundary between the Roman and the Parthian empires, Rome’s and Parthia’s boundaries shifted periodically (especially in Armenia). The threat remained a live one in the first century, though Parthians themselves usually did not want trouble with Rome, a formidable empire. The discordant note that the mention of Parthian Jews might strike among some of Luke’s audience might serve a rhetorical function similar to that served in the Jerusalem church by Peter’s ministry to Cornelius’s household (Acts 11:3–18), challenging traditional prejudices and hostilities. In any case, the “ends of the earth” (1:8) could not be completed in the East without their evangelization, and Christians had to be more committed to evangelism than to the stability or preeminence of whatever kingdom in which they happened to live (a theme that we would not expect Luke to develop fully, given his apologetic).

“Medes” and “Elamites” here indicate other peoples of the East along with the Parthians. Because by this period the Medes existed not as an empire but merely as a collection of tribes in Parthia, Luke’s source for the name is probably biblical: the Jewish Diaspora had gone there (2 Kgs 17:6; 18:11). Josephus derived the “Medes” from “Madai” in Gen 10:2 and 1 Chr 1:5 (Ant. 1.124). They are mostly coupled with the Persians and are associated with greater “Asia” in contrast to Europe.

Though the Elamites were now part of Parthia, they “often asserted their autonomy,” but like the Medes, they probably represent simply an example of the eastern Diaspora. Elamite was among the languages into which later rabbis ruled it lawful to translate the Esther scroll.

The title “Mesopotamia” appears twenty-one times in the LXX, nineteen times in Josephus, and often elsewhere. In the LXX it was common Greek usage for Aram-naharaim or Paddan-Aram (e.g., Gen 24:10; 25:20). Some scholars have estimated about a million Jews still in exile in the Mesopotamian region and Parthia. The largest concentration of Parthian Jews was in Babylonia; the second largest was in northern Mesopotamia (related to the Assyrian exile). For Luke, this was the very region from which Abraham hailed (Acts 7:2; cf. Jdt 5:7–8); like others, it was among the nations that would be blessed in Abraham’s seed (cf. Acts 3:25).

Some scholars have estimated about 2.5 million Jews in Palestine, including Judea, in this period. Because Judea is not the Diaspora and Judeans would not be surprised to hear Galileans speaking their language, some have emended Ἰουδαίαν to Ἰονάν, but this speculation is unlikely, presupposing more than a mere scribal change. Others have suggested, more plausibly, that “Judeans” was added to the original list; but one wonders why a redactor would add it as well. If “residents” in Acts 2:5 might include short-term residents between the festivals, then perhaps Luke means here Diaspora Jews who had settled in Judea (cf. 6:9); but then why distinguish them at all? Perhaps it distinguishes them from “residents” of Mesopotamia, but the matter is not easily resolved.

Hengel suggests that “Judea” stands for “greater Judea,” including all of Syria, according to its eschatological extent. This proposal would allow it to fit easily between Mesopotamia and Cappadocia, but Luke nowhere else uses “Judea” in this sense; there is also no reason to believe that Luke would appeal to eschatological boundaries here. Perhaps Luke simply wants to prevent his audience from forgetting that Judeans were also present, although they would be less likely to recognize the foreign languages being spoken.

Cappadocia, which became a province under Tiberius through his treachery, apparently had a large Jewish population. It was to the east of greater Phrygia, north of the Taurus Mountains north of Cilicia. The LXX claimed that the Philistines originated there (Amos 9:7). Josephus notes that Herod’s family had close ties with a king of Cappadocia, and often follows a famous writer, one Strabo of Cappadocia. Cappadocia was also near Pontus.

The region of Pontus was closely connected with Cappadocia (as noted above) and Bithynia. For Jews in Pontus, see Acts 18:2 (cf. perhaps 1 Pet 1:1). Luke may mention it because, when listing Jews in Asia Minor, one might mention Pontus to show how far north they had penetrated (Philo Embassy 281). He may also prepare for his mention of Aquila’s place of origin (Acts 18:2), though Luke could well have mentioned Pontus anyway. Located in the north of Asia Minor, it was less romanized in this period than was the western coast; it also was less educated (at least in Roman terms). In time it had a significant church (1 Pet 1:1; Pliny Ep. 10.96.6).

Some scholars estimate about a million Jews in all Asia Minor (including the Roman province of Asia). Philo speaks of many Jews in all the cities of Asia (Embassy 245), though (as will be evident below in the discussion of some towns of Asia’s interior) this is an exaggeration; still, they seem to have clustered in major cities. The Roman province of Asia figures prominently in the narratives of (and commentary on) Acts 18–20.

There were large Jewish communities in Phrygia (see further Acts 14:1; cf. Phrygia in 16:6; 18:23). Josephus claims that Phrygians descended from Thugrames, son of Gomer, son of Japheth (Ant. 1.126). Jews elsewhere knew that some Jews lived in Pamphylia (Philo Embassy 281; 1 Macc 15:23). Luke may mention the area to highlight it here because it will reappear in Acts 13:13; 14:24; 15:38; 27:5.

Although Greek was the dominant language in urban Egypt (See comment on Acts 21:38), the Egyptian language endured (though by the second century sometimes written in a combination of demotic and Greek scripts). The claim that more Jews lived in Alexandria than in Palestine is almost certainly an overstatement, but no one doubts that many Jews lived in first-century Egypt (Jos. Ant. 14.116–18). Some scholars have estimated about a million Jews in northern Egypt, especially around Alexandria, in the first century. These estimates, too, may be high; Philo, who had every reason to exaggerate, claimed a total of a million Jews in Egypt from its borders with Libya and Ethiopia (Flacc. 43). Nevertheless, a substantial portion of the residents of Egypt, especially Alexandria (where the proportion was perhaps a third), was Jewish. Two of Alexandria’s five districts were Jewish, with only a few Jews living in the other parts (Philo Flacc. 55).

Despite the cultural distance between members of Alexandria’s hellenized elite (such as the Middle Platonist Philo) and the average Palestinian sage, Egyptian Jewry was deeply influenced by events in Judea. After Luke’s day, Egyptian and Cyrenian Jews later joined their own revolt, and Alexandrian Greeks crushed them more brutally than Romans had crushed the revolt in Judea, virtually obliterating Alexandrian Jewry. Subsequent Christian presence in the city would therefore be primarily Gentile. See further comments on Acts 6:9 and especially on Acts 18:24. Although Luke focuses his narrative on the spread of the message in the northern Mediterranean world, it is clear that the Christian movement spread also in Alexandria, where it later became a significant force.

Well-known locations in Cyrenaica included the Ammon oracle (ca. four hundred miles from Cyrene) and the Pentapolis (the Five Cities). The five most prominent cities were “Benghazi [Latin Berenice], Arsinoe, Tolmeita [Ptolemaide], Marsa Sousah [Apollonia] and Cyrene itself” (Pliny E. N.H. 5.5.31). The Five Cities were not close to each other; by ancient estimates, from Arsinoë to Benghazi was forty-three Roman miles, Ptolemais was twenty-two miles farther, and so forth. Cyrene was eleven miles from the sea but had a harbor there (5.5.32).

Cyrene’s Jewish population originally came especially from Egypt, which adjoined Libya (Jos. Ant. 14.118; Ag. Ap. 2.44). Cyrene was connected with Egypt not only geographically; the Ptolemies even subdued it as part of their Egyptian dominion (though the Romans divided them again; Strabo Geog. 17.1.5). (Substantial evidence testifies to the Jewish presence not only in Cyrene but in much of Roman Africa farther west.)

Some scholars have estimated that there were about one hundred thousand Jews in Cyrenaica in this period. They made up one of the four groups of people among whom Cyrene was divided (Strabo, according to Jos. Ant. 14.115). Cyrenian Jews appear frequently in ancient sources (Acts 6:9; 11:20; 13:1; Luke 23:26; Mark 15:21; Jos. Ant. 16.169; cf. 1 Macc 15:23; 2 Macc 2:23). Jews experienced repression from Greeks in Cyrenian Libya in the time of Herod the Great and Augustus (Jos. Ant. 16.160, 162). Like the Jewish community in Egypt, many Jews around Cyrene ultimately revolted, leading to their destruction (Jos. War 7.437).

Romans generally looked down on Libyans in Rome, apparently because many were descended from prisoners of war and hence were of servile or freed status (Plut. Cic. 26.4). But inhabitants of Macedonia and Achaia (where we locate most of Luke’s audience) probably would have thought of Libyans simply as North Africans near Egypt. One of the most familiar accounts would have been Alexander’s visit to the famous oracle of Zeus at Ammon. Educated Greeks also knew that much of Libya was fertile and produced horses and goats in addition to providing elephants, ostriches, and other creatures that northern Mediterranean peoples regarded as exotic. In the late first century, Arrian claimed that Cyrene was in a more desert part of Libya yet itself was “well-watered with groves and meadows,” with animals and fruits of many kinds (Arrian Ind. 43.13).

Apart from “Cretans and Arabs” in Acts 2:11, Rome holds the climactic geographic position here—fitting for a work that narrates the movement of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome. Some scholars estimate about one hundred thousand Jews in Italy, with half of them in Rome, in the first century (see further comment on Acts 28:17); others estimate closer to half this designated figure for Rome. There were already Jews in Rome in the second century B.C.E., but many more came as slaves because of Pompey’s triumph in the first century B.C.E. We know the names and locations of various Jewish communities in first-century Rome.

If this passage refers to Diaspora Jews who have come from Rome and not merely Roman citizens from various locations, it could help explain why Paul finds (in both Acts and Romans) an established Christian community there, though some of his ministry colleagues had also been working there (Rom 16:3–5, 7, 9, 12). Rome also had many proselytes, more than xenophobic Romans appreciated; sincere proselytes made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, just like other Jews, as one might also infer from this passage in Acts. Luke’s term for “proselyte” here could mean “resident alien” (as often in the LXX), but its contrast with “Jews” in the same line indicates the more technical sense of “convert” here.

Whereas the Antioch mission, with its more lenient approach to Gentile conversion, planted churches in Asia and Greece, the Roman church (with its initial interest in circumcision, food laws, and holy days; see Rom 2:25–29; 14:1–23) probably was founded directly by Judeans from Jerusalem. The probable circumstances that prompted Claudius’s expulsion (see comment on Acts 18:2) suggest that Jesus’s followers reached Rome before that time (at the least, controversies about the Christ disrupted the Jewish community there at that time). Porphyry’s alleged later claim that Jewish law reached Rome under Caligula or afterward (Aug. Ep. 102.2) must refer, if accurate, to Christians (since the Jewish community more generally arrived, as we noted, much earlier). These strands of evidence probably support the idea that the Christian message reached Rome before Claudius. Certainly, the church was well established in Rome long before Paul’s arrival there (Acts 28:14–15; Rom 16:3–16), and Jerusalem had the largest evangelized Jewish population with strong ties to Rome (cf. Acts 28:21).

Luke would have reason to highlight both Rome and proselytes, the former because it is the geographic goal of this volume (28:16–31) and the latter because proselytes offer a narrative transition toward Gentiles even more effective than “Hellenist” Jews (6:5; cf. 13:43).

This closing coda need not be an afterthought but has parallels in other catalogues. Although geographic designations in Luke’s list that will recur later in Acts do not follow the precise sequence of their later appearance, it may be significant that Crete appears toward the end of the book. A sizable Jewish community lived in Crete (Titus 1:10–14); see further comment on Acts 27:7.

In this period the Greek term that is rendered “Arab” applied especially to the Nabateans, on which see much fuller comment on Acts 9:23; Nabatea, with its capital at Petra, was “then at the height of its power under Aretas IV (9 B.C.–A.D. 40)” and extended from the Red Sea in the south to the Euphrates in the north. Jerusalem had considerable trade with the Nabateans (Let. Aris. 114, 119), and Jews were making converts among some Arab tribes as far south as modern Saudi Arabia at least by the second and third centuries C.E. Various forms of languages related to proto-Arabian existed in the vicinity of Judea and could have been known by Jewish people living in these areas.

Not all members of the crowd are Diaspora Jews who understand bits of the disciples’ praises. Here, as elsewhere in Acts, God’s activity divides the crowd (Acts 14:1–2; 17:12–13; 19:9; 28:24; cf. 17:32), and as on some other occasions, it is those of lower status (here Diaspora Jews) who accept the message (cf. 4:1–4), although ultimately its recipients are broader (2:41; cf. 6:1).

Mockery was so common that ancient rhetoricians remarked on appropriate rhetorical ways to implement it. Sometimes hecklers interrupted speakers with questions or objections. Public questions sometimes set the agenda for teachers’ lectures on a given occasion. In this case, some complain that the disciples are drunk, just as on a later occasion one charges Paul with madness for his impassioned speech (26:24), perhaps due to apparent inspiration (cf. 26:25, employing the verb for “utter” used in 2:4).

The outsiders’ misunderstanding, and hence mockery (cf. elsewhere 17:18; 26:24), fits the disciples’ inspiration. Even Paul, who prayed in tongues devotionally (1 Cor 14:18), believed that outsiders would judge tongues-speaking believers insane if no interpretation was provided (14:23). (He also may have depicted his private devotional life as being what outsiders would consider “out of his mind” [2 Cor 5:13].) Although Paul believed that the pneumatic aspect of believers’ personalities can be controlled for the greater public good (1 Cor 14:32) and hence he would not identify tongues with pagan possession trance, he probably allowed for more exuberant aspects of speech or behavior (cf. perhaps 1 Cor 14:14–18, 23–25) that were unwelcome in, for example, the somber ritual of Roman civic cults.

It is probably also no coincidence that Paul (or, according to some readings, his disciple) contrasts being “filled with the Spirit” with drunkenness (Eph 5:18); the same contrast is probably implied in Luke 1:15. Ecstasy could also be associated with drunkenness, or “Bacchic” frenzy; this is most prominent in ancient portrayals of frenzied maenads, women followers of Dionysus. Occasionally it was thought that Bacchic frenzy could produce mantic prophecy (Eurip. Bacch. 298–99); occasionally Apollo and Dionysus are thus linked. (Particular Greek deities were portrayed as “frenzied”; worshipers of Cybele were also known to become frenzied.)

Many commentators thus find in Acts 2:13’s accusation of drunken-like behavior a suggestion of behavior or speech that is ecstatic; at the least (a qualification offered only because “ecstatic” has been subject to too wide a range of definitions), it suggests an extremely atypical exuberance. Various ancient writers contrast divine enthusiasm with the kind caused by alcoholic intoxication or use inebriation as a symbol of divine intoxication. A few circles even used literal drunkenness to induce religious ecstasy. The type of frenzy associated with the maenads could be associated with simple drunkenness. Perhaps relevant to exuberant behavior, some claimed that a measure of wine would also make dancing easier (Eurip. Cycl. 124, 156).

Drinking wine of various expenses and qualities was pervasive in Greco-Roman antiquity, but many moralists frowned on drunkenness, and even many who sometimes became drunk recognized its often harmful effects. Only a few moralists in antiquity counseled abstinence, most regarding moderation as sufficient. Ancient wine was, however, limited in its alcohol content (distillation not yet having been developed) and was normally watered down except when intoxication was the object.

Not only Judean but more generally Mediterranean practice is relevant here, given the broader world of Luke’s audience and even that of Peter’s audience within the narrative (which includes Diaspora Jews). Although Greece and Italy used beer, it was more popular in Egypt and northern Europe; Greece and Italy preferred wine. Wine was a basic staple in the Mediterranean world, drunk with meals by all social classes. It was a necessary part of wedding banquets. Many kinds of wine were used; Romans often considered Falernian the best. Wine was associated with the deity Dionysus (the Roman Bacchus), as allusions in ancient literature regularly attest; some ancients considered drunkenness unbecoming except at Dionysus’s feasts.

Although wine was supposed to be sold undiluted, it was rarely drunk straight; it was normally diluted with a larger amount of water. Some scholars estimate this as commonly one to three parts water for every part wine; others, two parts wine to five of water or one part to three. Greeks counted the failure to dilute wine backward and barbaric; drinking unmixed wine could lead to violence. People not only could alter the water content or the type of wine but also sometimes added various substances to adapt the effects; sometimes it was said that people added toxins, even hemlock.

Most ancients did not object to moderate drinking. Romans valued recreational use of wine among friends. Moderate drinking freed a person to laugh, sing, and dance, in contrast to excessive drinking, which exposed matters better not discussed in public. Moralists who warned against excessive drinking might suggest drinking moderately as a remedy. Many praised the benefits of wine. Wine could help one forget the day’s toils, relax, and rejoice. Most people approved of even heavy drinking for festivals; drinking could last for days.

The mockers in 2:13 are not complimenting the disciples. Ancients knew well the negative effects of drunkenness. One writer claimed that drunkenness was the worst of all harms to humanity. Many warned that drunkenness or wine (emblematic for drunkenness) could be dangerous. Wine could enslave persons, so that they were no longer masters of their own bodies or minds. An intensely self-disciplined person might maintain sobriety, avoiding much alcohol; it is reported that all of Spartan society followed this noble regimen. Excessive drinking parties were known as one way to squander one’s wealth.

Health was a further consideration in avoiding excess alcohol. Some, following the general Roman tradition that simplicity was healthier, complained that people were neglecting water, which was healthier than wine and easier to procure. Someone who became too drunk might still have a hangover two days later; in a more dangerous drinking bout, it was said that forty-one persons died afterward, including the winner. A tyrant who drank too much at a feast precipitated his sickness and ensuing death. One in ill health might hasten or precipitate his death by drinking undiluted wine.

Many philosophers opposed drunkenness; Stoics could even insist that the (ideal) wise person may drink but will not become drunk, since it leads to raving. Stoics could also opine that a person who becomes addicted to alcohol develops the psychological illness of loving wine. To control one’s drinking, one Stoic suggested, one should first develop the discipline of abstinence, then test oneself with small quantities. Craving wine, like craving sex or other things, was foolish, one thinker opined; once such individual vices become pervasive in society, they are issues of public order. A few even practiced and/or advocated abstention, such as Pythagoras and his followers.

Jewish writers also warned against drunkenness; in small quantities or well diluted, wine was beneficial, but it was deemed harmful in excess. Some noted that one ought not to pray while drunk (though rabbis differed over whether such a prayer was valid). Some commended even abstinence because it kept one far from the temptation, though most accepted even drinking parties so long as participants maintained self-control. The early Christians also valued sobriety, which in some contexts clearly included avoiding drunkenness (Rom 13:13; Eph 5:18; 1 Tim 3:3, 8; Titus 1:7; 2:3; 1 Pet 4:3); Luke undoubtedly shared this perspective, though like others he presupposes rather than argues it (cf. Luke 12:45).

Excess drinking is regularly associated with shameful loss of control; it makes people commit offenses that they would not commit when sober, and actions that a sober person found shameful a drunk person would not. This could lead to embarrassing behavior at banquets, to inability to make one’s way out properly, to losing one’s presence of mind and ability to discern, to mistakes in one’s activity, to criminal acts, or even to acts considered worthy of death, such as blasphemy. It clearly affected and even confused the mind, and one could speak of wine as mind-numbing arrows or as driving a person into temporary insanity. Drunkenness afforded satirists an opportunity for mockery, and more serious writers an opportunity for other criticisms. Some philosophers, though, opined that drunkenness was acceptable for wise persons who would not drivel or lose control of their tongue. Not drinking by itself but loss of control thereby was the problem.

Positively, wine could make people open up, talk more, and become more intimate; it revealed one’s true identity, as opposed to what one pretended to be. But such loss of normal reserve had necessary drawbacks. Drinkers made promises they would not offer (or keep) when sober; they also often grew loud. Their loose tongues could reveal secrets and otherwise get them in trouble; one might make someone drunk to learn his secrets. If one corrected a servant when drunk, it could be assumed that one so spoke only because drunk.

Because wine could make one sleep, it could make one vulnerable to dangers; even those who remained awake might become unable to defend themselves. Those who were drunk were vulnerable to slayers; one could deliberately get someone drunk to subdue him or escape his custody. Drunkenness and partying were thus bad military discipline. Soldiers or guards who fell asleep were thus easily killed. Conversely, drunk soldiers were also dangerous where they should not be. A leader given to too much drunkenness would neglect proper military and political duties and make foolish decisions; it was said that Alexander mocked his drunken father, Philip, for thinking he could invade Asia when he could not even cross from one couch to another.

Drunkenness often produced violence; it was said that Alexander, drunk, speared to death his friend. It also facilitated sexual license, for which specified reason some Jewish sources warn against it and early Romans forbade it to women. Aristophanes thus calls it “Aphrodite’s milk.” Enough wine might loosen one’s inhibitions sufficiently to perform sexual activities openly instead of privately. Sometimes it yielded both violence and sexual license in the raping of women or boys.

However it was viewed, drunkenness was commonplace at symposia. Cultic festivals were occasions of celebration throughout the eastern Mediterranean world, at which times strangers met each other and dined together. Although this spirit of celebration undoubtedly included its share of excessive drinking in many cities, Jewish people would not approve of drunkenness at their festivals, certainly not at Pentecost in the temple.

That women as well as men received the Spirit (Acts 1:14; 2:17–18) and may have also appeared intoxicated could have increased the offense. Although women’s inebriation may have been considered scandalous (see relevant comments above), it was known in urban areas. Drunkenness in the temple, whether involving men or women, would be offensive. Even knowledge that the disciples were praising God (probably in the temple courts) may not have softened the accusation much: as noted above, later rabbis even declared that a drunken person should not pray.

The matter was different if the inebriation was mystical rather than physical. Granted, drunkenness could symbolize improper thinking and behavior (as often in the NT; e.g., 1 Thess 5:6–8). But it also provided a metaphor for divine inebriation (especially for the writings of the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo but perhaps also for some others). P. W. van der Horst cites many other texts that compare ecstasy to drunkenness. Bacchic revelry (Βακχεία) could also blend with frenzied worship of the Anatolian mother goddess (Strabo 10.3.13). (Frenzy was common in the cult of the mother goddess, though one sage claims that one who truly received prophecy from her uttered it not as most do but calmly.) But while some popular cults used alcohol and frenzy, this did not occur in cults focused on oracles.

Moreover, one newly taken with philosophy might depict himself as “enraptured and drunk with the wine” (ἔνθεος καὶ μεθύων) of the philosopher’s words. (His colleague, however, corrects him: that is not inebriation but “sobriety and temperance.”) Although the apostles’ interlocutors in the narrative world use the charge of drunkenness as an insult, the informed audience, aware of the disciples’ pneumatic inspiration, should instead understand it positively.

Many scholars suggest freshly made wine here, which was still fermenting (cf. Isa 49:26); this usage would fit the eschatological fresh but sweet wine (γλυκασμόν) of Joel 4:18 LXX (3:18 ET) and Amos 9:13 LXX, as well as Greek literature in general. In business documents, “sweet wine” (γλεῦκος) was often unfermented must. Yet Pentecost was well more than half a year after the most recent grape vintage, and most wine would no longer be “new” (cf. Job 32:19; Luke 5:37–38; Mark 2:22; Matt 9:17). (The Qumran Temple Scroll does associate new wine with a second Feast of Weeks, fifty days after the Pentecost festival of grain firstfruits presupposed in this narrative.) Some means of preserving wine’s sweetness did, it is true, exist, and so some “new wine” could remain. One could preserve unfermented must by storing it in cold water until winter (Pliny E. N.H. 14.11.83). But the season for wine is probably beside the point here; we should remember that Luke attributes these words to hecklers who are mocking, not claiming that the disciples have literally become drunk on long-stored fresh wine!

Yet “new wine” did not lend itself to drunkenness as easily as more fermented wine. Sweet wines were “heavy” in the stomach, but they did not make the head “heavy.” By contrast, intoxication seems to be the primary point here. If Luke imported the wider semantic range of γλυκύς and its cognates into the narrower γλεῦκος, he could mean by “sweet” wine any wine mixed with honey or other sweetener, available at many banquets. To attribute unusual usage to an author should, however, be a solution of last resort, not a convenient way for modern interpreters to elude a problem. Some wines were both fairly sweet and months removed from the vintage: Italians prized especially sweet white wines, darkened and aged for years (the aging sometimes accelerated by storage in warm locations). One could serve wine that was both “sweet” (ἡδύς; possibly “pleasant”) and “old” (παλαιός; Lucian Lucius 3).

The key may be how much of the new wine the disciples are accused of drinking; when wine was not watered down and/or was drunk in sufficient quantity, a person could become drunk even if the alcohol content otherwise seemed low. Luke’s term for “full of” (a NT hapax legomenon) contrasts with his normal term for being filled with or full of the Spirit (Acts 2:4); it can be used with anger (3 Macc 5:1) or with glutting or satiating oneself. The hecklers may thus be mocking the disciples as being not only drunk but having made do with weaker wine to this effect by means of gluttony. (Pagan writers often condemn gluttony and overindulgence, which was common behavior; Jewish and Christian writers also condemned it.) Because such fresh (and less alcoholic) wine was also, presumably, cheaper, they might also be implying “that the Christians have been getting drunk as cheaply as possible.”

Many ancient texts associate “sweetness” with pleasant speech (e.g., Prov 16:21, 24; 27:9) or God’s message; thus eloquent speech is “honeyed,” and a voice may be “honey-voiced.” But it is likely the “inspiring” value of wine, rather than the pleasantness of its taste (compared with a pleasant message), that is in view here. For inebriation as negative, and spiritual inebriation as positive, see the excursus on wine above.

Why would Luke employ such a potentially ambiguous image? First, sweet wine could recall a restoration context that prepares for the imminent Joel quotation of Acts 2:16–21: after judgment on wine and other resources, God would pour out his Spirit (Joel 2:28 [3:1 LXX]), and there would be an eschatological abundance of sweet wine, milk, and water (3:18 [4:18 LXX]). Unfortunately, the terminology in Joel 3:18 is not close enough (γλυκασμόν) or distinctive enough (cf., e.g., Amos 9:13) to suggest this allusion except in retrospect. More important, Luke’s ideal audience might recall that Jesus compared kingdom joy to new wine (Luke 5:37–39; slightly expanded from Mark 2:22). Whereas the hecklers within the narrative might envision Jesus’s followers becoming drunk on sweet new wine, Luke’s audience instead recognizes a joy that previous structures could not contain.

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