1. Paul Makes Plans for the Future (19:21–22)
VI. PAUL PLANS TO VISIT ROME AND GETS THERE BY AN UNFORESEEN ROUTE (19:21–28:31)
A. HE PREPARES TO LEAVE EPHESUS FOR MACEDONIA AND ACHAIA (19:21–20:6)
1. Paul Makes Plans for the Future (19:21–22)
21 When all this had been done, Paul planned in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and then go to Jerusalem. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must also see Rome.”
22 So, sending two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, into Macedonia, he himself stayed on for some time in Ephesus.
21 The period of Paul’s Ephesian ministry drew to an end. It had been a most fruitful and encouraging ministry, even if it was attended by personal dangers of which little is said in Acts, although there are several allusions to them in the letters which Paul sent elsewhere (especially to Corinth) about this time.41 Now some two and a half years had passed since he made Ephesus his headquarters. Christianity had established a firm foothold on the east shore of the Aegean (as previously on the west shore), and the young churches of Asia (as of Macedonia and Achaia) could safely be left to continue their life of fellowship and witness under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Paul’s activity could be transferred to other areas, and he looked around for fresh worlds to conquer for Christ. His settled policy not to build on someone else’s foundation (Rom. 15:20) forbade him to consider missionary enterprise in Egypt or Cyrene in Rome, too, there was already a Christian community.42 He looked forward, however, to visiting Rome, not with the intention of settling down there but of halting there for some time on his way to Spain. For Spain, the most westerly outpost of Roman civilization, was the new Macedonia which called him to come over and plant the faith among its hitherto unevangelized inhabitants.43 But Rome is the goal of Luke’s narrative, and he is more interested in Paul’s plan to visit Rome than he is in his Spanish project. Whether or not Paul’s Spanish project was ever realized is something which Luke knew by the time he published his work, but something which we do not know. It is probable, too, that Rome played a part in Paul’s missionary strategy, which makes Luke’s choice of it as the goal of his narrative doubly appropriate.44 From this point on, then, we follow Paul to Rome until, at the end of Acts, he reaches the imperial city by an unforeseen route and is busily preaching the gospel there when the readers take their leave of him.
Before putting his plans into execution, however, Paul intended to visit his friends in Macedonia and Achaia, and then go to Jerusalem. Luke does not mention the main reason for this visit to Jerusalem,45 but Paul’s own writings make it clear that he wished to be there in person, along with delegates from his Gentile churches, east and west of the Aegean, in order to hand over to the leaders of the Jerusalem church the proceeds of the fund which he had organized in those churches for the relief of the poor in Jerusalem.46
22 So he sent two of his companions, Timothy and Erastus, over to Macedonia in advance of his own journey thither. Timothy has not been mentioned in the record of Acts since he returned from Macedonia to rejoin Paul in Corinth (18:5). But he was certainly with Paul for part at least of the Ephesian ministry; at some point in the course of that period Paul sent him to Corinth and expected him to return to Ephesus (1 Cor. 4:17; 16:10–11). It is uncertain if that was the trip referred to here.47 It is unlikely that the Erastus mentioned here is identical with Erastus the city treasurer of Corinth, to whom Paul refers in Rom. 16:23.48
2. The Riot at Ephesus (19:23–41)
a. Indignation of the silversmiths (19:23–28)
23 About that time a serious disturbance broke out in connection with the Way.
24 A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver49 shrines50 of Artemis and provided considerable business for his fellow-craftsmen,
25 called them together, along with those who were engaged in the same line of business, and addressed them as follows:
“Gentlemen,51 you know that our prosperity is based on this business.
26 Now, as you see and hear, not only in Ephesus52 but almost through out the whole province of Asia this fellow Paul53 has persuaded a great number of people to go over to his way of thinking: he insists that gods made by hand are no gods.
27 There is a twofold danger here: not only is our line of business54 likely to be discredited, but the temple of the great goddess Artemis will become of no account, and she who is worshiped by all Asia and indeed by the whole world will be dragged down from her preeminence.”55
28 Hearing this, they were filled with fury and56 kept on shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”57
23 The narrative style of Acts has been compared to “a lecture with lantern-slides; the pictures are shown one after another illustrating the story the lecturer wants to tell while he makes the transition from one plate to another by some general remarks.”58 This comparison is specially apt in the account of Paul’s ministry in Ephesus. Three “pictures” have already been shown (the incident of the twelve disciples, the program of discussions in Tyrannus’s lecture hall, and the encounter with the magicians); now comes the fourth, which is the most vivid of all. It is postponed until Paul’s further travel plans have been announced—partly to give prominence to those plans, and partly because the disturbance about to be described took place very shortly before Paul’s departure from Ephesus.
The disturbance, which might have led to very ugly consequences, arose out of the threat which the gospel presented to all pagan worship, and especially to the cult of the great goddess Artemis, and to those industries which were largely dependent on the cult.
The cult of Ephesian Artemis was of earlier date than the Greek settlement at Ephesus; the name Artemis is non-Greek. Artemis was traditionally venerated as the protector of wild creatures.59 This association with wild creatures survives, in an altered form, in her worship on the Greek mainland as the “queen and huntress, chaste and fair” of Ben Jonson’s poem;60 Ephesian Artemis, on the other hand, seems to have acquired some of the features of the great mother-goddess venerated from time immemorial in Asia Minor. Her temple, replacing an earlier one which was destroyed by fire in 356 B.C, was reckoned one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It covered an area four times as large as that of the Parthenon in Athens; it was supported by 127 pillars, each of them sixty feet high, and was adorned by Praxiteles and other great sculptors of antiquity.61 It stood about a mile and a half northeast of the city which Paul knew. All knowledge of its whereabouts had been forgotten for centuries, when its foundations were discovered on the last day of 1869.62 The great altar, west of the main building, was discovered in 1965.
24 The silversmiths of Ephesus regarded their guild as being under the special patronage of Artemis, in whose honor so many of their wares were manufactured. Among these wares were miniature silver niches, containing an image of the goddess, which her votaries bought to dedicate in the temple.63 The sale of these was a source of considerable profit to the silversmiths, and they were alarmed at the fall in the demand for them which the spread of Christianity was causing. When religious devotion and economic interest were simultaneously offended, a quite exceptionally fervid anger was aroused.64
25–27 Demetrius, a prominent member of the guild of silversmiths, probably their president, called a meeting of those who were involved in this trade, and persuaded them to stage a mass protest against the subversive propaganda spread by Paul and his colleagues. Those preachers, by denying ail existence to divinities that were made by human hands,65 and condemning any attempt to represent the divine likeness in visible form, were threatening the livelihood of those who carried on such a profitable business in the manufacture of images of Artemis. More than that, they were challenging the preeminent majesty of the great goddess herself—a goddess venerated not only at Ephesus and throughout the province of Asia, but over the whole civilized world.66 It was intolerable that they should stand idly by and allow such an affront to be offered to the goddess and her temple, the most magnificent shrine on earth.
28 Fired by the words of Demetrius, his hearers ran into the open street (as the Western text expressly says), acclaiming their goddess aloud with the cultic cry, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
b. Demonstration in the theater (19:29–34)
29 The city was filled with the uproar, and all rushed as one man into the theater. They seized on two of Paul’s traveling companions, Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia,67 and took them along with them.
30 Paul wanted to go in to confront the populace, but the disciples would not allow him.
31 Some of the Asiarchs also, who were well disposed to him, sent to urge him not to venture into the theater.
32 So some were shouting one thing, some another, for the assembly was in a state of confusion, and most of them had no idea why they had come together.
33 Some of the crowd put Alexander up;68 the Jews had pushed him to the front. Alexander, motioning with his hand, wished to make a speech of defense to the populace.
34 But when they recognized that he was a Jew, they shouted continuously for two hours, saying one thing only: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”69
29 The enthusiastic resentment of the silversmiths infected their fellow-citizens. Ramsay may be right in thinking that the silversmiths, on leaving the place where Demetrius addressed them, ran into the street later reconstructed as the Arcadian Way, leading from the harbor up to the left front of the theater.70 When the excitement spread to the crowd, the theater was the natural place for them to stage a demonstration. The theater of Ephesus, cut out of the western slope of Mount Pion (modern Panayirdag), could accommodate nearly 25,000 people.71 It was the regular meeting place of the civic assembly, which was held three times a month; on this occasion the demonstrating populace appears to have constituted itself as a meeting of the assembly, but a highly irregular one.72 As the people rushed along, they laid hands on two of Paul’s companions, Gaius and Aristarchus, and dragged them into the theater with them. It has been conjectured that the vividness of Luke’s description of what went on in the theater owes something to the account given by one or the other of these two men.
30–31 The crowd had not been able to lay hands on Paul himself, but as soon as he knew what was afoot, he prepared to go and face the unruly assembly in person. But the Ephesian Christians, in alarm, forcibly prevented him from doing what seemed to them such a mad thing. The Asiarchs also, leading citizens of Ephesus, sent him a message to dissuade him from running such a risk to his life. The title Asiarchs was given to leading citizens of those cities in the province which were linked in a league, more particulaly to those who were currently holding high office in the league, or had formerly done so. (It was apparently from their ranks that the annually elected high priest of the imperial cult in the province was drawn.)73 That such men were friendly to Paul suggests that imperial policy at this time was not hostile to Christianity, and that the more educated classes did not share the antipathy to Paul felt by the more superstitious rank and file.
32 In the theater, however, the popular indignation was enjoying uninhibited expression. There was total disorder, for the majority of the crowd had no clear idea of why they were there—a remark which reveals Luke’s Greek sense of humor.74
33–34 One group of residents in Ephesus had special cause for anxiety at this turn of events. This was the Jewish community. True, the prime occasion of the riot was Paul’s mission, but Paul was a Jew, and Jews were known to be disbelievers in Artemis and all other pagan divinities. Those members of the populace who were insufficiently informed about the cause of the demonstration were likely to indulge in general anti-Jewish agitation when they learned that the honor of the great goddess was in peril.
The Jews of Ephesus judged it necessary to dissociate themselves openly from Paul and the other missionaries, so they put forward Alexander,75 one of their number, to make it plain to the crowd that they had nothing to do with the present trouble—that they were as much opposed to Paul, indeed, as the demonstrators were. But when Alexander got up to speak, the people were in no mood to listen to him. All that they cared about was that he was a Jew, and therefore no worshiper of Artemis; some of them may even have thought that he was the cause of the trouble, seeing that he appeared so eager to make a speech for the defense. When he beckoned for silence and attention, therefore, they howled him down, and for the next two hours they kept up the cry: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
c. The town clerk calms the agitation (19:35–41)
35 At last the town clerk quieted the crowd. “Gentlemen of Ephesus,” he said, “no one in the world is unaware that the city of the Ephesians is temple warden of Great Artemis and of the image that fell down from the sky.
36 This is indisputable; therefore you must calm down, stay quiet, and do nothing rash.
37 You have brought these men here, although they are guilty neither of sacrilege nor of blasphemy against our goddess.
38 If Demetrius and his associated craftsmen have a case to bring against anyone, assizes are in session and there are such persons as proconsuls; let them state their charges against one another.
39 If you want any further action taken, the matter will be settled in the lawful assembly.
40 Indeed, we are in danger of being charged with riotous assembly for this day’s action: we can show no cause to plead in justification of this commotion.”
41 So saying, he dismissed the assembly.
35 There was one citizen of Ephesus who was particularly alarmed by the people’s riotous conduct. This was the town clerk,76 the executive officer of the civic assembly, who took part in drafting the decrees to be laid before it, and had them engraved when they were passed. He acted also as liaison officer between the civic government and the Roman provincial administration, which had its headquarters in Ephesus. The Roman authorities would hold him responsible for the riotous assembly, and might impose severe penalties on the city. He therefore did his best to calm the assembly, and when at last he succeeded, he addressed them.
They need not be alarmed for the honor of the great goddess, he said, for her fame and majesty were universally acknowledged. Everyone knew that her image was of no mortal workmanship but had fallen from the sky77 to be guarded by the people of Ephesus; everyone knew that in consequence the city bore the proud title, “Temple Warden of Artemis.”78 (There were several images in antiquity which were reputed to have fallen from the sky. Originally the term was used of meteorites, but was later extended to include sacred objects of other origin or material.)79
36–37 Therefore, the town clerk went on, the divine power of the goddess was undeniable and unassailable. The citizens ought to keep calm and not be led by excitement into some course of behavior which they would later regret. The men whom they had dragged into the theater were guilty of no crime: they had committed no act of temple robbery or other form of sacrilege; they had spoken no evil of Artemis.80
38–41 If Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen had a serious complaint to make, said the town clerk, let them make it in the appropriate manner. There were regular assize days81—the days when the convention of citizens met under the presidency of the provincial governor (perhaps it is implied that the assizes were being held right then). The provincial administration was functioning, even if at the moment there was an interregnum between two proconsulates.82 The aggrieved parties should avail themselves of these legal means of redress. If the matters which caused them concern were such as might more suitably be dealt with by the citizen body of Ephesus, they should wait for one of the regular meetings of the civic assembly, instead of convening an irregular and riotous assembly like this.83 The Roman authorities would not tolerate such disorderly proceedings; as it was, they might very well arraign the city on a charge of riot in consequence of what had happened, and the city could plead no justification for it. By this time the people were considerably subdued, as they listened to the town clerk’s sobering arguments, and when he spoke the words of dismissal (as he would have done at the end of a regular assembly), they went quietly home. The town clerk’s reasoned rebuttal of vulgar charges brought against Christians, not only in Ephesus but in other places too, is an important element in the apologetic motive of Acts.
41. Cf. 1 Cor. 15:32; 2 Cor. 1:8–11. It has been thought also that one or more of the frequent imprisonments to which Paul refers in 2 Cor. 11:23 may have been endured in Ephesus; cf. H. Lisco, Vincula Sanctorum (Berlin, 1900); A. Deissmann, “Zur ephesinischen Gefangenschaft des Apostels Paulus,” in Anatolian Studies presented to Sir W. M. Ramsay (Manchester, 1923), pp. 121–27 (in Light from the Ancient East, P. 237, n. 1, Deissmann says he introduced this hypothesis while lecturing at Herborn in 1897); W. Michaelis, Die Gefangenschaft des Paulus in Ephesus (Gütersloh, 1925); G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry (London, 1929). Luke’s reticence on Paul’s troubles in Ephesus (apart from the riot of vv. 23–41) has been attributed to his apologetic motive: if these troubles were in any way connected with the proconsul Lucius Junius Silanus (see p. 379, n. 82), it would probably have been impolitic to mention any incident in which he was involved (so Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry, pp. 103–4).
42 It was no doubt greatly diminished by the expulsion edict of AD. 49 (cf. p. 347 with nn. 9–12); but that would have become a dead letter on the death of Claudius in A.D. 54, and little more than two years after that the Christian community in Rome was large and flourishing, with Gentiles now apparently in the majority (Rom. 1:8; 11:13; 15:14; 16:3–16, 19).
43. Cf. Rom. 15:24, 28. The expression “Paul planned in the Spirit” most probably denoes a consciousness of guidance by the Holy Spirit; it “seems intended to describe a purpose formed with intense earnestness” (J.H. Kennedy, The Second and Third Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians [London, 1900], p. 20). Cf. 20:22.
44. See H. Chadwick, “The Circle and the Ellipse: Rival Concepts of Authority in the Early Church” (1959), in his History and Thought of the Early Church (London, 1982), pp. 3–17; F. F. Bruce, “The Romans Debate—Continued,” BJRL 64 (1981–82), pp. 334–59.
45. Apart from a vague allusion in Paul’s defense before Felix in 24:17 (see p. 445 with nn. 28 and 29).
46. Cf. 1 Cor. 16:1–4; 2 Cor. 8:1–9:15; Rom. 15:25–28. When 1 Corinthians was written (shortly before Paul’s departure from Ephesus, to judge from 1 Cor. 16:8), Paul had not finally decided to visit Jerusalem in person with the bearers of their churches’ contributions (1 Cor. 16:4); by the time Romans was written, he had definitely made up his mind to go himself. For the importance which Paul attached to this collection see F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Free Spirit (Exeter/Grand Rapids, 1977), pp. 319–24.
47. At some point between the writing of 1 Corinthians and the third visit paid by Paul to Corinth (2 Cor. 12:14; 13:1), probably the visit implied in 20:2–3 below, Paul paid his “painful visit” to Corinth (2 Cor. 2:1).
48. The Erastus of Rom. 16:23 is probably the man named on a Latin limestone pavement inscription discovered in Corinth by American archaeologists in 1929: “Erastus, in gratitude for his aedileship, laid this pavement at his own expense” (cf. J. H. Kent, Corinth VIII/3: The Inscriptions 1926–1950 [Princeton, 1966], p. 99).
49. Cod. B omits “silver.”
50. A gloss on “shrines” has found its way into the text of Cod. 1739 and a few other witnesses: “perhaps small cups” (
).
51. Gk. 
, to which the Western text adds 
, “fellow-craftsmen.”
52. The Western text reads “as far as Ephesus.”
53. The Western text adds “whoever (he may be)” (
).
54. Gk. 
. Moulton-Milligan (Vocabulary, p. 399) cite a papyrus document of the third century A.D. for this word used in the sense “branch or line of business.”
55. The Western text recasts these three clauses: “but also the temple of the great goddess Artemis will become of no account and her preeminence is likely to be brought low.”
56. The Western text inserts “running into the open street” (or “square,” Gk. 
).
57. The Western text reads this as an invocation (in the vocative), not an acclamation: “Great Artemis of the Ephesians” (as also in v. 34 below). See p. 376, n. 69.
58. W. C. van Unnik, “The ‘Book of Acts’ the Confirmation of the Gospel,” NovT 4 (1964), p. 35.
59. Homer calls her “Artemis of the wilds, mistress of wild beasts” (Iliad 21.470–71); Aeschylus pictures her indignant concern for injured wild things (Agamemnon 134–38). See W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods (London, 1950), pp. 99–106.
60. Hymn to Diana, line 1. “That such a goddess [as Ephesian Artemis] should come to be represented in English by the name Diana is almost ridiculous” (A. Souter, Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, I [Edinburgh, 1915], p. 295, s.v. “Diana”).
61. The earlier temple was burned down (on the night when Alexander the Great was born, it was said) by a young man named Herostratus, who said he did it so that his name might be remembered. On the temple of New Testament times see Strabo, Geog. 14.1.22–23; Pliny, Nat. Hist. 16.213; 36.95–97, 179.
62. By J. T. Wood; see his Discoveries at Ephesus (London, 1877); also J. Fergusson, The Temple of Diana at Ephesus (London, 1883); R. C. Kukula, “Literarische Zeugnisse über den Artemistempel,” Forschungen in Ephesos, I (Vienna, 1906). pp. 237–82; D. G. Hogarth, Excavation at Ephesus: The Archaic Artemisia (London, 1908); A. Bammer, Die Architektur des jüngeren Artemision von Ephesos (Wiesbaden, 1972); “Forschungen im Artemision von Ephesus von 1976 bis 1981,” AS 32 (1982), pp. 61–87.
63. We know of such miniature shrines of terra-cotta, but no silver ones are known to have survived. A Greek and Latin inscription found in the theater of Ephesus (BMI III.481 = Insch. Eph. 1.27) records how a Roman official, Gaius Vibius Salutaris, presented a silver image of Artemis and other statues to be set up in the theater during meetings of the civic assembly (see R. Heberdey and others, Das Theater = Forschungen in Ephesos, II [Vienna, 1912], pp. 147–49; A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, pp. 112–13). See nn. 69, 72 below. E. L. Hicks, “Demetrius the Siversmith: An Ephesian Study,” Exp. 4,1 (1890), pp. 401–22, pointed out that “shrine-maker” (
) was a designation of a member of the temple vestry (comprising probably twelve men).
64. Compare the indignation of the owners of the fortune-telling slave girl in 16:16–21; also the report of the younger Pliny (Epistles 10.96.10) that the sale of fodder for sacrificial animals had fallen off in Bithynia about A.D. 112 because of the spread of Christianity in the province.
65. This description is applied to material temples in 7:48; 17:24.
66. K. Wernicke, in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-enzyklopädie II, cols. 1385–86 (s.v. “Artemis”), enumerates thirty-three places, all over the known world, where Ephesian Artemis was venerated.
67. Some minuscules (36 307 431 453 and a few others) read the singular “a man of Macedonia” (
) instead of the plural (
), possibly under the influence of 20:4, where Gaius is said to be a man of Derbe (see p. 380, n. 4). But it may not have been the same Gaius; the name was very common in the Roman world. If the singular be the true reading here, then the plural has arisen through dittography of the initial letter of the following word 
(“traveling companions”); if the plural is original, the singular is due to haplography. Aristarchus was “a Macedonian from Thessalonica” (27:2; cf. 20:4).
68. Gk. 
. The Western text reads 
, i.e., the crowd “pulled him down” when the Jews put him up to speak.
69. The Western text, as in v. 28, makes this an invocation (see n. 57 above). Here the clause is repeated in Cod. B—“picturesquely,” say Lake and Cadbury, who reproduce the repetition in their translation (Beginnings I.4, p. 249), adding, “It may be a dittography; if so, it is a happy one.” In the Salutaris inscription (see n. 63 above) Artemis is repeatedly designated “the greatest goddess.”
70. W. M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches (London, 1909), p. 224.
71. See R. Heberdey and others, Das Theater = Forschungen in Ephesos, II (Vienna, 1912).
72. According to Chrysostom (Homilies on Acts 42.2), the regular assembly met three times a month. “Even this excited mob still retained some idea of method in conducting business. It was quite in the old Greek style that they should at once constitute themselves into a meeting of the Ephesian People, and proceed to discuss business and pass resolutions.… But this meeting was not conducted by persons used to business and possessing authority with the crowd” (Ramsay, Letters to the Seven Churches, pp. 224–25). Cf. the inscription mentioned in n. 63 above.
73. In A.D. 155 or 156 Philip of Tralles, an Asiarch, was apparently also “high priest of Asia” (Martyrdom of Polycarp 12.2; 21.1). See L. R. Taylor, “The Asiarchs,” Beginnings I.5, pp. 256–62; D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton, 1950), I, pp. 449–50; II, pp. 1298–1301; M. Rossner, Studii Clasice 16 (1974), pp. 101–42, summarized in SEG 26 (1976–77), § 1864; New Docs. 1 (1976), § 32.
74. On Luke’s sense of humor see H. McLachlan, St. Luke: The Man and his Work (Manchester, 1920), pp. 144–60.
75. Alexander is introduced as though readers might be expected to recognize his name, but nothing more is known of him. His identity with Paul’s enemy “Alexander the coppersmith” of 2 Tim. 4:14 is a matter of conjecture. Cf. also 1 Tim. 1:20 for another Alexander, evidently an errant Christian.
76. Gk. 
, “secretary.” See W. M. Ramsay, HDB I, p. 723 (s.v. “Ephesus”); A.W. Gomme, Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 476 (s.v.. “Grammateis”).
77. Gk. 
(cf. KJV “the image which fell down from Jupiter”).
78. Gk. 
, a word which literally means “temple-sweeper”; it acquired a more honorable status, being given as a title of dignity both to individuals and to cities. There is inscriptional evidence for the designation of Ephesus as “temple warden of Artemis” (CIG 2972). See W. M. Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, I (Oxford, 1895), pp. 58–60; D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, I, p. 637; II, pp.’ 1497–98; A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford. 1963), pp. 88–89; L. Robert, “Surdes inscriptions d’
,”Revuede Philologies (1967), pp. 7–84, especially p. 48.
79. Replicas of the “many-breasted” image of Ephesian Artemis have survived from antiquity. Other images or cult objects of supernatural workmanship were the Palladium of Troy, and the images of the Tauric Artemis (Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 87–88, 1384–85), of the Magna Mater brought from Pessinus to Rome in 204 B.C. (Livy, Hist. 29.11, 14), of Ceres at Enna (Cicero, Verrines 2.5.187), and of El Gabal of Emesa (Herodian, Hist. 5.3, 5). On the cult of meteorites see A. B. Cook, Zeus, III (Cambridge, 1940), pp. xii, 881–942.
80. Jewish interpretative tradition read Ex. 22:28a (cf. p. 426) as a prohibition of scurrilous attacks on pagan divinities (cf. Josephus, Ant. 4.207; Ap. 2.237; Philo, Life of Moses 2.205; Special Laws 1.53).
81. Gk. 
, originally “market days”; these were convenient days for the conventus of citizens of an assize city to meet under the presidency of the proconsul. The assizes were held in about nine of the cities of Asia in turn.
82. Hence the generalizing plural “proconsuls.” The proconsul of Asia, Marcus Junius Silanus (who was, like Nero, a great-grandson of Augustus), was poisoned at the instigation of Agrippina, Nero’s mother, soon after Nero’s accession to the imperial power in October, A.D. 54 (Tacitus, Annals 13.1–3;cf. Dio Cassius, Hist. 61.6.4–5). The interregnum between his death and the arrival of his successor was perhaps a specially dangerous period for Paul; see G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry (London, 1929), pp. 102–7. But Duncan’s suggestion that the plural “proconsuls” here refers to Helius and Celer, the officials in charge of Nero’s personal affairs in Asia, as though they carried out the proconsular responsibilities in the interregnum—a suggestion anticipated in ?. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Apostles as traced by St. Luke in the Acts (London, 1897), II, p. 189—is improbable; see W. M. Ramsay, “Some Recent Editions of the Acts of the Apostles,” Exp. 6,2 (1900), pp. 334–35.
83. Gk. 
is used both of the regular assembly and of the present disorderly assembly. The expression “lawful assembly” (
) was “the correct technical term … to distinguish the regularly appointed meetings of the people from the present concourse” (A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, p. 87).
ACTS 20
3. Paul Visits Macedonia and Greece (20:1–6)
1 When the uproar was ended, Paul sent for the disciples and encouraged them; then he took his leave of them and set out on his journey into Macedonia.
2 Having passed through that territory and spoken many words of encouragement to the people there, he came into Greece.
3 There he spent three months. Then, when he was about to set sail for Syria, a plot was hatched against him by the Jews and he decided to return through Macedonia.1
4 He was accompanied2 by Sopater, son of Pyrrhus,3 a Beroean, by Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, by Gaius from Derbe4 and Timothy, and by Tychicus5 and Trophimus from Asia.6
5 These went on ahead7 and were waiting for us at Troas,
6 but we set sail from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and came to them at Troas in five days. We stayed there seven days.
1 The riot in the Ephesian theater was one of the last—if also one of the most spectacular—of the incidents attending Paul’s ministry at Ephesus. According to 1 Cor. 16:8, written a few months before, he planned to leave Ephesus after Pentecost (probably in A.D. 55); it has been conjectured that the riot took place about the time of the Ephesian festival of the Artemisia, held annually in March/April.8 In the year 55 Pentecost fell on May 25. Paul may, of course, have had to change his plans because of the riot and other troubles which he experienced in the province of Asia.
In the light of 2 Cor. 2:12–13, W. M. Ramsay supposes that Paul took a coasting ship from Ephesus to Troas.9 At Troas he hoped to meet Titus, whom he had sent to Corinth to deal with a disquieting situation in the church there. Although there was ample opportunity for gospel witness in and around Troas, he could not settle down to take full advantage of it because of his anxiety about Corinth. When Titus did not arrive, Paul bade farewell to his friends at Troas, and continued his journey into Macedonia. He may have waited at Troas until he knew that Titus could no longer be expected to arrive by sea across the Aegean and would have to travel over-land.10 So he set out in hope of meeting him at some point on the road, and did in fact meet him in Macedonia. The reassuring news which Titus brought from Corinth brought Paul great relief and joy—feelings which find eloquent expression in 2 Cor. 1–9.
2 How long Paul spent in Macedonia we are not told; it seems to have been a rather prolonged period. It was probably at this time that he went as far as Illyricum (Rom. 15:19); his earlier Macedonian journey through Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea (16:12–17:10) did not bring him anywhere near the Illyrian frontier. On this occasion we must understand that he traveled west along the Egnatian Way, perhaps as far as its termination at Dyrrhachium (modern Durrës) on the Adriatic, and then turned north in the direction of Illyricum. The period between his departure from Ephesus and his leaving Macedonia for “Greece” (i.e., the province of Achaia), including his stay at Troas and his missionary and pastoral activity in Macedonia, may well have covered about a year and a half—say, from the summer of A.D. 55 to the late part of 56.11
3 The three months that he spent in Greece were the winter months of A.D. 56–57. Most of this time was probably spent in Corinth, where he enjoyed the hospitality of his friend Gaius (plausibly identified with the Titius Justus of 18:7),12 and sent his letter to the Christians of Rome, preparing them for the visit which he hoped to pay them quite soon, on his way to Spain.13 Among his concerns in Macedonia and Achaia at this time must be included the completion of arrangements for delivering the collected gifts from the churches of those provinces to Jerusalem.14 Toward the end of winter the delegates from the contributing churches gathered at Corinth to be ready to sail with Paul to Judaea when navigation started again. It may have been their first intention to take a pilgrim ship from Cenchreae (cf. 18:18), which picked up at the principal ports those who wished to be in Jerusalem for the forthcoming festival. But Paul got wind of a plot to kill him, when once he was on board this ship, so he changed his plan, and decided to go back to Macedonia and sail from there.15 The delegates set sail as arranged, disembarked at Troas, and waited there until Paul should catch up with them.
4–5 Luke mentions Paul’s fellow-travelers by name, but does not say why they were accompanying him on this voyage. He is strangely reticent about the Jerusalem fund. But when Paul, shortly before leaving Corinth, sent the Roman Christians greetings from “all the churches of Christ” (Rom. 16:16), he had good reason to do so, because representatives from those churches were joining him at the time. The churches of Macedonia were represented by Sopater,16 Aristarchus,17 and Secundus; those of Asia by Tychicus18 and Trophimus;19 those of Galatia by Gaius the Derbaean.20 (Timothy also belonged originally to one of the churches of Galatia, namely Lystra, but he was in the party probably not as a church delegate but as Paul’s junior colleague and fidus Achates.)
No mention is made of a delegate from the Corinthian church. The absence of any such reference may have something to do with the strained relations between Paul and that church. But Paul had recently told the Christians of Rome that contributions were coming from Achaia (Rom. 15:26). One possibility is that the church of Corinth had entrusted its contribution to Titus (cf. 2 Cor. 8:6–23; 12:18); if so, the failure to mention Titus here is part of the problem of his absence from the whole record of Acts. of his friend Gaius (plausibly identified with the Another possibility is bound up with the tradition that Luke is “the brother whose praise in the gospel is among all the churches”21 and who was appointed by the churches to travel with Paul and the others “in this gracious work which we are carrying on” (2 Cor. 8:18–19). He went to Corinth along with Titus, and may have been commissioned by the church there to convey its contribution. If that “brother” is to be identified with Luke, and Luke is the narrator here, that would explain the lack of any allusion to a delegate from Corinth. But all this lies in the realm of speculation.
6 As for Paul, he waited at Philippi until the week of the unleavened bread was completed (in A.D. 57 it lasted from April 7 to 14). Then he set sail with Luke, presumably from Neapolis (cf. 16:11). Their five days’ journey to Troas was over twice as long as the journey from Troas to Neapolis had been a few years before; the prevalent wind, which had helped them on the earlier occasion, was contrary this time. At Troas they rejoined their companions who had sailed from Cenchreae, and spent a week there with them and the local Christians.
B. THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM (20:7–21:16)
1. Paul at Troas (20:7–12)
7 On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them. He intended to set out the next day, and kept on talking until midnight.
8 There were many torches22 in the upper room where we were gathered together.
9 One young man, named Eutychus, who was sitting on the window ledge, dropped into a deep sleep as Paul continued his discourse; being quite overcome by sleep he fell down from the third floor and was picked up dead.
10 But Paul went down, threw himself on him,23 and put his arms around him. “Do not be alarmed,” he said; “his life is (still) in him.”
11 Then he came up and broke the bread. After eating, he engaged in much further conversation until dawn. Then he took his departure.
12 They24 brought the young man alive, to their very great comfort 25
7 The description of this critical journey to Jerusalem is given in considerable detail. Some have compared the detailed description given in the Gospel of Luke of Jesus’ critical journey to Jerusalem. But the kind of detail is different; the exactitude of this second “we” narrative in matters of time and place is due to the fact that the diarist was one of the party and kept a logbook. We may contrast the cursory treatment of Paul’s travels in Macedonia (vv. 1–2), on which he was not accompanied by Luke.
The reference to the meeting for the breaking of the bread on “the first day of the week” is the earliest text we have from which it may be inferred with reasonable certainty that Christians regularly came together for worship on that day.26 The breaking of the bread was probably a fellowship meal in the course of which the Eucharist was celebrated (cf. 2:42). It is plain from the narrative that members of the church at Troas (“they”) were present as well as the travelers of Paul’s company (“we”); the occasion was probably the church’s weekly meeting for worship. Paul’s ministry in Troas a year or two previously had evidently been more fruitful than he realized at the time (2 Cor. 2:12–13). This Sunday (perhaps April 24,A.D. 57) was the travelers’ last full day at Troas; they were to continue their journey the next day. The meeting was held in the evening27—a convenient time for many members of the Gentile churches, who were not their own masters and were not free in the daytime—and Paul conversed with them. Church meetings were not regulated by the clock in those days, and the opportunity of listening to Paul was not one to be cut short; what did it matter if his conversation went on until midnight?
8–10 But the air in that crowded upper room began to grow heavy with the smoke of torches which had been lit to dispel the evening darkness, and a young man named Eutychus, even though he sat at the window (where the air was freshest), found it impossible to keep awake. Perhaps he had put in a hard day’s work from dawn to sunset, and now in the stuffy atmosphere not even the words of an apostle could keep him from falling asleep. Suddenly he overbalanced, and fell through the window (a mere opening in the wall) to the ground beneath—and the room was three floors up.28 No wonder then that he was “picked up dead,” as Luke says, “implying apparently that, as a physician, he had satisfied himself on the point.”29 It is impossible to be sure whether Eutychus was clinically dead or not; Luke’s statement that he was “picked up dead” has to be weighed against Paul’s reassuring words: “his life is in him.” Luke may intend his readers to understand that the young man’s life returned to him when Paul embraced him. Paul’s treatment, similar to that given in other circumstances by Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:21; 2 Kings 4:34–35), suggests artificial respiration. It may have been a few hours before Eutychus regained consciousness.
1–2 After this untoward interruption, Paul resumed his discourse. It was probably past midnight (and therefore strictly Monday morning) when at last Paul “broke the bread” and shared their fellowship meal;30then he continued to talk to them until daybreak. At daybreak the ship on which they were to sail was due to leave, and the party went on board—all except Paul, who stayed till the last possible moment, probably to be assured of Eutychus’s complete restoration to consciousness and health, and then took a shortcut by land to join the ship at Assos.
2.
From Troas to Miletus (20:13–16)
13 We31 went on ahead32 to the ship and set sail for Assos. We intended to take Paul on board there, for so he had decided: he was to do that part of the journey by land.33
14 So, when he met up with us at Assos, we took him on board, and came to Mitylene.
15 Setting sail from there, we arrived the next day opposite Chios, the following day34 we crossed over to Samos, and35 the day after that we came to Miletus.
16 Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so as not to spend time in Asia. He was making haste, if he could make it, to be in Jerusalem for the day of Pentecost.
13 The ship which they boarded at Troas was due to put in at some of the main ports along the coast of Asia Minor, but it was a faster vessel than some which they might have taken; for example, it sailed across the mouth of the Ephesian Gulf, instead of calling at Ephesus. In one of the harbors of southwest Asia Minor, they expected to find another ship which would take them to Syria and Judaea; and so it turned out (21:1–2).
When it left Troas, the ship had to round Cape Lectum (modern Baba-burun) to get to Assos. Paul waited a little longer, and then, taking the direct road by land to Assos (a distance of twenty miles), got there in time to join his companions on board their ship.
Assos (modern Behram-kale) was a well-fortified city standing on a volcanic cone about 750 feet high. Its harbor, on the shore below, was protected by a mole, which is still to be seen.36
14–15 From Assos, the ship brought them to Mitylene, the chief city of the island of Lesbos (at an earlier date the home of the lyric poets Alcaeus and Sappho); then, calling at a point on the mainland opposite the island of Chios (somewhere near Cape Argennum, modern Beyaz-burun) and, a day later, at the island of Samos, they put in at Miletus three days after leaving Troas. The Western text says that they spent the night before arriving at Miletus off Trogyllium. Trogyllium is a promontory jutting out from the mainland toward the southeast of Samos, forming a strait less than a mile wide. An overnight stay off Trogyllium could have been dictated by the difficulty of navigating the strait in the dark.
Miletus stood on the south shore of the Latmian Gulf. Even then the gulf was being constantly silted up by the river Maeander, which entered it from the north. Today the Latmian Gulf survives as an inland lake (Lake Bafa), which is connected with the Maeander by an outlet on the north. The island of Lade, which then stood off the coast to the west of Miletus, has for long been part of the mainland. Miletus was a city of high antiquity; it is mentioned in Hittite and Mycenaean texts. Homer knew it as a Carian city,37 before the Ionians settled there; it was in fact the most southerly of the Ionian settlements in Asia Minor. The presence of a Jewish community in the city in Roman times is attested by an inscription found in the theater, allocating a block of seats to “Jews who are also called God-fearers.”38
16 In spite of his natural desire to see Ephesus again, Paul had decided that this was out of the question if he was to be sure of reaching Jerusalem in time for Pentecost (which in A.D. 57 fell on May 29); he therefore chose a ship which was to make the straight run from Chios to Samos. But the ship was due to spend several days in harbor at Miletus; this gave him an opportunity to see some of his Ephesian friends.
3. Paul Sends for the Elders of the Ephesian Church (20:17)
17 From Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and summoned the elders of the church.
17 While the ship remained in harbor at Miletus, Paul sent a message to Ephesus, which lay some thirty miles to the north, asking the elders of the church in that city to come and see him. (Probably some able-bodied member of the church of Miletus acted as messenger.) Ramsay reckons that the messenger could have shortened his journey by taking a boat across to the north side of the Latmian Gulf and continuing by land from Priene.
Paul wished to give the Ephesian leaders such encouragement as they needed. The speech which follows is not only his farewell speech to them (and to the church which they represented) but (so far as the perspective of Acts is concerned) his last will and testament to the churches which he had planted both east and west of the Aegean.
This speech is quite distinctive among all the speeches reported in Acts. It is the only Pauline speech delivered to Christians which Luke has recorded, and it is not surprising to discover how rich it is in parallels to the Pauline letters (especially, in fact, to the later ones). To explain these parallels along literary-critical lines, by supposing that Luke drew some suitable material for the composition of this speech from Paul’s letters, appears to be ruled out by the consideration that, elsewhere throughout Acts, Luke betrays no knowledge of them, even in places where they would have served him as firsthand sources had they been accessible to him. Besides, even on grounds of literary criticism, the report could not be described as a mere cento of passages from Paul’s letters. “The speech is altogether in the style of the writer of Acts,” wrote Percy Gardner, “and yet offers phenomena which seem to imply that he was guided by memory in the composition.”39 As the synagogue sermon at Pisidian Antioch (13:16–41) is intended to be a sample of Paul’s approach to Jewish audiences, and the speeches at Lystra (14:15–17) and Athens (17:22–31) samples of his approach to pagan audiences, so it might be said that this Milesian speech is a sample of his ministry to Christian audiences. But it is more than the sort of thing that Paul was accustomed to say to Christian audiences: it is a farewell speech, suited to the special occasion on which it was delivered. Since it comes in the context of a “we” section of Luke’s narrative, Luke may well have heard it; if so, he could be reproducing its gist from memory.40
The speech is mainly hortatory, but also in part apologetic. It seems to be implied here and there that Paul’s opponents in the province of Asia had tried to prejudice his converts’ minds against him in his absence; he therefore defends his teaching and general behavior by appealing to his hearers’ personal knowledge of him.41 He perceives that the opposition to his teaching which has already begun to manifest itself in the Ephesian church will increase, and that the church will be invaded by false teachers from outside. Its leaders must therefore fulfil their responsibility as shepherds, appointed by God to guard his flock.
Luke calls those men “elders,” but Paul speaks of them as “guardians” and “shepherds.” There is little or nothing of institutionalism in the part which they are seen to play here.
4. Paul Bids Farewell to the Ephesian Church (20:18–35)
a. Retrospect on his Ephesian ministry (20:18–21)
18 When they arrived, he said to them, “You know how I conducted myself all the time42 I was with you from the first day I set foot in Asia,
19 serving the Lord in all humility and with tears amid the trials that befell me through the plots of the Jews.
20 I kept back nothing that was to your advantage: I preached and taught you publicly and in your homes,
21 proclaiming earnestly43 to Jews and Greeks alike repentance before God and faith in our Lord Jesus.44
18–21 In the introductory part of his address Paul reminds his hearers of his manner of life all the time he spent in their midst—his humble and faithful service, his sorrows, the dangers to which he was exposed by reason of Jewish hostility and conspiracy, his unceasing proclamation of the gospel to both Jews and Gentiles,45 the profitable and all-embracing Christian instruction which he gave his converts, both publicly (first in the synagogue and then in the lecture hall of Tyrannus) and in private homes. His words contain a hint of trying experiences in Ephesus of which little is said elsewhere in Acts, although further hints are given of them in Paul’s own correspondence.46 Insofar as those trying experiences arose out of the opposition of Jews in the province in Asia, they brought him face to face once again, and perhaps in a specially intensified form, with a problem with which he had recently grappled in Rom. 9–11.
b. Paul’s prospects (20:22–24)
22 “And now, as you see, I am on my way to Jerusalem, under the constraint of the Spirit.47 I do not know what will happen to me there:
23 I know only this, that in one city after another the Holy Spirit assures me that imprisonment and tribulation lie in store for me.
24 But i do not reckon my life of any account, as though it were precious to myself,48 if only i may complete my course49 and the ministry I have received from the Lord Jesus—to proclaim50 the good news of God’s grace.
22–24 Paul then goes on to tell them of his present enterprise and of his misgivings about its outcome. That these were real misgivings is plain from his sharing them with the Roman Christians as matters concerning which he desires their prayers (Rom. 15:30–31). They found increasing confirmation as he went from port to port on his voyage to Judaea: in city after city the Holy Spirit, speaking presumably through the lips of prophets, as later at Tyre and Caesarea (21:4, 11), showed him that imprisonment and other hardships would be his lot when he reached Jerusalem. That the misgivings were well founded is evident from Luke’s narrative of events following Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem.
But Paul was ready to surrender his liberty and, if need be, his life itself for the sake of Christ and his service.51 Self-preservation was not a motive which he esteemed highly: his main concern was to fulfil the course which Christ had marked for him to run,52 preaching in the Spirit’s power the good news of God’s free grace in Christ. Life or death was not the issue that mattered: what mattered most was, as he told another church, that Christ should be magnified in his body, “whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20).
c. His charge to the elders (20:25–31)
25 “And now, I tell you, I know that you will never see my face again—none of you among whom I have gone about53 proclaiming the kingdom.54
26 Therefore, I testify before you that I am free of responsibility for anyone’s blood.
27 I have not refrained from setting before you the whole will and purpose of God.
28 Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has set you as guardians: feed the church of God,55 the church which he purchased with the blood of his own Son.56
29 I know that after my departure57 harmful wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock;
30 and not only so, but from your own number some will rise up and pervert the truth by their words, so as to entice the disciples to follow them.
31 Be watchful, therefore; remember that for three years, night and day, I never ceased to counsel each one of you, weeping as I did so.
25–27 And now he was addressing the leaders of the church of Ephesus as one who spoke to them for the last time. He was bidding farewell to the Aegean world, the area in which for seven or eight years now he had “gone about proclaiming the kingdom.”58 Henceforth, if he got safely away from Jerusalem, the western Mediterranean was to be his field of action.59 (Whether or not the Ephesians ever did see him again is not of primary relevance to the exegesis of these words, but Luke would not have reported and repeated them so emphatically if he had known that, in the event, they were falsified.) Paul had lived in Ephesus (as in other cities) and gone in and out among the people as a herald of the kingdom of God; he had planted the gospel seed and now it was the business of others to water it. His hearers could bear witness to his faithfulness in the proclamation of the divine message: he had made God’s saving plan clear to them, the whole of his will for their lives.60 Like Ezekiel’s trustworthy watchman,61 he had sounded the trumpet so that all the province of Asia had heard. If there were any who paid no heed, their blood would be on their own heads: Paul was free of responsibility for their doom.
28 On those elders, then, lay a weighty responsibility. The Holy Spirit had entrusted them with the charge of the people of God in Ephesus; they had to care for them as shepherds cared for their flock. It may be implied that their commission to take pastoral responsibility for the church had been conveyed through prophetic utterances, in which the direction of the Spirit was recognized.62 The word translated “guardians” is the word from which “bishop” is derived,63 but to use that word here might give it an official flavor which would be an anachronism. If their commission was received through prophetic utterances, they received it no doubt because they were known to be those on whom the requisite qualifications for this work had been bestowed—and bestowed by the same Spirit whose will was declared by the prophetic utterances.64 Their responsibility was the greater in that the flock which they were commissioned to tend was no other than the church of God which he had purchased for himself (an echo here of Old Testament language)65—and the purchase price was nothing less than the life-blood of his beloved Son.66
29–31 Paul now looks forward to the‘ future, and the prospects for the Ephesian church are not wholly promising. The sheep will have to be guarded with unceasing vigilance, for ferocious wolves will try to force their way among them and ravage them. As in our Lord’s parable of the good shepherd, so here the true pastors of the flock are contrasted with false teachers, described as wolves because of the havoc they cause.67 But it is not only from intruders from outside that false teaching will proceed: from their own ranks some will arise to seduce their followers into heretical by-paths. That this development did in fact take place at Ephesus is evident from the Pastoral Epistles68 and from the letter to the Ephesian church in Revelation. In 2 Tim. 1:15 mention is made of a general revolt against Paul and his teaching throughout the province of Asia; and in the apocalyptic letter the church of Ephesus is reproached for having abandoned the love it had at first.69 (Happily, Ignatius’s letter to the same church a decade or two later shows that it paid heed to the admonition and recovered its love in full measure.70) Foreseeing these trends, then, Paul urges the elders to be vigilant71 ‘and to follow his own example. Let them remember how he himself had shown such careful and compassionate concern for his converts, during the three years72 of his residence among them, pointing out unceasingly, night and day, the right path for them to pursue.73
d. Final admonition (20:32–35)
32 Now then, I commend you to God and to his gracious word,74 for that is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among those who are sanctified.75
33 I have coveted no one’s gold or silver or clothes.
34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine made provision for my own needs and for the needs of my companions.
35 In all this I showed you how we ought to work hard to help those who are less able, and to recall the words of the Lord Jesus: ‘It is a more blessed thing to give than to receive.’ ”
32 Now he was leaving them: they could no longer count on his personal presence for pastoral guidance and wise instruction. But, though Paul might go, God was with them still, and so was God’s word which they had received—the word that communicated his redeeming and sanctifying grace.76 (There is no appreciable difference between the “gracious word” here and the “good news of God’s grace” in verse 24.) To God, then, and to his word (with the grace which it proclaimed) Paul committed them. By that word, as they accepted and obeyed it, they would be built up in faith and love together with their fellow-Christians; by that word, too, they were assured of their inheritance among all the people of God, all whom he had set apart for himself.77 In due course Paul, with all the apostles, passed from earthly life; but the teaching which they left behind to be guarded by their successors as a sacred deposit, preserved not only in their memory but eventually in the New Testament scriptures, remains to this day as the word of God’s grace. And those are most truly in the apostolic succession who receive this teaching, along with the rest of Holy Writ, as their rule of faith and life.
33–35 Returning once more to the example which he had set them, Paul reminds them finally that those who take care of the people of God must do so without thought of material reward. As Samuel called all Israel to witness when he was about to lay down his judicial office (1 Sam. 12:3), so Paul calls the elders of Ephesus to witness that all the time he spent among them he coveted nothing that was not his. On the contrary, he did not even avail himself of his right to be maintained in temporal matters by those for whose spiritual welfare he cared; instead, he earned his livelihood, and that of his colleagues, by his own work (tentmaking): “these hands,” he said (inevitably with the attendant gesture), “made provision for my own needs and for those of my companions.”78 Let those to whom he was speaking likewise work hard and support not only themselves but others as well—the weak and sick in particular.79 To much the same effect is the admonition to elders in 1 Pet. 5:2–3, to “tend the flock of God …, not as compelled to do so but willingly, not for sordid gain but eagerly, not as domineering … but being examples to the flock.” Thus they would fulfil the saying of the Lord Jesus, which they ought ever to bear in mind: “It is a more blessed thing to give than to receive.” This dominical logion does not appear in any of the canonical Gospels, but its spirit is expressed in many other sayings of Jesus which they record.80
On this appropriate note Paul concludes his exhortation to the Ephesian elders.
5. An Affectionate Parting (20:36–38)
36 So saying, he knelt down and prayed with them all.
37 They all broke into loud weeping, and, embracing Paul, they covered him with kisses.
38 What grieved them most was his saying that they would never see his face again. So they escorted him to the ship.
36–38 When Paul had finished speaking to them, and had knelt in prayer with them, they bade him an affectionate but sorrowful farewell. It was in particular his saying that they would never see him again that filled their hearts with grief and their eyes with tears. But the ship was now on the point of setting out from Miletus after its stay of several days, and they escorted Paul to the quay before returning home to Ephesus.
1. The Western text reads: “a plot was hatched against him by the Jews, so he decided to set sail for Syria, but the Sprit told him to return through Macedonia.” His decision to set sail for Syria was not due to the plot; for the introduction of the Spirit as dictating a change of plan cf. 16:6–8; aslo the Western text of 19:1.
2. A D and the majority of Byzantine witnesses insert “as far as Asia” (pointlessly, since two of the men mentioned had come from Asia to join him).
3. The Byzantine text omits “son of Pyrrhus.”
4. The Western text calls Gaius a “Doberian” (instead of “Derbaean”), i.e., a native of Doberus in Macedonia, twenty-six miles northwest of Philippi. This would ease his identification with the Gaius of 19:29, who was evidently a Macedonian (see p. 375, n. 67). But there is no compelling reason to identify them. L. C. Valckenaer, followed by F. Blass, emends the text here to make it read “of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus and Gaius; and the Derbaean Timothy.” There is no necessity for such an emendation; and in any case Timothy was probably a Lystran (see 16:1–2 with exposition, and cf. p. 303, n. 6).
5. D calls him Eutychus, by confusion with the young man of v. 9.
6. The Western text, more explicitly, calls them “Ephesians” and not simply Asians (cf. 21:29).
, for which the Alexandrian text (
B*etc.) reads 
, “having come to (us).”8. Cf. G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry (London, 1929), p. 34.
9. St. Paul the Traveller (London, 141920), p. 283.
10. Cf. W. L. Knox, St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles (Cambridge, 1939), p. 144. n. 2.
11. G. S. Duncan thought that after Paul reached Dyrrhachium “there was a period of evangelistic work, which need not have been extensive or prolonged, in Illyricum; from there, as winter approached, he sailed south to Nicopolis (cf. Tit. 3:12), and in course of time he came to Corinth” (St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry, p. 221). He linked Titus’s visit to Dalmatia (2 Tim. 4:10) with this Illyrian ministry.
12. See Rom. 16:23 (cf. p. 350 with n. 26).
13. Cf. Rom. 1:9–15; 15:22–29.
14. See pp. 371–72 with nn. 45 and 46 (on 19:21).
15. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveller, p. 287) supposed that the original plan was to be in Jerusalem for Passover, but when the delay caused by the plot and consequent change of itinerary made that impossible, Paul determined to arrive at the latest in time for Pentecost (cf. v. 16).
16. Probably the Sosipater of Rom. 16:21 (see p. 348, n. 14).
17. Cf. 19:29; 27:2; Col. 4:10.
18. Cf. Eph. 6:21–22; Col. 4:7–8; 2 Tim. 4:12; Tit. 3:12.
19. Cf. 21:29; 2 Tim. 4:20.
20. Possibly a convert of Barnabas and Paul during their first visit there (14:20–21); see also p. 380, n. 4.
) by Paul” (with 
cf. 2 Cor. 8:18, where Paul speaks of the “brother’s” 
). (Possibly, however, to Eusebius at least, 
simply meant “quoted,” and Eusebius may have had in mind the mistaken notion which he expresses in HE 3.4.7, that Paul’s phrase “according to my gospel” [Rom. 2:16, etc.] refers to Luke’s Gospel.) Compare the echo of 2 Cor. 8:18 (“whose praise is in the Gospel”) in the Collect for St. Luke’s Day (October 13) in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. If Luke is indeed the person referred to in 2 Cor. 8:18, that rules out a conjecture of more recent days—that Titus is unmentioned in Acts because he was Luke’s brother (W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp. xxxviii, 390; A. Souter, “A Suggested Relationship between Titus and Luke,” ExT 18 [1906–7], p. 285: “The Relationship between Titus and Luke,” ibid., pp. 335–36). Nothing could have been more counterproductive than for Paul to send Titus’s blood-brother with him on the delicate financial mission to Corinth.
. D reads 
(“windows”), but the Latin text of the same codex (d) has faculae (“little torches”).
).24. The Western text reads “And as they were saying farewell, he [Paul] brought the young man alive …”
), i.e., “very greatly” (a typical instance of Luke’s litotes).26. See O. Cullmann, Early Christian Worship, E.T. (London, 1955), pp. 10–14, 88–93; C. F. D. Moule, Worship in the New Testament (London, 1961), pp. 16, 28–29; R. P. Martin, Worship in the Early Church (London, 1964), pp. 78–80; W. Rordorf, Sunday, E.T. (London, 1968), pp. 196–205; S. Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday (Rome, 1977), pp. 101–111; R. T. Beckwith and W. Stott, This is the Day (London, 1978), pp. 28, 31–32, 36–38, 89–90. In the still earlier reference to the “first day of the week” in 1 Cor. 16:2 there is no explicit mention of a meeting for worship, though it may be implied. Compare also the implication of John 20:19, 26.
27. On Sunday evening, not Saturday evening. Luke is not using the Jewish reckoning from sunset to sunset but the reckoning from midnight to midnight: although it was apparently after sunset when they met, their departure in the morning was “the next day.”
28. The building was evidently a tenement block like the one in Rome where Martial lived: “I live up three flights of stairs, high ones at that” (Epigrams 1.118.7).
29. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 290–91.
(v. 11), where the article points back to 
(v. 7), refers to the eucharistic breaking of the bread, while 
(translated “after eating” above, lit. “having tasted”; for 
= “eat” cf. 10:10) refers to the fellowship meal.31. Ephrem the Syrian’s commentary on Acts (preserved in an Armenian translation) presupposes an Old Syriac text which read here: “But I Luke, and those who were with me, went on board.” The usual “we” was deemed inappropriate because Paul was not with them from Troas to Assos. See F. C. Conybeare’s translation of Ephrem in Beginnings I.3, p. 442.
. As in v. 5, there is a variant reading 
(A B* etc.); the Western text reads 
, “having gone down (to the shore).”
, normally to go on foot as opposed to riding, but here to go by land as opposed to sailing.34. B and some minuscules add “in the evening.”
35. The Western and Byzantine texts add “having stayed at Trogyllium (Trogyllia).”
36. See Strabo, Geography 13.1.57–58, 66; also J. M. Cook, The Troad (Oxford, 1973), pp. 240–50. Assos was the birthplace of Cleanthes the Stoic (see p. 339, n. 76).
37. Iliad 2.868–69.
38. See A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, E.T. (London, 21927), pp. 451–52. On Miletus see also T. Wiegand and others, Milet: die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1906); A. G. Dunham, The History of Miletus (London, 1915); G. Kleiner, Alt-Milet (Wiesbaden, 1966); Die Ruinen von Milet (Berlin, 1968); Das römische Milet (Wiesbaden, 1970).
39. “The speeches of St. Paul in Acts,” in Cambridge Biblical Essays, ed. H. B. Swete (Cambridge, 1909), p. 403. Gardner considered further that among the Pauline discourses in Acts “that at Miletus has the best claim of all to be historic” (ibid., p. 401). See also M. Dibelius, “The Speeches in Acts and Ancient Historiography” (1949), E.T. in Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (London, 1956), pp. 155–58: C. L. Mitton, The Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford, 1951), pp. 210–13, 217–20, 266–67; J. Munck, “Discours d’adieu dans le Nouveau Testament et dans la littérature biblique,” in Aux sources de la tradition chrétienne: Mélanges offerts a M. Goguel (Neuchâtel/Paris, 1950), pp. 155–70; J. Dupont, Le discours de Milet: Testament pastoral de saint Paul (Ac 20, 18–36) (Paris, 1962); “La construction du discours de Milet,” Nouvelles études sur lesActes des Apôtres (Paris, 1984), pp. 424–45; H.-J. Michel, Die Abschiedsrede des Paulus an die Kirche Apg 20, 17–38: Motivgeschichtliche und theologische Bedeutung (Munich, 1973); C. K. Barrett, “Paul’s Address to the Ephesian Elders,” in God’s Christ and His People: Studies in Honour of N. A. Dahl, ed. J. Jervell and W. A. Meeks (Oslo, 1978), pp. 107–21; J. Lambrecht, “Paul’s Farewell-Address at Miletus (Acts 20, 17–38),” in Les Actes des Apôtres, ed. J. Kremer, BETL (Leuven, 1979), pp. 307–37.
40. Cf. F. H. Chase, The Credibility of the Acts of the Apostles (London, 1902), pp. 234–88; A. Harnack, The Acts of the Apostles, E.T. (London, 1909), p. 129.
41. For similar appeals to personal knowledge cf. 1 Cor. 6:11, etc.; Gal. 3:2–5; 4:13; Phil. 4:15; 1 Thess. 2:1–2, 5, 10–11; 3:3–4; 4:2; 2 Thess. 2:5; 3:7.
42. For “all the time” D reads “three years or even more.”
, “a favorite Lukan word” (E. Plümacher, Lukas als hellenistischer Schriftsteller [Göttingen, 1972], p. 48); of its fifteen NT occurrences, ten are in Luke’s writings. Like the simple 
, it usually has in Acts the sense of preaching in the Spirit’s power (cf. 5:32).
A C E and very many minuscules, with latvg syrpesh. D reads “through our Lord Jesus Christ.”45. The gospel is here said to evoke “repentance before God (or turning back to God) and faith in our Lord Jesus.” In Paul’s letters repentance does not figure soterio-logically as faith so emphatically does. But “true repentance,” says C. F. D. Moule, “… means responding in kind to the creative efforts of reconciliation.” If so, then this “is precisely what Paul is all the time expressing” in different language. “Justification by faith involves such a response to that finished work [of Christ] as identifies the believer most intimately with the costly work of Christ, involving him inescapably in the cost and pain of repentance” (“Obligation in the Ethic of Paul,” Essays in New Testament Interpretation [Cambridge, 1982], pp. 271–72).
46. See p. 370, n. 41.
… 
, where (especially in view of what he says in v. 23) it is best to understand a reference to the Spirit of God, and not simply to Paul’s own sense of spiritual compulsion. Cf. 19:21 (p. 371 with n. 43).48. The Western text expands. “But I make no reckoning of any thing for myself, nor do I value my own life as precious to me.” The Byzantine text reads “But I make no reckoning of anything nor do I hold my life precious to myself.”
49. The Byzantine text adds “with joy.”
(cf. p. 389, n. 43). D and some other witnesses add “to Jews and Greeks.”51. For Paul’s ready surrender of himself for the gospel’s sake cf. also 2 Cor. 4:7–12; 6:4–10; 12:9–10; Phil. 2:17; 3:8; Col. 1:24.
) to be run cf. 1 Cor. 9:24–27; Gsl. 2:2:Phil. 2:16; 2 Trim. 4:7; also the words about John the Baptist in 13:25 above.53. Lit., “that you all among whom I have gone about … will no longer see my face.”
54. The Western text adds “of Jesus”; the Byzantine text adds “of God.”
). The Byzantine text exhibits the conflate reading “of the Lord and God.”
, for which the Byzantine text reads 
. The Byzantine reading could mean only “with his own blood,” but the reading here adopted is best rendered “with the blood of his own one.” This sense of 
is well attested in the vernacular papyri, where it is “used thus as a term of endearment to near relations, e.g. 
[‘So-and-so to his own (friend), greeting’]” (J. H. Moulton, MHT I, p. 90). As used here, 
is the equivalent of Heb. 
(“only”), elsewhere represented by Gk. 
(“beloved”), 
(“choice”), and 
(“only-begotten”). In view of this, it is unnecessary to conjecture, with F. J. A. Hort, that 
(“son”) may have dropped out of the text after 
(it may be supplied for the purpose of translation).
, related to 
(“arrive”); the sense “arrival” is well attested for the noun in classical Greek. But in Hellenistic Greek the sense “departure” is equally well attested, and that is the only sense which suits the context here.58. It is a fruitless task to try to make a distinction between “proclaiming the kingdom” and “proclaiming the good news of God’s grace.” Such a distinction is made by W. Kelly, who deplores the “confusion which, mingling both characters, never enjoys the simple and full truth of either” (The Acts of the Apostles [London, 31952], p. 306). For the subject matter of the kingdom see on 1:3 (pp. 31–33).
59. See Rom. 15:23–29.
here the ideas both of God’s will and of his plan or purpose seem to be combined; see the translation above.61. Ezek. 3:16–21; 33:1–9.
62. Cf. 1 Tim. 4:14; also 13:2, 4 above.
(cf. Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:7). Other designations for those exercising this kind of ministry in the churches appear in 1 Thess. 5:12; Rom. 12:8; Heb. 13:17. The present wording is far from the stereotyped terminology of “incipient Catholicism,” as frequently conceived, especially in the sense given to Frϋhkatholizismus by German Protestant scholars. See J. B. Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry,” dissertation in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (London, 1868), pp. 181–269 (also pp. 95–99, excursus on “The synonyms ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter’ ”); T. M. Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries (London, 1902); H. B. Swete (ed.), Essays on the Early History of the Church and Ministry (London, 1918); B. B. Streeter, The Primitive Church (London, 1929), pp. 27–83; T. W. Manson, The Church’s Ministry (London, 1948), pp. 53–77; Ministry and Priesthood: Christ’s and Ours (London, 1958); R. P. C. Hanson, Christian Priesthood Examined (London, 1979), pp. 7–32; G. Schneider, “Die Entwicklung kirchlicher Dienste in der Sicht der Apostelgeschichte,” Theologisch-Praktische Quartalschrift 132 (1984), pp. 356–63.64. Cf. 1 Cor. 12:7–11.
, rendering Heb.
), which thou hast gotten of old”; Isa. 43:21, “the people whom I formed (LXX 
, “acquired,” “purchased,” the same verb as is used here) for myself.” For “church” (Gk. 
) see on 5:11 (pp. 107–8).
(
) or the noun 
to express redemption rather than 
, which is used here (both 
and the related noun 
are used in LXX for God’s acquisition of his people Israel; cf. Eph. 1:14; 1 Pet. 2:9 for 
used with regard to the church as God’s possession). The Pauline language here cannot be dismissed as a “turn of phrase” introduced “to give the speech a Pauline stamp” (H. Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, E.T. [London, 1960], p. 201). Rather, “this is Paul, not some other speaker; and he is not evangelizing but recalling an already evangelized community to its deepest insights. In other words, the situation, like the theology, is precisely that of a Pauline epistle, not of preliminary evangelism” (C. F. D. Moule, “The Christology of Acts,” in Studies in Luke-Acts: Essays in Honor of Paul Schubert, ed. L. E. Keck and J. L. Martyn [Nashville/New York, 1966], p. 171).67. John 10:12. False prophets are described as wolves in sheep’s clothing in Matt. 7:15; cf. also 4 Ezra 5:18; 1 Enoch 89:13–27.
68. Cf. 1 Tim. 1:19–20;4:1–3; 2 Tim. 2:17–18; 3:
69. Rev. 2:4.
70. Ignatius, To the Ephesians 1:1–2:1.
(v. 31), is a “pastoral word,” as Bengel calls it. Cf. 1 Cor. 16:13; Col. 4:2; 1 Thess. 5:6, 10; also the synonymous 
in a similar context in Heb. 13:17 (the leaders “keep watch” over the souls of those entrusted to their care).72. For the duration of Paul’s stay at Ephesus see p. 366, n. 23 (on 19:10).
, “admonish”) cf. 1 Cor. 4:14; Col. 1:28.
, a phrase used already in 14:3. If 
is genitive of quality (i.e., the “word” is characterized by God’s own grace), then “gracious word” is a suitable rendering (cf. Luke 4:22); if it expresses the subject matter of the word, then “the word of his grace” (cf. v. 24) is the proper rendering.75. The Western text added: “To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen” (a doxology evidently derived from a lectionary, in which a prescribed lesson came to an end at this point).
76. “This message of the free bounty of God is the word which has the greatest effect on the heart of man, and so it is able to build up the church” (R. B. Rackham, The Acts of the Apostles, WC [London, 1902], p. 395).
77. For their inheritance among the saints cf. 26:18b; Col. 1:12. The language recalls Deut. 33:3–4, “all those consecrated to him were in his hand; … an inheritance for the assembly of Jacob.”
78. For this insistence on Paul’s part cf. 1 Cor. 4:12; 9:3–15; 2 Cor. 4:5; 11:7–11; 12:13; 1 Thess. 2:3–12; 2 Thess. 3:7–10.
79. Cf. the admonitions in Rom. 15:1; Gal. 6:2; Eph. 4:28; 1 Thess. 4:11–12; 2 Thess. 3:10–13.
80. Cf. Luke 6:38; 11:9–13; John 13:34; also Matt. 10:8, “You received without pay; give without pay.” When Paul wishes to affirm the right of those who preach the gospel to live by the gospel, he can refer to another saying of Jesus (1 Cor. 9:14). He also refers to sayings of Jesus in Rom. 14:14; 1 Cor. 7:10; 11:24–25; 1 Thess. 4:15; 1 Tim. 5:18. H. Windisch argued that the occurrence of this logion here shows that Luke the physician could not have been the author of Luke-Acts because, if he were, he would certainly have incorporated “so fine a saying” in his Gospel (Beginnings I.2, p. 331). This argument, as W. L. Knox rightly pointed out, “betrays a complete failure to understand his methods” (Some Hellenistic Elements in Primitive Christianity [London, 1944], p. 29).
ACTS 21
6. Miletus to Tyre (21:1–6)
1 When we tore ourselves away from them and put out to sea, we followed a straight course and arrived at Cos. The next day we came to Rhodes and from there to Patara.1
2 There we found a ship that was crossing over to Phoenicia, so we went on board and put out to sea.
3 Sighting Cyprus, and leaving it on the port side, we sailed to Syria and put in at Tyre; it was there that the ship was to unload its cargo.
4 We located the disciples and stayed there for seven days. Those disciples told Paul through the Spirit not to go on to Jerusalem.2
5 When we had completed our week’s stay, we departed and continued on our journey. They all escorted us out of the city, with their wives and children. Then we kneeled down on the beach and prayed,
6 and said good-bye to one another. We embarked on board the ship, while they returned home.
1–2 The Ephesian elders escorted Paul and his friends to the ship, and at last, as Luke says, “we tore ourselves away from them” (if we give the verb its full force).3 From Miletus they sailed to Cos, one of the islands of the Dodecanese, famed as the home of the medical school founded by Hippocrates in the fifth century B.C. The following day they put in at the harbor of Rhodes. “Rhodes” is here the city rather than the island of the same name (the largest island of the Dodecanese). The city of Rhodes, lying at the island’s northeastern extremity, was founded in 408 B.C. by the amalgamation of three earlier settlements. As the prevailing wind was from the northeast, they were able to accomplish this part of the voyage with a straight course. From Rhodes they turned east and sailed along the south coast of Lycia, putting in at Patara (formerly the port of Xanthus, capital of the kingdom of Lycia, and now the headquarters of the Roman governor of the province). There (or, according to the Western text, at Myra)4 they found, as they had hoped, a ship bound for the Phoenician ports, which would take them quite close to their destination.
3 The first port at which this new ship was due to put in was Tyre, in Phoenicia. This meant a cross-sea voyage instead of a coasting voyage; the journey was thus considerably shortened. (The ship was probably a large merchant vessel; smaller craft hugged the coast.) According to Chrysostom, the voyage from Patara to Tyre took five days. On the way Luke reports that they sighted Cyprus on the port side. So they arrived at Tyre, and there it was necessary to spend a week, as the ship’s cargo had to be discharged; but the time saved on the voyage meant that the party could afford to wait at Tyre until the ship was ready to sail on again. Paul knew that there was now every prospect of achieving his intention of being in Jerusalem in time for Pentecost (cf. 20:16).
4 They knew that there was a Christian church in Tyre; it had been founded, in all probability, as a result of the dispersal of Jerusalem Hellenists after Stephen’s death (cf. 11:19). Paul and his friends sought out the Tyrian Christians and spent the week with them. Among those Christians were some who had the gift of prophecy; as they foresaw by its means that grave danger awaited Paul in Jerusalem, they warned him to abandon his plan of going on there. But Paul’s mind was already made up, and he was not to be diverted from his purpose by such predictions. Tyre was not the first place in which indications of this kind had been given him of what lay in store for him at Jerusalem (cf. 20:23). It should not be concluded that his determination to go on was disobedience to the guidance of the Spirit of God; it was under the constraint of that Spirit that he was bound for Jerusalem with such determination (19:21; 20:22). It was natural that his friends who by the prophetic spirit were able to foresee his tribulation and imprisonment should try to dissuade him from going on, but with a complete lack of concern for his own safety, so long as he could fulfil his sacred stewardship, Paul like his Master “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51).
5–6 The disciples at Tyre were not old friends of Paul, as the Ephesian elders were, but the love of Christ is the strongest of bonds, and at the end of a week he and they were as firm friends as if they had known each other all their lives. When the ship was due to sail, all the Christians of Tyre, with their families, accompanied Paul and his companions to the shore.5 There they knelt and prayed, before taking an affectionate farewell of each other. Then the Tyrian disciples went back home, while the ship continued its journey.
7. Tyre to Caesarea (21:7–9)
7 Then we continued the voyage6 from Tyre and arrived at Ptolemais. we greeted the brothers there and spent a day with them.
8 The next day we set out and came to Caesarea. There we went into the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the seven, and stayed with him.
9 He had four unmarried daughters, who had the gift of prophecy.
7 From Tyre they continued their voyage, and put in next at Ptolemais, the most southerly of the Phoenician ports. It appears in the Old Testament under the name Acco (Judg. 1:31), by which it is known today. Although it was known in Graeco-Roman times by the name Ptolemais (which it received apparently in honor of Ptolemy II, 285–246 B.C.), it later resumed its Semitic name, Gallicized in the age of the Crusaders to Acre.7 At this time it was a Roman colony. It had been evangelized probably about the same time as Tyre, and Paul and his friends spent the day in the company of the Christians of the city.
8 Ptolemais was perhaps the last port at which their ship was due to put in; it is not clear whether they took another ship to Caesarea or went there by road. At Caesarea they were entertained by Philip. Philip was one of the seven Hellenistic officers appointed in the early days of the Jerusalem church to supervise the distribution of largesse from the common fund to those who were in need (cf. 6:3–6). Later he engaged in missionary activity in Samaria and in the coastal plain of Judaea,8 and we last heard of him when he arrived at Caesarea (8:40). Now, after a lapse of some twenty years, we find him at Caesarea still. It is noteworthy that we left him there in the regular third-person narrative of Acts, whereas we find him now in the same city in the course of a “we” section. This is an incidental confirmation of the integrity of the “we” sections with the main narrative of Acts, as is also the reference to “the seven.”
9 By this time, Philip had a flourishing family of four daughters, a credit to their father, for they all had the gift of prophecy. Several years later Philip and his daughters, with other Palestinian Christians, migrated to the province of Asia, and spent their remaining days there. The tombs of Philip and of two at least of his daughters were pointed out at Hierapolis in the Lycus valley toward the end of the second century. The daughters, or at least some of them, lived to a great age, and were highly esteemed as informants on persons and events belonging to the early years of Judaean Christianity.9 It has been surmised that even at the time with which we are dealing information such as Philip and his daughters could supply was highly prized by Luke, who made use of it in the composition of his twofold history10—not only during the few days which he spent at Caesarea now, but also during the two years of Paul’s imprisonment there (cf. 24:27). But nothing is said of any prophecies which they uttered during the present visit: a romancer could hardly have let slip the opportunity of putting some appropriate words into their mouths.
8. Agabus Reappears (21:10–14)
10 As we spent several days there, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judaea.
11 Coming to us, he took up Paul’s girdle, bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, “Thus says the Holy Sirit: this is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man to whom this girdle belongs, and they will hand him over into the power of the Gentiles.”
12 when we heard this, we begged him—both we ourselves and the people of the place—not to go up to Jerusalem.
13 Then Paul replied, “What are you about, weeping like this and trying to break my will? I am ready not only to be bound but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
14 when he would not be persuaded, we gave up pressing him: “the lord’s will be done,” we said.
10–11 If no report is given of any prophecy uttered by Philip’s daughters, another prophet appears with a word for the occasion. The appearance of Agabus provides a further link between the “we” narrative and the general narrative of Acts. In 11:27–28 it was told that Agabus came down from Jerusalem to Antioch with some other prophets and foretold the famine of Claudius’s day. Now, in this “we” section, he comes down to Caesarea11 and foretells Paul’s arrest and imprisonment at Jerusalem. But, unlike the Tyrian Christians who spoke “through the Spirit” (v. 4), Agabus does not draw the corollary that Paul ought not to continue his journey. The mode of his prophecy is reminiscent of much Old Testament prophecy: it is conveyed in action as well as in word. As Ahijah the Shilonite tore his new cloak to show how Solomon’s kingdom would be disrupted (1 Kings 11:29–39), as Isaiah went about naked and barefoot to show how the Egyptians would be led into captivity by the Assyrians (Isa. 20:2–4), as Ezekiel mimicked the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem by laying siege himself to a replica of the city (Ezek. 4:1–3), so Agabus foretold the binding of Paul by tying himself up with Paul’s girdle. The action was as much part of the prophecy as the spoken word: both together communicated the effective and self-fulfilling word of God (cf. Isa. 55:11). The terms of Agabus’ s prediction resemble our Lord’s words about his own arrest by the Jerusalem authorities and delivery to the Gentiles (cf. Mark 10:33); in the event, however, Paul was rescued by the Gentiles from the Jews, who were compelled against their will to give him up.
12–14 If Agabus did not interpret his prophecy to mean that Paul should not go on to Jerusalem, Paul’s companions and the Caesarean Christians drew that conclusion, and entreated him with tears not to proceed. But all their entreaties failed to weaken his resolve. He could not turn aside from the path of obedience and sacrifice, and he was prepared, if necessary, to suffer death as well as imprisonment for his Master’s sake. He was not unmoved by his friends’ tearful pleas, and begged them to desist from attempting to soften his determination.12 When they saw that his mind was made up, they desisted from their entreaties, praying only that the Lord’s will might be done. Luke no doubt intends his readers to discern in this prayer an echo of the Lord’s own prayer in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42).13
9. Arrival at Jerusalem (21:15–16)
15 At the end of those days we got ready for the road14 and went up to Jerusalem.
16 Some of the disciples from Caesarea came along with us, and brought us15 to Mnason, a Cypriot, a disciple of long standing, with whom we were to find hospitality.
15 So, after spending several days at Caesarea, they set out on the last stage of their journey. Getting ready for the road, they began the sixty-four miles’ journey to Jerusalem. It has been inferred from Luke’s language that animals were provided for them so that they might ride rather than go on foot.16
16 They were accompanied by some Christian friends from Caesarea, who knew a place in Jerusalem where they could be conveniently entertained.17 This was the house of Mnason, a Cypriot by family and a foundation member of the Jerusalem church.18 Not every member of the church of Jerusalem would be prepared to have a party of Gentile Christians in his home; but they might be sure of a hospitable reception from Mnason, one of the small minority of Hellenists still remaining in the mother-church. There is little probability in the Western reading, according to which Mnason was their host not in Jerusalem but at some village between Caesarea and Jerusalem where they spent a night on the way.19 Luke’s special mention of Mnason’s being a disciple of long standing has suggested to some readers that he acquired some valuable information from him about the early days; Ramsay, for example, thought that Mnason was Luke’s authority for the episodes of Aeneas and Dorcas (9:32–42).20
C. PAUL AT JERUSALEM (21:17–23:30)
1. Meeting with James and the Elders (21:17–26)
17 When we came to Jerusalem,21 the brothers received us gladly.
18 The next day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.
19 He greeted them, and related to them one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
20 When they heard him, they gave glory to God. then they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews 22 and they are all zealots for the law.
21 Now they have heard reports about you, how you teach all23 the jews who live among the Gentiles to commit apostasy against Moses, telling them to stop circumcising their children and not to follow the ancestral customs.
22 What is to be done, then?24 They will hear, of course, that you have arrived.
23 Therefore do as We tell you. We have four men who have taken a vow on themselves.
24 Take them with you and be purified along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may have their heads shaved. Then all the people will know that there is no substance in the reports they have received about you; they will see that you yourself live as an observer of the law.
25 As regards the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter conveying our decision that they should abstain from idol sacrifices, from blood, from strangled meat, and from fornication.”25
26 then Paul took the men and the next day, having been purified along with them, he went into the temple, giving notice of the days of purification which had to be fulfilled until the offering was presented for each one of them.
17 The “brothers” who “received us gladly” may have been Mnason and his associates, perhaps the Hellenistic remnant in the church. Alternatively, they may have been James and the elders, if verse 17 is an anticipatory summary of the verses that follow. This interpretation involves some awkwardness with “the next day” coming where it does at the beginning of verse 18; this cannot easily be explained by change of source, since the “we” narrative comes to an end with the report of the visit to James in the course of verse 18.
18 Since “all the elders were present” when Paul and his companions went to see James, it may be inferred that notice had been given of their visit. James’s house must have been a building of some size, if it could accommodate the whole elderhood as well as the present visitors.26
Nothing is said about the gift which Paul and his companions brought, but it helps to understand Luke’s account if the gift is borne in mind. Both Paul and James could remember the injunction to “remember the poor” which, on a previous visit to Jerusalem, Paul had received from the “pillars” of the church (Gal. 2:10). Of those “pillars” only one was now resident in Jerusalem. Peter and John had undertaken more extended missionary responsibilities. But James the Lord’s brother remained, exercising wise and judicious leadership over the mother-church, greatly respected not only by its members but by the ordinary Jews of Jerusalem also.27 In his administrative duties he was helped by a band of colleagues—the elders of the Jerusalem church. How many they were is not said, but in view of the large number of believers in Jerusalem28 they may well have numbered seventy—the traditional figure for elders in Israel. However many they were, all of them were present to receive Paul and his associates the day after their arrival in the city.
19–21 Paul’s narrative of all that God had accomplished through his ministry on both sides of the Aegean gave his hearers cause for joy. The representatives of many of the Gentile churches which he had planted were there with him as living witnesses to the truth of his report, and the gifts which they brought (though Luke says nothing about them) showed that the divine grace which they had received found a response in action as well as in word. So James and his colleagues praised God for his astounding grace manifested to Gentiles.29
But there was something that caused them serious anxiety, and now they had an opportunity of unburdening their minds to Paul about it. It was freely rumored in Jerusalem that Paul not only refused to impose the requirements of the Jewish law on his Gentile converts (and, despite the Jerusalem decree, this was probably still resented by some of the “zealots for the law”30in the church); he actually dissuaded Jewish believers, it was said, from continuing to practise their ancestral customs, handed down from Moses: he even encouraged them to give up circumcising their sons. James and the elders evidently regarded these rumors as false; but it would take more than a merely verbal assurance to persuade those who paid heed to such rumors that they had been misinformed.
Paul’s position in such matters is fairly clear from his letters. The circumcising of Gentile converts as a kind of insurance policy, lest faith in Christ should be insufficient in itself, he denounced as a departure from the purity of the gospel (Gal. 5:2–4). But in itself circumcision was a matter of indifference; it made no difference to one’s status in God’s sight (Gal. 5:6; 6:15). If a Jewish father, after he became a follower of Jesus, wished to have his son circumcised in accordance with ancestral custom, Paul had no objecttion.31 He adopted the same flexible attitude to such customs as observance of special days or abstention from certain kinds of food: “let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom. 14:2–6). He himself was happy to conform to Jewish customs when he found himself in Jewish society. Such conformity came easily to him, in view of his upbringing, but he had learned to be equally happy to conform to Gentile ways in Gentile company. If it is asked what his practice was when he found himself in mixed Jewish and Gentile society, the answer probably is that he acted as he thought each situation required: any Jews who were content to participate in such mixed society had doubtless learned some measure of adaptation already. For anyone who stayed by the letter and spirit of the law, Paul’s regarding some of its requirements as matters of indifference, his treating as optional things that the law laid down as obligatory, must in itself have constituted “apostasy against Moses”; but in practice he avoided giving offense to those in whose company he was from time to time.
22–24 There was, however, a way in which Paul himself could give the lie effectively to those disturbing reports. If he were seen to take part publicly in one of the ancestral customs, it would be realized that he was, after all, an observant and practising Jew. Therefore, in their naïveté, they put a proposal to him. Four of their number had undertaken a Nazirite vow: if no time limit was specified, their vow would last for thirty days.32 During that period they would abstain from wine and strong drink, would avoid any defiling contact (e.g., with a corpse), and would leave their hair uncut. At the end of the period they would present an offering in the temple, and their hair, which they had now cut, would be consumed in the sacrificial fire.33Another Israelite might associate himself with Nazirites by defraying the cost of their offering; this was regarded as a pious and charitable action.34 The elders’ proposal, then, was that Paul should associate himself with the four Nazirites when they discharged their vow in the temple and pay their expenses.
To do this Paul himself would have to be purified: he had just returned from a long residence in Gentile lands, and the ritual defilement which inevitably attached to him on that account had to be removed before he could take part in such a solemn ceremony. But his purification should be distinguished from the Nazirites’ purification. In the LXX the same Greek term35 does duty both for general purification from ritual defilement (as in Num. 19:12) and for the various forms of abstention which Nazirites had to practise throughout the period of their vow (as in Num. 6:3); and Luke here uses that term in both senses. If the two kinds of purification be distinguished, it will not be necessary to suppose either that Paul had a Nazirite vow of his own to discharge on this occasion36 or that the four Nazirites had inadvertently contracted some defilement during the period of their vow and had now to be purified from it.37
25 The elders added the assurance that they had no thought of going back on the terms of the apostolic decree, and imposing legal requirements on Gentile believers. So far as they were concerned, said the elders, all that was required of them was that they should abstain from eating flesh that had been sacrificed to idols or killed in such a way that the blood was not completely drained away, and from the practice of fornication.
There is no good reason for the view sometimes expressed, that this was the first time that Paul was told of the terms of the apostolic decree.38 The repetition of those terms, as a sort of afterthought or footnote, is perfectly natural in the context.39 The elders wish to assure Paul that their misgivings are confined to his teaching reportedly given to Jewish believers. We are glad to know, they say in effect, that you do not teach Jewish believers to abandon the ancestral customs, and we should like you to make this clear to everybody here. As for Gentile believers, of course, we have already agreed that nothing is to be imposed on them apart from the abstentions detailed in the apostolic letter.
26 Paul fell in with their suggestion, and accompanied the four Nazirites into the temple. Notice was given simultaneously of the intended date of the discharge of their vow, and of the termination of Paul’s purificatory process. The phrase “having been purified along with them”40 must refer to the initiation of his purificatory process; the process would not be completed until the seventh day.
The wisdom of Paul’s complying with the elders’ plan may well be doubted. Probably he himself was not too sanguine about its outcome; but if his falling in with their proposal would relieve them of embarrassment, he was prepared to bend over backward in applying his stated policy: “to those under the law, I became as one under the law—though not being myself under the law—that I might win those under the law” (1 Cor. 9:20). Certainly he cannot fairly be charged with compromising his own gospel principles.
As for the elders themselves, the impression made by Luke’s account is that they were well-meaning but deeply worried men. They knew that, if they appeared to countenance Paul by accepting the Gentile churches’ gifts, it could prejudice their mission to Israel and their influence with their own flock. But if Paul took some public action which would give the lie to the disturbing rumors that circulated about him, this would ease the situation for them. But attempts have been made to read between the lines of Luke’s account. It has been suggested that the course of action which the elders pressed on Paul was a condition for their acceptance of the gifts.41 It has even been suggested that they knowingly drew Paul “into an ambush by luring him into the Temple”—that this suspicion dawned on Luke himself when Paul was riotously assaulted while carrying out their directions.42 If any such suspicion did dawn on Luke, he has concealed it very skillfully.
2. Riot in the Temple (21:27–30)
27 When the seven days were about to be completed, the Jews from Asia saw him in the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him.
28 “Men of Israel,” they shouted, “come and help us! This is the man who spreads his teaching everywhere, indoctrinating everyone to the detriment of the people, the law, and this place. not content with that, he has brought Greeks into the temple and polluted this holy place.”
29 They had already seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with him, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.
30 The whole city was set in turmoil, and the people came running together from every quarter. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut.
27–29 Paul’s purificatory process lasted for seven days; there was a special ceremony of purification on the third day and the seventh day.43 He had practically completed all that was required of him44 when a riot broke out in the temple courts. Among the Jews of the dispersion those of the province of Asia were particularly hostile to Paul; he had incurred their enmity during his years of ministry in Ephesus.45 Some of these Asian Jews had come to Jerusalem for the festival of Pentecost, and finding Paul there, they determined to take more effective action against him now than they had found possible in Ephesus. Among the Gentile friends who had come with Paul to Jerusalem was the Ephesian Trophimus, whom these Asian Jews recognized when they saw him in Paul’s company. When they later came on Paul in the temple, in the Court of Israel,46 discharging the ritual obligations which he had undertaken, they took it into their heads that Trophimus was still with him. But this was a capital offense: Gentiles might visit the outer court of the temple (which for this reason was sometimes called the Court of the Gentiles), but they were forbidden to penetrate any of the inner courts on pain of death. The Roman authorities were so conciliatory of Jewish religious scrupies in this regard that they authorized the death sentence for this trespass even when the offenders were Roman citizens.47 That no Gentile might unwittingly enter into the forbidden areas, notices in Greek and Latin were fixed to the barrier separating them from the outer court, wan, ng Gentiles that death was the penalty for further ingress.48 Two of these notices (both in Greek) have been discovered—one in 1871 and one in 1935—the text of which runs: “No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surrounds the temple and enclosure. Any one who is caught trespassing will bear personal responsibility for his ensuing death.”49
If the Asian Jews’ charge against Paul had been justified, he would certainly have been guilty of aiding and abetting, and indeed participating in, a most serious crime against Jewish law, and one which was bound immediately to inflame all the Jews of Jerusalem against him. The Asian Jews were well aware of this when they raised a hue and cry against him: this man, they shouted, not content with the attacks on the Jewish people, law, and sanctuary which he made in his teaching all over the world—an accusation strongly reminiscent of the charge against Stephen50—had actually profaned the holy place by bringing Greeks into it.
30 A tumult broke out at once; the crowd that was present in the Court of Israel set on Paul, and dragged him out of the inner precincts down the steps into the outer court. The news spread quickly from the temple area to the city, and many others hastened to the scene of action. The “gates of the sanctuary” leading from the inner courts into the outer court were closed by the temple police, who were anxious to preserve the sanctity of the sacred precincts proper from being outraged by the violence of the crowd and by its possibly fatal outcome.
Some commentators have seen symbolic significance in the brief statement that “immediately the doors were shut”; and such a significance may well have been intended by Luke. T. D. Bernard, for example, in his Bampton Lectures for 1864, says of this incident: ‘ “Believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets’ and ‘having committed nothing against the people or customs of [his] fathers’, he [Paul] and his creed are forced from their proper home. On it as well as him the Temple doors are shut.”51 For Luke himself, this may have been the moment when the Jerusalem temple ceased to fill the honorable role hitherto ascribed to it in his twofold history. The exclusion of God’s message and messenger from the house once called by his name sealed its doom: it was now ripe for the destruction which Jesus had predicted for it many years before (Luke 21:6).
3. Paul Rescued by the Romans (21:31–36)
31 As they were trying to kill him, a report went up to the military tribune that all Jerusalem was in a tumult.
32 Immediately he took soldiers and centurions and ran down among them. When they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.
33 Then the tribune came up and arrested him, ordered him to be bound with a chain on either hand, and asked who he might be and what he had done.
34 Some of the crowd shouted one thing, some another; so, when he could not learn the certain truth because of the uproar, he ordered him to be taken into the fortress.
35 when he came to the steps, paul had to be carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd,
36 for the multitude of people followed him, shouting, “away with him!”
31–32 Meanwhile, in the outer court, Paul was being fiercely attacked and beaten by the mob, and his life would not have been worth more than a few minutes’ purchase had it not been for the timely intervention of the Roman garrison. Northwest of the temple area stood the Antonia fortress (at one time called Baris but rebuilt by Herod the Great and renamed by him in honor of Mark Antony). It was garrisoned at this time by an auxiliary cohort of Roman troops under the command of a military tribune.52 The fortress was connected with the outer court of the temple by two flights of steps, so that the garrison might intervene as quickly as possible in the event of a riot. On this occasion, then, as soon as the tribune received a report of the tumult, he summoned a detachment of soldiers with their centurions53 and they, running down the steps into the court, forced Paul’s assailants to stop manhandling him.
33–34 The tribune then formally arrested Paul, and ordered him to be handcuffed to two soldiers. No doubt (he thought) the man was a criminal, but whatever he had done to infuriate the mob in this way, he had to be dealt with legally and not by riotous violence. But when he tried to find out what the man had done, or who he was, he could get no clear answer: so great was the din and so confused and conflicting were the accusations which were being hurled at Paul. He must find out the truth of the matter by other means, so he ordered the soldiers to take Paul into the fortress.
35–36 The disappointed crowd, thus peremptorily robbed of their victim, pressed hard on the soldiers who had Paul in their custody; and when they reached the steps leading up to the fortress, Paul had to be carried by the soldiers lest the crowd should pull him away from them. This was no more glorious an escape from danger than his being let down in a basket over the wall of Damascus: Paul could add it to his store of memories of situations which kept him humble in moments when he was tempted to be “exalted above measure” (2 Cor. 12:7). The shout “Away with him!”54 which pursued him as he was carried up the steps was the shout with which Jesus’ death had been demanded not far from that spot some twenty-seven years before (Luke 23:18; John 19:15).
4. Paul Obtains Leave to Address the Crowd (21:37–40)
37 When he was about to enter the fortress, Paul said to the tribune, “May I have permission to say something to you?” “What?” said he; “do you know Greek?
38 Then you are not that egyptian who some time ago stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand ‘assassins’ out into the wilderness?”
39 “No,” said Paul; “I am a Jew, a native of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city. Please give me leave to speak to the people.”
40 He gave him leave, so Paul stood on the steps and with his hand motioned to the people to be quiet. When a great silence fell on them, he addressed them in the “Hebrew” speech.
37–38 By the time he reached the top of the steps, Paul must have presented a sorry figure—bruised, battered, begrimed, and disheveled. But, as so frequently in Acts, he is quickly in command of the situation.
The tribune, trying hard to grasp the cause of the trouble, had jumped to a conclusion. Some three years previously, an Egyptian adventurer appeared in Jerusalem, claiming to be a prophet, and led a large band of followers out to the Mount of Olives.55 There he told them to wait until, at his word of command, the walls of the city would fall flat; then they would march in, overthrow the Roman garrison, and take possession of the place. But Felix, procurator of Judaea, sent a body of troops against them; they killed several and took others prisoner.56 The Egyptian himself discreetly disappeared. Those whom he had duped would cherish no friendly feelings toward him. Now, thought the tribune, the impostor had reappeared and the people were venting their rage on him.
He was therefore surprised when Paul, having been carried to the top of the steps and set down, addressed him in an educated Greek voice and asked permission to speak to the throng below. He must have been wrong in his identification of Paul, he concluded, and Paul, on being questioned, confirmed that he was indeed no Egyptian.
39–40 On the contrary, said Paul, he was a citizen of the illustrious Cilician city of Tarsus,57 born of Jewish stock; and he repeated his request for permission to address the angry crowd in the outer court. His request was granted, so, standing at the top of the steps (which would be strongly guarded by soldiers), he began to speak to the crowd of Jerusalemites below, addressing them in their Aramaic vernacular.58 His securing their silence with a characteristic gesture of his hand59 is probably intended by Luke to bear witness to the power of his personality.
His choosing to speak to them in Aramaic rather than Greek was a not wholly unsuccessful bid for their tolerance while he spoke. If an audience of Welsh or Irish nationalists, about to be addressed by someone suspected of being a traitor to the national cause, suddenly became aware that he was speaking to them not in the Saxon tongue but in the Celtic vernacular, the gesture would no doubt call forth at least a temporary measure of goodwill. Aramaic was not only the vernacular of most Palestinian Jews; it was also the common speech of all non-Greek speakers in Western Asia, as far east as (and including) the Parthian empire beyond the Euphrates.
1. The Western text adds “and Myra” (see n. 4 below).
) in Jerusalem” (ASV).
(the verb is used in the active voice in 20:30 in the pejorative sense of enticing people to follow false teaching).4. Myra was the great port for transshipment for cross-sea traffic to Syria and Egypt; the Western reviser (see n. 1 above), knowing this, may have thought it must have been so used on this occasion (if indeed he was not simply influenced by its mention in 27:5). But Myra lies fifty miles east of Patara in a straight line, too long a distance to be accommodated within the day’s voyage, which is all that the itinerary implies here.
5. In the Roman period Tyre was a prosperous commercial city, noted for its purple dye works. The mole which Alexander the Great constructed to facilitate his siege of the island of Tyre in 332 B.C. was continuously widened by accumulations of sand, which formed two smooth beaches.
, otherwise “having completed the voyage,” but F. Field notes that the expression is repeatedly attested with the meaning “continue a voyage” in Xenophon Ephesius (second century A.D.); see his Notes on Translation of the New Testament (Cambridge, 1899), pp. 134–35.7. More fully St. Jean D’Acre, after the Knights of St. John. The tendency for the old Semitic names to reassert themselves after the Graeco-Roman period can be copiously paralleled in Syria and Palestine.
8. It is from this missionary activity that he is called “Philip the evangelist,” perhaps to distinguish him from Philip the apostle. Even so, they are confused by later writers. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, writing to Victor of Rome c. A.D. 190, includes among the “great luminaries” whose tombs could be pointed out in the province of Asia “Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps at Hierapolis, with his two daughters who grew old as virgins, and another daughter who lived in the Holy Spirit and now rests in Ephesus.” But Eusebius, to whom we are indebted for this quotation (HE 3.31.3), plainly understood the reference to be to Philip the evangelist, for immediately afterward he reproduces from Proclus the Montanist’s Dialogue with the Roman presbyter Gaius (c. A.D. 200) the claim that “the four daughters of Philip, who were prophetesses, were in Hierapolis in Asia; their tomb is there, and their father’s also”—and quotes Acts 21:8 as the biblical reference to this family. That it was Philip the evangelist who migrated to Asia with his daughters was maintained by T. Zahn, Apostel und Apostelschϋler in der Provinz Asien. FGNTK 6 (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 158–75; A. Harnack, Luke the Physician. E.T. (London, 1907), p. 153; that it was Philip the apostle was maintained by J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (London, 1879), pp. 45–47; J. Chapman, John the Presbyter and the Fourth Gospel (London, 1911), pp. 64–71. But others have urged us not to overlook the possibility that the same person is meant, that “Philip was originally one of the ‘Twelve’ and … went over to the ‘Seven” (so, most recently, M. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, E.T. [London, 1983], p. 14; he refers further to E. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums, I [Stuttgart/Berlin, 1924], pp. 296, 338; J. Weiss, Earliest Christianity, E.T. [New York, 1959], p. 167, n. 4).
9. This last piece of information we owe to Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, quoted by Eusebius (HE 3.39.9). For the story which they told about Joseph Barsabbas see on 1:23 (p. 46). See also P. Corssen, “Die Töchter des Philippus,” ZNW 2 (1901), pp. 289–99.
10. Cf. A. Harnack, Luke the Physician, pp. 153–60; J. V. Bartlet, The Acts of the Apostles, CentB (London, 1902), p. 23; J. A. Findlay, The Acts of the Apostles (London, 1934), pp. 49–50.
11. When it is said that he came down “from Judaea,” “Judaea” is plainly used in the narrower sense of the Jewish territory proper, and not in the official sense of the Roman province; the Roman province of Judaea included Caesarea (cf. 12:19).
, “pounding” my heart (i.e., my resolution) “like a washerwoman” (J. A. Findlay). Luke does not explain why Paul regarded his visit to Jerusalem as so solemnly imperative; his determination can be better understood in the light of Rom. 15:25–32, where Paul sets forth the importance of his going there with the evidence of ministry among the Gentiles thus far.13. Compare Polycarp’s reply in a similar situation: “Let God’s will be done” (Martyrdom of Polycarp 7.1).
14. The Western text reads “we bade them farewell.”
15. The Western text expands: “and these brought us to those with whom we were to find hospitality. And when we arrived at a certain village, we put up with one Mnason of Cyprus, a disciple of long standing.” See n. 19 below.
(“having made ready”) with an object, 
(“the things for the journey”). This might refer to necessary supplies, but W. M. Ramsay took it to mean pack animals (St. Paul the Traveller [London, 141920], p. 302).17. Perhaps some Caesarean Christians had gone to Jerusalem to arrange hospitality for the party during the “several days” they spent in Caesarea.
(“a disciple of long standing”) probably means that he had been a disciple from the beginning (
).19. See n. 15 above. The Western reading here has, however, been read in the light of the Western text of 11:2 (see p. 219, nn. 2 and 3). G. Salmon, reviewing F. Blass’s Acta Apostolorum (Göttingen, 1895) in Hermathena 9 (1896), p. 239, finds here a further point of contact between the earlier part of Acts and the “we” narrative, and says it is “a natural combination” that Mnason was one of Peter’s converts on his way home from Caesarea to Jerusalem.
20. BRD, p. 309, n. 2.
21. The Western text reads: “And when we departed thence [i.e., from the halfway village], we came to Jerusalem.”
22. Cod. 
omits “among the Jews”; the Western text reads “in Judaea”; the Byzantine text reads “of Jews.”
23. A few authorities (including the Greek codices P74 A D E 33, the Latin Vulgate, and the Coptic Bohairic version) omit “all.”
24.
P74
A C2 D E, the Byzantine text, and the Latin Vulgate add “a crowd is bound to come together” and continue: “for they will hear.…”
25. The Western text, as in 15:20, 29, reads “we sent a letter conveying our decision that they should observe nothing of the sort save to guard themselves from idol sacrifices and blood and fornication” (but the addition of the negative golden rule is not repeated here). See p. 296, n. 62; p. 297, n. 70.
26. Cf. M. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, p. 108.
27. It was by the populace at large that he was called “the Just” (possibly “the 
”), according to Hegesippus (ap. Euseb. HE 2.23.4, 7).
28. The element of hyperbole in 
(“how many myriads”) can be appreciated when it is remembered that, according to the calculations of Joachim Jeremias (“Die Einwohnerzahl Jerusalems zur Zeit Jesu” [1943], in Abba [Göttingen, 1966], pp. 335–41; Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, E.T. [London, 1969], pp. 77–84), the normal population of Jerusalem at this time was probably between 25,000 and 55,000. Several scholars, with no basis in the textual tradition, have argued for the deletion of 
(“of those who have believed”) from v. 20, so that the “myriads” would be the Jerusalem Jews in general; so, among others, F. C. Baur, Paul, E.T., I (London, 21876), pp. 201–4; J. Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, E.T. (London, 1959), pp. 240–42; cf. A. D. Nock: “We may well be somewhat sceptical about this reference to the multitude (literally, ‘myriads’) of Jewish Christians: the danger was from ordinary Jews” (St. Paul [London, 1938], p. 136).
29. Cf. 15:3–4.
30. When James and the elders describe the rank and file of the Jerusalem church as “zealots for the law,” the term “zealot” is not used in its party sense (for which see on 1:13) but in the sense in which Paul applies it to himself in Gal. 1:14, where he claims to have been “a zealot for the ancestral traditions.” Even so, it is unlikely that the church membership remained completely unaffected by the insurgent spirit which was abroad in the land during Felix’s governorship.
31. Compare his circumcision of Timothy, his own “son in the faith” (see on 16:3).
6.3.
6.5–6).34. Josephus probably implies that Herod Agrippa I performed a meritorious action of this kind when, on his entering Jerusalem as king, he directed many Nazirites to have their hair cut (Ant. 19.294).
35. The verb 
(“purify”) with the derivative noun 
(“purification”).
36. Cf. the vow which he discharged at Cenchreae (see on 18:18).
6.6–9).38. Thus H. Lietzmann, The Beginnings of the Christian Church, E.T. (London, 1949), p. 109, held that the apostolic decree was drawn up after the Council of Jerusalem, behind Paul’s back, and that “only towards the end of his life, when he again visited Jerusalem, was he given any direct official information.”
39. Cf. H. Conzelmann, Die Apostelgeschichte, HNT (Tϋbingen, 1963), p. 123; E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, E.T. (Oxford, 1971), p. 610.
40. Gk. 
—is the aorist ingressive?
41. Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (London, 1977), p. 257.
42. A. J. Mattill, “The Purpose of Acts: Schneckenburger Reconsidered,” in Apostolic History and the Gospel, ed. W. W. Gasque and R. P. Martin (Exeter/Grand Rapids, 1970), pp. 115–16.
43. Cf. Num. 19:12.
44. Every requirement for the purificatory process had been met, according to the natural sense of the perfect participle “purified” (
) in 24:18.
45. Cf. 20:19.
46. The Court of Israel was the area of the inner precincts to which Jewish men who were not priests or Levites were admitted (see on 3:1–3, p. 77 with n. 7).
47. Titus, the Roman commander-in-chief, reminds the defenders of the temple of this concession in a speech attributed to him by Josephus (BJ 6.126).
48. Cf. Josephus, BJ 5.194; 6.124–25; Ant. 15.417; Ap. 2.103–4; Philo, Embassy to Gaius 212.
49. Cf. C. S. Clermont-Ganneau, “Discovery of a Tablet from Herod’s Temple,” PEQ 3 (1871), pp. 132–33; J. H. Iliffe, “The 
Inscription from Herod’s Temple,” QDAP 6 (1936), pp. 1–3.
50. Cf. 6:13; see pp. 126–27.
51. T. D. Bernard, The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament (London, 51900), p. 121.
, lit. “commander of a thousand”: the auxiliary cohort (spe??a) which he commanded had a paper strength of 1,000 men (760 foot-soldiers and 240 cavalry). Cf. p. 433, n. 44 (on 23:23). Details of the Antonia fortress are given by Josephus, BJ 5.238–45. See also P. Benoit, “The Archaeological Reconstruction of the Antonia Fortress,” in Jerusalem Revealed, ed. Y. Yadin(New Haven/London/Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 87–89.53. Since centurions are mentioned in the plural, there were at least two of them, each in charge of a “century” of 100 men (on paper).
(cf. 55. The story is told by Josephus, BJ 2.261–63; Ant. 20.169–72. He does not suggest that the man’s followers were “assassins” (sicarii), as the tribune says. The sicarii, or dagger men (from Lat. sica, “dagger”), began to be active about this time and, after murdering the former high priest Jonathan, made pro-Roman Jews their special target; they mingled with crowds at festivals and stabbed their victims by stealth (cf. Josephus, BJ 2.254–57; Ant. 20.162–65, 185–87). In saying that the Egyptian led them into the wilderness, the tribune may be grouping him with other impostors who at this time did lead their dupes out to the wilderness of Judaea, promising to perform miracles there (cf. Matt. 24:26), according to Josephus (BJ 2.259; Ant. 20.167–68); see P. W. Barnett, “The Jewish Sign Prophets, A.D. 40–70—Their Intentions and Origin,” NTS 27 (1980–81), pp. 679–97.
56. Josephus gives the number of his followers as 30,000; the number of 4,000 mentioned here is much more probable.
57. The tribune was much more impressed by Paul’s later revelation that he was a Roman citizen (22:25–19) than by his present claim to be a citizen of Trasus: what was Tarsus to him?
58. Aramaic appears to be meant wherever reference is made to the “Hebrew” language in the NT, except in Rev. 9:11; 16:16. See F. Rosenthal, Die aramaistische Forschung (Leiden, 1939).
59. Cf. 13:16.
ACTS 22
5. Paul’s Defense to the People of Jerusalem (22:1–21)
a. His early days (22:1–5)
1 “Brothers and fathers, listen to me as I now speak in my defense.”
2 When they heard him addressing them in the Hebrew speech, they listened to him even more quietly.
3 “I am a Jew,” he went on, “born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict interpretation of our ancestral law. I was a zealot for God,1 as you all are today.
4 I persecuted this Way to the death; I bound both men and women with chains and handed them over for imprisonment.
5 Indeed, the high priest2 can bear me witness in this, together with the whole body of elders. From them I received letters for our brothers in Damascus and was making my way there in order to bring those who had fled there3 to Jerusalem as prisoners, for punishment.
1–2 Speaking Aramaic, then, Paul asked the crowd to listen to what he had to say for himself, beginning with the same words as Stephen had used many years before at the outset of his defense.4 When they realized that the man whom they execrated as a renegade was addressing them in their vernacular, the silence which they had reluctantly accorded to his beckoning hand became deeper still, and they allowed him to go on.
3–4 His defense takes an autobiographical form, as he tells his hearers of his heritage and upbringing as a strictly orthodox Jew, of his call and commission by the risen Jesus on the Damascus road, and of his being sent to evangelize the Gentile world. This is the second account in Acts of Paul’s conversion; the first is related in the third person in 9:1–22, and the third (like this) is in the first person, on Paul’s own lips, as he makes a further defense—this time before the younger Agrippa (26:2–23). Along with the virtual identity of the subject matter in the three accounts, there are subtle divergences of style and presentation, especially between the two delivered in the first person, each of which is specially adapted to its audience.
Here Paul emphasizes that, while he was born in Tarsus, he was brought up in Jerusalem, exposed only to Jewish influences. Some writers have given rein to free imagination as they have described the Tarsian influences which would have made their mark on Paul in his formative years; according to this account, however, his formative years were spent in Jerusalem.5 When the time came for him to receive his higher education, it was to none of the academies of his native city that he was sent, but to the school of Gamaliel. We have met Gamaliel already as a leader of the Pharisees in Jerusalem and an illustrious teacher of the law.6 The “strict interpretation of our ancestral law” which Paul learned in his school accorded with Pharisaic tradition. What is said here may be compared with Paul’s account in Gal. 1:14 of his advancing in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries and his zeal for the ancestral traditions. As in his letters, so here he emphasizes his persecution of the Way7 as the supreme manifestation of his zeal for God.8
5 He goes on to tell how, in pursuance of his campaign of repression against the disciples of Jesus, he went to Damascus, armed with letters accrediting him as an emissary from the high priest and Sanhedrin at Jerusalem. These authorized him to procure the arrest and extradition of those disciples who had sought refuge in that ancient Syrian city.
b. The Damascus road (22:6–11)
6 “So, as I was on my way to Damascus, I was approaching the city when suddenly, about noon, a great light from heaven flashed round about me.
7 I fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to me,9 ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’10
8 ‘Who are you, Lord?’ I answered. ‘I am Jesus’, said he, ‘—Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’
9 The men who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me.
10 ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ said i. ‘Get up,’ said the lord to me, ‘and go into Damascus; there you will be told about all that has been appointed for you to do.’11
11 As12 I could not see13 because of the glory of that light, my companions led me by the hand and I came into Damascus.
6–9 Paul now describes the blinding light that flashed around him and his fellow-travelers about midday as they approached the walls of Damascus, and the voice that challenged him as he lay prostrate on the ground: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, Lord?” was Paul’s surprised question, and more astounding still was the swift reply: “I am Jesus of Nazareth,14 the one you are persecuting.” While this interchange was taking place between Paul and the glorified Lord, his companions stood by amazed. They too had seen the lightning flash and were momentarily stunned by it; now they heard Paul speaking, but neither heard nor saw the person to whom his words were addressed.15
10–11 That convicting word, “I am Jesus of Nazareth,” imposed on Paul a lifelong allegiance to the one whom in ignorance and unbelief he had hitherto withstood. Now he awaited the commands of one whom he henceforth acknowledged as Lord, and was told to go into Damascus, where further instructions would be given him. So in his blindness he was led by hand into Damascus.
c. Ananias of Damascus (22:12–16)
12 “There was one Ananias, a devout man by the standards of the law, who enjoyed a good reputation among all the Jews who were resident there.
13 He came to me, stood over me, and said, ‘Saul, my brother, look up.’16 That very moment I looked up and saw him.17
14 Then he said, ‘The God of our fathers has chosen you to learn his will and see the Righteous One and hear words from his mouth,
15 because you are to be his witness to all about the things which you have seen and heard.
16 And now, why delay? Rise up and get yourself baptized and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.’
12 As Paul has emphasized his orthodox upbringing and his devotion to the law and the ancestral traditions, so now he emphasizes the part played in his conversion experience by Ananias of Damascus, portrayed as a devout and law-abiding Jew, enjoying the respect of all his fellow-Jews in the city.
13–16 The first thing Ananias did when he came into the house where Paul was staying was to announce the restoration of his eyesight in the name of the risen Christ. The command “Look up” might be otherwise rendered: “Receive the power of sight again.” Ananias’s first words to Paul, as reported here, summarize the fuller statement of 9:17. But his following words in verses 14–16 are fuller than anything ascribed to him there.18 It was important to stress on the present occasion that the commission which Paul received from the risen Christ was to a large extent communicated through the lips of this pious and believing Jew.19 In the later speech before Agrippa there was no need for this particular emphasis, and so the substance of what Ananias says to Paul here in the name of the Lord is there addressed to him directly by the Lord on the Damascus road. It must be said that in this regard the speech before Agrippa is more in line with the testimony of Paul’s letters, with their insistence on the unmediated character of Paul’s call and commission (Gal. 1:12).
The Jewish style of Ananias’s announcement contributes to the general presentation of his role in this narrative: the initiative in Paul’s call is taken by “the God of our fathers” (contrast “the Lord—that is, Jesus” in 9:17), and Jesus himself is identified as “the Righteous One.”20
Thus Paul received his commission. He had seen the risen Christ,21 he had heard his voice, and from now on he was to fulfil the ministry of a true witness, telling forth with confidence what he had seen and heard, with all that it implied—that Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by men, exalted by God, was Lord of all. But first he must get himself baptized, as the outward and visible sign of his inward and spiritual cleansing from sin.22 And in the act of being baptized his invocation of Jesus as Lord would declare the dominant power in his life henceforth.23
d. Paul’s vision in the temple (22:17–21)
17 “When I came back to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance
18 and saw him saying to me, ‘Make haste; get out of Jerusalem quickly: they will not accept your testimony about me.’
19 ‘Lord,’ said I, ‘they know that I used to imprison and flog in synagogue after synagogue those who believed on you.
20 And when the blood of your witness Stephen was being shed, I myself was standing by with approval, and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’
21 Be on your way,’ he said to me; ‘I will send you far off to the Gentiles.’ ”
17–21 The vision in the Jerusalem temple which Paul now describes was probably experienced during his visit recorded in 9:26–30. The account of it may be influenced by that of Isaiah’s inaugural vision in Isa. 6:1–13.24 But this was no inaugural vision for Paul. His commission to preach Christ to the Gentiles had been received when the risen Lord appeared to him on the Damascus road.25 His testimony to this effect in Gal. 1:16 is confirmed by the account in 26:16–18. But it is entirely credible that, when he visited Jerusalem for the first time after his conversion, his “heart’s desire and prayer to God” for Israel’s salvation (of which he speaks in Rom. 10:1) should have made him eager to bear witness to his fellow-Jews. According to Luke, he began during that visit to engage in vigorous debate with the Hellenists of Jerusalem, and immediately aroused keen hostility, the more so because they remembered his former zealous opposition to the Jesus movement, and looked on him now as a traitor and turncoat (9:29).
The appearance of Christ which came to him in this moment of ecstasy26 reaffirmed what he had already learned on the Damascus road—that his call was to be Christ’s witness among the Gentiles. Jerusalem would not listen to his testimony. Paul tried to remonstrate: his former anti Christian activity in that very city, he argued, was fresh in people’s minds, and many could remember the responsible part he had played in the martyrdom of Stephen.27 His point seems to have been that people who knew his former record would be the more readily convinced that his change of attitude must be based on the most compelling grounds. But as a matter of fact their knowledge of his former record made them the more unwilling to listen to him at all. The Lord therefore commanded him peremptorily to leave Jerusalem; his mission field was to be the Gentile world.
According to Luke’s account (9:29–30), the leaders of the Jerusalem church, getting wind of a plot against Paul’s life during that visit, escorted him to Caesarea and put him on board a ship bound for Tarsus. This is not the only place in our narrative where divine direction and human action coincide.
6. Paul Reveals His Roman Citizenship (22:22–29)
22 They listened to him until he said this; then they started to shout, “away with him! a scoundrel like that should not be allowed to live!”28
23 They were yelling, waving their garments about, and flinging dust into the air,
24 so the tribune ordered Paul to be brought into the fortress, and gave directions that he should be interrogated under the lash, so that he might find out why they were shouting against him like that.
25 As they were stretching him out for flogging,29 Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to flog a Roman citizen who has received no proper trial?”30
26 Hearing that, the centurion went to the tribune and reported it to him: “What are you proposing to do?” he said. “this man is a Roman.”
27 The tribune came up and said to him, “Tell me: are you a Roman?” “Yes,” said he.31·
28 The tribune replied, “It cost me a great sum of money to acquire this citizenship.”32 “But I,” said Paul, “am a citizen by birth.”
29 Then the men who were about to interrogate him withdrew from him immediately, and the tribune was afraid when he learned that the man whom he had put in chains was a Roman.
22–23 The crowd below in the outer court listened patiently enough to Paul, as he spoke from the top of the steps, until he mentioned his mission to the Gentiles. This word made all their resentment blaze up with redoubled fury. They screamed and gesticulated in a riot of abandoned rage. The tribune had not understood what Paul said, since he spoke to them in Aramaic (he might not have understood him much better had Paul used a language the tribune knew); but while it was impossible for him to discover the exact nature of their grievance against Paul, it was evident that they were bitterly hostile to him and were out for his blood. In a few well-chosen words Luke paints the scene; we can see them waving their clothes in the air33 and throwing dust about in their excitement. “In England,” as Lake and Cadbury remark, “mud is more frequently available.”34
24 Despairing, then, of getting any coherent explanation of all this sound and fury from the rioters themselves, the tribune decided to find out the truth from Paul himself, by interrogating him under torture. He therefore ordered him to be flogged. If the instrument used was the scourge (Lat. flagellum),35 that was a fearful instrument of torture, consisting of leather thongs, weighted with rough pieces of metal or bone, and attached to a stout wooden handle. If a man did not actually die under the scourge, he might well be crippled for life. Paul had been beaten with rods on three occasions (once at least at the hands of Roman lictors), and he had been sentenced five times to the disciplinary lash inflicted by Jewish synagogue authorities,36 but neither of these penalties had the murderous quality of the flagellum.
25 Fortunately for Paul, it was a form of treatment from which Roman citizens were legally exempt.37 In earlier days the exemption was total, and although under the empire it was sometimes inflicted on citizens as a penalty after conviction, they were all exempt from it as a third degree method of inquiry before trial. So, as some soldiers were tying Paul up in readiness for the flogging,38 he asked the centurion in charge of them if it was legal to treat a Roman citizen so, before he had received a fair trial.
26–28 Knowing very well that it was not legal, the centurion went at once and told the tribune what Paul had said. The tribune, alarmed at the news, came quickly to the place and asked Paul if it was true that he was a Roman citizen. “Yes,” said Paul. Perhaps he did not look like a Roman citizen at that moment: after being set upon by the crowd and dragged down into the outer court of the temple, along with other rough usage he had received, he must have presented a battered and undignified spectacle. Something of this sort may have been in the tribune’s mind as he said, “It cost me a very large sum of money to obtain Roman citizenship”—the implication being that the privilege must have become cheap of late if such a sorry-looking figure as Paul could claim it.39
He was the more astonished by the calm dignity of Paul’s reply. The tribune had virtually bought his citizenship; presumably, since his Gentile name was Claudius (23:26), he had done so in the principate of Claudius. Technically, the great price which he paid was “the bribe given to the intermediaries in the imperial secretariat or the provincial administration who put his name on the list of candidates for enfranchisement.”40 This form of bribery reached scandalous proportions under Claudius.41 But Paul, the man whom the tribune was interrogating rather contemptuously, was born a Roman citizen. This means that his father was a Roman citizen before him. How the citizenship was acquired by Paul’s father or grandfather we have no means of knowing, but analogy would suggest that it was for valuable services rendered to a Roman general or administrator in the southeastern area of Asia Minor, such as Pompey in 66–64 B.C. or Antony a generation later.42
29 The revelation of Paul’s Roman citizenship gave the whole business a different aspect. Rough-and-ready methods which might be all right for ordinary mortals must be avoided when the person affected was a Roman citizen. The tribune shuddered as he realized how near he had come to perpetrating a serious illegality; indeed, he had already begun to perpetrate it by giving the order for Paul to be flogged; but at least the flogging itself had been arrested.43 He was now responsible to his own superiors for the protection of this Roman citizen; he must therefore set up a formal inquiry in order to ascertain the true cause of the disturbance.
7. Paul Brought before the Sanhedrin (22:30)
30 The next day, wishing to learn with certainty the reason for his being accused by the Jews, he released him44 and ordered the chief priests and all the sanhedrin to hold a meeting; then he brought Paul down and made him stand among them.
30 If the agitated Jewish crowd could give no coherent account of its grievance against Paul, the supreme Sanhedrin would surely be able to throw light on the situation. Whatever Paul was being charged with, it involved an offense of some kind against Jewish religious custom or sentiment, and the Sanhedrin was the appropriate body to deal with that. So the next day the tribune directed the Sanhedrin to hold a meeting. The Roman administration of Judaea was a military administration, and in the absence of the procurator the officer commanding the Antonia garrison was the chief representative of Roman authority in Jerusalem. If he ordered the Sanhedrin to meet, the Sanhedrin met. When the court was in session, he brought Paul down from the fortress to the council chamber on the western slope of the temple hill.45 It must be determined first of all that there was a prima facie case for trial by the Sanhedrin, and at least until that was determined Paul remained under military protection.
1. For “God” the Latin Vulgate reads “the law” and the Harclean Syriac has the asterisked reading “my ancestral traditions” (borrowed from Gal. 1:14).
2. A few Western witnesses add “Ananias” (cf. 23:2). But Ananias was not high priest at the time of Paul’s mission to Damascus.
(this translation is designed to bring out the force of 
“thither”).4. Cf. 7:2.
5. See W. C. van Unnik, Tarsus or Jerusalem: The City of Paul’s Youth, E.T. (London, 1962).
30b), is identified with Paul by J. Klausner (From Jesus to Paul, E.T. [London, 1944], pp. 310–11), but with doubtful cogency.7. For “the Way” see on 9:2.
8. Cf. 8:3; 9:1; 26:9–11; Gal. 1:13; Phil. 3:6 (“as to zeal, a persecutor of the church”). For the comparison of his former zeal to their present zeal cf. Rom. 10:2 (“they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened”).
9. Two Western witnesses (the Latin codex gigas and the margin of the Harclean Syriac) add “in the Hebrew speech” (borrowed from 26:14).
10. A number of witnesses, many Western in character, add “it is hard for you to kick against the goads” (borrowed from 26:14).
11. For “about all that has been appointed for you to do” some Byzantine authorities read “what you must do” (from 9:6).
12. The Western text reads: “And rising up I could not see. And as I could not see.…”
13. Cod. B reads “I saw nothing.”
(Jesus-Jeshua, E.T. [London, 1929], p. 18).15. See on 9:7.
, which may mean either “look up” (
= “up”) or “see again,” i.e., “recover your sight” (
= “again”).
.18. See, however, the instruction given to Ananias by the Lord in 9:15–16.
19. On the relation of Ananias’s role here to Paul’s claim in Gal. 1:1, 11–12, see the exposition of 9:17 (pp. 187–89).
20. For this designation cf. 3:14; 7:52 (see p. 81, n. 29).
21. That Paul actually saw the risen and exalted Lord in addition to hearing his voice is emphasized more explicitly in his letters than in Acts. It is mentioned indeed in Acts (both here and in 26:16); but whereas the narratives in Acts lay chief stress on what the Lord said, Paul himself makes it plain that to him the vision of Christ was the central and all-important feature of his conversion experience (Gal. 1:12, 16; 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8).
, “he was baptized,” is used in 9:18. The middle voice here (
) probably means “get yourself baptized”; similarly 
(also middle) may be rendered “have (your sins) washed away.” Cf. 
, 1 Cor. 6:11; 
, 1 Cor. 10:2.
) referred to in Eph. 5:26.24. See O. Betz, “Die Vision des Paulus im Tempel von Jerusalem,” in Verborum Veritas: Festschrift für G. Stählin, ed. O. Böocher and K. Haacker (Wuppertal, 1970), pp. 113–23. Both Isaiah and Paul were told that their testimony would be unacceptable, but Isaiah was told to persist, whereas Paul was told to leave.
25. And he began immediately to fulfil it by going to Arabia, i.e., the Nabataean kingdom (Gal. 1:17).
(v. 17); the phrase is used also of Peter’s experience on the roof at Joppa (10:10; 11:5).
from “witness” to “martyr” (cf. Rev. 2:13; 17:6).
.
).
), as in 16:37.
, for which the westeren reading is the synonymous 
.32. The Western text reads “I know for how large a sum I acquired this citizen-ship” (cf. n. 39 below).
here; the verb 
is a variant form of 
(“throw,” “cast”). For the action cf. the Latin phrase iactatio togarum. Chrysostom (Homilies on Acts 48.2), describing the scene, explains 
by 
(“shake out”); cf. F. Field, Notes on the Translation of the New Testament (Cambridge, 1899), p. 136.34. It may be that horror at Paul’s imagined sacrilege was also expressed by these actions. See H. J. Cadbury, “Dust and Garments,” Beginnings I.5, pp. 269–77.
(
) in v. 24.36. 2 Cor. 11:24–25. One of the beatings with rods had been received at Philippi (see on 16:22 above).
37. By the Valerian and Porcian Laws (see on 16:37).
38. The victim is commonly depicted as tied to a pillar or post of convenient height for scourging. F. Field (Notes on the Translation of the New Testament, pp. 136–37) adduces some evidence in support of the view that here the victim was strung up some little distance above the ground.
39. Bede of Jarrow, in his exposition of Acts, says here, “Another edition indicates more clearly what he meant: ‘The tribune said, Do you claim so easily to be a Roman citizen? For I know at how great a price I acquired this citizenship.’ ” Cf. the Western reading (n. 32 above).
40. A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), pp. 154–55.
41. Claudius’s wife Messalina and her court favorites used the procedure as a means of enriching themselves. Cf. Dio Cassius, History 60.17.5–6. The tribune’s personal name Lysias indicates that he was of Greek birth. Wealth or influence (probably both) had enabled him to become not only a Roman citizen but also a superior officer in the Roman army.
, able to be very useful to a fighting proconsul?” (W. M. Calder, personal letter, February 18, 1953). Jerome’s statement that Paul’s family came from Gischala (Gush Ḥalab) in Galilee and emigrated to Tarsus at the time of the Roman conquest of Judaea (On Illustrious Men 5) has been treated seriously by a number of scholars (including M. Dibelius, Paul, E.T. [London, 1953], p. 16, who links it with Paul’s claim in Phil. 3:5 to be a “Hebrew from Hebrews”). W. M. Ramsay’s dismissal of Jerome’s story as “in itself an impossible one” (The Cities of St. Paul [London, 1907], p. 185) seems to have no solid basis.
). This probably refers to his action in 21:33, rather than to Paul’s being tied up for scourging—the verb used for his being so tied up is not the ordinary verb for binding (
) but one which denotes stretching out (
). It may be that the two 
with which Paul was bound in 21:33 were heavier than the 
which he continued to wear during his custody in Judaea (e.g., before Agrippa, 26:29) and later in Rome (28:20). When in v. 30 the tribune is said to have “released him” (
) before bringing him before the Sanhedrin, the meaning may be that he released him (temporarily) from imprisonment in the fortress (cf. Byzantine reading, n. 44).
, “from his bonds,” i.e., from custody, making explicit what is in any case implied.45. See p. 91, n. 13.