5. The First Christian Church (2:41–47)
Text, Exposition, and Notes
ACTS 1
I. THE BIRTH OF THE CHURCH (1:1–5:42)
A. THE FORTY DAYS AND AFTER (1:1–26)
The first chapter of Acts provides a brief introduction to the narrative of the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit and its sequel. It deals with two topics: the risen Lord’s conversations with his disciples on the eve of his ascension, and the co-opting of Matthias to fill the vacancy in the apostolate caused by the treachery and death of Judas Iscariot.
1. Prologue (1:1–3)
1 The first volume which I wrote,1 Theophilus, was concerned with all that Jesus began to do and teach
2 until the day he was taken up, after he had given his commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.2
3 It was to them that he presented himself alive after his passion by many compelling tokens: he appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke to them about the kingdom of God.
1–2 Theophilus, to whom the second volume of Luke’s history is here dedicated, is similarly addressed at the beginning of the first volume, where he receives the title “most excellent” (Luke 1:3). There has been much indecisive speculation about him. Some have even suggested that he was no particular individual, but that the name Theophilus—which means “dear to God”—is used here to designate the “Christian reader.” The use of the honorific title “most excellent” makes this improbable. We cannot be sure, however, whether the title “most excellent” is bestowed on Theophilus in a technical sense, indicating his rank, or is given him by way of courtesy.3 Nor is much to be gained by pondering the omission of the title in Acts, as when it is suggested that Theophilus had become a Christian since he received the “first volume” and therefore would no longer expect worldly titles of rank or honor from a fellow-Christian.
Another suggestion is that the name Theophilus masks the identity of some well-known person, such as Titus Flavius Clemens, cousin of the Emperor Domitian.4 Even this is unlikely: Theophilus was a perfectly ordinary personal name, attested from the third century B.C. onward. Despite the evident apologetic motive in Luke’s history, it is equally unlikely that Theophilus was the advocate briefed for Paul’s defense at the hearing of his appeal to Caesar.5 It is quite probable that Theophilus was a representative member of the intelligent middle-class public at Rome whom Luke wished to win over to a less prejudiced and more favorable opinion of Christianity than that which was current among them. This much is certain from the prologue to Luke’s first volume (which serves also as a prologue to the twofold work): that Theophilus had already learned something about the rise and progress of Christianity, and Luke’s aim was to put him in possession of more accurate information than he already had.6
Such dedications were common form in contemporary literary circles. For example, Josephus dedicated his Jewish Antiquities, his Auto-biography, and his two volumes Against Apion to a patron named Epaphroditus. At the beginning of the first volume Against Apion, he addresses him as “Epaphroditus, most excellent of men”;7 and he introduces the second volume of the same work with the words: “By means of the former volume, my most honored Epaphroditus,8 I have demonstrated our antiquity.” These opening words are remarkably similar to those of Luke’s second volume.
Luke begins with a brief reference to his former9 volume as an account of “all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up”—or, if we follow the Western text, “until the day when, by the Holy Spirit, he commissioned the apostles whom he had chosen, and charged them to proclaim the gospel.” This exactly summarizes the scope of the Gospel of Luke from 4:1 onward: the commissioning of the apostles is recorded in Luke 24:44–49. The implication of Luke’s words is that his second volume will be an account of what Jesus continued10 to do and teach after his ascension—no longer in visible presence on earth but by his Spirit in his followers. The expression “to do and teach” well sums up the twofold subject matter of all the canonical Gospels: they all record The Work and Words of Jesus (to quote the title of one presentation of their subject matter).11
It was “through the Holy Spirit” that Jesus gave his parting charge to his apostles. Almost invariably12 Luke restricts the designation “apostles” to the twelve men whom Jesus chose at an early stage in his ministry (Luke 6:13–16), except that Judas Iscariot was replaced by Matthias (as we are told later in this chapter). His charge to them made them the chief heralds of the good news which he had brought. The extension of the good news in the power of the Spirit is the theme of Acts. At his baptism Jesus had been “anointed” with the Holy Spirit and power (10:38), and more recently, in Paul’s words, he had been “designated Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). In the Johannine account of the commission laid on his disciples by the risen Christ, he indicated the power by which they were to carry out their commission when he “breathed into them” and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).13 Luke makes it plain that it is by the power of that same Spirit that all the apostolic acts which he goes on to narrate were performed, so much so that some have suggested, as a theologically more appropriate title for his second volume, The Acts of the Holy Spirit.14
3 Over a period of forty days between his resurrection and ascension Jesus appeared at intervals to his apostles and other followers in a manner which could leave no doubt in their minds that he was really alive again, risen from the dead. The most primitive and comprehensive list of these appearances is that given by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:5–7, although the Gospel narratives indicate that even Paul’s list is not exhaustive. In both parts of Luke’s work the resurrection appearances are confined to Jerusalem and its neighborhood.15
What did Jesus teach them during those days? Many Gnostic schools which flourished in the second century and later claimed that he gave them certain esoteric teaching, not recorded in the canonical literature of the catholic church, of which they themselves were now the custodians and interpreters. Within the frontiers of Christian orthodoxy there was one line of tradition which represented him as giving the apostles instructions about church order.16 But Luke declares that he continued to instruct them on the same subjects as had formed the burden of his teaching before his passion—things relating to the kingdom of God.
From the earliest times in Israel, God was acknowledged as king (cf. Ex. 15:18). His kingship is universal (Ps. 103:19), but is manifested most clearly where men and women recognize it in practice by doing his will. In Old Testament times his kingship was specially manifested on earth in the nation of Israel: to this nation he made known his will and he called it into covenant relationship with himself (cf. Ps. 147:20). When human kings arose over Israel, they were regarded as vicegerents of the divine King, representing his sovereignty on earth. With the fall of the monarchy and the end of national independence, there arose a new conception of the kingdom of God as destined to be revealed on earth in its fullness at a later date (cf. Dan. 2:44; 7:13–14). It is in the light of this later conception that we should understand the New Testament teaching about the kingdom of God. Jesus inaugurates the kingdom: it “drew near” with the inception of his public ministry (cf. Mark 1:14–15) and was released in power by his death and exaltation (cf. Mark 9:1). The things relating to the kingdom of God which form the theme of his postresurrection teaching at the beginning of Acts are identical with “the things relating to the Lord Jesus Christ” which form the theme of Paul’s teaching in Rome at the end of the book (28:31). When they told the story of Jesus, the apostles proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God—the same good news as Jesus himself had announced earlier, but now given effective fulfilment by the saving events of his passion and triumph. It may reasonably be concluded that the teaching about the kingdom of God given to the apostles during the forty days was calculated to make plain to them the bearing of these saving events on the message of the kingdom.
Luke supplies one sample of this teaching toward the end of his Gospel, where he shows the risen Lord opening his disciples’ minds to understand the scriptures: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:45–47). “The kingdom of God is conceived as coming in the events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and to proclaim these facts, in their proper setting, is to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.”17 These words of C. H. Dodd may be adopted with one qualification: when the apostles proclaimed the good news, they did not stop short at the resurrection and exaltation of Christ, but went on to speak of one further event which would consummate the saving series. Peter told the household of Cornelius how Christ had charged his apostles “to preach to the people and testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead” (10:42). Paul told the Areopagites at Athens that God “has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has provided a pledge to all, by raising him from the dead” (17:31). This judgment of the world coincides, in the apostolic preaching, with the parousia of Christ, the final and perfect manifestation of the divine kingdom, when every knee will bow at his name and every tongue confess him as Lord (Phil. 2:10–11), when God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10). At Christ’s first coming the age to come invaded this present age; at his coming in glory the age to come will have altogether superseded this present age.18 Between the two comings the two ages overlap; the people of Christ live temporally in this present age while spiritually they belong to the heavenly kingdom and enjoy by anticipation the life of the age to come. Biblical eschatology is largely, but not completely, “realized”; there remains a future element, to become actual at the parousia. A balanced account of the New Testament presentation of the kingdom of God requires that due regard be paid to this future element as well as to those which have been realized.19
2. The Apostles’ Commission (1:4–8)
4 While he was eating with them20 he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but wait for what the Father had promised. “About this,” he said, “you have heard me speak.
5 For John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days’ time.”
6 When they had come together, then, they put this question to him: “Is this the time, Lord, when you are about to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
7 “It is not for you,” he replied, “to learn21 about times or seasons which the Father has reserved under his own control.22
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
4 That the risen Christ ate in the presence of his disciples when he appeared to them is stated explicitly in Luke 24:42–43 (cf. Acts 10:41). Plainly his resurrection body had no need of material food and drink for its sustenance. But Luke may imply that he took food in the company of his disciples, not for any personal need of his own, but in order to convince them that he was really present with them and that they were seeing no phantom. There may also be a hint that what he shared with them was a eucharistic meal, a token that the new age had dawned, comparable to his self-disclosure at Emmaus “in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:30–31, 35).23
In the course of these resurrection appearances, Jesus instructed the apostles not to leave Jerusalem until the Father fulfilled his promise to them and they were “clothed with power from on high” (to quote from the parallel narrative of Luke 24:49). He had already told them, he reminded them, of this promised gift. If we ask when and where he had told them of it, the Fourth Evangelist will give us an answer: it was on the night of his betrayal, in the upper room in Jerusalem, after they had celebrated the Last Supper together, before they left the house to cross the Kidron valley and spend the remaining hours on the slope of Olivet. Certainly we have no account of a previous reference by Jesus to the promised Spirit which fits the present allusion so well as the five well-known passages in John 14–16. And it is particularly noteworthy “that the emphasis of these five passages is precisely that which underlies the conception of the Spirit in Acts 1–15.”24
5 This promise, moreover, was foreshadowed by the ministry of John the Baptist.25 To those who came to receive the baptism of repentance at his hands John had said, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I … will baptize you with the Holy Spirit”26 (Luke 3:16 par. Mark 1:8). The time was now drawing very near, said Jesus, when these words of John would be fulfilled: “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days’ time.” According to Old Testament prophecy, the days of fulfilment would be marked by a widespread outpouring of the Spirit of God,27 and John’s baptism in water not only prepared his repentant hearers for the coming judgment but also pointed them on to that spiritual baptism of which the prophets had spoken.
6 These matters had been the subject of conversation between the risen Lord and his disciples from time to time during the forty days. The formula of transition at the beginning of verse 628 suggests that Luke now moves on to the last conversation of all, belonging to the risen Lord’s appearance to them immediately before his ascension.
The apostles evidently maintained their interest in the hope of seeing the kingdom of God realized in the restoration of Israel’s national independence. They had at an earlier date been captivated by the thought that in such a restored order they themselves would have positions of authority (cf. Mark 10:35–45; Luke 22:24–27). So now, hearing their Master speak of the coming gift of the Spirit, the sign of the new age, they asked if this was to be the occasion for restoring Israel’s sovereignty.
7 Jesus’ answer did not take the form of a direct “No.” He told them that the epochs of the fulfilment of the divine purpose29 were matters which lay within the Father’s sole jurisdiction. Similarly, he had assured them on a former occasion that not even the Son knew the day or hour of his parousia; this knowledge was reserved to the Father alone (Mark 13:32). Whatever purposes of his own God might have for the nation of Israel, these were not to be the concern of the messengers of Christ. The kingdom of God which they were commissioned to proclaim was the good news of God’s grace in Christ. Their present question appears to have been the last flicker of their former burning expectation of an imminent theocracy with themselves as its chief executives. From now on they devoted themselves to the proclamation and service of God’s spiritual kingdom, which men and women enter by repentance and faith, and in which chief honor belongs to those who most faithfully follow their Lord in the path of obedience, service, and suffering.
8 Instead of the political power which had once been the object of their ambitions, a power far greater and nobler would be theirs. When the Holy Spirit came upon them, Jesus assured them, they would be vested with heavenly power—that power by which, in the event, their mighty works were accomplished and their preaching made effective. As Jesus had been anointed at his baptism with the Holy Spirit and power, so his followers were now to be similarly anointed and enabled to carry on his work.30 This work would be a work of witness-bearing—a theme which is prominent in the apostolic preaching throughout Acts.31 An Old Testament prophet had called the people of Israel to be God’s witnesses in the world (Isa. 43:10; 44:8); the task which Israel had not fulfilled was taken on by Jesus, the perfect Servant of the Lord, and shared by him with his disciples. The close relation between God’s call to Israel, “you are my witnesses,” and the risen Lord’s commission to his apostles, “you will be my witnesses,” can be appreciated the more if we consider the implications of Paul’s quotation of Isa. 49:6 in Acts 13:47.32 There the heralds of the gospel are spoken of as a light for the Gentiles, bearing God’s salvation “to the end of the earth”; here “the end of the earth” and nothing short of that is to be the limit of the apostolic witness.
In Acts we do not find an apostolic succession in the ecclesiastical sense, nor a succession of orthodox tradition, but “a succession of witness to Christ, an apostolic testimony in Jerusalem to the self-styled leaders of Israel until they finally reject it, and an apostolic testimony from Jerusalem to Rome and the Gentile world of Luke’s own day.”33
It has often been pointed out that the geographical terms of verse 8 provide a sort of “Index of Contents” for Acts. “You will be my witnesses” might be regarded as announcing the theme of the book; “in Jerusalem” covers the first seven chapters, “in all Judaea and Samaria” covers 8:1 to 11:18, and the remainder of the book traces the progress of the gospel outside the frontiers of the Holy Land until at last it reaches Rome.34
3. The Ascension (1:9–11)
9 Having said this he was taken up, while they looked on, and a cloud received him out of their sight.
10 As he went, they remained gazing into heaven, when suddenly two men in white clothing stood beside them.
11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
9 When the Lord had made their commission sufficiently plain to them, he disappeared from their sight, and no further resurrection appearances were granted to them, of the kind which they had experienced on several occasions during the past forty days.
It is Luke’s mention of this period of forty days that is responsible for the arrangement in the Christian calendar by which Ascension Day falls on the fortieth day after Easter. In the apostolic witness Jesus’ resurrection and ascension seem to form one continuous movement, and both together constitute his exaltation. But his exaltation was not postponed to the fortieth day after his triumph over death. The ascension here recorded was not the first occasion when he vanished from his companions’ sight after his resurrection. He did so after he made himself known in the breaking of the bread to the two with whom he walked to Emmaus (Luke 24:31). Nor are we intended to suppose that the intervals between his resurrection appearances during the forty days were passed by him in some intermediate, earth-bound state. The resurrection appearances, in which he accommodated himself to the disciples’ temporal condition of life, even going so far as to eat with them, were visitations from that eternal order to which his “body of glory” now belonged. What happened on the fortieth day was that this series of visitations came to an end with a scene which impressed on the disciples their Master’s heavenly glory.
This was not the first occasion on which some of them at least had had his heavenly glory brought home to them in a similar way. The words “a cloud received him out of their sight” are reminiscent of those with which the Gospel incident of the transfiguration comes to an end: “a cloud came and overshadowed them; … and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone” (Luke 9:34–36).35 They are reminiscent, too, of Jesus’ own language about the parousia of the Son of Man—“coming in clouds with great power and glory” (Mark 13:26); “coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62).36 The transfiguration, the ascension (as here described), and the parousia are three successive manifestations of Jesus’ divine glory.37 The cloud in each case is to be understood as the cloud which envelops the glory of God (the shekhinah)—that cloud which, resting above the Mosaic tabernacle and filling Solomon’s temple, was the visible token to Israel that the divine glory had taken up residence there (Ex. 40:34; 1 Kings 8:10–11). So, in the last moment that the apostles saw their Lord with outward vision, they were granted “a theophany: Jesus is enveloped in the cloud of the divine presence.”38
10 There is no need to be alarmed by suggestions that the ascension story is bound up with a pre-Copernican conception of the universe, and that the former is therefore as obsolete as the latter. Anyone leaving the earth’s surface appears to spectators to be ascending, and so, when the cloud enveloped their Lord, his disciples stood “gazing into heaven” as he disappeared. Some of them, perhaps, remembering a previous experience, expected that the cloud would dissolve and Jesus be left with them, as on the Mount of Transfiguration. Instead, they suddenly became aware of two white-robed men standing by. Luke intends his readers to understand these men to be angelic messengers, like the two men who appeared to the women at the empty tomb of Jesus “in dazzling apparel” (Luke 24:4).39 In both instances the fact that there were two suggests that they are viewed as witnesses, two being the minimum number for credible witness-bearing (Deut. 19:15). On the former occasion the two men bore witness to Jesus’ resurrection; here they bear witness to his forthcoming parousia.
11 They need not stand gazing skyward, said the heavenly visitants. “This Jesus” would return in the same manner as he went. From Luke’s perspective, this promise would indeed be fulfilled, but not immediately. The disciples had seen Jesus go in power and glory; in power and glory he would come back. But an interval would elapse between his exaltation and his parousia, and in that interval the presence of the Spirit would keep his people in living union with their risen, glorified, and returning Lord.40
Christ is ascended, but his abiding presence and energy fill the whole book of Acts, and the whole succeeding story of his people on earth. His exaltation “at God’s right hand”41 means that he is the more effectually present with his people on earth “always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20). As it is put in Eph. 4:10, he “ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.”
4. In the Upper Room (1:12–14)
12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from Mount Olivet,42 which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey distant.
13 When they entered (the city), they went up to the upper room where they were staying. There were Peter, John, James, and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James.
14 All of these together were giving themselves continually to prayer, along with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
12 The apostles’ immediate duty was plain: it was to wait in Jerusalem until the heavenly power came on them. So they returned to the city. The place where their Master was taken from their sight, Luke tells us, was the Mount of Olives, to the east of Jerusalem, “a sabbath day’s journey distant.” This was a distance of 2,000 cubits or around one kilometer, ingeniously reckoned by interpreting Ex. 16:29 (“let no one go out of his place on the seventh day”) in the light of Num. 35:5 (where the Levites’ pasturelands are defined by a radius of 2,000 cubits from any one of the six “cities of refuge”).43 According to Luke 24:50, Jesus “led them out as far as Bethany”; but it is not certain that the same occasion is referred to there as here. Bethany lies on the eastern slopes of Olivet, about fifteen stadia (two and a half kilometers) from Jerusalem (cf. John 11:18).
13 Back in Jerusalem, the apostles went to the place where their company was lodging in the city—the “upper room.” It is possible (although naturally it cannot be proved) that this was the room where Jesus had kept the passover meal with them on the eve of his execution; it may also have been the room where he appeared to some of them on Easter Day (cf. Luke 24:33, 36; John 20:19, 26).44 It is an attractive speculation that the house which contained this upper room was the house of Mary, mother of John Mark (cf. 12:12),45 but this is even less demonstrable.
Luke now gives a list of the apostles,46 identical with that given earlier in Luke 6:14–16, save for a few variations in the order of names and, of course, the deletion of Judas Iscariot. The lists of the Twelve in Mark 3:16–19 and Matt. 10:2–4 differ from Luke’s lists mainly by putting Thaddaeus where he has “Judas the son of James.” Otherwise, while the lists vary considerably in order, the same apostles are named together in each of the three groups into which the Twelve are divided by all three writers; and Peter, Philip, and James the son of Alphaeus always come first, fifth, and ninth respectively. There is no sufficient reason for supposing that James the son of Alphaeus was a blood relative of Jesus, or that the name Alphaeus should be identified with Clopas (John 19:25).47
Simon the Zealot, as he is called here and in Luke 6:15, is called “Simon the Cananaean” in Mark 3:18 (followed by Matt. 10:4). “Cananaean” represents the Hebrew or Aramaic word corresponding to “Zealot” (from Gk. 
). The word might denote Simon’s zealous temperament, but Mark’s retention of the untranslated Semitic word suggests that it is used as a technical term, denoting a member of the party of the Zealots.48 The Zealots constituted the militant wing of the Jewish independence movement in the first century A.D.; it was they who took the lead in the revolt against Rome in A.D. 66. Although the name “Zealots” (or its Semitic counterpart) is not explicitly attested for them before A.D. 66,49 Josephus dates their rise from the earlier revolt of A.D. 6, when Judas the Galilaean refused to acknowledge the Roman Emperor’s right to receive tribute from Judaea,50 and describes their political doctrine as a “fourth philosophy” among the Jews (in addition to the “philosophies” of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes).51
Judas the son of James may reasonably be identified with “Judas not Iscariot” of John 14:22.52
Of the apostles here listed, only Peter, James, and John are mentioned again in Acts (or in any other New Testament document apart from the Gospels).
14 These eleven apostles had in their company the women who had gone up to Jerusalem from Galilee with Jesus and his followers (cf. Luke 8:2–3; 23:55), and in particular Mary the mother of Jesus. It is worth noting that the latest occasion on which Mary figures in New Testament history—or in any other narrative which can be regarded as in any sense historical—finds her joining in worship with Jesus’ disciples after his ascension.
With these women Jesus’ brothers are also mentioned. It has been warmly debated whether these were his uterine brothers or more remote relatives.53 The burden of proof lies on those who would understand the term in another than its usual sense. Jesus’ brothers did not believe in him during his ministry (cf. John 7:5), but after his resurrection they figure prominently among his followers. Their change in attitude may have resulted from his resurrection appearance to James (1 Cor. 15:7), who in due course occupied a position of undisputed leadership in the Jerusalem church (cf. 12:17; 15:13–21; 21:18). Three other brothers of Jesus are mentioned by name—Joses, Judas, and Simon (Mark 6:3).54 Since the brothers of Jesus receive separate mention here from the apostles, it is evident that the James and Judas who are included in the third quaternion of the apostolic list are not identical with the James and Judas named as two of the brothers of Jesus.55“The brothers of the Lord” continued to form a distinct group in the church well into the apostolic age (1 Cor. 9:5).56 Here, at the inception of the church’s life, they are recorded as faithfully observing the seasons of united prayer with the other members of this considerable company of believers in Jesus.57
5. A Replacement for Judas Iscariot (1:15–26)
15 During these days Peter stood up among the brothers (who numbered about 120 all told).
16 “Brothers,” he said, “there must be58 a fulfilment of the scripture which the Holy Spirit spoke in advance through the mouth of David, concerning Judas, who acted as guide to those who arrested Jesus.
17 He was numbered among us, and received his share in this ministry.”
18 [This man acquired a field with his unrighteous gain, and falling headlong there59 he was ruptured, and all his entrails were spilt out.
19 This became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; in consequence, that field came to be called in their speech Hakel-dama, that is, “the field of blood.”]
20 “It is written in the book of Psalms,” Peter went on:
‘Let his residence become desolate;
let it be without inhabitant,’
and
‘Let someone else take over his responsibility.’
21 Now then, of the men who accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went out and in at our head,60
22 right on from John’s baptism until the day he was taken up from us, one must become a witness to his resurrection along with us.”
23 So they put forward61 two: Joseph called Barsabbas,62 whose surname was Justus, and Matthias.
24 Then they prayed, “O Lord, thou who knowest the hearts of all, show which one of these two thou hast chosen
25 to take the place in this ministry and apostles hip from which Judas defected, to go to his own place.”
26 Then they cast lots between them, and the lot fell on Matthias, so he was reckoned along with the eleven63 apostles.
15 The number of those followers of Jesus who were together in Jerusalem was 120 or thereabout.64 In addition, there were more followers of his elsewhere, especially in Galilee. According to 1 Cor. 15:6, there was one occasion when he appeared in resurrection to more than five hundred of his followers; this is probably to be regarded as a Galilaean appearance. The presence and influence of so many followers of Jesus in Galilee should not be forgotten, even if Luke is concerned to trace the expansion of the gospel along the road which begins at Jerusalem and leads to Rome.65
The whole company of 12066 is here referred to as the “brothers”—a wider use of that word than in verse 14 (where it denotes Jesus’ relatives). Among them Peter takes the leading place, as to a large extent he did during the period covered by the Gospel narrative. His denial of Jesus in the courtyard of the high priest might well have discredited him irretrievably in his colleagues’ eyes, but the risen Lord’s personal appearance to him and recommissioning of him rehabilitated him and ensured for him a position of leadership never to be forfeited.67
16–17 On this occasion Peter takes the lead in filling the vacancy among the apostles caused by the treachery and death of Judas Iscariot. With one exception, where the term “apostles” bears a somewhat different sense,68 Luke restricts the use of this term to the Twelve. The total of twelve was significant: it corresponded to the number of the tribes of Israel, and may have marked the apostles out as leaders of the new Israel.69
Both the defection of Judas and the necessity of replacing him are viewed here as subjects of Old Testament prophecy. The use of messianic “testimonies” from the Old Testament—texts which had found their fulfilment in the story of Jesus and its sequel and therefore had great evidential value in witnessing to Jews—was a prominent feature of primitive Christian testimony and apologetic.70 It has been held that collections of such “testimonies” were compiled and circulated at an early date for ready reference, their nucleus being provided by Jesus’ own instruction to his disciples on the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy (cf. Luke 24:25–27, 32, 44–47). Even before the time of Jesus some of the material in the Psalter (especially in the “royal psalms”) was interpreted in a messianic sense.71 For those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah of David’s line, this meant that many of the experiences of the psalmist (David) were understood as prophetically applicable to Jesus (cf. 2:25–31, 34–36). Moreover, in the light of Jesus’ passion, many of the afflictions endured by a righteous sufferer in the Psalms were also interpreted of him. It followed that what was said of the enemies of the Lord’s anointed or of the righteous sufferer would be interpreted of the enemies of Jesus (cf. 4:25–28). Among his enemies Judas was unenviably prominent, and it was not difficult to find Old Testament texts which pointed to him. In John 13:18 Jesus, announcing the presence of a traitor in the company in the upper room, quotes Ps. 41:9 (“he who ate my bread has turned against me”), and in praying for his disciples in John 17:12 he says, “none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled.” Matthew brings together a text from Zechariah with one from Jeremiah to provide a composite “testimony” of the price which Judas received for his betrayal and the field which was bought with it (Matt. 27:9–10).72 So Peter here adduces further “testimonies” from the Psalter. Their real author, he affirms, is the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophet; David, being a prophet, was but a spokesman or mouthpiece of the Spirit (cf. 2:30; 4:25).
18–19 Before Luke reproduces the actual texts from the Psalter which Peter cited to establish his point, he inserts a parenthesis in order that his readers may understand the background of Peter’s remarks. Peter did not need to tell his hearers in the upper room what had happened to Judas, nor can the words of verse 19, “that field came to be called in their speech Hakeldama,” be part of Peter’s direct speech. But when Luke visited Jerusalem in A.D. 57, he was probably told the story of Judas’s death, and he inserts it here. Judas, he was told, bought a field with his ill-gotten gain. But he did not live to enjoy the fruits of his shameful act, for he fell and sustained a fatal rupture.73 The field was accordingly called by an Aramaic name meaning “the field of blood.”74
20 After this parenthesis, Luke continues with his report of Peter’s speech, and quotes the two texts from the Psalter to which Peter appealed. The former, from Ps. 69:25, is a prayer that the dwelling place of the psalmist’s enemies may be deserted; the latter, from Ps. 109:8, prays that a certain enemy may die before his time and be replaced in his responsible position by someone else. Here, then, is warrant for the appointment of a successor to Judas.
21–22 The essential qualifications of an acceptable successor to Judas are then set forth: he must have been an associate of the Lord and his apostles from the time of John the Baptist’s activity to the day of the Lord’s ascension; he must in particular be a witness to the resurrection, as the other apostles were. It is noteworthy in the first place that the period indicated is the period covered in the primitive apostolic preaching, the kerygma (cf. 10:37; 13:24–25). In the second place, the statement that the apostles had been in Jesus’ company since the days when John was baptizing agrees with the evidence of the Fourth Gospel, according to which nearly half of the Twelve began to follow Jesus in the days immediately following his baptism by John (John 1:35–51). The call of the apostles recorded in the Synoptic Gospels took place after John’s imprisonment (Mark 1:14–20).
23 The disciples’ choice fell on two of their number who possessed the necessary qualifications. Joseph’s additional name Barsabbas (“son of the sabbath”) may have been given to him because he was born on the sabbath day.75 Like many other Jews at that time, he bore a Gentile name as well as his Jewish one: the Latin cognomen Justus bore a superficial similarity to Joseph and may further have been regarded as a rendering of the Hebrew epithet 
(“righteous”).76 According to Eusebius and the later writer Philip of Side, Papias reported on the authority of Philip’s daughters (cf. 21:9) that this Joseph, when challenged by unbelievers, drank snake venom in the Lord’s name and suffered no harm.77 As for Matthias, he is said by Eusebius to have been one of the seventy disciples of Luke 10:1.78 Perhaps he was, but Eusebius (or his source) may only be guessing. Later tradition represents Matthias as a missionary to the Ethiopians.
24–26 The disciples did not cast lots haphazardly: they first selected the two men whom they judged worthiest to fill the vacancy. It may well be that there was nothing to choose between Joseph and Matthias; in that case the casting of lots, which had very respectable precedent in Hebrew sacred history, was a reasonable way of deciding on one of the two, especially since they besought God to overrule the lot, in the spirit of Prov. 16:33:
“The lot is cast into the lap,
but the decision is wholly from the Lord.”79
There is, to be sure, no New Testament example of this procedure after the descent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost; this may or may not be significant.
The prayer is couched in dignified language, with liturgical echoes.80 The question whether the “Lord” to whom it is addressed is God the Father or the Lord Jesus is probably settled by the fact that the same verb is used in verse 24 (“thou hast chosen”) as in verse 2 (“the apostles whom he [Jesus] had chosen”).81 The same Lord who had chosen the apostles at the beginning of his ministry would choose this replacement for Judas.
The reference to Judas’s going “to his own place” is no doubt euphemistic, but the reticence with which they alluded to his fate might be marked and emulated. The circumstances of his death gave them little ground for optimism in this regard, but they would not take it on themselves to say what “his own place” was.82
The lots, then, were cast; Matthias was indicated as the man to be coopted in Judas’s place. The number of the apostles was restored to twelve. It was Judas’s defection and not the mere fact of his death that created the vacancy; no steps were taken to appoint a successor to James the son of Zebedee when he died by the executioner’s sword some years later.83 Unlike Judas, James was faithful unto death, and might hope to reign with Christ in resurrection, if not (as he had once expected) in this present life.84
It has sometimes been suggested that the apostles were wrong in coopting Matthias to complete their number, that they should have waited until, in God’s good time, Paul was ready to fill the vacancy.85 This is a complete mistake, and betrays a failure to appreciate the special character of Paul’s apostleship. Paul did not possess the qualifications set out in verses 21 and 22. He himself would certainly have dismissed as preposterous the idea that he was rightfully the twelfth apostle, on the same footing as Peter and the rest of the eleven.
1. The “I” of “I wrote” (
) is identical with the “me” of “it seemed good to me” (
) in Luke 1:3. and is most probably included in the “we” of the “we” narratives of Acts (cf. p.7). See H. J. Cadbury. “ ‘We’ and ‘I’ Passages in Luke-Acts,” NTS 3 (1956–57), pp. 128–32.
2. The original Western text of v. 2 probably ran: “until the day in which he by the Holy Spirit gave his commandment to the apostles whom he had chosen, and bade them preach the gospel.” The omission of “he was taken up” (Gk. 
) is noteworthy, because the corresponding words in Luke 24:51, “and was carried up into heaven” (Gk. 
), are missing from the Western text (they are among those phrases at the end of Luke which Westcott and Hort bracketed as “Western non-interpolations”).
3. Gk 
might designate a member of the Roman equestrain order (representing Lat. egregius) or it might be a courtesy title (corresponding to Lat. optimus). Cf. the later occurrences of the word in Acts, where it is a courtesy title given to the Roman governors of Judaea—Felix (23:26; 24:3) and Festus (26:25).
4. Cf. B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (London, 1924), pp. 534–39.
5. Cf. C. A. Heumann, “Dissertatio de Theophilo, cui Lucas historiam sacram inscripsit,” Bibliotheca Historico-Philologico-Theologica, Cl. 4 (Amsterdam, 1721). pp. 483–505; M. V. Aberle, “Exegetische Studien. 1. Ueber den Zweck der Apostelgeschichte,” TQ 37 (1955), pp. 173–236; D. Plooij, “The Work of St. Luke: A Historical Apology for Pauline Preaching before the Roman Court,” Exp. 8, 8 (1914), pp. 511–23; “Again: The Work of St. Luke,” Exp. 8, 13 (1917), pp. 108–24; J. I. Still, St. Paul on Trial (London, 1923), pp. 84–98. More generally, G. S. Duncan suggests that Luke’s narrative was “designed to supply information which it was hoped might reach those who would decide the apostle’s fate at Rome” (St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry [London, 1929], p. 97).
6. On the significance of Luke 1:1–4 cf. H. J. Cadbury, “Commentary on the Preface of Luke,” Beginnings II, pp. 489–510; N. B. Stonehouse, The Witness of Luke to Christ (London, 1951), pp. 24–45; I. H. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids/Exeter, 1978), pp. 39–44; L. C. A. Alexander, “Luke’s Preface in the Context of Greek Preface-Writing,” NovT 28 (1986), pp. 48–74. See p. 6 above.
7.
(Ap. 1.1).
8.
(Ap. 2.1).
9. The word “former” in v. 1 renders Gk. 
, which literally means “first.” W. M. Ramsay presses the classical force of 
here and concludes that Luke contemplated a work of three volumes (St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen [London, 141920], pp. 27–28, 309). Cf. T. Zahn, Die Apostelgeschichte des Lucas, I (Leipzig/Erlangen, 31922), pp. 16–18. More recently some scholars have envisaged the Pastoral Epistles as constituting the third part of Luke’s work; cf. S. G. Wilson, Luke and the Pastoral Epistles (London, 1979); J. D. Quinn, “The Last Volume of Luke: The Relation of Luke-Acts to the Pastoral Epistles,” in Perspectives on Luke-Acts, ed. C. H. Talbert (Edinburgh, 1978), pp. 62–75. But in Hellenistic Greek 
, the word which strictly means the “former” of two, was largely displaced by 
. Luke never uses 
, and it occurs very rarely in the vernacular papyri.
10. This implies that the verb “began” in v. 1 carries a certain emphasis and is not to be regarded merely as a semitizing auxiliary.
11. A. M. Hunter, The Work and Words of Jesus (London, 1950, 21973).
12. For an exception see 14:4, 14, with comments.
13. Gk. 
, the same verb as is used in Gen. 2:7 LXX of the Creator’s breathing into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life (cf. also Ezek. 37:9). The relation of the insufflation (as the act of Christ in John 20:22 is called) to the outpouring of the Spirit recorded in Acts 2:1–4 is an interesting critical and theological question. It is a relevant point that Luke appears generally to think of the Spirit as coming with external manifestations of power, whereas the incident recorded by John is marked by none of the visible and audible phenomena experienced on the day of Pentecost. “What John records is no mere anticipation of Pentecost but a real impartation of the Spirit for the purpose specified. The Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit was more public, and involved the birth of the Spiritindwelt community, the church of the new age” (F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John [Grand Rapids/Basingstoke, 1983], p. 397).
14. Cf. J. A. Bengel, Gnomon Novi Testamenti ([Tübingen, 1742] London, 31862), p. 389 on Acts 1:1 (the acts of the Holy Spirit rather than of the apostles, as the former volume contains the acts of Jesus Christ); A. T. Pierson, The Acts of the Holy Spirit (London, 21913).
15. See H. von Campenhausen, Tradition and Life in the Church, E.T. (London, 1968), pp. 42–89; also S. H. Hooke, The Resurrection of Jesus (London, 1967); R. H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (London, 1971); J. W. Wenham, Easter Enigma (Exeter, 1984).
16. The full title of the early second-century manual called the Didachē—“The Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles”—bears some such implication. The fourth-century Syriac manual, The Testament of our Lord, claims explicitly to convey Jesus’ own directions on church order given to the apostles before his ascension. The Coptic work called Pistis Sophia, a product of Valentinian Gnosticism, claims to record revelations made by Jesus to his disciples eleven years after his resurrection, not over a period of merely forty days.
17. C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments (London, 1936), pp. 46–47. Dodd believed that the teaching of Jesus and the primitive apostolic preaching presented a completely “realized” eschatology; cf. also his The Parables of the Kingdom (London, 1935); The Coming of Christ (Cambridge, 1952).
18. O. Cullmann suggests that the Second Advent bears a relation to “the Christevent at the mid-point” of history comparable to that which the Victory Day celebrations bear to the decisive battle in a war (Christ and Time, E.T. [London, 1951], pp. 139–43).
19. On this subject see (inter alia) R. Otto, The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, E.T. (London, 1943); G. Vos, The Kingdom and the Church (Grand Rapids, 21951); H. N. Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, E.T. (Philadelphia, 1962); R. Schnackenburg, God’s Rule and Kingdom, E.T. (Edinburgh/London, 1963); G. Lundström, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, E.T. (Edinburgh, 1963); N. Perrin, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (London, 1963); G. E. Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids, 1974); J. Gray, The Biblical Doctrine of the Reign of God (Edinburgh, 1979); B. D. Chilton (ed.), The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (London, 1985); G. R. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids/Exeter, 1986).
20. Gk. 
, literally “eating salt (
) with” (this sense is borne out by the Latin, Syriac, and Bohairic Coptic versions). Less probably it is a popular spelling of 
, “lodging with.”
21. The original Western reading was probably “no one can learn” (
); cf. T. Zahn, Die Urausgabe der Apostelgeschichte (Leipzig, 1916), p. 241.
22. Or “which the Father has fixed by his own authority” (cf. 17:26 for a similar idea).
23. See I. H. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, pp. 898, 903; Last Supper and Lord’s Supper (Exeter, 1980), pp. 124–26.
24. W. F. Lofthouse, “The Holy Spirit in the Acts and the Fourth Gospel,” ExT 52 (1940–41), p. 336. The five passages are John 14:15–17, 26; 15:26–27; 16:7–10, 12–15 (see W. F. Howard, The Fourth Gospel in Recent Criticism and Interpretation [London, 41955], pp. 226–27; Christianity according to St. John [London, 1943], pp. 71–80). As for Lukan antecedents, in addition to John’s prophecy in Luke 3:16 there is Jesus’ promise in Luke 11:13.
25. John is never called “the Baptist” or “the Baptizer” In Acts (cf. 1:22; 10:37; 11:16; 13:24–25; 18:25; 19:3–4).
26. Luke 3:16 adds “and with fire” (so also Matt. 3:11), producing what has commonly been regarded as a conflation of the Markan “with the Holy Spirit” with the Q reading “with fire.” For the idea of fire cf. 2:3. Justin Martyr records a tradition that, when Jesus was baptized, “a fire was kindled in Jordan” (Dialogue with Trypho 88.3).
27. Cf. Joel 2:28–32, quoted in Acts 2:17–21.
28.
… (Luke uses 
with resumptive force: “So then”).
29. If there is a distinction between “times” (
) and “seasons” (
), the “times” would denote the interval before the consummation of the kingdom of God, the “seasons” the critical events accompanying its establishment. But probably here, “as in other cases of paronomasia, the combination has become stereotyped and the original distinction between the words forgotten” (Lake-Cadbury, Beginnings I.4, p. 8). Cf. 1 Thess. 5:1; Tit. 1:2–3. See J. Barr, Biblical Words for Time, SBT 33 (London, 1962).
30. The apostles had already (it appears) received John’s baptism; the promised baptism with the Holy Spirit would complete for them, in their measure, the anointing with the Holy Spirit and power which Jesus himself experienced on the occasion of his baptism in the Jordan (cf. 10:38). He had been anointed then as God’s chosen Servant; they were soon to be anointed to share the Servant’s ministry, carrying God’s salvation throughout the world.
31. Cf. 1:22; 2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39, 41; 13:31, etc.
32. See pp. 266–67.
33. G. W. H. Lampe, St. Luke and the Church of Jerusalem (London, 1969), p. 27.
34. It has been suggested that “the end of the earth” here is a direct reference to Rome, as in Ps. Sol. 8:16, where Pompey is sent by God against the disobedient people of Jerusalem “from the end of the earth” (
), i.e., from Rome. But the sense of the phrase need not be so limited in the present context.
35. See G. H. Boobyer, St. Mark and the Transfiguration Story (Edinburgh, 1942); H. Riesenfeld, Jésus transfiguré (Uppsala, 1947); A. M. Ramsey, The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ (London. 1949).
36. See N. B. Stonehouse, The Witness of Matthew and Mark to Christ (Grand Rapids, 21958), pp. 238–43; J. A. T. Robinson, Jesus and His Coming (London, 1975), pp. 43–58.
37. Cf. Rev. 1:7.
38. A. M. Ramsey, “What was the Ascension?”, Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Bulletin 2 (Oxford, 1951), p. 49. See also J. Denney, HDB I (Edinburgh, 1898), pp. 161–62 (s.v. “Ascension”); J. H. Bernard, ERE II (Edinburgh, 1909). pp. 151–57 (s.v. “Assumption and Ascension”); P. Benoit, “The Ascension” (1949), E.T. in Jesus and the Gospel, I (New York, 1973), pp. 209–53; B. M. Metzger, “The Ascension of Jesus Christ,” in Historical and Literary Studies (Leiden/Grand Rapids, 1968), pp. 77–87.
39. Cf. Mark 16:5 par. Matt. 28:3; John 20:12. Jesus’ own garments when he was transfigured became “dazzling white” (Luke 9:29), “glistening, intensely white” (Mark 9:3).
40. This aspect of the Spirit’s ministry is developed more especially by Paul, according to whom the Spirit is also the “seal,” “firstfruits,” or “guarantee” (Gk. 
) of believers’ coming heritage of glory (Rom. 8:23; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14; 4:30).
41. On this expression see 2:33–35, with comments.
42. Gk. 
, “oliveyard.”
43. Cf. Mishnah, 
5.3. The general regulations for sabbath observances and the sabbath limits are contained in the Mishnah tractates 
and 
.
44. So T. Zahn, Die Apostelgeschichte des Lucas, p. 44; he argues that the definite article 
before 
would certainly have indicated one special upper room to early Christian readers.
45. Cf. T. Zahn, Die Apostelgeschichte des Lucas, pp. 387–90.
46. See the discussion of “The Twelve and the Apostles” in V. Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark (London, 1952), pp. 619–27; also K. H. Rengstorf, TDNT 1, pp. 407–47 (s.v.
); A. Fridrichsen, The Apostle and his Message (Uppsala, 1947); C. K. Barrett, The Signs of an Apostle (London, 1970); R. Schnackenburg, “Apostles before and during Paul”s Time,’ in Apostolic History and the Gospel, ed. W. W. Gasque and R. P. Martin (Grand Rapids/Exeter, 1970), pp. 287–303; J. H. Schütz, Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority, SNTSM 26 (Cambridge, 1975).
47. Alphaeus is Aram. 
. There is no means of knowing if this Alphaeus was the father of Levi the tax-collector (Mark 2:14). Clopas is said by Hegesippus to have been the brother of Joseph the carpenter and father of Simeon, who succeeded James the Just as leader of the Jerusalem church (cf. Eusebius, HE 3.11).
48. Gk. 
, Heb. 
, Aram. 
. The Zealots were the spiritual heirs of the Hasmonaean insurgents of the second century B.C., who rose in response to the call of Mattathias: “Whoever is zealous (
) for the law and supports the covenant, let him come out with me!” (1 Macc. 2:27). Mattathias in turn acted in the spirit of Elijah, who was “very zealous (
) for Yahweh, the God of hosts’ (1 Kings 19:10), and earlier still of Phinehas, who “was zealous (
) for his God’ (Num. 25:13). Cf. 21:20.
49. Josephus, BJ 2.651; 4.160–61, etc. It is similarly in the context of the Jewish War that the 
first appear in rabbinical sources (e.g., 
6.8).
50. See 5:37 (with comment).
51. Josephus, Ant. 18.9, 23. See M. Hengel, The Zealots, E.T. (Edinburgh, 1988).
52. Called “Judas Thomas” (Judas the Twin) in the Curetonian Syriac version. We have no means of identifying his father James.
53. In the fourth century Epiphanius (Panarion 78) argued that these brothers were sons of Joseph by a former wife. He was not the first to hold this view, but others, such as Tertullian (Against Marcion 4.19; On the Flesh of Christ 7) had understood them to be uterine brothers, sons of Joseph and Mary. This latter view was championed about A.D. 380 by Helvidius, a Roman Christian (as part of his campaign against the prevalent teaching that virginity was a superior way of life to matrimony). In reply to him Jerome wrote a treatise (Against Helvidius: On the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary), in which he propounded a new view, that the Lord’s “brothers” were his first cousins, sons of Alphaeus by “Mary of Clopas” (whom he inferred, probably wrongly, from John 19:25 to be the Virgin’s sister). The perpetual virginity of Joseph as well as Mary was thus safeguarded. Of the sons of Mary of Clopas two are named in Mark 15:40 as James the less and Joses, James the less (
) being so called probably to distinguish him from James the Just, soon to become leader of the church of Jerusalem (cf. Gal. 1:19).
54. In the parallel Matt. 13:55 “Joseph” appears in place of Mark’s “Joses.” In both places the sisters of Jesus are also mentioned, but not named.
55. The brothers James and Judas may be intended in Jude 1. “Jude (Judas), a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.”
56. See J. B. Lightfoot, “The Brethren of the Lord,” St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (London, 1865). pp. 252–91; J. B. Mayor, The Epistle of St. James (London. 21897), pp. v–xxxvi; T. Zahn, “Brüder und Vettern Jesu,” Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons. VI (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 225–363: J. Chapman, “The Brethren of the Lord,” JTS 7 (1905–6), pp. 412–33: R. E. Brown and others. Mary in the New Testament (London, 1978), pp. 65–72, 270–78.
57. This was the original company of Jesus’ witnesses, including “those who had gone up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem” (13:31). The article 
before 
(“prayer”) may indicate the appointed service of prayer. See P. T. O’Brien, “Prayer in Luke-Acts,” TynB 24 (1973), pp. 111–27; A. A. Trites, “The Prayer-Motif in Luke-Acts,” in Perspectives on Luke-Acts. ed. C. H. Talbert, pp. 215–42. G. W. H. Lampe points out that, as Jesus prays before the descent of the Spirit on him (Luke 3:21), so the apostles and their companions pray before the descent of the Spirit on them; this, he says, illustrates Luke’s “repeated doctrine that the grand object of prayer is the gift of the Spirit” (The Seal of the Spirit [London, 1951], p. 44).
58. Reading 
(“it is necessary”) with the Western text rather than 
(“it was necessary”).
59. Gk. 
. This has sometimes been translated “Swelling up” (cf. RSV mg.), as though 
were cognate with 
or 
(cf. 28:6). The Old Syriac version seems to have taken it thus, to judge from secondary versions based on it and from a comment by Ephrem. In Wisd. 4:19 
is rendered inflatos in the Latin Vulgate. A tradition that Judas did actually swell up to monstrous proportions was preserved by Papias (see J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers [London, 1891], pp. 523–24, 534–35). See F. H. Chase, “On 
in Acts I 18,” JTS 13 (1912), pp. 278–85, 415.
60. Gk. 
(“among us” is inadequate as a translation).
61. The Western text reads “he put forward” (
instead of 
), as though Peter took the initiative in nominating them.
62. The Western text reads “Barnabas,” by confusion with the Joseph of 4:36.
63. The Western text reads “twelve” (the clause would then have to be rendered “he was numbered among the twelve apostles”). Augustine conflates the two readings: ‘he was counted twelfth with the eleven apostles’ (this is accepted by Zahn as the original text; cf. his Urausgabe der Apostelgeschichte des Lucas, pp. 29, 244).
64. Luke regularly qualifies his numerical data with the particle 
or 
(“about”).
65. R. Schütz, Apostel und Jünger (Giessen, 1921), argued for a stream of Gentile Christianity flowing north from Galilee. Whatever may be said in favor of such a hypothesis, it cannot be established on Schütz’s premises, which are bound up with an unacceptable analysis of Acts as derived from a Judaean “apostles” source and a Galilaean “disciples” source. On the possibility of an independent development of Galilaean Christianity in the apostolic age see also E. Lohmeyer, Galiläa und Jerusalem (Göttingen, 1936); W. Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist, E.T. (Nashville, 1969); for a caveat see G. B. Caird, The Apostolic Age (London, 1955), pp. 87–99.
66. It is difficult to be sure if any design underlies the fact that this number is ten times the apostolic total.
67. See G. W. H. Lampe, “St. Peter’s Denial,” BJRL 55 (1972–73), pp. 346–68.
68. See 14:4, 14, with comments (pp. 271, 276).
69. Cf. Luke 22:30 par. Matt. 19:28.
70. See J: R. Harris, Testimonies, I, II (Cambridge, 1916, 1920); B. P. W. S. Hunt, Primitive Gospel Sources (London, 1951); C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures (London, 1952); R. V. G. Tasker, The Old Testament in the New Testament (London, 21954); B. Lindars, New Testament Apologetic (London, 1961); A. T. Hanson, The Living Utterances of God (London, 1983).
71. The words addressed to the Lord’s anointed in Ps. 2:9 are referred to the coming Davidic Messiah in Ps. Sol. 17:26 (mid-first century B.C.).
72. Cf. F. F. Bruce, This is That: The New Testament Development of Some Old Testament Themes (Exeter/Grand Rapids, 1968), pp. 108–10.
73. The Latin Vulgate harmonizes this account with that of Matt. 27:5 by saying that “having hanged himself he burst open (crepuit).”
74. Aram. 
(the final letter of 
is a visual, not phonetic, transcription of final aleph, as in 
for 
). According to Matt. 27:7, it was the potter’s field, and was used thereafter to bury aliens in. Matthew further says that it was the chief priests who bought it with the money which Judas threw back at them; E. Jacquier (Les Actes des Apôtres [Paris, 1926], p. 34) and others have suggested that they bought it in Judas’s name.
75. Aram. 
; a less probable derivation is from 
(‘son of the elder’). Another bearer of the patronymic 
is mentioned in 15:22.
76. Cf. “Jesus called Justus” in Col. 4:11. Other bearers of Jewish and Gentile names are John/Mark (12:12) and Saul/Paul (13:9).
77. Eusebius, HE 3.39.8; Philip, Hist. Christ. The drinking of poison without harmful consequences is mentioned as a “sign” in the longer Markan appendix (Mark 16:18).
78. Eusebius, HE 1.12.3.
79. One may compare the procedure by which magistrates were elected in ancient Athens under Solon’s constitution—by 
, i.e., casting lots among candidates previously selected on more rational grounds.
80. Note in particular the invocation “O Lord, thou who knowest the hearts of all” (
, 
): the same epithet occurs in 15:8.
81. Gk. 
.
82. Cf. Ignatius, To the Magnesians 5:1, “each is to go to his own place” (which could conceivably be an echo of the present passage). Ignatius refers to both bad and good. Polycarp (To the Philippians 9:2) and Clement of Rome (To the Corinthians 5:4) use similar language of the appointed place of glory.
83. Acts 12:2.
84. Mark 10:35–37.
85. Cf. R. Stier, The Words of the Apostles, E.T. (Edinburgh, 1869), pp. 12–15; G. Campbell Morgan, The Acts of the Apostles (New York, 1924), pp. 19–20.
ACTS 2
B. THE DAY OF PENTECOST (2:1–47)
1. The Descent of the Spirit (2:1–4)
1 When 1the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in the same place.
2 Suddenly from heaven came a sound of a strong, rushing wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
3 Then there appeared tongues as of fire, distributed among them so that one settled on each of them,
4 and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit granted them utterance.
1 The day of Pentecost was so called because it fell on the fiftieth day2 after the presentation of the first sheaf to be reaped of the barley harvest, that is, the fiftieth day from the first Sunday after Passover (pentēkostos being the Greek word for “fiftieth”).3 Among Hebrew-and Aramaic-speaking Jews it was known as “the feast of weeks”4 (Ex. 34:22a; Deut. 16:10) and also as “the day of the firstfruits” (Num. 28:26; cf. Ex. 23:16a) because on that day “the firstfruits of wheat harvest” (Ex. 34:22a) were presented to God. At a later date it was reckoned to be the anniversary of the giving of the law on Sinai5—a not unreasonable deduction from Ex. 19:1, according to which the Israelites arrived in “the wilderness of Sinai” on the third new moon after their departure from Egypt (i.e., at the beginning of Siwan, about forty-four days after the first Passover).
The “place” where the disciples were on this occasion, the “house” of verse 2, is not more precisely specified; it may have been the upper room of 1:13, but there is no means of knowing.
2 On the morning of the day of Pentecost, then, the place where the disciples were sitting together was suddenly filled with what seemed like a great gale of wind from heaven.6 It is perhaps pointless to ask explicit questions about this wind, for there is no likelihood of their being satisfactorily answered. Was it only the disciples who heard it, or was it audible to others? There is no way of knowing. What is certain is that the wind was held to symbolize the Spirit of God. When Ezekiel, by divine command, prophesied to the wind and called it to blow on the dead bodies in the valley of his vision, it was the breath of God that breathed into them and filled them with new life (Ezek. 37:9–14). And, probably with an allusion to Ezekiel’s vision, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Whatever else may be said about the disciples’ experience, this at least is clear: the Spirit of God came on them in power.
3. John the Baptist had foretold how the Coming One would carry out a baptism with wind and fire (Luke 3:16–17). In the disciples’ Pentecostal experience, then, fire had a part to play as well as wind: the manifestation of the Spirit’s advent was visible as well as audible. What appeared to be tongues of fire were seen, one of which lighted on each of them. Again, it is difficult to translate this experience into terms which will convey its true significance. As in the burning bush, fire denotes the divine presence (Ex. 3:2–5). Perhaps no one has expressed the spiritual meaning of the “pure celestial fire” which came down at Pentecost so well as Charles Wesley in his hymn “O Thou Who Camest from Above.”7
It is uncertain how far the “tongues as of fire” are intended to symbolize the “other tongues” in which the disciples proceeded to speak. F. H. Chase suggests that, “at the moment when the illuminating Spirit was poured upon the Church, the sunlight of a new day smote upon the Apostles,” and he goes on to ask, “was it unnatural that Christians should see a deeper meaning in the sun’s rays streaming through the colonnades and the arches of the Temple and resting upon the Apostles, and connecting the sight with the wonders of Apostolic utterance which ensued, should play upon a not un-common use of the word ‘tongue’ and speak of ‘tongues like as of fire’ resting on the Apostles?”8
This implies that the “house where they were sitting” was the temple, but the fact of their “sitting” there seems to rule this out. Certainly the temple courts would be suitable for the gathering of the large crowds who heard Peter’s words (vv. 14–41), and if the disciples were in a private house when the Spirit first took possession of them (which is more probable),9 they must have left it for the streets, or else their outburst of inspired utterance would not have made the impression it did. If they came into the streets still speaking with tongues, the crowds would certainly have gathered at the sound, and it may be supposed that they followed the disciples to the temple area, where Peter turned and addressed them. This involves reading more into the narrative than Luke actually records, but any attempt to envisage what actually happened involves that.10
4 However the sensible phenomena are to be understood, the disciples’ inward experience is plainly stated: “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” The spiritual baptism foretold by John and promised afresh by the Lord was now an accomplished fact. Being filled with the Spirit was an experience to be repeated on several occasions (cf. 4:8, 31), but the baptism in the Spirit which the believing community now experienced was an event which took place once for all.11
In Old Testament times when men or women were possessed by the Spirit of God, they prophesied. So it was with Eldad and Medad when the Spirit rested on them in the camp of Israel (Num. 11:26), and so it was with many another. So now the descent of the Spirit on the disciples was attended by prophetic speech, but prophetic speech of a peculiar kind—utterance in “other tongues.”
Speaking with tongues, or glossolalia (as it is commonly called), is not an unparalleled phenomenon. Not only are the speakers’ words partially or completely beyond their conscious control, but they are uttered in languages of which they have no command in normal circumstances. Within the New Testament there is ample attestation of another form of glossolalia—it was a “spiritual gift” highly valued in the Corinthian church. Paul acknowledges that the Corinthian glossolalia is a genuine gift of the Holy Spirit, but deprecates the undue importance which some members of the church of Corinth attach to it (1 Cor. 12:10, 28–30; 14:2–19). As cultivated in the church of Corinth, glossolalia was uttered in a speech which no hearer could understand until someone present received the correlative spiritual gift of interpretation. But in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost the words spoken by the disciples in their divine ecstasy were immediately recognized by the visitors from many lands who heard them. Possibly “what happened on that occasion was that the multitude of pilgrims heard the Christians praising God in ecstatic utterances; and were amazed to observe that many of the words which they uttered were not Jewish or Greek words at all, but belonged to the local languages of Egypt, Asia Minor and Italy.”12
The mere fact of glossolalia or any other ecstatic utterance is no evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit. In apostolic times it was necessary to provide criteria for deciding whether such utterances were of God or not, just as it had been necessary in Old Testament times.13 Paul laid down, as a simple but infallible test, the witness which such an utterance bears to Jesus: “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). A few decades later John takes account of a tendency in his own environment by insisting on a more explicit test.: “every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God” (1 John 4:2). The matter is more important than the manner; the medium is not the message. On the present occasion the content of the ecstatic utterances was “the mighty deeds of God” (v. 11), and the range of the languages in which these were proclaimed suggests that Luke thought of the coming of the Spirit more particularly as a preparation for the worldwide proclamation of the gospel. The church of Christ still speaks in many tongues, and if her speech is not now normally of the supernatural order that marked the day of Pentecost, the message is the same—the mighty deeds of God.14
2. The Crowd’s Amazement (2:5–13)
5 There were residing in Jerusalem Jews,15 devout men from every nation under heaven.
6 When this sound was heard, the crowd came together and was confounded, because each individual heard them speaking in his own speech.
7 They were astounded and amazed: “Are not all these people who are speaking Galilaeans?” they asked.
8 “How then does each of us hear (their words) in our own speech, in which we were born?
9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judaea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome,
11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty deeds of God.
12 They were all astounded and perplexed, saying one to another, “What does this mean?”
13 Others said in ridicule, “They are full of new wine.”
5–8 The Jews who were resident in Jerusalem on this occasion were to a large extent pilgrims from various lands of the dispersion who had come to the holy city to celebrate the festival of Pentecost. Even if the word “Jews” is an addition to the original text, it is Jews or proselytes who are indicated by the phrase “devout men.”16 Only at the Jerusalem temple could they attend the special sacrificial services prescribed for that “holy convocation” and take part in them (Num. 28:26–31). Many of the visitors were astonished as they heard the loud praises of God uttered by the disciples in inspired language (this, rather than the noise of a rushing wind, is what is meant by the “sound” of v. 6),17 because they recognized the indigenous languages and dialects of their native lands. The visitors from the lands to the east knew Aramaic, and those from the lands to the west knew Greek, but neither Aramaic nor Greek was a strange tongue to the disciples. The Galilaean accent was easily recognized, as Peter knew to his cost on an earlier occasion;18 but these Galilaeans appeared for the moment to share among them a command of most of the tongues spoken throughout the known world.
When the law was given at Sinai, according to later rabbinic tradition, “the ten commandments were promulgated with a single voice, yet it says, ‘All the people perceived the voices’ (Ex. 20:18); this shows that when the voice went forth it was divided into seven voices and then went into seventy tongues, and every people received the law in its own language.”19 Late as this form of the tradition is, it was already accepted in some Jewish circles that Pentecost marked the anniversary of the giving of the law,20 and there may be an implied parallel between that event and what was now happening in the statement that people “from every nation under heaven” heard the praises of God, “each individual … in his own speech.” Such an implied parallel was discerned and expressed by John Keble in his Whitsuntide hymn, “When God of Old Came Down from Heaven.”21
The people who heard the sounds on this occasion, however, were not Gentiles but Jews and proselytes; the evangelization of Gentiles was a revolutionary development, recorded with a fanfare of trumpets, at a later stage in the narrative of Acts.22 Yet those “devout”23 visitors are apparently considered by Luke to be representatives of the various lands from which they had come, and of the local dialects of those lands.
9–11 There follows an impressive roll call of the nations so represented. Such geographical lists appear elsewhere in ancient literature, notably in the Rudiments of Paulus Alexandrinus, a fourth-century astrological treatise, where the nations of the world are apportioned among the twelve signs of the zodiac.24 But the resemblance between the list of nations in Paulus and the much earlier list here presented by Luke has been exaggerated. Luke’s list is relevant to its context and has some features of special interest.25
Parthia, Media,26 Elam (Elymais), and Mesopotamia lay east of the Euphrates; the Jews in those parts spoke Aramaic. These were the lands of the earliest dispersion, to which exiles from the ten northern tribes of Israel had been deported by the Assyrians in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. They did not lose their identity as completely as has been traditionally supposed. Their numbers were later augmented by the Judaean deportations in Nebuchadrezzar’s time. In spite of Persian royal decrees authorizing their return, many of the descendants of those exiles preferred to remain where they were, and their settlements were increased by further immigration, so that the total Jewish population of those eastern territories amounted probably to several tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. Artaxerxes III of Persia planted a settlement of Jewish captives in Hyrcania on the Caspian Sea (c. 353 B.C.)27. Josephus has much to say about Jewish settlements in Mesopotamia and adjacent regions;28 it was for their benefit that he produced the first draft of his History of the Jewish War in Aramaic.29
The reference to “Judaea” has frequently been regarded as a scribal error, partly for grammatical reasons30 and partly because it is unlikely that special mention would be made of Judaeans as residing in Jerusalem.31 Many emendations have been suggested, but in view of the vastly preponderant textual evidence for “Judaea” it is best to agree with B. M. Metzger that “probably the least unsatisfactory solution to an admittedly difficult problem is to accept the reading attested by the overwhelming weight of witnesses.”32 If “Judaea” could be understood here in its widest possible sense, it might denote the extent of the land from the Egyptian frontier to the Euphrates, controlled directly or indirectly by the Judaean kings David and Solomon. This would explain the absence of Syria from the list.33
As for those living in Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, there is ample evidence of the large Jewish communities in those areas of Asia Minor. The central chapters of Acts (13–20) afford abundant proof of this; Philo declares that “the Jews are exceedingly numerous in each city of Asia and Syria.”34 Jewish presence is attested in Lydia as early as the sixth century B.C. (the Sepharad of Obad. 20 is Sardis, the Lydian capital). Antiochus III brought 2,000 Jewish families from Babylonia and planted them as military settlers in Lydia and Phrygia (c. 213 B.C.).35 From the north coast of Asia Minor some Jews crossed the Black Sea; Jewish inscriptions have been found in the Crimea.
Those visitors who came from Egypt and “the districts of Libya around Cyrene” belonged to another very populous sector of the Jewish dispersion. Jews had lived continuously in Egypt since the early years of the sixth century B.C., and were always receiving fresh accessions, especially after Alexander’s conquest of Egypt and the founding of Alexandria in 331 B.C. According to Philo, himself an Alexandrian Jew, two out of the five wards which made up the city of Alexandria were Jewish in population;36 he estimated that in A.D. 38 there were about a million Jews in Egypt37 (if his total be divided by ten, it might be nearer the mark). Jews of Cyrenaica are mentioned elsewhere in Acts (6:9; 11:20; 13:1), and Simon of Cyrene figures in the passion narrative (Mark 15:21 par. Luke 23:26). Ptolemy I of Egypt (323–283 B.C.) is said to have settled a number of Jews in Cyrenaica to ensure its loyalty.38
The “visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes” form the only contingent from the European mainland included in Luke’s list. Visitors from Greece may have been present as well, but they are not specifically mentioned.39 Luke is interested in Rome because it is the goal toward which his narrative is moving. It is at least a possibility that the Roman church, whose origins are so obscure, may go back to some of those “visitors from Rome” who heard the gospel in Jerusalem that day and carried it home when they returned. “By the autumn following the Crucifixion it is quite as possible that Jesus was honoured in the Jewish community at Rome as that He was at Damascus.”40
There was a Jewish colony in Rome in the second century B.C., and it was augmented by the Jews who were brought there from Judaea to grace Pompey’s triumph in 61 B.C. and were later set free. By the beginning of the Christian era, it is estimated, there were between 40,000 and 60,000 Jews resident in Rome.41 Our knowledge of them is derived not only from contemporary literary sources but also from the study of six Jewish catacombs.42 No Jewish synagogue from the imperial period has yet been excavated in Rome, but the names of eleven are known from inscriptions.43 It was probably the spread of Christian teaching in some of these synagogues that led to the rioting of A.D. 49, the occasion of “Claudius’s edict that all Jews should leave Rome” (18:2).44
Nowhere was Jewish proselytizing activity carried on more energitically than in Rome, and it is not surprising that the Roman contingent included proselytes as well as Jews by birth.45 A proselyte was a Gentile by birth who was converted to Judaism. Such a person undertook to keep the Jewish law in its entirety and was admitted to membership of the chosen people by a threefold rite: (1) circumcision (for male proselytes), (2) a purificatory self-baptism in the presence of witnesses,46 and (3) the offering of a sacrifice (while the Jerusalem temple stood).47 Because of the circumcision requirement, full proselytization seems to have been more common among women than among men. Many men were content with that looser attachment to Judaism conventionally indicated by the term “God-fearers.”48
The catalogue is concluded with the reference to Cretans49 and Arabs. The “Arabs” probably lived in the Nabataean kingdom, east of Syria and Judaea, which stretched from the Red Sea to the Euphrates, with its capital at Petra. It was at this time at the height of its power under Aretas IV (9 B.C.–A.D. 40).50 This monarch’s relations with Judaea may be illustrated by the fact that a daughter of his was the first wife of the tetrarch Herod Antipas—the wife whom Antipas divorced in order to marry Herodias.51
All these visitors, then, heard the ecstatic exclamations of the apostles and their companions. The Jewish authorities appear to have sanctioned the use of any language in the reciting of certain religious formularies—the Shema‘ (“Hear, O Israel …,” Deut. 6:4), the “Eighteen Benedictions,” and the blessing invoked over meals.52 The praises of God in various tongues were thus heard frequently in Jerusalem during the great festivals, when so many pilgrims of the dispersion were present in the city. Now, to their surprise, these pilgrims heard the praises of God in all the tongues of the dispersion being uttered by Galilaeans of all people! The event was nothing less than a reversal of the curse of Babel.53
12–13 The public amazement and perplexity spread. One kind of ecstasy is superficially much like another, and even Paul, who himself had the gift of glossolalia,54 had to warn the Corinthian Christians that a stranger entering one of their meetings when they were all “speaking with tongues” would certainly conclude that they were mad (1 Cor. 14:23).55 So on this occasion some in the crowd dismissed the strange event with a jibe: “They are full of new wine”—that is, sweet wine56 (for, although the vintage of the current year was still some months off, there were ways and means of keeping wine sweet all the year round).57
3. Peter’s Proclamation (2:14–36)
a. “This is that” (2:14–21).
14 Then Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them. “Men of Judaea,” he said, “and all you who are resident in Jerusalem, let this be known to you; pay attention to my words.
15 These men are not drunk, as you suppose; it is only the third hour of the day.
16 No; this is what was said through the prophet Joel:58
17 ’It shall be in the last days, says God,
I will pour out some of my spirit on all the human race:
Your sons and your daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Yes; on my servants, male and female, in those days
I will pour out some of my spirit, and they will prophesy.59
19 I will give wonders in heaven above,
and signs on earth below,
blood and fire and smoky mist;60
20 the sun will be turned into darkness
and the moon into blood,
before the great and notable day of the Lord comes;
21 and every one who invokes the Lord’s name will be saved.
14–15 The ecstatic utterances had achieved a useful purpose in attracting a large crowd around the disciples. Now Peter stood up, supported by his eleven fellow-apostles, and he began to address those who had gathered around. Whatever account may be given of the geography of verses 1–4, it is difficult to think of a more appropriate or probable setting for Peter’s address than the outer court of the temple.
There is no suggestion that Peter now spoke in a tongue unknown to himself, although the verb “addressed” may imply divine inspiration.61 Before he proclaims the apostolic message, based on the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, he gives an explanation of the phenomena that had drawn the wondering multitude together.
He starts with a brief rebuttal of the charge of drunkenness. If the charge itself was made in jest, there is good humor in Peter’s dismissal of it; it is too early in the morning, he says, for them to have had an opportunity to drink to excess.
16 Then comes a statement of tremendous import: “This is what was said through the prophet Joel.” Joel, like other Old Testament prophets, had spoken of what was going to take place in the “last days.” Peter’s quotation of his prophecy means that these days, the days of the fulfilment of God’s purpose, have arrived. In another place Peter tells how the prophets who foretold the coming manifestation of God’s grace “searched and inquired about this salvation; they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Pet. 1:10–11). But now that Christ has been “made manifest at the end of the times” (1 Pet. 1:20), his followers have no further need to search and inquire (as the prophets themselves did) what person or time the prophetic Spirit pointed to, for they know: the person is Jesus; the time is now. The “last days” began with Christ’s appearance on earth and will be consummated by his reappearance; they are the days during which the age to come overlaps the present age. Hence the assurance with which Peter could quote the prophet’s words and declare “This is it.”
17–18 The quotation comes from Joel 2:28–32. Joel announces the coming of the day of the Lord, the day when he will act in righteousness and mercy. Joel says that the events of that day will come “hereafter”;62 Luke, matching the prediction to the fulfilment, uses the more precise phrase “in the last days.”63 For Luke the sign of the age to come is the presence of the Spirit. The context of Joel’s prophecy contains a call to repentance in hope of divine forgiveness (Joel 2:12–14)—a call which is echoed by Peter later on (v. 38). But the prominent feature of the words which Peter quotes is the prediction of the outpouring of God’s Spirit on the whole human race—literally, “on all flesh.” Luke sees in these words an adumbration of the worldwide Gentile mission, even if Peter could not have realized their full import when he quoted them on the day of Pentecost. Certainly the outpouring of the Spirit on 120 Jews could not in itself fulfil the prediction of such outpouring “on all flesh”; but it was the beginning of the fulfilment. Joel’s words may have harked back to Moses’ exclamation: “Would that all the LORD’S people were prophets, that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Num. 11:29). The effect of the Spirit’s outpouring is the gift of prophecy, exercised in visions and dreams and by word of mouth.
19–21 The wonders and signs to be revealed in the world of nature may have more relevance in their immediate setting than is sometimes realized. “It is remarkable,” says B.J. Hubbard, how Peter’s quotation from Joel “alludes to so many of the phenomena (including dreams and visions) which characterize the Lukan version of Christian origins.”64 More particularly, little more than seven weeks earlier the people of Jerusalem had indeed seen the darkening of the sun, during the early afternoon of Good Friday; and later in that same afternoon the paschal full moon may well have risen blood-red in the sky in consequence of that preternatural gloom.65 These phenomena are now interpreted as harbingers of the advent of the day of the Lord66—a day of judgment, to be sure, but more immediately the day of God’s salvation to all who invoked his name.67
b. The resurrection of Jesus proclaimed (2:22–28)
22 “Men of Israel, listen to this. I speak of Jesus of Nazareth, a manattested to you by God by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did among you68 through him, as you yourselves know.
23 He was delivered up to you in accordance with God’s appointed counsel and foreknowledge; you took him69 and by the agency of lawless men you nailed him up70 and killed him.
24 But God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for death to hold him fast.
25 David says with regard to him,
‘I saw the Lord before me always,
because he is at my right hand, that I may not be moved;
26 therefore my heart has rejoiced
and my tongue has exulted,
and my flesh moreover will rest in hope
27 because you will not abandon my soul to Hades,
nor let your holy one see corruption.
28 You have made known to me the ways of life;
with your presence you will make me full of joy.’
22 Peter now takes up his main theme: the proclamation of Jesus as Lord and Messiah. The early apostolic preaching71 regularly comprises four elements (not always in the same order): (1) the announcement that the age of fulfilment has arrived; (2) an account of the ministry, death, and triumph of Jesus; (3) citation of Old Testament scriptures whose fulfilment in these events proves Jesus to be the one to whom they pointed forward; (4) a call to repentance. These four elements are present in Peter’s proclamation here. He has already announced that the age of fulfilment has come (v. 16); now he summarizes the story of Jesus.
The “mighty works and wonders and signs” which God accomplished through Jesus of Nazareth72 among the “men of Israel” needed no elaboration; they were fresh in the minds of all. That these acts were indeed performed by divine power had been generally acknowledged except by those who saw that such an acknowledgment would involve unwelcome theological implications.73 The miracles of Jesus were not mere “wonders”; they were “mighty works,” evidences of the power of God operating among the people, and “signs” of the kingdom of God—“the powers of the age to come,” in the language of Heb. 6:5. “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons,” said Jesus on one occasion, “then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20). And the generality of those who saw his mighty works agreed: “God has visited his people” (Luke 7:16).74
23 Yet this Jesus had been put to death by crucifixion. While the judge who sentenced him to this form of death and the soldiers who carried out the execution were Romans, “lawless men” in the sense of being outside the range of the law of Israel,75 yet it was the Jewish authorities, more particularly the chief priests, who handed him over to the Romans. Such an action was not unparalleled: another Jesus, the son of one Ananias, was handed over to the Roman governor for appropriate treatment in A.D. 62 by the Jerusalem magistrates when they found themselves unable to handle him.76 Peter’s words are here addressed to the people of Jerusalem, not to the Jewish visitors who were present in the city for Pentecost.
Nevertheless, the action of those who took part, directly or indirectly, in putting Jesus to death was overruled by “God’s appointed counsel and foreknowledge.” God himself is said by Paul not to have spared his own Son but to have “given him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32). It was the divine purpose, revealed through the prophets, that the Messiah should suffer (cf. 3:18, etc.). This carries with it no diminution of the guilt of those who handed him over to death or carried the sentence out; but it does point the way to the removal of their guilt and the assurance of pardon. Peter, however, says nothing about this until his hearers are truly convicted of their sin.
24 The sentence passed on Jesus by an earthly court and executed by Roman soldiers has been reversed, Peter asserts, by a higher court. They put him to death, but God raised him up and “loosed the pangs of death.”77 It was not possible that the chosen one of God should remain in the grip of death; “the abyss can no more hold the Redeemer than a pregnant woman can hold the child in her body.”78 If his suffering and death were ordained by the determinate counsel of God, so were his resurrection and glory.
25–28 Now comes an Old Testament “testimony” confirming Peter’s claim. The quotation is from the Greek version of Ps. 16:8-11.79 From early days the Christian church maintained that the exaltation of Jesus took place in fulfilment of God’s promise to David (cf. 13:34, with its quotation from Isa. 55:3). In the Hebrew and Greek texts alike Ps. 16 is assigned to David. But the words now quoted from it (Peter’s argument runs) cannot refer to David, for his soul did go to the abode of the dead; his body did undergo decomposition. No one would claim that David had been rescued from the grave; his tomb—and not an empty tomb—was still a well-known landmark (v. 29). The words, “you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your holy one see corruption,” refer therefore to the Messiah of David’s line, “great David’s greater Son,” whom David himself prefigured and in whose name he spoke those words by the Spirit of prophecy. (That the messianic interpretation of the words persisted in Jewish tradition is indicated by the gloss on Ps. 16:9 in a much later midrash: “my glory rejoices over the Lord Messiah, who will rise from me,” that is, from David.80 ) These prophetic words, Peter goes on to argue, have been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth and in no one else; Jesus of Nazareth is therefore the expected Messiah.
c. Jesus: Lord and Messiah (2:29–36)
29 “My brothers, I can speak to you openly about the patriarch David. He died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.
30 But he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn an oath to him that one of his descendants would sit on his throne,81
31 so by foresight he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, saying that he was not abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh undergo corruption.
32 This Jesus has been raised up by God; of this we are all witnesses.
33 So, having been exalted by the right hand of God, and having received from his Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this,82 as you both see and hear.
34 It was not David who ascended into heaven; rather, David himself says, ‘The Lord said to my lord, Sit at my right hand,
35 until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’
36 Let the whole house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him—this Jesus, whom you crucified—both Lord and Christ.”
29 It was a matter of public knowledge in and around Jerusalem that David—the “patriarch,”83 as Peter calls him (because he was the founder of a dynasty)—died and was buried and had never been raised from the tomb where he lay to the south of the city, near Siloam. His tomb is mentioned in Neh. 3:16 (the site having been remembered from preexilic times). It was entered and robbed by John Hyrcanus during the siege of Jerusalem in 135/4 B.C.; over a century later Herod, having been halted (by divine action, it was believed) in an attempt to follow Hyrcanus’s example, made amends for his impiety by building a monument of white marble at the entrance to the tomb.84 Like David, Jesus had died and been buried, but even if his tomb could be pointed out, there was no need to do so because, unlike David, he was risen; he was no longer there.
30–32 Before he died, however, David received a solemn promise from God, as Ps. 132:11 declares:
The LORD swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: ‘One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.’ “85
It was with regard to that descendant of whom the promise spoke that David, as an inspired prophet, uttered words betokening deliverance from the grave and resurrection from the dead. And in asserting that Jesus of Nazareth had been so delivered and raised up by God, Peter and his colleagues were making a claim which they could confirm by their personal ocular testimony: “of this we are all witnesses.”
In Jesus’ own teaching no emphasis is laid on his Davidic descent, but his identity and authority were early interpreted in terms of a “Son of David” christology. The expectation of the Davidic Messiah burned brightly in the hearts of pious Jews in the first century B.C., including those of the circle into which Jesus was born.86 Paul does not develop a “Son of David” christology, but he takes Jesus’ Davidic descent for granted as something which was widely known and confessed in the primitive church (cf. Rom. 1:3; 15:12).
33 But where was Jesus now, if he had been raised from the dead? He was enthroned on high, exalted by God’s right hand.87 He had received from his Father the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, and had now poured out that Spirit on his followers; all Peter’s hearers had just witnessed the external tokens of this outpouring. The triumph of Jesus was attested by the witness of his disciples and the witness of Old Testament prophecy, as it was also to be attested by his own enduring activity (3:6; 4:10, etc.) and by the witness of the Holy Spirit (5:32).
He who had earlier received the Spirit for the public discharge of his own earthly ministry had now received that same Spirit to impart to his representatives, in order that they might continue, and indeed share in, the ministry which he had begun. His present impartation of the Spirit to them, attended as it was by sensible signs, was a further open vindication of the claim that he was the exalted Messiah.
34–35 The claim is now clinched by another proof from scripture, this time from Ps. 110:1.88 The belief that this too was a Davidic psalm, and that the “lord” to whom the invitation, “Sit at my right hand,” was addressed by God was the Messiah, is attested in the Gospel incident of Mark 12:35–37. Peter’s argument is similar to that already based on Ps. 16:10. The invitation to sit at God’s right hand was not addressed to David: David did not ascend personally to heaven to share the throne of God. The invitation was addressed to the son of David, and has found its fulfilment in Jesus. He has been exalted not only by God’s right hand (as has been stated in v. 33) but to take his place at God’s right hand, the position of supremacy over the universe. Thus the words were vindicated with which he had shocked the Jewish court of inquiry less than two months previously: “from now on the Son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God” (Luke 22:69). This exaltation of Jesus, in accordance with Ps. 110:1, is an integral part of the primitive apostolic message, as it remains an integral part of the historic Christian creeds.
36 The good news has been proclaimed: the witness of the apostles and the testimony of prophecy have combined to give assurance of the truth of the proclamation.89 The attested facts point to one conclusion: God has made the crucified Jesus both Lord and Messiah.90 The contrast is pointed between the treatment which Jesus received from his earthly judges and that which he has received from God. When he claimed to be “the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed” (Mark 14:61), his claim was rejected as false and judged to be worthy of death. But God has vindicated his claim as true, and brought him back from death, exalting him to the highest place that heaven affords. His messiahship, acclaimed at his baptism, was confirmed by his resurrection; by it he was “designated Son of God in power” (Rom. 1:4). But he has been exalted not only as Messiah and Son of God, but as Lord. The first apostolic sermon concludes with the first apostolic creed: “Jesus is Lord” (cf. Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; Phil. 2:11)—“Lord” not only as bearer of a courtesy title but as bearer of “the name which is above every name” (Phil. 2:9). To a Jew there was only one name “above every name”—the ineffable name of the God of Israel, frequently represented in synagogue reading and in the Greek Bible by the designation “Lord.”91 That the early Christians meant to give Jesus the title “Lord” in this highest sense of all is indicated by their not hesitating on occasion to apply to him passages of Old Testament scripture referring to Yahweh.92 Indeed, in this very context it may well be that the promise of Joel 2:32, “all who call on Yahweh’s name shall be delivered,” is viewed as being fulfilled in those members of Peter’s audience who repentantly invoke Jesus as Lord.
4. Call to Repentance (2:37–40)
37 When they heard this, they were conscience-stricken and said to Peter and the other apostles,93 “What are we to do, brothers?”
38 “Repent,” said Peter to them, “and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ94 for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
39 For the promise is for you and your children,95 even for all who are far away—all, in fact, whom the Lord our God may call.”
40 He warned them with many further words, appealing to them, “Save yourselves from this perverse generation.”
37 Peter’s preaching proved effective, not only persuading his hearers’ minds but convicting their consciences. If Jesus of Nazareth was indeed their appointed Messiah, then no guilt could be greater than the guilt of treating him as he had been treated. If they had refused him in whom all their hope of salvation rested, what hope of salvation was left to them now? Well might they cry out in anguish of heart, “What are we to do, brothers?”
38 The reply was unspeakably reassuring. Incredible as it must appear, Peter told them that there was hope even now. Let them repent of their sin and turn to God; let them submit to baptism in the name of Jesus, confessed as Messiah. Then not only would they receive forgiveness of sins, but they would receive also the gift of the Holy Spirit—the gift which had been bestowed on the apostles themselves only a few hours before.
Since John the Baptist distinguished his own baptism in water—a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4 par. Luke 3:3)—from the baptism in the Spirit to be administered by the Coming One, it might have been expected that, when the disciples experienced the out-pouring of the Spirit from the day of Pentecost onward, they would discontinue water baptism as having been superseded by something better. In fact they did not: they continued to baptize converts in water “for the forgiveness of sins,” but this baptism was now part of a more comprehensive initiation which took its character especially from the receiving of the Spirit.
Repentance was plainly called for: a complete change of heart, a spiritual about-face, was essential if those who had failed to recognize their God-sent deliverer in Jesus were nevertheless to enjoy the deliverance which he had come to procure for them and was now offering them from his place of exaltation. The call to repentance had been sounded by John and Jesus (and by Jesus’ disciples in his name) in the years preceding the crucifixion,96 and it remained an essential element in the proclamation of the apostolic message.97
As in John’s preaching, a call to baptism is conjoined with the call to repentance. Apparently the command to be baptized occasioned no surprise. The practice of baptism was tolerably familiar to Peter’s hearers, who (like John’s hearers before them) were required to receive baptism in water as the outward and visible sign of their repentance. But there are now two new features in the rite of water baptism: it is administered “in the name of Jesus Christ” and it is associated with “the gift of the Holy Spirit.” These new features emphasize, in G. W. H. Lampe’s words, that Christian baptism “is still an eschatological rite, for it looks forward to the final redemption which is still to come at the Lord’s return in glory; but, considered in relation to John’s baptism, it represents a realization and fulfilment of Israel’s hope.”98
It is administered “in the name of Jesus Christ”—not only by his authority but also, probably, in the sense that his name was invoked or confessed by the person being baptized (cf. 22:16). In addition, the person who administered the baptism appears to have named the name of Jesus over converts as they were being baptized (cf. 15:17). And it is associated with “the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Baptism in the Spirit is an inward work; baptism in water now becomes its external token. Baptism in water is thus given a richer significance than it formerly had, thanks to the saving work of Christ and the reception of the Spirit. The baptism of the Spirit which it was our Lord’s prerogative to bestow was, strictly speaking, something that took place once for all on the day of Pentecost when he poured out the promised gift on his disciples and thus constituted them the people of God in the new age; baptism in water continued to be the visible sign by which those who believed the gospel, repented of their sins, and acknowledged Jesus as Lord were publicly incorporated into the Spirit-baptized fellowship of the new people of God.99
It would indeed be a mistake to link the words “for the forgiveness of sins” with the command “be baptized” to the exclusion of the prior command to repent. It is against the whole genius of biblical religion to suppose that the outward rite could have any value except insofar as it was accompanied by the work of grace within. In a similar passage in the next chapter (3:19) the blotting out of the people’s sins is a direct consequence of their repenting and turning to God; nothing is said about baptism, although it is no doubt implied (the idea of an unbaptized believer does not seem to be entertained in the New Testament). So here the reception of the Spirit is conditional not on baptism in itself but on baptism in Jesus’ name as the expression of repentance.100
The gift of the Spirit is to be distinguished from the gifts of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is the Spirit himself, bestowed by the exalted Lord under the Father’s authority; the gifts of the Spirit are those spiritual faculties which the Spirit imparts, as he “apportions to each one individually as he wills” (1 Cor. 12:11). It is true, as has frequently been pointed out, that Luke thinks of the receiving of the Spirit in particular relation to the impressive manifestations which commonly accompanied it in the apostolic age,101 but the gift which is promised in verse 38 to those who repent and are baptized is the Spirit himself. This gift may comprehend a variety gifts of the Spirit, but first and foremost “the saving benefits of Christ’s work as applied to the believer by the Spirit.”102 The relation between these saving benefits and the work of Christ by which they are made available is not explicitly set out by Luke in the present context, but it is implicit here and is stated more expressly elsewhere in his record.
There is no suggestion here that believers’ reception of the Spirit was conditional on their having apostolic hands laid on them. To be sure, in such a brief summary various details would inevitably be left out; but if Luke held that the laying on of apostolic hands was an indispensable prerequisite for the receiving of the Spirit (as some have precariously inferred from 8:16), it is remarkable that he has nothing to say about it in this Pentecostal narrative.103
39 The promise of the gospel was extended not only to those present on that occasion, not only to the contemporary generation but to their descendants as well,104 not only to the people of Jerusalem but to those of distant lands (and, as appears later in Luke’s narrative, not only to Jews but to Gentiles also). Peter’s words echo two prophetic passages—Isa. 57:19 (“Peace, peace to the far and to the near, says the LORD”) and Joel 2:32, where the words quoted in verses 17–21 above are continued thus: “for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.” Those who call on the name of the Lord are those whom the Lord himself has called—and called effectually.
40 In such terms, then, Peter bore his reasoned witness to the gospel facts and to the promise of salvation.105 The generation to which his hearers belonged had been upbraided by Jesus as a “faithless and perverse generation” and as an “evil generation” because of its unbelieving response to him and his message (Luke 9:41; 11:29). But there was a way of deliverance from the judgment which such faithlessness must inevitably incur. The deliverance of which Joel had spoken was to be enjoyed by a remnant of the whole people; so now Peter urged his hearers to make sure, by a repentant calling on the Lord, that they belonged to this remnant and saved themselves from that perverse generation. The new community is viewed, in fact, as the believing remnant of the old Israel and the nucleus of the new.
5. The First Christian Church (2:41–47)
41 Those then who accepted his message were baptized: that day about three thousand persons were added to them.
42 They adhered to the apostles’ teaching106 and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.
43 A sense of awe fell on every person, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.107
44 All the believers were together in fellowship108 and they held everything in common:
45 they sold their property, real and personal, and distributed the proceeds109 to all according to the need of each one.
46 They met together constantly in the temple day by day and, breaking bread at home, they shared their food with exultation and generosity of heart,
47 praising God and enjoying favor with all the people.110And the Lord added to their fellowship111 day by day those who received salvation.
41 Those of Peter’s hearers, accordingly, who believed his message were baptized, some three thousand in all. Through the apostolic witness Jesus thus acquired more followers in one day than in the whole of his public ministry. No wonder that, according to the Fourth Evangelist, he told his disciples that, as a result of his returning to the Father, they would perform greater works than they had ever seen him do (John 14:12).
42 Luke presents in this paragraph an ideal picture of this new community, rejoicing in the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit. The community, the apostolic fellowship, was constituted on the basis of the apostolic teaching. This teaching was authoritative because it was the teaching of the Lord communicated through the apostles in the power of the Spirit. For believers of later generations the New Testament scriptures form the written deposit of the apostolic teaching. The apostolic succession is recognized most clearly in those churches which adhere most steadfastly to the apostolic teaching.
The apostolic fellowship found expression in a number of practical ways, of which two are mentioned in verse 42—the breaking of bread and prayers. The “breaking of bread” probably denotes more than the regular taking of food together: the regular observance of what came to be called the Lord’s Supper seems to be in view. While this observance appears to have formed part of an ordinary meal, the emphasis on the inaugural action of breaking the bread, “a circumstance wholly trivial in itself,” says Rudolf Otto, suggests that this was “the significant element of the celebration.… But it could only be significant when it was a ‘signum’, viz. of Christ’s being broken in death.”112 As for the prayers in which they participated, the primary reference is no doubt to their own appointed seasons for united prayer, although we know that the apostles also attended the Jewish prayer services in the temple (cf. 3:1). The community’s prayers would follow Jewish models, but their content would be enriched because of the Christ-event.113
43 The conviction of sin that followed Peter’s preaching was no momentary panic, but filled the people with a lasting sense of awe. God was at work among them; they were witnessing the dawn of the new age. This impression was intensified by the wonders and signs performed through the apostles. The words of Joel which Peter had quoted at the outset of his address declared that the “great and notable day” would be heralded by “wonders in heaven above” and “signs on earth below.” Among those signs on earth must be reckoned the works of mercy and power which God accomplished through Jesus, in token of the advent of his kingdom (v. 22). And just as the miracles of Jesus when he was on earth were “signs” of the kingdom of God, those performed through his apostles partook of the same character (cf. 3:6).
44–45 In addition to the expressions of fellowship mentioned in verse 42, the members of the new community, living together thus and experiencing a deep sense of their unity in the Spirit, gave up all thought of private property and “held everything in common.” Jesus and his apostles had shared a common purse, and the pooling of property was practised by at least one of the more rigorous parties among the Jews. The idea, therefore, was not entirely new. Those of the believers, then, who had landed property, as well as those whose belongings were of a more portable character, began to sell their assets and share out the proceeds among the members of their community, according to individual need.114 This pooling of property could be maintained voluntarily only when their sense of spiritual unity was exceptionally active. As soon as the flame began to burn a little lower, the attempt to maintain the communal life was beset with serious difficulties.
46–47 So, in the weeks that followed the first Christian Pentecost, the believers met regularly in the temple precincts for public worship and public witness, while they took their fellowship meals in one another’s homes and “broke the bread” in accordance with their Master’s precedent. The part of the temple precincts where they seem to have gathered habitually was Solomon’s colonnade, running along the east side of the outer court (cf. 3:11; 5:12). Their community was probably organized along the lines of the voluntary type of organization called a 
, a central feature of which was the common meal. The common meal could not conveniently be eaten in the temple precincts, so they ate “by households” (as the Greek phrase may be translated).115 Within the community there was a spirit of rejoicing and generosity;116 outside it, they enjoyed great popular goodwill. The praises of God were constantly on their tongues, and their numbers were constantly increased as he added more and more believers to the faithful remnant.117 It’s is the Lord’s prerogative to add new members to his own community; it is the joyful prerogative of existing members to welcome to their fellowship those whom he has accepted.
1. The Western text amplifies: “And it came to pass in those days.…”
2. The feminine form of the ordinal, 
(sc. 
), is first found as a name for this festival in Tob. 2:1 and 2 Macc. 12:32. On the significance of Pentecost in Acts see G. Kretschmar, “Himmelfahrt und Pfingsten,” ZKG 66 (1954–55), pp. 209–53; J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit (London, 1975), pp. 135–56; I. H. Marshall, “The Significance of Pentecost,” SJT 30 (1977), pp. 347–69; A. T. Lincoln, “Theology and History in the Interpretation of Luke’s Pentecost,” ExT 96 (1984–85), pp. 204–9.
3. The Sadducean party in the first century A.D. interpreted the sabbath in the phrase “the morrow after the sabbath” (Lev. 23:15) as the weekly sabbath. While the temple stood, the Sadducean interpretation would be normative for the public celebration of the festival. Christian tradition accordingly has fixed the anniversary of the descent of the Spirit on a Sunday (the “fifty days” of Lev. 23:15 being reckoned inclusively). The Pharisees, however, took the “sabbath” of Lev. 23:15 to be the festival day of unleavened bread (on which, according to Lev. 23:7, no servile work was to be done); in this case Pentecost would always fall on the same day of the month (Siwan 6), but not on the same day of the week. The Pharisees could appeal to Josh. 5:11 (“the morrow after the Passover”), read in the light of Lev. 23:10–14. Cf. Mishnah 
10.3; Tos. 
10.23.528; TB 
65a; see also L. Finkelstein, The Pharisees (Philadelphia, 1946), pp. 115–18.
4. Heb. 
, by which name the day is commonly designated among Jews.
5. This reckoning perhaps originated in sectarian Judaism; cf. Jub. 1:1 with 6:17. It is first attested in rabbinical Judaism by Jose ben Halafta, C. A.D. 150 (Seder
R. 5), and then by Eleazar ben Pedath, c. A.D. 270 (TB 
68b). See B. Noack, “The Day of Pentecost in Jubilees, Qumran, and Acts,” ASTI 1 (1962), pp. 73–95.
6. Ephrem the Syrian (4th cent, A.D.) says that the house was filled with fragrance; this may be a reminiscence of Isa. 6:4.
7. This hymn (Methodist Hymn Book 386) is in origin a meditation on Lev. 6:13 ( “The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out”), but the invocation of one who came from heaven to earth “the pure celestial fire to impart” is reminiscent also of the Prometheus theme.
8. F. H. Chase, The Credibility of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles (London, 1902), p. 35.
9. The word “house” (
) is used of the temple as well as of a private house (cf. 7:47; Mark 11:17; John 2:16; Isa. 6:4 and LXX passim). According to Luke 24:53 the disciples, after Jesus’ departure, “were continually in the temple”; but the wording in Acts 2:2 suggests an ordinary house rather than the temple.
10. An argument for a setting in the temple is adduced by R. A. Cole (The New Temple [London, 1950], P 38, n. 18); he points out that if the coming of the Spirit was manifested in the temple precincts there is a link with Ezek. 47:1–2, where the life-giving stream issues from beneath the threshold of the temple (a passage perhaps underlying John 7:38).
11. See comment on v. 38 below (p. 69).
12. P. Loyd, The Holy Spirit in the Acts (London, 1952), p. 32. Cf. also R. B. Rackham, The Acts of the Apostles (London, 1901), pp. 15–16: “Every new beginning in thought or life is inevitably accompanied by disturbance. There is the struggle with the old, and the re-adjustment to the new, environment. So the coming of the Spirit is followed by irregular and abnormal phenomena. Like Jordan, the full and plenteous flood of the Spirit ‘overflows all its banks’ (Josh. 3:15). At first the old worn-out vessels of humanity cannot contain it; and there is a flood of strange and novel spiritual experiences. But when it has worn for itself a deep channel in the church, when the laws of the new spiritual life are learnt and understood, then some of the irregular phenomena disappear, others become normal, and what was thought to be miraculous is found to be a natural endowment of the Christian life.”
13. cf. Deut. 18:22 (if a man’s predictions fail to come true, he is a false prophet); 13:1–5 (even if his predictions do come true, but he seduces his hearers from their allegiance to the true God, he is a false prophet). See also the more pedestrian tests applied to prophets in the Didachē (11:1–12:5).
14. On glossolalia see K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of Paul (London, 1911), pp. 241–52; A. L. Drummond, Edward Irving and his Circle (London, 1937), pp. 236–70, 278–97, and bibliography, p. 300; J. G. Davies, “Pentecost and Glossolalia,” JTS n.s. 3 (1952), pp. 228–31; J. P. M. Sweet, “A Sign for Unbelievers: Paul’s Attitude to Glossolalia,” NTS 13 (1966–67), pp. 240–57; K. Haacker, “Das Pfingstwunder als exegetisches Problem.” in Verborum Veritas, ed. O. Böcher and K. Haacker (Wuppertal, 1970), pp. 125-31; W. J. Samarin, Tongues of Men and Angels (New York. 1972); A. J. M. Wedderburn, “Romans 8:26—Towards a Theology of Glossolalia,” SJT 28 (1975), pp. 369–77; W. E. Mills, Speaking in Tongues (Grand Rapids, 1986).
15. 
om. 
(see p. 55).
16. Gk. 
(for 
cf. 8:2; 22:12; Luke 2:25).
17. Gk. 
(the word translated “sound” in v. 2 is 
).
18. See Mark 14:70 par. Matt. 26:73 and Luke 22:59. Galilaean speech was distinguished by its confusion or loss of laryngeals and aspirates; cf. A. Neubauer, “The Dialects of Palestine in the Time of Christ,” in Studia Biblica, I (Oxford, 1885), p. 51; G. Dalman, Grammatik des jüdisch-palästinischen Aramäisch (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 33–40, 42–51; F. Rosenthal, Die aramäistische Forschung (Leiden, 1939), p. 108 n.; E. Y. Kutscher, Studies in Galilaean Aramaic (Bar-Ilan University Press, Israel, 1976).
19. Midrash Tanhuma 26c; cf. R. Yohanan (d. A.D. 279) in TB 
88b. The true sense of the words quoted from Ex. 20:18 is “all the people perceived the thunderings” (RSV). The “seventy tongues” correspond to the seventy nations enumerated in Gen. 10:2–31. With this total rabbinical exegesis linked Deut. 32:8 MT, “the Most High … fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel”—the “children of Israel” being the seventy “persons of the house of Jacob, that came into Egypt” (Gen. 46:27 MT). Cf. Philo, Decalogue 36. See n. 24 below.
20. See p. 50, n. 5.
21. J. Keble, The Christian Year (London, 1872), No. 47. The stanza is reminiscent not only of the “tongues as of fire” of Acts 2:3 but also of Virgil’s description of the lambent flame, betokening the favor of heaven, which played around the head of lulus, son of Aeneas, at the fall of Troy (Aeneid 2.681–86).
“The fires, that rushed on Sinai down
In sudden torrents dread,
Now gently light, a glorious crown,
On every sainted head”
22. See 10:1–11:18; 11:19–26; 15:7–11.
23. See p. 54, n. 16. The word is not one of those used to denote “God-fearing” Gentiles (cf. 10:2, p. 203, n. 7).
24. S. Weinstock, “The Geographical Catalogue in Acts 2:9–11,” JRS 38 (1948), pp. 43–46, reports on a marginal note found in an offprint of F. Cumont, “La plus ancienne géographie astrologique,” Klio 9 (1909), pp. 263–73 (an article on the division of the countries of the earth among the signs of the zodiac). The marginal note, in F. C. Burkitt’s hand, tabulated the catalogue of nations in Acts 2:9–11 alongside Paul of Alexandria’s list. Weinstock concludes that Burkitt must have regarded astrological geography as the key to the understanding of Luke’s catalogue, and that Luke consequently, “however strange his list is, meant in fact to say ‘the whole world’ … all nations who live under the twelve signs of the zodiac received the gift to understand their preaching immediately.” Cf. J. A. Brinkman, “The Literary Background of the ‘Catalogue of the Nations’ (Acts 2:9–11),” CBQ 25 (1963), pp. 418–27. In view of the reference to Deut. 32:8 in n. 19 above it is not irrelevant to recall that the Hebrew fragment 4QDtq with LXX renders the closing part of that verse, “he fixed the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the sons of God” (i.e., the angels)—a reading which has sometimes been interpreted (or misinterpreted) astrologically.
25. If there were a literary relationship between Luke and Paulus, we should have to assume an earlier source for Paulus. See B. M. Metzger, “Ancient Astrological Geography and Acts 2:9–11,” New Testament Studies: Philological, Versional and Patristic, NTTS 8 (Leiden, 1980), pp. 46–56.
26. In 1 Enoch 56:5 “Parthians and Medes” play a leading part in the last Gentile war against Israel.
27. Jerome, Chronicle (on Olympiad 105); Syncellus, History, ed. G. Dindorf. 1.486.
28. Josephus, Ant. 11.133; 15.14; 18.310–79.
29. Josephus, BJ 1.3, 6.
30. The absence of the article before 
is a difficulty (since the word is properly an adjective): “anarthrous 
… is certainly corrupt” (BDF §261, n. 4). But 
may come under the regimen of 
before the preceding 
.
31. As Bede pointed out in the eighth century.
32. B. M. Metzger, “Ancient Astrological Geography and Acts 2:9-11,” New Testament Studies, p. 56.
33. Jerome actually read Syria here. Other emendations offered have been Armenia (Tertullian and Augustine), India (Chrysostom and, much later, R. Bentley), Galatia (M. Dibelius), Ionia (W. L. Knox), Iberia (J. M. Ross, ExT 96 [1984–85], p. 217), and Gordyaea, i.e., Kurdistan (F. C. Burkitt, Encyclopaedia Biblica, col. 4992). This last emendation has the support of a few Arabic MSS of the NT: Bodleian Canon. Or. 129 (Acts and the Epistles in Arabic) opens the list with Akrād (plural of Kurdi)—a reading supported by the Old Cairo MS 99 and by an early eighteenth-century Aleppo MS of the NT in Arabic (in the library of the Maronite bishop), chiefly translated from the Peshitta, but not entirely, since its text of the present list agrees with that of the Bodleian MS already mentioned (E. F. F. Bishop, “Professor Burkitt and the Geographical Catalogue,” JRS 42 [1952], pp. 84–85).
34. Philo, Embassy to Gaius 245 (cf. 15:21, where Syria and Asia Minor are chiefly in view).
35. Josephus, Ant. 12.149; cf. F.F. Bruce, Colossians–Philemon–Ephesians, NICNT (Grand Rapids, 1984). pp. 8–13.
36. Philo, Flaccus 55.
37. Philo, Flaccus 43.
38. Josephus, Against Apion 2.44.
39. This is an argument against the Burkitt-Weinstock thesis (p. 55, n. 24); Paul of Alexandria’s list places “Greece and Ionia” (under the sign of the Virgin) between Asia (under the Lion) and Libya and Cyrene (under the Scales).
40. F. J. Foakes-Jackson, Peter. Prince of Apostles (London, 1927), p. 195.
41. H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia, 1960), pp. 135–36; Schürer III, pp. 73–81.
42. H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, pp. 46–66.
43. H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, pp. 135–66; Schürer III, pp. 95–98.
44. See p. 347 with n. 9.
45. At the beginning of the second century A.D. Juvenal still has occasion to satirize the proselytizing activity of Jews in Rome (Satire 14.96–106).
46. See H. H. Rowley, “Jewish Proselyte Baptism and the Baptism of John” (1940) in From Moses to Qumran (London, 1963), pp. 211–35; T. F. Torrance, “Proselyte Baptism,” NTS 1 (1954–55), pp. 150–54; T. M. Taylor, “The Beginnings of Jewish Proselyte Baptism,” NTS 2 (1955–56), pp. 193–98; K. Pusey, “Jewish Proselyte Baptism,” ExT 95 (1983–84), pp. 141–45.
47. According to G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit (London, 1951), p. 83, this sacrifice “was not indispensable, and it was in any case probably a merely ideal or theoretical regulation, since there is no real evidence that this complex of ceremonies dates back to the days of the Temple.” See also Schürer III, pp. 173–74.
48. See p. 203, n. 7.
49. For Jews in Crete cf. Tit. 1:10–14; Josephus, BJ 2.103; Ant. 17.327. Josephus’s second wife was a Cretan Jewess (Life 427).
50. He is mentioned in 2 Cor. 11:32 (cf. p. 192 below, on 9:23–25).
51. Josephus, Ant. 18.109–15 (cf. p. 99 below, on 4:27).
52. Mishnah 
7.1; cf. Schürer II, pp. 22 (n. 78), 454–63.
53. “The account of Pentecost is dependent upon the account of Babel” (J. G. Davies, “Pentecost and Glossolalia,” pp. 228–29).
54. 1 Cor. 14:18.
55. Cf. the contrast in Eph. 5:18 between being “drunk with wine” and being “filled with the Spirit.”
56. Gk. 
. Cf. Elihu in Job 32:19a LXX, speaking by constraint of the spirit within: “My belly is like a tightly tied wineskin fermenting with new ( ‘sweet’) wine” (
).
57. “If you wish to keep new wine sweet the whole year round,” says the Roman writer Cato, “put new wine in a jar, cover the stopper with pitch, submerge it in a pool of water, take it out after the thirtieth day; you will have sweet wine all the year round” (On Agriculture 120).
58. Cod. D and some other Western authorities omit “Joel.”
59. The Western text omits “and they will prophesy” (probably by harmonization with the OT text).
60. The Western text omits “blood and fire and smoky mist.”
61. The Greek verb is 
, used already of Spirit-inspired “utterance” in v. 4. (In LXX it is used of prophesying in 1 Chron. 25:1, of soothsaying in Mic. 5:12.)
62. LXX 
(cf. 15:16 below), translating Heb. 
. For “in the last days” introducing an oracle cf. lsa. 2:2 par. Mic. 4:1. There are other variations from the OT text in this citation: in the OT “your young men will see visions” follows and does not precede “your old men will dream dreams”; the clause “and they will prophesy” (v. 18) is absent from the OT, as also are the words “above,” “signs,” and “below” (v. 19).
63. Similar phraseology is used by other NT writers to denote the new age inaugurated by the Christ-event: “the ends of the ages” (1 Cor. 10:11), “these last days” (Heb. 1:2), “the consummation of the ages” (Heb. 9:26), “the last times” (1 Pet. 1:20), “the last hour” (1 John 2:18).
64. B.J. Hubbard, “The Role of Commissioning Accounts in Acts,” in Perspectives on Luke-Acts, ed. C. H. Talbert (Edinburgh, 1978), p. 198.
65. It could not have been a solar eclipse, because the moon was full at Passover-tide. On the meaning of Luke 23:44–45, “the sun”s light failed” (
), see G. R. Driver, “Two Problems in the New Testament,” JTS n.s. 16 (1965), pp. 331–37 (he attributes the darkness on Good Friday to a 
wind). Cf. C. J. Humphreys and W. G. Waddington, “Dating the Crucifixion,” Nature 306 (1983), pp. 743–46 (they explain the blood-red appearance of the moon by a lunar eclipse on April 3, A.D. 33).
66. The adjective “notable” (LXX 
) presupposes Heb. 
in place of MT 
( “terrible”).
67. Cf. the description of the great day of wrath in Rev. 6:12, based on this same oracle of Joel.
68. The Western text reads “us” (
) instead of “you” (
).
69. “You took him” reflects the participle 
, read in 
D E 
and the majority of cursives (but omitted from most critical editions).
70. Gk. 
and not the more usual 
(lit. “fasten to a stake”).
71. Often called the kerygma (
, from 
, “proclaim as a herald,” 
).
72. Or “Jesus the Nazoraean” (
, v. 22). In spite of a variety of other explanations of the title 
as used of Jesus, it seems clear that the NT writers took it to be synonymous with 
, “belonging to Nazareth.” There is no difference in sense between “Jesus the Nazoraean” here and “Jesus from Nazareth” in 10:38 below. Gk. 
is equivalent to Heb. 
(with vowel metathesis). See M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Oxford; 31967), pp. 197-200. For the plural 
used of the followers of Jesus (24:5) see p. 440, n. 15.
73. See Luke 11:15 for the charge that he exorcised demons by the power of Beelzebul.
74. Cf. D. S. Cairns, The Faith that Rebels (London, 1929); A. Richardson, The Miracle Stories of the Gospels (London, 1941); C. Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind(Grand Rapids, 1984), pp. 293–325. The Greek word for “miracles” (
) is never used in the NT except in conjunction with the word for “signs” (
). Here a third word, “mighty works” (
), is added to make the significance of these miracles even plainer. Cf. Heb. 2:4.
75. Gk. 
, in the sense which it bears, e.g., in 1 Cor. 9:21, where the 
are Gentiles, as opposed to those 
(Jews). As for the more general sense of the word (cf. KJV “wicked”), it is relevant that the Romans are sometimes referred to in Jewish literature as, 
“the wicked” (the Roman Empire is 
, “the kingdom of the wicked”); cf. Mark 14:41, “the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners” (
).
76. Josephus, BJ 6.303; cf. G. Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism (London, 1983), pp. viii–ix.
77. Gk. 
. The Hebrew phrases 
, “the cords of death” (Pss. 18:4; 116:3) and 
, “the cords of Sheol” (Ps. 18:5), are rendered 
and 
respectively in LXX, possibly because of the similarity between Heb. 
( “cord”) and 
( “birthpang”). But one need not see here an allusion to the 
, “the birthpangs of Messiah” (i.e., the troubles ushering in the messianic age; cf. Mark 13:8). Polycarp (Ep. 1:2) may echo this passage of Acts when he speaks of Jesus as the one “whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of Hades” (
).
78. G. Bertram, TDNT 9, p. 673 (s.v. 
).
79. LXX has “I beheld” (
) for MT “I have set” (
) and “my tongue” (
) for MT “my glory” (
); it renders 
( “in safety,” “securely”) by 
( “in hope”) and 
( “pit”) by 
( “destruction,” “corruption”).
80. Midrash Tehillim on Ps. 16:9.
81. The KJV expansion, “that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh [cf. Rom. 1:3; 9:5], he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne,” goes back through the Byzantine recension to a Western reading.
82. Some Western authorities add “gift” after “this” (
); though not part of the original text, the addition indicates the true meaning.
83. Gk. 
denotes the founder or ancestor of a family; it is used in 7:8–9 below of the twelve sons of Jacob and in Heb. 7:4 of Abraham.
84. Josephus, BJ 1.61; Ant. 7.393; 13.249; 16.179–83.
85. There is another allusion to this psalm in 7:46–47 below.
86. Ps. Sol. 17:23–51; Luke 1:32–33, 69.
87. Instrumental dative (
); cf. 5:31, also Ps. 118:16 (LXX 117:16), 
( “the Lord’s right hand has exalted me”).
88. Cf. the use made of Ps. 110:1 in Rom. 8:34; 1 Cor. 15:25; Col. 3:l;Heb. 1:3, 13, etc. (and of Ps. 110:4 in Heb. 5:6, etc.). The oracle here quoted may have had its original life-setting in the enthronement ceremony for a Davidic king; it provides the foundation for the credal assertion that Christ is seated at the right hand of God. See D. M. Hay, Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm 110 in Early Christianity (Nashville/New York, 1973); M. Gourgues, À la droite de Dieu: Résurrection de Jésus et actualisation du Psaume 110,1, EB (Paris, 1978).
89. The “whole house of Israel” is called on to take cognizance of the exaltation of the crucified Jesus. For this phrase cf. Ezek. 37:11; it appears in the Qaddish, an Aramaic prayer in the Jewish liturgy:
“Magnified and sanctified be his great name
In the world which he created according to his will;
May he establish his kingdom in your life and in your days.
And in the life of the whole house of Israel,
Speedily and at a near time.
And say ye, Amen.”
90. Gk. 
… 
. Cf. the conjunction of the two titles, 
( “the Anointed Lord” or “the Lord Messiah”) in Luke 2:11 (also in Ps. Sol. 17:36).
91. The name whose consonantal skeleton is YHWH came to be regarded among Jews as so sacred that it might not be pronounced (except, it is said, by the high priest on the annual day of atonement, as long as the temple stood). MT supplies the consonantal skeleton YHWH with the vowel points of whatever word is to be substituted for it in public reading—usually 
, “Lord.” In Christian MSS of LXX YHWH is regularly represented by 
(most often without the definite article). In Ps. 110:1 (LXX 109:1), quoted in v. 34 (
[
] 
), the first 
represents YHWH, the second represents 
, a common noun meaning “lord.” When Peter says that God has made Jesus “Lord,” he gives that title a fullness of meaning far beyond that of a mere courtesy title. Cf. V. Taylor, The Names of Jesus (London, 1953), pp. 38–51; W. Kramer, Christ, Lord, Son of God, E.T., SBT 50 (London, 1966), pp. 65–107, 151–82, 215–22; F. Hahn, The Titles of Jesus in Christology, E.T. (London, 1969), pp. 68–135.
92. Consider, e.g., the application of Isa. 45:23 in Phil. 2:10 ( “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow”), and of Isa. 8:13 in 1 Pet. 3:15 ( “sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord”).
93. Various Western authorities omit “other” before “apostles” and frame the following question thus: “What are we to do then, brothers? Show us.”
94. The Western text inserts “the Lord” before “Jesus Christ.”
95. The Western text reads “for us and for our children.”
96. Mark 1:4, 15; Luke 5:32; 13:3,5.
97. Cf. 3:19; 8:22; 17:30; 20:21; 26:20. On Paul’s usage see p. 389, 11. 45.
98. G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit, p. 33.
99. This aspect is more prominent in Paul (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13) than in Luke (who nevertheless implies it by effectively dating the life of the Christian church from the Pentecostal descent of the Spirit). The vital unity of the people of God under the new covenant with the people of God in earlier days is not denied; the new beginning to which OT believers had looked forward was now an accomplished fact in the experience of those who received the gift of the Spirit.
100. On baptism see H. G. Marsh, The Origin and Significance of New Testament Baptism (Manchester, 1941); W. F. Flemington, The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism (London, 1948); O. Cullmann, Baptism in the New Testament, E.T. (London, 1950); G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit: G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (London, 1962); K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, E.T., 4/4 (Edinburgh, 1969);J. K. Howard, New Testament Baptism (London, 1970); J. D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (London, 1970).
101. Cf. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit, pp. 47–48.
102. N. B. Stonehouse, “Repentance, Baptism and the Gift of the Spirit,” in Paul Before the Areopagus and Other New Testament Studies (Grand Rapids, 1957), p. 85.
103. Cf. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit, pp. 64–67, with the literature to which he refers. Note his answer to the view that “be baptized” in v. 38 is used by synecdoche to cover the whole initiatory rite, including the imposition of apostolic hands: “there is absolutely no evidence to support it, so far as the New Testament is concerned” (p. 68). Cf. pp. 168–70 below (on 8:16).
104. Cf. the promises to Noah (Gen. 9:9), Abraham (Gen. 13:15; 17:7–8: Gal. 3:16), and David (Pss. 18:50; 89:34–37; 132:11–12).
105. See E. Lövestam, “Der Rettungsappell in Ag 2,40,” ASTl 12 (1983), pp. 84–92.
106. The Western text adds “in Jerusalem.”
107. P74
A C and some other authorities add: “in Jerusalem, and great fear was upon all.”
108. The Greek phrase 
, translated “together in fellowship” in v. 44 and “to their fellowship” in v. 47 (cf. 1:15), seems to have acquired a semitechnical sense, “in church fellowship” (see MHT II, p. 473). These believers may have constituted a kind of synagogue within the wider Jewish community—the “synagogue of the Nazarenes.”
109. The Western text reads: “And as many as had property, real or personal, sold it, and distributed it daily.…”
110. For “all the people” the Western text reads “all the world” (for the idiom cf. Fr. tout le monde).
111. Gk. 
(“together”). The Western text adds “to the church.”
112. R. Otto, The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, E.T. (London, 1943), p. 315.
113. On the wider implications of v. 42 see P. H. Menoud, La vie de l’ église naissante (Neuchâtel/Paris, 1952).
114. It is unnecessary to restrict this action to those Jews who had come to Jerusalem from their homes in the dispersion and bought burial plots in the Holy Land so as to enjoy certain advantages on the resurrection day, as suggested by K. Bornhäuser, Studien zur Apostelgeschichte (Gütersloh, 1934). Further details of this community of goods are given in 4:32–35. Similar wording to Luke’s (
) is used by Iamblichus of the Pythagoreans: 
(Life of Pythagoras 30.168). For the Qumran community of goods see on 4:32–35 (p. 100 with n. 54).
115. Gk. 
, for which the sense “by households” is attested in papyri. Cf. 20:20 below, 
.
116. Gk. 
may be rendered “generosity of heart”; cf.
(
)
in much the same sense in Eph. 6:5: Col. 3:22.
117. In view of the force of 
in vv. 21 and 40 one might almost translate 
here as “the remnant.”