The Pulpit Commentaries Acts (Vol. 1) (Joseph S. Exell)

《The Pulpit Commentaries – Acts (Vol. 1)》(Joseph S. Exell)

Contents and the Editors

One of the largest and best-selling homiletical commentary sets of its kind. Directed by editors Joseph Exell and Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones, The Pulpit Commentary drew from over 100 authors over a 30 year span to assemble this conservative and trustworthy homiletical commentary set. A favorite of pastors for nearly 100 years, The Pulpit Commentary offers you ideas and insight on "How to Preach It" throughout the entire Bible.

This in-depth commentary brings together three key elements for better preaching:

·  Exposition-with thorough verse-by-verse commentary of every verse in the Bible.

·  Homiletics-with the "framework" or the "big picture" of the text.

·  Homilies-with four to six sermons sample sermons from various authors.

In addition, this set also adds detailed information on biblical customs as well as historical and geographical information, and translations of key Hebrew and Greek words to help you add spice to your sermon.

All in all, The Pulpit Commentary has over 22,000 pages and 95,000 entries from a total of 23 volumes. The go-to commentary for any preacher or teacher of God's Word.
About the Editors

Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., served as the Editor of Clerical World, The Homiletical Quarterly and the Monthly Interpreter. Exell was also the editor for several large commentary sets like The Men of the Bible, The Pulpit Commentary, Preacher's Homiletic Library and The Biblical Illustrator.

Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones was born in London on January 14, 1836. He was educated at Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he received his B.A. in 1864. He was ordered deacon in 1865 and ordained as a priest is the following year. He was professor of English literature and lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's College, Lampeter, Wales from 1865-1870. He was rector of St. Mary-de-Crypt with All Saints and St. Owen, Gloucester from 1870-1877 and principal of Gloucester Theological College 1875-1877. He became vicar and rural dean of St. Pancras, London 1877-1886, and honorary canon since 1875. He was select preacher at Cambridge in 1883,1887,1901, and 1905, and at Oxford in 1892 and 1903. In 1906 he was elected professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy. In theology he is a moderate evangelical. He also edited The Pulpit Commentary (48 vols., London, 1880-97) in collaboration with Rev. J. S. Exell, to which he himself contributed the section on Luke, 2 vols., 1889, and edited and translated the Didache 1885. He passed away in 1917 after authoring numerous individual titles.

00 Introduction

Introduction.

§ 1. OBJECT AND PLAN OF THE BOOK

THE most ancient title of the book, as given in the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Bezae — πρα ì^{ξεις ἀποστο} ì^λων; and properly rendered, both in the Authorized and the Revised Versions, "The Acts of the Apostles" — though probably not given to it by the author, sufficiently exposes its general object, viz. give a faithful and authentic record of the doings of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, after he had ascended into heaven, leaving them as his responsible agents to carry on the building of his Church on earth. is obvious that, if the authoritative Christian documents had ended with the Gospels, we should have been left without any sufficient guidance in regard to a multitude of important questions of the utmost moment to the Church in all ages. We should have had, indeed, the record of the life and death, the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus; but as to how the holy Catholic Church, of which he was the Divine Founder, was to be compacted together, how the Lord Jesus would carry on from heaven the work which he had begun on earth, what should be the functions of the Holy Ghost, how the cry of God was to be ruled, how the evangelization of the world was to be carried on from age to age, — we should have known almost nothings. This second "treatise," therefore, which in St. Luke's design was a following up of his own Gospel, but in the design of the Holy Ghost was the sequel of the four Gospels, was a most necessary supplement to the histories of the life of Christ.

But beyond this general object, a closer inspection of the book reveals a more particular purpose, in which the mind of the author and the purpose of the Holy Ghost seem to coincide.

The true way to judge of the purpose of any book is to see what the book actually tells us, as it is to be presumed that the execution corresponds with the design. Now, "The Acts of the Apostles" gives us the history of the apostles, generally, to a very limited extent. After the first chapters, which relate with such power the founding of the Church at Jerusalem, it tells us very little of the work of further evangelization among the Jews; it tells us very little of the history of the mother Church of Jerusalem. After the first chapter, the only apostles named at all are Peter, James, John, and James the Less. And of their work, after those first chapters, we learn only so much as bears upon the admission of Gentiles into the Church of Christ. Peter and John go to Samaria to confirm the converts made there. Peter is sent from Joppa to the house of Cornelius the centurion, to preach the gospel to the Gentiles; and afterwards declares to the assembled Church the mission which he had received, which led to the assent of the brethren in Judaea, expressed in the words, "Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life" (Acts 11:18). The apostles and elders come together to consider the question of the circumcision of Gentile converts, and Peter and James take a prominent part in the discussion and in the decision of the question. The preaching of the gospel by Philip to the Samaritans and to the Ethiopian eunuch, and the conversion of a great number of Greeks at Antioch, are other incidents recorded in the early part of the book, which bear directly upon the admission of the Gentiles into the Church of Christ. And when it is remembered how very brief these early chapters are, and what an extremely small portion of the actions of Peter and James the Less, compared with their whole apostolic work, these incidents must have made up, it already becomes manifest that the history of Gentile Christianity was the main object which St. Luke had in view. But the history of the conversion of the Gentiles to the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and their admission into the Church as fellow-heirs with Israel, and of the same body, and partakers of God's promise in Christ, through the preaching of the great apostle of the Gentiles, is avowedly the subject of the last sixteen chapters of the book. From Antioch the capital of the East, to Rome the capital of the West, the writer traces in these chapters the wonderful history of Gentile Christianity through about twenty years of the eventful life of St. Paul, during the last eleven or twelve of which he was himself his companion. Here, then, we have a confirmation of what even the first part of the Acts disclosed as to the writer's purpose; and we are able to frame a theory consistent in itself and with the known facts as to the object of the book. Assuming the authorship of St. Luke and his Gentile birth (see below, § 2), we have an author to whom the progress of Gentile Christianity would be a matter of supreme interest.

This interest, no doubt, attached him, when an opportunity presented itself, to the mission of the apostle to the Gentiles. Being a man of education and of cultivated mind, the idea of recording what he had seen of St. Paul's work would naturally occur to him; and this again would connect itself

with his general interest in the progress of the gospel among the nations of the earth; while, having already written a history of the life and death of Jesus, in which his special interest in the Gentiles is very apparent (Luke 2:32; 13:29; 14:23; 15:11; 20:16), he would, as a matter of course, connect his new work with the former one.

But assuming that his object was to write the history of Gentile Christianity, it is obvious that the history of the first preaching of the gospel at Jerusalem was necessary, both to connect his second work with the first, and also because in point of fact the mission to the Gentiles sprang from the mother Church at Jerusalem. The existence and establishment of the Jewish Church was the root from which the Gentile Churches grew; and the Gentile Churches had a common interest with the Jewish in those first great events — the election of an apostle in the place of Judas, the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, the preaching of Peter and John, the appoint-meat of deacons, and the martyrdom of Stephen, at which last event the great figure of St. Paul first came upon the stage.

So that, in assuming St. Luke's purpose in writing the Acts to be to give the history of Gentile Christianity, we are supported both by the actual features of the book before us, and by the probability that his own position as a Gentile Christian, as the companion of St. Paul, and as the friend of Theophilus, would give birth to such a design.

It is no less apparent how the hand of Divine providence and inspiration moved him to this choice. St. Luke could not possibly know of himself that the Church of the circumcision would come to an end within a few years of the time at which he was writing, but that the Church of the uncircumcision would go on growing and spreading and increasing through more than eighteen centuries. But God did know it. And therefore it came to pass that this record of evangelical work in heathen countries has been preserved to us, while the work of the apostle of the circumcision and of his brethren has been suffered to fade from remembrance.

§ 2. AUTHOR OF THE BOOK.

We have, in the preceding section, assumed St. Luke to be the author of the Acts of the Apostles; but we must now justify the assumption, though the fact that there is no reasonable doubt about the matter, and that there is a general consent of modern critics on the point, will make it unnecessary to enter into any lengthened disquisition.

The identity of authorship of the Gospel of St. Luke and the Acts of the Apostles is manifest from the dedication of both to Theophilus (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1), and from the reference by the writer of Acts 1:1 to the Gospel written by him. The details in Acts 1:1-9 agree closely with Luke 24:28-51; and there is a striking resemblance of style, phrases, the use of particular words, arrangement of matter, and turn of thought in the two books, which is generally recognized by critics of all schools, and which supports the unanimous testimony of the early Church, that they are both the work of one author. And this resemblance has been lately brought out with remarkable force in one particular, viz. the frequent use of medical terms, both in the Gospel and in the Acts — terms, which in very many instances are found nowhere else in the New Testament (Hobart's 'Medical Language of St. Luke:'Longmans).

If, then, the Gospel was the work of St. Luke, the Acts of the Apostles was so likewise. That the Gospel was the work of St. Luke is the unanimous testimony of antiquity; and the internal evidence agrees with all that we know of St. Luke that he was not of the circumcision (Colossians 4:10-14); that he was a physician (Colossians 4:14), and consequently a man of liberal education. Indeed, even modern hypercriticism generally admits St. Luke's authorship. It may be added that the internal evidence of the Acts of the Apostles is also strongly in favor of it. His companionship of St. Paul, who styles him "the beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14); his presence with St. Paul at Rome (2 Timothy 4:17), compared with the fact that the writer of the Acts sailed with St. Paul from Caesarea to Italy (Acts 27:1) and arrived at Rome (Acts 28:16), and the utter failure of the attempts to identify the author with Timothy (see especially Acts 20:4, 5) or Silas, or any other of St. Paul's companions; are of themselves strong if not decisive testimonies in favor of Luke's authorship. Taken in conjunction with the other arguments, they leave the question, as Renan says, "beyond doubt." (See below, § 6.)

§ 3. DATE OF COMPOSITION.

Here, again, the inquiry presents no difficulty. The obvious prima facie inference from the abrupt termination of the narrative with the notice of St. Paul's two years' abode at Rome is undoubtedly the true one. St. Luke composed his history at Rome, with the help of St. Paul, and completed it early in the year A.D. 63. He may, no doubt, have prepared notes and memoranda and abstracts of speeches which he heard delivered, for several years before, while he was St. Paul's companion. But the composition of the book is clue to the comparative leisure of himself and his great master during the two years' imprisonment at Rome. It could not, of course, have been completed earlier, because the narrative comes clown without a break, in one continuous flow, to the time of the imprisonment. It could not possibly have been written later, because the termination of the book marks as plainly as is possible that the writer was writing at the very standpoint to which he had brought down his narrative. We may affirm, without any fear of being wrong, that St. Paul's trial before Nero, and his acquittal and his journey into Spain (if, indeed, he went to Spain) and his second trial and martyrdom, had not taken place when St. Luke finished his history, because it is utterly inconceivable that, if they had, he should not have mentioned them. But it is highly probable that incidents connected with St. Paul's first trial, and consequent immediate departure from Rome, put a stop at the moment to all literary work, and that, it St. Luke designed continuing his history, his purpose was frustrated by circumstances of which we have no certain knowledge. It may have been his employment in missionary work; it may have been other hindrances; it may have been his death; for we have really no knowledge whatever of St. Luke's life subsequent to the close of the Acts of the Apostles, except the mention of him as being still with St. Paul at the time of the writing of his Second Epistle to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:11). If this Epistle were written from Rome during St. Paul's second imprisonment, this would bring down our knowledge of St. Luke two years later than the close of the Acts. But it is easy to conceive that even in this case many causes may have hindered his continuing his history.